July 24, 2008
Windows-Based
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There are many reasons why a computer slows down after years of usage, but the most common reason is the lack of computer maintenance from the user. Owning and using a computer requires basic knowledge on the hardware and software, and computer troubleshooting. The bit of know-how is important to sustain the life of your computer and its performance.
If you have a computer that has the best hardware and software features, you still need to check the integrity and the performance of your machine. It is not enough to leave your computer on its own especially if you are connected to the internet and using it extensively.
A weekly or monthly computer maintenance check will make a difference in the performance of your computer. You need to know the basic tools that can help maintain your computer’s good-as-new performance. If you are awkward and daunted by this task, you can pay a computer technician to do the job for you.
Do-It-Yourself Weekly Computer Maintenance
There are some basic tasks that you can do to maintain your computer. But always remember that your need to do these tasks on a weekly or monthly basis to help protect your computer from deadly elements that can penetrate it through a number of ways.
* Defrag your computer at least once a week. If you do so, your computer can write and rewrite data files in order, improve your computer’s speed, organize scattered data files and utilize blank spaces in the hard disk accordingly. Defragging your computer allows it to work at a minimal a mount time, speeds up processes efficiently
* Computer scanning is a must everyday, so make sure your anti virus software is turned on and running real time. Updates are quite crucial for anti virus software as viruses are being developed each day.
* Spyware scanning. Use you anti spyware software everyday and make sure it is updating every time. You want to make sure that this is happening everyday to prevent spyware from penetrating your machine.
* Extensive virus and spyware scanning. You can do this weekly apart from the daily live scans. Extensive scanning can detect and destroy remnants from viruses and spyware that have been deleted. It’s better to be safe than sorry.
Compute maintenance is a small responsibility that makes a huge difference. Being careful and conscientious about your computer usage will extend the life of your machine.
For the latest tips to
Optimize PC performance visit our site. We provide independent software reviews, daily PC news and various PC tips and tweaks to help you get the most out of your computer.
July 21, 2008
Windows-Based
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Computer error beeps could be your worst nightmare. It usually indicates computer problems or errors within your computer’s system. Computer error beeps are also early warning signals that aim to trigger the user that there is something wrong with his computer.
If you encounter computer error beeps, you should immediately save a back-up copy of your files. Use a CD or flash drive in saving your files to make sure you’ll have a spare in the worst of times.
When you experience error beeps, don’t ever take it for granted. These could be just warning beeps that indicate potential problems with your computer. Once you hear a beep, take it seriously and make the necessary move.
Different Types Of Computer Error Beeps
POST or Power On Self Test failures are the worse types of computer errors that sometimes do not manifest in error beeps. At the start of your computer, you will usually hear the beeps that accompany information about your computer. Once you turn on your computer, it is the process called POST.
A single beep indicates that everything passes the POST. If your computer produces a series of beeps during POST, this means that there is a problem. Often times when this happens, the computer just ‘dies’ and nothing works. There are also cases that the computer continues to operate but on very minimum capacity.
Operating system errors trigger warnings and pop-ups that indicate your computer’s current problems. Computer error beeps will also be heard when these problems occur.
Here are some operating system errors:
* Blue Screen of Death - This is a dreaded error since users are left out with only a blue screen staring back at them. Although the Blue Screen of Death is not the worst, it is still a serious condition that needs immediate attention. It is a manifestation of hardware error and accompanied with a computer error beep.
* Corrupt or missing system files - Computer error beeps occur when files become corrupted. Usually, files can still be recovered and repaired.
* Damaged or corrupted registry - When a computer’s registry is corrupted or damaged, it creates errors that trigger computer error beeps. Computer registry stores information about your hardware, software and settings.
* Improperly installed software or device drivers - Computer error beeps are also triggered by improperly installed programs.
Computer error beeps will help you take immediate action whenever there are errors encountered by your machine. You should take it as a warning and precautionary indicator. Though there are drastic problems that could not be repaired immediately, occurrence of computer error beeps will help you fix the problems initially and allow you to further investigate the underlying errors.
For the latest tips to
Optimize PC performance visit our site. We provide independent software reviews, daily PC news and various PC tips and tweaks to help you get the most out of your computer.
March 27, 2008
Windows-Based
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You might be surprised at the answer. Through the years I have been asked this question many times. People understandably would like to know the answer before spending their money. Many think that the only answer is in the big names that they have heard. And it’s no wonder these same companies have spent millions promoting their names.
