Free Computer Consultant ………. Daily Insights

There are a number of reasons to shop and buy online, in no particular order:

• Don’t have to leave home, can do it in your underwear at 3am if you want
• Easy to compare prices, including tax & shipping
• You can save money - by increased selection of merchants and many times no sales tax. Shipping costs may negate savings of sales tax but many online vendors know the value of the words “free shipping” when competing for sales
• You can benefit from reviews written by previous customers
• Easy to compare products

But one thing that you should consider when shopping and buying online: did you go to a local retailer first to pick their brain or “touch and feel” the product?

The Bible says that a worker is due his wages. If you find a local retailer to be helpful or you feel you could not have made the decision without seeing the product, then do the right thing and buy from them even if the cost is higher.

The same goes for a website. If one particular website was the most helpful far and above the others, don’t go back to the site with the lowest price and buy from them. Don’t reward a merchant with a poor website, reward the one who has put forth the effort.

And in the flavor of my blog post of earlier today Moving The Free Line - Part 1, don’t begrudge someone their commission either. There is nothing wrong with someone going to the trouble to review or promote a product in some way and being paid for their effort. Presuming, that is, that their effort was of value to you.

Note, that after writing that post earlier, I realized that this website did not have a disclosure policy, an oversight I have corrected. (More recent websites that I have started I have included a disclosure policy as I learned about website “required” pages. - thanks Jeremy!) Again, the emphasis is on value; if someone helped you, you shouldn’t mind helping them.

A personal anecdote in this regard of buying online versus buying locally is in order. I recently took my family to the local Best Buy (I cringe just walking in) to look at Apple iMacs since we don’t have an Apple store within a 3 hour drive and gas is almost $4 a gallon. Best Buy is the only store in our area that claims any Apple product on hand.

What I found was a table of product on display that had the look and feel of a garage sale. The Mac AirBook looked like it was well used and abused. The actual iMacs were absent from the table. A somewhat arrogant but helpful young lad explained that someone had intentionally closed the lid with the mouse on top of the keyboard and destroyed the screen of each of the two display models.

“Don’t you have any more we could look at?” I queried.

“No,” he answered, “but we should have those back in about 10 days or so, we had to send them in for repair”.

Gee, don’t you suppose Best Buy can afford to put some other units out for display - possibly even ones that look attractive to buy and own? Yes, I understand damage happens, some people aren’t nice.

But how many sales do you suppose they lose in the 2 to 3 week time period they had no product on display? How many sales do you suppose they lose because the display product looks beat up?

My business philosophy is this: “Do it right or don’t do it at all”. In my humble opinion, Best Buy should put away the garage sale table and quit selling Macs.

I happen to have business interest in a website that is an Apple affiliate and I could make a commission (albeit small) if I bought an iMac through that website. But if Best Buy had attractive product on hand for my wife to try out and fall in love with, chances are we would have brought one home that day.

If we ever buy an Apple laptop, we will probably buy online instead of buying locally.

I am very happy to announce that I now have a help and support forum for those who want to contact me directly with a question or request for help.

This forum will replace my helping people via email and comments on YouTube videos.

• Now everyone can benefit from my helping an individual
• YouTube doesn’t allow links, the forum does; links make it much easier to point someone to a helpful site, page or download
• The search feature will allow users to sometimes find their answer immediately

Please feel free to reply to others if you have an answer or suggestion that is useful.

Visit the New Forum Now!

If eBay were a person I’m sure it would that the rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated. Here is what I mean.

As an auction site, eBay is hitting the skids. More and more activity on eBay is just stores with Buy It Now buttons.

I think the reasons are these:

• The novelty of the auction system has worn off
• eBay has jacked around the sellers so much recently with rule changes
• eBay has increased fees significantly since starting
• About the only way to sell much is to have a merchant account with PayPal, so now they take a cut too
• Shipping costs have sky rocketed thanks to this country’s lack of a comprehensive energy plan
• Other auction sites have sprung up to try to get a piece of the action
• People want it now

Personally, I have found that selling perfectly good computer components on eBay is hardly worth the trouble anymore. You have to start the bid at $0.99 in order to get bidding started, then a single bidder can walk away with the item for that price and I’m left having to package it up and take it to the Post Office or FedEx and stand in line to ship it off.

If you want to make sure and not let it go for $0.99, you can set a reserve; but eBay soaks you plenty for that option. And if it doesn’t hit your reserve price you’re out the money anyway.

Any kind of auction takes bidders, and eBay just doesn’t seem to have them like they used to.

Maybe a stalled economy will change that some.

