Computer 101: How to Create a Back-up of your files. Windows Native Back-Up

On my post we blog about the need for back-up and the needed things for back-up. Now lets blog about how to back-up you files on your own. First for Windows user, windows system has already a native back-up system in place so you don't need to use another software or tool to back-up you files.Yes they are generous enough to place a back-up tools for the individual user like us. Please see picture below for more information.




Windows Back-up Location

 

Please note the red encircle part, it's said "This option will back up files in volume." Okay what was that? Don't be scared by it. It just telling us that this is the back-up tool for you files. Also the volumes means all your files will be back-up at the same time even the ones you are using. Now how do you get to this part. well its basically easy. First step go to the My Computer  and click or double click it, either way you'll arrived at the same spot. Next the picture on the background will appear. That the inside of the My Computer. Now for the third step choose the hard drive you going to back-up and do a mouse right click. Now to make it clear i have inserted another picture to guide you.




Note pull down menu after the Right Click mouse event

 

Now do you see clearly on the image, my apologies for the smaller images previously. See the pull-down menu, on the bottom part click the Properties tab and the first picture above will appear. Now click on the Back-up Now Button to begin the back-up process. You can play with it if you are not yet comfortable in using the this tool. Playing with it also enhances your knowledge on what to select on the different menu and options once you started the back-up process. Try to setup a group of files for test back-up so you will know all the options, before you start on your real file back-up process. Don't be intimidated by it, once you learn how to do it, then you'll begin to use it more and more. Go ahead and try it.

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Computer 101: Self File Back-Up

On my post we blog about how important it is to save your file as often as possible, especially when you are working on it. Now i'll blog about how you can create a back-up for all your files and documents.You may ask, But i do not have the technical knowledge or know-how to do this stuff. Well this is understandable, because using something deeper on your computer is very scary and unsafe for a regular user. Also the first step is the hardest part of it. If you make that first step on this task then the rest of the next journey will become easier for you to do. Now to get you started, first of all having a back-up files is very very important, because if somethings happens to your original files, then you the resources to fall back. Also the back-up files must be regularly updated, so it pays to back-up as often as possible.

First things first we need to to some checklist on what your going to need to do your back-up files. A list of the things that you need to and have is displayed below.

1. Organize you files and documents. Like MS word files located on one folder, spreadsheet files                    on the next folder, Picture or image on the next and other stuff on the same categories should be group together. Then place them under one main folder and put a name on it like MY FILES.
2. After organizing your files you need to check the available medium you going to use to back-up you files like CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R or DVD-RW or even better a large size USB Flash drive which small enough to keep safe on under lock and key on you volt or safety cabinet.
3. The method which you are going to do the back-up task. There are several method to this stuff. The most common way is to copy and paste the folder from your computer to your back-up drive or location. Another is used a third party software to back-up your files or just use the windows tools for backup. Its already there in your computer and its free, very simple to use, you can also practice using on a test files before you do it on your precious files and documents.
4. And the last after creating your back-up make sure to verify that you have indeed created a sets of back-up off all your files.

Wow that a lot of technical stuff to do and to understands,. How on earth em i going to do all this stuff. Wait hold it. I'll try to guide you one-by-one on all this stuff. We will not tackle all of them at the same time. Remember my goal for this blog is to make the technical stuff easier for the ordinary folks out there to help them understand even if they do not have the technical background to start with. We just started on this and i will explain it all step by step and provide pictures to make it really simple and easy to on my next post.

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Computer 101: File Saving and Backup

Back up your file always, how many times have you heard that phrase? This stuff is very important in all your usage of the computer. Every time you use the computer to do your task somethings might go wrong during the activity.Do we really need to back-up our files and data, and if so how often? Well the answer is a big YES and more YES. It is imperative that we back-up our computer files.And how often, as often as you can, especially if you use the computer 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 12 months a year. Yup that how need to backup our stuff in the computer. I can't emphasis enough how important it is to back-up all your files. Remember if you don't back-up. There will be no chance for you to recover you data or files in the event your computer came crashing down. The need for back-up now is more needed than ever before because of the huge volume of data that we put into our computer everyday.A lot people has the mentality not to back-up there files, especially the documents they working until they are finish. This practice is completely wrong. Let me explain further. Lets say you are going to work on a file for several days and this file is very large, 100 pages or more and its growing everyday. Because of the heavy data encoding and lots and lots of information to put in on the documents, the saving and the backup process has been the least concern of the user. This process only happens twice or thrice during the daily activity during the typing period. What happens if and during this long process your computer suddenly hangs and you didn't save or update you files. Another scenario is that your computer is fine and working yesterday, but for some reason when you open it today, it did not start. How would you feel. This things can be very disappointing and dangerous. The scenario i mentioned are real, i have experience them during my learning days. That why when i do some encoding or word processing, i always save them as often as possible and create a back-up files for the days activity.

Saving is the most common method of preserving newly created documents and files, from word processing, spreadsheet calculations, image editing to video editing or just simple playing with your favorite software. Some software has a feature called AUTOMATIC SAVE. It works by setting the needed time interval to save your documents on a regular basis while you work on it. It is measured in minutes, most common intervals is 5, 10, 15 20 or more minutes. This means when when you set your AUTO SAVES to 5 minutes. The document you are currently working is being save every 5 minutes. Some people don't like being disturb during the typing period by several time so they set the auto save function to longer minutes. When the auto-save activates, you will see that your word processor in reacting by temporarily not responding to your command. This can be noticeable on the status toolbar of the software where in it display the current activity. If the auto save activate this will clearly be display on the status bar of your word processor. But over used on this feature is sometimes not good, what if somethings go wrong with this feature and does not work properly. Therefore from time to time you need to manually save your work by pressing the save button on your word-processor or use the shortcut key equivalent for it like CTR L+S for most short cut key. It pays to be prudent on always updating your files and saving them, this will save you from allot of trouble and head ache in the future. So start training your selves to always save your file as often as possible.

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Smart Phone Application: Video and Video Streaming

Video, a very nice technology developed for television and now it can be found on all new models of smart-phone. Oops let me write that again, it is now a standard feature on all smart-phone whether new or old models. From your cam-coder to those big television camera to this tiny bit of lens that can be found on smart-phone.What makes this technology possible on small device like a phone is the advances on memory size and capacity. Without this technology advances the video technology for the mobile phone will not be possible because if the memory size is small then simple taking pictures and storing them on the phone will not be possible. So this technology must also be developed for small devices for the camera to work properly on the mobile phone.

Now let cite an advance usage of this video on your mobile phone. Have seen the movie titled Bourne  the Movie and its trilogy. This movie is about a CIA hit-man and of-course the CIA itself. On the third installment of this movie trilogy. The main character is Jason Bourne a former CIA hit-man and agent. When you get to the scene where he met a reporter on the water loo station in France. The CIA is all over the place, name it and they there on this movie. How is this related to my blog, well as you can see the moment they detected that a reporter is on to them, they immediately put on the all knowing and all presence system to watch the reporter's every move. His phone is tapped, he is being observed live while walking on the street by CIA agent using there mobile phone with camera. And feeding that information to the main system onto the CIA HQ in the US. You say it's a just a movie. Could this be possible to used your mobile camera to send live video feed to some else or to your friend? Well the answer is yes this is now possible, live video feed not just recorded video. Okay lets go back a little first there was the video at 2.5 mega pixels. It was the standard in phone camera technology. That bask then, now it up to 5 or more mega pixels so why bother with a separate digital camera when your mobile phone has a 5 and up mega pixels with a large memory storage in the rage of 16 to 32 GB of space. The picture one can take and store is pretty immense and another technology of the smart-phone is the connectivity. This means your phone can be connected to almost anything today from printers for instant hard copy picture to computer and laptop for instant saving and uploading to the internet and direct connection to the internet for instant uploading of your photos and videos on the your favorite social media site. Pretty cool features isn't it. This also another factor why the smart-phone have dominated almost all aspect of our daily activity.

