Malware, oh no!

Probably the most frequent type of computer I see is one that is loaded down with virus and spyware. There is so much on the Internet these days that you need to protect your computer from.

The first thing a person can do to protect their system is to have a good virus protection application installed. One that I often recommend is AVG. They have a free version for personal use and it always rates well against the subscription supported applications such as Norton Security Suite. You can find AVG here. They also have a reasonably priced subscription version if you are so inclined.

One application alone is not enough to protect a computer these days. Another application that I recommend is Spybot Search and Destroy. Spybot has been around for quite a while and just keeps getting better. It is free also (supported by donation and other products). There is a scanning section, a preventative section and a live detection system included. More information is available on their site.

Additionally, you must be careful where you take your computer on the Internet. Always know the sites that you visit. If you avoid the more "shady" sections of the Internet, you can avoid much of the trouble too.

Perhaps, you might be thinking that I am shooting my business in the foot by recommending these applications, since it could limit the business that I get. While this may be true, I would rather see my customers/readers protected. In all truthfulness, there is more to cleaning a computer once it gets full of the malware that is out there than just using these applications. Most of the information on how to clean a computer is available, if you search long enough on the Internet, but I realize that many do not have the interest or time to make such a search and that is where I come in. In addiotion, each computer infection seems to be a little different and often requires special handling.

To sum it up, I would be happy to help anyone with the installation and usage of these applications and if you do get caught while unprotected or something slips by, I am always available to help!

Disaster strikes...

The unthinkable happened yesterday. I had used my laptop in the morning and shut it down to go to church. When I got back home, I turned on the laptop and heard the familiar sounds, but no picture came on the screen. To make matters worse, I had moved the bookkeeping that I am doing for our church over to the laptop about a week ago.

After a session with an Apple Guru, we determined it was a hardware issue (likely the graphics chip. I've got an in-store session scheduled for later today to have someone check it further.

The good news is that I have backed up my data quick well and I was able to get the bookkeeping running on the desktop again and only had to add 4 checks back in.

I was really impressed with Apple support. It was Sunday afternoon and someone called me after only 10 seconds from the time I logged in to support on the Apple web site. He had me try several things and when he could not help, he scheduled my applointment at the Apple store near me. I don't know where he was calling from, but his area code indicates Texas. At least he was not in India, although with today's technology, I suppose he could have been, but at least I could understand him.

Another good thing was that I had decided to pay the extra for Apple care extended warranty when I bought the laptop two years ago. I never buy extended warranties as they are usually never used.

I'll write further when I know more.

Added: I took my Macbook Pro to the Apple store. As expected the tech there could not get any better result and had to send the laptop in to Apple for repair. My extended Apple Care will cover all costs. He said it will take about a week and they could not guarantee that they would not lose my data. I had the important data backuped up, so that was not a big deal.

On a side note, the Apple store was fancy. In fact, before I noticed the large Apple logo on the front of the store I thought it was an art gallery. Once I got in the store I could see the many large display apple displays. All of them where setup for people to try out. When I checked in, they gave me a little pager that buzzed when my appointment time arrived. All in all, it was a good experience, except for not leaving with my Macbook Pro.

It's 9 am, do you know where your data is?

Let's face it. As reliable as computers have become, they can still let us down from time to time. A few accidental key strokes, a virus caught, or a hard drive failure can leave your computer with no brains, or if you are fortunate, only a few files may be missing or damaged. Murphy's law tells us this will happen at the worst possible moment and perhaps with the most important files damaged.

Recently, large hard drives have become very reasonably priced. This offers a possible solution for backing up your most important files on your computer,  but how often should you back up that large drive? Experience shows that most people will not back it up at all. In fact, many computer users do not back up their files at all and this is really gambling.

With the almost universal usage of high-speed, broadband Internet services, we have been provided with a good solution to this problem -- remote backup services. Your data is saved to a remote computer where it is protected from all possible problems that happen on your personal computer.

One very good remote backup solution is provided by a company called Mozy.

With Mozy, you download and install a simple client application, tell it what files you would like to backup and Mozy does the rest. Backups can be done daily or weekly and you can specify that the backup only takes place when the computer is not in use if you like. There is a Mozy client for Windows computers and for Macs also.

The good news is that Mozy has a free service. You can protect up to 2 GB of data for free! In addition, if you use the Mozy link above to access their site, you will get an additional quota of 250 MB and so will I.

In addition to the free service, there is a paid service which allows you to backup an unlimited amount of data for $4.95 a month. This would theoretically allow you to backup an entire computer, but practically, it would probably take too long to backup that much data and this is not recommended.

Another good feature of Mozy is the ability to backup more than one computer. This is available for the free service as well as the unlimited service, so if you are like me and have a laptop and a desktop computer, you can back them both up subject to the available quota from your account.

Internet Safety and side benefits

In the past, I have been asked to find software that would help a parent to restrict their child's Internet usage to only "safe" sites. This can be anything from porn to Internet dating sites, such as MySpace. There are quite a few offerings in this area, but running your Internet through another software application can slow down the access and I did not find any one application that I can say is better than the rest. With most applications, you are stuck with the services list of restricted sites and cannot easily add sites of your own.

Today, I discovered an alternate and I feel better solution. OpenDns.org allows you to filter your access in any number of different categories and it is highly customizable. In addition, their DNS service is often faster than your own ISP's DNS. My speeds picked up considerably when I implemented their service.

The Open DNS site is well organized and the installation instructions are clear and easy to use, so I will not detail them here. I will instead refer you to their site - 

If anyone who like help in setting up the service, I would be happy to help!

Introductions - trying the new blog features

I run a computer services company in the Kansas City area. I will be using this blog to introduce interesting and, hopefully, useful things that I discover and that I feel others would benefit from.

For me, computer service is all about sharing the knowledge I have with those who need it, as my mission scripture (Understanding is a Wellspring of life to those who have it . . .  Proverbs 16:22a Amplified Bible) highlights.

And now on a more personal note,here is a picture of my grand-daughter Gracie!