Computer Accessories We All Want For Our New Computer!

Printers


A computer accessory we all need. From inexpensive ink jets to monochrome and color lasers, different printers are designed to do different jobs with your computer. You will have a few choices to make when getting your new printer: price, speed, and print quality are the main ones. Ink jet printers and digital cameras are changing how we print photographs. Load your printer up with special photo inks and paper and ink jet/bubble jet printers have become one of the best options for transforming a digital image into a photograph! For speed and razor sharp text the monochrome laser printers are fantastic.



Scanner

This computer accessory is for input into your computer. Graphic designers will use a scanner often to input pictures etc. If you don't have a digital camera a scanner is the only other way to get pictures into your computer to email, manipulate, add to cards, etc.



Speakers

These are computer accessories that most computers come equipped with. But some people like 'game players' want to upgrade for surround sound. You will find many different versions and brands.



Keyboard and Mouse

These are also computer accessories that usually come with a computer system. Although most people will have to purchase new ones during the life of their computer. This is because they do not last as long as the computer system itself. Of course, it is dependent on how much you use them, how rough you are on them, and how clean you keep them.



http://www.A1-computers.net/accessories.html

You Need a Spyware Remover!

If you use the internet, “There is over 90% chance your computer is infected with spyware” - Source CNN.




Just think about it. You probably have a t least one, if not more computers in your home. Most computers today have internet access. And if you receive email from others and surf to a couple of sites can you be almost completely sure you have some kind of spyware installed in your computer.



How dangerous are spyware?



Let me give you a short list of things spyware can do,



• Spyware can run completely hidden on your computer

• It can slow down your computer a lot

• It can spy on you and send everything you type to someone else

• It can record everything you do, allowing someone to see it later

• It can spy on you and send account information, passwords, credit card numbers and similar to a third party.

• It can “steal” files, pictures, videos and more from your computer



Some spyware will do just a few things and others everything from the list above, and more.



You must keep your computer clean from spyware or risk loosing personal information, financial information or even your private photos or family videos.



Run a spyware scanner regularly to clean out any spyware that may have sneaked their way into your computer. Do note that antivirus software (even the most expensive ones) have problems to keep spyware out. So get a good anti spyware software and use it!



No matter what the spyware's purpose really is, the bottom line is that at the very least it will cause you countless hours of problem solving and slow downs on your computer.



Scan your PC now to make sure it is clean. If you find anything, avoid using any credit cards or visit your bank until the PC is cleaned with a top anti spyware software.



To get more information and a see our Top Three list over spyware removal software with free downloads, please visit our site.

http://www.free-spyware-remover-reviews.com/

Searching for the latest and accurate help relating to computer programming.

When you're seeking better-quality information about computer programming, it will be easier said than done sorting out the best information from ill-advised computer programming submissions and proposals so it is imperative to know how to judge the information you are offered.




Here's a few tips that we think you should use when you are searching for information concerning computer programming. Understand that the advice we tender is only pertinent to web based information about computer programming. We don't really offer any tips or guidance for researching in 'real world' situations.



Elementool: Programming Defect Tracking

Web-based software bug tracking tool. Enables programmers to track application defects without downloading software. Offers a free basic option.







A good pointer to follow when you are presented with information or advice on a computer programming web is to research who is behind the website. This could reveal the people behind the website computer programming integrity The fastest way to determine who owns the computer programming site is to look for the 'about' page.



All highly regarded sites providing information about computer programming, will nearly always have an 'about' or 'contact' page which will list the people behind the site. The details should tell you a number of key indications about the site owner's capability. This enables you to make an assessment about the vendor's qualifications and experience to provide advice to you regarding computer programming

Decide On A PC Monitor Before You Buy Your New Computer Equipment

Before you buy your new computer equipment you will want to decide on a PC monitor. After all you will be staring at it for the next few years! You will need to decide on the image quality, resolution, size, and type Your new should have enough screen space for what you will be doing. The viewable size is about an inch smaller that the advertised tube size on CRTs. The best size for most people is 17-19 inch. Either of these sizes should be plenty for most computer equipment needs. An LCD screen is the full size it says so it really takes up a lot less space than the CRT, inch for inch.




Would A LCD or CRT PC Monitor Fit Your Style of Computer Equipment?



