Forum: General Tips

We live in a world where multitudes of companies want to know every facet of your life so that they can use this to sell you some shit via AdSense, or popups. If you're fed up with, or worried about, being tracked on the Internet then read on: First of all, you should be using Google Chrome. This is simply because, with the various plugins that are available for it, it is more secure than firefox, safari, IE or Opera, etc. Handy plugins for Google Chrome are

The biggest misnomer about Macs is that a Mac user does not need to worry about malware or viruses. This is not entirely true and may be best described as a false statement. While Mac’s are less prone to getting Viruses and Malware they are still vulnerable. The most recent example of a major Malware outbreak was in 2011 with the dreaded Mac Defender. Mac Defender guised itself as a legitimate software program but then ended up turning out to be something a Mac User could not get rid of. When they installed the software began to inform the user they had viruses or other malware on their computer and would need to pay to get the full version of the software to remove these so called “threats” that were not really there. Long story short, even Mac users have to be careful and should guard their systems against viruses and malware. I thought I would give a review of a few of the free ones which I have used. iAntivirus: While this is a free software program that is quite good at removing...

iPad Apps keep crashing? Here’s a little trick for you to get them to stop this. If this doesn’t work then you may have a recently installed app that is giving you problems with the other apps. Click and hold both the Home and On/Off-Sleep/Awake buttons. Hold these buttons through the “turn iPad off” screen until you get the Apple Logo on your screen. Once you see the Apple Logo release the Home and On/Off-Sleep/Awake buttons. When you restart the apps should stop crashing. What you are basically doing above is hard rebooting the iOS to dump all the cache. Some Cache for some apps may remain in system memory and cause other apps to crash. Also, Safari for iPad may crash from time to time because of excess memory usage because you may be attempting to load a page that is really memory intensive with lots of animated graphics or such. If the above doesn’t work for you, I can only suggest that you determine which App you installed last before you started getting the issue and uninstall it....

For those unfamiliar with CCleaner, it is a small program that cleans your computer of temporary files. It can empty your Recycle Bin, delete temporary Internet files and cookies, delete old cache files and so on. Using the default settings is well and good, but if you want extra security you can change the settings from simple deleting to delete and overwrite. This helps remove data from your computer better than simply deleting files. (See this thread for details on data destruction.) CCleaner is a tool commonly used by those thinking they can simply wipe old history from their computers with a single click. For the most part this is true, and CCleaner is definitely a tool I would recommend to everyone. While I endorse CCleaner, I will be the first to tell you it is not an answer-all to deleting data. This thread, however, is not so much about recommending CCleaner to people but about a single offered option I suggest everyone check. I do not recommend users play with the Advanced settings of...

Drives can fail without mechanical issues, so judging whether your drive is failing can at times get tricky. And who wants to pay a diagnostic fee for someone to tell you what you already know? More than 80% of the time it's apparent when a drive shows signs of failure—you can hear it it. Yet occasionally a drive can fail without offering any noisy hints. There are many ways to judge whether a drive will fail, and I will tell you things to look out for. MECHANICAL FAILURE Most of the time when a drive begins to fail many warnings are given, mostly audible ones. You will hear scratching or grinding, and at worst a clicking noise when the drive is in use. Hard drives are not too complicated. Depending on age, brand, speed, etc., it all boils down to spinning platters stacked atop one another. When in use, those disks spin as the data is read from them, similar to a CD or DVD, yet the discs involved are metallic and not plastic, and they're stacked/layered. Imagine watching a DVD movie using 4 tandem...

It's common for people to shutdown their computers at night, when they're done for the day. Conventional wisdom would lead us to believe leaving a machine on all the time is bad. I mean, we don't leave our cars running overnight, do we? Well, this time conventional wisdom is wrong. Booting up your computer in the morning and shutting it down at night actually wears the thing out faster, significantly shortening the lifespan of vital components that use moving parts. A motor vehicle has a substantially greater number of moving parts than a computer (and it requires fuel), thus leaving it running all the time, and simply long-term use of the vehicle will result in those parts defecting eventually. On the other hand, computers have very few moving parts, and those parts already save energy on their own without you switching the machine on and off. But before I move forward on this, let's look at the moving parts of a computer. Hard drive(s) Fans Media drives (CD/DVD-ROM) That's it! Those are the...

The fastest growing crime in the world is identity theft, and it has been rising exponentially each year for the last 8+ years. Getting personal information from someone is easier than you think, and that person doesn't even have to own a computer. But I won't go into all the dangers and preventions of identity theft because it is beyond the scope of this thread. What we are concentrating on here is how to destroy old data from a hard drive in your computer. This is called data remanence. KEEPING THE MACHINE Many people swear by programs such as CCleaner, programs that constantly wash your machine of internet history and files dumped into your recycle bin. Unless you're trying to hide something from your spouse or parents, programs such as these are not really that useful in the grand scheme of things. They do provide the user with a sense of security, which is a double-edged sword. It's nice to feel secure, but there is such a thing as a false sense of security. And at times applications like CCleaner...

