Surf Wonders

What Will You Learn Within This Series?

Part 1 – Cleaning your computer of viruses

Part 2 – Cleaning your computer of spyware

Part 3 – Cleaning your computer registry

Part 4 – Defragmenting your computer, and disk cleanup

Part 5 – Useful keyboard shortcuts

All of these tips should be used on a regular basis. Your computer is like a car, you need to change the oil, replace the tires, clean the interior frequently to ensure that your car is runs smoothly, that it keeps you safe, and remains clean.

Cleaning Your Computer of Viruses:

I think I can make the assumption that most of you have heard of computer viruses before? For those who haven’t, a computer virus is a program created by highly advanced programmers world wide with the intent on harming your computer in so many ways. Viruses can infect your computer, delete important files, corrupt your hard drive, or even make your computer unusable. Viruses can mean death to your computer. We are all subjectable to a virus attack, in fact millions of computers are infected with some form of virus right now as you read this, and your computer may be one of those infected.

Ways To Get Infected With A Virus:

• 1) – Firewall is not activated
• 2) – No anti-virus software
• 3) – Spam Email attachment
• 4) – File transfer via a messenger service
• 5) – Copying files from an infected CD, or floppy Disk
• 6) – Network of computers sharing files

A virus can infect your computer through any of the methods from above. Prevention is the key to making sure you don’t keep your computer to such attacks.

How To Prevent Viruses From Coming In:

1) Activate Your System Firewall:

You want to make sure that your firewall is active. A firewall blocks hackers from finding loop-holes within your computer that gives them a gateway (doorway) in. A firewall can help to stop most hackers, but not all of them.

Activating your firewall:

Windows systems: START > CONTROL PANNEL > INTERNET CONNECTIONS > WINDOWS FIREWALL > “On (Recommended)”.

Mac Users: APPLE MENU > SYSTEM PREFERENCES > SHARING PANE > FIREWALL > START

There you go; your firewall is now active!

2) Scan Your Computer With An Anti-Virus Software:

Installing an anti-virus software is key! An anti-virus software will help to monetize your computer for viruses. An anti-virus software will also help to perform a system wide scan of your computer for already infected areas.

Most newer computers come with an anti-virus software already installed; all you need to do is run the program.

Here are some of the top PAID anti-virus software’s:

(No particular order)

• Norton Ani-Virus By Symantec
• McAfee Ani-Virus
• BitDefender
• Kaspersky

Here are some of the top FREE anti-virus software’s:

(No particular order)

• AntiVir Personal Edition Classic 6.32
• Active Virus Shield (AOL)
• Alwil Software Avast Home Edition 4.6
• Grisoft AVG Free Edition 7.1

For more anti-virus software’s, with good editorial reviews go to: Download.com

Once installed, launch the program, and find a button that says “update virus definitions”. This will help to make sure your virus definitions are up-to-date. Virus definitions have the most recently found viruses that just came on the market. Up-to-date definitions are key to finding newer, more powerful viruses.

Once you’ve updated your definitions, close all running programs and perform a “full system scan”. Depending on your computers size, and speed, the scan can take up to a couple of hours to complete.

Once complete, hit a button that will say something like; “Quarantine Files”, “Delete Infected Files”, “Clean Up Files”, “Remove Infected Files”. This process will remove all files that have been flagged as a virus, and it will do this safely without harming your computer.

Things to know:

• Once a virus scan is complete, reboot your computer.
• Some viruses cannot be caught while your computer is running; they may have to be removed after a reboot (which should be automatic).
• You can setup a full system scan to start at 12 midnight every night.
• Scan your computer ATLEAST once a week if connected to the internet.

You’ll probably start to notice that your computer is running faster, this is because the viruses which were there before, are no longer using your computers memory to run consistently.

Some viruses are extremely resilient and cannot be removed from a simple virus scan. Going through (Part 2 & Part 3) will help to attack these harder-to-find viruses.

