Simple Computers

Wireless networks are a great invention - especially for the home user!  It gives you the chance to network your computers, share a single internet connection and printer and all without having to drill holes or festoon your house with cables!  But it’s not always quite that simple - and if you are seeing erratic connections, there are some things to check:

• Wireless networks use radio waves, so just like your FM radio - make sure that the hub and the receivers are away from strong magnetic fields like TVs, speakers, etc
• Make sure that all antennae are vertical
• If you are using a desktop with an internal card, try fitting an external aerial that you can move around to find a stronger signal
• Dumb down your router - by default most modern routers will search for the “best” channel and also offer both ‘b’ and ‘g’ type connections.  Each time your router changes channels, all of your computers lose their connection and have to go searching for the router again - giving dropped downloads, lost websites, etc.  Get into your router’s admin settings and fix which channel it uses and, unless you reall need it, turn off the ‘b’ capability - most people only use ‘g’ now anyway.

If all else fails - look into switching to something like the Netgear Powerline equipment - VERY fast transfer speeds and no extra wiring - ideal for a fixed computer like a desktop!

If you’re like me - when you bought your GPS, you didn’t really worry about what was happening under the hood - it’s just a magic black box, that tells you how to get to where you want to be!  But these magic black boxes are closer to being PCs than you might think - and they have some PC like problems too…

The heart of a TomTom is its software - and just like a PC it has a central hard drive to store that software on, along with all your settings, routing information, etc.  Although TomTom have used a linux-like operating system, they have chosen to stay with a FAT32 file system on the hard drive - if you’ve been around Windows a while, you’ll know that FAT32 is not the most robust file system in the world.  So when your TomTom starts to behave a little strangely (or even as a sensible maintenance job) - start by checking that file system for errors.  Since I found out about this, I check mine weekly - only takes a moment and it saves a lot of grief!

• Connect your TomTom to your computer as usual
• Close down TomTom Home
• Open Windows Explorer
• You should see your TomTom as one of the drives connected to your computer - if you have an SD card installed, that will show as a second drive on your TomTom
• Right click on the TomTom drive, select “properties”
• Click the “tools” tab
• Click the button that says “scan for errors” and press the start button
• Once completed, you will see a little window telling you if any errors were found or not
• Repeat for the SD card if you have one fitted

One of the most common problems that I see with computers - both personal and business - is viruses and spyware getting in.  It’s just not enough to rely on “I only visit my bank’s website” any more - you HAVE to make sure that your computer is properly protected!

So why don’t we?  Cost is often an issue - but really, does that make sense?  It took me over 8 hours to clean up and restore one PC - you can do the math yourself at a typical hourly rate up to 50 or 60 per hour - that pays for a lot of anti-virus software!  And what’s more, there are some very good packages out there that don’t have to cost anything for personal use.

Here’s a selection that we have listed on our mallsite - all of these are free for personal use with manual updates for life, although they do also have subscription options if you prefer something that does automatic updating in the background.  If you have never done anything before - I recommend you download, install, update and run all three of these - and make it at least a monthly chore to review their updates and rescan if needed.  You could save yourself a LOT of time and heartache!

Download from MySimpleShopOnline here.

Following on from my previous post - I was talking about using the <iframe> to embed another website into your own website, keeping visitors on your domain while using affiliate or other suppliers’ sites to present information or process orders, etc.  Well, when you are building your own website, mastering inclusions for standard elements will save you a LOT of typing and debugging initially, not to mention even more time saved when you change something in the future!  Imagine - instead of updating the <img> tags on each page of your website when your company logo changes, just update the logo.php included file and all webpages are magically up to date!