Lets go back to the application video streaming. This feature has already found its uses today, like live reporting of sudden events where there is no big camera around. You can use this to send a report to a news network that you have agreement with to send live unfolding events from where you are. Life a traffic accident ans other news worthy events. Or just simple talk to your friend or love ones using video conference via your phone, provided both phone has camera and your network allows it, But besides that a lot of truly nice and good uses of the technology is being unfolded before our eyes. So don't be left out try your phone camera today and see what you can do with it.

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SmartPhone or Computer that Do More than Just Make A Call.

How time passes by and so is the development of the technology involved in creating and developing the personal computer and other devices that is associated with it. One example of this is the mobile from it early bulky appearance and call function only, to personalization and fashion style and adding SMS and MMS then again to colour display, MP3 and movie player with powerful camera and an ever expanding Memory card. Now we have packed every imaginable application to the mobile phone and making it a smart mobile phone.

How smart is the smart phone today. First all latest smart phone from Apple I phone 4, Motorola Atrix and HTC to name a few have a single or dual processor in them to run every bit of the phone and all applications installed in it. The latest smart phone is powered by a dual processor, a 5 Mega Pixel and up main camera, the ever expanding memory of 16 Gigabytes or 32 Gigabytes and the latest Android OS version. Plus a host of all types of standard application from WIFI connectivity, GPS tracking system HD display where watching video has become more fun than ever before.

What is the important of having a dual core processor in smart phone; well it can run your favourite games pretty nice and start all those application on a faster mode. The phone can do things simultaneously or it can do multi tasking of all your favourite android base application at one time. More processor also the Smartphone can handle more complex application compare to the regular application let say a weight monitoring and tracking software. A more complex health application would be an application capable of monitoring one’s entire body status from blood pressure and the like to alerting the right Doctor to inform them of their patience condition in real time environment.

Bigger memory means lots and lots of music, picture and video can put into the phone without having to worry of getting it full. Also an application runs and reacts much faster. We can enjoy hours of homemade video via the latest smart phone because it provide a bigger storage area. Plus more new application is being created for the entire latest Smartphone model regardless of manufacturer. Adding to the basic and advance feature of each phone and creating a smarter phone compared to its predecessor.  With all the new and present application plus the always evolving hardware counterpart it has become harder to choose from a simple view of an ordinary user which would not have any clue on how to use all the available application present in the current generation of Smartphone.

All the picture taken and video recorded is also very clear because of the 5 mega pixel camera and watching the playback is also very clear and enjoyable because of the High Definition display for each latest smart phone.

With the current trends in the mobile phone industry, old and new player will continue to churn out more and smarter phone feature and adding or expanding current technology and also developing new technology for this smart phone making them smarter than today latest generation of smart phone. Indeed the computer technology has evolve so much that it created a revolution called the Smartphone which have influenced us very much on how we communicate and do our task every day.

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Computer Tips And Tricks: Free Public DNS Servers from Google

Free Public DNS Servers from Google

Do you know Google also provides two free public DNS servers that you can use on computer to resolve domain names or URL, so that you can do website browsing faster and secure? Well.. these servers can be used as alternative to your current DNS service provided by your ISP. If you are not satisfied with your current DNS service, you can try to use this and compare the performance.
You can enjoy following benefits by using these servers:

Speed up your browsing experience:

- Provisioning servers adequately to handle the load from client traffic, including malicious traffic.
- Preventing DoS and amplification attacks.
- Load-balancing for shared caching, to improve the aggregated cache hit rate across the serving cluster.
- Prefetching name resolutions, overcome the limits of conventional, passive caching and aim to serve the majority of requests out of cache.
- Providing global coverage for proximity to all users.

Improve your security:

- Securing your code against buffer overflows, particularly the code responsible for parsing and serializing DNS messages.
- Overprovisioning machine resources to protect against direct DoS attacks on the resolvers themselves.
- Implementing basic validity-checking of response packets and of nameserver credibility, to protect against simple cache poisoning.
- Adding entropy to request messages, to reduce the probability of more sophisticated spoofing/cache poisoning attacks such as Kaminsky attacks.
- Removing duplicate queries, to combat the probability of "birthday attacks".
- Rate-limiting requests, to prevent DoS and amplification attacks.
- Monitoring the service for the client IPs using the most bandwidth and experiencing the highest response-to-request size ratio.
Are you ready to proceed? Make sure you write down the current DNS server addresses before configuring Google Public DNS, so that you can revert the change later if something goes wrong.
So how to set it up? It’s very simple! What you need to do is to change your DNS servers information on your computer or router to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. Here is the screen shot on changing the DNS setting in Windows XP.

If you have problem going to above TCP/IP properties page, check out these articles on how to set opendns information in Windows 7, Vista or XP.
If you want to learn more about this Google public DNS, check out this Google site.

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Smartphone Application: Multimedia Messaging System(MMS)

To continue on this blog series, last time i have blog about SMS or Short Messaging System. Heard of the MMS or Multimedia Messaging System. Well it not really new it been around a couple of years. Its an innovation to the earlier SMS. In SMS we can send only the message pure text only period. While in MMS they enable a feature that allow you to add an image on the text or message that you are sending, pretty cool right? Well for some it;s not but for others it a welcome change than just sending plain message. It gives the user another thing to do. In this feature, one can add his/her own created image via your phone or computer. You can also add simple text to this image that is if you have the time to do it. But if not there are ready made available image for you to choose. During its initial days the image were only black and white, but as the phone technology changes so does the image changes. This is needed because if you have a colored capable phone which is true today and your want to send MMS then colored images are needed or required.  Back them many people does yet used this feature because they are not familiar with it. But as the new generation of smart-phone came. This MMS application become more and more integrated on daily activity. Everybody is now using them. If you want to send a friend a birthday message, just simple using text to do it is not enough already you need to customize your message, decorate it with lot of images, and pictures before sending it and vice-versa. Since your phone is now more capable than the earlier model then your require more from this MMS feature.

Now lets go to the present day, what has become of the MMS, the next evolution of this feature is called Full colored picture, yup the kind that you take with the digital camera and the latest full streaming live feed video. This has become possible because of the evolution in phone technology. All phone now has a built in camera. This is one key feature that really boosted the sales of smart-phone, yo don't need an extra digital camera because your phone has already one built on it. From 2.5 megapixel to 5 megapixel. Hey this pictures look really good too.Most camera phone today is good enough for the average user. I say this because if your a professional user then, i assume you know what your requirements are. For average user this camera is very handy it allows instant picture on all times and this full colored picture can be send via the same phone. Using the MMS, from black and white to the full pledge colored picture. Also this technology has been around for sometime now, and almost everybody is using it. provided your network support its and you can pay for it. It cost more to send MMS than to sane regular SMS. This is because more data is being send via the network and requires more room and time to process this data compare to the SMS or the text only version. So if you want to use thie feature be sure you have the necessary credits for it.

