Essential Maintenance Tips for your Computer

           The computer is one of the most important inventions to have taken place in the 20th century, which has grown over several decades contributing to the growth and changes in human learning and behavior. Today the computer is an essential part of human life without which they cannot do their day-to-day tasks.

           This amazing machine has made life easier for most people and contributed to their overall growth. Today almost all household have at least one computer but the most important question that arises here is, if the owner is concerned about the proper maintenance of the machine or not.

            Most people either fail or forget to properly maintain their computer from both internal and external threats that can seriously jeopardize the functioning of the machine. However, with just a few important tips you can effectively maintain your computer and can keep its functioning as good as ever.

Here are a few essential maintenance tips to keep your computer stable and in a perfect condition: 

1.)  Perform a disk clean up for maintaining the speed of your computer. Running regular disk clean up can clean your system of unnecessary data. This step can be done manually or by running the disk cleanup utility in Windows.

2.)  Running a registry cleaning software can relieve your system from obsolete and corrupt entries in the registry file. A clogged registry can severely hamper the performance of your system and can even cause it to crash. So, it is important to clean your Windows registry at regular intervals.

3.)  By using an Anti-Spyware program you can clean your system from malicious programs that intend to steal your data and cause your system to clog.

4.)  Viruses are one of the most common and serious threat to computers and using a good updated Anti-virus program will help your computer to rid itself from harmful viruses.

5.)  Lastly, you need to clear all un-important software installed on your computer as they cause a lot of trouble during the Windows startup process and make the process a rather clumsy one.

By following these simple steps you can effectively shield your computer from all internal and external threats.

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Prevention Measures Before Your Computer Gets Infected

There is nothing wrong with taking less than adequate measures to prevent a bigger damage to anything you treasure if you have financial or other constraints, as long as this is done temporarily over a short time.  Similar reasoning applies when it comes to computer security threats.

Unfortunately some (if not most) computer users tend to forget this.  They search on the internet for free computer security software which they dump into their computers and hope for the best.  Most of the free software developers consistently forget to inform the downloaders of the inadequacies of their software – and they are many and significant!

A simple search for free anti-spyware programs on any search engine yields significant results.  If we exclude genuine beta-software from these results, almost all of these anti-spyware programs operate on the principle – “Get infected first, then call us”.  In other words these programs are reactive.  They scan and destroy spyware as it’s found in the user’s computer.  The real downside of these programs is that they offer no real-time protection.  Are you surprised?  Maybe you’ve forgotten that “there’s no such thing as a free lunch!”

The big computer security software developers spend millions of dollars every year developing products that can quickly detect and destroy new computer security threats like spyware, adware, viruses, hacking techniques, Trojans, worms keyloggers etc...

Do you think the developers of free computer security software inject millions of dollars in order to bring users of their software regular software updates?  I think not!

Computer security software is such a critical purchase that I think one should actually buy the software before bringing home a new PC!

The most critical software that you should have in you PC is:

1. Firewall:
         To protect your PC from hackers and internal malware that maybe trying to “phone home”.

2. Spyware/Adware:
         To detect the “ETs” that are “phoning home” from your PC, endangering your sensitive information such as passwords, credit card numbers and other sensitive information.  These programs also use lots of your critical computer resources.  That’s why your computer is slow and crashing lately!

3. Anti-virus Software:
          These can either completely wipe out your critical data or render it or your computer useless.  The most dangerous thing is that you may end up (unaware!) being a source of the virus (e.g. through email or infected website pages).

Here are common-sense measures you can take to protect your PC:

1. E-mail – Avoid replying to chain letters.  Also be very careful of image attachment.  Hackers attach malicious JavaScript codes on these.

2. Regularly update your anti-virus definitions by running the update function of your security software.

3. Before buying a computer security software or package make sure that it offers regular updates to keep up with new viruses, adware, spyware and other computer security threats.

Final Thoughts:
           I want to repeat what I said at the beginning of this article: There is nothing wrong in taking temporary security measures as far as your computer security is concerned (i.e. using free software/downloads).  What is wrong is forgetting that the measure was supposed to be over a temporary period in the first place.

Author Bio:

Msingathi is the owner of the Computer Security Resources Website.  The website is targeted at the computer user who wants the best computer security software to protect against spyware, adware, viruses and to improve computer performance using registry cleaners.  Visit Msi’s websites at http://www.computer-security-resources.com and at http://www.computer-security-resources.biz

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Best Free Alternative To Microsoft Office

Anyone who ever priced the Microsoft Office Suite knows it represents a significant investment.

A quick check of the CompUSA.com website shows Microsoft Office Standard costs $399 and Microsoft Office Professional will set you back $449. Now, this doesn't discount the value of the software.

In fact, the functionality in MS Office represents the true workhorse of home and small business computing, namely: word processing (Word), spreadsheets (Excel), presentations (PowerPoint), and desktop database applications (Access).

However, with the cost for such functionality at a premium, it comes as no surprise that a viable alternative emerged to challenge Microsoft's position atop the office application market.

