Free Computer Consultant ………. Daily Insights

I was reading this morning an article by some respected PC Guru’s about Driver Update programs. They led off warning readers not to be scammed by a product called Driver Update 5 which essentially does nothing for you.

The premise to all of this, although unstated, is that you need to keep abreast of driver updates for your computer’s hardware in a similar fashion that you need to keep your software updated.

I disagree with that premise.

Unless you enjoy the prospect of seeing the dreaded Blue Screen of Death on your Windows computer my recommendation is the same as in many areas of life:

If it works, don’t fix it.

If for some reason you feel your computer would benefit by updating certain drivers, my recommendation is to go the manufacturer of the computer (Dell, Gateway, local PC shop) and get the drivers from them. Hopefully you will get the right ones that way.

And before I go any farther, before attempting ANY update of this sort BACKUP YOUR COMPUTER!

This particular article did recommend a couple of free driver update programs, but the one they get the best review to apparently couldn’t handle the traffic today and I was unable to even bring their site up.

What they did mention is that these free products, which offer a paid version as well - naturally, typically will pollute your PC with InstaCrap (a new term I have coined to represent the installation of software, by default, unless you take action to prevent it, that is not related to what you are trying to install and probably shouldn’t want). So beware always when installing software to UNCHECK the InstaCrap boxes for the toolbars, installers and whatevers that they want to clog up your computer with.

And trust no company, it seems like everyone has jumped on the InstaCrap bandwagon.

And, remember, when it comes to updating drivers, “if it works, don’t fix it”.

The original Asus Eee PC was spectacular hit. Most people, however, wanted more power, longer battery life and a larger solid state storage drive. Many wanted to install Windows besides.

Now it’s here! The ultimate in an ultra portable PC.

The new Asus Eee 901 PC, which comes in white or ebony, has all of that. The Asus Eee 901 is based on the new Intel Atom CPU, has 1GB RAM, 802.11n wireless, bluetooth, 10/100 lan, webcam, 12GB SSD drive, 8.9″ (1024 x 600) WSVGA display, hi-def speakers and mic, MMC/SD slot and it only weighs 2.4 pounds.

This machine is packed full of features and has Windows XP Home preinstalled. Thanks to the new Intel Atom architecture it can boast a battery life of 4 - 8 hours instead of the typical 3 hours of the original Eee PC.

When the first Eee PC debuted I thought it was just a bunch of hype and that it would die down. It never did. In fact, entire online communities sprung up around the Eee PC and what you could do with it.

Now with the 901 version of the Eee, Asus has added about every feature that users hungered for in the first edition.

You won’t find much competition on the price, it’s pretty set at $599. What you will be looking for is availability.

One of my favorite vendor’s is Buy.com, they are offering the Eee PC 901 with free shipping - when in stock! You can place your order and they will ship it as soon as it’s in.

Asus Eee 901 PC - ebony

You may have heard the story of Raelyn Campbell, the woman who took her laptop back to Best Buy for warranty work and sued for $54 million after Best Buy finally admitted they lost it.

Sounds like Raelyn Campbell bought a $1100 laptop with a $300 extended service plan (because the laptop only came with an unacceptable 1 year warranty).

I have written about this so many times, discussed it face to face with clients, friends and (now enemies) thousands more times.

Forrest Gump: “Cheap is as Cheap Does”. Stay away from big box stores like Best Buy when buying computer hardware. And don’t buy ANY computer, laptop or monitor without a 3 year warranty (caveat: you are running for public office and the whole operation goes away in November).

I’m not positive if the $1100 was with or without the warranty, but 300 divided into 1400 or 300 divided into 1100 is a big percentage either way. I’m guessing that she could have bought a GOOD laptop (one where the power switch would never break) from Dell, with a 3 year warranty, for less. (Especially if she had my eBook “How to Save 8 - 16% Buying Dell Online”). Toss in a little extra and she could have completecare coverage that covers your own screw ups, like dropping it.

So she bought wrong, probably didn’t know any better.

Here’s the real story: Best Buy was going to fix her laptop in 2 to 6 WEEKS!

You must be kidding me! Dell would have a technician at your home or office the next business day! The laptop wouldn’t even leave your sight. No identity theft that way.

How about the lost data? Don’t feel sorry for her. It is the users responsibility to have their data backed up at all times. You never know when you have turned your computer on for the last time. See Computer Backup.

The reason I push Dell Computer is because of the service. But you still have to BUY THE RIGHT COMPUTER IN THE FIRST PLACE! I’m here to help with that.

