How to Be More Productive with your Computer, Part 2

Extend your laptop’s battery life

With proper care, the expensive lithium-ion batteries in your notebook PCs and other portable gear can run well for many, many years.

Common battery-care mistakes will reduce your batteries’ run times and lead to needless environmental waste and costly early replacement.

Heat is the biggest offender to lithium-ion (Li-Ion) batteries. It is best to keep the laptop as a whole as cool as possible by avoiding direct sunlight, leaving the laptop on while storing it in a bag, or leaving the battery in while it is plugged in and already at full charge. When your laptop is running on AC power, it’s recommended to remove the battery pack and store it in a cool place, like the refrigerator (in tightly wrapped plastic bag). Low temperatures stall the inevitable and irreversible chemical changes that occur in Li-ion batteries.

In fact, if your laptop is mostly run off household AC power, you can greatly extend the life of its Li-ion battery by following the 40/40 rule: Run the battery down to about 40% of maximum charge then store it at 40 degrees Fahrenheit (in your fridge).
If you can, avoid running Li-ion batteries all the way down. It used to be recommended to run the battery all the way down, but that has changed with the Li-ion batteries.  It is best for the battery to be used between 40-100% of the charge.
Even when you are careful about the battery, your battery will still eventually go bad from normal wear and tear.

Most people purchase spare batteries, but it is best to wait until you really need one for heavy mobile usage or you will have the same problem with it wearing out before it is needed.  If you do have a spare battery, store it in the fridge with about a 40% charge when it’s not in use.

It is important to check the manufactured date on the battery pack when buying a replacement.  It could have been on the shelf for a couple years, which defeats the purpose of buying it.
If carefully taken care of, you can get 300-500 charges from a battery and a happy battery life.
These two excellent articles provide more information on Li-Ion battery life:

• How to prolong lithium-based batteries from BatteryUniversity.com

• The care and feeding of Li-ion batteries from TechRepublic.com

Have a dead laptop battery or two? Give it to me and I will recycle it properly for you! I can also provide replacement batteries for your laptop.

The Future of Computer Storage

Most computers today might have what has traditionally been a mechanical hard drive; a noisy metal rectangle shaped box about 3.5 inches wide that generates a lot of heat and has little metal platters inside that spin about several thousand times a minute and holds your data and computer programs. But there is a new challenger on the block that is taking the computing world by storm, and for very good reason: it is so much better.

Mechanical hard drives are very, very common. Trouble is, they are very susceptible to damage and wear. Yes you may have one that lasts years, but many a hard drive has been found that has “crashed”, that is, the little “arm” inside the drive that sweeps over the metal plates to read your data has either scrapped or seriously damaged the metal platters, taking all of your data with it. In most instances, your data is irrecoverable. They are also incredibly sensitive to movement and a simple accidental drop or bump (even if the computer is off) could potentially kill the drive pretty quickly. A painful lesson for those who do not have a recent (or any) backup of their data.

The new drives, called SSD drives (the SSD stands for Solid State Device), use a special computer chip for storing your data, and these gems bring with them many, many benefits. Some of these are; [1] Using less than a tenth of the power that traditional hard drives use (save on your power bill!), [2] Have absolutely no moving parts that can wear out, which eliminates any chance of mechanical problems, [3] They produce very, very little heat, whereas a mechanical drive can get so warm they are too hot to touch! [4] They can be bumped, dropped, prodded and left in extreme temperature conditions and still be fully functional. In fact, you can do all of the above to an SSD drive while it is turned on and it still won’t be affected, [5] they are really fast. SSD drives can read your data over 1000 times faster than mechanical drives. Yes, that fast.

The only disadvantage with SSD drives is the same for every introduction of a new technology; they can be expensive and offer lower storage capacity than current desktop systems might have. However, all that was months ago, and today, they are more affordable, offer more capacity and they are more popular than ever.

