Posts Tagged ‘comp’

Comparing 1 GB of Storage

Side by side view of 1 GB 20 years ago and 1 GB today.

Microsoft Office 2010 Beta

So I am going through my email yesterday and I come across an email from TechNet announcing the beta of Microsoft 2010.

Abbot and Costello with new style ‘Who’s on First’

You have to be old enough to remember Abbott and Costello,
And too old to REALLY understand computers, to fully appreciate this. For those of us who sometimes get flustered by our computers, please read on...
If Bud Abbott and Lou Costello were alive today, their infamous sketch, 'Who's on First?'might have turned out something like this:

Is a Computer Male or Female

A language instructor was explaining to her class that French nouns, unlike their English counterparts, are grammatically designated as masculine or feminine. Things like 'chalk' or 'pencil,' she described, would have a gender association although in English these words were neutral.

Instructions from the I.T. Department

1. When you call us to have your computer moved, be sure to leave it buried under half a ton of postcards, baby pictures, stuffed animals, dried flowers, bowling trophies and children’s art.
2. Don’t ever write anything down, especially the error message that was on your screen.
3. If we ask what the last thing you did was, always respond with, “I didn’t do anything.”
4. When we say we’ll be right over, immediately find a reason to leave so you won’t have to answer silly questions from us, like “what’s your screen saver password?”
6. When describing your problem, just tell us what you were ultimately trying to do. For example, just say, “I can’t get my email”. We don’t need to know that the computer won’t even turn on.
7. Feel free to ignore any email sent from us, especially those marked with high importance. You don’t really need to know about the latest virus that wiped out your neighbors hard drive.
8. Always send important and urgent emails in all uppercase.
9. When the copier, or anything else remotely electronic, doesn’t work, call us. Heck, if we can fix computers, we must know all about copiers too.
10. If the document you sent to the printer didn’t print, send it at least 20 more times. One of them is bound to work.
11. Don’t ever learn the proper name for anything technical. We know exactly what you mean by “my thingy blew up”.
12. Don’t waste your time using the built in help files. We already had to learn the hard way, why should you?
13. If any of the computer cables are in your way or keep moving, be sure to route them across the top of your portable heater or set something big and heavy on them to hold them in place.
14. Never bother reading any message that pops up on your screen. Just click the X to close it or the first button your mouse gets to.
15. Don’t ever try rebooting the computer yourself. Call us immediately. Only experienced, highly-trained professionals should attempt that.
16. Feel perfectly free to say things like “I don’t know anything about this computer crap”. We love hearing our area of professional expertise referred to as crap.
17. When you receive a huge movie file that’s really funny, be sure to forward it to all your friends. We have plenty of disk space and bandwidth.
18. Don’t bother bringing a radio to work, just listen to music over the internet. Like I said, we have plenty of bandwidth.
19. Don’t even think of breaking large print jobs down into smaller chunks. Somebody else might squeeze their one-page document into the queue.
20. When an I.T. person is carrying heavy equipment, worth thousands of dollars, that’s the best time to ask why your screen saver quit working.
21. Don’t bother to tell us when you move computer equipment around on your own. We certainly don’t need to keep track of those things.
22. Your computer case makes a great flat surface for sitting drinks or potted plants on.
23. Do whatever you can to cover up those ugly open air slots in the computer and monitor.

Clampi Virus targets online banking

In the modern world, most people never see their bank (with the exception of ATM withdrawals).  We use bill pay, direct deposit and bank debit cards.  This is the exact behavior that the Clampi virus is living on.

Must Have Application for Thumb Drives

It’s a sign of the time, you can buy a thumb drive almost anywhere.  I have even seen them in Gas Stations in the Omaha area.

The System Administrator from Hell

Some days I get emails that just have to be shared.  This is one of them.  All credit to the original author, though I don’t know who it is.

What’s old is new again

Yesterday, Microsoft put out an advisory to a security vulnerability specific to the Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 SP2, and Windows 7 RC operating systems.  No other Windows operating systems, including Windows 7 RTM are impacted.