Check out uBid.com

Or go to eBay

Use Free Classified Ads to Buy or Sell Anything

Please post a comment with your thoughts or experiences with eBay

Free software is free, but they usually want you to buy their paid version. If the free version makes you mad, how likely are you to buy the full version?

I have long used FoxIt Reader for PDF’s to replace the agonizingly slow Adobe Acrobat Reader. But I really get ticked off when I want to open a PDF and have to wait for it to check for updates. If you cancel the check, the program locks up; restart it and it checks again. Gotta wait for it.

Can you turn off the auto update feature? Heck no, only in good software programs can you do that. This latest version, 2.3, even has the annoyance of showing the bookmarks side panel at startup. You can turn it off, but exit FoxIt and come back in and there it is again. I almost never use bookmarks.

You could say I’m cheap, but what if I told you I own the full version of Adobe Acrobat Standard? I just can’t stand waiting for it to load 6 zillion plugins before it opens up a simple PDF.

Anyone from FoxIt reading?

I think it’s the current version of Windows Installer. Microsoft has never been known for cleaning up after themselves after installs, but come on, guys.

Every time I do anything that involves Windows Installer I have all of these language .bin files left behind in my temp folder (which for me is C:\Temp, nice and easy to get to - not C:\Documents and Settings\%UserProfile%\Local Settings\Temp).

These files are, to name a few,  Turkish.bin, Norwegian.bin, Hungarian.bin, Hebrew.bin; useless files for an American speaking English thank you very much.

Some poor, understaffed, not-too-bright software publishing company I might give a pass to, but Microsoft? How many of you still have directories on C: root that look like a random character string? Those are probably from a “much needed” XML Parser update.

Happy Pet Peave day.

Webpreneurs, those who make a living on the web, seem to live and die by Alexa rankings. A very popular site will have a low ranking, say, less than 250,000. An extremely popular site maybe down under 50,000 (those people can make a nice living with a site like that).

Those of us with new sites tend more toward 1 million and up. A few months ago, my FreeComputerConsultant.com was sub 800,000 and I was pretty happy with that. Since then, traffic to my site has increased, but my Alexa ranking has tanked. So I got to wondering: “how does Alexa know?”. Without having a hook in every major internet router or a bug in every single site, how can they tell how many visitors, how many pages, etc? They don’t even agree with Google on sites linking in, and that info is available with a web crawler.

The answer, from Alexa’s own site, seems to be that the Alexa toolbar loaded in volunteer users browsers will phone home with the data. So, that isn’t even as scientific as a Nielsen rating for TV shows. But get this - the toolbar is for Internet Explorer only, doesn’t work for Firefox! Yet, sites like mine SCREAM at visitors to use Firefox instead of IE. And since 40% of my users are using Firefox or another browser, NOT IE, certainly none of those visits are counted. Nor can Alexa tell what percentage of visitors to my site are using IE in order to mathematically make and adjustment.

So I thought, hey, let’s give it a try. I attempted to load the Alexa toolbar in Internet Explorer on my PC. Won’t install. Finally I get a message from Trend Micro that Alexa is spyware and it’s blocking it for me. How hard am I supposed to try in order to get this toolbar loaded?

Without going on and on in a rant here, does anyone else see the problem? Does anyone else wonder why Alexa carries the weight it does?

If I’m missing something here, perhaps completely off base, PLEASE fill me in by commenting to this post.

Otherwise, if you do have IE, would you mind loading the Alexa toolbar and heading over to my FreeComputerConsultant.com website and browse around for a while? Thanks in advance.

This advice was passed on to me by my wife who read it in a magazine. Flat panels should apply here as well. The old CRT screens I always said “Windex and a Kleenex”, but flat panels don’t do as well with that at all. And the cleaners at the office supply store haven’t impressed me yet.

Rule #1, never blow compressed air at a screen, particles can actually get embedded in the screen from the force of the air.

Rule #2, if possible, test on a screen you care little about (or maybe someone else’s? - just kidding!).

Rule #3, check your warranty first. I recently bought a new monitor for someone whose son had hit a hardball in the house, bounced off the fridge, then smacked the 19″ flat panel - not breaking it per se, but leaving a black spot in the image. I asked her about the warranty, from Dell, she said “no way”. After we bought the monitor, however, she double checked and sure enough, she had “completecare” which DID cover accidental damage. She resold the new monitor to a friend.

This tip they claim actually will clean ink off of a screen:

Make a solution of one part 90% isopropyl alcohol and one part distilled water. Wet a cotton swab with the solution and gently dab the stain; don’t have the solution dripping. Then wipe dry with a soft cloth.