A drive that is ultra reliable (even when the drive eventually goes bad, data rescue is much easier), ultra fast, produces very little to no heat, uses practically no electricity to run and is completely silent. That sounds like the perfect device for your computer. Fast, Reliable and Affordable. Mechanical drives used to make us choose two out of those three options with a compromise on a third option. Today SSD drives offer all three. They work just fine with the new Windows 7 too.

What exactly is computer memory?

Most computer users are confused between the two types of computer memory. There is the one type of memory that if you increase it’s capacity, you get a dramatic performance boost. Then there is the other type of memory where if you increase that capacity, you get to store a lot more music, photos, videos, and the like. I sometimes get questions like “Will adding all of my photos from my camera onto my computer slow it down?” The answer to that question is no and I will explain why below.

There are two types of computer “memory”. There is RAM (or Random Access Memory) of which the operating system and programs you see on your computer’s screen resides in and there is hard disk drive storage memory. RAM is the “fast” type of memory. This memory works so fast that its speed is measured in nanoseconds. Hard disk drives are the “slow” type of memory. This memory is so slow that its speed is measured in milliseconds. Hard disk drive storage is in the hundreds of gigabytes and it is a permanent storage medium for all your computer’s data (operating system, pictures, music, documents, etc). This type of memory should be thought of as “storage” rather than “memory” because that’s where the terminology can get confusing for some users. The real type of computer “memory” is RAM and it’s the kind that runs all of your programs in real-time until you turn off your computer. That’s why computers take a long time to boot up because it has to pull all the programs off the slow hard disk drive back into fast RAM before you’re able to work on the computer. RAM is volatile memory – all your stuff disappears as soon as the power is turned off.

Now here’s where things get interesting. If you try to load so many programs at once to multitask in, or play a very resource intensive game, database application, or CAD type of program, your computer might actually run out of its fast RAM type of memory. Then guess what happens? It has to use the slower hard drive for additional memory! This is called paging or swapping. It will take those unused running applications that are usually in the background or minimized on your task bar and put those onto the hard disk drive in order to free up RAM for the newly launched application. This is why one of the BEST things you can do to speed up your computer is to add more RAM. For Windows XP, I recommend no less than 2 gigabytes of RAM for today’s common applications. For Windows Vista, I recommend no less than 4 gigabytes of RAM. For the upcoming Windows 7, we will be able to run a very efficient computer with only 2 gigabytes of memory again, just like Windows XP, because Microsoft has really scaled back all the “bloat” that plagues Vista.

So, if you find that launching multiple windows on your screen is very slow, then you just might need a RAM upgrade. Feel free to contact me for a free evaluation of your computer and its RAM upgradeability.

Information Privacy and Encryption

Pretty much anyone who has dealt with ordering goods and services online or doing online banking has heard of encryption. But what exactly is it and how important is it really?

I would say it is absolutely crucial that any personal information being transmitted online be encrypted to the highest level possible. Modern web browsers such as Mozilla FireFox or Internet Explorer have good encryption and do a good job in letting you know if you’re about to send personally identifiable information to a third party. You should always look out for the yellow lock icon whenever you’re about to send a password, address, or other personally identifiable information. Anything less, you should avoid doing so.

Encryption does not end at web browsing and using services on the Internet, however. It’s also important to have strong encryption for your home or office wireless network. The most common type is WEP, which unfortunately, is not as secure as originally thought. With the right tool, it can be hacked in less than a minute. I recommend at least WPA encryption security, or WPA2 if your wireless router and laptop support it.

A growing trend in data privacy and security is the encryption of storage media such as the hard disk drive or even flash drives. I use a Lexar JumpDrive, which can be configured to have an encrypted, password-protected volume. There is a new flash drive called the IronKey. It not only encrypts and protects your data with a hardware Cryptochip, it can also self-destruct. Should it get in the wrong hands, it will literally fry itself so the data cannot be recovered.

For encryption of your files on your computer, there is a non-profit organization called TrueCrypt that has developed a great, free software program. Their program, TrueCrypt, allows you to encrypt entire drives, folders, or individual files with ease.