Is an LCD PC monitor for you?

For most computer users a 17 inch LCD is the optimal desktop pc monitor. A 15 inch is cheaper but will seem quite small if your current computer equipment as a 17 inch CRT. 17 inch will be most comfortable in size and price. The price is much higher when you get to an 18 to 19 inch PC monitor.



Maybe a CRT PC monitor is for you?

The 19 inch flat screen is great, the price is about the same as a conventional but the picture quality is much greater. Also, it will take up much less desk space then the conventional PC monitor.



Important Note From PCworld Magazine:

When you are finished using your current computer equipment never, ever send your old PC monitor to the dump. Recycle it instead. It's not only good for the environment, but it's also a legal requirement in some states that will not accept PC monitors in regular municipal landfills. CRTs contain four to six pounds of lead plus other toxic materials that leach into the soil and water if not properly disposed. Check with the vendor or your local government to find recyclers in your area that can handle CRTs.





Bonnie Archer

A1-computers.net



word count 347

Access Your PC From The Road

Have you ever sat in front of your computer and wished you could show someone else what appeared on your screen?




Maybe you were experiencing a problem, or couldn't figure out how to make something work, but you knew if someone else could see what was happening on your screen, they could help you fix the problem immediately.



Ever had a phone conversation with someone about a particular business topic, but you just couldn't "connect" with your ideas because it was too hard to explain over the phone?



Now, visualize jumping on the phone with that same person and literally sharing your computer's desktop to collaborate, discuss, and create virtually anything together, even if you are separated by thousands of miles.



Though this may sound like an episode of Star Trek, remote computer sharing is actually a daily business reality.



Imagine you need to take a trip and you either don't want to or can't take your computer.



The thought of emails piling up for days makes you crazy and you also need to monitor some things on your pc.



Instead of trying to lug your laptop (or fit your desktop into your suitcase), you can use "remote desktop" software that allows you to access your computer through the Internet from any other computer in the world.



One of the most common remote desktop services is GoToMyPC.com, which provides a safe and secure way for you to go down to the local internet café, log on, and access your office or home computer just like sitting at your own desk.



Now, before you panic and think anyone can access your computer, let me explain security.



First, you log in to the GoToMyPC.com website with a username and password.



Once logged in, you then click a link to log onto your PC, which will then ask you for another password.



GoToMyPC.com has even thought of a solution for those of you worried about people looking over your shoulder as you enter your passwords on a public computer or if the computer you use might carry a keystroke logger.



Before leaving home, you can program in a series of up to 99 passwords that only work one time.



This means even if someone watches you log into your computer or records your keystrokes, the password you used won't work again.



If a would-be thief tries to access your computer too many times, GoToMyPC.com will shut down all access attempts to your PC.



The benefits of remotely accessing your PC from the road are numerous, but the bottom line is that it enables you to use your computer from the road like you never left home.



For example: while traveling to a conference this weekend, my wife (and business partner) accessed our office computer from my laptop and, instead of the usual pile of 4,000 emails that would normally await after 5 days away, we just picked up this morning like we'd never been gone.



The same company that offers GoToMyPC.com also offers a service called GoToMeeting.com which allows you to remotely host a meeting where multiple users can share and collaborate on a single computer desktop.



This service makes it super simple to provide online training, do software demos, and even make complete sales presentations.



I personally use both of these services and find them easy, reliable and well worth the price.





About the author:

Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how to use fr^e articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website or affiliate links...



Simple "Traffic Machine" brings Thousands of NEW visitors to your website for weeks, even months... without spending a dime on advertising! ==> http://www.turnwordsintotraffic.com

All About Computer Viruses

Feel Free to reprint this article in newsletters and on websites, with resource box included. If you use this article, please send a brief message to let me know where it appeared: kara333@earthlink.net




Word Count = 1,500

Word Wrapped to 60 characters per line

URL: http://www.karathecomputertutor.com

Author photo: http://www.karathecomputertutor.com

Date of copyright: November 2004



All About Computer Viruses

by Kara Glover

kara333@earthlink.net



Your computer is as slow as molasses. Your mouse freezes every 15 minutes, and that Microsoft Word program just won’t seem to open.



You might have a virus.