See these links:

Dell Computer Review

For everyone who forgets how to enter diagnostic mode on a Dell Laptop, hold down the <Fn> key while you press the power button to turn it on. Once you see “diagnostics” on the screen, you can stop pressing the key.

A client had a very usable, but a bit out of date Compaq workstation; P4 2.8Ghz. But the integrated video was inadequate to handle Dual Monitors - naturally.

Unfortunately, this PC only had PCI slots, no AGP, so I was forced to buy a new video card (I have a couple of used AGP cards that were up to the task on my shelf which I would have given him). I chose a BFG Tech card from one of my favorite retailers, NewEgg.com, who happen to be on my recommended vendors list.

No matter what I tried, I just couldn’t get the 2nd display to do more than 800×600 in 16 colors - not only gross but unusable.

So I placed a call to BFG Tech, which has 7×24 service - this was on a Saturday morning. After a 20 minute hold, a technician came on the phone, asked my name, phone number and problem. I gave him my name and callback number, which he verified.

As I began describing the problem, the line went dead! I waited a short while for a callback and none came. This doesn’t speak too well of BFG’s Tech Support.

At this point I had wasted over an hour and it was time to call it quits. So I removed the BFG PCI card and informed the client that dual monitors just weren’t going to happen on this PC.

Here comes the good part: In less than 5 minutes I had received an RMA for refund from NewEgg.com via their website.

Now that’s service. I highly recommend NewEgg.com for hardware and software purchases.

What timing! I just released my new eBook “One Secret That Will Save You 8 - 16% Buying a Dell Online” the other day, charging only $15 for it. (Contact me on my website contact form to get it.)

I just hung up the phone. My Dell sales rep called me and 100% validated one of the two bonus secrets in the ebook.

I love it when a plan comes together.

Asus is my favorite motherboard to use for build your own computers. Tech support has generally been pretty good, but once in a while…

When the P5LD2 Deluxe board came out, it “supported” the Pentium “D” processor at 3.0Ghz, but not with the BIOS that shipped with it. The machine wouldn’t even POST. So how do you upgrade a BIOS in a PC that won’t boot up?

One way is to call Asus BIOS department and give them $5 for a new BIOS. That worked a couple of times, then they started sending me BIOS’s that didn’t work. I don’t know if they were defective or just had old code in them, and when I called they would send me another. But twice I went through about 4 of these before I got a good one. Eventually the boards started shipping with the right BIOS.

Another way is to throw away money on a lower grade processor (that I wouldn’t want otherwise) that the old BIOS does support, boot the machine, upgrade the BIOS, then change processors. I’m too cheap to spend $200 or so for a BIOS upgrade only processor.

The third way is to have 1 machine that does boot, extract the BIOS while the machine is running (carefully!) and put in the BIOS that won’t work (carefully!) and upgrade it. Unfortunately, Asus put a chassis fan connector right up against the BIOS socket which makes it tough to get the proper tool on it.

This problem essentially resolved itself a year or year and a half ago. But I had to RMA a P5LD2 Deluxe a couple of weeks ago, and when I got the board back and it wouldn’t boot. If I took the memory out, I got the memory missing beeps, but it would not POST all assembled.

I called tech support and mentioned this old BIOS problem and was assured that since I got the missing memory beeps, that couldn’t be it. Probably bad memory. Wrong, works in another PC, etc.

Well the board is grounding on the case, take it out. Nope, I’m not gonna fall for that.

So I (carefully) grabbed a working BIOS, popped it the RMA board and viola (sp), it worked!

So I performed the “hot bios upgrade” mentioned above, and with the loss of only about 2 - 3 hours of time (argh!) it’s all working.

Ever notice that it takes 4 or 5 times longer to tell someone what they don’t want to hear than to tell them what they want to hear?

I had a conversation with a cheap (not inexpensive) Dell desktop computer owner today. He bought this “good deal” 13 months ago. It came with a 1 year warranty. It came with RAID 1 (mirrored hard drives) to help protect his data.

Sidenote: RAID 1 protects you if 1 hard drive dies. Period. If the controller goes bad gradually (bad thing, rather have it die outright), or if a hard drive just starts scrambling data, you will likely end up with either 2 hard drives of either mismatched garbage or matched garbage.

For $39, Dell helped him get the RAID array re-mirrored. 24 hours later, the array is again being reported as “degraded”, i.e., both drives not matched. Windows is locking up and certain program files are being reported as corrupted or “damaged”. Want to take a guess what his data files are like?

