Your Computer Information

If you’d ever like to know what hardware and software (including serial numbers) are on your computer, you have two nice options. Belarc or System Information. Both are free and will tell you everything you need to know about what is on your computer.

Don’t Buy a New Computer Now!

Windows 7 should be coming out in a few months and if you can wait, you’ll be rewarded. All the  press I’ve seen lately says Windows 7 is MUCH BETTER than Vista. Here’s a site with many of the new features.(click here).

Note – Windows7 is slated for an October 22nd release!

Encrypting Your Files

Everyone has a different solution to remembering their passwords – yellow sticky pads, paper, excel spreadsheet. One solution I like in Win XP is to just encrypt a folder and put all the files you want encrypted into that file. Now only you can open those files. Here’s how to do it.

Open Windows Explorer and locate and right-click the folder that you want, and then click Properties. Click Advanced and under compress or encrypt attributes, select the Encrypt contents to secure data check box, and then click OK. Now anything file you drag into this folder is encrypted.

There are a couple of big problems with this solution, but it will keep out the casual hacker. If a person can guess your login password then they have access to those files – so don’t let others use your account. Setup a Guest account for people who need to use your computer.

The second big problem is that there are easy ways to get around the user password, so again only allow trusted people access to your computer.

I would definitely not use this solution for a laptop which is easily stolen.

The $2.95/month Phone Plan

As my wife’s retirement edges closer to reality, I’ m realizing that my 1000 minutes per month Family plan from T-Mobile is not going to hack it any more.

The question is, how can I get more minutes without having to pay through the nose? One answer is the Skype subscription plan. For $2.95/month I can make unlimited calls to anyone in the U.S. and Canada.

The bad news is that if you search the Skype user forums, there are lots of  people upset with the poor customer service Skype provides. They have no phone number you can call and make it very hard to ask a simple question as I found out.  Buyer Beware.

Rip MP3s with iTunes

You can have iTunes rip your CD collection into mp3s instead of their AAC format with just a few mouse clicks. Here’s the procedure.

Edit – Preferences – Import Settings – Import Using – change this to MP3 Encoder.

How to Backup Your iTunes Library

I’ve found through personal experience that the  iTunes library can get corrupted and lose all it’s information – that’s a bummer. I’ve found that what I need to do is backup the library as part of my normal weekly backup.

I’ve found the detailed answer on the apple support site – (click here)

In short, what I do is backup my entire “My Music” folder every week. This includes my iTunes library, so I’m protected.

Pandora – New Music for Free

If you’re tired of the same old music, give Pandora a try. You rate songs it plays and from your ratings it starts to suggests other songs you might like. It even has a free iPhone/iTouch application which is great for me when I’m outside gardening. I’m impressed!

Encoding YouTube Video

If you’d like your videos to look their best on YouTube, here are their recommendations in the graph on the left. You can also find recommendations on this page.(click here)

I usually change my AVI files to MOV files uses QuickTime Pro and use h.264 with orignal frame rate. Depending on the length of the video I will change the bit rate to make sure my video stays under the 1 GB limit. Usually around 1500 kbs.

Conficker Test for Your Computer

Click on the link below to see if your computer is infected by the Conficker Virus.

(Conficker Test)

Western Digital – Get Your Act Together

Do you own one of those small external hard drives from Western Digital? They are great for storing large amounts of data in a small space and only need a USB port for power.

The problem however comes when you try to move a large file, say over 4.5 GB, over to the drive. It won’t move!

It turns out that the problem is that WD continues to format this hard drive with FAT32. FAT32 used to be ok in the old days, but now we all use NTFS which allows for the larger files which we all need for backup and video.

They say they do that so that MAC users can use the hard drive, yet they make an external hard drive formatted for MAC – the “My Passport Studio.”

Why they don’t make an external portable hard drive formatted for the Windows world is idiotic.

While you can reformat the drive, it’s another time waster. They should come that way in the first place.

Another aggravation I incurred with WD was when I called them up to complain about this problem and the CSR asked for my serial number. The number and letters are so small that I had to guess.Even when you scan it in, the ink is not sharp enough to get a clear impression of each of the letters. Please just print out the serial numbers large enough for the average person to read.

Western Digital – Get Your Act Together!