To see what I mean, take a look here - each page has the same basic table structure:

• Header - including the page meta tags, company logo and top navigation bar
• Side bar - slightly different navigation menu, plus google ads
• Main body - this bit changes from page to page
• Footer - close out the page properly

This tip is perfect for affiliate websites - in this case, it was for ebooks combined with an online shopping mall.  The problem was that I needed my customers to go to individual sites to purchase each ebook, and I also had NO control of the webpage optimisation for the shopping mall.  What I wanted to do was to create a single website for all the products I offer so that each page could be optimised, but without having to duplicate all the content on my partner websites…

Enter the <iframe> command!  This is no harder to use than inserting an image, but now you have a “shell” webpage that is part of your domain, and inserted into that <iframe> goes the website that you want to use to process or present information.  What is seen by the search engines is the information on YOUR website, so now you have complete control over the optimisation of keywords, etc, but it can be almost transparent to your users.  Take a look here: msso.co.uk to see it in action - the basic page layout is mine, complete with top navigation bar and all the metatags and my customer never leaves msso.co.uk, but the content in this case comes from the “master cleanser” website - which will also handle the payment processing, etc.  Take a look at the source of that page to see the syntax I have used.

Now you can work on building your website brand with a single domain name - getting linked to all the key directories and listed on all the key search engines - but you can incorporate many different streams of income into that website!

What happens if it goes wrong??

A lot of the latest PCs (and Macs, for that matter) are increasingly being designed to be as compact as possible, and for visual appeal.  And, with the increasing reliability of computer parts, this really is not causing any problems for most users, at least in the beginning.  HOWEVER - if you are in the market for a new computer, there are a couple of things to consider before you buy that super-compact, sleek looking new computer…

1. How long do you expect to keep this machine?  Technology moves forward so quickly, that there will be a new, sleek machine to buy in a few months’ time - will you be upgrading or do you need this machine to last?  If you want it to last, then consider how replaceable the parts might be - if everything is integrated onto the motherboard then the breakdown of anything is a major rebuild.
2. Is it powerful enough?  Just like technology, software is constantly developing and demanding more and more of the hardware.  It’s always a good idea to buy the fastest machine that fits your budget today, but what about upgrading tomorrow?  Compact usually means no space for a second harddrive for all those photos and MP3’s - and can the motherboard take additional RAM?

What this is all about, of course, is making sure you get the right machine for your needs.  For example, my server is in the biggest case I could find - giving me plenty of space for lots of hard drives, RAM and air cooling and who knows what expansion in the future.  But when I was travelling through the airport yesterday, I needed the lightest, most compact laptop possible - I wouldn’t want to have to carry my server on my shoulder everywhere!  So - before you succumb to the latest promotion from your friendly local PC store (and remember, the best discounts are on the computers they are trying to get rid of!!) - take a few moments to think about and even write down just what you want this computer to do for you, and how the rest of the family are likely to use it.  That way, you will get exactly what you need now and in the future, and you might even be pleasantly suprised at how much money you save in the process!

This article was inspired by an older laptop - still in great working order, but maybe a little low on storage space.  10GB harddrive and 400MB RAM - plenty for surfing the internet and checking emails, which was all that we wanted to do with this machine.

So the job was to install Windows XP, anti-virus, etc onto this machine.  Here’s the tricky part - although it already HAD XP on it, I needed to format the drive to clean off all the viruses and spyware.  When you install Windows XP from scratch, there are a LOT of upgrades and patches to be applied - although the final version has plenty of space, XP needs a certain amount of elbow room to carry out the upgrade.

This is proof that it CAN be done on a 10GB harddrive, but you need to be careful about the sequence you do things in…

1. Format the drive - even if you “know” it’s empty, format it when prompted by windows setup and make sure that the full 10GB is in one big partition
2. Install the minimum Windows - preferably from an XP install disc, but if you have to use recover discs select only the minimum that you can get away with
3. Once you have windows installed, it will STILL have installed a bunch of non-essential items that are just taking up space - go into the control panel, open up “add/remove programs” and uninstall anything that is not related to networking - so all the games go to start with!  You will be able to put these back on later, but we need the space for now.
4. Before you do ANYTHING else, download and install the service packs - these are the big packages that need the most space.  Ideally, you’d have your anti-virus installed before connecting to the internet, but there just isn’t space…  Make sure you are doing this from behind a NAT firewall or similar - do not expose your computer to the internet without protection, otherwise you’ll be doing the whole thing again real soon!
5. Now add anti-virus and the rest of the Windows patches.  Once you’re done, make sure you stay on top of deleting temporary files and generally cleaning up to make the most of that little hard drive!

