Another year down and a new one in the chute. I wonder what this new year will bring me when it comes to slow computers? Will some new technology finally allow me to teleport from the bed to the bathroom? And will that same technology come with a “mechanical wiping” option? Ok, ok. Just a thought…
Dear 2011,
Please bring me a pc that doesnt crash. I would also like to have a computer that doesn’t know the meaning of the word virus let along know how to catch one. The word “Trojan” should henceforth be used only to describe University of Southern California’s sporting teams.
The “Blue Screen of Death”? If there is a way you might be able to wave a magic wand of sorts to banish this little bugger to the afterlife where it belongs that would be just fine with me.
Malware! Can we do something about this stuff? It just junks up my computer and keeps me from learning who is looking for me on Mylife.com. I need to know if that old client is really looking for me.
And as a responsible computer consumer I hereby resolve to:
Never decide to just unplug my desktop as opposed to shutting it down the right way by clicking “Shut Down”. I guess this really is bad for the computer. Lesson learned.
No longer visit that ahem, adult entertainment site I keep telling my boyfriend(s) and my therapist I have stopped visiting. These sites are the absolute worst for computer STD’s, go figure.
Hopefully all of this will keep me on the right track in 2011 and off the slow train.
Happy New Year!
When it comes to our computers, most of us are content to just turn them on, use then for what we need at the moment and then turn them off (or in my case turn it off every few weeks just to make the system reboot). But how much do most of us really know about the terms that computer junkies throw around with wild abandon?
Maybe… just maybe… if we know more about our actual computer and what makes it work, then we might be better prepared to handle the myriad of little technical problems that those bad boys develop. Then again, maybe not. But hey—at least we’ll be better equipped to understand the guys at technical support the next time we call in a panic.
So in an effort to educate the masses, here are a few computer terms that might help you on a frustrating computer day in the near future.
Motherboard-No I am not referring to the large spacecraft alien fighter craft dock to. I am talking about the big circuit board in your computer that every vital component of your computers hardware is affixed to. You’ll find the CPU, hard drive and memory as permanent parts of the motherboard. Just think of it this way: Mothers usually are the contolling mechanism in our lives as children, and so is the motherboard to a PC.
Video Card-This little baby is really important in the grand scheme of all things PC. This card is responsible for transferring the the computers output to the visual media. No video card means you see nada on your screen. Also, geeked up video cards are vital to most gamers these days. They can also enable you to watch TV on your computer.
Ethernet-Without this little gem most of us would go absolutely stark raving nuts. The ethernet is your computer’s gateway to the internet and world beyond your small cramped studio apartment. Ethernet is the network standard for data transmission; be it internet data or data between two computers
The last weekend of May each year, the brickyard at Indianapolis is filled the sound of reving engines, the smell of exhaust and the telltale smoke of burnt rubber. It is the precusor to the annual Indianapolis 500 car race at one of professional racings most hallowed speed tracks. In the days leading up to the event, racing teams tweak engines and cars to try and get every bit of speed they can in preparation for the race. Speed is but once factor in winning the race… but a very important component of a victorious race day for drivers.
Our computers are much the same.
When we shop for a computer we are generally looking at the speed of the computer almost immediately. If the primary use of the computer is for internet surfing, we then look to our internet service providers for an idea of how fast it’s really going to run once it hits the track.
Keeping the internet service providers honest with their promises of certain internet connection speeds is the job of the multitude of internet speed checkers out there on the net.
But are these speed tests really accurate?
Whenever you go to one of these speed test sites online you’ll want to keep a few things in mind when it gages your results. There are a lot of variables that go into the test, and not all tests are going to give you the same readings.
In order to get the best idea of your internet connections real speed to the following:
Run these speed tests over a period of weeks. One and done is a very small sample. You’ll want to increase the sample size for a truer reading. Internet speeds will vary during different times of the day and even by the day of the week you are testing. The internet isn’t a congestion free zone so even a little disruption in the internet’s flow to your connection will make a real difference.
When you run your speed test, make sure you have no other programs running either visibly or in what is commonly called the background. If you do the speed test withother applications open your results will be askew.
The final thing I will suggest to you is to use more than one internet speed checking tool. Do a quick web search to find the top three speed check sites and use all of them during your testing period.
