|
|
Yes, I’m from Pennsylvania. I grew up in Harrisburg (the State Capitol) and always lived pretty close to Hershey. Most of you have probably heard of this quaint town, mostly because of the famous chocolate. I remember so many nights when I’d walk out onto the porch and the night sky was filled with stars… and with the sweet aroma of the cocoa bean mixed with milk.
I loved the smell of Hershey’s Chocolate. Day or night, it didn’t matter to me. I did discover, however, that not everyone shared my enthusiasm for the wonderful odor. In fact, several of my friends actually worked in the factory and they couldn’t stand the aroma. The last thing they wanted to see, smell or taste was a chocolate bar!
Do I still crave Hershey’s Chocolate? You bet I do! It doesn’t take much for me to envision the flowing chocolate in the factory, the sounds and the smell that went with it. (Yes, I’m old enough to have toured the real factory before they shut if off to the public and built Hershey’s Chocolate World.)
Oh, I know what you’re wondering: “What does Hershey’s Chocolate have to do with computers and the Internet?” Excellent question!
1) You can order some great Hershey’s Products online! In fact, I love Hershey’s so much, I’m an affiliate. Just click the banner below to visit the Hershey’s Store!
2) I grew up around Hershey, PA, and I’ve heard tons of stories about Mr. Hershey – his struggles, let downs and successes. But, if you have never heard all there is to know about him, you can find a plethora of information on the web. Here are some links to help you get started:
http://yep.it/wrgsmy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_S._Hershey
http://yep.it/dxnxvi
Two weeks ago, I purchased a new laptop. It’s a 17″ media notebook. Since I’m in the computer business, here are the first things I did:
1) Upgraded to Windows 7 Ultimate. 2) Removed Norton’s Anti-virus and installed Avast Internet Security 3) Installed Office 2010 Pro
Next, I installed Carbonite Online Backup. If you’re still backing up your “stuff” onto CDs, DVDs or USB Drives, it’s time to move to online backup. Here’s why I love Carbonite: it backs up my data files within minutes of their creation; it can’t get scratched and become unreadible; I can access my stored files from a different computer as long as I can get onto the Net; my backup can’t be stolen or ruined by fire or water.
Once I had my backup in place, the next thing I installed was Lojack For Computers – Premium Edition. Why? This is a very expensive laptop and I take it with me on all my service calls, to Microsoft Partner meetings and even on vacation. Should my computer get lost or stolen, I want to be able to trace it. Perhaps more importantly, since I bought the Premium edition, I can actually delete my data files remotely. (Remember, though, I have Carbonite, so my data is safely backed up on their servers!)
Carbonite and Lojack For Computers – if you have a laptop, you should be using these products. This is definitely a case of “doing what I do and what I say!”
As many of you know, Riverside Bank of Florida was taken over by the FDIC and bought out by TDBank. All of this happened last Friday. This blog post is a warning!
Already, in less than a week, we’ve received 9 emails purporting to be from TDBank. Since Keystone Computer Concepts did bank with Riverside, these emails coming in caught our attention. However, they are ALL bogus. Some subjects state that our account is about to expire, some say we need to click to transfer our account from Riverside to TDBank. All of these are fakes. You need to be on the alert. BTW (by the way), the first clue is that all the emails start out “Dear Customer,” not “Dear Keystone Computer Concepts.” A second clue is that a number of the emails have misspellings and/or poor grammar.
Do NOT be fooled by these bogus emails. Do NOT click on any of the links. Delete them and, if you’re really a Riverside customer, you’ll receive legitimate information either through logging in to your Riverside account (if you bank online) or via US Mail.
Hate making a doctor’s appointment and then having to sit in the waiting room for hours? Well, now you may be able to visit your doctor without leaving your computer at home. My doctor participates in a program called, “RelayHealth.” This past week, when I still had a razor-like sore throat after four days, I made a “web visit” with my doctor. The next day, I received a reply and my doctor sent prescriptions to the pharmacy for the treatment of my condition. My insurance covers most, if not all, of the cost of my web visit along with the usual discount on the prescription drugs. No waiting for an appointment and no sitting in a room filled with other sick people!
A few words of wisdom: the web visits available are NOT for emergency use or for things like chest pains, etc. And, if you really need a doctor’s response the same day, you shouldn’t use the online form, either. Most of the time, the doctor will respond within 24 hours but that is not a guarantee.
I’m a believer in NOT reinventing the wheel, so for a much broader view and a deeper explanation of how these web visits work, I direct you to this Wall Street Journal article: click HERE.
This is the first time I’ve used a web visit and I was very happy with the results!
As you know, Saint Patrick’s Day is almost upon us. (Did you know that this month’s Computer Seminar has a St. Patty’s Day theme?) I started looking for some clipart I could use and I thought I’d share one of the pages with you. You do know you can add clipart to Word documents, email and web pages, right?
The site I’m going to share has some nice clipart but just a little word of caution: they make you go through some extra steps to get to the clipart you want – because each page has Google ads on it and they want to expose you to as many of those as they can. Still, if you want to use clipart, it’s worth the effort. Here’s the site: St. Patty’s Day Clipart.
By the way, if you’re not sure how to use clipart in a document or email, be sure to attend our Seminar on March 13th, either in person or over the web. I’m going to teach you how to do use clipart.
Finally, I did find some controversy when I was looking for the St. Patty’s Day clipart. Shamrocks have only three leafs. If you see 4-leaf clipart, that’s a four-leaf clover, not a shamrock. You can read more about shamrocks HERE.
