IT Security has written a very useful article entitled The Twenty Minute Guide to PC Security: 20 Tips to Secure your Box. This is a very good article that talks to pretty much everyone who has a home network or spends time on the Internet. If you do nothing else but take the advice in this article, you will be doing more to secure your computer and home network than the vast majority of users.Here are the areas that are covered in the article:
The Basics: Spotting and Eliminating Threats
Use a firewall
Install and update anti-virus software
Install and run anti-spyware software
Install additional basic threat counter-measures
Tweaking Settings and Making Usage Adjustments
Strengthen your web browser security
Install the latest OS service pack
Select secure software and update it regularly
Disable file sharing on your hard drives
Be cautious when downloading
Safely Emailing
Use a first-rate email client
Handle email attachments carefully
Do not click on email links haphazardly
Set up email filters
Protecting Your Password
Keep hackers guessing
Use a variety of different passwords
Password protect your computer login access
Wireless Protection
Protect your wireless network
Do not use a neighbor’s wi-fi connection
Physical Protection
Disguise your laptop
Use anti-theft solutions
We can all stand to improve our security knowledge. Take some time to read through this and think about your security setup.
It is really easy for your computer system to get full of junk. This is one reason why people often notice that their computer system seems to be slowing down.
This post will show you how to set up the built-in disk cleanup program in Windows to perform a deep clean of your system so that it will run quicker.
Configure the Disk Cleanup Program
The first step is to get the disk cleanup program to free up as much free space as it possibly can. Follow these steps:
Go to Start→Run… and type in cleanmgr /sageset:99
You should now see the Disk Cleanup Settings window. In this window, check off all of the options. Once you have done this, click on the OK button.
Your cleanup manager is now ready to perform a deep clean.
Performing a Deep Clean
To run the deep clean, simply follow these steps:
Go to Start→Run… and type in cleanmgr /sagerun:99
The disk cleanup program will now run. It will close automatically when it is finished.
The deep clean may take some time the first time that it runs but if you run this on a regular basis, then you will find that this process becomes quicker each time.
I was performing a search on Google. The results were over 300,000 for what I thought was a pretty specify query. Thanks to online glossaries, dictionaries, dungeons and dragons as well as World of Warcraft, I was inundated with copious amounts of useless data. In a bid to reduce the number of results, I started adding terms such as “-Wow”, “-warcraft”, “-game”, -”dictionary”, “-is better because” and so forth. That’s when I hit “The Wall.” There is a limit of 32 words for a Google search query. By the time I hit “The Wall,” I had reduced the search results from just over 300,000 to a little under 79,000. Still too many. Frustrated, I gave up sure that I would never find what I was looking for in a reasonable amount of time.
That’s when it hit me. Google has a calculator. It converts miles. For goodness sakes, it’s written by GEEKS! Could it be? Could I have an interesting idea?
I entered a new search query: “-WoW|Warcraft”. To my amazement, it worked. All sites with “warcraft” or “WoW” were filtered out. This told me that it accepts programming values (in programming, “|” typically means “or”). Curious, I entered a new query using regex. For those that don’t know, regex is short for “regular expressions.” Regular expressions are essentially filters that allow you specify what kind of text to look for by specifying a text pattern. An example would be “Bob” versus “bob”.
As an example for you, I generated a search about our favorite website. The search query uses the regex expression: ^dailycupofte$. This expression looks for “dailycupofte” and only that phrase and the results must contain results that begin and end with exactly that phrase. In other words, sites with “dailycupofte” will be returned but not “dailycupoftech”.
In my office at work, have have set up two computer systems (soon to be three). Once system is for my day to day work and the other system is for testing and monitoring. Each system has two screens giving me a total of four screens.
Now, the one thing that I didn’t want was two keyboards and mice. So, my first thought was, “Get a KVM. Problem solved.” The problem was that I needed to have all of the screens active at the same time. With a KVM, I would switch screens (although I could always not use the screen portion). The other issue that I saw was that a multiple screen KVM with digital inputs started to get pricy!
After some research, I discovered a wonderful little program called Synergy. It allows you to run a program on each computer and then it transfers control from one computer to another. So now, all I need to do is slide the mouse off the right hand side of screen two on computer one and it magically appears on screen one of computer two.
I have put together a little tutorial on setting up a two computer system with a single keyboard and mouse. I also explain how to set up the system so that it is taking up a minimial amount of desk space with the maximum amount of usability.
If you are planning on running more than one computer, this will give you a really good head start and probably give you some ideas that you have not thought about.
IT Security has written a very useful article entitled The Twenty Minute Guide to PC Security: 20 Tips to Secure your Box. This is a very good article that talks to pretty much everyone who has a home network or spends time on the Internet. If you do nothing else but take the advice in this article, you will be doing more to secure your computer and home network than the vast majority of users.Here are the areas that are covered in the article:
I was performing a search on Google. The results were over 300,000 for what I thought was a pretty specify query. Thanks to online glossaries, dictionaries, dungeons and dragons as well as World of Warcraft, I was inundated with copious amounts of useless data. In a bid to reduce the number of results, I started adding terms such as “-Wow”, “-warcraft”, “-game”, -”dictionary”, “-is better because” and so forth. That’s when I hit “The Wall.” There is a limit of 32 words for a Google search query. By the time I hit “The Wall,” I had reduced the search results from just over 300,000 to a little under 79,000. Still too many. Frustrated, I gave up sure that I would never find what I was looking for in a reasonable amount of time.
In my office at work, have have set up two computer systems (soon to be three). Once system is for my day to day work and the other system is for testing and monitoring. Each system has two screens giving me a total of four screens.