Welcome to the Geek Choice Blog

This message cannot be stressed enough: PC’s come with great technology and great risks,  the former offers the user access to tons of information and the ability to run a company, manage finances, and reach amazing features. However,  the latter puts all that ease and comfort on a tight-wire, balancing over the black abyss which all the saved programs and files will fall into if the user is not careful. This happens time and time again when the belief that “my system will never fail” is shattered and the person has to come to terms with either throwing the computer away or paying hundreds of dollars to fix it.

There is a way out. If your system is about to fall off or has already fell and needs to be repaired, Geek Choice Blog has the key to recovery.

What you will need:

External Hard Drive: these can be found at your nearest computer store, Staples, Best Buy, anywhere they sell computer electronics. This will allow you to copy all of your original files from your old hard drive. You will need this if you want to keep all your existing files, music, documents, and information.

Recovery Tool: can be found in your Windows computer, search for it on the Start Menu. If you cannot find it, then contact your manufacturer to see what can be done. Usually the recovery tool is a CD that came with your computer, if you still have them, take a look at those and see if it is there. This tool will enable you to reinstall Windows. If all else fails, try TotalRecovery, for $50 dollars you can have a fail-safe recovery tool.

The Process:

Launch the back-up tool that is on your computer, TotalRecovery, or any back-up tool you can find. Clone, or copy your hard drive to the external hard drive that is connected via USB. The external hard drive is easy to see on the “My Computer” screen as an external drive. Now you have what  you need to reboot and reinstall.

Depending on whether your recovery tool is from Windows or is an external program, find the option that says “installation”. It usually is processed by a Wizard, no not from Harry Potter, but a step-by-step guide so you do not screw things up even more. Follow the Wizard to boot Windows in a safe environment.

After this is done, you will be asked what kind of Windows would you like to be installed. You want a fresh start right? There should be a “Custom”  option, click that.

Run the Windows Update that is already on your computer, that way your computer will stay fresh. Next you will need to reinstall your drivers, these can be found with the discs that came with your computer. If you do not have them, use the ones you cloned or copied to the external hard drive. What usually is the case is that a back-up folder is created, so when you are ready to copy the old files to the newly cleaned hard drive, you can just click and drag them over to folders located in C:

When picking the right programs to install, choose the security options first. If you do not have any anti-virus software, go online and download Avast or AVG. Most of the programs will ask you to restart the computer to finish the installation. Do not wait, just do it. After your firewall and internet security is in place, go for the Windows basic programs to install.

After you have created a new Windows, and all the programs you want are installed, make sure you back it up! Use the same tool you used at the beginning to clone your new, fresh hard drive so that IF this problem comes up again, you will have this as a fall back plan.

Good Luck!

It is like catching the cold virus, it is spread by other people through bacteria, reproducing until the system is infected and sick. No one wants a virus, it does not feel good, and they restrict your activity as well as keep people at a distance from you. The computer virus acts much like the biological virus in that it has the same effects, only it infects files and spreads electronically. In this article I will define the virus, explain how it spreads, and how to tell the difference between a virus and other forms of attacks.

The basic definition of a virus is a series of written instructions in a computer program that is designed to reproduce and infect another computer. It is programming code that’s purpose is to destroy another program. Most of the time a user will not realize that they have a virus because they can take the form of a regular program, or hide deep in your system files unbeknownst to anyone it is there.

Anti-virus programs have been fighting a never-ending battle with hackers, people who want to rip off and spread chaos throughout people’s computers. How do they spread? A real computer virus can only be spread by a human who inserts it into the target computer himself via floppy or disc, or even sending it over the internet.

The first “wild” virus, that is, a virus that appeared out of the computer lab back in the 70′s, actually attacked the Apple DOS system. Back then, the only way to really create a virus and have it spread was through hands-on work like inserting a floppy disk into a computer.

Viruses spread when they are attached to the .exe or executable file. Say you want to open a program that has been on your computer for a while, you trust it to work properly and it does. But a hacker hooks a virus to the .exe file that the next time you open the program the virus takes effect, damaging the files and ruining the program.

That is the main idea of a computer virus, to attach to a file (cell) and jumping to other files like it, until the computer is no longer usable. At Geek Choice calls come in about viruses or recovering a computer from an attack. So what can you do about it to prevent your computer even further than the anti-virus protection is.

