by Tina Gasperson
If you’re in need of extra storage space for your digital photo or music collection, or you’d just like to back up those files in case the inevitable hard drive failure happens, one of the easiest ways to add more space to your PC is by adding an external hard drive that connects via USB. An external hard drive is inexpensive, portable, and very easy to use.
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by Ross M. Greenberg
If you put two computer users in a room you get three opinions about Vista. But there’s one thing they all have in common: Everybody hates User Account Control – that annoying box that pops up every time you try to do something useful. It can be turned off easily, but I don’t recommend it. There really are “bad guys” out there getting their jollies by zapping your hard disk. You are fully backed up, right?
Leave UAC turned on.
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by Tina Gasperson
If you have a need to keep your notes really secure and private, a little tool called Locknote should work well for you. Locknote is free and easy to use. All you do is download Locknote and run it. There’s no installation required.
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by Tina Gasperson
Have you ever “Googled” someone? It’s easy. Just visit your favorite search engine, such as Google.com, and type their first and last names into the search box, preferable encased in quotation marks in order to exclude pages that happen to have the first and last name in some other order. In a matter of seconds, you have a list of links to pages that include your friend’s name. If your friend has an uncommon name, you can be pretty sure you’ve got the right person. Now imagine your friend Googling you. If the thought of that makes you nervous, maybe you’d better Google yourself and see just what’s out there. You may be surprised to find that 10-year-old discussion forum post you made is still lingering online, even though you’ve moved on to completely different things.
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by David Hakala
Imagine buying an expensive, slick new TV, taking it home, unwrapping it in eager anticipation, and finding its shiny new screen covered with stickers advertising things that you have no intention of buying:
Thai Kick Boxing Pay Per View – First Month FREE!
Universal Remote Control – FREE With Subscription to Quilting Channel!
Best TV Screen Cleaner – Only $29.95!
Worse, these stickers have that evil sort of glue that won’t let you peel them off cleanly. They tear and leave shreds of paper stuck to the screen, forcing you to scrape the remnants off with fingernails.
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by Tina Gasperson
There are many reasons you might want to check the browsing history on your computer – perhaps you remember finding the perfect crème brulee recipe last week but you forgot to bookmark it, or maybe you just need to check up on your teenage daughter to make sure she really was researching her latest school project online and not watching reruns of Family Guy the whole time. Whatever the reason, finding out where you were is easy to do if you know where to look.
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by Gabe Goldberg
Bill Gates must be a trusting soul, since Windows was designed to be an open and flexible computing environment, usually allowing any user full authority to do all sorts of complex and (potentially) dangerous things. In a perfect world — one in which nobody made mistakes and no malicious acts occurred — this would be useful and convenient.
But in reality, the PC’s openness means that a well-intentioned – and even knowledgeable — user can do damage, sometimes simply by visiting a Web site which has been corrupted to include malware (evil-intending software such as a virus, work, Trojan, etc.) which will download and install itself by stealth.
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by David Hakala
Q: How does one get rid of History Swatter? And, how did one get History Swatter to begin with? — Bill
A: To get rid of History Swatter and a bunch of other adware you undoubtedly picked up with it, run a scan with an antivirus program such as Avast! Antivirus or an adware remover such as Ad-Aware Plus. Both are free for non-commercial home users.
You probably got History Swatter by downloading MyWebSearch Plus, or by downloading any of several hundred free applications that bundle MyWebSearch as part of their super-duper deals.
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by David Hakala
You may want to get rid of Outlook Express if you do not use it for email. It is a weakness in your system’s security perimeter, a favorite target of hackers. Much malware targets Outlook Express because Outlook Express has been around since 1998, is installed automatically on every machine running Windows 98 to Windows XP, and is so devilishly difficult to remove that very few people take the trouble. To remove Outlook Express manually you must:
Rename three folders, for every user account on the system
Find and delete seven registry keys
Rename 17 files twice, for they are in two folders
Most people would rather pull out their toenails one by one. Outlook Express consumes a trivial 190 KB of disk space so they leave it alone. The back door for hackers remains open and unnoticed. Here is how to close it easily:
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by David Hakala
Say you don’t want your spouse or parents to know where you’ve been surfing because you’ve been shopping online for birthday presents. Or perhaps you work for the CIA and don’t even want your password-protected, biometrically accessed, triple-DES encrypted personal computer to know what you’ve been working on. You need to erase your tracks; delete the recorded history of your computer activity.
History is convenient. Windows, by default, keeps track of files you have opened. When you open the Start menu in Windows XP, you will find a list of them under My Recent Documents; just click on one to open it and start working again. Separately, Web browsers keep track of URLs you have visited so you can just type a few letters of one to pull it up and click to go there, instead of re-entering the whole thing. That’s great, but so can anyone who has access to your computer. If that thought makes you uncomfortable, here is how to minimize or eliminate your history.
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by Tina Gasperson
The Internet can be a dangerous place for a desktop computer. Sometimes it seems as if there are viruses lurking around every virtual corner. The people who write the code that makes these evil programs run are always thinking of new ways to lure us into their cyber clutches. And unfortunately, sometimes we take the bait.
If you’ve been tricked by a nasty little bit of code and your computer looks like it’s down for the count, don’t despair. Most of the time you can fix it by following a few simple steps.
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