Take Advantage of the Future, Today

Arthur C. Clarke once write “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” and I believe that applies more today than it ever has. It has been proven by the massive explosion of great new technologies released lately and it can be hard to tell if this is the panacea, or if there are still a few surprises ahead of us.

What seemed like a far fetched idea just a few years ago in the arena of consumer electronics, we are now using in our living rooms without giving it a second thought. Personal Digital Assistants were small devices that once handled our schedules, address books and took notes. Then they progressed to featuring touch screens, advanced operating systems and allowed wireless internet access for email and web browsing. They continued further to allowing portable music playing and
movie watching. Now we only have to look at recent developments in tablet PC technology, such as the Eee PC T91, the concept of which was pushed again to the Apple iPad.

Storage devices which, once upon a time, were the size of a washing machine holding mere megabytes (to give you an idea, they may have been able to hold one, yes one, small PowerPoint presentation, word processor document or only a handful of high resolution digital images). Now storage devices the size of the knuckle on your pinky finger can hold an entire library of books, hundreds of music files, thousands of digital images, several home movies with space left over to save a copy of important emails if you wanted to. Wouldn’t that have seemed like magic a mere 10-15 years ago?

However, that trip down memory lane has another purpose besides helping us to appreciate how far we have come on our digital journey. It is to tell you that all those years of progress have brought us some amazing devices, and that if you aren’t taking advantage of a few of these, you may well be losing money, time or both.

Take advantage of the new hard drives that will keep working even if they are accidentally bumped, use very little power and are impossible to “crash”. Use a tablet PC for computing on the run and working remotely or to occupy you for those long journeys. New network technologies allow full computing and internet access without wires, and some even allow completely free calls to anyone in the world. Contact family and friends with cheap video conferencing abilities and enjoy the full
benefits of modern personal computing.

Ready to see a magic show? Take a look at what technology can do for you and stop slaving away with obsolete, costly and slow devices. The future is here, right now and the show has just started. Enjoy.

Finally, A Replacement for Vista and XP

It looks like Windows 7 is coming out very soon! Microsoft released the Release Candidate of Windows 7 last month and usually when they do this, the final release comes out 3-5 months later. I downloaded and installed the Release Candidate for Windows 7, which is publicly available to anyone who wishes to try it out (I do not recommend doing so on production computers).

The download should be available until at least June 2009. The software, however, is time-bomb trial-ware which will disable itself on June 1, 2010.

I installed it on my main desktop computer onto a secondary partition and configured it in such a way that it dual boots both my primary/production Vista OS and my Windows 7 Release Candidate OS. I have been playing around with it for about 2 weeks off and on. I can say that this new operating system will finally be a replacement for Windows Vista and Windows XP. I can tell the difference in performance and usability, even on the same machine, when doing similar tasks in both Vista and 7. It is stable, solid, clean, and feels very fast.  It uses a lot less hardware resources than Vista or even XP and puts all the computing power at the forefront for the user’s disposal rather than using it all up for its own thing. It resembles Vista a bit, and was built on the Vista core, but feels less flashy and more modest.  Applications that run on Vista should run on Windows 7, and hardware that runs Vista will run Windows 7. There are also several compatibility options for Windows XP-era applications as well.

One of the goals of Microsoft was to improve the performance from Vista, and they have addressed this by both increasing the speed of the OS and by developing features that help the user operate more efficiently.
Overall, Microsoft worked on providing a fundamentally secure platform, helping secure anywhere access, protecting users and infrastructure, and helping protect data.

There are many new features to explore, but here is a quick bullet point list of some of the highlights:

• Improved desktop search
• Internet Explorer 8 for improved Internet security
• DirectAccess (automatically connect remote workstations to Windows Server 2008)
• BranchCache (used to sync files between corporate and branch offices)
• Improved BitLocker (drive encryption)
• BitLocker To Go (encrypt portable devices such as USB keys)
• Built-in Biometric support
• Improved taskbar
• Improved device management
• Better compatibility for both hardware and software
• Windows Touch (for touch screen enabled monitors)
• Tight integration with Windows Live online services
• Remote media streaming
• PlayTo
• Windows Media Center improvements

Before the Release Candidate was released, Microsoft fixed over 2,000 bugs that were reported by beta testers (including me). With the success of the Release Candidate, I have already decided that I will be upgrading to Windows 7 on both my production workstation and my laptop as soon as it comes to market. I’m not even worried about application compatibility or hardware compatibility as all of my applications already work fine in the RC and anything that runs in Vista should run in Windows 7 with no problems. My computers will feel like new computers again with the performance, reliability, stability, security enhancements that Windows 7 offers over XP or Vista.

Additional Microsoft Resources

Videos: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/videos.aspx
Windows 7 Home: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/default.aspx
New Features: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/whats-new.aspx

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.