When in doubt, and when your computer is definitely infected, choose the System Restore that was explained earlier in the November blogs. This will turn back the clock to a time when  your computer was not infected. But hackers are getting smarter, making their viruses disable the Control Panel, or messing with the System Restore so that the computer gets restored to the same day the virus started.

The difference between the virus and other programs like adware, spyware, and malware, is that the virus spreads and reproduces. It is a catch-all phrase for all the bad stuff that happens on a computer. When something starts to go wrong, people think virus because it makes sense. But knowing exactly what is wrong with your computer can allow whoever you ask to fix it to do it faster and perhaps recover the files.

Here at Geek Choice we try to educate these people, teach them all about the basics to the complicated, and hope that it helps with the sometimes frustrating experience. This frustration can turn into anger which then might result into an Office Space scene smashing the computer with a baseball bat. Take a deep breath, relax, and know that this blog is here to help. When we get calls from people, they are stressed out and are at the point of screaming over the phone. This blog is designed for just such people.

File systems or filesystems are the way computers organize and store the files that contain data and programs on a hard disk drive or other storage device. Every computer operating system has a unique file system, Windows is so unique actually, that it confuses people trying to use it who might not be so computer literate.

If you click on My Computer in any version of Windows, a list of all the storage devices on your computer will be shown.

This is the hard drive containing all your data and programs. Here the name is OS, a name chosen when the disk was created. On your computer the name could be any name you choose.

To view the contents, simply double click on the drive.

To change what is displayed see our Computer Help on File Types here. The Windows default is not that useful. The display uses Windows Explorer. It shows all the files and folders on your computer. The folders are identified by a folder icon. The files are shown in the lower two rows. their icon varies depending on the type of file. The view you are looking at is known as the root of the (C) drive. It is the highest level view of the drive and is represented in text by C:\

Windows uses the backslash \ to separate folders. There are folders in folders, in folders etc.

If we now look at the Documents and Settings folder on most Windows system we see the directory structure structure shown at the right.

This is another source of confusion in Windows. If we are looking for the My Documents folder there is not a single folder, but a separate folder for each user user defined in the system. There may be one user or many users. All computers are different.

The same is true for Internet Downloads. Ever wonder where those downloads went after they have finished? It can be a pain trying to find them again. Try making a folder specifically made for downloads from the internet. This will cut down on all that confusion which can lead to more problems if you are not careful.

Organizing your computer is an easy task, it is also very important. Over the few years your laptop or desktop runs for you, tons of information is stored on them, where will you put it all. It comes in gradually so by making easy to find folders and putting the files in the corresponding folder, can make sure you do not lose or delete those files that are important but forgotten about because they were in the “Miscellaneous” folder.

We have all seen them when a page fails to load on the internet, and people often do no understand why they happen.

The error messages are the end result of a problem that happens all the time in the internet. Whether you are visiting a site that you are not allowed to visit, or you are just trying to check email, these messages tell you that access is denied. The problem is that the messages do not really tell you anything, about how to solve the problem or direction towards making sure this does not happen again.

HTML runs on these codes,  they determined whether this page loaded correctly or something is off. There are actually codes being sent in your computer right now.

From the numbers 100 to 300, each beginning digit corresponds to a specific function. If it is a 201 or 202 then the code is received as a success. If it is a 401, or a 404 which seems to be the most common type of error message, something is wrong.

• 400 (Bad Request). The server did not understand the request. This is usually cured by resending the request.
• 401 (Unauthorized). The request requires some form of authentication (e.g., userid and/or password) but did not contain it. Usually, this code results in a box popping up in your browser asking you for the required information. Once you supply it the request is sent again.
• 402 (Payment Required). Reserved for future use. [Who says the web is not moving toward being a commercial medium!]
• 403 (Forbidden). This is a sort of catch-all refusal. If the server understood the request but, for whatever reason, refuses to fill it, a code 403 will often be returned. The server may or may not explain why it is sending a 403 response and there is not much you can do about it.
• 404 (Not Found). If you happen to mistype a URL or enter an old one that no longer exists this is the error you will likely see. The condition may be temporary or permanent but this information is rarely provided. Sometimes code 403 is sent in place of 404.
• 405 (Method Not Allowed). Your browser has requested a resource using a procedure not allowed to obtain that resource. The response should contain allowed procedures.
• 415 (Unsupported Media Type). If your browser makes a request using the wrong format, this code may result.

When you see these error messages, there is always a solution to the problem. If you feel that you have run out of ideas, and have no where to turn for help, look for the Geek Choice guys. They will assist you in completing the task and getting you up and running again.