Here are some quick tips for making sure your data is safe and protected:

• Make sure the yellow lock is on and visible whenever you send information via a form online.
• Make sure the website address is prefixed with an https:// instead of just plain http://. This denotes Secure Socket Layer (SSL) SSL security.
• If you need to transmit sensitive information or documents via e-mail, you really shouldn’t. Instead use fax, certified postal mail, or a secure file-sharing service such as ShareFile.com.
• Contact me if you have any concerns about the privacy of your sensitive data.

For a great article on on encryption, check out How Stuff Works. It is rather technical, but still offers insights on protecting your information online.

I lied in my Vista newsletter.

In my previous newsletter regarding my take on Windows Vista, I stated that I was going to wait until Windows 7 comes out in 2010 before building myself a new computer. Well, I went ahead and took the plunge!

Despite the fact that I was going to push my circa-2005 computer into a 5-year stretch, I decided that it was time to upgrade to a Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit capable PC. The main reason in doing so is because I was getting tired of the pokey performance of my Intel Pentium 4 single-core 3GHz processor and limited motherboard capacity of 2 GB of RAM. This is especially evident when browsing media-rich websites like YouTube or a lot of tech-related websites I frequent. Those Flash ads and Flash videos really take a toll on older CPUs. Today’s software is simply more demanding, more “bloated”, and requires the latest hardware; especially dual or quad-core CPUs and tons of memory. With that said, let me introduce you to the computer I built for myself in October:

- Intel Quad-core Q9550 2.83GHz (that’s four 2.83GHz CPUs in one package).
- 8GB Memory
- Two extremely fast WD Raptor 150GB 10,000RPM hard drives in a RAID-1 mirror (this means that if one hard drive fails, I just put in a hot spare and it will rebuild with no data loss. It also means double the read speed for even faster Windows boot up time and program loading).
- Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit edition. (I have started to recommend going with 64-bit Vista if you’re going to go with a Vista PC. The reason being is that Vista is extremely demanding of memory and with 32-bit versions, you’re limited to 3 to 3.5GB or so and cannot upgrade to anything higher. Most modern computers today can be upgraded to 8GB or more. I consider 4GB the bare minimum for Vista, and with memory prices so low, it’s actually affordable).
- nVidia GeForce 8800GT 512MB Video card. (Considered one of the best budget graphics cards you can buy today).

The computer I built myself scores a 5.9 in the Windows Experience Index benchmark.

So what is this Windows Experience Index score? It’s a rating system developed by Microsoft to benchmark your computer. A score of 5.9 is the highest score you can get currently. Microsoft has stated they may increase the maximum score in the near future, but for now, if you want the best Vista computer money can buy, make sure it scores 5.9 across the board. Anything less than 5.0 for a Vista desktop PC or 3.0 for a Vista laptop should probably get upgraded in RAM or video. If that’s not possible, then a new PC or a downgrade to XP would be ideal.

The best part of it all, is my computer will easily be able to handle Windows 7 when it comes out in late 2009 or early 2010 simply because of the fact that Microsoft is working hard to minimize the “bloat” in their operating system. They are refining the operating system kernel and calling it “MinWin”. This means faster boot times, faster program loads, and easier ways to work with the computer. The future is looking good for PCs.

By the way, I’m a PC!

QuickBooks Pro 2009 & Windows Vista 64-bit Printing Problem

Ever since I upgraded my computer to Windows 64-bit, as well as QuickBooks 2009 up from 2007, I’ve experienced a lot of lock-ups with QuickBooks. More specifically, these lock-ups would occur whenever I tried reconciling accounts, saving an invoice or estimate as a PDF, or sending an invoice via E-mail from within QuickBooks. Upon further troubleshooting, I discovered that the QuickBooks PDF Converter “printer” was erroring out with the document stuck in its queue. It was also setting itself as a default printer as well. Needless to say this was extremely annoying and NOTHING worked…until now.

