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According to Symantec’s recent Internet Security Threat Report  the number of malicious software (malware) detected has surpassed the one million mark. Unfortunately the number of new viruses, trojans and spyware is increasing at an alarming rate, with nearly 70% of the existing malware being created in 2007. Trojan Horses lead the pack of infections by a large margin.

Not only are malicious programs on the increase, they’re also becoming more tenacious. It’s becoming harder for the average computer user to clean up their computer after it’s been infected. In many cases malware quickly multiplies from one infection to dozens, making restoring the computer to a clean state extremely difficult without professional assistance.

In the past the most common way your computer could become infected was by opening an email attachment. Today, the most common way to get infected is by visiting an infected website. Since most people own a computer to surf the internet and email the chances of your computer becoming infected are very high. Panda Security, in a recent test, found that 23% of computers with up to date security solutions are infected with malware. Depending on the source, anywhere from 70-90% of computers that aren’t running a current antivirus program are already infected.

The dangers of an infected computer are scary. Besides the annoyance of pop-up windows and a slow computer much of the current malware is designed to monitor your surfing habits, display advertisements for bogus software promising to remove viruses, and record your login usernames and passwords for sites you visit, including banking and credit card sites. “Increasingly, Symantec has observed that malicious activity has moved away from targeting computers and towards targeting end users themselves. Specifically, attackers are targeting confidential end-user information that can be used in fraudulent activity for financial gain.”

Many people are quick to degrade Microsoft because most malware targets their operating system and web browser. But since 90% of computers in use today run a Microsoft Operating System it’s obvious why they’re the main target. That being said, if you have no intention of insuring your computer is protected from malware you should either buy a Mac or switch to one of the popular Linux Operating Systems, like Ubuntu.

If you continue to use a Microsoft Operating System, like Windows 2000, XP, or Vista, then your only choices are to either insure you’re properly protected or become a victim of malware. Here are some things anyone running a Microsoft Operating System should do:

1. Turn on Microsoft Automatic Updates and set them to install automatically.

2. Insure you have System Restore turned on in case you need it.

3. Back up your important computer files like tax files, resumes, etc..

4. Run antivirus software with current updates. If you’re antivirus definition updates have expired the program is useless. Here are some great options.

Free Programs – Use AGV Free Edition or Avira AntiVir.

Paid Programs – Use NOD32 or Avira Antivir.

5. Run antispyware software with current updates. If you’re running a free antivirus program or your antivirus program doesn’t protect against spyware make sure your running one of these free programs as well. Spyware Terminator or Windows Defender.

6. Consider using Firefox or Opera instead of Internet Explorer for web surfing.

7. Don’t open email from people you don’t know. Even the pictures shown in emails can infect your computer.

8. Never respond to an email that appears to be from your bank or credit card company asking you to go to a website to verify any personal account information. If you get an email like that delete the email and call them using a phone number you have on file for them.

9. Insure you have your Windows firewall turned on, or an even better option is the free Comodo firewall.

10. Don’t install free programs unless they’re from a reliable source like download.com.

11. Don’t use P2P file sharing programs like BitTorrent, Limewire, Morpheus, etc..

The stakes are high when it comes to your computer security and protection. There are now over one million malicious programs out there intent on stealing your identity and financial information, invading your privacy, and destroying what should be an enjoyable computing experience. Following these 11 computer security tips will help you to be safe and not become a victim.

Happy Computing!

-Bert

Have you ever been reading something on your computer and thought, “wow, that font size is so small it’s making my eyes hurt”? There’s a really easy way to increase or decrease the font size. Simply press the Ctrl key on your keyboard and use the scroll wheel on your mouse to increase or decrease the size.

If you don’t have a scroll wheel on your mouse you can press Ctrl and use the + and – keys on your keyboard. Pressing Ctrl 0 (zero) will set it back to the original size.

I’ve found this works in both Windows XP and Vista in nearly any application. It’ll even increase or decrease the size of your desktop icons. Give it a try!

Regards,

-Bert

If you run Windows Vista you may have encountered one its many bugs if you’ve ever tried to unzip a compressed file. A file with a ZIP extension is simply one or several files that have been compressed into a single, smaller file. It’s common when downloading files from the Internet to get them in ZIP format.

