New computer or not

I am the owner of a computer repair shop in Meyers lake plaza in Canton ohio. http://insta-tek.com for more info. I have been doing IT for 15 years now. I hear people tell me all the time they need a new computer. I have collected some information that you should know.

Most people only use about 1/4 of what their computer is capable of. What does this translate into? You may be spending a lot more on a computer than you actually need.

Hard drive - this is storage. Think of it like a filing cabinet. The bigger the more things you can fit in it. Hard drive space. Just about every new computer comes with at least 500gb of hard drive space. Any sales rep will try and tell you that for just a little more money you can upgrade to 1tb or higher. I personally have never seen a regular user come into my shop with over 200gb worth of data on their hard drive. I will get a user that has more every once in a while but not that often. You can store lots of movies/mp3s/pictures on a hard drive with 500gb of storage.

RAM - or Memory. Your computer can only use information stored in RAM. Your hard drive is too slow to use for this. EVERY program takes up RAM. Windows XP uses about 75-100mb of RAM to boot up. Vista - around 500. Then every program will need more and more. The more you have the better. There is overkill though. MOST normal users for XP 1gb of RAM is plenty. VISTA you need about 2-3gb of RAM. Windows 7 is about the same as VISTA although windows 7 can run faster than VISTA with less RAM. 2-3gb is where you should be.

Processor - This is the brain of your computer. Just like the animal kingdom has many types of brains so do computers. There are 2 major players in the Processor field. Intel and AMD. AMD is pretty easy to figure out. A 3200 processor is slower than a 5000 processor. Intel is a little more difficult to figure out so I am going to take some time here.

Intel has several different lines of processors. I am going to jump back in time just a little to fill in some blanks you would have if I just skipped to today. Intel released the Pentium processor. I am sure you have heard of it. What you probably don't know is that the same time the Pentium was released they also had out the Celeron processor. Now a 2.4 Ghz Celeron processor is NOT as fast as a 2.4 Ghz Pentium processor. The Celeron is a lower end processor. It's like buying a car that comes with either the 4cyl engine and a 6cyl engine. There is a big difference. As far as I can remember I have never seen a commercial for Intel advertising the Celeron processor. With that in mind I see about 50% of the computers that come into my shop with Celeron processors. Why you ask? Celerons were cheaper to buy. Most people would go into a store and see 2 comptuers both 2.4 Ghz and 1 of them was $100 cheaper. So they buy it.

In todays market Intel has once again mixed things up. They now have the I3, I5, I7 and the I9 is on the way. Again if you think about it like a car. You can go buy the exact same car with different engines in them. The I3 is the 4cyl and the I7, I9 is the 12cyl Lambourgini version.

So what does all this have to do with buying a new computer? A quick (very quick) look on bestbuy.com shows the following.

Toshiba Satellite Intel® Celeron® processor 900; 3GB DDR3 memory; 6-cell lithium-ion battery; DL DVD±RW/CD-RW drive; 15.6" widescreen; 250GB hard drive; Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

Cost - $349.99

New! Toshiba - Satellite Laptop / Intel® Core™ i5 Processor / 15.6" Display / 4GB Memory / 640GB Hard Drive - Slate

Cost - 1,149.99

See the difference here? 1 more gb of RAM .. not that big of a deal RAM is VERY inexpensive. Hard drive is bigger.. but do you REALLY need that space? Heres the biggest difference.. we jumped from a celeron processor to an I5. That is the only differences listed on the site. I would hope the more expensive one would have a better warranty but I would not hold my breath.

So when purchasing a new computer keep these things in mind. Also keep in mind that when you got your current computer. You were amazed at how fast it was. Did your computer needs change since then? Probably not. You are more than likely doing the exact same things now as you were 5 years ago. So why dump a ton of money into that new computer??? Maybe just a little cleaning and tune up for $40 - $75 would get you by for a while.

If you have any questions and you are in the Canton Ohio area stop in and ask. I don't sell computers so I have no reason to try and talk you into the $1200 computer with $400 in extras.

Check us out http://insta-tek.com

What are the risks of using Facebook Myspace and other social sites

I have been asked this 100 times over recently. I have read many many articles on the subject and with my own experiences. I think I have a few tips for users.