Just what exactly is a virus? What kind is in your computer? How did it get there? How is it spreading and wreaking such havoc? And why is it bothering with your computer anyway?



Viruses are pieces of programming code that make copies of themselves, or replicate, inside your computer without asking your explicit written permission to do so. Forget getting your permission down on paper. Viruses don’t bother to seek your permission at all! Very invasive.



In comparison, there are pieces of code that might replicate inside your computer, say something your IT guy thinks you need. But the code spreads, perhaps throughout your office network, with your consent (or at least your IT guy’s consent). These types of replicating code are called agents, said Jimmy Kuo, a research fellow with McAfee AVERT, a research arm of anti-virus software-maker McAfee Inc.



In this article, though, we’re not talking about the good guys, or the agents. We’ll be talking about the bad guys, the viruses.



A long, long time ago in computer years, like five, most viruses were comprised of a similar breed. They entered your computer perhaps through an email attachment or a floppy disk (remember those?). Then they attached themselves to one of your files, say your Microsoft Word program.



When you opened your Microsoft Word program, the virus replicated and attached itself to other files. These could be other random files on your hard drive, the files furthest away from your Microsoft Word program, or other files, depending on how the virus writer wanted the virus to behave.



This virus code could contain hundreds or thousands of instructions. When it replicates it inserts those instructions, into the files it infects, said Carey Nachenberg, Chief Architect at Symantec Research Labs, an arm of anti-virus software-maker Symantec. Corp.



Because so many other types of viruses exist now, the kind just described is called a classic virus. Classic viruses still exist but they’re not quite as prevalent as they used to be. (Perhaps we could put classic viruses on the shelf with Hemingway and Dickens.)



These days, in the modern era, viruses are known to spread through vulnerabilities in web browsers, files shared over the internet, emails themselves, and computer networks.



As far as web browsers are concerned, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer takes most of the heat for spreading viruses because it’s used by more people for web surfing than any other browser.



Nevertheless, “Any web browser potentially has vulnerabilities,” Nachenberg said.



For instance, let’s say you go to a website in IE you have every reason to think is safe, Nachenberg said.



But unfortunately it isn’t. It has virus code hidden in its background that IE isn’t protecting you from. While you’re looking at the site, the virus is downloaded onto your computer, he said. That’s one way of catching a nasty virus.



During the past two years, another prevalent way to catch a virus has been through downloads computer users share with one another, mostly on music sharing sites, Kuo said. On Limewire or Kazaa, for instance, teenagers or other music enthusiasts might think they’re downloading that latest Justin Timberlake song, when in reality they’re downloading a virus straight into their computer. It’s easy for a virus writer to put a download with a virus on one of these sites because everyone’s sharing with everyone else anyway.



Here’s one you might not have thought of. If you use Outlook or Outlook Express to send and receive email, do you have a preview pane below your list of emails that shows the contents of the email you have highlighted? If so, you may be putting yourself at risk.



Some viruses, though a small percentage according to Nachenberg, are inserted straight into emails themselves.



Forget opening the attachment. All you have to do is view the email to potentially get a virus, Kuo added. For instance, have you ever opened or viewed an email that states it’s “loading”? Well, once everything is “loaded,” a virus in the email might just load onto your computer.



So if I were you, I’d click on View on the toolbar in your Outlook or Outlook Express and close the preview pane. (You have to click on View and then Layout in Outlook Express.)



On a network at work? You could get a virus that way. Worms are viruses that come into your computer via networks, Kuo said. They travel from machine to machine and, unlike, the classic viruses, they attack the machine itself rather than individual files.



Worms sit in your working memory, or RAM, Nachenberg said.



OK, so we’ve talked about how the viruses get into a computer. How do they cause so much damage once they’re there?



Let’s say you’ve caught a classic virus, one that replicates and attacks various files on your computer. Let’s go back to the example of the virus that initially infects your Microsoft Word program.



Well, it might eventually cause that program to crash, Nachenberg said. It also might cause damage to your computer as it looks for new targets to infect.

This process of infecting targets and looking for new ones could eventually use up your computer’s ability to function, he said.