This evening I was reminded of the issue when I downloaded a fairly small ZIP file. It contained 580 files but was less than 2MBs so it should have unzipped in a few seconds. Using Vista extraction would have taken over an hour!

Hopefully Microsoft will come out with a patch soon but in the meantime I’d suggest downloading the free 7-Zip program HERE.

Using 7-Zip I extracted all 580 files in about 2 seconds. Sure beats waiting 1+ hour using the Vista method!

Regards,

-Bert

In a perfect world you’d never have to worry about losing any of the important files on your computer. But in reality the chances of you losing everything on your computer are pretty high. Most people have pictures, tax files, resumes and a host of other important files on their computer but have never made a backup copy. A hard drive crash or a virus could wipe out everything tomorrow, so why haven’t you backed up your data yet?

I believe the reason most people haven’t backed up their files is that they’re not sure how to do it. So today, let’s look at some simple ways to give your data a second life and give you some peace of mind.

An important first consideration is to insure that all your files are in one place. By that, I mean that if you save all your files in your My Documents then it makes it easy to find all the files you need to back up. In fact you can simply backup that one folder, along with its contents, and you’re done. On the other hand if you commonly save files on your desktop or other places on your computer you have to remember where they are so you can back them up as well. Personally, I’d move everything into the My Documents folder.

If you don’t have a lot of media like music and pictures to backup the easiest thing to do is buy an inexpensive USB flash drive (click HERE for a 4GB Kingston flash drive  with great reviews and for only $22 at Amazon.com). If you do have a lot of media I’d suggest buying an external hard drive. You can find a great hard drive for around $100 at Amazon as well.

Once you have an external device to back up your files you could simply copy your important files by dragging your files from your My Documents to the external drive. For a one time backup that works great, but if you’re like most people, you’re constantly creating new files that should be backed up as well. If you’d like to easily schedule regular backups I’d suggest using a free program called SyncBack. Click HERE to get it at Download.com. Syncback allows you to choose what you want to back up and schedule it to run automatically. I’d suggest setting up a weekly or monthly backup of your files.

In case of a fire or natural disaster it may be a good idea to keep a copy of important files in another location. If you can’t afford to buy an external drive or would prefer having your files offsite I’d suggest using MediaMax.com. They allow you to store 25GBs of data online for free. They’ve even recently added a free backup & synchronization service. It’s secure and easy to use.

An article about data backups wouldn’t be complete without mentioning Acronis True Image. If your hard drive were to ever crash you’d have buy a new hard drive, then reinstall your Operating System, the drivers, all your programs and finally re-load all the files you backed up. Acronis True Image costs $50 but it allows you to make an exact image of your entire hard drive so, should yours fail, you would install a new hard drive and restore the Acronis image and your computer would be exactly like it was the last time you created the image. An Acronis image would save several hours of work so unless you were intending to just buy a new computer if yours ever crashed you may want to consider this option.

This article has given you several simple options to backup your computer files but the most important thing I can leave you with is to do something now. Knowledge without action is useless and you’ll appreciate the piece of mind you’ll have knowing your most important files are safely backed up.

Regards,

-Bert

About a month ago I got a great deal on a Sony camcorder (this one to be exact). I got it for quite a bit less than the price at Amazon because it was a closeout display at Target.

I went with Mini DV because the camcorders with hard drives are still out of my price range and I’ve read that the video quality of the Mini DVD’s isn’t as good as the Mini DV.

This is our first camcorder so I can’t compare it to any others but this one is simple to use, it takes great video and the battery lasts a long time. It also has a 20x optical zoom, which I’ve found to be quite sufficient.

After taking some family videos I wanted a simple way to share it with family and friends on the web. Here were my requirements:

•  I wanted one place that I could share both pictures and videos
•  It had to be easy to use
•  It had to be free or at least inexpensive
•  It had to have some security so the whole world couldn’t access our family media
•  It had to have very little, if any, advertising
•  And my friends and family wouldn’t have to sign up for an account

OK, I can hear you saying, “dream on buddy, a place like that doesn’t exist”. For a while I almost believed that too. I signed up for more free sites than I’d like to remember.. I’m not going to go through the pros and cons of every site I checked out. There are other articles on the web that review multiple sites. I would like to tell you about the gem I did find though.