It’s Sunday afternoon, the game is on and you are keeping up with your fantasy football league via your wifi smartphone because you live in the wilderness, 35 miles from the nearest cell tower. This is going to be counted as one of those times your Internet connection had better be operating at peak efficiency. If not, your buddy Hank from marketing is going to trash talk you for the next week.
Things are going as planned until late in the fourth quarter when both your team’s offense and your internet connection slow to a crawl.
Gee… slow internet sucks.
How does this happen, you ask. Why does it have to happen right as your team is pulling up lame with a playoff spot on the line?
The answer is probably going to be as basic as the reason your team’s quarterback can’t seem to get a pass off.
Computers slow for a lot of different reasons.
You could be at the end of the line. Your home’s connection could be at the end of your provider’s line in your area.
There could be heavy usage on the connection in your neighborhood. It’s common for internet providers to hookup entire streets onto the same node. When this happens, your connection is being shared by a ton of people. If the guy across the street’s kid decides to call all of his neighborhood friends to an online game of Call of Duty your going to see your connection speed drag like a dogs itchy butt across the carpet.
Slow internet can sometimes be rooted in the router you are using. If the router supplying wireless internet to your home is more than a few years old, you may want to look into upgrading to current technology.
For many of today’s internet users, trying to get a page loaded while surfing the web is a slow and painful process.
One of the reasons for the reduced speed are something called internet “Cookies”. (Think small computer files, not a big blue fuzzy muppet.) Cookies are small files that are stored on your computer used to track the places you have been online. Everytime you are surfing the web a new cookie is being added to the jar of existing cookies. I think Cookie Monster would find this process inviting.
So what do these cookies do while they are tracking your journey across the internet? They are allowing you to view websites the way they were meant to be viewed in many instances. By and large these cookies are pretty safe for your computer. No stomach aches as a general rule, unless your computer gets a malicious or rotten cookie. Rotten cookies will give your computer stomach aches, some of which can’t be fixed. The rotten ones will also wreak havoc with your computers internet speed.
If this has somehow frightened you don’t be too terribly alarmed. Cookies can be deleted.
Once you are able to delete the internet cookies you should see a return to somewhat normal internet browsing speeds. Note here that cookies aren’t so much a hinderance to the operating system per se. They are more something that attacks your speed via your internet browser.
Getting rid of these cookies you’ll want to do some searching of your internet browser menus. For instance, in Internet Explorer you would need to navigate to the Tools menu and then click “Internet Options”. Once you have managed to get this screen open you should easily spot the button “Delete Cookies”. Click the button and just like magic the cookies are gone
When I was a little girl I would go out to the garage, sit on a stool and watch my father give the family car a good once over. He always stressed to me the importance of taking care of things; be it my Easy Bake Oven, my first CD player, or the old car he bought me for my 16th birthday.
So when I bought my first computer, I knew I should take good care of it if I wanted it to last. Given the price I paid for it I wasn’t planning on replacing it for at least 5 years.
But how exactly do you perform maintenance on a computer anyway?
Start with a disk cleanup: As you use your computer off and online, it stores up information in what are called “temp files”. These files continue to balloon in size until you clean them up. Another source of bloated information files are the internet files you have downloaded, as well as files that are simply old and no longer used. Disk Cleanup takes care of all of these now useless files all at once. The result? More space.
Error checking: This is a good idea for your PC as it gets older. Error checking checks the operating system for errors and then provides the solution to you. You’ll be surprised at the amount of system errors your PC develops over time. As soon as you “take it off the lot” you computers system integrity is compromised.
Update Spyware and AntiVirus programs: Most of us just install these types of software and then forget about them. We figure it’ll just update itself without any requirement for input from us. The good news here is that many programs perform automatic updates for their software, provided the user has specified so in the programs settings. Still, software gets old and its technology dated. It’s not a bad idea to upgrade these two necessary programs every year.
Ever get tired of looking for things? Like the sock your dryer seems to eat with every load ? Or how about the dreaded car key hunt? How many times have you lost time scouring your apartment only to discover they were in your purse the whole time? See, searching for things is never fun and something tells me you probably get just as frustrated as I do when the lost refuses to get found. Internet searches can be just as time-consuming and frustrating… unless, of course, you know a few tricks to making the world’s most popular search engine work for you.
