At this time of year, many technology experts unleash their predictions for the next 12 months. Instead, Computer Troubleshooters surveyed you, our clients, to find out what you want to see in 2010. Your responses did not include house-cleaning robots or flying cars, but focused on better core technology components like security, file sharing and internet browsing. Here’s what you told us will be important in 2010: Read the rest of this entry »
WARNING!!! You’re infected with a Virus. Â
This is becoming a very common call currently. While we always have gotten calls about viruses and always will, the number of these calls has increased. The sad thing is that most are not infected at the time the Warning appears…
On October 22, 2009, Microsoft will release it latest Operating System, Windows 7.  With every new operating system we get asked “should I upgrade?” or “wait till it is released”
For us this creates a conflict of interest. Most our revenues are based on Break-fix. You break it and we fit it. So with that in mind, Yes Please upgrade on October 22. In fact camp-out the night of October 21 and be the first to get it.  After all we do have mortgages, food to put on the table, and college funds to fund.  Heck I would love to have a yacht too.Â
Ram/Memory – The Ram or memory is the computer scratchpad. When you a run a program it is loaded into the Ram. That program will also use a poration of the RAM as its working space. However like all scratchpad what ever is in RAM is temporary, it is not stored perminatly onw your computer. As soon as the computer is turned off, the program is quit, or power is lost what is in RAM is lost.Â
Storage - Your Storage space can be made up several different items. The main one is your hard drive. You can also have, floppy disk (although do not see many anylonger), Flash Drives (also call jump drive, thumb drives, Memory Sticks (do not confuss this with a stick of RAM memory) and an sortment of other names, Writeable (and RE-Writeable) CD, DVD, and Blu-Ray disk. This is where you perminatily (at lease semi-perminatily) store you programs and data files.  When you install a program this is where it is stored, until you run it. Once your using it at least part of it is put in RAM.  This is also where your “DATA files” are stored.
Installing a program - this is the process in which you have inserted a cd or download and ran a program that copy another program to your storage space. It will also add things to your operating system files that are needed for you to be able to run the program. Sometimes the “Installer program” will add instuction to your operating system that tell it to run components of the new application everytime your computer is booted or at certain times.  Â
Data File – The is the category of files that you have created. It is your picture file, Videos, letters, emails, contacts, Documents – basically the stuff that is unquie to you and your business.
Program File(s) – this catagory of files or group of files that contain the instuctions (Code) for the applications you run and and use on your computer. Internet Explore, Word, Word perfect, Excel, screen savers, antivirus are examples of programs. You can not do anything on a computer without a program instructing the computer what to do.
DNS – Stands for Domain Name Service.  It is basically a yellow pages for internet sites.  To the computer and on the internet names like ct-swaustin.com are not recognized. That name is only there for us humans. Each domain and sub domain must have a unique address and the Domain Name Service (servers) is how that domain name is translated to that address.
DHCP – Stands for Dynamic Host Control Protocal.  Basically – this allows you to be able to use the internet where ever you take your computer.  This is the process that assignes your a computer a dynamic IP address that needs to be unquie to the Internet Service proviers, and environment that you are use the computer in. Without this the administration of using the internet would be a night mare for both users and administrators.
In this article we talk about 10 habits that are bad practices on your computers.  And Watch out for the sheep’s in wolf clothing. Read the rest of this entry »
Many people install P2P applications such as Limeware, BearShare, Morpheus, Kazaa, bit torrents such as utorrents, Gnutella, Napster, iMesh, SwapNut, WinMX, AudioGalaxy, Blubster, eDonkey and the list goes on. In order to download files easily from the Internet. However many do not realize how they work, where the files are really coming from and the risk of them. In this arctial we explain how they work and their risk.
Have you upgraded to Windows Vista? Even after you or someone imported your Address book from your old computer to the new Windows contacts the only way you can find the contacts is by clicking the To: button or opening Windows Contacts? The contacts are on the computer but they still do not pop-up when you start type in the To: field.  How do you “fix” this!.In the Windows Vista Operating systems, Windows Mail is the email program that replaces Outlook Express(OE). OE was included with the previous version of the Windows operating systems and is not available for Vista. Read the rest of this entry »