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Smartphone Application: Sending Message thru SMS(Texting)

Good day, for this blog post we will talk about the usage of a Smart-phone application called the SMS or Short Messaging System or just plain Tex-ting. The used of this application has become more and more prevalent in this age of modern smart-phone. Instead of calling a person to used the call function of a phone we instead use the SMS application. We send the short message we want to send to a person or particular group of person listed on the phone memory book or just phone book. Now why do think most people find it more easy to use than using the call function or just calling the person if he or she wants to communicate with another person. Well for one the cost of using this feature is very cheap compare to the call rate another is this SMS application can be done very easily and does not require much effort for most veteran user. Also one can TEXT almost anywhere and in any location. Even on location without network signal, the system automatically resend the message by saving it on the output and labeling it pending, then when the signal is available it can resend this message automatically. Well some phone model requires the user to resend the message if the signal has been detected by the phone. You don't need to type the the message al-over again you just press the send button and away it goes. While compare to calling the system needs to dial the number of the other person and then wait for that person to acknowledge the call to make sure you get the message across, sometimes you cant just call someone because of situations. He or she maybe in a important meeting with a client or office meeting that they simply cannot be disturbed.

While if you text the concerned person, if his phone is in the silent mode he or she can still peak and response to you without disturbing the meeting or the proceedings. This can be done discretely by the other person or by you defending on your situation. This cannot simple be done if you used the Call Function where you have to lift up the phone to call or response to a call. Even if you used a headset still the person needs to make certain movement in order to used or response to the in-coming call. Of course There situation that even texting is not applicable, for example if you are driving, you cannot just text away because driving needs a whole of attention, and simply doing another task while driving is very taxing and downright dangerous for you and everyone else on the street. Its a NONO to drink and drive just as the same is also thru for texting and driving at the same time. But if your stuck in a traffic jam for hours then maybe it safe to text and even to call.

Another factor is the strength of the network signal. Using the SMS on low and High signal places has very minimal differences on the message you want to send. While if you are going to call on a low signal location, the your voice might not be properly heard or understand by the other party you are talking to. Whereas if you text on allow signal the text message still can be send by the network and it still can be receive by the intended recipient of the message. Also there a feature on every smart-phone called SEND to Many or Group Messaging. How do we do this? Simple you first need to organized the groupings by using your contact on the phone, for example group name FAMILY, OFFICEFREIND, FRIEND and other name you want to identify that certain group. After this assign the members for each group. Include all the necessary members for that group. After creating the grouping you can now used the feature. This feature is located on the SMS menu of your phone. Of course there is a cost associated with this SMS, if one standard message cost lets say $.001 then if your sending to five (5) person on that group them $0.001 multiple by 5 and you get the cost of sending 5 message simultaneously. The more the group members the bigger the cost detected to your account by the network provider of your phone. So make sure you always have a load especially for prepaid user whenever going on a trip or just passing a time to used the feature mentioned above.

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Self Computer Maintenance: Part 3 Using the Defragmentation Tools

Greeting to all, to continue on this series another way of accessing the scan disk tool is by pointing your mouse on the my computer picture or icon then double click to access the item of the icon, then select the hard disk drive you want to be fixed. After selecting the hard disk point the mouse on the disk and press the mouse right button or just press the right click button. From here a menu will appear from that menu select the properties tab at the bottom of the menu and the dialog box for the my computer icon will appear. Then select the TOOLS tab which contain the Scan-disk, Defragmentation and Back-up tools. Then select Scan-disk and press start. Again if it needs to be scheduled then just followed the instruction on the screen.

Now after finishing the repair and diagnostic of the scan-disk, your hard disk is now ready for the defragmentation tools. Now you may ask, what the heck is that tool and what does it do. First of all your hard disk files tend to be fragmented from all those usage day in and day out. You sometimes notice that the response time of your computer has become increasing slow this past days, weeks and months. And your wondering what is going on with this computer, it seems fine, it boot-up well there was no error or problems encounter in its operations. But when i try to access my files they seems a bit slow and yes it boot up well but its a little bit slower compare last week or last months. So what is going on inside there. Remember your hard needs to spin in order to work and to access data, during that operation sometime your file tend tend to be separated from its component. What????, well actually your file is compose of several parts which i not go into to detail because it will become to technical and will defeat the purpose of this blog. Just know that a file store on the hard disk has many parts okay, and this part seems to be separated from the whole because when where using our computer, some other files is also being used. And there are plenty of them. The job of the defragmentation tool is to correct this error so that you can access your files much faster or same as before. Its put the file most used in the hard disk location where is can be accessed easily and can be loaded mush faster, the other files that is not being used much is put on the farthest part, well something like that. The fragmentation of the hard disk as a whole and your files as well is also fix.

Well anyhow before is actually begins the fixing of the problem, it first analysis your computer hard disk drive to see how large is the fragmentation. After doing this it will display a report about this in percent like telling you that your hard drive is 50% fragmented and its recommendation of proceeding with the used of the tool to correct this error. Oh i need to mentioned that when your going to this, you cannot used your computer while deffragging is going on. So this one need to be scheduled as well. Now how long will it take to do this stuff. Primarily it defends on your hard disk size and how much files is there to check. If you have a very large amount of files to check. You can do this before you go home, set-it up and start the tools, of course leave it alone once it has begun to work. Just turn off the monitor of you computer and let it be. Another thing If this is your scheduled you report this to you Tech Support Staff so that they will now what your doing and can monitor your machine first thing in the morning. If  your going to do this on your home computer then scheduled it before you go to sleep. Just do as mentioned above and check it the next day to see if its done. I hope i was able to help you in this little way on how to used this tool which is available to you. You don't need buy other tool and software for maintenance purposes. This two will suffice. But again for a more serious problem you need to consult a qualified technician to help you out on your computer problem.

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Self Computer Maintenance Part 2: Using the SCANDISK and DISK DEFRAGMENATION software

To continue on this series, if you already has a UPS and its up and running, congratulation. The next set of tools is also very important as its take care of a specific hardware device on your computer the all important Hard Disk Drive. Yup this two software is often ignore because they take time to implement. But sometimes we need to pause for a moment to know what is going on and know the status of our computer, especially the hard disk drive.

The two software i'm mentioning is the scan-disk and the defragmentation tool for windows user. Both software are completely free. Its already inside windows you just need to access and used to see its benefit. Now why do we need this to software tool? Well this tool is used to simple make the files in your hard disk drive much easier to access. Also they check to integrity of each files and repair them and also your hard disk. Its test every sector of your hard disk to see is they are damage. If it is found to be damage the file occupying that sector or place in your hard disk is moved to another location complete with notice to all the software that is associated with it. Its just like your moving to another place and you want people to know that you are moving and have moved already. You inform all important people about the moving away activity. It is important to inform all that is involved in the process so that no-one will be lost when they try to communicate with you. You do not want to lost a file when maintaining your computer specially the important ones.