Making Google your professional search program:
Ever want to know what time it is in a particular place in the world? All you have to do is type, “what time is it in Pakistan” and wham, there is your time and date. Pretty awesome huh? Well not as cool as some of the others I drop on you but still, kind of neat.
Tossing things all over your desk in search of your calculator and still can’t find it? Trip on over to Google. By using the operators “+,-,* and /” you can perform as many of the basic functions of math as your little heart desires.
If you are wanting to search for all of the keywords in a phrase all you need to do is add a “+” between all of them and Google will conduct a search that looks for all instances of each word and returns them in a combination result.
More useful searches include looking for the status of an airline flight by typing the airline name and flight number. “United flight 1342″ will give you the status of that particular flight. That is really cool. No more logging onto the airline carrier’s website and having to navigate all over to find a flights status.
Want more?
Google it!
Hello faithful readers… (And good day to the not so faithful as well—every reader is welcome at my humble little blog)
Those of you that follow my ramblings on a somewhat regular basis might have noticed that I have been a little out of touch as of late. First of all, to answer your unspoken concerns, no I did not finally loose my mind and toss my slower than slow computer out of my second story window, only to bonk an unsuspecting pedestrian on the head as they strolled by.
The truth, in fact, is much simpler: I wasn’t feeling well. A trip or two to the ER, however, and I’m (almost) good as new. So, what did I miss in my absence? Please tell me that someone, somewhere, came up with a permanent cure for slow computer syndrome while I was gone? I didn’t think so.
Anyhow, now that I’m starting to feel a little more human again, I just wanted to assure my faithful followers that I will be back to blogging in full force. My nimble little fingers have every intention of flying across the keyboard with a renewed vigor and sense of purpose. So look out world, here I come!
There are few things more frustrating than having a computer running as slow as molasses sliding downhill in a sub-zero January. The good news is there are relatively simple fixes you can master to remedy this oh so common computer problem. All you’ll need is the internet, time and some patience. As is often the case, what seem like the most difficult of problems is actually not as hard to figure out as it first appears.
Slow Computer Fixes Part I-Start up folder
Every computer has a folder called “Start Up” that holds all of the programs that will begin running when the operating system starts up. One of the tricks to keeping your PC running fast is to keep this folder clear of clutter. It’s fairly common for this folder to fill up with random programs you have downloaded over time.
Check and see what is in your PC’s startup folder by going to Start>All Programs>Startup. If you are like most of us you’ll say “Milk-a-what??” when you see all the stuff in your Startup folder.
Getting rid of unwanted programs is just a click away. Cursor over the name of a program you want to remove from the folder and right click. You can then delete the program. This will stop the program from running in the background and should speed things up a bit for you.
Now that I’ve showed you how to turn off those unwanted programs you’ll need to begin practicing some better judgement.
From now on, no more random downloading of pretty screen savers and toolbars and the like. These programs may look cool, neat, whatever but in reality they are sucking the life out of your computer. Before you download ask yourself if you really need what essentially is an add-on or not.
In my next blog I’ll show you how to deep clean Startup.
The operating systems on our computers come traditionally in two flavors, Mac and Windows. If you want an OS other than either of those two, people tend to look at you like you are sick or something. Until the last few years there hasn’t been any serious competition for the Big Two. Now computer users are beginning to compare the Linux operating system in earnest to Mac and Microsoft platforms.
Here are some of the good and the bad of what you’ll find under the hood of the Linux operating system.
The Good
Many distributions don’t cost a thing. My favorite four letter word ever … free. It’s a server friendly platform and therefore a good for business as well. User support for various distributions has been generally very good. Distributions, such as LiveCD, let you test things out before you commit to installation. Believe this or not (Mac users play nice now) the Linux operating system is actually a bit more secure than its Mac and Microsoft peers.
The Bad (and not so ugly)
Although most of the distributions do not require much, if any, knowledge of Linux there are a few which will require a basic level knowledge of the OS in order to maximize it’s benefit.
Since it’s been on the fringe so long there are not a lot of software manufacturers making programs for Linux, although the number is rising. Depending on how adept you are you may find manipulating the OS a little difficult if you try and install it on a computer that already has an OS on it. You’ll find it a bit frustrating at times if you are one of those users who have to have the latest and greatest software titles available