I tried everything initially. Reloaded the PDF Converter numerous times by deleting it and letting QB rebuild it, upgraded to 2009 R2 web patch, and a bunch of other miscellaneous things. I was about to pick up the phone and call QuickBooks for $79 dollars a month. How lame! It’s a rip-off to pay a software vendor for support when it’s their own software that has bugs and doesn’t work! Googling like crazy, I finally came across this Knowledge Base article from Intuit’s site:

http://support.quickbooks.intuit.com/support/Pages/KnowledgeBaseArticle/1007856

I was finally able to fix this annoying issue by following the steps to make the PDF Converter compatible with settings in a 64-bit OS environment. I’ve copied and pasted the exact steps below for our future reference:

Windows Vista:

1. Make sure that you are logged in as a user with administrator rights.
2. Click the Windows button, select Control Panel, and click Printers.
3. Right-click the QuickBooks PDF Convertericon and select Run as administrator and Properties.
4. Click Continue.
5. Select the Ports tab, then click the Add Port… button.
6. Select Local Port and click the New Port… button.
7. Enter PDF1 for the new port name and click OK. Close the Printer Ports window.
8. Ensure that the PDF1 port is selected in the Ports list.
9. Select the Advanced tab.
10. Select the Spool print documents radio button to make the options below it clickable.
11. Clear (uncheck) the box labeled Enable advanced printing features.
12. Select the Print directly to printer radio button again.
13. Ensure that Amyuni Document Converter 300 is selected in the Driver: drop-down arrow
14. Click the Apply button, and then click OK.
15. Important: In order for the changes to take effect, you must restart your computer.
    Reboot your computer and then try to print, email, or create a pdf from QuickBooks.

64-bit computing is GREAT, but beware of pesky little issues like these. Mental note to self: Whenever upgrading to 64-bit, make sure ALL hardware is compatible (i.e. have compatible 64-bit versions of drivers) AND make sure that software “printers” like PDF converters are also compatible. There are three other printers loaded on my system: Dell 3110cn Color Laser Printer (networked and fully 64-bit compliant – works great), Adobe PDF (from Acrobat 9 which is fully 64-bit compatible), and Microsoft XPS Document Write from Office 2007 (I never use it but it does work fine).

Now I can get back to business!

Intel Matrix Storage RAID-5 woes

I am currently in the process of building myself a new server. This server will primarily serve as a file server as well as a learning platform for Windows Server 2008 and other various utilities such as Microsoft CRM 4.0, System Center, and others that come with the Microsoft Action Pack Subscription. I’m a Microsoft Partner so I was able to pass a test and literally be able to purchase tens of thousands of dollars worth of Microsoft software for just $299, all legally.

My original intention was to build my server with six identical 750GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 SATAII hard drives in a RAID-5, with 100GB of the 3.5TB partitioned as the C: drive. However, the RAID array never seemed to initialize properly. I had left the IMSM BIOS utility overnight for 2 whole days with it saying “Initialize”. Finally, I lost patience and gave up on it – especially after I had read some forum comments about Intel’s Matrix RAID slowness in initialization. I immediately tried setting up a RAID-1 array of two of the 750GB hard drives. The initilization was instant and it was immediately available and ready with a status of “Normal”. I then decided to RAID-5 the remaining four hard drives. Again, the initialization was instant and it was immediately available and ready with a status of “Normal”. At this point, I probably should have deleted the arrays and tried the full six disk RAID-5 array creation once more. But, I went ahead and went with the Server 2008 install. The down side to this RAID-1 and RAID-5 mixed setup is I basically “wasted” 1.5 TB of potential space, as two of the 750 GB hard drives have to be dedicated to the RAID-1 mirroring and the RAID-5 parity (although parity is actually distributed across ALL disks, equaling approximately 750GB total for parity data).

The next step was the installation of Server 2008 Standard Edition, x64. I have 8 GB of RAM installed on a Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3R motherboard with the Intel P35 chipset and a Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz CPU. The hardware is definitely not server-grade, but it works well for a budget server and so far everything has been installed and running without a hitch. I’m fully going to rely on the RAID-1 and RAID-5 for my nearline backups and an online backup subscription to MozyPro for the more serious business data. This server will finally be the central hub for all of my data – photos, music, videos, documents, e-mail, and business-related data.

