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Avoiding Security Risks
By Kraig Lane, Group Product Manger, Symantec Corp.
For millions of consumers in households worldwide, home computers are being used for a wide range of activities. From managing booking travel reservations to managing financial accounts, communicating with friends and colleagues, conducting research, and more, the PC has become a critical component of everyday life.
However, as computer-related security incidents continue to increase, consumers have become increasingly concerned about online safety – and with good reason. To protect themselves from becoming victims of a growing wave of Internet threats, computer users need to know how to avoid them.........more
Author: Kraig Lane,
Group Product Manger, Symantec Corp.
Date: 04 /2006
April CFCS Newsletter
Clear Reading With Cleartype
by Vinny La Bash
My students know why LCD displays are superior to CRT monitors. When one of them complained to me that he found text difficult to read on his new 21-inch LCD Monitor, I told him it was probably because the screen resolution made the text too small to read easily. He didn't think so because his teen age granddaughter also thought the text wasn't clear. His comment made me think.
Flat panel LCD Monitors are designed to display information at a specific resolution known as the "native resolution.” Manufacturers refer to them as "fixed-pixel displays" because they are limited to displaying only one resolution. If they receive an image signal that is either higher or lower than the native resolution, they convert or scale the image automatically to fit the native resolution. .......more
Author: Vinny La Bash
Member, Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., Florida
Date: 04 /2006
April CFCS Newsletter
What Does a Cache Do For a Computer?
By Brian K. Lewis, Ph.D.
A cache (pronounced “cash”) is a form of memory storage that generally operates faster than RAM memory or the time required to access a hard drive. The cache is smaller, faster memory that stores copies of the data from the most frequently used memory locations. Computer processors (CPUs) utilize both internal and external caches. You will also find references in the specifications of hard drives, CD & DVD drives to caches of various sizes. In order to see how these caches benefit computer operations, we'll look at the operation of the internal caches on CPUs....more
Author: Brian K. Lewis, Ph.D.
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Date: 04 /2006
April CFCS Newsletter
Do a Clean Sweep of Your Computer
How to Safely Remove Software and Files from Your PC
By Marc Saltzman
Like many mothers, Andrea Grace will sit down at her PC to check e-mail, only to find that her kids, Jason, 8, and Rachel, 10, have installed some new programs. "Between those CD-ROM games found in cereal boxes and downloaded Neopets, there are now icons all over the place," says Grace. "And of course they don't play half the games. If I ran out of space I wouldn't know how to delete them," she admits.. .....more
Author: Marc Saltzman
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Date: 04 /2006
April CFCS Newsletter
Do I Have to Overwrite My Hard Drive Multiple Times?
By Stephen Elderkin
There are multiple standards for wiping drives, and each one recommends a certain number of hard-drive overwrites. How many times do you really need to overwrite your drive in order to keep your personal information from falling into the wrong hands?
Computer forensics expert Stephen Elderkin explains below how overwriting drives makes data unusable and how many times you need to overwrite your drive in order to prevent identity theft.......more
Author: Stephen Elderkin
President of WhiteCanyon, Inc.
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Date: 04 /2006
April CFCS Newsletter
E-mail . . . Overused, Abused & Invaluable
By G.A. "Andy" Marken
President, Marken Communications Inc.
"I predict that by 2010, 100 percent of network traffic will be packetized. None of it will be voice because we will be too mad at each other from sending flame e-mails." Vint Cerf, executive vice president of MCI and one of the founders of the Internet.
It's true. Emotions don't travel well in the written form.
A smile, a wink of the eye, a smirk, a furled brow . . . is fine for face-to-face communications but they are completely missing when you use the killer application of the Internet . . . e-mail.
Despite the hype and global business promises of the World Wide Web, the most used, most useful and most misused Internet tool is e-mail........more
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Date: 04 /2006
April CFCS Newsletter
Hard Disk Disasters
By Dick Maybach
Member Brookdale Computer User Group, New Jersey
N2nd@att.net
Hard disk failure is the most serious PC problem, because it jeopardizes all your data. Even if everything else in your PC dies, if your hard disk is good, you can just move it to a new machine and be back in business as though nothing had happened.
The first problem is to recognize hard disk failure. Look for one or more of the following symptoms:-.......more
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Date: 04 /2006
April CFCS Newsletter
How to Protect your Laptop and your Lap from Heat Build-up and Other Hazards
Or. . .
How to Prevent Groin Burns from Overheated Laptops
By José Calero, President, LapWorks, Inc.
If you had been this guy, you wouldn’t be laughing! The BBC News World Edition reported that “A Swedish scientist who rested his laptop computer on his lap for just an hour needed medical treatment for extensive blistering on his penis and scrotum. Unfortunately the blisters broke and developed into infected suppurating wounds.” The concerned doctor who treated the victim wrote in The Lancet, the UK’s best-known medical journal, warning the public of the potential dangers of using a laptop “in the literal sense.”......more
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Date: 04 /2006
April CFCS Newsletter
Identity Theft Phishing Scams Abound
By Ira Wilsker, APCUG Director; Columnist,
The Examiner, Beaumont, TX; Radio & TV Show Host
I have been busy compiling information so I can complete my 1040 for this year. I have also been actively searching for bargains on eBay, typically paying for my purchases utilizing my PayPal account. I frequently use the online bill paying service offered by my credit union. Much to my chagrin, according to a series of emails I received, my eBay account is being suspended, as well as my PayPal account, or somehow I added another email address to my PayPal account that I did not recognize........more
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Date: 04 /2006
April CFCS Newsletter
Improving PC Performance Without Upgrading Your Hardware
Boosting up the performance of your PC doesn't have to be difficult or expensive. Here's a step-by-step guide on how to do it.
By Kevin J. Vella, Public Relations Manager, Uniblue Systems Ltd
Nine things that Chip Manufacturers and PC retailers don't tell you!
The most common reasons for PC slowdowns are viruses, spyware, too many temporary files, software conflicts, residues from unwanted (and uninstalled) trial downloads and other applications, and, sometimes, just too many applications running at the same time, hogging all or most of your computer resources.......more
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Date: 04 /2006
April CFCS Newsletter
To Defrag, or Not to Defrag?
If you're looking for ways to speed WinXP machines, then the answer is Not.
By Carey Holzman, freelance writer
Defragmenting, of course, is the process of reorganizing all data on a hard disk drive so that each file is arranged into a single uninterrupted, or contiguous, location on the disk. Many system builders and technicians have been taught, and still believe, that defragmenting hard disk drives on a regular basis keeps PCs operating at peak performance. But that idea is behind the times. .......more
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Date: 04 /2006
April CFCS Newsletter
What Is Spyware
by Anton Chuvakin, Security Strategist with a major information security company.
Spyware
Spyware is a new strand of malicious software (or malware), annoying, and capable of robbing computer users all over the world.
In This Article:
How Spyware Works - Protecting Yourself - The Future
Spyware is such a broad term that even the definition of this computer scourge is fuzzy. So, what is spyware? The best definition out there is given by Wikipedia:......more
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Date: 04 /2006
April CFCS Newsletter
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