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This month we discuss the evils of Norton Antivirus, how to troubleshoot obscure crashes, choosing the right tech for your student, the impact of iPhone 4 on modern journalism and much more.
Being a roving computer guy is like no other profession. This week I have decided to list the top 10 things that make my job strange and wonderful.
10. Everyone wants to be your friend. Sometimes you are even treated like a celebrity and people are afraid to come up to you and ask you a question.
9. You get to hear dozens of apologies each week for cluttered offices. No one believes you when you tell them that clutter is the norm.
8. You meet dozens of dogs and a few cats each week. Dogs love computer guys. Many people have told me, “My dog never is this friendly with anyone!”
7. You are asked by wives to help monitor husband’s and kids Internet activity and you are asked by husbands how to delete history and cookies.
6. You get to setup brand new computers each week and inhale that new computer smell.
5. You get to explain how problems happened with phrases like, “I told you last time that Norton Antivirus slows down your computer” or “Shady problems come from shady websites.”
4. After working on a computer problem for an hour and using every tool in your software bag to get rid of it, not to mention tweaking dozens of settings, you have to answer the question, “What did you do to fix it?”
3. You get to hear the phrase, “I am a computer illiterate,” “I know nothing about computers,” “I only know enough about computers to get into trouble,” “You know those Computers for Dummies books – those were written for me.” dozens of times each week.
2. You get to see how other people live their digital lives. No two computers or offices are the same and I get many ideas from those that I work for.
1. Job security. I try to never leave a problem partially fixed. I aim to meet every need of every client because I know that I will always be back eventually. Every computer has problems. Every computer user needs help eventually. I spend my day helping people by fixing their computers. I am a doctor, a mechanic, a librarian and a teacher all crammed into one geek package.
Every January, I spend several days per week setting up new computers. Some people receive them as gifts for Kwanzaa or one of the other Winter festivals, others just take advantage of the great prices this time of year.
Setting up a new computer correctly can be one of the most important factors in how your computer performs the rest of its life. Here are a few tips to help you along the way.
1. Don’t tear down your old computer all at once. Only take away the big pieces and leave the cables in place.
Many of the same cables can be reused and this will prevent having to re-string wires. Power cords, modem cables, and USB cables haven’t changed so there is no need to use the new ones that came in the box.
2. Put the big pieces in place before hooking wires together. This will prevent having to attach cables more than once. Make sure that all of the devices will fit in their spaces and cords are long enough.
3. Hook up all other cables before plugging in power cords.
POWER EVERYTHING ON
4. When prompted, give as little information as possible. You don’t need to register with Windows, you don’t need to tell it what kind of Internet you are using, you don’t need to type in a name for each person who will be using the computer and, whatever you do, don’t put in any passwords before the system is completely up and running.
If you are asked to put in a password for your user account, just leave it blank.
5. Don’t let any teenagers do anything besides hook up the pieces. Getting the software in place is critical before you let a teenager loose on the system.
6. Uninstall all of the crap software. Take off all Norton or McAfee software as well as any other software that you don’t want. Look for the Trial version of Microsoft Office and make sure to take that off as well.
7. Download and Install AVG free edition .
8. Run Windows update from the Tools menu in Internet Explorer or top of the Programs menu.
9. Download and install Mozilla Firefox and remove the icon for Internet Explorer from the your desktop as well as any other icons that you don’t need.
10. If this is your first computer, setup a free email account at gmail.com. This will likely be the last email address you will ever need. If you have another email address, use it to give away to solicitors and prize applications.
You will then have a computer that will surf the web safely, run cleaner and have far fewer problems than if you had run it with all included software and settings.