When browsing through the PriceGrabber website the other day I came across this Belkin Mini Computer Vacuum which seemed like quite an interesting idea. Presumably it could be used to try and get at all those crumbs of chocolate and biscuit that have been lost between the keys of your keyboard!

It also brought back memories of my early days working with computers and at the risk of giving away how ancient I am, I thought I would share one story. In my first job overseas I worked in the Libyan capital Tripoli. I was involved in the computer processing of seismic data collected in the desert during the search for oil. This was quite compute intensive, (indeed it still is today), and the office worked round the clock 364 days a year (we had Christmas day off). We had two computers which each had 64 Mb memory, a CPU with a separate array processor for number crunching, 3 large tape decks and a 80 Mb hard disk drive the size of a washing machine! We communicated with them via punch cards and a teletype machine, while all the data was kept on tapes.

The room where the computers where housed however would often, especially during dust storms, get a lot of sand and dust coming in through the holes in the wall in which the air condition units were housed. I have vivid memories of our computer engineers pulling the circuit boards out of the back of the machines, blowing the dust and sand off each board and resetting individual chips and other components in the board with a very firm tap! It was a long way from todays environmentally controlled computer rooms but seemed to work.

Anyway back to the mini computer vacuum. Computer components do get quite a build up of dust and (food) overtime, and it can be well worth doing a spring clean from time to time. So a vacuum could well be a useful purchase, however an alternative is just to buy an air dusting can, which is just what our engineers used to use!

We have talked a few times on this blog about wireless networks and some of the ways to make you network more secure. But I thought I would write yet another post on wireless as I was recently asked by a very confused friend, what was the difference between all the different flavours of WiFi that you see on the market. What is all this 11b, 11g and 11n and what does it all mean, and what should I look out for when buying an access point? Well it is a good question and I will give it a go. All these refer to various standards that have been agreed for WiFi equipment. In fact the original standard was 802.11a, but this was soon replaced by the other standards each one following on from the other. The changes essentially relate to a changes in the provided bandwidth or range of the wireless signal.

802.11b

Created in 1999 802.11b can be considered to be the lowest or a base standard nowadays and supports bandwidth up to 11 Mbps. The majority of access devices on the market will still support this standard.

802.11g

In 2003 the newer standard 802.11g appeared which increases the bandwidth of the signal to 54 Mbps, with similar or only slightly less of a range.

802.11n

802.11n is the newest standard (although still in draft and not finalised) and is now fairly common in newer devices. It provides significant increases in signal range and bandwidth. The signal is also more resistant to interference from other devices. The standard is backward compatible with both 802.11g and 802.11b though you will be limited to the bandwidth of the earlier standards.

What to look for when buying

When buying an access device, due to generally good backward compatibility you should generally look for a device that supports the newer 802.11n standard. Something like the Buffalo AirStation Nfiniti WZR-G300N Wireless-N Router. All your existing devices should be able to connect even if they are based on earlier standards and newer devices will be able to take full advantage of the new standard’s benefits.

When you slip the rest of the family and visit a computer store for some window shopping, what is it that you usually gravitate towards? Browsing through the latest 3D graphics cards and games even when your poor desktop is way below the minimum specs? Or perhaps it is reviewing the latest WiFi kit for that wireless network you have been thinking of installing for years now? Well for me it is laptops, and I will always browse along the line comparing features.

This is of course the point at which a sales person may well come along and offer to help and sometimes I will indulge is a spot of salesman baiting. You know asking difficult questions and seeking opinions and watching them squirm. Actually this is a great way to identify the people who really know what they are talking about, which might come in handy in future when you do need advice.

Anyway back to the laptops. What I am doing as I look at the different computers is essentially looking for the best specifications for the smallest price. Basically I am looking for a good all round PC that has a good CPU, a good sized hard drive and plenty of memory and all for a reasonable price. Something like the Acer Aspire 5920-3A2G16Mi Notebook would fit the bill, with a 1.66GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of memory and a great screen. A PC that can handle just about anything and for a very reasonable price.

Which laptop is your favourite all rounder?

