THE IMPORTANCE OF BROWSER UPDATES

Having a browser that is constantly updated is crucial if we want to browse safely online. In these hours Microsoft has launched Internet Explorer 9 that claims to be safer and to give priority to users’ privacy. Good news indeed. However, it’s good to remember that these features should have already been among Microsoft’s priorities at the moment of designing the infrastructure of their browser. Last year German analysts wrote that Explorer had several holes that allowed hackers to sneak into users’ private Internet habits. That’s why throughout the years Explorer lost consensus and users favored Mozilla Firefox, which I personally  prefer because of its velocity and addons.

CONFIGURING NORTON FIREWALL

Norton Internet Security 2011 is a very reliable product that allows you to be safe online. The product has been rated according Pcworld.com as the best Antivirus suite in 2011. The advantages of having Norton are many: first of all it’s a very light product, meaning that it does not take much of your cpu; in addition, it has several configuration options that require you to make some tweaks. For example, if you share multiple computer and a printer, once you have installed NIS, these devices may not work, because the Network Security Map is not properly configured. As a matter of fact, you have to create a trusted zone in which all the devices you have in the same network can communicate each other. This said, Norton products get the best rating in the market because they offer also a complete overview on how the company fights against the hackers and aims at improving the security of our machines.

ON MEMORY STICKS PLACEMENT

If you have discovered the passion of building your own machine, you should know that one of the easiest tasks is to install memory sticks. In the new 1366 sockets motherboards, there is the support for dual and three channel. This means that dual channel motherboards have 4 slots, whereas three channel memory slots support 6 slots. Contrary to popular belief, if you want to speed up your pc, it’s not matter of adding more memory, but of using the three or two slots available in full. In fact, if you scatter the memory sticks throughout the slots leaving empty spaces, your pc performance will be affected because of the time and distance covered to communicate between each stick. Therefore, it’s always better to group the sticks all together and put the memory bars one after the other in the available slots.

Soluto is the solution to the booting issues of your pc

When it is time to tune up our pc, we often forget that the booting speed is a relevant factor of our computing experience. The computer performance of our machine can dramatically be affected by an annoying long booting time. Soluto solves the problems of the programs that opens up at the start up. It has a very innovative and dynamic interface and it’s a very light program. It’s divided in three sections: an area with the recommended programs to be left on the pc, another area indicates the programs that can be delayed; the third area shows the programs that are considered almost useless and may be definitively put to sleep to make the computer boot up faster. At the end of the tweaks, a timer tells how much time we have gained in delaying or eliminating useless applications. It’s really worth a try, also because it’s a free beta.

INSTALLING MULTIPLE APPLICATIONS

We always have less time. Ninite.com helps us for free to pick out the software to be installed and with just one click we can install up to 70 applications. Just choose the ones you really need and you are done in a few minutes.

A NEW BACKUP UTILITY ON WINDOWS 7

Buyers of Windows 7 professionals can save extra money if they will use the backup utility that is already included in Windows 7. In fact, before that your computer crashes it will be helpful to create a system recovery disc. Just pop in your device a recordable DVD or CD, and with the help of a burner you will be able to have in few minutes a copy of your system that will save you time and money when you need to resume your normal operations after a crash.

CREATE YOUR OWN RECOVERY IMAGE

Before that the computer crashes it’s a good habit to do a recovery image quite often. Macrium Reflect Free imaging software comes into play when it’s time to back up your computer. In fact, taking an image of your drive now, you can use this as a starting point for any future reinstalls.

REMOVING UNWANTED PROGRAMS AND SPEED UP YOUR PC

There is no need to find and use Vista and 7 tweakers: pc decrapifier does a good job by removing the unused programs. It has a very easy interface, and it boosts the speed of your pc since it removes old  programs that clog and slow down your machine.

HOW FAST MY HARD DRIVE CAN BE?

Several are the factors involved in the speed potential of your hard drive, but the most important is the rotational speed of its platters. Today the standard speed is 7200 rpm but there are also more expensive 10,000 rpm that can make your hard drive faster. In addition, if you need a faster server’s hard drive you need a 15,000 rpm hard drive.The hard drive memory plays an important role in determining its performance and 16MB hard drives are faster that 2MB ones.

NEED TO KNOW WHAT PROGRAMS WE HAVE INSTALLED ON OUR PC?

No problem. Belarc advisor does an excellent jobs in retrieving the softwares  we have installed and the hardwares running in our machine. Gathered info includes motherboard type and revision, CPU and GPU info, drive space, Microsoft hotfixes, operating system revision, and Web browser vulnerabilities, as well as third-party software installs.