I’ve been signed up and using a free account at www.DropShots.com for a week now and really like it. With a free account I can upload up to 20 videos. They have to be a maximum of 2 minutes in length but I’ve found that to be a good thing. I just upload the highlights and don’t bore people with more. I can also upload up to 500 photos.

DropShots.com is very easy to use, in fact, I’d recommend installing the DropBox on your computer because you can just drag and drop pictures and videos on it and it converts them and uploads them to your site. I’m not sure it can get any easier than that.
 
DropShots.com also has a simple password protection system. You assign a password and anyone who tries to view your media has to enter the password first. I kind of wish you could assign different passwords or no passwords to different media but that would probably just complicate it and I love the simplicity of the site.

The hardest part to my search was finding a site that didn’t bug people to sign up or show a bunch of annoying advertisements all over the place. This is my favorite part of DropShots.com. They don’t do either!

Although the free DropShots.com account is excellent they do have a Premium membership that costs a whopping $4.95 per month that you can cancel anytime. It gives you unlimited photos and videos (10 minute max length). For $99 you can even get a lifetime membership rather than pay $4.95 every month.

I believe in supporting great websites (that don’t drown you in advertisements!) so I’ll eventually sign up for DropShots.com . For now, I’ll just tell everyone I know what a great service they offer!

Regards,

 -Bert

Have you ever thought to yourself, “wow, my internet connection seems slow..” or “I wonder if my internet connection is as fast as what I signed up for..”. There’s no need to ponder these questions anymore. There’s a great site called speedtest.net that will show you exactly what your upload & download speeds are.

You can even compare your internet speed with others so you’ll know how your service stacks up.

Here’s what to do:

1. Click on this speedtest.net link.

2. Click on the recommended yellow pyramid.

3. Watch the cool graphics as it tests your internet connection speed.

4. After the test is done it will take you to a result page, which may not mean a whole lot at the moment but make note of these numbers.

5. Click on the My Summary tab at the top of the page.

6. On the Summary page you can easily see how your download and upload speeds compare with others using the same ISP, everyone in the US, North America and globally.

OK, so now you’re probably wondering, “what the heck is a Kb/s anyway?”. Kb/s stands for kilobits per second. Kilo is 1,000 so Kb/s is how many thousand bits per second are being transferred. If you divide your Kb/s by 8 you get your KB/s transfer rate. In North America the average download speed is 4,726 Kb/s or 590 KB/s or 5.9 Mbps (from speedtest.net’s stats).

Upload speeds are usually slower because with DSL broadband it’s normal to have faster download speeds than upload speeds. With Cable broadband they’re more likely to be the same. In North America the average upload speed is 892 Kb/s or 112 KB/s or 1.1 Mbps (from speedtest.net’s stats).

Understanding Internet speed lingo can be confusing, this site does a great job of explaining it:
http://www.broadbandbuddy.com.au/broadband-learning-centre/internet-speeds-explained

Now you don’t have to wonder anymore about how fast your internet connection speed is :)

Regards,

-Bert

This is the 3rd and final part to my series on speeding up a slow computer. In Part 1 we checked to insure you have enough memory (RAM). In Part 2 we made better use of the RAM you have by turning off unnecessary programs.

By this point you should already see a big increase in the speed of your computer. In our final part we’re going to use a free program to clean up all the junk files that Windows likes to collect and check a couple of other things.

Remember back when your computer was new and it seemed so fast, but over time it just kept getting slower and slower? The main reason for that is because Windows likes to save a lot of files that are not only unnecessary but they slow down your computer.

The program I’ve been using and recommending for a few years is CCleaner. It’s a small program that doesn’t take long to download and install. You can download it at Download.com. I highly recommend Download.com whenever you’re looking for a free program to do some task on your computer. See my article, “Free Software, is it worth it?”. Click HERE to go to Download.com and download CCleaner.

CCleaner will clean up several areas, including the Temp files and Cookies from Internet Explorer or just about any other Internet Browser. If you have Cookies that store web-page settings and stored passwords you may want to go into Options in CCleaner, click on Cookies and select any Cookies from websites you want to save by moving them to the “Cookies to Keep” area.

