Tips On Buying and Working with Personal Computers.

If you don't like the Windows Blue screen of death, "This program has caused an illegal operation and will be shut down," or the black locked up screen, all causing you to have to reboot, other goofy problems, and dealing with slow computer, then read on!

None of this applies to Apples, laptops, or notebooks

The first rule of desktop PC buying is to never buy a Dell, HP, Compaq, Gateway or other big name brand desktop computer.

Unfortunately, this is the age of the internet. Most large websites do everything they can to drive traffic to their website, collect and sell your personal information and what you do with your computer online (cookies), and put you on spam (junk mail) lists.

These, and other, useless programs are known as "crapware" or "parasite programs."

To see how much crapware your compute is running, press these three keys all at the same time only once: control, alt, and delete.

Click the Processes tab. The amount of processes running should not be more than 1.3 screens long. Anything more, then you have parasite programs the computer manufacturer is forcing your computer to run.

These programs don't do anything you want them to do, so all they do is make your computer run slower, crash, collect information about you, and drive you to their useless websites.

Because the vendor has modified Windows, you can't eradicate most of them.

Companies like the ones listed above customize their motherboards and Windows to do all kinds of worthless things - like drive internet traffic to their, and their "partners" websites.

This is annoying, but even worse, it makes the computer slow, makes it incompatible with other software you may want to install, and makes it crash all the time.

Anyone familiar with AOL, Earthlink, Norton/Symantec, Adobe and similar software knows about these programs taking over your computer. Nothing good ever comes of this.

So here is what to do: Go to a good local PC shop that puts PCs together from scratch. Tell them you want a genuine unmodified Intel motherboard, with a genuine Intel CPU, and get a brand new original Microsoft Windows CD.

Then when there's a problem, you can call them, or just drive the PC to the shop, and/or you can call Microsoft. Actually, all of this changed recently. Now when you buy a clean computer with clean Windows, you have a choice. You can buy it so you'll get a non-OEM serial number, and you can call Microsoft for support for 90 days for free. After 90 days, you'll be charged $95 an hour for help. This version of Windows costs more. Or you can get the same Windows with OEM in the serial number, and when you call for help, you'll be charge $95 an hour from day one. This is cheaper. The concept is the same even though Microsoft is now charging for support - the clean, non-modified, version of Windows is the biggest factor when it comes to having a PC that won't annoy you with crashes and stupidity all day.

This way:

· Your computer will rarely crash or do stupid things to you all day (compared to the name brands with OEM Windows).

· You'll be able to upgrade Windows without having to take it back to the store (if you can). Because these firms modify Windows, you can't just buy and install the latest version of Windows because it doesn't have all of their modifications. It may run, but it will crash constantly.

· You'll be able update Windows via Microsoft's free update site.

If you do that with OEM operating systems, it will just make things worse (like make everything like wireless drivers stop working), because pure MS code won't run on motherboards that have been modified (by Dell/Gateway/Compaq/HP/Etc.). You have to go to the vendors website to get updates, and they're usually full of bugs and "patches."

· You get a free copy of WinZip - the file compressor and decompressor. When you buy something like a Dell, you don't get it for free, and have to pay to get it. The same with Windows Media Player, which comes as a freebie with a pure version of MS Windows.

· Your computer will be much faster (because it's not running tons of useless crapware parasite programs in the background). No more having to pack it up and spend a fortune sending it in the mail.

· The service will be better (because you can drive it over to a real human in your community).

· You won't get the constant parade of "patches" that you need to install to keep your computer running.

· The PC will be cheaper even after the local sales tax.

· Useless background programs won't take over you computer and drive you to their useless websites. It also won't go to websites automatically anymore, updating things you don't want.

· There won't be unwanted icons and favorites all over the place.

· You'll be putting money into your community instead of reinforcing the name brand's bad behavior.

· You can try to eradicate parasites one at a time, but only if you know what you're doing.

First, to see what parasites are running on your computer, press Control-Alt-Delete ONCE. This is a list of everything that's running on your computer. If it's more than 1.3 pages long, then you can help your PC by getting rid of the bad ones.

Most are needed by Windows and can't be stopped. Most everything else can be eradicated.

First, go to the top of the list and press the Print Screen key. Now go to MS Word and open up a blank document. Please control B to paste. What was on your screen pastes into the doc. Scroll down the list so you can see more, and repeat. When all of the programs are in the doc, save it.

Now input the name of each program that's running into a Google search. If it's a parasitic program, then there will be tons of things to read that tells all about it and how to remove it.

If you know what you're doing, you can decide whether or not to deinstall programs, or delete the files.

If you have a kid using your computer, and they're going online all the time playing games, then this is a hopeless battle. The best thing to do s get the kid their own computer to destroy.

Miscellaneous PC Tips and Info

No, you can't install clean Windows on an OEM computer (HP, Dell, Compaq, Gateway, etc.). because they modified their mother boards to only run on their modified version of Windows. You can only run their version of Windows.