3) Don’t Open Suspicious Email attachments:

So many viruses are activated by people like yourself who open email attachments that they don’t recognize. Most viruses are distributed this way. Part 6 – “Useful Email tips & fighting spam” from this mini-series will go into greater detail on fighting spam, but for those of you who won’t get to read that article, I must mention a couple of things here:

• Do NOT open an email that you don’t recognize, or didn’t ask for!
• Do NOT open an attachment with the extension “.exe”.
• Immediately delete emails from people you don’t recognize
• Do NOT save emails onto your computer that you don’t recognize
• Spammers will try to trick you into thinking they are your friend
• Pay close attention at the person, email, and content from each email
• Do NOT click “Unsubscribe” from a spam email, this will do the opposite
• Do NOT reply back to an email you don’t recognize
• Do NOT forward an email that you don’t recognize
• Report ALL spam to your internet service provider

These email tips I just mentioned are part of the basic foundations to helping you fight spam, and to ensure that you don’t inadvertently activate a malicious virus onto your computer.

4) Avoid Using Messenger Services:

Messenger services, or “chat programs” on your computer are like leaving an open gateway pointing directly to your computer. Messenger services like “MSN Chat”, or “Yahoo Chat” connect two computers together in order to talk to each other over and over again. This allows the two computers to give, and receive information through the software.

An Example of What Can Happen:

Many viruses have infiltrated millions of computers through this easy to hack service by disguising itself as “your chat friends” and by sending you a link to a virus file to open up onto your computer. The problem is, you have no idea what kind of file you’re opening, because it seems as though the file came directly from your friend (who is infected by this virus), and it looks as though they are simply trying to send you a photo of themselves.

Personally, no one is allowed to have a messenger chat software installed on any of our computers. They are too easily misused, and can give a hacker a passport to your computer.

If your children use such a service, make sure to let them know of what can happen if they accept files from others. Tell them that it’s better to send files via an email attachment, rather than through a messenger chat script. At least this way, an email can pass through various firewalls, and anti-virus software’s before getting to your computer. This also ensures that you know exactly who is sending you the file.

5) Copying Files From An Infected CD, or Floppy Disk:

We’ve all done it, taken a disk from a friend, or co-worker, and inserted a disk into our computer in order to copy all the files from the disk. Did you ever think to scan the disk for viruses before copying any of the files?

Viruses come in all shapes & sizes, they are passed along from one computer to another. The person who gave you the disk could have had a virus lurking within their files, and they may have copied it onto the disk they just gave you. It happens all the time.

An easy way to protect yourself from getting viruses this way is to launch your anti-virus software, and scan your disk drive with the cd, or floppy disk in it. It takes only a couple of seconds to prevent a disaster.

6) Sharing Files From A Network of Computers:

Many companies network their computers together so that they can share files easily between the two, instead of always copying files onto a disk. The same thing happens at home as well when two computers are networked together. Make sure you have your firewall in place (step 1 above), and make sure your anti-virus software (step 2 above) is keeping an eye on your “shared folders” section. This just helps to prevent viruses from jumping one computer to another. Again, always perform a virus check within your “shared folder” when you receive files from others.

In Conclusion:

There you have it. You now have a good base of knowledge to help prevent viruses from getting into your computer. Make sure to make it a habit to double-check everything to ensure that you don’t unwillingly leave an open doorway directly to your computer. When using software’s like chat scripts, make sure not to accept files via your chat script. Never read, or open emails that you don’t recognize, and always make it a habit to scan your disks, hard drive, and email attachments before something terrible happens.

Now that you have some knowledge against fighting viruses, let’s move onto part 2 of this series which talks about fighting another form of attack against your computer, the deadly spyware!

Next: Part 2 – Cleaning your computer of spyware & ad-aware

About The Author:

Martin Lemieux is the owner of a successful article directory network with over 80,000 author submitted articles, with over 30,000 active authors world wide.

http://www.Article99.com – Authors Club
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Copyright, All Rights Reserved. Reprints accepted as long as the entire article remains the same including this author resource box.