Computers is a fast growing technology that is improving, upgrading, and coming out with crap everyday. For older people or for those who just do not believe in the PC or Mac company philosophy, learning about the computer is a struggle against ignorance. But once that person educates his or herself, then life becomes much better due to the fact that they can access the internet and understand how to use it. Here at Geek Choice we see the dilemma of people who are maybe not as educated in the computer field, so here is an easy to understand blog about the internet.

Dial-up Internet access

Dial-up Internet access is basically an analog access method using the standard telephone system with a maximum speed of 64,000 bits per second (bps). Typically the fastest actual access speed is closer to 52,000 bps.

If all you do is email and the occasional web site, a dial-up Internet access is sufficient. In the early days of the public Internet (1970-1990) most users accessed through this method with Internet Service Providers(ISP’s) like Compuserve, Prodigy, WebTV, AOL and Mindspring (now EarthLink).

With today’s media rich Internet dial-up is not able to provide sufficient access speed.

Broadband Internet access

To provide faster access Broadband became popular in the early 1990′s with ISDN service from the local telephone company.

ISDN provided speeds of about 144,000 bps and was soon replaced by more efficient methods providing even greater speeds.

Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) Internet Service

The Digital Subscriber Line or DSL replaced ISDN in the mid 1990′s and is now one of the most popular Internet Access Methods. DSL typically provides Internet access of 1,500,000 bps to 4,000,000 bps.

DSL is available from AT&T, which can be found on the Internet at att.com.

The speed you achieve with a DSL Internet connection is dependent on distance from the closest DSLAM. Generally if you are within 60,000 feet with copper wire service will get excellent results. AT&T is actively laying fiber optic cable around the country to improve DSL service even more. Those big orange cables being laid all over are fiber optic cables.

Cable Internet Service

Not to be out done local cable companies began offering Internet service in order to entice customers into the lucrative cable based telephone service. Cable Internet Access uses the existing broadband CATV cable and adds Internet access using a cable modem attached between a cable jack and your computer or or router.

In the Atlanta area cable Internet service is provided by:

• Comcast Cable
• Charter Cable
• Cox High Speed Internet

If you are not in the Atlanta area, you can locate your local U.S. cable Internet provider here.

Cable Internet service provides speeds up to 32,000,000 bps.

T-1 and T-3 Internet Service

T-1 Internet Service is a formerly popular service with businesses. It provided Internet service at only 1,500,000 bps at a high price. Cable and DSL now provide faster service at a lower price. T-1 is rapidly becoming obsolete.

T-3 service provide Internet access at speeds up to 44,736,000 bps, slightly faster than cable and it is still used by large companies.

VoIP Telephone Service

If you opt for DSL or other broadband Internet without telephone service, there are services available on the Internet to provide you with a telephone number. The telephone companies have been charging you to place long distance calls for years using the Internet.

Ever since the birth of the computer and it’s evolution to the PC and Macintosh, researchers have been working hard on creating the quantum computer, a new algorithm that will make the already fast computer capable of unparalleled speeds.

But new developments have created an interesting question that might be answered by regular software, not superpositions and uncertainty principles: can classical computing match the quantum speed with software algorithms?

If you are not a quantum physicist or a computer wiz like the professionals at Geek Choice, then you are probably wondering what the first two paragraphs mean and why you should pay attention to them.

Work on the super-fast computer is based on the algorithm, which is a list of well-defined instructions for completing a task, like running the internet or playing a video game. It starts at an initial computation and then proceeds through successive states, until eventually the number reaches a terminating final state.

It is the transition from one state to another that is the key to the original question posed earlier.

Some transitions are deterministic, some are randomized, but with the quantum algorithm is a large quantity number that can be solved faster than the classic, or regular algorithm.

John Watrous, who works at a university for quantum computing, had this to say on the subject: “We could try to build quantum computers to solve problems but we could also just design new algorithms to solve problems.”

A test was ran to challenge a new algorithm, which a regular computer can run, and it was paralleled with a quantum algorithm. The new one matched the efficiency of the quantum.

This means that the algorithm could some day be used in commercial computing, especially in programming, where it can be used to get a fast answer using very little memory.

As soon as you click on your internet browser and start going from site to site, you leave a trail of information stored in text files. These are used by the browser to remember you, like usernames, email addresses, history, and everything you download. Without them, some websites you would not be able to use. With them, anyone can track where you just were on the web. Cookies also leave the door open to spyware and malware, something that has plagued the web for a long time. Want to understand them so you will know a little more about how you use the internet? Read more.