Often the destruction a virus causes is pegged to a certain event or date and time, called a trigger. For instance, a virus could be programmed to lay dormant until January 28. When that date rolls around, though, it may be programmed to do something as innocuous but annoying as splash popups on your screen, or something as severe as reformat your computer’s hard drive, Nachenberg said.



There are other potential reasons, though, for a virus to cause your computer to be acting slow or in weird ways. And that leads us to a new segment – the reason virus writers would want to waste their time creating viruses in the first place.



The majority of viruses are still written by teenagers looking for some notoriety, Nachenberg said. But a growing segment of the virus-writing population has other intentions in mind.



For these other intentions, we first need to explain the “backdoor” concept.



The sole purpose of some viruses is to create a vulnerability in your computer. Once it creates this hole of sorts, or backdoor, it signals home to mama or dada virus writer (kind of like in E.T.). Once the virus writer receives the signal, they can use and abuse your computer to their own likings.



Trojans are sometimes used to open backdoors. In fact that is usually their sole purpose, Kuo said.



Trojans are pieces of code you might download onto your computer, say, from a newsgroup. As in the Trojan War they are named after, they are usually disguised as innocuous pieces of code. But Trojans aren’t considered viruses because they don’t replicate.



Now back to the real viruses. Let’s say we have Joe Shmo virus writer. He sends out a virus that ends up infecting a thousand machines. But he doesn’t want the feds on his case. So he instructs the viruses on the various machines to send their signals, not of course to his computer, but to a place that can’t be traced. Hotmail email happens to be an example of one such place, Kuo said.



OK, so the virus writers now control these computers. What will they use them for?

One use is to send spam. Once that backdoor is open, they bounce spam off of those computers and send it to other machines, Nachenberg said.



That’s right. Some spam you have in your email right now may have been originally sent to other innocent computers before it came to yours so that it could remain in disguise. If the authorities could track down the original senders of spam, they could crack down on spam itself. Spam senders don’t want that.



Ever heard of phishing emails? Those are the ones that purport to be from your internet service provider or bank. They typically request some information from you, like your credit card number. The problem is, they’re NOT from your internet service provider or your bank. They’re from evil people after your credit card number! Well, these emails are often sent the same way spam is sent, by sending them via innocent computers.



Of course makers of anti-virus software use a variety of methods to combat the onslaught of viruses. Norton, for instance, uses signature scanning, Nachenberg said.



Signature scanning is similar to the process of looking for DNA fingerprints, he said. Norton examines programming code to find what viruses are made of. It adds those bad instructions it finds to its large database of other bad code. Then it uses this vast database to seek out and match the code in it with similar code in your computer. When it finds such virus code, it lets you know!

3 Summer Computer Tips

#1 – Summer Computer Travel

Holiday travelers should be on alert when arriving home from long weekends, such as the Fourth of July, a popular time for computer viruses to spread.



Most computer users have a tendency to turn off their computers when away on trips, which means you’re not getting newly-released anti-virus patches or anti-spyware updates; the two most common areas that cause computers problems. We recommend you update anti-virus and anti-spyware scans before opening e-mail or going online after an extended absence.



We consistently see an increase in calls for virus related problems immediately following long weekends. Avoid the problems altogether by updating your security software before using your computer. For a free listing of viruses, spyware threats and trends, visit: www.VisitingGeeks.com/downloads.htm



#2 -- Should You Leave Your Computer Running?

One question we hear frequently is, "Should I leave my desktop computer on or turn it off?"



There are 2 schools of thought…

Turning it on and off numerous times during the day subjects the microcircuits to flexing and fatigue due to change in temperatures. Over time this could lead to a break in the circuitry and result in system failure.



Leaving the computer on all the time puts excess wear on the mechanical components (the hard drive spindle motor and cooling fans).



Best compromise. First user in the morning turns it on; last user turns it off.



We leave our desktops on all the time allowing for scheduled utility tasks to run during overnight hours. We also restart the systems (to flush the RAM and reset the operating system) on a regular basis and routinely remove the case covers to clean out any dust that may have accumulated, especially around the fans and screens.



#3 -- Stop Popups!

Never click inside the window of a popup. Instead, close it by clicking on the X in the upper right corner. Many people are fooled into installing spyware applications by popups that promise to clean their system. If you receive a message saying it can help, assume it’s spyware and don’t click!