Free Protection Programs

PC's are vulnerable to virus's, Mac's are not exempt, they are just less likely to be infected. Those who decide to create these monsters want to inflict chaos on as many systems as possible, so they spend their time targetting PC's since they are more pervasive. Luckily there are some good free Anti-Virus (AV) programs as well as those more elaborate Suites that you will pay for. Through my testing I have found that the free offerings are just as effective as the paid versions in fighting these rogue pieces of software. I have tried many of these free AV programs and my latest recommendation is Microsoft's Security Essentials. I have been using this one since it came out last year and have been very pleased with it. It seems to use minimum resources, updates itself just fine and it just works. Prior to Microsoft's latest entry I was using the free version of AVG. AVG was doing the job but I did have a couple of issues with their latest level of the product, first I had a problem with it looping and slowing down systems, this problem required a reinstall to fix. The other problem I have is lately AVG was popping up ads trying to get you to buy their paid version of their products, they have also made it harder to find and install the free version. I had no problem with AVG protecting my systems but the annoying factors convinced me to switch to MSE. So MSE is my recommendation, it can be found with a google search of MSE or at www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/

If you are not protected or have a paid AV program that is out of date and needs renewal, I suggest you uninstall it and install MSE for your piece of mind.

Organize, Print, Email & Edit your Pictures

Most everyone is doing digital pictures these days. High quality digital cameras are plentiful and reasonably priced, so now the challenge is organizing and distributing your pictures. That's where my next free program comes in. Picasa, offered free from Google, is a really good and easy program to use for most of your digital photo needs. Install it, let if find your pictures on your hard drive and it provides you with a slick interface to your digital treasures. Printing is a snap and Picasa also offers a variety of standard picture sizes (ie. 5x7, 8x10, etc) that it automatically resizes them to. A newer feature Picasa now has is facial recognition. Picasa scans all your photos and pics out faces, you identify them this allows you to easily retrieve all your photos with a particular person in them. This is really handy when trying to find a picture of a certain someone for a project or to email to someone. Emailing is also easy, Picasa will trim your picture down to a manageable size for emailling and off it goes! Check it out at http://picasa.google.com/ and let me know what you think!

Online Music at it’s Finest!

Ever wish your radio station only played music you liked. Well your wish is here! With Pandora, (http://www.pandora.com) you type in what your favorite artists and/or songs are and Pandora will play only songs of similar characteristics, all for free and minimal commercial interruption. Another handy feature is adding Pandora to your mobile device and listen on the go! I have turned several of my customers onto Pandora and have had nothing but rave reviews. Check it out and see what you think, cloud computing and a free app, what more can you ask for! Until next time…

Some of the best Home Computing programs are.....FREE!!!

Who says you need to spend a ton of money to get quality software? It may surprise you that there is some really good inexpensive and, well yes, free software packages out there that you may find very useful in your everyday lives. Now for every really good free software program, there are plenty of no so good ones. You need to be careful in picking which programs you download to try. I would suggest that you don't just search for FREE SOFTWARE, you see the evil doers that create virus's and spyware target these types of searches and just when you think you are downloading a good program, you are actually downloading a virus! So how do you get the best of these programs and remain safe? That's where I come in. In this blog I will update you on software programs that I have personally tried and tested and have found to be both safe and useful. I will be updating this list regularly, at least weekly, so check back every week and read my updates, give any of these programs a try. Let me and others know what you think of them in our iAboutTown.com Forum under the category Free or Inexpensive Software. I hope you enjoy trying these programs, if they seem like a function you would use, let our members know by posting your comments.

My first program is pretty cool. Most of my customers have some type of weather program running on their computers, many of which take up gobs of resources and try to get you to open windows to click on ads and other annoying things. This program is free and is very eye appealing. Check it out at http://yowindow.com/ and let us know what you think!

Cloud Computing

Ok, now that we all have high speed internet (right?....get with it!), the time has come to fully embrace “cloud computing”. Cloud Computing is a term that means many things to different people, but the main idea is applications and data reside in the “cloud” or internet. So how should you be using cloud computing? Chances are you already have been! If you use an email service, you are using cloud computing to an extent...and my recommendation is to use it to the fullest to gain the most advantages. Check back to read my “Where is your EMAIL?” post, coming soon for details....but now back to cloud computing. With the wide spread use high speed internet capabilities, you now have the ability to fully exploit applications such as webmail, online storage and backups, document creation, online calendaring, reminders and so much more with more to come as cloud computing is fully embraced. Many of my upcoming posts will explore some cloud computing applications, which ones are worth using and which ones are....not.

Check back soon........or catch my blog announcements on Twitter.

Until next time...........

Welcome

Welcome to the Home Computing Consultant’s blog. I have moved my blog to be hosted on blogger.com and have copied and updated some of my posts to keep pace with the technology changes that are rapidly occurring. For those who are not familiar with blogs, the main idea of a blog (weB LOG) is to provide a vehicle to post thoughts, comments, or just about anything to share with other users of the web. In this case, my HCC blog is mainly used to convey information to our customers and the community on Home Computing issues and will be updated weekly. In future posts I will be commenting and hopefully providing some educational information on computing topics of interest to help make your computing experiences more rewarding and enjoyable. Some of the topics on the agenda (in no particular order) are:

* Cloud Computing

* Computing Security
- Wireless Networking
- Firewall
- Anti-Virus
- Spyware
- Malware

* Email systems – Webmail vs Email Clients
- AOL
- Gmail
- Yahoo
- Optonline / Verizon
- Outlook / Outlook Express

* Web Browsers
- Internet Explorer
- Safari
- FireFox
- Chrome

* Free Software Downloads
- The Good ones!

* Backup your system(s)!

* PC vs MAC

These topics and more are planned. Don’t worry, they will be straight forward and in easy to understand terms, this is not meant for geeks, but more geared toward the novice home computer user, information you can use. I get a kick out of people when they describe themselves as computer illiterate. This simply is not true, if you can send and receive an email, your already are computer literate. Just because you don’t understand the inner workings of a computer doesn’t mean you are computer illiterate. Do you understand the inner workings of your cars engine and drive train? Does this mean you can’t drive? Do you understand how your TV and phone’s transmit images and voice to your homes? Does this mean you don’t know how to watch TV or call someone on a phone? You just need to understand how to use the devices to achieve a desired result, such as sending an email, or looking up a web page, or paying a bill online. Don’t let the technology scare you, if everyone did then we would all be huddled around the radio in the evenings....which may be better than some of the reality shows I have heard of lately.

Don’t forget to check back often and read my newest blog entry, I hope you enjoy them!

An easy way to ensure you don’t miss any of my blog entries is to follow me on Twitter, that’s hcomputing on Twitter! Until next time...........