Author: Martin Lemieux
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Canada duty

After finding the perfect software solution for your mobile home business, you may unfortunately discover that there are extra modules and services needed to run the software. For example:

Updates: Many software vendors charge additional for updates to the mobile home park software that are released in the future. These updates can include new features as well as “bug fixes.” Charging for these updates is standard practice, but you can find companies that provide these updates for free. Some companies force the user to purchase updates even if their software is running fine. They force the issue by refusing to do technical support for the user unless they have purchased the latest version. A more reasonable approach is to provide the technical support and, if it is discovered that a problem the user is experiencing has been fixed in a later version, to notify the user. The user can make their own decision whether they want to find a work-around for the problem or to go ahead with the purchase of the corrected and newest version of the mobile home park software.

Additional Feature Modules: Many software companies have a standard price, but additional and often necessary features cost extra and can really increase the price. Look for software which includes all of the features you need, or make sure to add up the additional costs when you are making price comparisons.

Technical Support: Technical support represents a very important ongoing relationship with the software vendor. Most companies offer a user manual included with the software but this is often not enough when you are confused about how to use the software or are experiencing an error in the software. It is important that the vendor has free or low cost options for technical support for those with a quick question or error to report. For example, there may be a free user forum or free email technical support. All software has occasional errors. A vendor that allows you to report errors without penalizing you by charging for reporting the error is a must.

It is important that the software vendor offer some type of telephone support for those who don’t want to search the manual. For those who need to get back to business quickly and want to be able to pick up the phone for quick answers, a telephone support plan is useful. Telephone support is almost always a paid option. However, the cost of this telephone support can reflect on the software program. Software vendors must maintain some sort of recurring revenue from their customers in order to stay in business, and to pay their trained technical support representatives. However, if the telephone support is overly expensive, it may suggest that the software is full of errors and requires a lot of hours spent working with technical support.

Software Supplies: Often a software vendor will add features into the software which require you to purchase more products from them. For example, a software program that offers a check printing feature may require that you use their printing company to purchase check forms that are compatible with the software’s banking feature. Other companies will also offer an alternative and less expensive option, such as the option to use checks compatible with QuickBooks or other software for which it is easy and inexpensive to purchase check stock.

Value Added Services: Many software programs offer value added services embedded in their mobile home park software. For example, there may be a credit card processing service that will process payments for you. Often the software company itself receives a portion of the user’s cost for each use of the feature. You need to decide if you can get the feature less expensively elsewhere or if the added cost is worth the convenience of the feature interacting seamlessly with your software.

Watch for hidden costs when you are considering a purchase of new Mobile Home Park Software. Find Park Sidekick software with no hidden costs, specifically designed for management of mobile home parks at Mobile Home Park Community Software.

Jill Shaffer, Psy.D. is the president of Property Sidekick, Inc., and the creator of Park Sidekick Mobile Home Management Software. http://www.ParkSidekick.com Park Sidekick is specifically designed to help mobile home park owners and managers get organized quickly using a complete software solution. Dr. Shaffer has been instrumental in software innovation for the property management industry since 1994.

Author: Jill Shaffer
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Excise Tax

Nowadays on the internet you could practically search and locate any kind of software just by typing the keywords or related phrases into any of the major search engines such as Google or Yahoo. And it’s not just software I am referring to, but “fr.e.e” software – software that you could download, install and use without having to fork out a single dime! It is possible to believe that if anyone could envision a task, activity, function or use that could be made easier or even be automated, there is a software out there that has been developed for that purpose! And chances are that you could also find one that is free to download, install and use!

However, one may have several doubts and questions about the whole realm of “fr.e.e” software.

Questions like:-

(1)What actually is termed as “fr.e.e” software?

(2)Are there any limitations to it’s usage in the context of business?

(3)Why does programmers and developers develop fr.e.e software?