I have just realised that despite having contributed to this blog for over six months I have never discussed anything to do with protecting yourself against computer viruses. This of course is an extremely important subject as these days virus protection needs to be considered as an absolutely vital part of your computing setup. It is certainly something for which it would extremely inadvisable to go without unless you never ever connected your computer to the Internet. Even then the chance of infection delivered through the use of USB sticks or the transfer of digital documents really still would need to be protected against.

Protect yourself

There are a number of ways to ensure you are protected against virus attacks, and the one you choose will depend largely on your current situation. If you have recently bought a laptop for instance, with Windows Vista or XP installed you have the option of opting for Microsoft’s OneCare service. Another option would be to choose something like Norton’s Antivirus 2008. Often a newly purchased PC will have 90 day trials of these packages already installed and after the trial period you will be prompted to purchase an time extension online. These are both subscription based services for which the initial purchase price will include access to regular updates of the software virus database for a limited time period, usually 12 months, after which you have to renew again.

If you have an older laptop and you want to change or upgrade your present virus protection or you presently do not use any virus checking (Hint: buy one the above packages as soon as possible) you can purchase either Norton Antivirus and Microsoft OneCare or a similar package.

Update the database

However you purchase your virus protection software it is important to keep the virus database constantly updated. This is so that the application will be able to recognise and protect your computer from any new viruses that might appear on the scene. You should set up your application to check for new updates on a daily basis.

Do you have a preferred anti virus product?

Are you a budding photographer? Or perhaps you are someone that has been taking photographs in a fairly serious fashion for some time? Someone who has just decided to splash out and have moved to their first SLR? Or maybe you got your first digital camera last Christmas and have really caught the bug? However you started in Photography, if you are doing it in anything close to a serious manner you will soon realise that, firstly you are collecting an awful lot of photographs and secondly you’re going to need some way to touch up or manipulate your images.

Photoshop

Most people in this situation will normally will buy image software such as Adobe Photoshop CS3, perhaps starting with the entry level Adobe Photoshop Elements or even one of the free or online image manipulation applications first to see how things go prior to forking out the admittedly large amount of cash required for Photoshop.

Mice or Tablets
Unfortunately when you have used these applications for a while, especially the image manipulation applications, you (well at least I do) begin to find that the mouse gets a bit unwieldy. Have you ever tried drawing any sort of line thats not straight with a mouse and getting the results you wanted? Or delicately touching up the colour in a small area? Doing these things with a mouse can be frustrating to say the least and there has to be a better way. There is, it is called a graphics tablet, and while there is certainly a learning curve to overcome as you retrain yourself off your mouse, a tablet is what the majority of professionals use. If you are finding your mouse a pain it might be worth giving a tablet a go and while they can be expensive there are plenty of good value versions available. The well rated Wacom Bamboo Tablet for instance would be well worth a look. It is supported on both the PC and Macs and often comes with a software bundle as well and shouldn’t break the bank.

Do you use a tablet for your image manipulation?

A number of people have asked me recently for advice on the best approach to buying computer memory, and I thought that it would make a good topic for a post. When thinking about computer memory, either for a desktop or a laptop, my general advice is to buy as much as you can possible afford. Obviously you can’t buy more memory that a computer mother board can accept, but the more memory a computer has the better it will perform, especially if you are going to be running multiple applications, which all need their own share of memory.

So when in the market for a new computer you need to get a lot of memory. Fine, but do we look for a computer package deal with enough memory already, if we can find one? Do we buy a standard setup and pay the vendor extra for additional memory? Or do we buy the standard setup and then buy our own memory separately and install it ourselves? These are all good questions that I have discussed with friends recently, and the conclusion we came to?

Well it is almost impossible to find a good laptop with enough memory for a reasonable price, but if you do then that is a nice and simple answer and you should probably do that. However if you can’t, which is more likely the buying an upgrade to the memory at the time of purchase is generally fine, but I have found that you will usually pay a premium. However it would be my recommendation if you are unsure about installing your own memory. Buying your own is my preferred approach as you can choose a recommended manufacture with a good product such as this Crucial 2GB PC2-5300 DDR2 SODIMM Memory. The memory will be covered by its own guarantee, and you will often get the best price this way.

Just remember to make sure you buy the right type of memory for you computer. What would be your advice?