1. Social site accounts are VERY easily hacked. Just because your "friend" sends you a link or posts something on your "Wall" does not mean they actually sent it to you. Their account could have been compromised and an attacker could have sent the link to you. NEVER click on links emailed, IM'ed, or posted to you. There are several ways for attackers to hide where the link is actually going. You could very well be clicking on a link that is going to install something malicious on your computer.

2. Hide your account information from those who are not on your "friends list". I like to give this reason for an example. I had a user ask me if it was safe for her 18 year old daughter to use myspace. All I asked her was he daughters name. I googled for her name. The first link showed me her place of employment. This was a hair cutting solon. I found her hours that she worked from that site. I then looked for her on myspace. I found her account and pictures of her and her car. Just 2 minutes of searching now allows a violent type person to know that she works till 10:00pm on Tuesday nights. That person also knows what kind of car she drives what she looks like and her name. They also "know" lots of her friends. This is a bad combination.

3. A recent study (although I have friends that work at temp agencies and have known about this for years) shows that 70% of Human Recourse departments use the internet to "check up" on prospect employees and have admitted that they have rejected potential applicants due to "Life style concerns", inappropriate comments, unsuitable pictures and videos. This is even before you go in for the interview! It's hard enough in this economy to find a job. You don't want to post or be "tagged" in a photo of you doing something that someone might consider wrong.

2010 Computer Resolutions

I have been trying to figure out what resolutions I am making this year. I figured my computer resolutions would be the easiest so I will do those first.

1. Upgrade my computer - I have a DELL Dimension e520 It's been a good little machine for the past 3 years but I want a newer faster computer. What I am looking at is the best "Bang for the Buck" This is usually an AMD processor. Everyone Knows Intel but AMD is right up there with them. In fact in most peoples opinion AMD has always made a better chip. I ran Intel chips for many years and switched to AMD when I bought my DELL. I want a quad core phenom. Every processor has a core. This is the "Brain" portion of the processor. Intel and AMD now have multi-core processors. This allows your computer to do more thinking. Making your computer faster. I have no need for the Intel i7 processors. They are a bit overkill for what I do. I am not a hard core gamer so an AMD Phenom quad-core will do just fine.

2. Purchase more flash drives. If you call them flash drive, thumb drive, pen drive or something else. I would tell you to get as many as you can hold. I currently have 4 @ 4gb, 1 @ 16gb and 1 @ 32gb flash drives. The 4gb drives are for the shop http://Insta-TEK.com, The others are for personal data. They are great for backups of your pictures and what ever else you want to store. In the 6 months in 2009 that Insta-TEK was open. I recovered over 10 damaged hard drives to get customers images back for them. BACKUP PEOPLE!

3. RAM RAM RAM All of my personal computers need more RAM. My wifes computer has 1gb and the kids have 786mb. Both run Windows XP. I want at least 2 gb of ram on both computers. RAM will make your computer faster better than anything else you can do. Here is MY recommendations for RAM for the "Normal" Computer user. Power users will need more.

• Windows XP at least 1gb of RAM
• Windows Vista at least 3gb of RAM
• Windows 7 at least 3gb of RAM
• Ubuntu at least 2gb of RAM

4. Setup a NAS server at the shop. NAS stands for Network Attached Storage. Basically it's a computer that sits on your network that does nothing but hold files. FreeNAS is a FreeBSD (Linux) based NAS server. It has a ton of features like streaming audio/video so if you have an Xbox360 or PlayStation3 you can connect to it and play your movies over your TV. It has a built in webserver. It also handles Torrents. I want to put in 2 @ 1tb hard drives. Thats 1024 GB of storage. The drives will be mirrored. That means if 1 drive dies the other still has a copy of the data. This will hold my MP3's and all my important work documents.

5. Start a new training session at the Insta-TEK. I have had over 50 people attend my 4 week long classes. I have 1 more 4 week long class I want to do. Then I want to pick a day of the week and hold a different class from 6-8pm every week. I want to cover things like Ebay, Google, Torrents and much much more. Keep an eye out on our site here for updates on when the classes will be and what we will be covering.

6. Keep up with this blog. I started off good and have slowly fell into a slump on it.