Firstly, let’s define what is “fr.e.e” software. There are essentially 2 type of “fr.e.e” software:

(1)Freeware

(2)Free Software

Freeware

Freeware is software that is zero-cost or free in price terms and is usually referring to a common group of software programs that can be downloaded, installed and used in most operating systems. However, they are usually copyrighted and as such they may not be free to modify, share or to be reused in your new software developments, unless they are listed under “public domain software”.

Free Software

Free software is software that anyone may freely use, run, share and modify, at any time, for any reason. However, to re-distribute it, the only condition is that the distributed version of the free software must be done without altering the original terms of fr.e.e use, modification and distribution under the GNU General Public License(http://www.gnu.org), as stipulated by the Free Software Foundation (http://www.fsf.org/). The word “free” in the term “free software” is about freedom, not price. People are allowed to sell free software or distribute it for a fee and the person who buys the software may change it or give it away.

In terms of limitations, fr.e.e software tends to have less limitations in it’s scope and flexibility in it’s usage than freeware, as far as the community of users, programmers and developers are concerned.

But why are programmers and developers so willing to develop fr.e.e software? One of the answers, surprisingly, is that it is actually cheaper to develop free software! Any such software is usually put together using a number of smaller software program packages which are also developed and distributed under the GPL (General Public License). The completed software is then distributed to a community of beta testers which includes programmers to try out and give their feedback on existing bugs and often accompanied by patches which are corrected parts of the software program to fix these bugs.

In some cases, the programmers develop these software simply because they want to include some features that does not currently exist in paid software. They may also want to develop it in a different manner such as to make it more simplified or user-friendly. Most programmers also do it for the passion or challenge of solving some existing need or problem with their skills and deriving the personal satisfaction from the free software’s widespread usage and popularity.

In conclusion, most if not all users will always welcome more such fr.e.e and useful software, as a result of whichever objective they may be developed for. However, there’s only one thing all users need to bear in mind – the safest approach to it’s legal usage would be to install it only for your own use and NOT attempt to sell it or distribute it for profit, unless you are completely certain of it’s origin and classification.

Bert Teo is an IT professional, a freelance writer and an affiliate marketer of popular niche markets products. Kindly visit his technology website at http://www.FreeSimpleSoftware.com to obtain a copy of his free e-Resource on the 7 FREE and SIMPLE Software that you could download, install and use for your personal or business purposes.

Author: Bernard Teo
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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A generation of young people just leaving college and going out to seek their fortune have grown up with computers, and their computers have always been personal. They’ve always used a keyboard to enter data and have always viewed their work on a screen that reacted pretty much instantly to their input. Increasingly, they use a small portable computer with a flat high resolution screen, or maybe even a hand-held device, with a user interface they’ve customized to their own liking. Personal computing. Where did it come from?

I’ve had reason to think about this, having been involved in the early software business and having recently published a book about my experiences selling software in the late 1970s. The book is called Priming the Pump: How TRS-80 Enthusiasts Helped Spark the PC Revolution. In the book, co-authored with my husband David, we talk about how Steve Leininger, a newly-hired engineer and computer hobbyist, and Don French, a company insider, created this ground-breaking product for Tandy Corporation for under $150,000 in development costs. Tandy, parent of the nationwide chain of Radio Shack stores (3500 at the time) sold the TRS-80 for $599.95. It was the most expensive product Radio Shack had ever sold, and it was a phenomenal success, so successful that Radio Shack was overwhelmed with orders it couldn’t fill. People had to go on waiting lists to get one.

So was the TRS-80 the first truly personal computer? We do make the claim that it was the first mass produced (all made in factories in the US) off-the-shelf microcomputer. But in 1977, exactly thirty years ago, the TRS-80 was only one of three microcomputers introduced. There was also the PET from Commodore and the Apple I and II, designed by the guru of geekdom, Steve Wozniak. These three microcomputers hit the market that year, and for the TRS-80, it was the beginning of a series of upgrades and add-ons that eager users snapped up over the next seven or eight years. For Apple, their Apple II computer, which had color from the beginning and was a superb game machine, had an even longer run and sold in huge numbers. In fact, Steve Wozniak, in her new book, iWoz, claims that he “invented the personal computer” (iWoz: How I invented the personal computer, co-founded Apple, and had fun doing it, by Steve Wozniak and Gina Smith, Norton & Company, 2006). But did anyone really “invent” the personal computer?