The first tool to be applied should be the SCAN-DISK. The hard drive should be check first for storage error and data error or file error. But first where it is located on the computer. Well follow this step, first click the START button then point to the ALL Programs and then to the ACCESSORIES and the final sub-menu is the SYSTEM TOOL where you will find both of this tool. Click on the Scan disk menu name and a dialog box will appear select the TOOL TAB and press CHECK NOW to used the Scan-disk tool. Okay this is getting to technical, i have provided a picture on the next step. From the picture above just check the to boxes and press start to begin the disk checking. However for some reason the scan-disk replied to you like " DISK CHECK NEEDS TO SCHEDULED, WOULD YOU LIKE TO SCHEDULED ON THE NEST RESTART?". There is an option there for a YES or NO answer from your. You must press the YES button the start the scan-disk on you next restart. It will automatically activate itself after restarting the computer because you have scheduled it. If the scan-disk finds some error in your files and or hard disk it will automatically fix these things. Also there 5 stage during the scan-disk diagnostic, you must allow all stages to be finish in order for the diagnostic to be completed.

That it the scan-disk. How the Disk Defragmentaion tool, can i use it before using the scan-disk. Well sometimes it work you can used it without suing scan-disk first. But most of the time if try to used it. It will suggest that check your disk first by using scan-disk before using this tool. This is getting too long Part two on the Disk Defragmentaion on my next post.

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Technical Support: Sharing a small knowldege

Greeting to all, before i continue with the series on Self computer maintenance, i would like to share a bit of information on how to make a Technical Support job easier. Offcourse this not applicable to all Tech Supp job out here. But i hope with this i can help some Tech Guy how to make your job easier if your the only one in your company and if that company allows employee to take good care of there own computer unit. Again this not applicable to all. Being a technical support guy for all sort of computer problems in a company is rely hard and it also harder if your the only one there. Your expected to solved almost any computer problem that the company and its employee encounters. Luckily we have the good all internet as our resources to help us in our daily task of trouble-shooting the computer hardware and software and to help and guide all the employee and Big Boss at our company. Now how can we possibly make it more simple and less demanding. The answer share a little bit of your knowledge on almost everything you do to all of them. After the training you must follow it up every now and then to make sure they are doing it. Also to let them know that this is serious stuff and you are serious in training them.

At first it will require a huge amount of task and energy on your part but the benefit of this in the long run will be more than enough satisfaction if done correctly and positively. even your manager will be able to notice the different in productivity for each employee by reducing idle time and maximizing the effectiveness and prologing the life of the computer.


Star with the basic, like how to properly refresh the computer if its being used all day long. Explain it to them in plain simple terms that the computer just like any other machine needs to be refresh from time to time in order for it to function longer, therefore making them more productive. Don't do it by yourselves, guide them on a step by step task on how to properly shutdown and restart the computer. This way they will be able to do it by themselves id they feel that the computer is becoming sluggish in it performance. Explain it to them nicely and keep it simple how important it is do this as to maintain the right condition to make the computer more reliable in the long run. Be a friend them them and have the patience to share this one with them. Thereby giving them the basic tools needed to understand how there computer works. Also the solution to the most complex computer problem is sometimes prevention. Just alike a sickness or deceases, before started to become more serious, at its earlier stage the problem should be nip in the bud. This must be emphasis on the employee by your the Tech Support Guy pf the company. They will listen to you because they know that it is your job to know how to solve or fix the problems they encounter. Another plan of action is to scheduled seminar with actual hands-on exercises. Make a plan in advance draw up the topic you wish to train the employee. Topic that doe snot require in-depth technical knowledge for them. It must be easy and FUN for them so they will not be bored and they will become interested and pursue it even after the training. Of course you have to coordinate this with your boss and every person involved in the decision making.

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Self Computer Maintenance Part 1: Using UPS on your Computer

Greetings, today i will begin a series of self computer maintenance blog. This series is for those who is does not have a technical background or the ordinary user who wants to maintain there computer by themselves. I hope i can impart to you some simple things on how to maintain your computer without the help of a technical guy. To begin with do you know a electrical device that maintain power to your computer on a short period of time in an event of a power failure? This electrical device can really help us in such a scenario to SAVE our documents or works in progress and to properly shutdown our computer. Properly turn off your computer is one of the major factor that will prolong its life and its usefulness. With the help of the UPS, untimely shutdown during power failure or power fluctuation can go a long way in maintaining the health status of your computer.

So what is a UPS and how does it work. Well for one UPS stand for uninterpretable power supply or uninterpretable power source. Plain simple is a battery pack for the desktop computer. Just like the laptop computer which has a battery. The laptop computer does not get its power directly from the outlet but the battery charges up when connected to a regular AC outlet then the battery supplies the needed power for the laptop to function properly. The same is true with the UPS for the desktop computer, when it connect to the outlet your turn on then it start to store electrical and when you hook it up with your computer it is the one the supplies the computer its needed power to function properly. One of the main benefit of using the UPS against ordinary AVR or power source it that when something goes wrong with the normal supply of power in your area, the UPS can provide with enough time to save your files, close up all open software and properly shutdown your computer. Before using your UPS you need to read the instructions manual first, so you could gain a bit of an understanding on how its work. Basically every UPS needs to be charge up for about 8 hours before it is connected to a computer. Unpacked it from the box and connect it to the outlet in your house. Then leave it alone for 8 hours this way , it is conditioning the battery of regular used and it will have enough charge to power you computer. If it has a ON switch, turn it on to make it working properly an charging properly. The manual is were your going to get that information. So its a requirement to read your manuals, not just for UPS but for every appliances before using them. After charging it for 8 hours then its the time to connect it

It can do this because its has a battery unit inside that has charge enough power to supply your computer to do all those things mentioned above. Therefore keeping your computer hardware free from harm of sudden electrical loss while in used. Electrical outages or electrical ups and down can really do a great deal of damage on your computer hardware on a continuous basis. This is also true for almost all appliances today. This rectangular black things called IC or integrated circuit inside your appliances can work with little amount of current. But give more that they required and presto you have a cooked IC and there goes your appliances. Typically a personal UPS will give you about 15 minutes 0f power if its regularly and properly charge. Some more costly UPS is about 30 minutes, that enough time to save all your open files and properly shutdown your computer.

Now back to the UPS. Another thing it can do is SAVE your FILE which currently your are working. Its has become a habit of waiting to finish a document before saving them. It a really bad bad habit.Let say you have a five page document and during the last page and while finishing it suddenly the power went off, your computer suddenly shutdown. The result the entire document you just type in is now gone. Wasted time and effort you have to redo them again. Of course this is a Auto save feature on your word processing software, but let say you forgot to set it a a right time interval. It wasn't able to save your file information as it should be. Well this were the UPS come in handy, its save you the trouble of doing it again and it also helps you in maintaining your computer health status. You don't need a tech guy to maintain or check on your computer on a regular basis. Having also this UPS connected to tour computer than a regular AVR is a lot safer and better for your computer. If you don't have one now better start thinking of the possibilities of getting one today because if you take care of your computer, then you will be the one to reap its benefits and less head ache to from loss files and malfunctioning computer.

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The Hard Disk Drive Part 2

As i mentioned on part1 of this blog. Your requirement is important in determining the size of your hard disk. I also mentioned the term IDE, EIDE and SATA, well this are just some of the technology involve in a total hard disk makeup. The other technology is the RPM or Revolution Per Minute.The WHAT?????. You see there are plates inside the hard disk, this circular plate is coated with a certain material that make it able to store your data. Now what is that material, you may ask. I will try to give a less technical explanation of that as i can. I need to maintain a less technical look for all this technical stuff so i can reach out to all the other people who does not need to understand a more technical terms and approaches. Now lets go back to the RPM. You see the plate inside the HDD needs to spin around in order to save and/or access the data or your information. If for somehow it cannot spin well then your hard disk is in a lot of trouble there something wrong with it and it needs to be replaced.