What would make up the best computer? In my opinion it should have a minimum of these qualities. Be reliable, easy to upgrade, parts readily available, easy to work on and long lasting. The only one that meets all these requirements is the generic computer that is built by you or a computer dealer.
Computers are different than almost any other product. You probably wouldn’t want to build your own car for example. But early on manufacturers began supplying Cases motherboards and the rest of the parts to build a computer. So an industry sprang up and some bigger companies plus local dealers built computer to your specifications. These had many advantages the main one being that you could find parts anywhere at reasonable prices.
What sometimes happens for example is say a motherboard goes bad. Because of the way the major manufacturers computer is built a generic or another manufacturers won’t fit this has nothing to do with the electronics it’s a mechanical thing it physically won’t fit or screw holes won’t line up. Now the generic motherboard might run $80.00 to $100.00 while the major manufacturers could be $250.00 to $300.00 or more. After paying that much for parts plus the labor many are thrown in the junk rather than fixing. The same goes for power supplies. Many times the off the shelf power supplies won’t work in these computers. They will make you pay dearly and many times the power supply will need to be special ordered from the major manufacturer.
In other respects I think the computers are about equal. Taking into account that almost all of the parts in the major Brands are made by the same companies that make the generic parts. In selecting your generic computer do some research in is quality of product. What desktop computers will last, and which ones would not? What are the highest quality components? Does the company offering you desktop computer deals provide good warranties? Finding a cheap computer is less exciting when you find out that that computer is a lemon. The fact is that desktop computer deals are not real deals if you get a machine that doesn’t last out of them.
Our discussion has only covered desktops and the pc. The apple computer is a different story and isn’t covered here. Laptops are another story also and I will cover these in another article. If you were to ask almost any computer dealer I think most would agree with what I have said.
Lately the majors have started to make their computers more compatible. Maybe they have begun to see the light. In the mean time I hope you will consider buying your computer from your local dealer or repair shop.
Richard Sherland has been recycling cartridges for 6 years.He is the owner of http://www.economyinkjets.com The author has also been a Broadcast Engineer and owns a computer repair business.His new site is http://www.economyezine.com
March 27, 2008
Windows-Based
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During my years in business many people have asked what is the best printer. After reading this article you will be in a better position to determine the best printer for you.
The major manufacturers are Hewlett Packard, Lexmark, Canon, Epson, Xerox and Brother. Lexmark makes many printers for other manufacturers such as Xerox and Compaq. So you may see printers with another manufactures names that are actually Lexmarks.
The biggest names are Lexmark, HP.Epson and Canon. There are two major categories of inkjet printers. On one the print head is built right into the inkjet printer cartridge itself. This is a cheap print head meant to last a short time. The other has the print head built into the printer itself. This print head is meant to last the life of the printer. Now the reason this is important is that there is a huge difference in the cost of cartridges between the two types. This may be one of the main factors in your choice of printers.
Hewlett Packard from now on called HP and Lexmark are the ones with the print head built into the inkjet printer cartridge. These are the expensive cartridges sometimes costing $35.00, $40.00 or even more. These cartridges are much more expensive to manufacture. Also these companies have patients that keep other companies from making cheaper substitutes. This keeps the prices up.
The other style of printer cartridge is just a plastic container with a sponge in it .Ink is injected into the sponge. This makes for a very inexpensive cartridge. Many companies are making substitutes for these costing less than 25% of the cost of the Lexmark and HP cartridges. The print quality of both types is of cartridges is excellent. So at first glance it might seem that the obvious choice of printers would be the printer with the lost cost cartridges.
However there are some other factors to take into consideration. If you print once a week or perhaps every two weeks the print heads can dry out on the printers with the built in print heads. These can be hard to get going again. In some cases You may not be able to get them going at all. This means a new printer. Never take the cartridges out of this type of printer for long periods of time. Such as for shipping as they can dry out so bad you may not be able to get them going. New printers are shipped without cartridges but the print head doesn’t have any ink in it so there is nothing to dry out. The other style of print head also dries out but On the Lexmark and HP this isn’t so much of a problem since you can get the cartridge out to clean it and in the worst case you can always get a new cartridge.
Now after all of this you may be confused as to which is the best one for you. It really depends on how much printing you do or if your willing to print a test page daily then The Epson, Canon or Brother type printer might be right for you. The print quality on some of these is incredible. Some of these manufacturers recommend printing a page at least every two weeks. I have found this is not nearly often enough. I suggest a page every day or two. If you don’t print often then one of the HP or Lexmark might be better. The print quality is very good on either type.
