Computer Maintenance

Something else Kelsey asked me to give her was some advice on things she can do to make her computer run smoother. Well here are some possibilities:

1. All the time, make sure you have a good virus scanner running that keeps its virus definitions up-to-date.
2. All the time, use a good firewall that detects both incoming intrusions as well as outgoing connection attempts. Windows XP has a reasonable one built in. Use it!
   
3. Weekly empty the recycle bin.
4. Weekly run Spyware/Malware detection/removal tools such as (freebies):
1. Spybot Search & Destroy.
2. Lavasoft Ad-Aware.
3. Yahoo or other Internet service provider's software.
4. Or better yet, purchase one that does real-time scanning.
   
5. Monthly defragment your hard drives. If required do an offline defragmentation to defragment system files like the pagefile.
6. Monthly or more often back up your system. At least back up your documents and other files not easily replaced. Ideally copy them to something that is removable and can be stored in another location in case of fire.
   
7. Every 6 months or so, vacuum your computer. If you feel comfortable, open the case and gently vacuum the inside of the case to remove dust/hair buildup, especially near inlets to the case. As well vacuum the outside. Use some compressed air to blow the dust out of your CD or DVD drives.
8. Every 2 years reinstall Windows. Seriously, this isn't a bad idea as Windows still tends to get cluttered up and this also forces you to clean things out.

I'll add more ideas as I think of them.

PS No, I don't always practice what I preach. But I try!

Buying sites

Kelsey asked me to send her the list of where I shop for things on-line. I'll do one better and post it here for everyone to see:

http://bensbargains.net/
http://www.slickdeals.net/
http://www.techbargains.com/
http://www.edealinfo.com/
http://shopper.cnet.com/
http://www.pricegrabber.com/
http://www.pricewatch.com/
http://www.mysimon.com/
http://www.nextag.com/

The reviews, both user and professional at shopper.com (shopper.cnet.com) are often very good. Please guard the above list with your life. :-)

Someone please depose the iPod

I am soooooo sick of trying to repair, recover, upgrade, whatever, my daughters' iPods I could scream. An iPod must be the single most user unfriendly device ever when it comes to problems. Sure, Apple nailed the user interface when everything works well, but heaven forbid there be a problem. What happens when there is a problem? You get "Generic error message #42" or in iPod speak, a folder with an exclamation mark in it indicating you should go to www.apple.com/support/ipod for some totally useless advice. Diagnostics? What diagnostics? If you are fortunate enough to be able to get your iPod into "diagnostic" mode (and I use the quotation marks as it can hardly be called a set of diagnostics. Diagnostics are those things that point out what is wrong with a device. Every failing iPod I've come across has always had all the diagnostics indicate everything is great. Yet the device won't function, refuses to associate with the computer, and even in disk mode won't act like a normal USB hard drive. Back the rant already in progress...) the "diagnostics" never indicate a problem. Reminds me of the old Digital VAX/VMS diagnostics. They would find no problems, yet VMS wouldn't boot because of some hardware problem.

I mean really Apple, how hard is it to tell the user what's wrong with the device? If the boot loader can be smart enough to tell you to go to www.apple.com/support/ipod, can't it at least give out some hexadecimal error code that I could look up? Even Microsoft software can do that! And what's with a disk mode that doesn't let you access the device? How hard can it be to emulate a USB hard drive? Even a $19 device that includes an enclosure and power supply can do that. Yet my daughter's $300-400 60GB iPod photo seems unable to do that.