Is Your Computer Obsolete?

A few years ago, I saw a cartoon of a guy proudly driving home with his brand new state-of-the-art 386 computer in the back seat. In the background was a huge billboard advertising the 486. The message: his computer was obsolete before he even got it home.

Technology is always changing… it’s hard to be sure if the system you have will support the newest software and peripherals. So how do you know when it is indeed time to buy a new computer, or when it is best to ignore the commercials that tout the latest “gotta-have” technology?

You May Need To Buy A New Computer If…

…your processor speed is less than 1.0 gigahertz (GHz). Most operating systems and application software these days demand a lot from your system. A speedy processor will help you browse the Internet, run your word processor and play games with ease. On a Windows PC, click the Start button, then Control Panel, then System to see your processor information. If the speed is listed in megahertz instead of gigahertz, see if any friends need a new anchor for their fishing boat.

…your computer has less than 512 megabytes (MB) of RAM memory. Again, the System Properties window will show how much RAM is installed. I recommend at least 1GB (1000MB) of RAM for smooth and speedy performance. Go for 2GB of RAM if you’re running Vista.

…you are running a version of Windows that begins with a “3? or a “9? (Windows 3.1, Win95, or Win98). These versions lack the security features and technological advances required for safe computing and protection from identity theft. If you have a Mac that’s NOT running OS X, the same applies.

…you have a monitor that’s 15-inch or smaller, or worse, is a CRT. Most websites will not display properly on an old 15-inch monitor, and the larger 17-inch models are now standard. (I have dual 24-inch widescreen LCD monitors on my desk!). Save on the environment and energy bill with a new LCD monitor.

…you try to install a program and you get the error “Operating System not supported.”

…you try to upgrade the Operating System and get an error message that the hardware is not supported.

…your computer has no USB ports. Most peripheral devices such as the mouse, keyboard, printer, scanner and external hard drives now use USB connections.

…your computer has a 3.5 inch floppy disk drive! Software has outgrown the floppy disk, and the mere presence of a floppy drive on your machine may indicate that it’s time to recycle it.

All of the above scenarios warrant shelling out the dough for a new computer. There are cases however, where you might have a relatively new computer, (less than 3 years old) and it is acting up enough to make you want to replace it with a new one. Before you do that, let’s look at a few ways you can “soup up” a fairly new machine:

Your Computer Is Running S-l-o-o-o-w-w

This is probably the number one complaint I receive from users on a regular basis. If your computer is less than 3 years old, there are a myriad of reasons for the slowdown in performance. For instance, you may not have all the latest security software installed. Operating Systems, device drivers, anti-virus programs and other applications have frequent updates releases to their original product. Keeping up with the latest releases or patches of any software you are running, is a good way to keep your computer free from viruses and spyware that can slow it to a crawl.

Sometimes a slow running computer is one that is lacking memory. As applications get more feature rich, more memory (RAM, not hard drive space) is required to run them. A lot of times, computers will be sold or built without the maximum capacity of RAM that they can actually run. I can scan your computer for you and find out how much RAM you currently have installed as well as the maximum RAM you can have along with the type. Upgrading RAM is a very inexpensive way to speed up your computer and extend the life of it. I highly recommend it for any XP computer that has less than 1 GB or any Vista computer that has less than 2 GB.

Your Computer Is Running Out of Space

You are noticing degradation in your computer’s performance, and you are also noticing “Running low on disk space” messages. Low disk space can slow a machine down, and also cause problems running applications. Hard drive space is getting cheaper and cheaper these days; the newest computers often come with 500GB (or larger) hard drives as a standard. You don’t have to buy one of these new computers though; you can replace a smaller hard disk drive with a larger one, or add a second hard.

It’s important to know when to let go of an old clunker of a computer. It’s just as important to realize when your computer needs a “tune-up”. The goal is to find a happy medium between being able to experience the latest that technology has to offer, but not being pressured into throwing a perfectly good system away because of slick sales ads, feature envy or industry hype.

If you need advice on whether or not your computer needs a tune-up, a memory upgrade, a hard drive upgrade, or that you need a new computer altogether, don’t hesitate to contact me today. I give FREE assessments and consultations, and this can be done quickly and easily via remote support services.

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.

Ways to Reduce Spam/Junk E-mail

In this post, I’m going to talk about one of the most hated things about computers and the Internet — spam. Spam, also called Junk Email, hits our inbox daily whether we like it or not.

Most of you already have some kind of anti-spam mechanism, whether it’s by hosting with me, using a big ISP’s e-mail, or using a free webmail service like Yahoo! or Google. These all have server-side spam filtering. However, anti-spam is not a perfect science, so some junk mail still slips through. Below, I have listed seven different tips on reducing or circumventing spam.

