Home & Small Office Computer Guide

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.

by Stuart Livesey

In the last 10 days there seems to have been a mini surge in the number of computers coming into the shop with failed Western Digital 80 gig hard drives. Ironically the first one Rick, at the best computer shop in Hervey Bay, saw was his own office desk top and five or six others soon followed.

Each one of the hard drives that failed was built by Western Digital in 2003 and installed in machines in that year or early 2004.

When a hard drive fails there is very little if anything that anyone can do to repair it. Once it fails it’s gone and, in most cases, so has all the data that might be stored on it. There are some specialists who can recover lost data but their services are very very expensive.

These particular drives all came with a one-year warranty but no matter how long the warranty might be it only ever covers replacement of the failed unit - no hard drive warranty covers recovery of the lost data.

In one of the instances that came into the shop one family lost thousands of family photos and several years of research into their family tree.

You have to remember that hard drive failures are inevitable. Every hard drive will fail and the only way to protect your data is to back it up regularly. Back up at least weekly and don’t back it up to another sector on the same hard drive.
 

… but it’s not connected to anything

by Stuart Livesey 

A strange PC came into the shop last week. It was branded Lenovo-IBM so it was obviously built by IBM after the PC division of the company was sold to the Chinese company Lenovo.

The owner had bought it locally and had specified at the time he bought it that he wanted it so he could play some games on it. The salesman assured him that this computer would do the trick and he could even upgrade the graphics if he wanted to because it had a PCI slot.

After a couple of weeks he decided that he did want to upgrade it and the place where he obtained the computer suggested that he bring it down to Fraser Coast Computers so that a PCI Express graphic card could be fitted.

Rick fitted the card, rebooted the machine and it failed to recognise the card. Rick changed the graphic card thinking that perhaps the first card was faulty and still nothing happened.

Rick tinkered for quite some time before finally admitting defeat and phoning Lenovo-IBM. Imagine his surprise when the techs there told him that the motherboard may well have a PCI slot fitted but they weren’t actually wired into the motherboard because the motherboard fitted to those computers did not support PCI slots.

When Rick asked the obvious question all the tech could do was to give the telephone equivalent of a shrug of his shoulders.

It does make you wonder.

Our favorite antivirus software is now available for mobile phones.

While it’s extremely unlikely that you will ever pick up a virus from a phone call there is nothing to stop viruses being transferred to high-end phones when they’re being sychronized with a PC.

The new Kasperksy Anti-Virus Mobile monitors wireless connections and scans text messages and data transfered during synchronization.

Why am I not surprised

by Stuart Livesey

A team of British security experts have tested 15 different antivirus programmes on Vista and four failed. One of the failures was Microsoft’s very own antivirus software package, Live OneCare.

Another failure was McAfee’s antivirus package but McAfee claims that the security experts failed to use the latest release in their tests.

One that passed the test was the one that I use and recommend -  Kaspersky

You can read the more about the test here

If you like reading ebooks but find the reader a bit hard to see at times then this could be for you. 

by Stuart Livesey

Early last year Sony released the Sony Reader but, unlike other ebook readers the Sony Reader incorporated a new technology developed by the E Ink Corporation. The result is a reader that users often describe as looking like “black ink on white paper”

Follow this link to read about the marvel that is E Ink and follow this link to read a review of the Sony Reader by someone who found that they are much tougher than they look.

There could be some hardware issues because not all devices have drivers suitable for Vista. So before you do try upgrading perhaps you should download, instal and run Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor.

It’s a freebie and the experts say that it really does know what it’s talking about.

You will find some other great tips about Vista at All About Microsoft

If you’re thinking of upgrading to Vista it might be advisable to wait a few weeks. Reports are floating around that Microsoft is getting ready to release the first service pack for their new operating system.

That seems to say a lot when you consider that Vista hasn’t even been released in some markets yet.

How many times have you wanted one quick bit of information that’s only on your laptop? 

NVIDIA Corporation has announced that LG Electronics (LG), a global leader and technology innovator in consumer electronics, introduced a new series of notebook computers that take full advantage of the Windows Vista operating system, which fully utilizes the new NVIDIA Preface(TM) Personal Media Display (PMD) platform.

By using Preface to enable Windows SideShow, consumers will have “always-on” access to multimedia content and software gadgets via a secondary display embedded in the notebook lid.

Windows SideShow is a new technology that allows the Windows Vista operating system to drive auxiliary displays providing consumers with faster and easier to use bite-size bits of information. NVIDIA Preface allows consumers to link to the programs and data stored on the main system, even when the notebook is in hibernation mode or turned off.

Some of the many gadgets that can be used on the go without draining battery life include music playback, photo slideshows, e-mail, calendars, world clocks, stock quotes, RSS feeds, and more.

“In the consumer electronics market, the line between work and entertainment devices has become increasingly blurred,” said John Milner, general manager of personal media processors at NVIDIA Corporation.

“The LG Z1 with NVIDIA Preface technology allows consumers to get more from the notebook experience — they can be more productive throughout their workday and enjoy personal media along the way.”

“NVIDIA Preface technology and Windows SideShow allow us to offer our customers a new way to take advantage of the wealth of personal information in their notebook and on the Web,” said Mr. JJ Lee, general manager for the PC division of LG. “For those looking to enjoy a complete Windows Vista experience, this notebook is a must-have.”