Here’s a neat trick that Dell builds into their computers (at least, the recent ones!) - for all of us who have ever gotten Windows to a place where it just won’t work any more - they have an easy way out! When you reboot, while the “www.dell.com” banner shows at the top of the screen - this is only a few second window - hit +F11 - that launches the restore program. Just follow the prompts from there.

Now - one BIG caveat - this will restore your computer to the “fresh from the factory condition”. Now it didn’t have all your photos, your music and your favorite games on it when it left the factory, and it won’t after this procedure! So if you have anything important - back it up on another disk or a CD before you do this. A trick I like is to use a Knoppix CD to boot up, then copy the files onto a memory stick - no matter how badly damaged Windows is, Knoppix will be unaffected.

One other thing to note - this is NOT a quick process! Especially if your computer is a few years old, Microsoft have released a LOT of patches and you need to download ALL of them to make sure your restored system is secure. And don’t forget that antivirus and antispyware too. But it will feel like you have a new computer!

How common a comment is this?? Passwords for your bank, for your email, for your online shopping, for Facebook, for your photographs. A password to login with and a password for your screensaver. Not to mention all the ATM numbers, etc…..

Here’s the challenge I see - programs like Internet Explorer and Firefox are very good at storing all those passwords for you, then the next time you visit that website, they fill everything in - very convenient. Couple of problems with that:

1. If someone else is on your computer - THEY have exactly the same access to all those websites that you do!! Maybe not a big deal for Facebook, but what about that bank account?? Firefox has the facility to use a MASTER password - so you just have one password that you enter at the start of each session to access your stored passwords - all you have to do is close Firefox when you’re done.
2. If (and probably when!) something happens to your computer - virus, hardware failure or simply time for a new machine - you’ll spend the next six months trying to figure out what all those passwords are.

So - either you use the same password for everything, or you just write them all on a post-it note and stick it to your monitor, right??

There’s nothing wrong with having the passwords written down, but be smart about it - keep a notebook somewhere hidden away from the computer - after all, you will only need this if something goes wrong, most of the time your computer will be remembering them for you anyway. Or - and this is the way I work - use a program like KeePass - that’s freeware and stores your passwords in an encrypted database. Even if someone gets hold of the list, they can’t do anything with it unless they have your passcode. So you just remember that one passcode and KeePass takes care of the rest of it. And there are others out there - I like KeePass because it is available for Linux and Windows systems.

I’ve been working recently on a couple of home network setups where the high speed or broadband internet connection is through a USB modem - typically Tiscali internet, though they are not the only ones. Nothing wrong with that setup, except that a USB modem is usually connected into one computer and that’s the computer that is online - great, until one of the kids wants to get online with their laptop while you are checking your bank account!!

Step in “Internet Connection Sharing” - this was introduced in Windows XP and effectively turns one of your computers into a router. For example - say you have a desktop computer connected to the USB modem:

• Go to “Control Panel” and then “Network connections” - your USB modem usually shows up as one of the dial-up network connections. If you’re not sure which one to use, connect to the internet first and then see which one shows as active.
• Right click on that connection icon and select “properties”. Click the “advanced” tab.
• You will see a check box marked “Allow other users to connect to the internet through this computer” - check that box! Then hit OK. You will get a warning that the settings you just changed will not take effect until you reconnect, so right click on that connection icon and select “disconnect”. Give it a few seconds, then right click and select “connect”.
• Now your desktop computer is connected to the internet via that USB modem, and that all works as usual. But now, any computer connected to that one over your internal network can ALSO connect to the internet (and also to that desktop, incidentally). That connection can be a cable straight between ethernet ports, or, if you have wireless on your desktop and perhaps a wireless laptop, it can be wireless. When another computer attempts to join the network, your master desktop will assign an IP address and give the new computer everything it needs to go online. Now - be aware - this might not be as fast as a dedicated router, but within a few seconds you should get connected.

This is not as good as a dedicated hardware router (I like D-link, but there are lots to choose from!) as a hardware router protects your network from the internet via NAT and hardware firewall, but it can be a quick and cheap way to get your home computers sharing that internet connection.  Just make sure the master computer is thoroughly updated with Microsoft updates, firewall is switched on, antivirus and antispyware is running, etc.