In the last post on the sound theme, I thought I would have a look at headphones. I have looked at noise cancellation headphones before in the context of travel and getting to sleep on planes. Of course a nice pair of headphones would be a great way of listening to the output of your recently acquired computer sound card!

Apart from the filtering out the white noise found in aircraft cabins, a set of headphones are useful in a number of other scenarios. Being able to play games with the full sound experience without annoying everyone else in the house who happens to be working or revising for their GCSE’s. Being able to listen to your latest music without sending your parents completely insane (something I can relate to). I am sure that you can think of a number of other scenarios too.

Most sound cards now have software that provides the ability to give a virtual “surround sound” experience through just two speakers. Often referred to as 3D virtual this means that listening to a movie or games through earphones can be just as amazing experience as listening through a 5.1 or 7.1 speaker system. A really nice mid range pair of head phones that although are not noise cancellation do have a great sound are these Sennheiser HD 595 Headphones.

In the last few posts we have looked at sound cards for both desktops and laptops. All the sound cards and devices we looked at will enhance the quality of the sound you get from your computer, especially so if you are a gamer, a keen listener to music or are into watching movies on your computer. But one think wee didn’t talk about of course was the ability to output your sound in the best way to appreciate the increased quality. There is not much point in spending some money on a new sound card only to have to play the output through the tinny built in speakers on your laptop or monitor!

No to really appreciate the enhanced quality of the sound you are really going to need some good quality speakers. So if you haven’t already got some them, then you should be budgeting for the cost of speakers, or perhaps a decent pair of earphones, when you are looking for a sound card.

If you are looking at some new speakers then here is a huge range in terms of both what is available and cost. As an example of the sort of speakers you might look at in the lower range in terms of cost but still getting 5.1 surround sound have a look at the Logitech X-530 Speakers 5.1/70W RMS. A pretty good system at a low price! You need to shop around, work out the best quality to cost ratio that you can afford and then go for it.

What speaker system do you have to show off your sound card?

In the previous post we looked at the reasons why you might want to upgrade to a specialist sound card rather than stick to using the sound chip provided “on-board” the mother board in your computer. Of course having the sound just come with the computer rather than having to go out and buy a separate sound card is a great time saver and makes things simple if you do not really need a very high quality sound. With a standard desktop however you will always have the option to go out and buy a new card and be able to fit it reasonably easily.

Sound cards for laptops

But what happens if you have just bought a laptop? All laptops these days have sound capabilities, provided “on-board”, but of course because of the nature of the construction you can’t just open it up and install a new sound card. So what to do?

Well there are actually plenty of options for those people who do want to upgrade their laptop sound capability, with products like the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio Notebook Sound Card. This is a product that will slot into an Express card slot which you might find on a new laptop, while a product like the Creative AUDIGY 2 ZS notebook card will fit into the PCMCIA slot on an older laptop. A third option would be an external USB connected product like the Trust 510EX USB 5.1 Sound Expert External. Plenty of options so happy listening!

Have you upgraded the sound capability of your laptop?

When I was …, well just a little younger than I am today, I liked to rebuild and upgrade my desktop PC as far as I possibly could until eventually it no longer made any sense to do so. One of my desktops bought in 1995 lasted for about 10 years as a result of upgrades. During the early years it was a very capable games machine with a very good graphics card (for the time), and a superb sound card. During the later years it was my Linux desktop by which time all the components were very well supported in terms of drivers, and was used by my young children to play basic games.

These days there seems to be much less of a reason to upgrade, especially with the general swing towards using laptops. In the “good old” days graphics cards and sound cards where nearly always provided as separate components while today these are usually provided as an “on-board” capability of the mother board.

Sound Cards

For most people the on-board audio provided by the motherboard will be fine, but if you are a big gamer, someone who uses their PC to watch a lot of DVD’s or wants to have the best music experience then upgrading to a decent sound card is going to make all the difference. One of the most recommended cards is the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi series. These cards are provided in various modes, for gamers, music lovers etc., are highly regarded and come at a reasonable price. Most people will be amazed at the difference the sound card will make, with either headphones or speakers.

Do you upgraded your sound card? Did it make a difference?