The higher the RPM of your HDD the faster it can get your data. For example a hard disk with a 5400 rpm is slower than a 7200 rpm and vice versa. Other hard disk can have an RPM of 10,000. The standard rpm for regular hard disk is 7200. Also their is cost related, the higher the RPM the higher the cost of the hard disk. Yup that the truth of it, You may ask,what the different of a slower RPM than a faster RPM. Well in small files or simple application usage let says playing solitaire then there is not much differences in terms of performance of your hard disk. But as your requirement grows then you will begin to  notice that it taking a bit longer than the usual to get that files to run may favorite games or software, my music player suddenly takes longer to load, my computer seems a bit slower than before, and also a whole lot of things, you begin to notice.


The RPM of the hard disk is also a factor in determining the overall speed performance of your computer. Its contribute to the the time your computer "BOOT" meaning the moment you press the ON switch on your computer it will do a self check. It examined itself to see if all the necessary parts for it to work properly is there and that they are working fine. Its check the keyboard if its connected and working properly, that why when you see the lights on your keyboard blinks it means its checking it and same  is true with your hard disk, because the hard disk is where the software the control the hardware that your computer to see if the hard disk is working fine and is properly configured. As soon as all of this is done, then its load the software that would control or use the hardware. Without the hard disk or if something is wrong with the hard disk on your computer then, the software will not load properly, but this is just one aspect of it. Whewwww there are a lot of them out there.

Okay back to the RPM of your hard disk, the size of the file or files that your intend to use is also a factor for a faster or slower RPM. You see the bigger the files, software and others, the slower its appear on your screen. This is the moment you click on that file the hard disk access it from the hard disk location. When it finds it then it load from the hard disk to the memory and then it appear on your screen. That the only time you can use that file. The faster it can access that location where your file is located the faster it can be loaded to the memory and the faster it will appear on your screen.

I hope i was able to help you in understanding the RPM and process the take place inside your hard disk and your computer when a files is accessed and how the RPM can contributes to the overall speed performance of your computer. 

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Three Features to Consider when Choosing a Smartphone

When I got my first Smartphone in 2007, a N70 Music Edition I was a very happy fellow. I quickly explored it and tinkered with all the features it cold offered from downloading free app to taking picture and video with it camera and playing games with it, listening to music via the built in radio and stored music on it, I was having fun with it. Since then the smart phone has evolve so much that today model is far more fun than it was back then. I say fun because one can do a lot with today’s Smartphone than way back then although it is only four years have gone by.

Today I reach the point of thinking of getting a new Smartphone to replace my old phone, although my old phone is still working fine, I’m thinking of getting a new model so that I have the more than with it compare than the first time. More application to tinkered with, bigger and more pictures, video to shoot and a whole of other stuff to do and play. Now I have selected three general feature of a Smartphone that I would look for in buying a new model to replace my old one.

The first general feature that my new smart phone would have is a big memory. This should not be a problem for most new phone today because most of them come with a standard 8, 16 or 32 gigabytes of internal memory. Why is this choice, well it simply means the bigger the memory the more application I can put in it. More pictures and video to snap off without worrying it going to be full. Also more music to put in and listen to, from the 80’s, 90, and the present of course, we’ll probably more from the time when I was a teen or in my twenties. I love to listen to that music over and over again because they bring me back to a special time of my life. That music always evokes nostalgic moment. Simply put it, I need my new Smart Phone to have to have a bigger memory than the current standard size of capacity.

The next feature I would like my new smart phone is to have a five mega pixel and up lens camera. Why is this important, well I like to take pictures of my family, friends, event and places that I do not have the time to see again. To have that special moment clearly photograph and store for me to view them again and again. Also more important is the moving images that i always take on special occasion with my family.  Special occasion with my family is very important to me. I like to go back to that moment again and again thru those video.

The third and certainly not the least that my new smart phone should have is it should great whenever I play music with it, you see I love listening to music, music from my early teen days. Those old music has been a part of my life ever since and it would be very much fun for me to listen them over and over again is a very nice sounding way. The output sound of a device is one contributing factor on how music would be likened by a person who would listen to them. The better the sounding the smart phone when I play my favorite music on it the better. To some this may be trivial things but hey this is how I like my new smart phone to have.

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The important of RE-Booting your Computer.

Re-Booting or Re-Starting your computer, how many times have you done that. Well for most heavy user or professional user then, this happens very-very seldom. Why, well for one they have tons of automatic software that run in the computer and for them simply re-booting there computer is not a good idea. The bottom line is they do not like to wait on there computer to re-initialized all those automatic software that they have put into and windows itself has some of them. But it takes simply the user to activate this and scheduled them. Even when they go to sleep they do not shutdown there computer claiming it a waist of time, because they needed there computer to work for them even at night when they themselves have to take a time out and rest there mind and body. Simply waiting for those programs to come online again after a cold hard reboot is an eternity to them. why bother with the re-booting your computer, there no real benefits on this.Well not exactly the benefit of this can be seen as months and years go by, meaning it is more beneficial on the long run. One cannot forever to ignore that his computer needs to re-boot or to restart. Have ever heard of the term "Metal Fatigue" well this is true for some part of your computer, like the hard drive, your power supply unit, also those little chips and I.C. that make up your computer. Another danger is the over-heating of component or over use cycle. Where all you component degrade slightly each every time it is being used continuously.

But before your start re-booting your computer take the time to also save all your  files and close any open program. Re-booting the computer will also allows it to save all those configuration that you have just made on all your software and hardware. Now how do we start to re-boot your computer. Well you just do not press the re-star button on your computer, that will do more harm that it will do good for your computer. to reboot your computer go to the task bar and click it. Then select the shutdown command, for earlier version of windows a confirmation box will appear asking what is your choice, Turn-off, Restart, or Standby. For re-booting purposes click the Restart button and wait for it to complete it task. For shutdown purposes click the Turn-off button. For windows 7 user if you click on the shutdown button the choices is no longer there the computer will automatically turn-off after pressing the shutdown button so be very careful to save all those files and close all open programs that your using to really maintain you computer.

They will argue my computer is always in the air-conditioned room 24/7 and minimal dust gets in.Well if your using Windows OS then re-booting is a natural part of your computer life. When installing hardware upgrade and/or software. The OS will request a reboot, because it needs to initialized the hardware and the software for its proper configuration, but this is normal re-booting. More important reason to reboot is when a software hangs or just suddenly freeze in the  middle of your session and there is no other way for you but to re-boot to clear all cache and close the problematic software. Another thing is one needs to rest the computer so that it can heal itself and free the memory of all those cache items that needs to be removed. Simply re-booting your computer will help it run better in the long run.

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The System Information Tool Part 1.

Another tool that will also be able to help you understand your computer inner workings is the System Information Tool. But before we proceed i will caution everyone this tool is a bit different from the DXDIAGNOSTIC TOOL. Well for one this tool is more detailed compare to the other one and there is a whole lot more information on this. Also a lot of the information contain on this tool is very technical in nature. But do not let these things deter you from knowing your computer, yeah sure this tool is very technical in its presentation but this tool is free and there is NO I repeat NO labelled that said THIS TOOL IS FOR THE PROFESSIONAL ONLY. No wouldn't find any indication that this is for them only. This tool is for everybody, for those who is brave enough to know what is there need to know about their computer even if you do not have a technical background or come from the technical or I.T field. Now having said that please take a look at the picture or screenshot below of the System Information Tool.

