Larry Braud, longtime subscriber, reader and friend, told be about the protective film he applied to his new laptop. The material was a light-weight, clear, colorless material which came with an anti-glare finish. It adheres to the screen using a built-in silicone resin adhesive.

It seems to be easy to apply and easy to peel off. More importantly, it protects the delicate screen from accidental touches (fingerprint marks are very hard to remove from most LCD monitors). Most importantly, if he hadn’t told me that he had the film on the monitor, I never would have realized it. The picture was bright, sharp without the shine of a high gloss LCD.

I’m not sure why so many manufacturers seem to be shifting to high-glare notebook screens. Perhaps the glossy finish is less susceptible to finger oils or easier to clean — but they’re awfully hard to read.

I haven’t tried these, but Larry has. I’ve seen his and it looked good, too. If you’ve got a glossy screen laptop — or if you’ve got an LCD monitor and have children around (or adults) who can’t be trusted to keep their fingers off the screen, this can be a lifesaver.

Another friend noted that he had managed to touch his monitor while he had a felt-tip pen in his hand - and now has a mark on it. A film screen protector would have saved him a lot of grief.

Continue reading LCD Monitor and Notebook Protection

Once upon a time, there was a simple, text-based operating system called DOS. Most people don’t realize, but DOS was the term was for the Apple 2 series of computers.

Then, along came the IBM PC and the “Microsoft DOS” (MS-DOS) disk operating sytem that many of us came to know and love.

One of the really neat features of MS-DOS was really part of its keyboard facilities — IBM had put a “Prnt Scrn” key on the keyboard, and MS-DOS knew what to do with that.

Just press Prnt Scrn, and you got a dump of the monitor screen’s contents to the printer. Oh, by the way, printers in those days were also text handlers. To print an “E,” the program sent the 8-bit value that meant E to the printer, and the built-in smarts on the printer knew how to print the E.

Continue reading Screen-Printing From Your Computer Screen

I’m often asked whether a reader or a friend (or someone who is both!) should buy a new computer with Windows Vista — or buy a new computer and get Windows XP on it. At first, I would have thought this a strange question since Vista is the new system.

But, then I remembered the basic “rule” of Microsoft products — never buy version 1.0.

I’ve been thinking about a new notebook computer to replace my Dell Inspiron 8600, which has a Pentium M 1.7GHz processor and 2GB memory. It could probably do Windows Vista, but not the Aero interface (and I haven’t found anything in Vista that I particularly want in Vista other than the eye candy — and I like fast more than I like cute).

My first thought was to get a small notebook with Windows XP that I could easily carry. That thought has its own problems though. There’s a long-standing rule about notebook computers:…

Read the rest of the story.

One of the questions I answered recently was about computer overheating. In this case, the individual wanted to know the “right” temperature for his processor — but he didn’t mention which processor he was using or its speed.

His underlying problem was that his computer would spontaneously turn off occasionally. This is usually an indication that the motherboard has shut down automatically to prevent overheating and damage to the CPU.

Many computers allow you to monitor the temperature of the processor, the power supply and perhaps other points, too. You may have to run a special program for your motherboard or computer to be able to see these.

The average temperature for the CPU depends on which processor you’re using. Each manufacturer has difference specifications. For that matter, each of their processor models and speeds has different specs.

Check the manufacturer’s site for specifications on your specific processor — it will tell you the acceptable operating temperatures. I would want to be in the low half of the range.

If you suspect temperature, get a can of compressed air. Open your case and blow the dust out the heat sink and the power supply.

Continue reading Is Your Computer Overheating?

I answered a question recently from someone who wondered whether a router was necessary with a cable Internet connection.

No if’s, and’s or but’s, I recommend a router for any cable or dsl connection.

Whether you intend to have multiple computers connected or not, the router will give you another layer of security. Most significantly, the router will actually gives your computer a “non-routable IP address”. The router isolates anything on the local area network (LAN) side of the router from the Internet (the Wide Area Network - WAN).

This isolation, and the “Network Address Translation” that the router does for your computers, means that you can access computers on the Internet, but no computer on the Internet side of the router can touch yours. All they can do is send a response from your computer to your router ” your router will know how to get the response to your computer.

If you watch, you can find a good deal on a wired router. If you get a wireless one, make sure you can actually disable the wireless function — I used to have a Belkin where there was no option to turn off wireless. If you doesn’t use wireless, turn off the wireless functions.

Continue reading Router for 1 Computer?

Subscriber Rolf wrote to ask about the speed differences between hard drive “virtual memory” and RAM memory chips:

Hello Mr. Stockdale,

Since you actively solicit questions in your newsletter I can therefore feel like I’m not imposing too much of your daily schedule to answer a question or two from those of us (like myself) who don’t have much computer savvy. As for me, well, I have more questions than you’d ever have time for; but for now I’ll settle for one question, and I thank you in advance for taking time for a reply. My question is this -

Kindly explain in as simple terms as you can why free or clear space on hard drives can’t act as readily or responsively in lieu of RAM. In other words … the so-called ‘virtual’ RAM. I’ve read in a few separate places that while a computer can use this virtual RAM, it doesn’t do it as efficiently as more available RAM chips, and that it is generally slower. Why can’t this virtual RAM process, then release data as quickly as normal RAM? Thank you. Rolf
+++++++++++> The Irish Viking <+++++++++++++++++++

In four words: mechanical versus electronic speeds.

Continue reading Speed of Virtual Memory versus RAM

We take our computers for granted. We turn them on and they work (well, if we haven’t gotten tangled up in adware, viruses or Windows decides to misbehave <grin>).

As we do our Spring cleaning (that’s Fall cleaning for those of you in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and other points south of the Equator), we do some of the major cleaning jobs around our homes. And, inside our homes…

But, who thinks of about cleaning the PC?

Read more in Spring Cleaning – Don’t Forget Your Computer