Tech News & Reviews

You’re obviously online, or you wouldn’t be reading this post.  But perhaps you’ve considered changing your ISP or even the type of Internet service that you subscribe to.  While you won’t be able to get the 40 GB/s service that I mentioned a few posts back, let’s take minute to examine the various services currently available in most markets, and which one is right for you.

Dial-Up Service - This has been the good ol’ standby for many years.  However, with the advance of high-speed access services, dial-up has actually seen a decline in subscribers, based on a percentage of the marketplace.  Dial-up typically costs around $10 a month, and includes several e-mail addresses as well as some personal home page ability.  The speed of dial-up is always the limiting factor, as it is limited by the FCC, as well as the physical capabilities of the analog telephone service.  While most systems claim 56Kb/s as thier official operational speed, it’s really a misnomer, because the FCC limits the service over telephone lines to 53 Kb/s.

DSL & Cable - Essentially these high speed services operate within the same price range and speed range as well.  Starting around $25 a month, they can go as high at $50 a month.  Both DSL (which stands for digital subscriber line, by the way) and cable services have a high and a low speed version.  Either one totally blows away the dial-up speed.  There is simply no comparison.  However, the limitations to DSL and cable Internet services is that you must be close enough to either the telephone company switch (in the case of DSL), or within a certain distance to the main cable company broadcast site.  Neither of these services can effectively be used outside of a typical radius from any small to medium sized city.

That leaves only one high speed option for those located in a rural environment.  Satellite systems have been steadily taking off over the past few years, primarily because of newer upload technology that is not dependent on a phone line.  These services can range in price anywhere from $50 a month to over $100 a month, depending on the provider and the speed range you are looking for.  If the price wasn’t inhibitive enough, there are also some drawbacks to satellite service.  As with all digital satellite services like TV, the Internet can experience service outages in the event of severe weather, heavy rain, thick cloudcover, etc.  It also requires a clear line of sight to the service satellite, located in a somewhat southerly direction, depending on your location in North America.

That wraps it up for Internet service options.  Come back next month (in a few days, really) and we’ll talk about another tech support subject.

OK, this is where I wish I had a time machine.  Personally, I believe that Windows 98 Second Edition is the best operating system that Microsoft ever put out.  The last of the true DOS-based operating systems, it contained some very useful tools for tech support, and compatability with the widest range of third party programs.

If I had to choose an alternate, it would be XP, home or professional, either one.  Windows XP has been very stable, and a good operating system overall.  It is a system hog, however, not as bad as Vista. 

Windows ME and 2000 both had issues, and failure and corruption rates out in my area have not been good.  I wouldn’t wish either one of these bad boys on my worst enemy.

I do know that there is something to be said for Linux, but  because of the overall lack of support for third party software, I simply cannot recommend Linux as the operating systemof choice for most users.

That’s it in a nutshell.  Next time we’ll take a look at Internet services: dial-up, DSL, cable, and satellite.  Discover which one is right for you.

I’ve decided to start a short series of posts on personal tech support advice.  In a way, I’ve already touched on some of these subjects.  Over the next few posts, I will address the areas of concern for most home computer users, and what you need to do to stay on top of the issues.  Follow closely, and you can fire your tech support guy, or at least know how to discuss your service options intelligently.

The first thing that usually comes up in discussions of tech support nature is wether or not it is a good idea to updgrade or replace.  Usually there are only two hardware upgrades that you can make that will significantly improve your computer’s performance.  One is to replace the CPU, and the other is to add more RAM.

On both of these issues, the very first thing to do is to identify what you have in your system now.  This can be done during boot-up, or from within the control panel.  Once you’ve identified your system configuration, you need to look up the technical manual for the computer in question on the manufacturer’s website.  If you have a third-party clone type system, you will need to look up the motherboard manufacturer.  The point in looking up these people is to verify what the maximum support your system has for the two components in question: CPU and RAM.

The bottom line is this: if you are going to spend more than $100 on upgrades, and you are not going to double either your CPU speed or the amount of RAM in your system, it’s probably not worth it.  Prices fluctuate a bit, but you get the idea.  If you can go buy a new desktop system for $300 to $400, why spend more than $100 to upgrade?  Why upgrade at all if it’s not going to make a significant difference in your system performance?

Next time we’ll take a look at operating systems, and which ones I would recommend, and why.

So how fast is fast when it comes to an Internet connection?  Well, I used to think that a 14.4 modem was lightning speed.  Of course, at one time, it was.  Just a few years ago, if you didn’t have a 56k v1 modem, you just weren’t living.  Today, if you know anybody on Myspace, you’d better have a DSL, Cable, or T1 broadband connection, or you will be stuck loading their page for hours.

However, the speed of the Internet has been put to the test.  The fastest residential computer user has been ’spotted’ in Karlstad, Sweden.  A 75 year old lady, whos Internet connection was set up by her son, is now surfing at a speed of 40 gigabytes per second.  That’s right.  Read it again, it is not a typo.  This connection is over a fiber optic line, and was specially configured by her son, who is a networking expert.