Before there were personal computers, there were big corporate computers. In the 1960s, computers were large and expensive and did not have a screen. The input/output device was likely to be a teletype machine, itself a large, clunky and expensive machine. Or it may have been connected to a “terminal,” another expensive machine that did have a TV-like screen and a keyboard. You might think that this type of computer somehow evolved into the smaller ones we use today, but that is not so.

Small computers, known initially as microcomputers, arose in the 1970s as a result of developments in electronics, specifically the microprocessor, which let many components that used to be individually mounted on a board be part of one integrated device. This was a technology that moved fast once the principles were in place. Intel founder Gordon Moore observed the fast pace and declared a proposition: Moore’s Law stated that processing power would double every 18 months, and he’s proved right in this observation. But it was more than technical advances that brought about personal computing. It was also a pent-up desire on the part of many people to own their own computer. This is what drove Ted Nelson to write his self-published book, Computer Lib, in 1974 and later write that he sought “the freedom of people to do their own thing with computers.” It is what drove Ed Roberts to build the Altair, the first microcomputer, which appeared on the cover of Popular Electronics in January 1975. Roberts was once quoted as saying that he “lusted” after a computer of his own and that “to have a computer was better than sex.”

When the Intel 4004 chip came out, it was a beginning, but only a concept, as this first microprocessor did not do enough to power a computer. Then came the 8008 and finally the 8080, the one that became the brains of the Altair and the IMSAI, kit computers that found an eager following. These chips were expensive but soon there were other microprocessors, like the 6502 from MOS Technologies and the Z80 from Zilog. Among the fruit trees of northern California soon to be known as Silicon Valley, a young Steve Wozniak had obtained two 6502 microprocessors at a computer show for the incredibly cheap price of $20 each. The man selling them was Chuck Peddle, who had designed them. I recently heard Chuck give a talk (via internet) to the Vintage Computer Festival in New Jersey in which he stated that his company, MOS Technologies, had experienced many quality control problems and a lot of the chips did not work. He wanted to conceal the problems and make it look like he had produced the chips in abundance, so he filled a barrel with them, but only the ones on top actually worked! Good thing Woz got two that worked, because with those he built the first Apple.

Chuck Peddle sold out to Commodore, which began work on a microcomputer project. Wozniak says in his book that Peddle came to see the prototype Apple II in Steve Jobs’ garage and was considering buying the rights to it, but Commodore decided to do their own design. The Commodore PET, released in 1977, had a keyboard for input and a tape cassette for storage; it was a complete system.

In 1976, another Steve – Steve Leininger – was working at National Semiconductor and moonlighting at Paul Terrell’s Byte Shop, where Wozniak’s Apple I models were for sale. Terrell launched Jobs and Wozniak into a real business with a $50,000 order for the hand-built computer, which had no keyboard or monitor; it was really just a board that hobbyists could make into a real computer with add-ons. Leininger found himself talking one day to some buyers from Tandy Corporation, parent of Radio Shack. He later received an offer of employment and was flown to Fort Worth Texas to meet with John Roach, company CEO, and the man who would be his partner in designing the TRS-80, Don French.

The TRS-80 Model I, introduced in August 1977, had some features that the others lacked. Unlike the annoying “chiclet” keyboard of the PET, the TRS-80 had a full size keyboard. The PET came with a monitor, but the TRS-80 had a larger one. Most importantly, the PET was an all-in-one case model, with no expandability, but the TRS-80 was designed for expansion; the tape cassette recorder (the storage device) and the monitor were separate and could be replaced with something else. Eventually, Radio Shack released an “expansion interface” that let users connect a disk drive and add more memory. The TRS-80, with the BASIC language built-in, could accomplish many useful tasks, and its popularity went well beyond the enthusiastic hobbyist market. Small business owners were among the most eager buyers.

