Make your Windows machine run faster If you would like to ask questions in more detail about any of these suggestions please leave your comments on this blog.
• Don’t run too many applications at the same time
Each application on your machine uses whatever available resources there are. When you have a lot of programs open, they need to share those resources, and will run slowly if they don’t have enough to do what they need to do.
• Cleanup your startup items
When software is installed, it often adds something into startup so that it runs when your computer starts. Many of them aren’t necessary. When you have a lot of these programs installed, your computer can load a lot of unnecessary things to slow it down.
• Don’t run more than one antivirus program
Antivirus programs scan files when you use them to make sure that they aren’t infected. Having two antivirus programs means that each file is scanned twice, making everything twice as slow and often unusable.
• If something doesn’t open immediately, wait 5 seconds before trying again
When you double click on an icon and the program doesn’t immediately open, your first instinct will be to click it again, in case it didn’t work properly the first time. This can sometimes lead to the computer opening two or more versions of the program, all trying to run at the same time. A few seconds of waiting after trying to open a program can be enough to avoid minutes of waiting and closing duplicate windows.
• Set your antivirus to scan files less frequently
Depending on your antivirus solution, your computer may run a scan automatically first thing when you open the computer. This scan can slow down your computer while you run in the background. Reschedule it to run at a time when you’re not using the computer, or only on certain days.
• Make sure to keep at least 10% of your drive space free
Windows computers use free hard drive space to create a file that helps your computer run faster. If you have no free space, there is no room for this file and everything can run slower because of it.
• Change your visual settings for performance rather than quality
If your computer is lagging, disable Windows graphic effects can speed up performance slightly. You can set your profile to not animate windows, show certain shadows which can give your machine a slight boost.
• Upgrade your computer
There is only so much you can do to tweak your computer to make it run faster. If you’ve tried everything but it still runs slowly, consider adding more memory to help it run a bit better.
Vanessa Fisher, experienced marketeer and account manager has been brought into Technica with her optimistic and bubbly personality. Her attention to detail and 'can do' attitude provides a new friendly addition to the Technica family and for all our clients.
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On Tuesday I was on twitter and saw this:
"Question: I was using my phone when it was stolen so was unlocked. What do I do to wipe it? He's disabled location services"
Our team were on this straight away with offering technical advice, along with many other twitter users. This has prompted me to share some information with you about quick ways to act when losing your phone.
As smartphones vary here is a link to a very succinct article covering iOS, BlackBerry OS, Android and Microsoft WP: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2352755,00.asp
The victim of the mugging, also a Tech Reporter who posted the above question has since written a blog to advise people how to password protect location services settings on the iPhone.
http://blogs.channel4.com/benjamin-cohe ... gging/3658
Taken from this blog the blogger writes:
"The other thing I learnt, is how valuable it is to have my social media community around me in a time like this. Some of my Twitter followers have been out looking for a cyclist on that street (I assume he targets it regularly), others gave me really useful advice on how to deal with the technological challenges that the incident threw up."
This really does emphasise the power of social media, and how experts in certain fields and the community in general can help others in times of need.
Vanessa Fisher, experienced marketeer and account manager has been brought into Technica with her optimistic and bubbly personality. Her attention to detail and 'can do' attitude provides a new friendly addition to the Technica family and for all our clients.
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I regularly talk to prospects about their IT requirements. It's part of my role here at Technica that I really enjoy, and the plethora of answers interests me greatly.
My experience shows that generally companies are happy with their IT service. Some may be on a rolling contract and others may schedule a review at a specific time of year.
There are occasions where a prospect is unhappy with their IT partner and an immediate review is required.
This blog post is more of a question to anyone reading this.
Whether you are a large multi-site business or a business with 10 or more members of staff, what are you looking for from your IT partner and under what circumstances would you consider taking on a new IT partner?
I was inspired to write this blog after a conversation with a prospect who simply said “Moving is more hassle than it’s worth”.
I'd love to hear from you.
Vanessa Fisher, experienced marketeer and account manager has been brought into Technica with her optimistic and bubbly personality. Her attention to detail and 'can do' attitude provides a new friendly addition to the Technica family and for all our clients.
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Everyday, I look through the web for the latest news and interesting articles about technology to share with our readers.
Twitter is great for this, 140 characters of data linked to interesting articles via @vaness_technica. www.twitter.com
We want to get more involved with our audience and invite you to join in the discussions too!
