Date: November 9th 2009

PC-ASSIST/MAC-ASSIST | News and Updates!

(760) 550-9496 (office) or (760) 969-0974 (cell), Monday through Friday 9AM to 5PM by appointment.

As seen on Channel 2 KPSP last Friday morning, right before most mammals are awake...

http://www.kpsplocal2.com/mediacenter/local.aspx?videoId=474@kpsp.web.entriq.net&navCatId=58

Yup, I got interviewed regarding phishing scams, which I will cover in the next newsletter... I posted a small slide show on the main page regarding phishing scams and how to avoid them.

Onward....

Thanksgiving Holiday Special | Viruses | Backups | Vista/Windows 7 | iPhone

With that, here is the holiday special from 11/9/09 until 11/30/09!

This special will run until Monday November 30, 2009 @ 5PM. (Website services are excepted)

For ANY service call onsite, $125.00 for the first two hours! (Travel time out of the valley NOT included beyond Thermal or Palm Springs and is additional. Parts/Software additional.)

For dropoffs, $125 for up to FOUR hours! (Parts/Software additional and not included.)

Have you thought about tuning up the performance of your computer?

Has it slowed down, or become unresponsive?

Need some help with service updates, anti-virus configurations, new or old printer problems with new Vista Service Pack 2?

Need Help with a Windows 7 Upgrade?

Now is the time to get these configured and working!

Viruses and other malware | Kaspersky? BitDefender? Windows 7?

Since my last email, I have had the opportunity to setup Windows 7 Ultimate on the Quad-Core PC in my office and the last release candidates on a netbook and a laptop.

I am impressed with Windows 7, though there are a few very minor bugs, most users will not expereience them.

Since the launch of Windows 7, I have worked at finding the right Anti-virus solutions that perform with Vista and 7.

After contacting Kaspersky Labs, I was provided with three licenses to test out their Internet Security Solution. So far, Kaspersky has out-gunned all of my previous solutions, finding items and blocking web threats that had gotten past other packages.

So far it has blocked and found 192 threats. I really do run the software through the worst download sites like LimeWire and then some. It has caught and blocked every single attempt that was made on my computer.

As of this month, customers who are expiring with Trend or any other package this year are advised to call me PRIOR to renewing. The link to Kaspersky is now on the home page of my site: http://www.mac-pc-assist.com if you want to get a licensed version of Kaspersky.

As for BitDefender: during the past two months something went haywire with their licensing and update servers. I also was unable to get it to work correctly on Windows 7 and had to remove it. If you are going to Windows 7, I suggest trying the Kaspersky package.

Backups...Again?? And Again...(After the past two weeks, I have to send this again...and again...and again...)

Another computer catastrophe that can be avoided is the total or partial loss of your data including photos and documents. Remember those pictures you took 8 years ago and left on a zip disk? Well even Zip disks can fail over time and so can CDs.

There are a number of backup solutions that I have come across and can recomend.

Solution 1 - the simplest: get an external backup drive (500GB or more) that will copy the data off of the computer at night so you do not lose your photos, spreadsheets, documents, Quiken or other financial data. While some go for encryption, this can be a problem when it comes to restoring data if the key becomes corrupted. ("Scott, we backup it up every night." But it is encrypted with a non-decipherable key...not even the NSA can get to the 500GB of scrambled data!)

Solution 2 - almost as easy as Solution 1, but guaranteed that data will be available even after a disaster....get an external drive as in Solution 1 and also get an online backup service that is well rated and easily accessible if you had to restore the files to another computer in the event of a total failure. I have used Carbonite and am about to try out Mozy for one of my medical clients. Both are highly rated and Carbonite just saved my day after a profile crash on a machine.

Solution 3 - a little more involved but worth it for small businesses and medical offices....get TWO external 500GB drives that are easy to transport. Each day, one gets swapped out so that at no time is there a data set more than one day old. In conjunction with an online backup system and even another stationary backup drive that stays in the office, this guarantees that the data will be retrievable and your business will expereience the least amount of loss due to the crash or disaster. (Hey, I used to do the backups on weekends for American Mensa and we had OFFSITE storage for our backup tapes...yup, TAPES! Every day we had a pickup and a delivery of data sets so we were never more than a day out...)