So what does grandma do with the world’s fastest Internet connection?  Not much, really.  She mostly uses it to read online newspapers.  Too bad she can’t throw a little of that connectivity my way … I could think of a few ways to put it to better use.

So you’ve decided to check out an online tech support service.  They say they can fix your computer while you are logged in online, all while you watch on your own desktop.  So what exactly does this mean, and does it really work?

Well, it’s really become popular since Windows XP has included remote support in it’s composite build.  Basically, when you authorize it, you can have someone log in through a network (LAN or WAN, either one) and fix some items on your machine.  If you are missing a driver, they can send it to you and install it.  If your settings are messed up, they can fix them for you.  The one thing to remember is that if they need to reboot in order to apply any changes made, you will lose the connection.

It is a nice idea, and a concept whose time is long overdue.  However, it’s a little bit lofty to think that the tech support guy can fix ALL of your computer problems while logged in to your machine.  There is still a need for on-site or take-in tech support in a traditional setting.  That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t adapt to the new methods as well.

OK, now some of you may need to get your minds out of the gutter.  I’m not talking about when you go out on a date, or some such activity.  I’m actually referring to the fact that you should not go online without adaquate protection.

What kind of protection?  Well, at a minimum, I would say you need to have a firewall installed on your computer (Windows XP and up comes with a firewall you can turn on), and a regularly updated virus program.  There are some great free anti-virus programs out there that you can get for the home user.  Another useful product when you are surfing online would be a spyware eradicating program.  We’ll save that as a subject for future discussion.

The tactics of those who are seeking to deceive and take advantage of you while you are online are changing.  It used to be the simple e-mail chain letter, much like a regular postal chain letter.  Then it was the Nigerian 411 scams, claiming that you were needed to broker millions of dollars out of Nigeria, or some other obscure country.  Perhaps you won the U.K. lottery?

Well, today the tactics are changing rapidly.  Perhaps today you got an e-mail from eBay, or PayPal, or even your local bank, saying something was wrong with your account.  How could this be?  You think better, but perhaps you should check it out, right?  You go to the site, and you see that you need to login using your username and password in order to verify your account.  The login page looks pretty much identical to the website you think you are going to, so it must be legit, right?

Wrong!  Don’t ever think that it is always ‘ok’!  You need to know two things:

(1) your bank, PayPal, eBay, etc., will NEVER ask you to ‘verify’ your login and password. 

(2)Secondly, ALWAYS check the address bar in the top of your browser.  Does the address look correct?  Is it a secure site using “https” instead of the normal “http”?  These are indicators that you need to look for, and must make yourself aware of.

These new scams are called “phishing” sites (pronounced fishing), basically because they “fish” for your information.  Surprising as it may seem, when they put out tens of thousands of e-mails, they actually manage to scam some people and steal their ID and various accounts, even if only temporarily.  It’s enough to do damage, and can happen to anyone, anywhere.  The new watchword is caveat emptor: surfer beware!

I’ve been told that technological knowledge is doubling every 18 months these days.  That’s pretty funny when I crack the case on a PC and see the same basic architecture and parts that I’ve been looking at for years.  Oh, sure, they’ve definately gotten faster.  But have we really advanced all that much?

It’s taken us twenty-five years to go from a 3-8Mhz PC running 1 MB of RAM, w/ NO hard drive (at least not an internal one, maybe 20 MB external) to a machine that has the computing power of the Cray-1 or more computing power than whatever we used to supposedly send man to the moon.

Come on, give me a break.  The real question is, where do we go from here?

It’s been raining so much lately that I’ve thought about building a boat.  Really, on a technical note, when it rains here, we experience issues with our DSL service.  You see, DSL stands for Digital Subscriber Line, and it basically runs on the same lines your phone company installs, but on the extra pair. 

So what happens when it rains?  Well, here at the Mickey Mouse Telephone Company, somewhere, the lines get damp.  The moisture in the connection lends itself to massive amounts of static, which leads not only to poor phone service, but also degradation of the DSL service as well.

So what gives?  Who knows … but for now, that’s what I have to deal with.

Whenever someone calls me for advice because their computer is “running slow” I always cringe.  This is because usually the culprit is a crap load of spyware running in the background, in addition to the ever-present fragmented file system on their hard drive.

It is like checking the oil on a car.  I had a friend once who bought a brand new car.  After about a year, I asked him how it was holding up.  He said it was great, and he had no problems while putting over 20K miles on the car.  I asked him when the last time he had the oil changed was, and he said “you really have to do that?  I had no idea.  Never been done!”.  Incredible, I know.

Well, people not cleaning up the spyware on their computer and running defrag is the same way.  It’s unbelievable in this age of oowey-GUI and user-friendly OS, that anyone would not be able to do these tasks on their own.  But, then again, that helps keep me in the business.

I guess I may not be joining the ranks of the TV repair man and the Maytag repair man just yet.