Move Around Your System Faster..

One question I get asked a lot in my field is how do I move around so fast on the PC. Without meaning to, I seem to make people feel like they are moving in slow motion when I am opening, closing, copying, pasting, etc.

To be honest, I can type very quickly. But in addition, I know a lot of shortcut keys for the common applications we use. This comes from my time as a bench tech many years ago. In the days of serial and bus mice, we didn’t always have users bring in their mice for their system when they dropped them off. Sometimes we had a spare mouse, but now always. So we went to plan B. Keyboard commands.

I have decided that not only are they helpful for IT staff that can be in a hurry and dragging the mouse around does slow us down sometimes. But it can make users that have to do a lot of these common functions over and over again more efficient. Isn’t that the point of computers? I am including an overall common Office products PDF also a seperate on for each: Excel, Outlook and Word. I have even put together some helpful key commands for Windows. These are not all inclusive, and if you know of anymore that you use, please let me know.

Free PDF Writer

By now, most everyone has noticed that PDF files have become the prevailing format for secure and reliable distribution of electronic documents.

So how do you, the normal person, create these handy files without paying an arm and a leg? I have found a great and easy answer. CutePDF writer. I admit, it’s not as full featured as the pay version by Adobe, but for the savings, I can do without those features anyways.

Like with the MS Office products, it appears that the more you pay for the program, the more “features” you will never use in your life. I know someone somewhere would have a use for them, but at least for me, they just slow me down and make the product cost more then it’s worth.

I personally like the way CutePDF works, no interface to deal with, no configuration. Install and go. I like plain and simple.

When you get the product installed, to create a PDF all you have to do is print. That’s all. You have a webpage (I know this one is at the top of your list) that you want to convert, go to file print and select the CutePDF Printer. You can use this converter for any application you can print from. For the price you can’t beat it.

How Hot Is ur laptop..

How many readers have a laptop? I would say alot, they are much cheaper and much more functional then the laptops of the old days. Some are almost as cheap as a desktop. That coupled with how easy a wireless network is to set up and how many public area offer free WiFi for on the road, makes a laptop a good investment now a days.

But have you tried to ever sit with one on your lap sometimes? Well imagine the temperature inside the case and imaging what it is doing to your CPU(s).

For those that may not be aware of what high temperatures can do, it cause cause hardware problems or even cause software to freeze up and crash.

To see the CPU temperature, there is a few free programs out there. The first is Real Temp. It is a small download that you install and bam you see the temp of your Intel processor(s). It does show a lot of information, but for most users you will need only the minimum and maximum temp, the current CPU load, and the thermal indicators. Another I have used in the past is SpeedFan. I personally like SpeedFan better, I find it gives better information as well as information concerning S.M.A.R.T. hard drives.

For Macs, though I can test it, there is a utility for Mac OSX – smcFanControl2. If you are a Mac user and try this, please let me know how it works.

For the heat to your legs, I recommend getting a laptop cushion you can find almost anywhere, or I have a belkin base that actually has a fan that runs cold air up at the bottom of your laptop to cool it down. My base usually drops the CPU temp about 5-6 degrees Celsius. I highly recommend looking for one.

Task Manager Replacement..

As many Computer users know, the Task Manager is an essential piece of software. It is great for a quick glance to see how your system is performing, if there is a hung application, a memory leak, or a program is just eating up your system.

There are some limitations to it though, you get just very general information that may not help in your diagnosing problems. If you wish that Task Manager had more punch, have I got news for you.

This program does exist. Free Task Manager by Extensoft can be described as Task Manager on steroids.

Not only do you get the CPU and Memory statistics in the performance tab, you also get the Disk I/O information, to quickly gauge why your drive is tapping away while you are not even doing anything.

Another reality in this interconnected world of always on network connectivity is monitoring what application is talking to what and where. Instead of having to run NetStat or another tool, just go to the newly added Ports tab and get all the updated NetStat information. Great information if you feel there is something going on to slow or even compromise your network speed.

Some other features per their website:

Extended Task Manager features:

• Displays disk input/output activity with information about related applications
• Displays network port activity with IP addresses of external computers
• Displays information about applications that utilized most of the CPU or memory at any time presented on the charts
• Displays all files locked by a select process.
• Finds all processes locking a specified file.
• Includes “Summary” tab for quickly assessing the overall state of the Windows system
• Allows freezing individual Windows processes
• Offer various visual and functional improvements over the standard Windows Task Manager

Now the installation is pretty self explanatory, just a straight default install. The first thing that I recommend when launching it for the first time is to head to the Options and enable the replace Windows Task Manager, this way you don’t have to go and find and launch the application, you can now get it the normal route you take to launch the task manager. Personally, I right click the task bar and go to Task Manager.