Cookies, which used to be called “magic cookies”, are packets of data that are received by a program and sent back unchanged. The idea of cookies really came to be used for the internet from none other than an employee for Netscape. Lou Montulli, in June 1994, designed cookies so they could have a virtual shopping cart. In a year Montulli got a patent for cookies. Internet Explorer began using them in 1995, and no one really knew what they were, and more importantly that cookies were being used and people were unaware of it.

Not until a magazine article came out in 1996 did computer users realize that their privacy was at stake. People paid more attention to them back then, when it was new, today cookies are an old story no one wants to talk about. But we need to, without awareness of it how can we prevent problems in the future?

When you visit this site, cookies are sent to this server to determine whether you can have access or not. An example would be personalizing  a website, or the number of search results on Google. Say you want to load a page and there are no cookies for the website, the server will create a random string of numbers, thinking it is the first time the user is visiting the site. After sending the data back, every time you visit a new site the server records the URL, the date and time, and stores the cookie in a log file. The log is a list of other cookies from websites the user has visited, and this brings up a problem.

browsers should protect user privacy and not allow third-party cookies by default. But most browsers, such as Mozilla Firefox,Internet Explorer and Opera, do allow third-party cookies by default, though they allow users to block them. Some Internet users disable them because they can be used to track a user browsing from one website to another. This tracking is most often done by on-line advertising companies to assist in targeting advertisements. For example: Suppose a user visits www.domain1.com and an advertiser sets a cookie in the user’s browser, and then the user later visits www.domain2.com. If the same company advertises on both sites, the advertiser knows that this particular user who is now viewing www.domain2.com also viewed www.domain1.com in the past and may thus more effectively target the user’s interests or avoid repeating advertisements. The advertiser can then build up profiles on users.

This how all those annoying people who keep pestering you on buying their product or signing you up for money. Now that you know what they are and what to do with them,your life on the internet will run faster, as well as keep tracking hackers from breaking in.

If you have not seen the futuristic movie with Tom Cruise acting as a police officer in a time like 2050, where the cars travel on a highway in the sky and the computers are not a touch screen, then picture the future with even better computers. In this movie the computers were used by hand motions.

Microsoft has come up with a way to use your hands to change the screen without touching it. This would be an amazing breakthrough for computer science, as the touch screen market is such a staple in today’s technology, and the new way to enjoy computers is just really cool.

Check out this YouTube! video.

The whole idea of the no-touch screen is to start a new trend in the market of computers. Right now, this works for the Microsoft Mobile Surface PC, which is supposed to ‘one-up’ the iPhone.

Back in 2007, a new age was dawning on the mobile devices, one that would not just replace the Palm Pilot, but make sure that fingertips instead of pointed stylus’ would be used for clicking the screen. Microsoft was working on becoming the first to provide this to consumers.

But this touch screen was called Shift and it was to be used from the back of the device, not the front as it is now. It would make the handheld devices easier to use but had its drawbacks.

The announcement of this new development by Microsoft in May 2007 came a month before the iPhone was released in June, deflating any hopes Microsoft may have had to become better than Apple, Inc.

This is their chance. If Microsoft can implement this into mobile devices, the iPhone will take a back seat to this awesome concept of moving the screen without touching it.

In the video you see the researcher playing drums by tapping on a surface that a projector sees and send the message down to the phone. How they will be able to use this on mobile phones might be a tricky task, but the way technology is going I will not be surprised to see it happen.

Going beyond the touch screen is Microsoft’s main objective. You can easily see why, not just because they are bitter business rivals but because Apple smacked them in the face with the iPhone. Microsoft must be sick of seeing those ads on the computer for the new iPhone 4, so going even beyond the Windows Phone is a stretch.

Using the touch screen keyboards on the iPhone is a major pain sometimes, especially when it tries to correct your spelling of a word you want to use in a certain way. Microsoft has come up with a new screen, where “there would be no more reason for mobile keypads — they would simply be emulated when necessary,” said Patrick Baudisch, a display interaction expert at Germany’s University of Potsdam, in an interview with New Scientist magazine.

We will just have to wait and see what comes of this new technology. Stay tuned to Geek Choice Blog to find out new developments on this developing story.