I welcome you to the S.I.T. no welcome screen or message. It gets right down to the basic of your computer. You may ask why I need to know about this one, the DXDIAGNOSTIC is fine already. Well simple put it knowledge is power and the more you know the better for you. Okay look at those item on the left there the tree menu, notice those boxes with cross on the inside. If you click on them the sub item for each tree branch will appear. On the right frame it the content of its tree branch. In this first content you notice that the information about the computer is the same as that of the information displayed by the DXDIAGNOSTIC tool. Every bit of information is exactly the same, however this one contains more information that the other tool. Just like what I mentioned earlier this tool is more detailed. Examine each item very thoroughly and will know that both tool will display the same information on the same computer. But before we go any further let's back track a bit. First how does one activate this tool? Where is this tool located? Okay first click the start button then go to the accessories menu then from there looks for the System Tools sub-menu. Inside this sub-menu will find the many tools. Look for the System Tool and click on it. As you can see I highlighted the procedure so you will not be lost. Now you have two different tools that you can used to verify what is really inside your computer. They both should contain the same exact processor type, memory amount, manufacturer, Operating System version and a whole lot of other item. But wait this is just the first batch of information you will know. By clicking on the net level of the tree another set of information will be displayed, take a look at the picture below.

The first content of the Hardware resources is the Conflict/Sharing. As you can see the information shown is labelled they the Resources and Device. For the computer to work properly its need resources from the hardware like memory address and Interrupt request. Wait this is getting to technical. The summary of this information is the resources being shared by the hardware part of your computer to make them work as a one unit. . Also the conflict in resources is also shown and marks explicitly, but on this information there is no conflict in the sharing of resources. Everybody needs resources to work, from country, government to small community they need resources to function as whole even though they are not really on but a coming together of several parts working for the common goal. In this case each in every hardware and software of the computer needed each other to function normally. Without the other both of them will not be useful. As a common knowledge the hardware is just a piece of metal without the software and the same is true with the software. The benefit of both cannot be felt without the other. They go together with each other. If you are not comfortable to go on exploring this tool, then take it easy one step at the. Do a little research say on the words that are not familiar to you. Let say the word IRQ which is short for Interrupt Request, the RQ stands for ReQuest. Search for it on the internet they have ton of information regarding this word. Do it one day and one word at a time.

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The Hard Disk Drive Part 1

The computer today compare to the computer lets say five or more years ago is more powerful, faster, with bigger capacity and storage and also more energy efficient. Now lets focus on the bigger capacity in terms of data storage. This refer to a device  inside the system unit what we call the Hard Disk Drive or HDD. This device allows us to save all kinds of information that we put on our computer. All information meaning, your filed, pictures, movie, video and other stuff. The bigger the size of the hard disk the more information it can accommodate. There are a lot of type of hard disk out there from the old reliable to the new comer eager to prove its worth on costumer or people like us to try to take a look of what there device is offering. The hard disk is one of the most used part of a computer, the moment we open our computer, it and all other component inside the computer is activated from loading the operating and saving the information. The hard disk is also subjected to mechanical wear and tear, inside this seemingly non-moving item is a compose of moving part. They are the Head and Platter. I will try blog about this two part on my next blog, for the meantime lets focus on the size of the each hard disk for the desktop computer.

This is the device that where all our information, picture, video, document and other stuff, get stored. also this is this is where all the system that we used on our computer is also installed. The common thinking is that the bigger the size of the HDD the better, well that is most of the time that is true. If your computer can handle the bigger capacity drive then its ikay ti have ine installed. The sizes range from 80, 120, 160, 250, 320, 500 Gigabytes and 1 Terabytes.

Now how many HDD can a single computer have?  Well it really depends on the technology that is present on your computer, For older computer the IDE or EIDE technology is present, then only four HDD can be put inside your computer, for newer technology like the SATA one can add up to 6 or more depending on the slot available in your motherboard. Lets go back to the size. Lets say our computer has a 320 gigabytes, which pretty decent for normal or average user.. But if your a professional user then a more bigger capacity HDD is in order. Professional user tend to do a lot of things on their computer than normal user do. Moore files, document, picture, MP3 files, bigger video, more powerful software, for gamers and editing. Programming software and more other stuff.

The amount available on the HDD depends on the data you want to used, so getting a new HDD may also require a small planning and also there is the budget consideration which true for all items that we used today not just for computers.

To give a more information and help in understanding your Hard Disk need, please click the link below. This link will direct you to some of the well known manufacturer of Hard Disk Drive. Just a note Max tor is already a part of  SEA GATE.


            1. SEAGATE
            2. MAXTOR
            3. WD
            4. Fujitsu

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Computer 101

One may ask a question What is a computer? and the answer to that depends on how do you look at things, the computer, basically it has screen which display the information, it has a keyboard and mouse to access and manipulate this information and a main system unit where all the information is store and process. All this component are link together via cables, all this cable is connect to the main system unit most of the time it is located at the back of the computer.

The computer is one of the most used machine today. It can be found in almost all places in all country of the world today. The reason for this is it been design to carry-out all sort of task man would like it to do. Do task are but not limited to are typing,programming, playing games. mathematical computations, simulations, watching movie or video, listening to music, communicating with other people, and a whole lot more. Because of this versatility, it has spread all over the planet in just a few decade ever since its humble beginning.

As i explain earlier the computer is made up of several main keys parts, i say key parts because without them it will not function properly. They are the monitor, system unit, keyboard, pointing devices and printer. Still the other add on parts that has been dim necessary and very useful is the web-cam, microphone and speaker or headset. The function of the the main key part is always been the basic, to input and process the information and create an output of that information.

Now here comes the internet, and everybody is suddenly connected to everybody. The function and usefulness of the web-cam, mic and speaker suddenly get a very big boost. It has become a must add-in accessories for the all type of computer, today if you want to talk to your friend or family who is in another far away place, face to face, then all the three items mentioned is a must for you. Such is  the winder of the internet the its changes the status of these three times from luxury to necessity or needs, whenever one decide to acquire a computer. Of course one also needs a stable and reliable internet connectivity.

Now using them all together as one simple machine doing a variety of task then one would have a pretty good idea of what we can expect from this machine called the computer.

Below is a list of link of websites of SOME the different computer manufacturer, I hope this will help you in deciding which type of computer to buy. Just click on the link to open a new window on the manufacturers website.


1. Hewlett-Packard
2. APPLE MAC
3. DELL
4. IBM
5. Toshiba
6. ACER


For a complete List of name of computer Manufacturer please click the link below.

                   Wikipedia LIST of Computer Manufacturer

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Cellphone to SmartPhone to Computer

        Technology today compare to technology a few decades ago has become more integrated in our daily life. I said this because as i observe may own progress and my countries progress. One example of how technology evolve was the CELLPHONE. When i was just starting out after graduation the cellphone was just coming into our lives back then, they were still bulky and big, then came the wireless type they become small and more user friendly but still they are not in a level as it was today compare back then.