Some other really handy features include the Freeze process option. How will this help me you ask? Well say you are running a backup or virus scan, and you need to work on something quickly. Do you want to stop and have to restart whichever process? Me personally, no. With this tool, you can now go to the process in the list. Click on it and freeze it. When you are done, you can now go back and resume it. It will continue like it didn’t miss a beat.

Task Manager can be found here. Give it a try, I think you will be happy you did.

Install Like There is no tomorrow..

With so much free software out there, it is hard to not to want to install and take it for a spin. Well, after a while, you end up with all of these left over bits and pieces of the software clogging up your registry and taking up hard drive space.

A few weeks back, a good friend of mine recommended a piece of software to help me with this, Altiris Software Virtualization Solution (SVS). I have thanked him a few times since. This tool is a blessing.

With SVS, you can install software, without installing it to your system. How does that work you may be wondering? You simply install the software to virtual layers that sit on top of your Windows OS. It records all the registry keys and program files in this layer without ever modifying your system itself.

After installing SVS, you will launch the application and create a new application layer. There are two other layers there (Data and Empty) that I haven’t played with yet, but I will. You can name this layer anything that you would like so that you can easily remember it (if you are trying out multiple version of the same software Acrobat Reader 8 and 9 you can create a separate layer for each and name them accordingly).

Once you have named the layer, you will be brought to a screen where you can either capture the next install or browse for the installer file (this is my preference). Click finish and you are off to the races. The installer will run as normal, with the exception that it is not truly interfacing with your system.

With the software now installed, you have a lot of options. If you are done using it and want it gone, delete the layer, no muss no fuss. If you don’t want the application to be accessible until you are wanting to use it, you can deactivate the layer. You can have the layer auto start when you log into your workstation so it works like a normal install. There is even the option to reset the install in case you were tweaking the software a bit and messed up the install (it happens).

If you have a certain set of apps that you like to have installed on all of your computers, but don’t feel like installing them every single time, you can create it on one machine and export that layer. If you keep all of those layers in a repository you can then import them on all of your computers in 1/2 the time.

20 Things Programmers Say When Their Program Dont Work..

20. That’s weird….

19. It’s never done that before.

18. It worked yesterday.

17. How is that possible?

16. It must be a hardware problem.

15. What did you type in wrong to get it to crash?

14. There is something funky in your data. OR It’s a data problem, not a program problem.

13. I haven’t touched that module in weeks!

12. You must have the wrong version.

11. It’s just some unlucky coincidence.

10. I can’t test everything!

9. THIS can’t be the source of THAT.

8. It works, but it hasn’t been tested.

7. Somebody must have changed my code.

6. Did you check for a virus on your system?

5. Even though it doesn’t work, how does it feel?

4. You can’t use that version on your system.

3. Why do you want to do it that way?

2. Where were you when the program blew up?

And the Number One Thing Programmers Say When Their Programs Don’t Work:

1. “It works on my machine..”.

Online Backup...

A few days ago, I discussed a backup tool named Cobian and I promised to look into online space for offsite storage.

While looking around a I found quite a few, but focused on three. I will go over some of my initial impressions, and direct links to the site (so the FTC doesn’t chase me down for getting something for giving my opinion).

The three I will be talking about are iDrive.com, Mozy.com, and Humyo.com. Now the first thing that’s important to everyone is, how much space do I get. iDrive and Mozy both have 2 gigs for free, but this link (I promise I get nothing) will get you a 250 MB upgrade on Mozy. Humyo might as well be called Humongous giving you a whopping 10 GB online storage. Now this is all FREE.

Of course, if you find you are running out of space, you can pay for upgrades. For $4.95 a month you get expand to 150 GB on iDrive, Mozy gets to be a bit more expensive, using the pay as you go model at $3.95 a month per 500 MB. My opinion on that is if you are paying that, pay for hosting. In the odd case that you will need more then 10 GB for backing up your most critical data on Humyo it will run you $6.99 a month to get 100 GB.