CCleaner also cleans up Windows Explorer, the System, and any applications you have that like to store files. CCleaner also includes a Registry Cleaner that you can run seperately if you wish. You should never run any registry cleaner unless you first set a System Restore Point first in case you need to go back.

The first time you run CCleaner you’ll get a message stating CCleaner will delete files. Uncheck that box so you don’t get this message every time you run CCleaner. CCleaner only deletes unnecessary files that slow down your computer.

I’d recommend running CCleaner every couple weeks. You’ll be amazed at how much junk Windows collects and how much getting rid of it can speed up your computer!

There are a couple more simple things you can do that can add a little more kick to your computer.

The first thing is to turn off hard drive Indexing. Click Start and open “My Computer” right-click on your C: drive and go into Properties. Uncheck the box that says “Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching”. Apply this change to C:\subfolders and files when you get the confirmation window. This may take several minutes to run. You’ll only have to do this once though.

The second thing you can do is Defragment your hard drive. Click Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter. Click the Analyze button and you’ll get a message letting you know if your hard drive needs to be defragmented. If you decide to Defragment your hard drive, this is another function that can take several minutes to run. I usually Defragment my hard drive about once per year.

If you’d like to see a 25 minute video where you can look over my shoulder as I walk you step-by-step through what I do to speed up and optimize a computer click HERE.

One final bit of advice… If your computer is infected by a virus or adware your computer is going to be slow and do things like: change your Internet Homepage, give you endless pop-ups telling you need to buy some software (don’t do it!), produce system errors and a host of other annoying things. The things I’ve covered in this series of posts may help but your computer will never run right until you get rid of the malware (malicious software). If this sounds like your problem you can start by going to http://www.eset.com/onlinescan and running a free virus scan.

Regards,

-Bert

In Part 1 I discussed checking to see if your computer has enough physical memory (RAM) and looked at how much is being used. If you’re using 100% of the RAM in your computer then your computer is going to run very slow. So, today lets talk about how to free up some RAM and speed up your computer.

Every program that’s running on your computer uses RAM. Unfortunately some of the new computers come loaded with unnecessary programs that run every time you boot your computer. This past weekend I worked on a new laptop with 1GB of RAM and Windows Vista. As I often hear, the computer starts up slow and runs slow. First of all, 1GB is the minimum running Vista, I highly recommend 2GB of RAM with that memory hungry Operating System. What threw this computer over the edge though was a ton of programs that were unnecessarily running in memory.

Your first clue that you have unnecessary programs running is if you have a bunch of icons next to the time display on your taskbar like in the picture below.

If you see a small arrow, click it to expand this area so you can see them all. If you have more than 4 or 5 icons before you’ve started any programs then some of them are, most likely, just slowing you down.

There are several ways to shut off unnecessary programs. Someone who’s worked with computers for a while might use MSCONFIG to turn them off. I’m not going to go into any details about MSCONFIG though, because there are easier ways for the average computer user to do it.

A person could also hover over those icons to see what they are and just go into each program, find the options, and stop them from starting up when the computer starts. Keep in mind though that there are some programs that run at startup that don’t display an icon so this option may be helpful just not as effective as the next one.

There are also applications, like Windows Defender (which is on Vista computers by default), that make it pretty easy to turn off applications that start when you turn on your computer. I like to go this route because you see all the programs and you can easily turn them off and on in one place.

Here are the rules for turning off programs. If you don’t know what it is, you should probably leave it alone. Some of these programs are necessary and make your PC run better. If you know what the program is though and know that you don’t use that program every time you start your computer, it’s fair game to turn off.

That new laptop I mentioned at the beginning of this article was using nearly all of its 1 GB of RAM before I did this. When I got done, it was using just a little over half of that and was much faster! Hopefully you’ll see some amazing results as well.

If you’d like to see a 25 minute video where I walk you step-by-step through what I do to speed up and optimize a computer click here .

Regards,

-Bert

Having worked with computers for several years there’s one complaint I hear more than any other. The complaint is normally given to me as a question basically asking how someone can speed up their slow computer. Fortunately there are some things that anyone can easily do to speed up their computer.