          Today smart phone can be applied to almost anything in our daily activity, such as money transfer, online payment, ticket, web surfing, watch video streaming, tracking device and etc. It also acts a as a person locator, back then a person can go through his daily activity without these devices. It is still for luxury. But now only a decade has past and the cellphone has evolve into something very-very handy. almost every people in every country has one type or another, depending on the services and models available for that region.

 Also almost all mobile devices has multiple feature in them, they are not just for texting or calling, but has evolve into a lot more very useful application for business, finance, personal health, hobby, and a lot of other interest. The price has also gone down from 5 to 10 years ago where it used to cost a lot for a simple cellphone. While now a days, one can buy prepaid phone kit from almost any location in every country.

Also the phone design has come a long way from the early bulky type to the cover change, the antenna was place on the inside, using a single key to navigate the entire menu to playing music and watching video with bigger memory capacity, games has also evolve from black and white to full colored feature games type just like what is found on a PC and also using different type connectivity. From GSM, GPRS to 3G.

The latest in cellphone technology innovation is the touch screen navigation, that is using your finger to select menu, feature and function. The use if button to navigate your phone is slowly being put away step by step, as new model comes from different manufacturer, one trying to outdo each other to have a piece of the pie of the smart phone market which has grown a lot in this past years.

It has become an essential part of everyday activity. It helps a lot of people to know that they are connected to there family and friends on a 24 hours basis.



Source: http://lifeintech-ryder88.blogspot.com

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Un-hiding All Hidden Files after a Virus Infection

               Is your USB Flash disk ever been infected by a virus and the result is all you files and folder are gone? But wait when went to the technical support personnel in you workplace they says that it is not gone all your files and folder are still there. Feeling confused, you may say but when i check my USB flash drive i cannot see all my files and folder? But if did a deeper probe, by checking the properties of your USB flash drive, you can see that it indicates that your USB flash drive is half full or almost full depending on how many files it contains before the virus infection. Still confuse, well do not be. Here is what happens, when your flash drive got infected by the virus, it hides all your files and folder and then creates a copy of itself. But that copy of itself is not going to look like a virus, it will look like a regular folder inside your flash drive. The moment you click it, it will even more infect all the other files and folder in your flash drive. Ever seen a folder that when you tried to open it via the double click method, it did not open instead nothing happen, there is no reaction from the folder. A closer will reveal that it is not really a folder it is an application. Take a closer look at the screenshot below.

You can see that a folder is identified as folder and an application is identified as an application in a non-infected drive. To get this kind of view, please select the detail option when displaying the content of your flash drive. Now after the infection happened. All your folder and files is hidden not deleted or erased. You are left with an application that looks like a folder, but when you view it like this you can see that the folder has been classified as an application. When you see a folder that has been classified as an application then definitely it is a virus. Have your flash drive scan immediately to avoid the virus from infecting other places in your flash drive or drive or any type of container. DO NOT click or double click it. Now how do you recover your files if it has been hidden after a virus infection? Well first make sure that you have scanned and cleaned your flash drive. Next attach it to a clean computer, a computer that has not been infected by the same virus. After is has been recognized by the computer. Follow this step very carefully. First look for a utility or program called FOLDER OPTION. The FOLDER OPTION has three tabs they are the GENERAL, VIEW and SEARCH. Please see the screen shot below.

 

From the screen shot above the three tabs can be seen. The next step selects the VIEW tab. Please see screen shot below. This is where you're going to make the hidden files from your flash drive visible again. For the nest step please select the Show Hidden files, folders and rive option and unchecked all the check boxes for the three following option. The Hide empty drives in the computer, Hide extension for known file types and Hide protected operating system files then clicks the OK button. But wait before you go any further a word of caution, make sure to go directly to the flash drive and do not do to the main hard drive which contains the system files. The system files are hidden by default to protect against accidental erasure. Now that you un-hide it, it is now very open for such an accident. Whatever you do, go directly to the flash drive to get all your files. Now that we have cleared that the next step is to proceed to your flash drive and view it again. After editing the folder option, you can now see your folder. They are now safe to open via the double click. Do not copy the folder because they will be invisible after you redo the folder option. Open the entire folder individually and move all the files inside them to a newly created folder and all your folder will accessible to your once again. Now after recovering your files from the entire affected folder. The entire affected folder can now be deleted from your flash drive. Now for the last part go back to the FOLDER OPTION and put the check mark on all the boxes that you have unchecked earlier and select the other option to return all folder to their normal state. All system files must be hidden the same as before and press the OK button and close the FOLDER OPTION.

Remember when ever a virus has infected your flash drive. It will try to fool you by making you think that all your files have been deleted. Do not be fooled by this kind of virus infection. Make sure that you scan your flash drive and have the virus removed and make a deeper probe to see if all your files is still there. Do not format the flash drive as soon as you see that it appears to empty. Remember you smarter than any virus.




Source http://lifeintech-ryder88.blogspot.com 

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Different Function of a Personal Computer.

The most common type of computer nowadays is the PC or Personal Computer. This type of computer can found in almost all places that we do our daily activity like in school, at work, home, and some other commercial area. This computer can do a lot of things for us like typing a report, surfing the internet, playing games or watching movies to name a few. But the real benefits of having the computer wherever you are is doing all those mention above simultaneously. In computer term we call this as MULTITASKING. It simply means doing different function or work at the same time. We can do our report while at the same time we listen to music we download items from the internet. More time can be saving by doing work at same time.

Another aspect of a personal computer is that it can also be programmed to do just one specific task over and over again. An example of this an ATM machine where we get to withdraw our money even if the bank is close or during weekends and holiday. Also we would no longer go directly to the bank teller and give our passbook to withdraw our money. We just need to input a few items, like the PIN number for security purposes, the type of account that we have and the amount that we need to withdraw from our account. Most people think there are some super computers inside those front panels that we used to access our money. But the truth is it is only a PC the same computer that we used in our home. If it where a super computer then it would be truly pensive for bank companies to have almost everywhere even in places where there is no bank branches. Like Malls where a lot of people go everyday. The function of these PC or computer is just to allow people to have access to there account instantly without going to the bank itself.

Another customizes work for the Personal computer is the Cash register of a supermarket. These computers have software in them that allow various prices stored in another computer to be displayed into the cashier computer whenever a product is read via the bar code. It also computes for the individual amount of the same item and computes for the total amount purchase by the costumer and when costumer pays the total amount the cashier enter the amount tendered and the software in the computer computes for the change and will also print a result of the transaction. This process is repeated over and over again for each costumer all day long. This PC functions as a cash register year long.

Nowadays we have the gaming platform like XBOX, PS3 or Nintendo to name a few. But back on the all day’s personal computer were use as gaming PC. Again the specialize software is programmed into the computer and computer is house in an arcade type housing with its own key pad not unlike the keyboard of the personal computer. The people just simple drop a token and select the game and input a few more information and press the start button to begin the game they have chosen to play.

The Personal Computer has really come along way from a multitasking computer to specialize computer that has been programmed to do specific task over and over again. It has spawned all sort of computer types, from the super computer, to mobile computers like the laptop and its cousin to small computer that has evolve to become more sophisticated because of the tons of function it can do.