Computers and the Internet give us many options for saving time and for conveniently performing tasks which we once had to do on foot. We can: bank online; purchase from just about every company you can think of and some you never even imagined existed; print our own postage; and, stay in touch with friends and relatives quickly via email.
Unfortunately, almost all of these tasks require a password. And, there’s the rub. If you make your password too simple – say “miser1″ for your bank account – you take the risk of having some hacker break into your account. (I would remind you that you should read our tutorial on making passwords secure. You can find that HERE.) If you make your passwords too complicated, you can’t remember them or you can’t find the piece of paper on which you wrote them! (Additionally, if you use the same password for everything, then if you get hacked in one account, you may be hacked in all your accounts.)
So, the dilema is: how do you remember different, yet secure passwords? Over the years, people have asked me about using a program to store their passwords. In the past, I have usually advised against using these programs as I have been concerned about the security of keeping all your passwords in one place. Recently, however, my own passwords have gotten so complicated and have grown so much in number, that I decided I needed to make a change. So, I went researching.
I found what I think is the best and safest password storage software currently available – RoboForm. I purchased it and have used it for about two weeks now. It works in Internet Explorer (IE), Firefox (FF) and Google Chrome. Once you’ve entered all your user names and passwords, the software requires you to remember just one password – the password to get into the software itself – and it will insert user names and those secure passwords at just the click of a button.
There are two features that I really like: 1) by clicking on the “Logins” button on the tool bar, you can choose a site and RoboForm will take you to the site, fill in the information needed and log you in; 2) you can allow the software to create secure passwords for you.
There are other robust features as well. For example, you can set up different profiles so that each computer user can keep their information separate from others on the same machine, etc. Additionally, everything is encrypted so hacking into to your passwords would be a monumental chore, even for the best hackers out there.
If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to email or call me. I really like the way this software works and if you think it sounds like a good idea, too, just click on this banner to get started:
In any job, if you really have a passion for it, there are times when the personal satisfaction from accomplishing some aspect of your work far outweighs the financial rewards. In the case of computer repair, for me, I get a real “high” when I can recover a customer’s data after his or her computer hard drive crashes and there was no backup.
Today, however, I had to tell another customer that there was nothing I could recover. They lost pictures of their family, children and others. They lost documents and Internet favorites. Some of these items can be found again but many pictures are lost forever. It’s sad that I wasn’t able to help them.
Still, what happened today is just another reminder of what I keep “preaching” about - ALL HARD DRIVES FAIL. Back ups are so very important. There are many ways to keep copies of your files, documents and pictures – external drives, CDs, DVDs, and USB drives. For my money, though, the best backup is encrypted, online backup like we use here at Keystone Computer Concepts. With online backup, new files are backed up within minutes of being created; you can access your backed up files from anywhere on the Internet; and, you can transfer your back up from one computer to another. (Example: you buy a new computer and give up the old one.)
If you’re not using online backup now, I strongly urge you to give it a try. It may very well be the best $55 investment you’ll make in the next year. Just click on the banner below and get started!
A number of people have taken my advice and moved from the old, free Avast to the new paid version. In doing so, a few customers tried to open the license key. There is no program on your computer to do that. Simply download the license key to some location you’ll know, download and install the new Avast. When you go through the install wizard and it asks for the license key (bottom choice on the window), use the browse button to find the license key that you saved.
Remember, any other questions, let me know.
If you’re a Keystone Computer Concepts customer, you know that we have recommended and installed Avast Anti-virus for a very long time. This software is installed on all our computers and hundreds of our customers have been using the free version with great success.
We have used and recommended Avast over all the other Anti-virus programs for the following reasons: 1) unlike other A-V programs, Avast has worked well and rarely interferes with other software programs; 2) Avast has been excellent in blocking websites with malicious codes – better, in our opinion, than any other A-V program with which we have worked; 3) Avast has not consumed a large percentage of a computer’s processor.
Although there are other free A-V programs available, we just haven’t found any that stack up against Avast.
Like most other software companies, Avast has been constantly improving its software. Just this past week, the company released version 5. With this new edition of Avast comes some changes. Many of the improvements are cosmetic – new icons, new control panel, things like that. But, there have been changes “under the hood,” as well.
One of the significant changes is that they have improved the web portion of the software by creating a virtual “sandbox” for surfing the web. The sandbox “enables potentially exploitable programs (such as web browsers) and/or suspicious executables to be run in a safe, virtual environment. The avast! Sandbox is unique as it runs on both 32 and 64bit platforms.” (Quote for Avast website.)
I’m very impressed by this new feature. However, the free Avast does not include the sandbox. So, for the first time ever, I am now recommending that my customers purchase Avast instead of using the free version. Those of you who know me, realize that I am always trying to find ways to save you money, including the use of free Anti-virus programs. Still, as hackers get more sophisticated on the web, it just seems to me that keeping your computer safe has merit, even if there’s a small price to pay.
Since I really believe Avast is the A-V program to use, if you are currently running the free 4.8 version, I would urge you to move on to a paid version. There are other new features in the paid version of Avast (see below for the link to the comparison chart) which I like as well, but the sandbox alone is enough to move away from the free version.
If you hurry, Avast is offering some nice discounts during the breakout of this new version. Just click on one of the following links:
Avast Internet Security (The most protection; can be installed on three computers for the same price.)
Avast Pro:
If you’d like to compare these two versions, here’s Avast’s own webpage: http://www.avast.com/comparison-chart
If you have any questions or concerns or need help installing this new version, please don’t hesitate to call me or email me. (john@4kcc.com)
|
|
