TECH TIPS 101

[ftvfatboy]

PSP Virus?
For owners of the Sony Play Station Portable ("PSP") video game system, there’s a threat on the Internet that can turn your game system into a worthless hunk of junk.

The antivirus company Symantec is warning that a program which can be downloaded to a Play Station Portable game system can do real damage.

The downloadable file is named EXPLOIT 2G PSP, and promises to roll back your PSP's firmware to a version which would allow you to play games other than Sony games on your Playstation Portable. But the program is actually a "Trojan horse," and instead deletes files needed to run the device.

If you install it, your PSP becomes an inoperable piece of junk, or as the program itself mockingly calls it, "a brick."

Before you download and install anything on any computer or videogame system, make sure you know who wrote it, and that they have a phone number or email address where you can get support.

[ftvfatboy]

Shut It Down!
There’s a right way and a wrong way to do everything. When you want to stop your car, you slow down, stop, put it in park, remove your key and unbuckle your seatbelt.



By now, you know that shutting down your computer means more than just pushing the power button. Windows users should hit their start key and choose shut down… mac users, Click on the apple menu and “shut down.”



But if you have a removable hard drive, like a USB flash drive, digital camera card or even an mp3 player, there’s rules to follow here, too. Failure to properly shut down the drive before you pull it could result in memory loss, and we don’t mean you forgetting the groceries. Windows users, look for the removable drive icon on the lower-right part of your screen… it’s a little gray square with a green arrow on it. Right click and select “safely remove hardware.” Choose the one you’d like to remove and select “stop.” Mac users, go to your desktop and drag the drive’s icon to the trash.



It’s a simple process that could literally save your memories.

[ftvfatboy]

Internal Hard Drives
The hard disk drives that come with today’s computers are simply massive. The ability to store 250 gigabytes of information right out of the box makes it easy to work with huge video and audio files just minutes after bringing your computer home.



But even with a huge hard drive, your computer could use a bit of an upgrade if you’re planning to do a lot of video work. Your best bet, if you have a desktop computer, is an extra internal hard drive.



For less than a dollar a gigabyte, you can add a separate storage disk where you can store and work with raw video. A second disk means your computer is free to use its main drive exclusively for the operating system and software. You’ll see better performance right away, and with all your video on a separate drive, you won’t lose the data if your computer crashes.



Just be sure your new drive spins at 7200 rpm so that you’ll get the best quality video capture.

[ftvfatboy]

Inbox Cleaning
How many email messages are sitting in your inbox right now? Really… I mean, give or take a few hundred…. These days, it doesn’t take long to acquire several hundred messages – and that’s not even counting all that spam.



To empty mine, I used to go through each message – one by one – and decide whether it was a keeper, or trash. But going line-by-line chronologically can cause you to lose track of emails related by subject or sender.



Here’s a better way. Check your email program to find out how to sort your messages – not by the date received, but by sender. This way, you’ll see every message from each person individually. Now, you can delete all but the most recent messages about the topics you’ve been sending back and forth and clear up a lot of email. Also, you’ll be able to delete all of the messages from certain senders all at once. You’ll be amazed how quickly you’ll clean your inbox.

[ftvfatboy]

Word Translation Timesaver
Email has made life a lot easier in countless ways. It’s an indispensable communication tool that has almost no equal. But where email disappoints, it lets us down bigtime.



One of the most annoying quirks of email is its ability to strip formatting from embedded documents. Have you ever received an email with all those extra spaces or other characters added before each line, only to have to go in and manually remove each and every one? Then here’s a tip that can really save you some time.



First, open a new word processing document. Select all of the text in the email that you’d like to edit… then copy and paste it into your new document. Look for the characters, spaces or symbols that are most often repeated and copy them. In Microsoft Word, click on the “Edit” menu and select “replace.” Paste in the offending symbols, and then the item you’d like to replace them with… usually, just a blank space. Hit “replace all” and there you have it. Nice, clean copy.

