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What would happen if you lost everything on your computer? It’s not fun – let me tell you. Fortunately I haven’t had this experience for a LONG time but I’ve certainly seen it happen to others more times than I can count. And it’s never a pretty sight. A lot of people I know don’t really keep anything on their computer anymore – they just use it to access the internet.  In that case, it’s not the end of the world if a hard drive crashes. But what about the rest of us who do have important stuff on our computers?  Documents, pictures, movies… And what exactly can you back up? Here’s some basic backup information; First – I always tell people; if you have anything important saved on a hard drive, you’d better be darn sure it’s saved somewhere else too – I can’t tell you how many hard [...]

My dad called me the other day to tell me that when he booted up his computer in the morning – SURPRISE!  He now had Windows 10. Say what?! Needless to say, he wasn’t pleased. I’ve actually heard this story from several people now – they get up from their computer, and return to it installing Windows 10 “for them”… without them even asking for it! Yes, it’s true – Microsoft has changed the way Windows 10 is being pushed out to the masses and now scores of people are having Windows 10 jammed down their throats. Now for people who were running Windows 8 previously, I’m not sure I’d complain.  Let’s face it – Windows 8 was a STINKER.  This may be the best thing that’s happened to your computer since you got it. But for those of us fortunate enough to be happily chugging along with Windows 7, [...]

Over the last few weeks I’ve been talking about keeping your computer safe from viruses and spyware.  This week, I’m going to tell you about a simple upgrade you can make to your computer  that will fundamentally improve your experience. But before I jump into that, I want to back up for a minute and answer a question that I’ve been getting a lot lately: “What exactly IS spyware?  And how is it different than a virus?”  [Scroll down if you don't care ☺] I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this, because, to be honest, it’s less important you understand what it is, and more important that you’re staying safe by way of the methods I’ve been discussing. Basically, spyware (or malware, or adware, or whatever you want to call it) is software that gets installed on your computer (usually without your knowledge) that does all [...]

Last week I sent out an email about computer security.  This week I’d like to follow that up with some additional information. I received a lot of great feedback from the last email so I’m going to address some questions and comments that came in. The first question that came up is, “How do I uninstall a program?” Every version of Windows is slightly different, but you should be able to get to your programs list by going to the Start menu, then typing in “Add or Remove” in the search box – you should see the option “Add or Remove Programs” pop up.  Click on this and you’ll be taken to a screen that shows every program that’s installed on your computer.  If you have trouble finding this, just let me know and I’ll help out.  From this list, you can select individual programs and choose “Uninstall” to start [...]

For years I’ve recommended AVG as a good free antivirus software for my clients.  And until recently, it has been just that. Sadly, this is no longer the case. In recent months AVG has begun inundating its users with annoying popups and offers to buy their paid services. If you’re running AVG, you’ve probably seen this. You may have even pulled out some of your hair by now. For whatever reason, AVG has decided to annoy the heck out of their user base with these popups.  I did a little research on this issue and found this AVG forum FILLED with unhappy users, which includes a very interesting post someone made a few days ago on April 5th, where it’s speculated that this recent change is actually part of a stock manipulation scheme.  Is it true?  Who knows… but interesting nonetheless. So the bottom line is this; AVG is no [...]

For the last few weeks I’ve been listening to my laptop fan whir away, running full speed, hopelessly trying to keep the critical components cool, and failing. Then the other day when my wireless router pooped out on me from overheating, I realized it was time to take action. If your computer sounds like a jet engine, you should probably keep reading. Let’s face it, it’s been freaking HOT here in Hawaii lately.  Hot and MUGGY.  And our electronics HATE it. So I wanna give you some quick advice on how to keep your electronics happy (and alive) in the hot summer heat. First, let’s start with computers and laptops.  Basically, there are several components in these devices that heat up and, over time, if not taken care of, they burn out.  No bueno. The CPU, the graphics processor (GPU), the hard drives, memory and other chips all run hot.  [...]