For the next few articles I’m going to discuss why computers run slow and how you can speed them up.

One of the main reasons computers run slow is they don’t have enough memory (RAM). RAM is the memory that’s used every time you run a program on your computer. Some programs use very little RAM while others can use a lot of RAM. If your computer is short on RAM your computer will use virtual memory, which is very slow.

If your computer is more than 4 years old you may need more RAM unless you’ve already upgraded it. Also, companies often sell new computers with too little RAM so they can charge you to buy more later. I know, that’s not very nice of them!

If you’re running an Operating System prior to Windows 2000, seriously consider buying a new computer since Microsoft is no longer supporting it with essential security patches. This includes Windows 95, 98 and ME (Millenium).

If you’re running Windows 2000 or Windows XP you should have, at a minimum, 512MB of RAM. I recommend 1GB.

If you’re running Windows Vista you need at least 1GB and I recommend 2GB. Vista is a very memory hungry Operating System that still has a lot of bugs. As of this writing I’m still not recommending it to people buying new computers (but it’s getting harder to find new computers that come with Windows XP).

How can you tell how much RAM you have in your PC? Right click on your Task Bar and left click Task Manager. Next click on the Performance tab.

In this picture of my Task Manger’s Performance tab you can see the red arrow is pointing towards the Physical Memory of this computer. Total is the amount of RAM in this computer. 523,632 is basically 512MB of RAM. You also want to look at Available. This computer has 105,552 or 100MB of avaliable RAM.

Do you need more RAM? You can buy some at newegg.com. Not sure what type you need? Find out at kingston.com. There are many types of RAM and they’re not interchangeable. Don’t go out and buy the first RAM you find on sale and expect it to work in your computer. Chances are it won’t.

If you don’t want to take the time to find out what type of RAM you need and how to install it you can take your computer to a computer repair shop or find a friend or relative who’s done it before. A RAM upgrade should be around $100 installed and is well worth it if your computer is slow.

If you’d like to see a 25 minute video where I walk you step-by-step through what I do to speed up and optimize a computer click here .

Regards,

-Bert

In my last article I gave you some great places to purchase a new computer. In this article I’d like to give you some ideas about what you should purchase.

For a desktop computer you primarily intend to use for things like email, internet, and working with pictures from a digital camera you shouldn’t pay more than $600. I’d recommend staying in the $400-$500 dollar range since you’ll need to add another $100-$200 for a decent flat screen monitor. If you can wait for a deal you can get everything for under $500.

For a laptop computer used for the same purpose you shouldn’t pay more than $700. If you can wait for a deal you can find one for $400-$500.

The brands I like to stick with are Dell, HP/Compaq, and Acer for both desktop computers and laptops. They all rate well for reliability and service.

When you’re looking for a new computer the most important specifications to look at are the OS (Operating System), processor speed, the amount of memory (RAM), and the size of the hard drive.

Let’s start with the OS. At the time of this article Microsoft is getting ready to release SP1 for Vista. I’ve heard more bad than good reviews of Vista. I think it has some good points and may be ready for purchase in 6 months to a year. In the meantime I’d recommend sticking with Windows XP Home or Professional version with SP2. It’s faster and more reliable than Vista.

For your processor you have a lot of choices. Either an Intel or AMD processor is fine. For a laptop I’d look for at least 1.8GHZ and for a desktop look for at least 3GHZ. If you can get a dual processor that’s all the better.

The amount of memory or RAM you buy is an important consideration since, the more you have, the faster your computer will be. If you’re buying an XP computer system I’d recommend at least 1GB and for Vista 2GB. RAM is pretty easy to upgrade but don’t skimp on RAM when you buy a new computer.

The size of your hard drive isn’t much of a factor unless you plan to download a lot of songs or movies which take up more space. 80GB is fine for the majority of users. 160-250GB should be sufficient for those who will be downloading or storing a lot of media. Another reason that the hard drive size isn’t of huge importance is because you can buy and external hard drive for under $100 that you can use for backing up your files and for extra space.

If you’re looking for a computer to do serious gaming, plan on spending $1,000 or more. If you want to play games you might be better off with a PlayStation, Nintendo or Xbox.

Regards and happy shopping,

-Bert