And now it's December...

Yep, the whole summer and fall have passed.  Incredible.

First tip, if you bought a PC that has MS Office Starter on it and you want to upgrade to Office 2010 Home and Student, buy the new S/W in a store.  Then, completely remove Office Starter.  Be sure to reboot your PC after removing Office Starter.  THEN and ONLY THEN, install Office 2010 Home & Student.  Oh, and make sure you buy the 3 pack so you can install Office 2010 Home and Student on 3 separate PC's.  But DO NOT lend it out to your friends.  Keep it home in a safe place.

Beware, ANDROID devices are particularly susceptible to malware.  There have been many notes on the web about this.  And not much in the way of A/V, anti-malware and such for Android devices.

Memorial Day

The official start of the Summer of 2011.  And several new initiatives.  I am now offering online web seminars with introductory free "webinars" during June 20011.  Hoping to resume my Blog talk Radio shows soon.

Enjoy the summer of 2011.  Call if you need help, 732-568-4943.

Peace,

Dave

Winter Over?

Seems I write about every 3 months or so.  It's now March 27th and we just returned from a week in Ft Myers Beach, Fl.  Why am I still in NJ??

PC Spring Cleaning

Get your pc cleaned.  Clean up your Temporary files, Temporary Internet files, etc.  Run Disk Cleanup to get rid of the temp files.   Run Disk Defragmenter to get rid of fragmentation of your files.  Your PC will run better.  Make sure your Anti-Virus software is up to date and functioning.  Make sure your AV Signature files are updated.  One sure sign of the presence of a virus is that your AV software won't run and/or your AV signature files won't update. 

Review Options

If you're still running Windows XP on your home machine(s) then give serious consideration to upgrading your hardware to Windows 7.  Hardware prices are low and XP support is dwindling.  You will be forced to upgrade if you run into any problems with your XP machine(s).  Be proactive and take advantage of any deals the hardware companies may be offering.

Tighten your Security

Don't put your life history on social networking sites.  No need for anybody to know your exact birthday, where you went to school, and all that other stuff.  Some of the stuff you will be using for your credit card and banking sites.  Posting these bits of information on social networking sites gives identity thieves the information they need to hack your financial sites.

Turn OFF file and print sharing if you are going to use unsecured WiFi hotspots.  Reduce the possibility of getting your files appropriated by hackers.   Make sure you put passwords on your user accounts.  They are another layer of protection.  Don't have any Administrative priveledge accounts without passwords.  Don't let anybody have Administrative priveledges when they don't really need them.   Sometimes it's good for a less skilled user NOT to have Admin.  If they click on a link that wants to install a malware program, Windows may reject the attempt saying the user does not have sufficient priveledges.  This is GOOD.  It prevents indiscriminant installation of malware and malicious programs.

Need Windows PC Help?  Call 732-568-4943 Free initial consultation and reasonable rates thereafter.  Follow me on Twitter 

Peace,

Dave

More January

Home Shared Calendar App

I recently did yet another search for a home shared calendar solution.  I have been using a shared calendar add-in for outlook for about the last five years.  It was programmed by a company on Long Island called "pc dot com".  It only worked on outlook 2002.  They never updated it to work with more recent releases of outlook.  I emailed them many times, receiving no answer.  I called them a couple of times and was told the programmer left and they didn't have anybody to update the code.  Believe it or not I think they are STILL in business.  And, now that I have upgraded my home pc's to 64 bit Windows 7 machines, it does not work at all.  It won't install.


So I resumed my search with a renewed vigor to find a FREE acceptable shared calendar solution.  The criteria was that it hand to handle shared calendar entries so my wife and I could make entries and see each other's appointments.  I would then run my outlook 2002 and manually enter appointments and sync with my HTC Touch pro 2 phone.  I did not want to use yahoo or hotmail calendaring because I did not want to make either of those my primary email.  I have yahoo and hotmail id's but I use them for junk mail.  I did not want to subject my phone to hotmail and yahoo mail junk.


I settled on a  home oriented cloud based app called cozi.  See it at http://www.cozi.com/ .  It provides family shared calendar, shopping lists and more.  I only use the family calendar feature.  So far it works great.


I'll see how it works out.


Fiver

I found a site that "markets" your skills for anything you'll do for $ 5.00.  People put "gigs" on the site that must be approved by site administration.  Once approved, any other member may buy the services for $ 5.00.  The site keeps $ 1.00 and the provider then gets $ 4.00.  Works good so far.  The site is http://www.fiverr.com/ .  I decided to put a gig on there for emailing ONE of my landscape digital photos for $ 5.00.  No takers on this one yet but I did get a few takers for writing reviews on websites for $ 5.00.  My site there is
Click here for my Fiver site 

Peace,

Dave

Two machines

Just recently got two Dell desktop machines with Windows 7.  They are basic machines about $ 400 each and work great!  Got one for my wife and other for me.  I junked one older dell machine from 2000, and will investigate putting a terabyte hard drive in the other and installing Windows Home Server.

The holidays made it sort of difficult to keep up with the blogging, radios shows, etc.  So therefore they didn't get done.

All for now.