So besides space, I am sure there are probably other things to consider. Let me think…

How do I get my data from my computer to my storage place. Well all three have a client that you can install on your computer. Though Humyo requires you have a paid account to use the client. It does, however, have a web console you can drag and drop into a java upload client.

The clients are nice and small, quick easy downloads, so I won’t get into that. Some of the things that I noticed on the client.

For the Mozy client, it automatically gives you a recommended backup set, including Thunderbird data. Since I use Thunderbird, that is handy to have. It also gives you two options of data encryption. If you push have VoIP phones, or bandwidth issues in general, you can throttle the application as well as schedule your backups for slow network times.

iDrives’ client is not as fully featured (at least not to the naked eye). The initial backup set is your documents and settings folder. With some digging around you can setup bandwidth throttling also. But it does have a synch option (quick delete if you erase a folder and want it pulled out of your backup) and continuous backup. Though I am not sure how often it checks.

Since you have to have a paid account for the Humyo client, I will not review it.

Ok. We have now backed up all the data and sure enough, we have to reformat or our machine, boooo. Or we just got a new computer and we want to get our documents back, yeah!

How do we get it back. Of course for both iDrive and Mozy you can use the client and restore. But… I want more. It’s free, I want it all.

For Mozy you have a two options: You can use a virtual drive (created when the client is installed) and drag and drop or pay for a DVD to be created and FedEx to deliver the disk.

With iDrive, you can go to the site and login. Going into the restore area you can use a Java applet to download your files. Or you can get a second download to create a virtual drive and go through your Windows Explorer.

Well Folks. I hope that helps a bit. Remember, backups are important…Before the system crashes.

How Fast is ur internet...

I have compiled a few links for you to use to test your broadband speed. I do this once or twice a week.

Try these links:

• http://www.speed.io
• http://speedtest.net - This one has a lot of nice options, including testing sites around the world.
• http://reviews.cnet.com/internet-speed-test/
• http://2wire.net/?p=154 – 2Wire Speed Test
• http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/

Although this list is not comprehensive, I think these have all served me very well.

Phising Scams...II

Top 10 Phishing Scams 06/02/2009

If you receive a similar message in your inbox you should delete it and not follow the links in the message. If you want to check your account, you should type the bank or company website directly into your web browser, or add a bookmark, rather than following links in an email. If you are unsure if an email you receive is legitimate, visit the companies website directly, phone the company, or contact their Customer Services or fraud department (usually fra...@companyname.com) to confirm that they sent the mail.

Updated Last: June 2, 2009

1. security issues
2. important announce
3. Security alert
4. Notification from Commonwealth Bank
5. Alert : Update Your Online Banking Information.
6. urgent message from Marshall & Ilsley Bank
7. security alert
8. safeguarding customer information
9. online banking alert
10. official information

Ok, so you are now armed with the top 10 phishing emails, and you want to avoid them. The FTC (Federal Trade Commissions) has put out these helpful hints:

• If you get an email or pop-up message that asks for personal or financial information, do not reply. And don’t click on the link in the message, either. Legitimate companies don’t ask for this information via email. If you are concerned about your account, contact the organization mentioned in the email using a telephone number you know to be genuine, or open a new Internet browser session and type in the company’s correct Web address yourself. In any case, don’t cut and paste the link from the message into your Internet browser — phishers can make links look like they go to one place, but that actually send you to a different site.

• Area codes can mislead. Some scammers send an email that appears to be from a legitimate business and ask you to call a phone number to update your account or access a “refund.” Because they use Voice Over Internet Protocol technology, the area code you call does not reflect where the scammers really are. If you need to reach an organization you do business with, call the number on your financial statements or on the back of your credit card. In any case, delete random emails that ask you to confirm or divulge your financial information.

• Use anti-virus and anti-spyware software, as well as a firewall, and update them all regularly. Some phishing emails contain software that can harm your computer or track your activities on the Internet without your knowledge.Anti-virus software and a firewall can protect you from inadvertently accepting such unwanted files. Anti-virus software scans incoming communications for troublesome files. Look for antivirus software that recognizes current viruses as well as older ones; that can effectively reverse the damage; and that updates automatically.A firewall helps make you invisible on the Internet and blocks all communications from unauthorized sources. It’s especially important to run a firewall if you have a broadband connection. Operating systems (like Windows or Linux) or browsers (like Internet Explorer or Netscape) also may offer free software “patches” to close holes in the system that hackers or phishers could exploit.