Purchasing computers �Windows XP or Vista? Windows 7? New Information!

Right now almost every computer on the market is loaded with a version of Windows 7. If you do get a get a computer with Vista, Microsoft is still offering FREE upgrades with authorized purchases.

Microsoft is also offering to certain customers the XP compatibility pack which allows Win7 to run XP software with less difficulty than Vista. This will only be available on certain levels of Windows 7 and is not needed for everyone.

Of course the next question: 32-bit or 64 bit software?

64-bit operating systems are the future as they will handle larger amounts of RAM, run faster as it uses CPU and memory processing power more efficiently and over the next few years, we will see more and more software written to operate on 64-bits systems.

How do you know what your computer has? If you look at the tag with the chip maker's mark, it will sometimes have a "64" on it. The best would be a dual-core or quad-core 64-bit chip for the better processing power.

Recently Dell had a special through Costco. The computer had a Quad-Core Chip, 8GB of RAM and a 750GB hard drive. It was less than $800 for the package with a 23" Widescreen Flat Panel Monitor.

iPhones vs Blackberry vs Windows Mobile or just a plain phone?....

Well here is a confession. When I first started PC-ASSIST/MAC-ASSIST I was on Sprint. Before I cancelled the contract, I had gone through 4 new phones, and 11 refurbs. All were Windows Mobile. After last September, Sprint service was greatly affected where I am on Shadow Mountain. On one side of the street I could get service but in my apartment, I did not even get voicemail. So I went to Verizon. And the Blackberry Storm. It was a nightmare since the phone did not work with bluetooth on it's first iteration. Nor would it work with it's own speaker. Along came two more Windows Mobile based phones. I tried, really I did...Windows Mobile describes the phone 8 nanoseconds prior to sudden deceleration trauma as it hits the wall...

After four phones on Verizon, I recently tried out the Apple iPhone on AT&T. Granted, AT&T service is not Verizon, but when I am sitting in my vehicle trying to make a call hands free and the phone has to get rebooted or does not understand English it is difficult to keep up with the volume of communication that I handle. You can have the best service in the world but if the phones don't work, what good is the service?

Phones usually have to perform a few functions for me. Yes calls are important, but the other functions are also necessary. They have to synchonize with Outlook, get email and be able to find things on the web and text message. The Blackberry Storm was by far a great invention. It just did not work as well as Verizon touted.

About a month ago, I got up early for a conference call and I could not get my Blackberry to stop deleting contacts, messages, appointments and whatever else it's posessed mind could eat. I had to take out the battery and reboot the phone. Thank heaven I had backed up the phone earlier in the week...(mmm, did Scott mention backups, AGAIN? Is this now subliminal messaging?)

That night a close friend allowed me to check out his iPhone. Make an appointment? The iPhone was the fastest text entry with onscreen scrollers to get to the right date and time. Press in one spot and the data is finalized and entered.

I can describe the calendar process for Windows Mobile and Blackberry as lengthy and drawn out, with a need to go through tons of menus just to enter an appointment. I used to carry around paper so would not have customers and others waiting for me to finally get to a screen to enter the information. On the Blackberry Storm, entering information was a workout in that the screen-based interface was not accurate enought to avoid major typos all of the time.

That night I bought an iPhone. Last week my parents went to iPhones. Two weeks before that my good friend and her family went and got iPhones. Don't know what else I can say other than this is the easiest phone to operate.

I have never had an easier to use system for appointments, contact, directions, addresses, and playing music. I can go to a contact in the iPhone and just press on the address, and it brings up the address in a map as the destination. It will then give me directions to the address from my exact location using GPS.

When I was in San Francisco two weeks ago for my first comedy show as a comedian, I spent Friday walking around. I needed a Starbucks pretty bad as they usually have restrooms. I have an app that locates Starbucks and guides me to them on the map! There was even an app for the BART system that let me find the station and times of the trains to get from my hotel to Chinatown!

If you need any assistance setting up your Smartphone with your computer, give me a call!

In Service,

Scott