[ftvfatboy]

Making Space
A lot of newer PCs come with a partitioned hard drive. That means, although you only have one hard disk in the computer, it is partitioned with software to have, say, a c and a d drive. The “My Documents” folder, the default location for your files, is located on the c drive. As a result, it can cause the usually smaller C partition to fill up quickly, especially if you have a lot of digital pictures stored there.

But you can move the folder to the larger D drive with just a few clicks.. here’s how. Create a new folder on the D drive called “My Documents.” Now right click on the one on your desktop. This is only a shortcut, so choose “Find Target.” It will point to the one on your c drive, but with a click of your mouse, you can make it point to the new one, creating a new home for your documents on a much larger drive. Remember, all you have to do is change the target for the My Documents shortcut on your desktop. Don’t forget to transfer your files from the old folder to the new.

[ftvfatboy]

Recurring Web Charges
Imaging browsing the web one day, and the next, finding out you unknowingly authorized a website to charge your credit card?



That’s what happened to a Las Vegas woman, whose story was told in a recent issue of PC World Magazine. Heidi Speidel was charged $100 on her credit card after simply clicking “yes” on a website questionnaire. It seems she was offered a $25 gift certificate to Kmart if she accept the terms of the offer on a web page. She clicked “yes,” and soon found out that the “terms of the offer” meant allowing the charge to her card, which was on file at America Online. AOL no longer authorizes such transactions, and Ms. Speidel did get her money back, but it raises an interesting point.



These days you have to be careful where you click. Many times, complicated contracts are located on pages other than the simple window before you. Before you click, be sure to follow the link and read whatever it is you’re agreeing to. Or you might not be as lucky.

[ftvfatboy]

The Scam That Won't Die
Recently, a coworker forwarded to me an email he had received from afar. It seems a well spoken foreign national somehow found his email address, and decided he should be the one to help him with his teeny tiny problem.



The situation in his own country is dangerous, he says, and his rich relative just died, leaving him a ton of money. He can’t get it himself because of the aforementioned yet unspecified danger. So he asks his new, best email buddy to send money so he could retrieve his millions, from which my friend would be rewarded with several million for his troubles. Smell something funny?



This scam predates email, and is known as the Nigerian Scam, because that is the country often used in the rouse. People have sent money… only to find out that was the end of the story.



If you have a question about a questionable email, check it out at sites like vmyths.com and snopes.com. And remember, if it sounds too good to be true… well, you should know the rest.

[ftvfatboy]

RAMp Up Your Computer
If you have a relatively new computer, you can give it a quick upgrade simply by adding more RAM memory. RAM allows you do to more things at once. If hard drive memory is like your file cabinet for your documents, consider your RAM to be your desktop. The more RAM and the bigger that desktop, the more things you have open at once.



Before you head to the store, see what kind of RAM your computer uses. You can find this on the documentation that came with your machine. Once you know what kind you need, consider how much… a doubling of what you have is a good place to start. Once you bring the chips home, disconnect your computer from everything and carefully open the case. Your documentation will tell you where to put the chip… just be sure to touch metal to discharge any static electricity from your body. After that, it’s as easy as snapping it into place. Reconnect your machine, restart it, and enjoy the boost. Even if you’re a novice, the whole procedure shouldn’t take more than 20 minutes.

[ftvfatboy]

Why You Should Back-Up
Here’s an easy question for owners of notebook computers: What’s the first thing you should do when your CD rom or DVD drive starts giving you trouble? BACK UP YOUR HARD DRIVE.



A listener from West Chester, Pennsylvania recently called to tell me about what happened when his CD drive crashed… he sent the new computer back to the company for repair. He got the computer back alright, complete with new CD drive… and a completely formatted hard drive. All of his documents, music files and pictures, gone forever.



When he called the company to ask why they had to erase his hard drive to replace a CD drive, they explained that they needed to do that to test it.. and that such possibilities were listed in the fine print of his warranty. Don’t wait until after the fact to back up your system. The inconvenience of backing up your files onto ANYTHING before a repair could be well worth the trouble.