• Don’t use any “auto-preview” features in your mail client. Examples of this are the Reading Pane in Outlook 2003/2007 or the Preview Pane in Outlook Express/Windows Mail. These should be turned off as they auto-load the e-mail. Most spam is easily identifiable by its sender and subject, which is okay to view.
• Don’t post your e-mail address in plain text on the Internet. Examples include having it on your website (use a contact form instead), posting in forums, chat dialogs, or blogs. Having your e-mail in plain text can easily be found by spam robots that crawl the Internet to harvest e-mails for spamming. Spammers are very sophisticated with this, much like how Google is sophisticated with web search.
• Don’t unsubscribe. Some spam e-mails have an “opt-out” link that simply verifies that you’re a real, active e-mail user who opened their junk e-mail message. Legitimate newsletters, however, usually have good privacy policies, are e-mails that you know you signed up for, and are from trusted, known sources.
• Don’t open suspicious/unknown attachments. Spam e-mails may come with an attachment that looks like it’s a picture or a text file of some sort. This is usually malicious in nature and will usually infect your system with a Trojan that gathers even more e-mail from your own address book. A good anti-virus solution usually circumvents this very well. In fact, AVG AntiVirus 8.0 does this very well. It has plugins that scan incoming emails for these malicious attachments and will either silently take care of it for you, or prompt you to do something about it.
• Don’t open spam e-mails with pictures. The pictures are downloaded from a spammer’s server on the Internet. This lets them track you and see that you opened their message. It’s a welcome mat for even more spam.
• Use a throw-away e-mail address. If you regularly find yourself having to sign up on various websites just to gather information on something, download something, or get something, it may be a good idea to have a “throw-away” e-mail address. This is an address that you can use for sign-ups only and it would be separate from your business or personal address that you only give to friends or family. Free e-mail services such as Google’s Gmail, Yahoo, or MSN Hotmail are easy to sign up for and use. On the more advanced side, I have my own domain “neuroncomputers.com”. So what I do is I create some random, jargon e-mail address like signups392@neuroncomputers.com and use that for awhile. When I see that it gets hit with tons of spam, I simply delete it and create a new one called signups405 and so on so forth.
• And the #1, perfect anti-spam solution is…Don’t Use Email! Of course that would be impossible since email has really become a staple in business and in our personal lives. The good news is, as technology gets better and better, so does the fight against spam. From my own observations with clients and how their email systems are set up, I’ve seen first hand that approximately 98% of all emails have been effectively blocked and discarded as spam. So if you’re actually getting 5-10 spam e-mails per day, that’s only a small fraction of the 2% of e-mails that are not being blocked. I’d certainly hate to have thousands of spam e-mails in my inbox!

If you have any spam-blocking/prevention ideas, questions, or comments, please feel free to share them with me, and I’ll be sure to add your comments to my blog and in my next newsletter edition.

My Take on Windows Vista

A lot of people are confused about the transition from Windows XP to Windows Vista, especially since Microsoft has really pushed for Vista despite a rocky, well-published start. In this blog post, I’m going to talk about this very situation and give you my honest take on the whole deal with Windows Vista. Read on!

My Take On Windows Vista

For starters, it has always been my policy to stay away from any new operating system release until at least the first service pack (SP) has been released for that particular OS. I did this back in the days of Windows 98, 2000, and even XP. I held onto Windows 2000 the longest, for at least 4 years, well beyond the time frame of Windows XP’s service pack 1 release. I can even recall how people complained about Windows XP’s flaws and shortcomings when it was first released. I’ve seen reviews of the “new Fisher Price toy operating system that does not offer any new, exciting features over Windows 2000″. However, Windows XP is an exception to Microsoft’s line of operating systems because of the fact that it has been the operating system of choice for over 7 years now (it was released in 2001). As such, it has been patched, re-patched, updated, and is currently at SP3 level. The result of 7 years of Patch Tuesday updates has brought on a rock-solid operating system that millions of users have come to love and appreciate. As an IT tech, computer gamer, and computer hobbyist, it still remains my operating system of choice for myself, friends, family, and clients. I currently run Windows XP on my primary desktop PC as well as my “Tech Station” PC that I use to backup hard drives and serve out files on my network.