9 Old Computer Ads

Bill Gates with a Tandy 2000

Go Figure, Dirty sites are dirty…

Symantec, the makers of a very widely used array of internet security programs, has compiled a list of the 100 “dirtiest” sites.

Find drivers for unknown devices

Have you ever been given a com­pu­ter, or bought an old fixer upper PC that didn’t have all the discs or infor­ma­tion for the components?

I know this is frus­tra­ting since I too have had this pro­blem.  Espe­cially when it invol­ves key equip­ment (Net­work card).  There is nothing more irri­ta­ting then loo­king at your device list and seeing the yellow ques­tion mark.  Well tech­ni­cians, as with almost everything com­pu­ter rela­ted, there is a site setup to help with this.  PCIDatabase.com

So how does this work?

You will want to go to the ques­tion mark in the device mana­ger and right click on the entry (there maybe more then one on a rei­mage or a cus­tom built machine).  For those that may not be fami­liar on how to get to the device mana­ger here are some sim­ple steps.  Find the My Com­pu­ter icon on your desk­top (upper left by default).  You will want to Right click on the icon and you will get a menu like this:

After you left click on the pro­per­ties entry a new win­dow will pop up:
If you do not have the tab shown, you will want to click on the Hard­ware tab.  Once here, click on the device mana­ger and you will see a list of ins­ta­lled devi­ces.  You will scroll down for the yellow ques­tion mark.  In my exam­ple there are none, but I am sure you will find them rather quickly.

Read more…

When is an antivirus really a virus?

Today I recei­ved a call from one of my exter­nal users that was una­ble to access any web­si­tes because some new anti­vi­rus was saying he was unpro­tec­ted and every web­site had mali­cious code.

Since I know that we have McA­fee 8.5 deplo­yed to our users, I knew that this was not a McA­fee issue.  As we dis­cus­sed it a little further he was men­tio­ning that the Anti­vi­rus wan­ted him to purchase the software.

This isn’t the first I have heard of this.  There is a soft­ware com­pany Inno­va­gest 2000 that is pro­du­cing this soft­ware.  They adver­tise it as an antispy­ware appli­ca­tion, but it is the spy­ware.  On some less then savory web­si­tes you will get a pop up that says that your com­pu­ter maybe infec­ted and they offer a free scan.

The fear of being infec­ted moti­va­tes a lot of peo­ple to run this free scan.  Unk­nown to them this appli­ca­tion ins­talls under­neath and now you are stuck.  On that note, I do recom­mend only doing the online scans from repu­ta­ble sites.  I per­so­nally recom­mend the follo­wing: Syman­tec, Panda, and McA­fee.

This appli­ca­tion is extre­mely hard to get rid of.  It rere­gis­ters and ins­talls if it is not com­ple­tely unins­ta­lled correctly.

I hate pro­grams like this.  But it is a fact of life out there.  The modern day snake-oil salesman.

While the pro­gram is run­ning you will see the follo­wing unde­si­ra­ble behavior:

• A “Win­dows Secu­rity Cen­ter” sta­ting that you should purchase Per­so­nal Antivirus.
• Nume­rous alerts sta­ting that your com­pu­ter is under attack or that you have mal­ware run­ning on your com­pu­ter. If you click on these alerts, Per­so­nal Anti­vi­rus will be ins­ta­lled, or you will be brought to the purchase page for the program.
• Your Inter­net Explo­rer brow­ser will be hijac­ked to show secu­rity war­nings when brow­sing the web that stop you from reaching your desi­red page.

As I men­tio­ned before this bug­ger is very hard to get rid off.  But not impos­si­ble.  I found these ins­truc­tions at BleepingComputer.com.

Read more…

New Computer Security Mistakes

I wanted to pass on what I see as some of the top computer security mistakes that most casual computers users make when first setting up a new computer:

Online Backup

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