If you ever need to reinstall the software, you will be required to re-enter the product key. For this reason, it is imperative that you keep a copy of your product keys in a safe place. The Computer Psychic recommends that you print out a page containing any pertinent information for a given program. This would include the program name, the product key, any user names and passwords associated with the application, plus contact information – company’s address, help line number, and the like.

You can then keep a file of all of these pages in a handy location, in case you ever need to reinstall. There is one more precaution you can take. If you have a web-based email account (Windows Live Mail, GMail, Yahoo Mail), or if your internet service provider has a web-based tool for their email (most do), you can email yourself a list of all of these product keys. This way if you have a fire and lose both your computer and your product keys file, you can always recover these from your email.

One more thing to keep in mind. The Windows operating system also has it’s own product keys. If your computer came with Windows pre-installed, there will be a sticker on the computer showing the version of Windows you have, and its product key. Since these stickers have been known to come off, or wear down such that they are illegible, you will want to add that information to your product key file as well.

This article is provided by Steve Smith, The Computer Psychic. All content is protected by applicable copyrights, and may not be reproduced without express consent of the author.

The information in this knowledge base article is provided “as-is” with no warranty, express or implied, as to the suitability or validity of its content. It is up to the reader of this article to determine if the steps outlined herein are appropriate for his or her use. As with all tasks on the computer, be sure to have a current backup of your data before proceeding.

Without even being aware of it, you most likely are already using some cloud-enabled programs. Web-based email is a good example. If you have, for example, a Hotmail or Gmail email account you’re using a cloud-based program. These programs store nothing on your computer. Instead you log onto their servers, enter your credentials and read and send emails.

Cloud computing – also called Software as a Service (SaaS) has several advantages over traditional installed programs. First of all, the programs (with a few exceptions) don’t reside on your computer. That means they aren’t eating up disk space. Also, you don’t have to worry about downloading updates. The program is always current. Most importantly, though, true cloud apps don’t force you to store your data locally on your computer. Instead, you save your work on their servers. This allows you to access your work from any computer that has an internet connection.

Google has been a leader in cloud computing. They have even released a beta of their Chrome operating system that’s entirely internet based. You create an account and customize your desktop and applications to suit you. Then from any computer, you access Chrome, log in with your credentials, and there’s your desktop. And your programs. And, most importantly, your data!

It’s going to be a while until your entire computing experience can be cloud-based. Until then, here is a subjective list of the best cloud applications:

Google Apps – The granddaddy of online applications, Google apps offer a multitude of solutions: word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, photo editing… way too much to list here. Just reviewing everything they offer is great fun! http://www.google.com/apps/

Microsoft Office Cloud – Microsoft was rather late getting into cloud computing, and has been playing catch-up with Google. They offer online storage and accessibility for their popular Office suite of apps (Word, Excel and PowerPoint). http://www.microsoft.com/cloud/

Microsoft SkyDrive – All you need is a Windows Live account and you can store documents, pictures, videos – any file – on Microsoft’s SkyDrive service. SkyDrive is offered as part of the Windows Live experience.  http://explore.live.com/

Mint – Mint.com is a free online personal finance application. Set up and maintain a budget, track expenses and easily generate reports. Mint is also available as an iPhone app. http://www.mint.com/

Panda Cloud Antivirus – If you’re looking for a solid anti-virus program that has a small footprint and uses few resources (for a netbook, as an example), then Panda Cloud Antivirus is for you. http://www.cloudantivirus.com/en/

Picnik - The Picnik website says it best – “Photo editing made fun”. One-click photo fixes, special effects, cropping and more. http://www.picnik.com/

Fitday - A free online diet journal, Fitday features tracking tools for your foods, exercise, weight  loss and goals. http://www.fitday.com/

Sumo Paint – Sumo Paint is an online image editing application with a full palette of tools, allowing image enthusiasts to create and edit their own masterpieces. http://www.sumopaint.com/home/

iCloud – If cloud-based apps, aren’t enough, how about a virtual online operating system? iCloud is a desktop with applications that you access through your browser. This virtual computer offers the most popular productivity programs – a Microsoft Word-compatible document editor, a calendar, contact management and a to-do list. Plus iCloud has a music player, a movie player, a photo viewer – even an online radio! http://www.icloud.com/en

Cloud computing is an idea whose time has come. Fortunately, more and more vendors are creating cloud-based programs. And, as you see above, many of them are free! Have fun up in the clouds!

This article is provided by Steve Smith, The Computer Psychic. All content is protected by applicable copyrights, and may not be reproduced without express consent of the author.

The information in this knowledge base article is provided “as-is” with no warranty, express or implied, as to the suitability or validity of its content. It is up to the reader of this article to determine if the steps outlined herein are appropriate for his or her use. As with all tasks on the computer, be sure to have a current backup of your data before proceeding.

Step 1: Leave the computer in a public place

Don’t let your children have a computer in their bedroom. Instead, leave the computer in a public area in your home, preferably one where the screen is visible to most everyone. This will help assure that your kids don’t spend time on sites that are less than desirable.

Step 2: Create a user account for your kids

Windows allows different people to have their own accounts, each with different levels of access. If you give your children an account with Guest access, they will be able to browse the internet, chat with friends and send and receive email. However, they won’t be able to install software and games they might find on the internet, many of which carry viruses.

Step 3: Install internet filters

A filtering program can help keep kids away from websites that contain pornography or promote hate. While no filtering system is perfect – and you shouldn’t depend wholly on a filter to protect your kids – a web filter can be a valuable tool. There are many for-pay web filters out there. However, The Computer Psychic recommends an excellent free program, K9 Web Protection. K9 Web Protection keeps a list of known websites that promote pornography, violence, drug use or gambling, and blocks access to those sites. In addition, K9 Web Patrol checks all other sites “on the fly” for any questionable content.

Step 4: Talk to your children

Yes, it’s obvious, but all too many parents don’t take the time to explain to their children just exactly what type of behavior is expected from them. Explain to them what sort of sites they may and may not visit. Explain to them that there are bad guys out there disguising themselves as kids. Make sure they know never to reveal any personal information over the internet, including telephone numbers and addresses. These same rules apply to cell phones. Make sure they know that any action performed online is potentially available for the entire world to view.

Summary:

As parents, we walk a fine line between informing our children and scaring them. But it’s important for us to take the steps needed to keep them safe. Hopefully with these tools, your kids will find the internet to be an enriching and wonderful place.

This article is provided by Steve Smith, The Computer Psychic. All content is protected by applicable copyrights, and may not be reproduced without express consent of the author.

The information in this knowledge base article is provided “as-is” with no warranty, express or implied, as to the suitability or validity of its content. It is up to the reader of this article to determine if the steps outlined herein are appropriate for his or her use. As with all tasks on the computer, be sure to have a current backup of your data before proceeding.

Disney.com – Not only can your children watch new and classic Disney cartoons, they can also catch up on the latest episodes of their favorite live action Disney shows.

KidsWB.com – This site has a wide assortment of classic Warner Brothers cartoons, including Looney Tunes, The Flintsones, Scooby Doo and tons more!

Cartoon Network – Odds are many of your children’s favorite cartoons are here, both current and older shows. This site lets them choose from scores of episodes.

Sesame Street – Technically Muppets aren’t cartoons, but if you have younger children, they’ll love this!

Nick.com – Nickelodeon’s website is chock-full of show clips, full episodes and music videos of all your kid’s favorites.

Nick Jr – This Nickelodeon site is targeted towards pre-school children, containing the most popular shows on Nick Jr.

After your kids are cartooned out, they can spend additional time on any of these websites playing educational games and learning more about their favorite characters.

While all of these webistes are 100% kid-safe, keep in mind that they all carry ads for other destinations. While these other sites are in and of themselves kid-friendly, they will also contain links that may eventually lead to non-desirable websites. So as always, be sure to monitor you children’s internet usage for maximum safety.

This article is provided by Steve Smith, The Computer Psychic. All content is protected by applicable copyrights, and may not be reproduced without express consent of the author.

The information in this knowledge base article is provided “as-is” with no warranty, express or implied, as to the suitability or validity of its content. It is up to the reader of this article to determine if the steps outlined herein are appropriate for his or her use. As with all tasks on the computer, be sure to have a current backup of your data before proceeding.

Fortunately, there’s a web service that will simulate intrusions by hackers, and give you a report of any weak points in your computer. Along with the report, it will give you suggestions you can follow to make your system more secure.

Visit the ShieldsUP! website and run their free test. It only takes a couple of minutes, and it’s a valuable tool towards keeping your computer safe.

Commercial antivirus programs will do a good job in removing most viruses. But there’s an additional tool available that will compliment any anti-virus program. That program is called HijackThis. Combined with the online HijackThis File Analyzer, HijackThis will give you exceptional control over what happens in your computer.

The first step is to download Hijack This from http://free.antivirus.com/hijackthis/. Once you’ve installed and run it, you’ll see the initial HijackThis screen, as pictured below:

All you need to do is click the “Do a system scan and save a logfile” button to start analyzing your system. HijackThis will soon show a text document showing everything that’s currently running in your computer, along with what happens upon startup. As pictured below, highlight the entire text of the document and copy it.

Rather than try to figure out what all this means, we’re going to let the online HijackThis File analyzer to the work for us. Open the analyzer by going to this address: http://hijackthis.de/. As pictured below, paste your copied text into the textbox.

Now you can scroll down a bit and click the Anaylyze button. After a few moments, the analyzer will display the results, as shown in this screen:

Threats on your system will show with a big red X. Items that you will want to review have a question mark next to them. As you can see, this computer has the Ask toolbar and the Sweety animated smiley app. Both of these are considered spyware – they monitor your internet usage and push ads based on your activity.

To remove threats, just switch back to the HijackThis program and click the checkbox next to each item you want to remove.

Then click the “Fix checked” button. HijackThis may prompt you to close any Internet Explorer or Windows Explorer windows to assure the fixes get applied properly.

It’s just that simple! It’s a good idea to run HijackThis periodically, just to assure any malware hasn’t crept its way into your system.

This article is provided by Steve Smith, The Computer Psychic. All content is protected by applicable copyrights, and may not be reproduced without express consent of the author.

The information in this knowledge base article is provided “as-is” with no warranty, express or implied, as to the suitability or validity of its content. It is up to the reader of this article to determine if the steps outlined herein are appropriate for his or her use. As with all tasks on the computer, be sure to have a current backup of your data before proceeding.

The reality is, these days a good credit score can not only save you money on a car loan, mortgage and insurance, but it might dictate whether or not you get an apartment or even a job!

With so much riding on your credit score, it only makes sense to monitor it regularly. Fortunately, the internet makes it easy to do that.

First of all, forget FreeCreditReport.com. That’s the one we all hear about on the radio and TV. However, if you sign up with them, you’ll find the credit report is only free if you subscribe to their monthly monitoring service. And that’s not free! Here are some other resources you can use to monitor your credit score, and they really are free!

Credit Karma – Their easy to read reports and graphs allow you to track your credit score from month to month. In addition, they offer free tools and advice to improve your score.

Quizzle – As their tagline says: Don’t guess. Know. This easy to use website not only gives you your credit score, but also your full credit report, home value, and tools and tips.

AnnualCreditReport.com – This website was created as mandated by the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act. It is operated by the big three credit reporting agencies: Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. Under the rules of the act, you are able to receive one free credit report per year from each agency. This means you can log in once every four months and request a report from a different agency. As mandated by the act, ou will receive your full credit report, but – since credit scores weren’t part of the mandate – you will have to pay extra to view your credit score.

With all of these sites, you will need to provide personal information, including your social security number. But rest assured, the sites are secure and so is your data.

This article is provided by Steve Smith, The Computer Psychic. All content is protected by applicable copyrights, and may not be reproduced without express consent of the author.

The information in this knowledge base article is provided “as-is” with no warranty, express or implied, as to the suitability or validity of its content. It is up to the reader of this article to determine if the steps outlined herein are appropriate for his or her use. As with all tasks on the computer, be sure to have a current backup of your data before proceeding.

No, The Computer Psychic didn’t just have a stroke. I meant to type the above paragraph that way. For those of you not into texting, here’s what it says:

Does this look strange to you? Can you even read it? If you’re comfortable reading this, then you are familiar with texting.

If you have kids – and if they have cellphones – odds are they text more than they talk on them. But what is all that gobblygoop they type? It’s simply a form of shorthand that makes texting on a telephone keypad quicker and easier. And, even though they may not admit it, they also think it’s “cool” to text like that.

It’s pretty easy to decipher text-speak. You simply read the characters as they look. For example, take a look at the title of this article. It translates into “What are you texting today?” In addition to this shorthand, there are many acronyms these darn kids today use as well. Following are just a few:

And, once again proving that you can find anything at all on the internet, check out the Lingo to English translator.

So, now that you know all bout texting, put dwn yr keybord, pik ^ yr ph, n gt txtN!

This article is provided by Steve Smith, The Computer Psychic. All content is protected by applicable copyrights, and may not be reproduced without express consent of the author.

The information in this knowledge base article is provided “as-is” with no warranty, express or implied, as to the suitability or validity of its content. It is up to the reader of this article to determine if the steps outlined herein are appropriate for his or her use. As with all tasks on the computer, be sure to have a current backup of your data before proceeding.

If you’re like most people, chances are you’ve had your computer for quite some time and have never opened the case and looked inside. Well, now’s the time. If you have a desktop computer, take the case off. Notice all that dust that’s accumulated around the fan and other components. That dust acts as an insulator, causing heat buildup. Heat is your computer’s enemy. A system that runs cool runs longer. Purchase a can of compressed air and blow all that dust out of your computer. Make sure there’s nothing obstructing the vents on the case, and make sure the fan inside spins freely. Blow air through all of the vents on the computer, and in the drive bays as well.  Once you’ve cleaned everything out you can put the case back on.

If you have a laptop computer, you don’t want to open the case and do that sort of cleaning. However, you can take the compressed air and clean out the vents under it. In addition you can blow the air across the keyboards.

Now you can clean your computer screen (laptop or desktop). Be careful cleaning it. Excess moisture can actually get under the LED panel and distort the screen. Don’t spray a cleaner directly on the screen. Your best option is to purchase cleaning cloths especially made for LED screens. (By the way, that’s also a great way to clean your large-screen TV!)

Nex it’s time to address the programs in your computer. Do you have anti-virus and anti-spyware programs installed? Do you trust them? Did you know that many so-called anti-virus programs actually act as back doors into your system, tracking your computer usage and reporting results back to spammers? They can even access your address book and target spam to your friends, relatives and business associates. The Computer Psychic recommends the free suite, Microsoft Security Essentials. This anti-virus/anti-spyware program is top rated by most review sites, updates its virus definition daily and is 100% free.

Next, remove unneeded files that are cluttering up your hard drive. The freeware program Ccleaner does an excellent job of this. Once you have Ccleaner installed, run it and click the Cleaner button. Select the types of files you want to be removed – here’s a screenshot of the file types I recommend removing.

Once the files are selected, click the Analyze button. After a few moments you’ll see a list of files the Ccleaner will remove. If you’re OK with this, simply click the Run Cleaner button to apply the changes.

While you have Ccleaner running, this is a good time to also optimize the Windows registry. The registry is a database that stores virtually everything Windows needs to “remember” in order to run correctly. Over time, as you install and uninstall (or even just use) applications, the registry can become cluttered with “orphan” entries that no longer pertain to anything valid. These orphan entries can – and do – slow down your system.

In Ccleaner, click the Registry button on the left. I suggest leaving all items in the Registry Integrity column checked, and click the Scan for Issues button. Once Ccleaner is done populating the list of issues, you can click the Fix Selected Issues button to remove these entries from the registry. After clicking that button, you’ll see an option to back up the current registry. It’s very important that you do this backup. This way, if anything vital is accidentally removed during the cleaning process, you can recover it by restoring the backup. After you’ve saved the backup file, simply click the Fix All Selected Issues button to finish.

Now take some time using some tools that are included right in Windows. The first is Checkdisk. This utility will analyze your computer’s hard drive, looking for and fixing any damaged sectors. A damaged sector is an area on your hard disk that is no longer able to be written to or read from. Too many damaged sectors can cause errors when saving your programs, or cause existing data not to be read. To run Checkdisk, first close all programs that are running, and disable any screen savers. Then do the following:

1. Click on your Windows Start button and type CMD.  (Windows XP users will need to click Start, then Run, and then type CMD.) Press the Enter key. This will open up a black command window.
2. In the command window, type chkdsk /F and press Enter. Note, there’s a space between the k and the / character. Since Checkdisk can’t run while Windows is running, it will ask if you want it to run the next time Windows is restarted. Press Y for yes, and press the Enter key.
3. Now restart your computer. Before Windows boots up, Checkdisk will run and automatically fix any errors. Any sectors that cannot be fixed will be marked unusable by the system so Windows won’t try to access these bad sectors. Once Checkdisk is complete, Windows will finish loading.

Now it’s time to run the Disk Defragmenter. When Windows writes data to the hard drive, it writes it to the first available spot on the disk. As you remove a program or file this leave a bit of empty space on the disk.

As you add and remove programs and save and delete files, Windows will write that data to the first available spot on the hard drive. Data that gets written to the disk becomes fragmented. That is, instead of all the data residing in contiguous sectors, the data will be written in the first available sector. If the data is larger than that sector, the operating system will continue to write in the next available sector, elsewhere on the disk. After time the data can become very fragmented – scattered all over the hard drive.

The Disk Defragmenter will re-write the data on your drive, all in contiguous blocks, thus speeding up data access and reducing stress on the hard drive. To run the Disk Defragmenter, click on your Windows Start button, then Accessories, System Tools and then Disk Defragmenter. Click on the Analyze button to determine the state of the hard drive. The program will tell you if the system needs defragmenting.

That’s it! Your computer is now all cleaned up for springtime! If you clean the computer twice a year and perform the other software tasks monthly, you can be assured that your computer will continue to run as desired.

This article is provided by Steve Smith, The Computer Psychic. All content is protected by applicable copyrights, and may not be reproduced without express consent of the author.

The information in this knowledge base article is provided “as-is” with no warranty, express or implied, as to the suitability or validity of its content. It is up to the reader of this article to determine if the steps outlined herein are appropriate for his or her use. As with all tasks on the computer, be sure to have a current backup of your data before proceeding.