In this case you can use refilled cartridges to cut down on costs. Well I hope this helps I’ve been I the refill business several years and I have seen the problems people face with these. But it’s worth it the printing quality is incredible. Some of these printers are capable of gallery quality prints.
Richard Sherland has been in the ink refill business for 6 years.His website has Factory direct pricing on cartridges Under construction is a new sitefree info ezine
March 27, 2008
Windows-Based
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Please read this article it could save hundreds or even thousands of dollars on ink cartridges. I’ve been in the cartridge refill business for 6 years now and there’s one thing that I have learned. There is a lot of BS going around about ink cartridges. I’m here to set you straight and save you plenty on ink.
Of coarse the manufacturers will try to force you to buy their cartridges and that’s understandable because of the very high markup on ink cartridges. They will try to make you think that compatible or refilled cartridges will damage your printer. Lets look at it this way if you used 5 compatibles you would save enough to buy that $99.00 printer. So what are you afraid of?
Now let me tell you I have customers bringing their printers to my shop all the time. The fact is print heads clog up just as often with originals as they do with compatibles. There is no magic in original cartridges, although billions in advertising has brought the manufacturers to almost the level of gods in some people’s minds. In fact some of the newer color cartridges with the pigmented ink are the worst of all. After the ink dries it’s almost impossible to dissolve even with their cleaner.
One of my customers bought a printer on Ebay and it was promptly shipped out and arrived 3 days later. But the sender had removed the cartridges and put them in plastic bags. This is not the thing to do! The heads were so dried out that that manufacturers own cleaner wouldn’t unclog it. This was with original manufacturers cartridges. If you ship a printer be sure and leave the cartridges in it.
With spectrometers and other equipment ink manufacturers can very closely determine what is in ink and duplicate it. You know scientists can tell the composition of stars billions of miles away, do you think it’s a problem to tell what in ink?
I had a customer come in one day and he had on of those expensive printers that take 6 cartridges. He said well I’ll try just 2 to see how they work. He didn’t sound very convinced. He came in a few days later and said I couldn’t hardly believe it If anything the pictures look even better.
What happens is that when a printer clogs up it is immediately blamed on the ink compatible or refilled cartridge. When the problem is that the printer hasn’t been used often enough. Another thing that happens is that printers have a parked position where the print head sometimes drip some ink. This area usually on the extreme right of the printer is always black with ink and most people don’t even notice it. But after getting a cartridge refilled or using a compatible they go looking for ink and then they spot this ink and say your cartridges is leaking all over the place. They have heard that refills leak. Properly filled cartridges do not leak
What basally causes clogs is the printer isn’t used often enough. I recommend printing a page every day or two. I see some manufacturers recommend printing at least every two-week but I have found this isn’t nearly often enough. I have seen on the Internet a free utility made for this that automatically prints a page a day. Maybe you can find it. . On refills if the empties have been sitting around for weeks or months there may be a problem with clogs. The fillers may have powerful equipment to clean cartridges but dried up ink inside the cartridge can break loose later causing a clog.
At my business we basally fill the customers own cartridge. So if the customer brings it to us in a reasonable length of time there is no problem. However after years of trying to educate people it still happens that some still let them set around for months before getting them filled.
So after all this how much can I save? If you can use compatible cartridges you can get good American made cartridges at a savings of 70% or more. Now that’s like buying gas at 75 cents a gallon, now that what I call a savings. If compatible cartridges aren’t available for your printer you must use refills and can save 25 to 40%. In another article what’s The Best Printer and Why I explain the difference between these types of printers.
Money gets tighter and tighter for many people. It makes sense to save money where you can. Some schools and other large users could be saving thousands and the taxpayer is paying the bill. You can also do refills yourself but some of the newer cartridges are difficult. I will have an article on this later. I’m for the little man. I see on some forums people recommending that you use originals only. I can only say I think they are repeating what they have heard from others. I doubt that they really know much about the subject. I f you use refills and let your empties set around for months before refilling
Richard Sherland has been in the cartridge refill business for six years.He is affiliated with Global Inka factory printer cartridge and computer accessories manufacturer he also has an ezineFree information on many subjects
March 27, 2008
Windows-Based
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The cost of inkjet printer cartridges is on the rise year after year. The printer manufacturers are subsidising the cost of the printer knowing that in the long run they are sure to make more money selling high priced cartridges.
There are several ways that you can save money on the cost of printer cartridges.