• Don’t email personal or financial information. Email is not a secure method of transmitting personal information. If you initiate a transaction and want to provide your personal or financial information through an organization’s website, look for indicators that the site is secure, like a lock icon on the browser’s status bar or a URL for a website that begins “https:” (the “s” stands for “secure”). Unfortunately, no indicator is foolproof; some phishers have forged security icons.

• Review credit card and bank account statements as soon as you receive them to check for unauthorized charges. If your statement is late by more than a couple of days, call your credit card company or bank to confirm your billing address and account balances.

• Be cautious about opening any attachment or downloading any files from emailsyou receive, regardless of who sent them. These files can contain viruses or other software that can weaken your computer’s security.

• Forward spam that is phishing for information to spam@uce.gov and to the company, bank, or organization impersonated in the phishing email. Most organizations have information on their websites about where to report problems.

• If you believe you’ve been scammed, file your complaint at ftc.gov, and then visit the FTC’s Identity Theft website at www.consumer.gov/idtheft. Victims of phishing can become victims of identity theft. While you can’t entirely control whether you will become a victim of identity theft, you can take some steps to minimize your risk. If an identity thief is opening credit accounts in your name, these new accounts are likely to show up on your credit report. You may catch an incident early if you order a free copy of your credit report periodically from any of the three major credit bureaus.

Phising Scams...

This information is straight from McAfee’s site.

If you receive a similar message in your inbox you should delete it and not follow the links in the message. If you want to check your account, you should type the bank or company website directly into your web browser, or add a bookmark, rather than following links in an email. If you are unsure if an email you receive is legitimate, visit the companies website directly, phone the company, or contact their Customer Services or fraud department (usually fra...@companyname.com) to confirm that they sent the mail.

Updated Last: July 1, 2009

1. security alert!
2. account notification!
3. account notification
4. please confirm your data!
5. Chase Bank: online banking notification
6. Chase Bank: necessary to be read!
7. Chase Bank: important notice
8. Chase Bank: important security notice
9. Chase Bank: account secure confirmation
10. Chase Bank customer service: security alert.

Top Brands Exploited by Phishing Scams

The following chart shows the top brands exploited by Phishers.

Reduce Computer Related Eyestrain...

If you are like most office people, you spend at least 8 hrs staring at your computers monitor. Ever since my very first computer with an amber monochrome monitor, monitor technology has improved immensely. But eye strain is still a real concern.

First let’s look at some of the symptoms of eye strain:

• burning
• dry and strained eyes
• headache
• neck ache
• blurred vision

What are the causes of this eyestrain
Eye strain can be caused by a variety of factors, including, but not limited to:

• over- or misuse of computer monitors
• bad lighting
• environmental factors
• ergonomic factors

How can you reduce or prevent eye strain?

This question actually has a lot of different ideas to try.

Take a break

I know that this may not always be easy to do, but try and get up every hour. At least take 5 minutes to look away from your screen. You can return phone calls, get up and send faxes, get a drink of water, even do chair exercises.

Work in a properly lit workspace

In most companies out there today, you have no choice in your lighting, but there are some ways you can do this. If you are by a window, adjust the blinds so that the light is not directly in your eyes. If you do now have windows, try and get a cheap table lamp and put that on the side of your desk. With your monitor providing direct light, you only need indirect lighting around you. Never work in a dark room with the only light being from your monitor. The direct light with no indirect light will cause eye strain quickly since your eyes will be working between extreme light and extreme dark.

Humidity

Don’t work in a desert. If there is no humidity in your building, your eyes will dry out quickly. Adding some plants helps on two fronts, dust removal and increases humidity, just a touch, but anything is helpful. You can even use over the counter eye drops.

Ergonomics

Again, most companies have an ergonomics team that studies your workspace and makes sure you are set up in the best way possible, for not just eye strain, but Carpal Tunnel reduction. If you don’t know how to contact your ergonomics department, your HR team should know how to contact them.

Monitor Configuration

For this step you may have to enlist your IT team. Work on the refresh rate on your monitor, the higher the better. Also, make sure the font and icon sizes are comfortable for you to look at. If you need to, make them larger so that you don’t have to squint to read everything.

Position your Monitor correctly

OSHA recommends that your monitor be between 20 and 30 inches (the length of your arm, from shoulder to finger tips). Also have the monitor slightly lower then your head. So when you are sitting up and looking forward, the top of the monitor should be eye level. This will put your neck in a more comfortable position, by forcing you to look slightly down at your monitor.