My Dell XPS m1330 Laptop Came Preloaded with…

I purchased my new Dell laptop back in November of 2007 preloaded with, you guessed it, Windows Vista. The first service pack was not yet released for Vista at this time, so I actually did break my own golden rule of “wait for SP1″. However, since I am an IT technician, I have to stay on top of the game and keep my knowledge and skills sharp with the latest software and hardware technologies. This was the only reason I chose to get my laptop preloaded with Vista. Despite all of the negative publicity surrounding Vista in terms of performance, stability, and most importantly, compatibility, I personally did not experience any problems whatsoever with my Vista laptop. However, with other clients’ Vista computers, the most common problems I faced were:

• Printer compatibility: Very, very rocky in the beginning. It was nearly impossible to get even a 6 month old printer to work with Vista as drivers were not released. Microsoft had completely changed the printing subsystem, so as a result, it broke a lot of applications’ printing capabilities as well as printers.
• Software compatibility: While Vista does have a “compatibility mode” feature where you can make programs run as if it were installed on Windows XP, for example, they were still flaky and unstable in some cases.
• Learning curve: The user interface of Vista has changed dramatically from XP. It took time for some clients to adjust to the interface. While you can turn off a lot of Vista’s new user interface features, and make it look practically like XP, it’s still a different and unfamiliar way of doing things.
• Performance: Forget about running Vista on less than 2 GB of RAM. You can also forget about running Vista’s Aero interface on a slower, older graphics card. Memory requirements for Windows XP are recommended to be at least 128 MB (512 for even better performance) whereas Vista recommends 1 GB. It’s such a huge leap in memory requirements, but luckily memory upgrades have become dirt cheap.

The Future of Windows XP

Microsoft officially stopped selling Windows XP on June 30, 2008. You can no longer walk into a retail store to pick up a copy of Windows XP. However, the good news is, OEMs like Dell or me can still provide copies of Windows XP on preloaded systems. You can purchase a Dell with a valid Windows Vista license and legally “downgrade” to Windows XP and the computer will come shipped with XP preloaded and ready to go. The same holds true if you want to purchase a PC from me, although there won’t be a Vista software DVD included – only Windows XP.

Windows XP patches and support will continue until the end of 2014, even though sales will officially end, regardless of Dell, OEM, etc, at the end of 2009.

So, in short, we have until Q4 2009 to get our hands on Windows XP but our investment in Windows XP is good ’til 2014.

The Bottom Line: Should We Embrace Windows Vista?

My short answer to that is yes, but only for very specific situations. If you are running brand new hardware and have business applications that do support Vista, then it would be an ideal choice. If you have a relatively new Windows XP computer that has absolutely no problems, then there is certainly no need to upgrade to Vista. You wouldn’t be missing out on anything if you chose not to go to Vista in that case.

In my recent experience with working with Windows XP and loading updated third party software, I have noticed some programs actually get broken with their latest update, since they were “fixed” or “optimized” for Vista. This has happened in some cases with clients’ computers and networks where business applications that were once rock-solid on Windows XP became very buggy and broken due to updates tailored for Vista compatibility. Ouch!

As for me, I love the fact that I’m running Vista on my laptop because it is great with managing battery life, networking/wireless connectivity in multiple locations, and has gotten much, much more stable with SP1. However, I’m not in a hurry to switch my main desktop PC over to Vista anytime soon. In fact, I have decided to hang on to my current setup, as-is, until at least 2010, when Windows 7 is slated to come out. At that time, I will upgrade with totally new hardware that would be more compatible and in line with the requirements of the next generation operating system.

Bill Gates Retires

Microsoft Corp Chairman Bill Gates is stepping down from daily operations at the software maker, to focus on his philanthropic efforts. Go here to see a cool time line of all the major events in the life of Microsoft, the company he co-founded in 1975, and in the Gates’ life.

Remote Support Services

This thing I came across by a good friend of mine has absolutely, positively blown me away. It’s called LogMeIn Rescue and it is the coolest thing since sliced bread. I signed up for the 2 week free trial and it has already “paid” for itself many times over. I was able to provide computer repair services to several satisfied clients. I cannot wait to purchase this thing.

Basically the way it works is I send an e-mail with a link or send customers to a special website (customizable later by me), and a PIN code. They input the PIN code, download and run the special program, and we’re connected. It’s as simple as that. Once it’s running, we can chat one on one in an AOL Instant Messenger-like chat window. I can then request various important functions such as the current PCs resource load (CPU, memory, hard drive space used, etc), programs that are running, and even take complete control of their desktop — all with their permission first of course. The best thing of all is this is safe and extremely secure, as it uses 256-bit encryption to transmit information back and forth between me and the client.

What I envision doing in the the very near future is implement a website that is an extension of www.neuroncomputers.com and have clients be able to provide their information and click “Connect”. Initially, I will just offer instant connect access and ask for billing information post-session. In the future, I will accept credit cards and offer the option to purchase “prepaid minutes” or flat-rate services such as “Set up your music player” or “Install your office suite program”.

It is so amazing how technology has progressed to this. With Windows Vista coming out very, very soon (if it hasn’t already — I’m so behind with that), then there will be even more of a need for remote support.