As someone doing tech support or tech work how can you add value in the work that you do for the people that you support? Well I think there are three ways and each of these ways probably will putt you out of your comfort zone, which is great.

1. When doing support always refer to the computer as a pet – Most people have no real relationship with their computer and they treat it badly. One of the ways that you can use the pet analogy is to teach them to do drefrags, system scans, and to blow out dust and wipe down the computer. Read the rest of this entry »

I have finally got Google Buzz, after wondering yesterday when it was going to come. For those that are not really aware Google Buzz is apparently Google trying to steal the Twitter market although I am not sure if that is really right.

To get Google Buzz you just need to log into your GMail account and you will see it right under your email inbox. The idea is that anyone that you add to your Buzz group, or whatever it becomes an auto inbox for conversations. When someone adds you to their buzz they will see anything that you add as a buzz.

So how will this really affect us. If this Google Buzz does take off in simple ways it will become like conference calling although it will be very public to anyone on your list. I am kind of likening it to a twitter with inline messaging.

The bad thing is that if you add the wrong people you will start to get a lot of Spam I would expect. I am really looking forward to the whole Buzz vs Google Wave conversations though as it looks like Google Wave has fallen off the map after the initial hype.

I am sure we have a lot to learn about Buzz though, like friendfeed it allows you to add many Google services as well as RSS feed like stuff and even liked posts from Google Reader so quite quickly we will all get buried in content from the people that we buzz with on a regular basis.

One thing that many people do not like, including Kevin Rose from Digg, is the lack of non-integration with your Gmail inbox. There has got to be a decoupling as many people use GMail as a bit of a spam filter and we will now have frinds spamming stuff to us without realizing it

Understanding LCD Display Dead Pixels

A liquid crystal display (LCD) is a thin, electronic flat panel used to display information and images. It includes monitors for computers, televisions, instrument panels, and other devices ranging from aircraft cockpit displays, to every-day consumer devices such as video players, gaming devices, clocks, watches, calculators, and telephones. LCDs are simply everywhere now.

Its major features and benefits are: lightweight construction (compared to Plasma displays); portability (in the case of smaller displays); the ability to be produced in much larger screen sizes than were practical for older Tube (CRT) displays; and perhaps most important, its much lower power consumption. Read the rest of this entry »

The problem that Windows 7 has is nothing new. In fact, a slow computer is something that has been plaguing Windows systems since the invention of PC’s… but there’s a specific problem inside Windows 7 that is the main cause of its slow speed. This issue is so common that it’s estimated that 95% of computers are slowed down by it… and it’s most likely to be the cause of your slow PC today. And fortunately, you can fix this problem with a simple method.

The reason why most computers run slow is all to do with a part of your computer called the ‘registry’. This is a database which lies at the heart of Windows and stores all the settings and personalization options for your PC. It’s a central storage facility for Windows, which gives your system the ability to ‘remember’ various different settings that you might have on your system, such as which email addresses you use and even what color theme you have. It’s a very important part of your computer, but the registry is also one of the main reasons why your PC tends to run slow.

Ever since Windows ‘98, when the registry was first introduced into Windows, it’s been causing computer to run slow. And it’s all because of how important it is. The registry is so important that Windows *needs* to use 100’s of files from it constantly. This is okay, but it makes your computer confused and makes it save many of these important files in the wrong way; causing them to become corrupted and extremely hard to read.

This corruption of the registry files is one of the biggest causes of slow systems – because these files become so difficult to read. Your computer needs to read the files from the registry to make it work, but if they are unreadable, then your system cannot do that in a timely manor, making it run slower. This is still a problem for Windows 7 and the bad news is that since the more registry files that become corrupt, the slower your PC runs.

The most likely reason why your computer is running slow is because of these corrupted registry files – they prevent Windows from being able to process the files it needs, resulting in it becoming slow and unreliable. The trick to fixing this problem is to use a registry repair tool, which is a scanning utility that looks through all the registry files and then fixes any of the damaged ones that are in there. Getting these tools to speed up your PC is quite easy – you just need to install one and it will show you what to do. And if you can get a cleaner which is able to fix the most registry errors, you’ll be able to get your computer to run like new again.

If you want to Speed Up Windows 7, then one of the best ways to do it is to use a registry tool. This will scan through the registry database and fix any of the damaged or corrupt files that are slowing it down. You can Click Here to speed up Windows 7.

Last weekend I got myself an Apple iTouch after seeing my wifes iPhone and all of the cools apps and features. I used to own a Palm and after moving my MP3s and getting a couple of podcasts I started to get interested in syncing this iTouch with my Outlook and using it as a pda. Disappointing to say the least.

First of all I looked around for a plugin or app that would do more than mail and contacts. I thought there would a native app to sync my notes and tasks, something that my work Blackberry does easily enough and I found that it was very difficult if at all possible.

Here is what I found first in searching around. There was one guy griping like me and no really good fix except for hacking around two different third party apps. I then looked around for desktop apps that I could start to use to sync anything with iTouch and was again disappointed.

The way that I look at my shiny new iTouch is that it is a media player and game player and just like with almost all other handheld devices I would want to be reminded of stuff and use it as reference and very rarely will enter data to it as it is difficult to get any typing pace for inputting.