OpenOffice.org offers a suite of office software applications free to download for anyone with a computer, including PC's operating with Windows or Linux.

Open Office also offers a free version for Macintosh computers.

Open Office offers its software freely to anyone who wants to download it.

Their all-volunteer organization, sponsored in large part by Sun Microsystems, operates with the noble goal of making productivity software available worldwide in 36 languages, particularly to economies that simply can't afford the cost of other office solutions.

The Open Office software publishes in the Open Document Format to make data universally available (instead of using proprietary file formats that, for instance, make it hard to share between Microsoft Word and Word Perfect).

Open Office contains several main components, each of which help the user with specific tasks. They are as follows:

Writer:

This software offers a full-featured word-processing program enabling the user to type letters, brochures, faxes, even entire books. No matter what you need to type, this program lets you do it. It also offers such features as spell check, auto-correction, and thesaurus.

Calc:
It offers a spreadsheet program enabling the user to create cells containing text or digits, execute simple and complex calculations, database functions, and more. Calc is perfect for accounting spreadsheets, inventory and more.

Impress:
Impress enables the user to create "slideshow" presentations containing text and images for use in sales or group presentations. Impress also allows the user to create impressive slide transition effects and eye-catching animation.

Draw:
Draw gives the user the ability to create simple to complex drawings using vector graphics. Users can create drawings by hand, or incorporate an array of existing shapes, arrows, lines and other graphics.

Though it does represent an excellent alternative to expensive office software suites, Open Office is not without a few drawbacks.

Since they make the software available free of charge, tech support for the free version only lasts 30 days. Also, by its nature, the software is a "work in progress."

As such, you will find bugs periodically that should get reported to the Open Office website so they can fix them.

However, despite these drawbacks, Open Office software rates a "must look" if you need word processing, spreadsheets and other capabilities we've naturally come to associate with home and small business computing.

Author Bio:

            Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and co-author of an amazing program that teaches you how to use free articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website, affiliate links, or blogs... without spending a dime on advertising! Click Here.

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Speeding Up Windows Vista - Easy Ways To Accomplish This

             Windows Vista is an operating system that you can speed up if you know some of the tricks. While many users have complaints about Windows Vista, and it's widely believed to be slower than either Windows XP or Windows 7, when you optimize it properly you should be able to get better performance out of it. Try applying the following tactics to speed up Windows Vista, and you may find that your computer runs like new.

Tweaking The Display Settings:

               Changing the display settings is one of the easiest ways to speed up Windows Vista. Windows Aero is the default display, and this contains lots of impressive colors and effects. Yet it also uses up lots of RAM, and most users would rather have their computer running faster and have a plainer display to look at. If you fall into this category, you'll want to change your display to Windows Standard. You can do this through the Control Panel, under "Appearance and Personalization." This will make your display less colorful and animated, but it will also mean better performance.

Desktop Changes:

               Doing a thorough cleaning of your desktop can be a good way to make Windows Vista run faster. If your desktop is very crowded and cluttered, you might have files, icons and applications that you haven't looked at in months or even years. There's a good chance that you wouldn't miss many of these, so delete anything that's not important to you. For files that you frequently use, create shortcuts on your desktop. This frees up operating memory, and allows you to open up these files more efficiently. Shortcuts, as the name implies, speed up the time it takes to do things. Cleaning up your desktop will probably enhance your computer's speed, and it will also make it easier for you to find what you're looking for.

Defragmenting Your HD:

                One task that many users don't do that can speed up the performance of any computer is defragmenting your hard drive. If your computer is fairly new, this probably isn't necessary, but if you've been accumulating files over several months or years, then it's likely that you have fragments of the same file in various locations on your hard drive. This is a waste of space and memory, and defragmentation is a way to make your hard drive more efficient. You can do this by using the defragmentation utility that comes with Windows Vista. One thing you should make sure of is that you back up all of your essential data before you do this to avoid the risk of losing anything vital. Also, avoid this process if there's a risk of losing power, such as during a storm.

Final Thoughts...

             There are, as we've seen, a variety of strategies that can help Windows Vista speed up. Which ones work best for you will depend on the setting of your computer and what might be causing it to run slowly. You should always check for viruses and other malware, clean the registry and keep your desktop free of clutter. If you want Windows Vista to run smoothly, you should regularly perform such maintenance on your computer.

Author Bio:

          Omar is very passionate blogger and SEO expert. He runs multiple sites including his well established Best Binoculars blog.

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Make Applications Always Open Maximized

If you are facing a problem like me (i.e) clicking maximize button each and every time when opening a particular program, then you are at right place to get rid of it by making it to get always opened maximized by following this simple technique,

Steps to follow:

• Locate the application.
• Right-click and choose Properties.
• Click the Shortcut Tab.

• In the Run field, select Maximized as mentioned in the above picture.
• Click OK and close the dialogue window.
• The next time, the application will run in a maximized window.

Note: You have to do this tweak for every application you want to open in full view. After doing this to every applications that you want always to get opened maximized it wont open minimized until you minimize it by clicking the minimize button.

That's It! :)

Feel free to hit Like, Share or Comment if you like this post.

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