The user tells me all of this, then carefully explains what error messages his browser reports when surfing a local news website. It takes 15 minutes to tell him to quit worrying about Windows until he has the hardware working solidly.

I tell him that after he gets the hardware repaired and squared away - I recommend he ask Dell for an extended service contract, they might do it at 13 months - he will likely have to reload Windows from the Dell Recovery CD that came with his PC. A Windows Repair install is probably not even a good idea at this point.

Oops. This was one of those “today only” super specials (that you can get every day) and, in order to offer such a good deal, Dell decided they couldn’t afford the 39 cents it would cost them to include a recovery CD.

I’ve said before, I say again, there are few reasons not to get a 3 year warranty on computer hardware:

• You pride yourself on being penny wise and pound foolish
• You are using the PC’s to run a political campaign and the election is less than 1 year from now
• Your doctor gives you less than 1 year to live and you have no heirs
• Your wealth makes Bill Gates and Warren Buffet look like middle class citizens

Think about it. The (r)e-tailer thinks so highly of the product that they are only willing to stand behind it for a year. Why should you think it will last longer than that?

If you buy right and your needs change little (my clients still use Microsoft Office 2000) that PC you buy today should cover your needs for at least 3 years. My clients typically get 5 - 8 years from PC’s.

I could fill a book with stories of computer hardware that had a 1 year warranty that died after 13 months. The name Gateway stands out in this category but Dell would find its name there too.

Don’t buy without a 3 year warranty. If you do, please don’t call me when it pukes after 13 months.

I had reader contact me with this question:

I am buying a laptop for the first time and have been looking at the Dell XPS M1330. The only thing is once you start getting the specs up it starts getting quite expensive. I was hoping that maybe you could tell me if this is one of those systems that you can upgrade yourself easily without voiding warranty and for a cheaper price like my friends MacBook.

Here is my response:

You are absolutely correct, adding the good stuff drives the price up.

I can’t think of too many ways to scrimp on price and upgrade later. Upgrading processors in laptops never seems to be economical; RAM is about the only thing you can add later.

If you can live in the Mac world, I have never heard of an unhappy macbook buyer. I live in the PC world because the applications that my clients have always needed are spec’d on PC’s and Windows.

It truly is frustrating to see those cheap prices on Dell ads, but when you actually go to buy the product and make a few changes the price zooms upward.

All I can say is that if you buy right the first time, a laptop can serve you well for 3 - 4 years before you really become unhappy with it. My laptop is going on 3 1/2 years and still going strong.

I can’t say the same for an el cheapo unit that looks better in the glossy ad than it performs in person. I have seen too many of them go by the wayside after little more than a year of frustrating usage.

Please buy accordingly.

I had a Pentium 4 2.4 processor floating around that would only eBay for about $25. So I decided to see how little I could spend to turn it into a decent computer.

I found the Asus P4V8X-MX motherboard was feature packed and very inexpensive. 1 GB of memory from Crucial.com was less than $75. The SATA hard drive I had laying around had XP installed on it from an Asus P5B or P5L installation, not sure which, but surprised the heck out of me when it booted into windows with just a few drivers missing.

Since more and more of the problems I solve are regarding Windows Vista, I decided to see how Vista would fare on this board.

So I downloaded and ran the Windows Upgrade Advisor. After doing its thing, the advisor reported that it had encountered an error (thanks for all of that detail, Microsoft); and perhaps I should re-download the latest version (did it change in 15 minutes?) and try again.

Forget it. Install Vista anyway.

I booted with the Windows Vista Ultimate DVD (Dell OEM copy) and chose to install to a new partition. Wisely, I had only allocated about half of the 120GB disk to the Windows XP Pro installation.

With Vista, there really aren’t too many questions to answer during the install so I came back later to see how it was doing. I had to press the power button since it had gone to sleep waiting for me (fitting, as I have fallen asleep so many times waiting for Windows) but essentially it was all done.

The Asus P4V8X-MX board did not come with Vista drivers and I didn’t download any. Yet everything worked; no yellow exclamations in device manager; NIC, sound, and an old Asus GeForce MX 400 AGP video card all worked perfectly. The P4V8X-MX has video on the board making it a great value, but I figured AGP video with its own RAM would perform better - and the card was just gathering dust anyway.

So I guess my advice when Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor reports an error is to just go ahead anyway.

With one BIG caveat!:

I had backed up the PC first, even though I didn’t care about the XP install, with Acronis True Image software to a USB hard drive.

When I was done I now had a dual boot, Windows XP Pro, Windows Vista Ultimate, computer. Runs great on both.