Home Computer Talk

Occasionally Mr. JM and I will wander down to the local pub and have a couple of drinks. We go there mainly to say hello to our friend Cyril, who is at the pub every day but Sunday and days he has family commitments. Cyril is always good for a laugh and good conversation, but there is one thing he resists above all else…

Technology.

Though Mr. JM and I have been telling him all about how technology can benefit him, even just by having a mobile phone, he refuses to mess with ‘that nonsense’. I even brought in my laptop to the pub last Friday and, while impressed, he refused Mr. JM’s offer to get him a laptop. For free.

I’m not sure if you know anyone technology-resistant who would go so far as to refuse a free laptop, but I’m sure you know at least one person who (more…)

There are a variety of ways in which computers improve our multimedia experience. Those with the cash to spare can buy a Multimedia PC, using the functions built in to connect to a home entertainment system that rivals those which, until recently, (relatively) were only available in cinemas.

Surround sound, large screens, High Definition quality – all these contribute to an experience that leaves a simple TV night in the dirt. A few years back you could spend $5,000 on a fairly basic system and you’d be lucky if you knew anyone with a good system. Now you can upgrade your screen and use your computer to boost performance for an engrossing evening deep in the multimedia experience.

But you can also do it fairly simply with your computer. Systems these days come with more than enough memory, video performance, DVD players and hard disk space to let you spend some quality multimedia time in front of your machine.

It can also, properly configured, provide an enveloping experience with computer games.

Once good speakers were a necessary part of the quality time, but now there are cheap headphones that can easily match the performance of expensive speakers. And it means you can enjoy yourself in a room with people watching TV or doing other things.

Just try not to be vocal about things happening on the screen – it gets extraordinarily annoying to others to have odd unexplained noises coming from the corner of the room. Keeping the noise down can be thought of as divorce avoidance.

So, you’ve upgraded the RAM (memory) in your computer and now it runs better than before, but when you try to edit your digital video or convert your digicam footage into a DVD, it takes hours to run. Or maybe you go out and buy the latest game and then find it shows jerky video segments or takes excess time to update screens. What’s going on?

Well a lot of video performance issues come down to how capable your video card is. Most recent computers have a video chip on the motherboard to provide video capability. The problems with this may only surface (more…)

OK, so you’re wanting to improve your computer performance and you figure you’ll start with memory. You’ve looked inside the box to see if you have free slots or you’ve decided to replace what you have.

How to tell what kind you have?

There’s a nice little tool called Hardware Info which will query your computer and present you with a nice list of everything in it. Download it, install it and when you want to upgrade things in your machine it will tell you all you need to know.

Note the memory type in your computer (write it down) and you’re ready to (more…)

So… you’ve looked around, found your needs, discovered which ones suit your computer best, found a supplier with a good rep and a decent price and you’re wondering who you can pay to do the upgrade.

Relax, it’s not that hard. If you try not to worry about the complexities of what a computer actually does, there are only a few parts to see in the box and they are easy to identify.

But first, read and meditate on the following…

Rule number one – (more…)

So if you have a reason to upgrade, and the money to do it, you should spend a little bit of time to work out just what needs upgrading. In the examples from Upgrading a Computer, Part 1, there’s not a lot of point in buying a new computer if all you want is more space. Most computers have extra hard disk connectors so you can simply add in a new hard disk.

For better game play, you can add more memory to your computer or purchase a new video card and see a remarkable difference in how your machine responds. Most games don’t actually (more…)

The first question is, I guess, should you upgrade. If you look earlier in these posts, you will see ways to improve the performance of your computer which don’t cost anything except some time. (see Old Age or Clogged Arteries?)

So, should you upgrade? Well if you have a burning desire to spend money you could go out and buy a high specification computer and then cripple it with Windows Vista. Look to spending well over a thousand dollars to get something that will probably (more…)

So it’s late, I’m at home after a busy day and, after a phone call to Mr JM, he’s going to be late.

Why is it so?

Well, he’s busy with a computer (more…)

How many computers do you have?

How about printers?

What about scanners?

In the 1980’s personal computers became a reality. In the beginning (more…)

You’ve seen some of this before in how to freshen your PC… see http://www.homecomputertalk.com/old-age-or-just-clogged-arteries-part-2/

From Mr JM
Way to fix Windows problems so you can get back in and (more…)

When computers first became personal (according to Mr JM) they were rather expensive. You can get a cell phone now for one tenth the cost of his first computer and the phone will out-perform the XT computer in every way. With a printer, he paid nearly $3,000 for a one megabyte, twin floppy drive XT computer. The floppy disks held 360kb (that’s right kilo-bytes, not megabytes) each.

His first hard disk came six months later and was a whopping thirty megabytes!

Not only was $3,000 a lot more money back then, you (more…)

I asked Mr JM about his work – he does Helpdesk for an Aged Care company. He says he helps people to use their computers; they call him a Desktop Support Engineer. Specifically I wanted to know what is the best thing for people to do before they call for help.

His response? ‘If the computer is not responding, NOTHING!’

What he means is that, quite often, things are recoverable if help is called before anything changes. But mostly computer users will fiddle and try to fix things they know little about and in the process spoil the chances of getting back the document or data.

Of course, if your computer has given the much talked of BSOD, (Blue Screen of Death) there isn’t likely much you could have done.

He also thinks that not enough people (more…)

When Mr JM began computing, the Apple computer company was in its infancy. According to him, they made an almost fatal mistake – they locked down the architecture, sued the pants off (or threatened to) anyone who dared to try to imitate them, (in spite of the fact they ripped off the WIMP interface from Rank Xerox) and over-priced their machines to almost absurd levels.
(WIMP = Window, Icon, Menu, Pull-down)

IBM, on the other hand, introduced a much inferior computer, opened the architecture, & didn’t care if people copied them. Consequently, today, there are at least 50 Windows PC’s out there for every MAC.

There were a few other faux pas as well; inability to expand the machine you’d paid $5,000 for, holding onto a nine inch grey screen even when the standard everywhere else was a fourteen inch 256 colour VGA screen, and eventually a clunky single button mouse when even IBM was releasing a two button version.

Mr JM says also that you can tell someone who began their computer experience on a MAC by the fact they bang the mouse on the desk before they move it. (Apparently the MAC mouses had ‘sticky’ balls,  and you had to lift them & tap them on the desk to get the pointer to begin moving)

Now they have the MAC-Air. Lovely looking machine, light, thin, everything a catwalk model should be – and about as intelligent.

To quote Tech Republic, Computer Guru site… (more…)

OK, so we’ve talked about the bits that matter when choosing the computer. Why do they matter?

Well, it’s possible to go out there and buy a top of the range computer with all the best items in it. But unless you have seriously too much money in your pocket, or you’re a games geek with a burning need to push the boundaries of what’s possible and do it all at an inch short of light speed, the chances are you’d be spending money you don’t need to spend.

Most computer users will tell you all about how you need the latest and bestest and that if you don’t get it you’ll be behind the pace within a few weeks. But unless you want to buy into the Wintel game, that horse don’t run. (more…)

It’s that time. You’ve finally decided to go and buy yourself a home computer. The first and probably most important question would be… For what purpose are you buying a computer?

It’s more important than you realize if you’re new to the computer world or if you’ve only ever used a work computer running Word. The use can determine how much memory (RAM) hard disk space, which chipset you need, whether you need a whiz-bang video card and if you need a network card.

What are we talking about?

Memory or RAM: The Computer loads instructions from programs and executes them to give you results. RAM is the area where it does the processing. The more RAM, generally, the less to and fro the chip (CPU) has to do to get things done, so the faster you get your results. (more…)