Get linked in with us and share your opinions with like minded technical enthusiasts. Whether you are a technical geek or a casual computer user, let's all get involved.
Technica IT Support discussion group is now an open group on linked in:
Copy and paste this link into your browser: http://t.co/69hwE3UE
Whether you read our blogs, follow us on twitter or in our discussion group, we look forward to hearing from you.
Vanessa Fisher, experienced marketeer and account manager has been brought into Technica with her optimistic and bubbly personality. Her attention to detail and 'can do' attitude provides a new friendly addition to the Technica family and for all our clients.
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I enjoy reading interesting articles about technology. I came accross an eye opening one written by Jeff Bullas which I thought I'd share both on twitter vaness_technica and on our blog.
http://www.jeffbullas.com/2011/08/16/15 ... le-iphone/
Jeff states that apart from the obvious use to make phone calls there is a per centage breakdown of all the other uses.
This just shows how much we rely on our phones. Feel free to comment about what you most use your smartphone for in the comments section. Click on the link above to see the per centages from Jeff Bullas' research.
1.Send or receive a text
2.Take a picture
3.Access the internet
4.Send a photo or video to someone
5.Send or receive email
6.Download an app
7.Play a game
8.Play music
9.Record a video
10.Access a social networking site
11.Watch a video
12.Post a photo or video online
13.Do online banking
14.Access Twitter
15.Participate in a video call
Is there anything on this list you would add?
Vanessa Fisher, experienced marketeer and account manager has been brought into Technica with her optimistic and bubbly personality. Her attention to detail and 'can do' attitude provides a new friendly addition to the Technica family and for all our clients.
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This month I’ve asked Vincent one of our expert technicians to tell us how he feels about working at Technica:
Vincent is a second line network support engineer and has been with us since July 2011.
"Technica differs from the corporate support companies I’ve dealt with because although we are corporate it still feels like a small friendly IT business. I came from a company that literally started out in supporting home users from a garage, and grew from there. We had a very personal relationship with many many clients. Technica feels the same but with a far more professional and focused vision, and this is surprising. Handling some of the large clients and complex systems we manage you would expect the normal ‘IT guy in the background’ approach but not so with Technica we know our clients well, some personally, this makes a massive difference.
Predicting the future of IT is impossible to say, but people are becoming more comfortable with technology in their every day lives. You might think that this will slowly push traditional ‘IT Support’ out of the picture but I think as the systems supporting all of this day to day technology become ever more complex, we will see an increasing need for IT support. It may even take on a life management type of role as these technologies become literally indispensable to people.
My strengths with regards to IT lie in support and customer relations. Making a client happy is top of the list of priorities, they often don’t understand how you are helping them technically but they always understand good service and communication."
Follow Technica:
www.twitter.com @vaness_technica
Facebook: www.facebook.com/technicasol
www.technicasolutions.co.uk
Vanessa Fisher, experienced marketeer and account manager has been brought into Technica with her optimistic and bubbly personality. Her attention to detail and 'can do' attitude provides a new friendly addition to the Technica family and for all our clients.
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Did you know that your Mac’s wireless network card has the ability to send Wi-Fi to other devices, as well as receive?
Turn your Mac into a Wireless Hot SpotThe Situation
You have internet on your Mac but do not have a wireless Access Point. Maybe you only have a 3G dongle or your ADSL router only has Ethernet. You don’t want to sit at your Mac all day while your Wi-Fi iPad, laptop or mobile phone remain offline. Your Mac’s wireless network card has the ability to send Wi-Fi to other devices, as well as receive!
To set this up follow these instructions:
1) Click on the Apple logo at the top right corner of the screen, and click System Preferences.
2) Within System Preferences, click the Sharing icon.
3) Click to highlight Internet Sharing, but do not click the check-box yet. You will see a drop-down menu next to “Share your connection from:” from here you will need to select the source of your internet connection. If you are using a 3G dongle, you will be able to identify this on the list. If you are plugged in via Ethernet cable, you would select Ethernet. If you are tethering from your iPhone, you can choose iPhone USB, etc.
4) In the “To Computers Using” section, tick the box next to Wi-Fi.
5) Click the “Wi-Fi Options” button to the bottom right of the window. You will be asked to give your network a name, though it will likely use your Mac’s name by default. Put something simple here as some devices struggle to connect to networks with complicated names.