So of course there is a temporary but effective method. As we all know there is wifi on the iTouch but otherwise you are off the grid. If this is not good enough then get an iPhone or eventually the iPad and have always on Internet. So right now I have Google Apps or Remember the Milk for tasks or notes. With these apps I can enter info on a desktop or from the iTouch when in the vicinity of a wifi connection and also view the data wherever there is wifi. For anytime that I have no wifi I can just use any of the free info apps to help me remember until later when I am at a computer.

Maybe David Allen would be proud of this method. Easy updates and then looking later at the stuff when I am at the computer to really track it.

Of course when I mention these drawbacks I also have to mention that even without a phone I still have a great PDA. I can have alarms, calendar, contacts all at my fingertips and if I meet anyone I can get the critical info from them. And let us also remember that this iTouch really is supposed to be a very simple PDA and really is supposed to be a media and game player like Apple markets the thing.

So all the hype is over. Apple just announced the Ipad. This is the next generation device that is supposed to be in between the form factor of an iPhone and an iMac.

So what will this be used for? Steve Jobs has been saying that this is the next generation in computer devices and that this iPad is a real game changer. Now we will see what is going to happen and if people really flock to the bigger screen for the bigger bucks or if people will stick to cheap netbooks. Steve Jobs says that Netbooks are terrible and just give you a crappy laptop. He is doing a full demo so I will post on this later…

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OK here are some numbers. 1/2 inch thick, 1.5 pounds and has a 9.7 inch display. 10 hour battery life. Starting to sound more and more like a iPad is a bigger version of the iPhone but still don’t know the price…

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So Steve jobs announces that the price will start at $499 going to $829 will be wireless and bluetooth and there is a deal with AT&T for a non-contract data plan starting at $14.99/month. Also all the iWork apps will work on the iPad and there is an optional keyboard and no webcam.

So in the end I am undecided about this thing. I would rather have a netbook for half the price even with no 3G and I will stick with my iTouch for now for portability. I am sure this will be a big seller but I am sure the MacBook is as well and I can still get a PC laptop for half the price.

I love Apples innovation and game changing and marketing tactics but I have never really been a big fan of their products for myself as much as I am a fan of their ideas and vision of the future.

For years now I have been using AVG as my antivirus program and occasionally (always on others machines) I will use a couple of different antispyware programs to clean up a computer.

At work we use McAfee, which is a bit of a resource hog although it seems to be easy enough to deploy and update so in the enterprise it is incredibly popular.

Lately I have seen that Microsoft Security Essentials is all the rage. Some of the guys at work are installing it, using it, and raving about it. so when my brother in law got a new laptop that was preloaded with a trial of Norton Internet Security I told him to try the free Microsoft Security Essentials. Seemed like a good plan and I had a guinea pig as a tester.

Well things seem to have worked out. My brother in law did the Norton uninstall and the Microsoft Security Essentials install was just two clicks from the home page at Microsoft and after the update everything was done in about 10 minutes. Read the rest of this entry »

I am posting this looking for a bit of help from the blogging community. I have said in the past that I use 1and1 for my hosting and up until now things seemed to be ok, well yesterday things took a bit of a turn for the worse.

There is a release candidate out for Wordpress 2.9 that I tried to install yesterday and amongst my blogs I have a mix of MySQL 4.0 and 5.0 databases, well the version for the MySQL 4.0 databases is at 4.0.27 and the minimum requirement for Wordpress 2.9 is currently MySQL 4.1.2

So I looked through the documentation with 1and1 and I saw that the best way to change things is to create a MySQL database 5.0 version and then export the old database, import to the new empty database and I would be good. The trouble I had was that the database export was to big to import to the new database (2 meg limit) so I am still stuck.

I am sure that 1and1 must me aware of this by now, with 1,000 of people possible having trouble with an upgrade in the next few days, and the support tickets that I opened were not handled correctly with the emails coming back telling me how to create a new database only.

So I am hoping that one of two things happens. I hope that 1 and 1 hosting upgrades all the MySQL databases to 4.1.2 from the current patch level or that there is some easier way to upgrade my current MySQL 4.0 databases to MySQL 5.0

Get ready for the fanfare. Today is the launch date for Windows 7. after all of the hype and all of the disappointment of Windows Vista I ma sure the great marketing machine of Microsoft is eagerly awaiting this morning and a chance to tour a great new Operating System.

Even though Vista is not the most installed Operating System in the world, that would still be Windows XP, today everyone will still be comparing Windows Vista with Windows 7.

As many people know I am still running Windows XP and although I really want to test out Windows 7 the problem that I have is that none of my four computers are good enough for the minimum specs for Windows 7.

Windows 7 wants at least 2 gigs of ram and more realistically six or eight gigs to run well while I seem to be limping along on 500 megs and 1 gig on all of my home machines and my work laptop. And I have to admit that they seem to run great on Windows XP anyway. Read the rest of this entry »

Wow I ran into this problem on my Windows XP machine iwth Outlook 2007 and had never seen it.

Found a simple fix. I just opened the run command (Start–>Run) and typed in outlook.exe  /resetnavpane

I hit enter and Outlook opened correctly