The first thing that you can do is to print in draft quality if you are just printing the document for yourself, to proof read or if your kids are just playing. This will print everything in low quality and pictures in black and white. Therefore, this will save you loads of ink in your colour cartridges. This can be done easily enough. All you have to do is go into the printer driver on your pc, select printing preferences, and in there, there will be the draft printing option. There may also be other options in your printer driver set-up that may not be as low quality as draft printing, but that could save ink as well instead of printing in full quality. Printing in draft will also be very fast as there is less ink put onto the paper. Therefore, if you are printing large document on you inkjet printer then this certainly a good option for you.
The next thing you can do is to re-fill your own printer cartridges after they have ran out. There are plenty of shops out there who will sell you refill kits. However, this can be kind of messy. You have to use a syringe to fill up the cartridges. When I tried the ink went all over the desk. It may be worth doing this over a sink or have plenty of paper around to mop up the mess. Another way of getting your cartridges re-filled is to take them to a printer cartridge re-filling outlet. They seem to be in most towns and cities presently, so finding one would not be hard. However, be careful which outlet you choose as some of them can be as dear as buying the originals.
Another option to save money is to buy compatible or re-manufactured printer cartridges. Compatible cartridges are new cartridges that have been made by manufacturers other than the printer manufacturer. These cartridges will fit your printer. All the parts in the cartridges are brand new and the cartridges are filled with high quality ink. This could reduce printing cost of up to 70 percent. Re-manufactured cartridges are original manufacturers printer cartridges that have only been used once then sent away to be dismantled and then cleaned, put back together and professionally re-filled and re-packaged.
The final way that you could reduce the cost of printing and always use original manufactures cartridges is by selling your used, original cartridges back to be re-manufactured. Cartridge brokers will buy original cartridges and then re-sell them back to companies that will process them and re-manufacture them.
Whatever method of saving money and ink you choose, remember to consider what is the right option for you. What will suit one person, will not always necessarily suit another. Try them out and see if they can benefit you.
Quality Cartridges opens up a world of cheap compatible printer cartridges for all you ink needs.
Find out how much money you could save by visiting http://www.quality-cartridges.co.uk
March 26, 2008
Windows-Based
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These days many of us use our computers a lot and they seem to be running slower than it did even last week. What is up? Heres some ways to get back that speed and even improve on it a little and what’s really cool is they’re easy to do and don’t cost anything !
Before we start just make sure you back everything up in case something horrible happens.
1. Clean and organize your hard drive.
Sometimes people just dump a ton of files into the root directory of their hard drive making it unorganised and slow. Use Windows Explorer and create a filing cabinet system of folders and sub folders that makes sense to you so and store your files accordingly. This will also make it easier by the way for anyone else who needs to use your files and find something.
While you’re in Windows Explorer look for any ‘temp’ folders with files inside them ending with .tmp and delete them.
2. Check your hard drive.
While still in Windows Explorer, right click on the C: drive and select Properties. Go to the Tools tab click on the Check Now… button. Tick all the options and click on the Start button. Verify that you want to perform a check after a reboot. Do this for any other hard drive you might have in your computer. Reboot your computer and let the system check the hard drives and fix any issues. This might take some time, so be patient.
3. Clean up Internet Explorer records.
Searching the Internet is a certain cause for putting stuff on your computer that will slow it down. Prior to doing anything with your Internet Explorer, make sure you know the critical data you enter at the websites you visit. You will be clearing the history, and that saved data will be gone. Usually it is not needed, but there might be some things that you have come to depend on, such as passwords, logins etc.
For Internet Explorer, choose Tools… Internet Options. A new window will open. In the Temporary Internet records section, choose to Erase Cookies and OK. Click on Erase Records and OK and then in the History section, click Clear History and Yes. Then choose OK to close the Internet Options.
For Firefox, select Tools … Options. In the Privacy section, select the Clear All button and Clear All Data. Then select OK to close the Options window.
For other browsers, there ought to be similar settings.
4. Update your anti virus software and anti virus signatures. Keep them up to date. I would suggest setting your anti virus software to automatically update every day. Perform a full anti virus scan on your PC.
5. If you do not have anti-spyware software installed on your system, you definitely need to get one and get one soon. Microsoft has a free one that you can get at their website called Windows Defender and ought be available to download from Microsoft. Make sure you keep your anti-spyware software up to date and keep it up to date.
6. Defragment your hard drives. From your Explorer window, right click on the C: drive and select Properties. Then select the Tools tab and Defragment Now… button. Highlight the C: drive and select the Defragment button. Carry out this operation for each drive in you PC.
Carry out these steps on a routine basis and your computer ought run much better.
Mr James started MyBusinessTipsOnline to provide business advice, etc and write articles about his industry-full article here