6) Now, most importantly, in the Security option, choose 40-bit WEP and give your network a password. WEP keys can use numbers, or any letters from A to E. Repeat the WEP password in the Confirm Password box, and then click OK.
7) You will probably be prompted for your Mac password after clicking OK (don’t get this confused with the WEP key you have just created – this key is only for other devices to connect to your Mac’s wireless).
8) Now that we have set this up, tick the check box next to Internet Sharing and click the Start button when prompted. Within seconds you should notice your Wi-Fi icon at the top right of your screen now looks like a grey triangle with a white arrow pointing upwards – this means that internet sharing is now working through your Mac’s Wi-Fi.
9) To connect other devices, simply scan for Wi-Fi networks, find the network name you specified and type in the WEP key. You are now connected to the internet using your Mac as a Wi-Fi access point. You can connect multiple devices to this at once – as such it’s a great way to keep everything online even when your internet access is limited!
An Apple Certified Service Professional, Lee is an integral part of the Technica Solutions team and has spent six years in the IT industry. A self-confessed gadget addict he'll buy it regardless of whether he needs it - the electrical retailers dream customer!
www.technicasolutions.co.uk
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The situation:
Your Mac boots into MacOS but none of your applications work.
Typical symptom of this is that the icons bounce around in the dock but never launch.
If you need to get online ASAP, the following will help:
While all serious computer problems are best left to professionals to fix, sometimes you need to get online and cannot afford to wait. The good news is that, unlike Windows, the vast majority of software faults with MacOS X are what we call “profile specific”. This means that each and every file, setting, configuration for all your applications are stored in a Library folder within your user profile.
When these files become corrupted for any reason (inproper shutdown, interrupted update, etc.) all you need to do is create a new user profile and your applications will begin working again.
How to create a new user profile:
1) Click on the Apple logo in the top left hand side of the screen, and click System Preferences.
2) Once System Preferences is open, click on the “Users and Groups” button (Lion) or the “Accounts” button (Snow Leopard and below).
3) Click on the padlock icon at the bottom left of the window and type in your password (leave it blank if you don’t have one). You’re now ready to create a new user.
4) Click on the + button underneath Login Options.
5) In the drop down menu next to New Account, select Administrator.
6) Give the account a name – I usually use “Temp” as I rarely use this profile but you can call it anything you like. Give the account a password, then click Create User.
7) You have now created a backup user account. To log into this account, click the Apple logo at the top left again, then click the Log Out… option at the bottom of the drop down menu.
8) You will now be presented with a login screen in which you can select your new backup account.
Once you log into this, it will be like logging into a brand new Mac and all your applications should work. Remember, this is just a handy workaround as all your files and settings are still in your old profile.
Prevention is usually the best cure – there is nothing wrong with having a backup account set up just in case, even if your Mac is working fine. After you’ve created your backup account, click the Login Options button and make sure your regular account is selected in the Automatic Login drop-down menu. This means that, while your backup account is ready to be used at any time, you won’t ever see any reference to it unless you manually log off of your regular profile.
An Apple Certified Service Professional, Lee is an integral part of the Technica Solutions team and has spent six years in the IT industry. A self-confessed gadget addict he'll buy it regardless of whether he needs it - the electrical retailers dream customer!
www.technicasolutions.co.uk
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Apple has released iOS 5. It is a free update for iPads and all iPhones of 3GS and above, as well as some iPod touch devices.
What I like in iOS 5Apple boasts that there are 200 new features. Most of these you will not notice in normal use but the following features offer real improvement to the user experience:
Drag and drop email addresses
You reply to all, and then decide that you want to move someone in the CC: field to the To: field or to the BCC: field. Previously this was a nightmare to achieve and it was often easier to retype the addresses. Now you touch the email recipient for a few seconds and it floats and can be dropped on to an alternative field.
Formatting in Email
OK, it's not a full blown word processor interface but you can, at least, add a bit of Bold, Underline or Italic to your email as well as indent text.
Spelling and Word replacement
The really annoying iPhone/iPad word replacement feature is ever so slightly less annoying now that it really seems to learn words you use regularly. In addition you now have a full blown spell checker when creating an email with the red squiggly line that you get in Word like packages and spelling suggestions.