So the moral of the story here with Intel Matrix RAID is this: It’s great for a low-cost, budget PC or server but it definitely lacks when it comes to true RAID benefits and performance. A true RAID solution would have, at a minimum, support for up to 8 drives in a RAID-5, battery backup, and onboard dedicated RAM for RAID caching. These RAID solutions costs upwards of $500 for an add-on card alone. The Intel Matrix RAID costs $0 when it’s already included in certain motherboards.

How to be more productive on your computer

Computers and the Internet have made all of us incredibly productive. Long gone are the days of writing letters on paper with a pen. With typing speeds on average of 30-45 words per minute, computer users can type up an e-mail and send it off far quicker than mailing a letter via the United Slow Postal Service. With such a dramatic increase in productivity with computers, it may be hard to imagine even faster ways to get things done and do things on a computer. Well, in this blog post, I’m going to talk about several ways to increase your productivity with your computer.

Use the Keyboard More
Moving your hand constantly from the keyboard to the mouse is a time-waster. For example, filling out a form online where it has fields that ask you to fill in your name, e-mail, and other information can quickly be navigated with the Tab key instead of using the mouse to click on each individual field. Here are some other great keyboard shortcuts to speed up your productivity:

Alt+tab: Hold down the Left Alt key and tap on the Tab key to quickly navigate the open applications that are running on your computer. Let go of the Left Alt key to switch to that application. The slow method: use your mouse to click on the application on the bottom task bar.

Windows Key+M: Need to quickly see your desktop screen? Hit the Windows Key (it has a logo of Microsoft Windows) and then M to minimize all the open windows on your screen. The slow method: clicking that minimize button one after the other with the mouse.

Ctrl+N: Need to make a new document, e-mail, or web browser window? Just hit Ctrl+N to create a new whatever.

Alt+F4: Close a bunch of windows and applications that are open by hitting Alt+F4 repeatedly. The slow method: clicking all those X buttons one after the other with the mouse.

Ctrl+Enter: If you use Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, or Windows Mail, you can send off e-mails faster by hitting Ctrl+Enter instead of clicking the send button with the mouse. You can also do Ctrl+R for replying to an e-mail, or even Ctrl+F to forward.

For a more comprehensive list of virtually all available keyboard shortcuts, check out the following knowledge base article on Microsoft’s site.

Go Dual Monitor, or more
The more you see on the screen, the more information is there to help you get things done even quicker. Before, it was all about getting the bigger sized monitor so you can have the biggest desktop screen space. Nowadays, however, it’s not uncommon for businesses and individuals to have dual monitor setups. Personally, I started out with a 24-inch Dell widescreen monitor that sports a 1920×1200 resolution. I have tons of desktop screen space. However, I quickly outgrew it so I added another 17-inch monitor. The result is I am now, statistically speaking, up to 30% more productive with two monitors than with just one. For more information on this great productivity gaining idea, check out this article.

How about going Triple Monitor?!

Find & Open Programs Faster With Launchy
This great, free software lets me use the keyboard to launch any program I want that’s in my Start Menu or Quick Launch bar. All I have to do is hit Alt+Spacebar (by default; it can be changed to any keyboard combination you want), then type in a partial phrase of the program I want to launch. For example, I can type “quic” and right away it shows QuickBooks, which I hit Enter to launch. I don’t even have to worry about spelling. Wait a few more seconds and other program suggestions will come up. This increased my productivity tenfold because I no longer have to dig around endless Start Menu entries to find the one obscure program I’m looking for. Check it out here: www.launchy.net. Don’t forget to check out the Tips & Tricks of the program as well.

Do you have ideas for increasing productivity on the computer? Please feel free to share them with me!

The Importance of Backups

Do you regularly backup your data? I cannot stress the importance of regular backups simply because it’s not a matter of if your computer or server’s hard drive will fail, it’s a matter of when. Also of equal importance are regular backup checks. Do you really know if your backups are actually backing up? Check out this great article, courtesy of pcmag.com.