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Just another Smartphone Application

With the current trends in Smartphone development in its hardware and software component, a far more complex application can also be put inside one of those Smartphone models. The application is for medical use, it works by monitoring the overall health status of a person not just a single item like weight or calorie intake. This application has a hardware part in two different places. The first hardware is located in the phone itself and the second hardware component is located or embedded somewhere in the body of the person being monitored. Sound like Star trek tech but not really, embedded system has been around for some time and has become smaller in physical size enabling it to be place almost anywhere and every item that needs to have a customize programming or set of specific function for that machine.

The embedded hardware component is the main monitoring and alert system for the specific person. It must be capable of reading the current and sudden change in the body physical condition. It must be able to monitor the following Heart beat, blood pressure, pulse, oxygen intake, blood cell count, calories intake, weight, and a whole lot of other stuff that concern a regular person health status. Also these embedded systems must also be able to store information regarding the history of the health of the person to be able to accurately measure what is the ideal health status. It must contain a complete system for data for each individual vital sign of a person.

Another function of this system is the alert function, which means any sudden or gradual changes in the physical health condition must sent to the intended receiver of the data. This can be by communicating with the other half of the application contains in the Smartphone that the person uses. This embedded system must be able to also produce a low emission short wave radio signal that it will communicate with the application inside the Smartphone. Also the application in the Smartphone can access the data collected by the embedded system and display it as human readable form. The alert signal will be sent from the embedded system via the Smartphone then the Smartphone will send the alert signal via text or call or any other form of communication to the intended receiver of the alert signal which is usually a doctor.

Also the application in the Smartphone can also collect and store the information being sent by the monitoring system embedded in the person body and display all them in real time mode. Another thing is that this data can be used by the doctor in determining the treatment needed to cure or correct the situation of a person health. This application must also be affordable so that many people will be able to use them to personally monitor their health status on a daily basis.

The Smartphone application i am blogging right now my exist or not does not exist yet, but if ever it become real in the near future then a lot of people will truly benefit from this and will make the Smartphone become not just a fashion item for some but a necessity for the many people. Also this application will really make a Smartphone a lot smarter and valuable.

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The need for a Simple Peer to Peer Network

A Peer to Peer Local Area Network is a LAN that has no true servers connected in the network. All workstations on the network can share files and resources within the network. A peer-to-peer network is commonly composed of computer with fully loaded software like the operating software and different types of application program installed in the entire computer within the peer-to-peer network. To further illustrate this network setup. Lets say your in a small office and this small office has ten computers and each has it’s own printer. If one employee needs a copy of a certain report then the employee who have that report needs to print the said report and photo copy it the number of times that it requires so that every employee that needs it will have a copy of it.

Linksys 48 Port Switch from Cisco Systems

This image was taken from Wikipedia.org

Also since all computers have each own printer, then the cost of just buying an ink for several printers is very huge. There should be at least one reserved pack of ink for each printer. But them there are ten printer to supply to, multiply it by ten them you need at least that minimum amount just to make sure very printer can be able to print daily without interruption. Also if the office needs to have a shared internet for each personnel then this would be a problem since internet connection for commercial or business use is expensive compare to internet for home usage. Another thing is the supply of paper needs to be in a constant flow since a lot of paper will be used to communicate between employee and the boss. Also all employee needs to be updated properly on a daily and weekly basis.

To solve this one would think that we need a very expensive device to link all the computers in the office? The answer is a big NO; a simple office only needs a simple network that can share resources like paper, printer, files and internet connection. It doesn’t needs a full blown big local area network to solve the problem mentioned above. First we need a first level Network SWITCH not a HUB but a Intelligent SWITCH. Then we need one or two box of Unshielded Twisted Pair Cable depending on the size of the floor area of the office. And last but not the least we need connector called RJ45 to put at both end of the UTP Cable. One end of the cable will be connected to the Network Switch while the other end is connected to the computer. Do this repeatedly until all the computer in your office is connected to the network switch.

Okay you’ll ask how I will know that I did the proper UTP cable configuration. Sorry my fault, before you begin any connects you needs to know the proper UTP configuration so that those RJ45 will not be wasted. Or if you do not have the necessary technical background to setup a small peer-to-peer LAN then, suggest it to your company to have it installed by a professional company. Okay lets say the network is up and running, then the next step is hire somebody who has the proper technical knowledge and expertise to manage your network and all it’s resources. You’ll say I though that was going to save some time and money, but is sound it already cost more to have a small LAN and a person to mange it. Yup the initial investment is big, but if you study the long term cost then you’ll see that all the initial investment is worth it.

The paper that needs to be bought would be dramatically lessen, every employee can share a report electronically and a lot faster compare to the old ways of having it given to each one by hand. Another is the entire office can share only in one or two printer compare to the ten printer the office previously needs. Also the ink that will be needed will be very much lessening compare to the old ways of ink storing. And also every employee can have an internet distributed via the network. Then the office will become more productive will less maintenance cost of consumable item and therefore save more time and money to operate.

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Simple Trouble-shooting Method for Most Common Computer Error

For this article I will list down some very simple easy to follow trouble-shooting method for most computer. We do not need to have the professional technical background and knowledge to perform or do most of this stuff.

Anyway here goes the list:

1.     NO POWER

One of the most common problems that a person who uses a computer is that the computer has no power meaning no sign of power is flowing. There is no light, no sound or beep, the power supply fan is not moving, heck even the light indicator of the monitor is not blinking.

            Solution:

Check the following item, first the power supply must turn on and connected to the wall socket or check the UPS if you’re using one make sure to press the power button of the UPS.

If both items mentioned above has no problem then check the power cord that is connected to your computer make sure it is properly plug in at the back of the system unit and properly plug in at the power supply unit or UPS it is connected to.  

Another thing if you’re not sure if the inside wiring of the power cord is not broken then try changing it just to make sure that it is not broken from the inside.

And last but not the least make to really push all those power cord in there respective socket just to make sure they are properly plug in. Most of the time these solution will work to solve the problem stated above.

If this not solves the problem of NO Power a qualified technician is needed to check your computer.

2.     NO DISPLAY

Another common problem of computer is the NO DISPLAY error. To correct this problem by yourself, try this simple solution. Go to the back of the computer or make the back of the computer accessible to you. Then check if the data cable of the monitor or LCD is properly connected to the output port of the video adapter.

If is it connected, try removing it from its connection and reinserting it again carefully. The reason for this is the contact inside the connector and output port seems to generally worn out or become grounded, so in order to refresh the connection, detached both of then and do a little cleaning of both ends and reconnect them both carefully while observing if a display will appear in the LCD or monitor. If the display has appeared then gently screw the side screw of the connector to lock it in.

Another way is to replace your old monitor with a new one just to make that it is still functioning properly. IF this solves the problem then your monitor simple needs replacement. But if the problem persists then you will needs assistance from a qualified technician to fix the problem.

3.     Used the computer Properly (User Error)

You’re computer is a machine that needs to used properly and efficiently to become more productive and useful in the long run. If is not made for heavy gaming then do not play games that require large amount of resources.

Make sure to shut it down properly, do not just unplug the cord or press the power off button of your power supply unit if you’re in hurry to shutdown your computer. Not shutting it down properly will create a lot of serious problem in the long run. Eventually this habit of not shutting down your computer properly will comeback to hunt you, in several form or very serious problem that will needs time and money to fix.

Remember preventive measure is better than fixing the problem of the computer. Do not treat your computer as it where just a tool that is used everyday but treat your computer as a friend and you will benefit from it in the long run.

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