You also have the ability to select a word and look up its definition. Although I’m not convinced how useful this will be, as one would have thought you would know the definition of the words you are creating yourself.
Keyboard Shortcuts and adding Custom words
There is a new feature allowing you to create keyboard shortcuts. For instance you can create the shortcut:
lbf = llamas are bigger than frogs
and every time you type lbf it will replace these three letters with the phrase “llamas are bigger than frogs”
But the hidden power of this feature is it allows you to add word and phrases without assigning shortcuts and once added these words/phrases are in your custom dictionary. Thus they are not auto corrected and they are even used as suggestions by the autocorrect and the spellchecker.
Alert sounds
Finally there is an easy way to change the sounds your device uses as email and text alerts. We may now see a time when a text arrives on somebody’s iPhone and everyone in the room doesn’t reach for their pocket at the same time.
Having said that, the new choices of sounds are all extremely annoying. Anyone who selects the sound “Update” or “Anticipate” will soon found themselves without friends.
Jason Ozin is a well-known IT professional, technical architect and joint owner of Technica Solutions - www.technicasolutions.co.uk. Jason consults leading UK and international enterprises on real world technical and IT issues. Jason specialises in business infrastructure and IT security matters.
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As the first member of our technical team to receive the iPhone 4S I wanted to share my iPhone experiences so far.
I had an iPhone 3GS shortly after launch and loved it. I did however feel that there were a lot of features lacking and being a self-confessed tech geek this left me wanting more. Many of the features we take for granted now, were not included in the iPhone operating system to begin with. Multitasking, the notification centre, custom wallpapers, gestural commands, wifi tethering, etc. were all excluded. Over time, Apple included more and more of these features into the operating system – likely, to a large degree, to discourage jailbreaking.
Apart from this the iPhone 3GS was a perfect device for my needs. However, 2.5 years of wear and tear, it had a dodgy battery and a few scratches and was in desperate need of retirement. Having sat out a generation in avoiding the iPhone 4 and enduring a year and a half of having it rubbed in my face, I felt it was time to get cutting edge with the 4S. The recent release of iOS 5 pretty much put the finishing touches on my iOS wish list with the notification centre and iCloud backup, so I was pretty confident that with the performance upgrades and additional features, this would make it a worthwhile purchase.
With my brand new iPhone 4S in hand, my laptop was at home and my 3GS was flat. I had no access to iTunes anywhere for the old mandatory iPhone activation and I figured there wouldn’t be much I could do with it until I got it home. To my surprise, it booted, connected to the 3G network, and activated itself! Secondly, I signed in with my Apple ID, connected to the nearby wireless network, and asked if I’d like to restore from iCloud. I hadn’t even realised that this was an option. Three minutes later, the device rebooted and it suddenly looked a lot more familiar. All my settings, messages, call history, etc. had been transferred. Next, it began downloading all the applications I had on my old phone from the App store automatically. Within 10 minutes of automatic setup I had an identical clone of my old iPhone, apart from my music and videos which would require a sync with my laptop. From now on, if someone has updated the software on their current iPhone and makes an iTunes purchase, that purchase will sync between devices but as I hadn't updated mine I had to sync with my laptop.
Next, I decided to test out Siri – the voice prompt technology that there is hype about. Asking Siri to direct me to the nearest chinese food restaurant was disappointing as it only does business directions in the US. Apart from that, the system works well. I was impressed with how fast it accurately recognised my voice and became nearly flawless. It is still a novelty and not a game changer for me, however I can imagine that some people might find uses for it.
I played around with the camera which is easily accessible from the lock screen now and it opens substantially quicker. This, again, could be a reason to buy for a lot of people, but I don’t really take anything other than the odd snaps here and there so this is another novelty for me.
All in all, the improvements are there, just not obvious. It is a lot quicker, and with the iOS5 features it makes it the perfect upgrade. In my opinion it is vastly better than the 3GS, but I wouldn’t say it’s worth upgrading to if you already have an iPhone 4. The technology is powerful and underutilized at this point while everyone holds back on the processing requirements of their apps to make them compatible with older models. Where I’m always left wanting more, Apple always seems to catch up.
An Apple Certified Service Professional, Lee is an integral part of the Technica Solutions team and has spent six years in the IT industry. A self-confessed gadget addict he'll buy it regardless of whether he needs it - the electrical retailers dream customer!
www.technicasolutions.co.uk
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