They say DON’T use window cleaners or citrus based anything. And don’t apply cleaner directly to the screen.

Reason #7 to backup your computer. Ok, I made up the #7 thing, but don’t the guys on TV commercials make it up too?

When you take your laptop or desktop PC in to be repaired, make sure you have a good backup of it. Preferably an entire drive image with a product like Acronis True Image.

And this same advice goes when you or someone you have trusted your computer to might reach for a system recovery disk or boot to system recovery mode.

Your entire hard drive will be reformatted and all data and Windows customizations will be lost! Let me repeat that: you will lose everything. All data, all programs you have installed, all songs you have downloaded. Everything.

Unless you have a backup.

Now, with the system recovery, this is indisputable. It’s gone. You need to restore data and reinstall additional programs you have added when it’s all done. If you have no backup…

When you take the laptop or PC into the repair shop, or they come to you, you might fare better. But don’t bet your data on it!

Case in point: Client bought a new HP/Compaq laptop for his son. Pretty nice unit, actually. Got a good price at boogie buy. The latch broke. Couldn’t get the laptop cover open. This particular PC came with XP Home and I upgraded it to XP Pro for him, among other enhancements. Took it in for repair. Thank you very little they not only fixed the latch, but also reformatted the hard drive. What? Procedure, I am told. In their defense, that way they know the PC will work properly when it gets home; without having to clean off viruses and malware which might cause the customer to blame them.

What if your computer isn’t operating, and that’s why you need to get it repaired? (Or the latch is broken.) You can’t backup then can you?

Ah, grasshopper, that’s why you make backup a habit before you shut the machine down.

Remember this tip: whenever you shut your computer off, or even reboot it, there is a chance it will not come back up properly.

So backup first!

See here for more on computer backup.

One Laptop Per Child is a non profit organization whose goal is to give children in developing countries access to computer technology. It’s a noble goal.

These laptops, with wireless but without hard drive, are designed to be easy to use and help these under privileged people gain access to the worlds prosperity.

The laptops have a rechargeable battery but can be powered also by a car battery or a hand crank.

I think this is fantastic, with one exception. That exception is the United States. The One Laptop Per Child program specifically excludes the under privileged in the United States.

As a person who is well aware of some of the rural, maybe a bit backward, areas of this country where people applaud the opening of a Super Walmart so they have access to a $9/hr job, even though statistics show that Super Walmarts are long term detrimental to the economic well being of their county, I ask “Why?”

Why is it that what’s good for the rest of the worlds poor isn’t good for our poor? Our poor only get hand outs from the government when they can coalesce into a large enough voting block to get some politicians notice. And that usually only happens in the inner city.

If the laptop only costs $100 to make due to mass production, then our poor should have access at $100 too.

Your opinion counts, please add it.

It may seem odd for me to be writing about this topic, and it’s more than just the connection between the name “Tech” and what I do for a living.

The reason I wanted to write this post was that I am a big fan of Bruce Schneier’s work (his world renowned security blog is here) and I recently finished reading his book Beyond Fear which deals with exactly these types of tragedies.

The particular areas that he discusses are our reaction and any change in our behavior because of them:

• Take ourselves or our kids out of college
• Start wearing kevlar
• Carry a gun (legally or otherwise)

and the actions that may or may not be taken by the proper authorities to prevent such happenings in the future:

• Tighten campus security, possibly limiting student freedom of movement, etc.
• Place restrictions on foreigners living in the U.S.
• Further erode freedoms of all citizens with increased gun laws, etc.

Schneier evaluates such reactions and explains what is rational and what isn’t.

For instance, with regard to taking your kids out of college to avoid the risk of being in another incident (copycat or otherwise - 3 colleges on alert today), he examines the actual statistics and probabilities of such an occurrence affecting one individual; thus putting the danger in perspective.

Now most of his analogies have relevance to terrorism, which the Virginia Tech massacre apparently was not. But the thought process is the same. Examine the risk, take reasonable precautions against it, then live life normally within that framework.

From the authorities side, Schneier does a brilliant job of outlining exactly what criteria government should take in determining law or policy changes to prevent future tragedies; clearly describes the errors that government usually makes in these cases; and even gives a rational as to why they sometimes are forced to do things that make no sense and do not increase safety whatsoever.

Since Bruce is a computer security expert by trade, he also covers such topics as internet banking safety and other digital concerns as well. His expertise is clear, however, when he applies the same strategic thought process when evaluating any threat, electronic or otherwise.

Overall it’s an excellent read for anyone concerned with safety and security in a post 9/11 world.

Buy Beyond Fear at Amazon