Monthly Archives: December 2008

... at PC Fixer

Wishing you a healthy and prosperous 2009!

Happy New Year!

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Well, as I noted before, it is that time of year for lists. Mostly "Best of" and "Worst of" with the range of experts and contributors extremely varying.  I especially like the way Time Magazine's website has broken down their 50 Best Websites of 2008.   Instead of the usual 1 through 50, with 1 being the best, it's more just a list of 50 separated into 5 subcatagories.  The cataggories are Advice & Facts, Info & Gossip, Handy Tools, Fun & Games, and Hobbies & Interests.  At the end there is the requisite poll providing a ranking of the sites in order. So, here are eight of their 50 that I really appreciate making the list (no specific order).

• Hulu (Fun & Games) - Where you can streamline Bionic Woman or Conan O'Brien or the Simpsons or whatever. ... --

Unlike many youth of previous generations who wondered which house Santa was at on Christmas Eve, or when he would be arriving, today's kids can look it up on-line.  That's right, Google has teamed up again this year with NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, to bring you the NORAD Santa Tracker.  The spirit of the season and a wondrous curiosity has inspired this fun activitiy, especially on Christmas Eve. Usually, NORAD provides aerospace warning and control for North America, but on Christmas Eve, they turn their attention to Santa, tracking his yearly gift-delivering journey from the North Pole. The Santa Tracker itself goes live at 6am EST on December 24th. Meanwhile, you will find the unique history of the Santa Tracker, holiday-themed games (a new one released each day) and updates from the North Pole at... --

The answer: $9 billion.  The importanc: That's how much Panasonic has agreed to pay for the purchase of Sanyo.  The latest in large tech company mergers.  This one makes sense, too.  Panasonic, which makes Viera TVs and Diga Blu-ray disc players, said last month that it was interested in acquiring Sanyo. Sanyo, which has been struggling to turn around its business, also expressed interest in the alliance.  One of the most beneficial aquisitions Panasonic will gain from Sanyo is it's strength in green enrgy.  Sanyo has well respected solar panels and rechargeable batteries in its lineup.  According to Panasonic's president,  in the long run, this deal should help them prepare for a better place in the technological market. The deal should be complete around February 2009, based upon final approval by all parties shareholders.... --

Did you get a flu shot this year? Are you downing the echinacea? Or are you more of a Vitamin C addict?  Well, don't forget to take similar care of your computer.  With computer viruses, as in traditional human healthcare, an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.  The ideal way to protect your system is to purchase and install a virus monitor and scanner. Virus monitors constantly scan for suspicious content in incoming data sources.  These sources may include email, digital photos, download files and web pages.  These monitors load with Windows and, therefore, use valuable system RAM (Random Access Memory) to do their job.  Virus scanners allow the user to scan the entire computer for suspicious content. Both virus monitors and scanners must have their virus definitions updated on a regular basis... --

Computer companies are not known for their efficient packaging.  A disc and 50 page instruction manual will arrive in a box the size of a dictionary.  An entirely new system will arrive in enough boxes to make it look like you are moving out of state.  Well, apparently, the packaging people at Dell are trying to do what they can to limit the waste, but maintain the protection. Dell recently announced that it is launching a new initiative to get really green by reducing packaging materials for its desktops and laptops by 10 percent in the next four years. The company says this would result in saving the company about $8 million.  Not too shabby for the earth or the bottom line.  What is nice to know about the attention to this detail is that it came... --

Well, you know someone out there is either a) bored, b) procrastinating or c) wishing they had gone to art school instead of getting a degree in programming.  An anonymous techy describes how he built and justified a Geekmas Tree made of decomissioned six old HP/Compaq servers.   He decided to disassemble the hard drives and recycle them into something "neat".  The original goal was to clear up space for new servers and, obviously, each server had a fairly large raid array. So, instead of formatting every hard drive and then disposing them all together with the servers, a funky shimmering disc tree was born.  This required loads of patience and plenty of determination.  In total there are around 70 old SCSI hard drives, between 9gb and 18gb in size each. They were old-school style, aka nice and chunky.  There... --

Many of you may remember the excitement around 1996 to 1998 over Tamagochis.  The novel virtual pets were cute eggshaped keychains that had animals you played with, fed, cleaned up after and loved.  The Japanese toy excited all ages of American kids who wanted to play with them.  Around that same time Ty Beanie Babies were also dominating kids and collectors alike.  So here we are about 10 years later and the two ideas have become Webkinz.  Webkinz are stuffed animals that you purchase in a store and each one has an individual security code to register them online.  Now your toy in hand is a virtual pet in it's own game world on line.  Once again you can feed, love, play with and, even, heal back to health your new friend.  Similar to the original Beanie... --

As with so many December traditions, the Top Ten List seems to dominate.  From Barbara Walters to Yahoo, everyone wants to summarize who or what seemed important in 2008.  With this idea, Yahoo, Google and Ask.com have all released their lists of the top ten searches made on their sites this past year.  By the way, on Yahoo, for example, generic searches like "car" and most company names are ignored.  What should definitely be noted when comparing these lists are the various views of who uses which websites and for what.  Yahoo and Google seem to be the most main stream, so their searches reflect a more general type of population.  While Ask.com seems to attract a more specific crowd.  Think of the first two as major chain supermarkets and the latter as Whole Foods Market.  You... --

It never hurts to have a reminder of what to look for....

1. Make regular back upts of all important files.
2. Download material from reliable sources only.
3. Do not open e-mail from unknown senders.
4. Write-protect removable disks.
5. Use a virus monitor.
6. Regularly update virus definitions.
7. Scan computer drives frequently.

Be safe this holiday season, you don't want anything lost due to a virus.  An ounce of prevention really does help.... --