If you are not yet full from all the information being fed to you over the internet these days, try a Really Simple Syndication, or RSS as it is commonly known as. The syndicate is a way for you to subscribe to a certain web page, blog, or any site that is constantly updating information as a way to follow what these sites are doing.

It has an interesting history, and it involves one of our favorite web browsers of old: Netscape! the “Scape” will not go away, even if the three top web browsers combined tried to eliminate it from use. Yes, it is true that no one uses Netscape anymore, but we all have to respect the name and what it brought us in terms on internet and invention.

The first version of the RSS feed was called Resource Discription Framework(RDF), developed by a man named Ramanathan Guha at Netscape in 1999. The aim was to be the first to provide instant access to updated information say for a news site, to get the latest headlines instantly was huge back then. Now it is a thing of the past, funny how technology works, it is so fast that it leaves behind major inventions in the past like they were cavemen who made them, and it has only been a couple years!

After AOL bought Netscape and made some changes, the RSS was abandoned, but it would return through other developers. RSS feeds have become a popular way to stay informed on the internet. As if it was not easy to do that, with computer science at a very high level of innovation and user-accessibility the RSS is an add-on to an already booming information business.

What this add-on brings is knowledge of what is going on at a site that you do not have to be visiting. All you need to do is subscribe to the feed, usually by seeing this icon and clicking on it.

This little icon was used first as a symbol for Mozilla  Firefox’s web browser, and was brought back by Microsoft Internet Explorer an Outlook team in 2005.

Whenever the source of the feed, whether it be ESPN or a news station or even YouTube, has a new headline, video, or update, you will know by seeing the number of updates on the icon.

The new browser Rockmelt uses RSS feeds as one of its features connected to the browser. On the right hand side are feeds that you can subscribe to. The feeds are there for real easy access. I use it for email, if I am doing some business on another website, if an email comes into my Gmail account, how would I know? With the RSS feed for Gmail, I can see if anyone sent me an email. The icon even pops out so you can preview the message before you go to the site.

You can even subscribe to this blog, the Geek Choice Guy!

That damn yellow triangle sign where your wireless bars should be has a “!” telling you that the signal is there, but due to a weak signal your internet use is put on hold. Until the signal can regain strength, your first thought might be to sit there patiently and wait it out, but who has time for that anymore? We live in a digital world, a wireless world, one that is very fast and waiting is something the tribes did sending a message to another camp hundreds of years ago. Try a second thought: change the things you can! The power to change the signal is yours, listen up.

If we look at the router, it is really an amazing machine that is capable of fascinating feats for which we should be grateful for, I mean this little network tool makes our lives SO much easier. If we did not have the router, where would we be? Think about it, while you walk across the office to deliver something that could have been handled on a wireless network.

It all started back in Stanford with Bill Yeager who created the first router, which allowed for the wireless internet to blossom, as well as open many doors for the future. Yeager was asked originally to connect various departments at the school, he did much more than that. Back then they were only running on 56kb of memory, look how far it has have come!

Now that you know a little bit more about where router’s come from, let’s talk on improving that sometimes weak signal which is everyone’s enemy if you use wireless.

1. Place the router away from the wall. The signal that is being given off the router is too high to go through walls very good, and until we start using the television white space which is a much lower signal but can travel through walls, it is best that you position your device to a more accessible spot. Try placing the router in the middle of the room, house or office. It will be able to reach all the computers trying to access it better.
2. Keep it off the floor. If you put the router on the floor, the signal being sent to other networks will surely be slow because it is not able to receive the data packets being sent back to the router from your computer.
3. Do not put the router near metal objects. This is self-explanatory, metal objects can deflect signals and interrupt them, causing that annoying warning sign to piss you off.
4. Use a hi-gain antenna. The router comes with a regular antenna that sends a signal in all directions, if it is placed in your office then half of the signal is going out the window! A hi-gain antenna focuses on a certain direction, a better choice if you have a desktop computer.
5. Still weak? Try another type of router. This is called a wireless repeater, you still need your router, but the repeater will take the strong signal it gets in the office, and transmits it to the living room to supply the same strong signal to your laptop while enjoying the news.

If all else fails, just turn the router on and then wait for a couple minutes, then turn it on again. Resetting the router will boot it up again, it usually works to get a good signal after reset.

I don’t know about you, but I am sick of that stupid yellow sign that blocks my internet and keeps me from accessing work, finishing emails, and all the basic tasks the internet allows me to do with ease. Thanks to these tips though, I will never have that problem again. After all, ignorance is the only real problem, everything else is just details.