Avoid PC Matic

Posted by Brian Haines on Nov 2, 2011 in Computers | 0 comments

I am sure this advertisement didn’t fool anyone. The TV commercial promises to completely and magically heal everything that could possibly be wrong with your computer. It even saves the gentleman from going to the store and the lady gets to go to girls night – all because of PC Matic. Wow!

Get real!

CNET’s download.com had four+ stars for this product as rated by users, but

Secure Passwords

Posted by Brian Haines on Oct 31, 2011 in Computers | 2 comments

In the last several days two people that I know had their email hacked and everyone in the address book was sent a link which I have no doubt would infect the computer if followed. Please, right now, create a strong password policy for yourself and implement it with your email. Especially if that email is associated with Yahoo! as both of these were (one was an @yahoo.com and the other an @bellsouth.net provided by Yahoo!).

A quick way to create a secure password…

Scam Alert: MyCleanPC.com

Posted by Brian Haines on Aug 2, 2011 in Computers | 0 comments

I regularly remove viruses and spyware from Windows PCs. It is unfortunate that there are so many infections for Windows computers, but it is a Windows world for the most part and so we have to protect and clean our computers as best we can.

What is worse than the infections themselves are some of the programs or Websites that prey on people’s desperation when their computer is not performing properly. Sites claiming to speed up your PC or clean your PC might

Backup, backup, backup!

Posted by Brian Haines on Jul 4, 2011 in Computers | 0 comments

Why should I backup my computer(s)?

Hard drives fail. That is it, plain and simple. They don’t need a reason to fail, a certain percentage of hard drives are going to fail at some point in their life and in most cases there is no advanced warning. Everything that you store on a computer hard drive should exist also on one or more backup locations, otherwise you are at risk of data loss.

Hard Drives Fail

If you are a business the impact is obvious and can be expensive. The loss of days, months even years of work can be devastating. Most businesses have computer consultants that will suggest backup strategies and professionally implement them. (Brian Haines 954-434-1968)

The home user is often left on their own and unsure of what to do. Maybe they think they don’t need a backup because their data isn’t as important. Then a hard drive crash and all the pictures you have taken for years are gone! This is very heartbreaking and unless you stored your photos in Web Albums using Picasa or a similar service they are lost forever.

What to backup to?

So you need to backup, but how, and to what? Well a simple and inexpensive solution is backup to a local external hard drive. There is the one-time purchase of the drive and it often comes with

What is a Web Browser

Posted by Brian Haines on Mar 13, 2011 in Computers | 0 comments

Okay, I came across this today and decided to simply share. To some of us who do more than just use computers it seems so obvious, but in my work I frequently find myself explaining to people what a Browser is. This short video does the subject justice: