Available Computers Section...Now Live!

If you are looking for an affordable laptop or desktop, please check out the link above about what systems are availble.  Glad to have your trust and confidence, as well as well as your business!

Do Not call me to repair a Microsoft Surface Pro Tablet..

Popular do-it-yourself website iFixit today gave Microsoft's Surface Pro tablet the lowest-possible repair score, just 1 out of a possible 10, after spending hours getting the device open.

"The Surface Pro received a 1 out of 10 score on our repairability scale -- the worst any tablet has ever received," said Miroslav Djuric, iFixit's chief information architect, in an email Wednesday. "The display assembly is anchored down with the most adhesive we've ever seen on a small device. In fact, it took us well over an hour to figure out how to get inside -- an iFixit first."

Microsoft introduced the Surface Pro in mid-2012, but started selling it only last Saturday, Feb. 9. Within hours, the $999 128GB configuration sold out. The $899 model with 64GB of storage space, however, remains in stock on Microsoft's online store.

The Surface Pro iFixit tore apart was the latter; presumably the 128GB model differs only in the SSD's (solid-drive storage) number of gigabytes.

The tear-down experts encountered copious amounts of adhesive that fixed the display and battery to the case. "We tried every method we could think of to free the screen, including cutting the adhesive, to no avail," iFixit said in the step-by-step notes documenting the disassembly. "This Pro requires a pro method. Thankfully, we have one: We call it the 'Heat-It-Up-and-Poke-It-Till-It-Does-What-We-Want' method."

Djuric knocked the battery adhesive, too. "We don't understand the point of heavily-glued batteries. This kind of planned obsolesce is completely unnecessary," he wrote.

In short, if it took them that long, I'm not even touching it, lol.

Please read the article on why your anti-virus program didn't protect you!

I get this call so often that I can actually recite the speech from memory while driving.  At least once a week, somebody gets a virus, calls me..complains and says..."I thought you put a program on my computer to prevent this!".  Well I did put a program on your computer, but I never said it would prevent anything. 

Everybody, please realize that the number one determining factor on how you get a virus is your online behavior.  If you engage in the big sins of online web surfing, you will get a virus, no matter what anti-virus program you use.  It is why no anti-virus program guarantees that it will protect you completely.  They can't.  What shouldn't you do?  In no particular order, but all with the same degree of danger:

* Clicking on unknown links in emails

* Porn

* Downloading Pirated software, music, videos, pictures, etc. or using software that facilitates such activity.

* Clicking on strange popups

Among the most popular dumb things many people do online.  The article to read is on your left under "Improve and Protect Your browser"  Please read and adhere!

You really should ditch Adobe Reader.....really

Another day, another critical security exploit discovered for Adobe Reader. Ho-hum. The PDF software's near-ubiquitous presence has made it a big, fat, juicy target for years now, and by this point, you shouldn't be asking what Adobe's going to do to shore up its perpetually leaky program. Instead, you should ask yourself: Why are you still using Adobe Reader at all?

Believe it or not, the PDF viewer scene is bristling with a number of alternatives that receive far less nefarious attention than Adobe's software. Switching away from Reader won't only free you from the tiresome exploit-update-exploit-update-exploit treadmill, it could very well free up some of your valuable system resources. Adobe Reader's so big and bloated that even its most feature-packed competitors seem downright svelte in comparison.

Here are your alternatives...all free too.

Sumatra PDF. If you just want the ability to open PDFs and don't care about bells and whistles, Sumatra PDF is an excellent choice. The program's pretty much limited to straightforward PDF viewing, but it's lightning-fast and uses very few system resources.

Foxit Reader. Foxit Reader's not quite as fast or resource-friendly as Sumatra PDF, but it's still incredibly lightweight, and it packs a few features you won't find in Sumatra; namely, PDF-to-speech functionality, the ability to fill out fields and add text to PDFs, and optional integration with the DocuSign service.