Before you buy any hardware or software, make sure it's not made in China or Taiwan. There's too many problems with all that.

if you've noticed, you can't eradicate cookies and the tons of useless and dangerous crap websites load on your PC anymore. When you Delete Cookies and all of that from your browser, it doesn't get rid of hardly any of them. Then when you try to use Windows Explorer, these files in Documents and Settings don't even display so you can delete them. There is only one way around this, and that's to use your CD burner program to hunt these files down and delete them manually. This way you can eradicate everything except the infamous index.dat files. You have to hunt for them in dozens of folders under Documents and Settings, but it's worth it to do it monthly at least.

AMD processors are a lot more buggy than Intel processors. Of all of the computers we've had, the one with the most stability problems has been the one with the AMD processor.

And if you didn't know - Macs are only good for people that do nothing but create artsy graphic images. They're like swimming in mud when it comes to getting any real work done. So never ever buy a Mac unless ALL you do are graphics. People that do nothing but graphics even say these days that enough software they need runs on PCs. So they are really no applications that could justify the unbelievable non-stop parade of annoyances and limitations that are Apple computers. They're getting better, but still compared to having a pure Microsoft/Intel system, working with Apples is like swimming in mud.

If you have XP, you should consider turning off the "Send Error Report" function. It is very annoying, may break Internet Explorer, and is prone to spyware viruses that let bad people into your PC when it's sending the error report. This happened to our Compaq Presario and it sat and the evil-doers downloaded 200Mb of stuff before we realized it wasn't sending an error report and killed it. So it's best just just turn it off. Go to Control Panel, System Properties, and at the bottom there's a button for Error Reporting.

If you have a name brand computer (HP, Dell, Compaq, Gateway) running Windows, XP, DO NOT upgrade to Vista from XP! The amount of problems you'll have will suck your life away for weeks.

Avoid Windows Vista if possible and get Windows XP if you can.

If you're annoyed because Standby/Sleep doesn't work right, because it comes out of Standby for no reason, or because the mouse moved, then the problem is your Logitech mouse. Get a Microsoft mouse (3000 v1.0) and all of your mouse and standby annoyances will go away (including the problem where the mouse jumps all over the screen for no reason).

We've also found that Microsoft keyboards also work the best. The Mail and Web keys are cool, and they just feel the best. Get the spill-resistant ones.

On all of our keyboards, you'll find several keys have been removed. They are rarely used, and only serve as targets for making mistakes. For example, we popped out all of the following keys: Caps lock, Number lock, the Start menu key, Break, Scroll, F1, and the two keys next to the Print Screen key. If you gently pop them out, then they easily pop right back in. Popping out these useless keys will greatly improve your typing speed and efficiency. If you need to use them temporarily, you can just insert a pencil or pen tip. You'll be amazed at how your life will improve without these keys!

Always use a good power surge strip for your PC and monitor. Even better is using even the cheapest battery backup unit.

Tips for working with and saving files can be found here.

You should make CD backups of all of your work on a monthly basis, and store the CD in a safe location, but not where your computer is. It's critical to back up your data, but not programs. At any time, your hard drive could crash, there could be a fire, flood, burglary, power surge, or any number of things that would make the data on your hard drive irretrievable.

Don't forget to backup your MS Outlook Express e-mail folders too. Do a search for *.dbx files to find them. You can also backup your Favorites by looking in the folder Documents and Settings, Owner. Backup the star-shaped folder named Favorites.

Try to keep your desktop box a few inches off of the floor to keep the dust down. Then use a vacuum to dust only the exterior air intake. Never try to use a vacuum for anything inside the box, as the static electricity will fry your motherboard and/or hard drive.

Using desktop shortcut keys helps too. This makes it so you can open programs way faster using your keyboard, instead of hunting for the icons to double click on with the mouse. For example, go to your desktop. Find the Internet Explorer icon. Right click, and choose Properties. Now type the letter "I" in the Shortcut key: field. Close. Now when you press Control, Alt, and I all at the same time Internet Explorer opens. It's faster and easier once you get used to it.

If you've had it with spam, here's what to do. You have to delete that e-mail address so all new e-mails sent to it will get a failed mail e-mail back. If you just try to turn up your spam blocker, then too many real e-mails will be blocked. Flagging e-mails as spam doesn't work, because they use a different domain name daily.

After you've deleted the old address and made a new one, you'll have to manually tell people about the new one. Do it one at a time over a month. Then if you start getting tons of spam all of sudden you can narrow down who's doing it. Sometimes people have a virus on their computer that lives in their Outlook address book, self-replicates and automatically puts your e-mail address on a master spam list. Tell them to get their computer fixed.

After a few months, then reactivate the deleted e-mail address. Then wait a few days and check it. If there' no new spam, then it's safe to use it again. If there's any new spam, then delete it again. Most of the time, you'll still be on the spam list even if the address has been deleted for years.

Go to a site with great summaries of Microsoft shortcut keys

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