During Firefox version 3 there was an uproar about memory leaks and, as updates were made to the browser, attempts to fix the problem failed. Even now with Firefox 5 (v4 only lasted a couple of months) Mozilla's team hasn't corrected the problem. There is, however, a solution to the problem. But first I should explain what a memory leak is for those who do not know. A memory leak is an error in software coding wherein the longer the application remains open the more memory it sucks up. When a user launches the Firefox browser, the minimum amount of memory is allocated to it, and that is considering no addons are installed. Every installed extension to Firefox increases the minimum amount of memory required to run the browser, thus the more addons one has the more memory is required. Now consider users opening multiple tabs in a single session, each tab requiring extra memory not just for the tab but also to run all the extensions in that tab. So, for every tab you open in a Firefox session, the browser...

In this thread I advise you not to shutdown your computer regularly but instead reboot it about once per month. There is a negative side to this, and it is especially pronounced when you get a power surge or even a brown or black out. Surges are more deadly to computer components than outages, but the quick halt of any device can cause problems. Outages can wreck your computer, but surges are killers, so we'll start there. SURGES A surge is basically a rush of electricity to either a home or single outlet, where the normal wattage is spiked with excess energy. I don't need to tell you that being shocked is bad, and this can actually destroy electronic equipment plugged into an outlet. A power surge can render any single component in your computer useless, from destroying a power supply to burning out your video or sound card, or even frying your motherboard and/or CPU. More commonly when a surge wrecks a motherboard, the whole board isn't ruined, just a single bus. Yet that bus can be the one your CPU...

I know not how Internet Service Providers (ISP) work globally, I can only speak for North American practices. Thus, the following information is restricted to North American ISP business practices. Internet Service Providers continually fool customers by using abbreviations and terminology to which most consumers are ignorant. Most commonly ISPs advertise their bandwidth flow using megabit per second, but usually they abbreviate to Mbps, which confuses most customers. This confusion leads to many customers believing their bandwidth is much greater than what is actually offers. Moreover, what is offered is rarely achieved. First and foremost, you need to know the abbreviation the ISPs use, which is Mbps. This stands for megaBITS per second. Normally a provider says you get X Mbsp download and X Kbsp (kilobit per second) upload. BIT & BYTE I truly hate to do this, but we have to tackle some mathematics in order to comprehend the relationship between a bit and a byte, a kilobit and kilobyte, a megabit...

Most people using wireless internet in the home don't set up their own networks, the internet provider does that during installation. It's rare these days that an internet provider doesn't include a broadband modem capable of wireless networking. Whether you use your provider's wireless connection or you introduce your own wireless router is irrelevant. By default, all wireless routers in the home are installed without security. Simple plug'n play. Wireless security is important but it's not terribly serious when discussing in-home usage. The major reason security should be implemented is to prevent your internet connection from being hijacked. Without wireless security anyone from a neighbor to a vagabond in a van can login to your wireless network and use its internet for free. Most wireless routers using 802.11 technology can broadcast up to 200 feet (61 meters), though attenuation occurs dramatically after 100. This means if you live in an apartment complex your neighbor can use your internet with...

The reason I'm placing this topic here is because most people believe ID theft is digital. This thread is definitely meant to scare you. But I will also offer advice on how to protect yourselves. Identity theft is the fastest growing crime in the world, and it has been such for more than five years. People can piss and moan about gun deaths in the United States, but ID theft is 23x more likely. Don't worry about being raped or murdered. Worry about waking up tomorrow and everything you own is gone. You are not you, someone else is you. With the recent digital revolution, most companies prefer to do business online. It's cheaper and more convenient for customers. Pay your bills online, move funds online, check your balance, and on and on. Everything today is digital, and most people use the same password for every digital transaction. Keeping yourself secure digitally is easier than most think. Hollywood likes to make movies about hackers capable of doing anything and everything (Die Hard 4), more...

Information technology, known simply as I.T., is everywhere. It is part of nearly every form of technology we use today in the home, ranging from personal computers to television. It is globally ubiquitous. And because this field of technology is ubiquitous many retailers who sell technology have opened support departments in order to take advantage of this boom so that a profit can be returned. This leads us to Geek Squad. BACKGROUND Geek Squad is now owned by Best Buy, but originally it began with a single college student in the Midwest (United States). This feller, in order to make money to pay his tuition, used his knowledge of computers in a unique way. He purchased a van and painted it (including a phone number), and drove around his small town hoping people would call or flag him down. Apparently it worked, because he quickly gained client after client, and made so much money so quickly that he hired a few pals to help out. Geek Squad was originally a handful of college buddies with know-how...

Believe it or not, when you use the uninstall wizards provided by developers they tend to leave a lot of leftover garbage behind. Rarely do they remove all traces of the application. In some instances directories filled with junk files are left behind, and in others registry keys are left behind. The more junk you have on your computer, whether files or registry keys, the slower your machine runs. There is a free and easy way around this without having to manually dig through the registry or manually go behind the uninstaller and delete leftovers. You can download and install a small application called Revo Uninstaller. Revo will walk you through uninstalling the software, removing leftover registry entries, and any leftover files on the hard drive. Revo has a PRO version, which costs money. I've been using the free version for years and it works plenty well. NOTE: Make sure when you're shown a list of leftover files/folders and registry entries you choose "select all" then "delete" before...