Reduce Glare

The ergonomics inspection will also look at the glare on your monitor, they may recommend a glare screen to be placed over your monitor. At home, you can move the lighting around to avoid direct glare back from the monitor, again at work you are kind of limited, but the glare screens can really help. You can also move your monitor to make sure it is not facing the direct sun either from the front or back.

Eye Health

Lastly, don’t forget the Optometrist. Get regular eye exams and wear glasses as prescribed. I know a lot of people that normally wear contacts, but at work will use their glasses. This allows them to remove them and rub their eyes on occasion.

Google Chrome-The Best

Don’t let the cutesy comic about Google’s browser, Chrome, lull you into feeling all warm and fuzzy. This is not that old little company of Sergey and Larry we are talking about now. Google is now a multi-billion dollar mothership which rules the search and internet advertising markets, and is aggressive in a pile of others.

The question to ask is, does this mean world domination is around the corner!

Okay, let me wind it down a bit. Surely not that. But dominating Internet Explorer with its myriad security problems, and the current favorite Mozilla Firefox 3 - of course. That is the intention.

Google Chrome start page

There are those who say that this was Google backstabbing Firefox. Nope. The Google browser was rumored about for a couple of years or more, nothing surprising here - and I am sure Mozilla expected it at some point.

Tech commentators all over say that this is the time to wait and watch, and till we see the Chrome Beta and get an idea of how the market takes to it, there is no point in getting our Firefox brand panties in a knot. Sure, sure.

Update: Google Chrome beta is now released, people have run their initial tests, and said that at last in javascript performance, Chrome beats everyone else hollow.

Quickly let’s bring the Chrome virgins up to date here. Those who know all about Chrome, skip all the way down.

After its foray into the world of mobile phones with the Android, Google has now shifted its sights to web browsers.Rumors were flying for a couple of years, and just when we thought that’s all it was - just a rumor -Google sent out a comic book to the Blogoscoped blog about its new open source browser project, “Chrome”.

According to the 38-page comic with sketches by Scott McCloud, Google has started from scratch, using nothing other than an existing web rendering engine called Webkit. It says that all the browsers in existence today were made back in the time when the internet was an innocent, safe and uncomplicated place, without any evil websites. So whatever the changes and improvements, and whichever the new browsers, they have made to them, these browsers still apparently have some fundamental flaws in them. Chrome aims to get rid of these flaws by starting from scratch.

Some of the key features of Chrome are

A tab will be the smallest unit of the application. Each tab will be an independent, restricted process, which runs by itself and also crashes by itself in case it does crash. This also reduces memory fragmentation, and leads to much better use of memory resources. The tab list will take the place of the traditional title bar of the window.

An address bar named “Omnibox” which will functions a bit likes Windows Vista’s search box in the start menu. This means that it will find out any info relevant to whatever you are typing in, and show it below. So if you visited, say, a great website on amateur astronomy yesterday, you only have to type in amateur astronomy in the omnibox and you will instantly get the site listed below the box. Additionally, the omnibox lets you search a website of which it captured the search box; So you can type “ebay”, press Tab, and then type in the keywords you want to search on Ebay.

A homepage with 9 thumbnails, a bit like the “Speed Dial” in Opera. The only difference here being that these thumbnails will consist of the sites you visit most frequently, so that you don’t have to type in the address every time.

A task manager, which shows which sites/plugins are consuming most memory and resources. This will help you determine which sites to close if things start to slow down.

Javascript will now be run in a Virtual Machine called V8. In current browsers, javascript is interpreted and run on-the-fly. In case of V8, the javascript is only read once and then converted into binary code that can be executed directly without having to be interpreted again. This again leads to much better performance.

Each tab will have restricted rights. Scripts running in a tab will be running in a sandbox. Then will have very limited access to resources and virtually no write access to files on the disk.

An “incognito”/privacy mode for browsing all that NSFW sites/pr0n or for something more innocent, like keeping a surprise gift a secret. No history, cache or cookies gets saved in this mode.

Downloads will be shown in the task bar. Google has apparently been inspired by the success of the Download Status Bar extension for Firefox.

You can also run web apps like GMail and Google Calendar in separate windows without any address bars, and even create shortcuts to them to put on the Desktop or the Start Menu.

More phishing and malware resistance. Chrome will keep a list of blacklisted sites which will be constantly updated by Google.