The initial events that made the personal computer possible were about technical advances – better, faster microprocessors – and hardware innovations, such as the five-inch disk drive. But the next wave of innovation that made computers essential to modern life was software, all kinds of software that helped people do common tasks more efficiently. Word Processing. Accounting. Mail lists. Database. And the first “killer app” – spreadsheets, beginning with VisiCalc. At the same time, microcomputers were a new form of entertainment. Games were tremendously popular; some mimicked the arcade games of the day and others were analogies to board games like chess. Some broke new ground for gaming, like Scott Adams’ Adventure games, and the popular Oregon Trail. Without all the programmers out there creating useful applications, the computer would never be personal. In our case, David created a word processor called Lazy Writer. It received rave reviews in the many computer magazines that reviewed popular software. We sold copies all over the US and the world, with many buyers in Australia (who used a TRS-80 clone machine called the Dick Smith System 80). We never got rich selling software, but we felt the excitement of being part of something that really was a revolution.

So who invented personal computing? Was it Steve Wozniak, with his amazing designs, or was it Ed Roberts, who believed people lusted after a kit that let them build a computer called Altair, was it Chuck Peddle who gave the world a cheap microprocessor, or was it Leininger and French who built the TRS-80, a machine that had so many fans? Notice that I have not even mentioned Bill Gates or the IBM PC. Gates was there from the beginning, and he too has a claim on inventing personal computing. It was Gates who created the version of the BASIC language that was in the Altair and who later supplied the operating system for the IBM PC, the machine that first gave us the term, “Personal Computer.” But it seems clear to me that the vision of a personal computer was out there long before IBM got into the act. In fact, it seems unlikely that we can ever name one person who deserves the credit for “inventing” personal computing. A computer as a personal tool – an idea that was in the ether, as they say, and that had many inventors, both through breakthroughs in hardware and creativity in software.

The tremendous strides we’ve made in how we use our computers is exemplified for me in two remarks from family members. The first was something my daughter, born in 1985, said to me some years back. She said that when she first heard that computers were once huge machines that filled a room, she pictured in her mind a giant modern computer, with a gigantic screen filling a whole wall and a huge keyboard, with a person jumping from one enormous key to another. She couldn’t see how else a computer could fill a room. The other remark was just recently made by my sister, who is relatively new to computer ownership. She had finished reading my book, which she said she enjoyed despite her lack of computer savvy, and I was pleased because we did not intend our book just for geeks. Then she said, “I always thought early computers would be kind of like modern ones only maybe slower, but now I see that they were completely different.” My first reaction to this was wanting to say “No they weren’t,” but I didn’t say that because I wanted to think about why she would make this remark. I realized that the way a user interacts with a PC today really is completely different from looking at a screen displaying a blinking cursor and the word “Ready.” That’s what we used to see on our TRS-80 when we turned it on. It was ready for us to give it a command and until we did, it would do nothing. And it could only do one thing at a time. Just look at the graphics, sound and interactivity of modern personal computers and, even though they are the descendants of the blank screen with a blinking cursor, the way we use computers and take their amazing abilities for granted is completely different from the era of microcomputers that dazzled us thirty years ago.

You can buy Priming the Pump from the book website at http://www.microcomputerpioneers.com or from amazon.com.

Theresa Welsh is co-author of Priming the Pump: How TRS-80 Enthusiasts Helped Spark the PC Revolution (www.microcomputerpioneers.com) and two other books. She and her husband David started a software business selling TRS-80 software in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and she continued working in IT, first at EDS and later as a contract worker at Ford Motor Company. She currently is a free-lance writer and editor and operates a book review website at http://www.theseekerbooks.com

Author: Theresa Welsh
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Creditcard Currency Conversion Fee