Home & Small Office Computer Guide

I really hope that you’re not one of those people who opens email attachements - no matter how innocent they may appear - without first running them through a virus scanner.

Even if the email is addressed to you personally and comes to you at work you should take precautions because the attachement you open could compromise your computer and every other computer that’s networked to it. This story shows how nasty the situation is becoming.

If you happen to spend a lot of time on eBay - searching for computer bargains of course - then here’s the eBay Toolbar.

Check it out … it looks like it can save you time for other things … like searching for other bargains on eBay.

Hitachi shipped it’s first 1 terabyte hard drive several months ago and now Cnet is reporting that Seagate’s first 1 terabyte capacity hard drive will be available in the next month or so.

Seagate’s hard drive comes with a 5 year warranty and both Seagate and Hitachi have priced their units at $US399.

So scientific tests have shown that there are more germs and bacteria on computer keyboards and mice than there are on toilet seats but is there a solution?

Would you believe that there’s a keyboard and mouse that’s dishwasher safe?

Well there is and you can find them at Seal Shield.

The manufacturers, Via Technologies Inc. claim that this is the world’s smallest full featured x86motherboard. It’s designed for ultra compact embedded PCs, systems and appliances.

The mother board is designed to be used with Via Technologies C7 processor. These processors aren’t as powerful as Intel or AMD products but then the C& processors don’t use as much power.

A pocket sized PC running XP is said to last for around 5 hours on just one battery charge.

You can read more about the motherboard and the computer that it’s fitted to here

Are you thinking of increasing the amount of memory in your computer?

Well now might be the time to stop thinking about it and actually do it because experts suggest that the price for memory is near rock bottom and the only way left is up.

You can read the story here

… Microsoft to small business - too bad … it’s gone from the beginning of the year.

Well it seems that sales of Windows Vista haven’t been quite as stellar as the hype from Microsoft would have us believe. In fact in some markets, such as the small office/home office market, sales of Vista have been rather dismal as small businesses prefer to stick with an operating system that works with all their software.

Microsoft’s solution? Make sure there’s no other operating system the small office/home office people can buy. Windows XP in the OEM version will be withdrawn from sale by the end of the year.

There’s nothing quite like bludgeoning your clients into submission.

You can read the full story here

Here’s an interesting little problem that appears from time to time. You will notice that the screen has a decidely pink tinge to it

Now if you saw that on your monitor you might be excused for thinking that your monitor was about die and that you needed to buy a new monitor asap.

Fortunately this problem is usually not down to your monitor. In this instance it was caused by a fault inside the cable that runs from the monitor to the computer and it’s simple to test to see if it is the cable that’s at fault.

All you have to do is squeeze and roll the cable between your thumb and forefinger somewhere along it’s length. At the same time watch the monitor to see if it returns to it’s normal color display. If it does all you have to replace is the faulty cable.

If it doesn’t return to it’s normal color then make sure that the plugs at either end of the cable are firmly attached to the monitor and the computer. The other major cause of the pink screen monitor is a loose connection.

If neither of those remedies work then perhaps it is time to seek help from your friendly computer shop.

Microsoft expects small businesses to ‘deploy’ Vista more quickly than they did Windows XP.

Here in the town where I live one medium sized retailer advised a small business that needed a new laptop to buy the one the retailer had for sale and take it round to a computer shop to have Vista wiped and XP installed - you see, the small business had a payroll system that wouldn’t run with Vista.

I wonder how many others around the world are being told something similar?

I realise that as I post this it’s getting close to April Fool’s Day but this tip is really quite genuine and it sometimes it does work. It’s not going to work every time but sometimes it does and so it really is worth trying.

All to often a hard drive in a computer fails and you lose the data it contained. Many people either don’t back up their data at all or don’t back up their data often enough and so when a hard drive fails - as it inevitably will - they lose all their data.

Usually the failure of a hard drive is the end - there’s nothing a computer technician can do but replace it with a new unit. However, sometimes it is possible to encourage a hard drive to come back to life just long enough for you to recover the most important data.

So how do you encourage it to come back to life and give up all those important records that it’s holding?

This is where I have to assure you once more that I’m serious, I have seen this four step process work.

1. Seal it inside a plastic bag - a zip-lock bag is the best.

2. Put that bag inside one of those plastic bags that motherboards come in.

3. Place it in the freezer for 40 minutes (yeah I know - it sounds totally crazy but it does work in some instances and if you want the data then this may work for you.)

4. After 40 minutes in the freezer take it out and connect it to a computer as a slave unit and then see if it will appear in Explorer. If it does then don’t waste any time in transferring the data to another hard drive.

If it doesn’t work for you then I’m sorry - as I said earlier, this process does not work for every hard drive that has failed.