Nitro PDF Reader. The final PDF reader of the bunch opens files slower than the other two options, but makes up for its somewhat pokey performance with a deep feature list—and it's still the equivalent of an Olympic sprinter compared to Adobe Reader's downright sluggish speeds. The free version of Nitro Reader can print (read: convert) virtually any document to a PDF, comes packed with collaboration, creation, and editing tools, and lets you embed your signature into any PDF. That's just the tip of the ice berg, and even better, Nitro PDF Reader dumps nary a watermark on your documents—a rarity amongst free PDF creation tools.

Organize your folders by Colors with Folder Colorizer

Microsoft Windows has been around since 1985, and one of the only things about it that hasn't changed is Windows Explorer (File Explorer in Windows 8). We still have the yellow folder tree-like structure, and many people may argue that it is comforting to have something familiar to hold onto, something that we all know, while the rest of Windows goes through dramatic changes. But some people depend on color to navigate successfully between folders, and all-yellow isn't going to cut it. If that's you, check out the free Folder Colorizer to add a dab of paint to the place and inject some color and life into the operating system. You may be surprised at the difference in not just your mood, but the efficiency of navigation.

Just right-click on the folder you want to colorize and choose your shade. If the one you want is not there, you can access a color table to make more colors.

Simply put, Folder Colorizer (as the name implies) allows you to assign a set color to each folder in Explorer. Upon installation (which also requires a system reboot), you are given some pre-set colors to start playing around with, and to install a certain color, all you have to do is right-click on the folder and go to the newly inserted  "Colorize!" option in your right-click Explorer menu. From there, you can choose a color and the changes will take effect immediately.

If you don't like the color change, you have three options: You can change to another color, choose  "restore original color " to completely undo everything, or reveal the hidden files in Explorer to reveal a temporary color file inside the folder. Delete that and your folder's original color will immediately re-appear.

The color table enables you to add and remove colors to get the ones you want.

If you don't care for the preset colors, you can delete them and start again, courtesy of a color wheel. However, this color wheel doesn't do RGB and HEX color codes, so nix any thoughts of getting that subtle shade that you simply adore. It only allows you to point to red, green, yellow, and so on, with slight shades of each. It's not bad, but RGB and HEX support would make it so much better.

So what is the advantage to this app, apart from turning Windows/File Explorer into Joseph's Technicolor Dreamcoat? Well, look at it this way. It makes navigating Windows folders much easier. A lot of people use color to find their way around, and if you can remember that you placed a file in the red folder and that Dropbox is the green folder (for example), then it may help you to speed up when dragging and dropping files all over the place.

You are not in Afghanistan....that might be a drone overhead!

What’s that buzzing through the sky? It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s… a drone aircraft? If you live in one of 81 cities across the US, you might be seeing drone aircraft flying overhead much more before long. The FAA has just released an updated version of the drone application list, as requested under a Freedom of Information Act action from the EFF. Is your hometown on it?

Most of the list isn’t a real surprise. There are a number of universities that are testing drones, government departments, and a ton of police forces and sheriff’s offices. Some of the more unexpected applicants include the Barona Band of Mission Indians Risk Management Office and the Ohio Department of Transportation.

FAA authorization is necessary because of the potential that drones could interfere with other aircraft. The authorities need to know where drones are operating so that no one gets in a nasty accident.

As for what all those drones are doing up there, that’s a point of contention. Drones overseas get a lot of attention whenever there is a controversial attack on suspected militants in Pakistan or Afghanistan. The drones in the US are often of different designs, and do not carry weapons. Instead, these craft are bristling with multiple cameras — IR, heat sensing, the whole nine yards.

There is definitely an issue of privacy here. Police forces having air units is nothing new, but drones are cheap enough to operate that they can be in the air for long stretches of time doing surveillance that a helicopter wouldn’t be suitable for. Law enforcement in these areas will have unprecedented ability to track individuals across the city on a whim.

The EFF is hoping that the publishing of the list will encourage residents to ask local authorities about their drone programs. The argument can certainly be made that drones can increase public safety, but the potential for abuse is vast as well. Check out the full list of drone-zones on the EFF site.