Tag: Computer support St. Paul Minnesota

What to do if you get your electronics wet

Guest Post by:
Liam Tidwell of LiamTek in Longview, Texas

We have all been there. You knock your iPod of the counter into the dogs water, your cell phone ends up in the pool thanks to a friendly toddler, or coffee is spilled in your laptop.

Now what? That depends on the device. Follow the steps below to minimize your chances of damage to your device.

Immediately pull the battery. Can’t get to the battery? Turn it off and get it to someone who can take it apart. DO NOT turn it back on, charge it, or try to use it!! Pull the device apart as much as you can and set the individual parts in rice or some other dry grain to help pull the moisture out of it. DO NOT try and dry it with a compressor or hair dryer this will only force the liquid deeper into the device. DO NOT put it in an oven or under a heat lamp. The heat will only speed up the corrosion or your electronics. Do flip it upside down so it can drain out the same way it got in.

The main thing is to have a plan and to know how and what to do if your device(s) get wet/immersed. Learn how to get the batteries out. Take off your phone case and put it back on a couple of times. It can be harder than you think, and those things trap water really well…

Liam Tidwell – LiamTek
Longview, Texas
903 686 0200

Liam Tidwell is a Laptop & Cell Phone repair technician in Longview, Texas with over 11 years experience in IT and owns two Computer Repair Businesses. Liam can be found on Nutz@Night almost every Thursday night working hard to bring you the LULZ.

What’s the Cost of Free Software?

This blog is a cross blog by  Eric Salce of Gem State Computers

I much like everyone else like a good deal, and what deal is better than free? Sure we have been there, hanging out online, and you stumble across, or you see an ad for software that speeds up your computer, or it could copy your DVDs and CD’s. The best part, it’s all free. Or is it? I think most people will find that this software comes with a very steep price. While many people think the only way you get infected with virus or malware is downloading pirated music, and movies, or to be surfing material of a more adult/questionable nature. While some infections are very obvious, for instance if you download a video or music file and it contains a program, then most likely you will find some form of malware waiting to jump on to your system.

 

One of the most common ways computers are infected is by downloading free software. While not all free software is bad many free software comes bundled with tagalong programs or other malware. How do you know if you are infected? On sign of infection is the toolbars that have been added without your knowledge. Another Sign of infection is that your computer will slow down, as more and more spyware use up your systems resources, you will find your computer to slow to a crawl. What should you do if you find yourself infected? You should find yourself a friendly computer Technician to get your system cleaned up. If the infection is caught early then the damage should be minimal, and should be a very straight forward, inexpensive, and easy to repair. So just stop and think about what you are installing. If you are not sure give us a call and let us tell you what paid/free software might meet your need.

After all it’s like mamma used to say, if it’s too good to be true, then it most likely is.

Eric Salce of Gem State Computers

Facebook Administration has sent you a notification FAKE

Just got an email from Facebook Administration. Looked real, but I got this awhile back. As a daring person who troubleshoots malware and virus attacks everyday, I clicked on it out of curiosity and of course got sent to a weird banking site. I closed it immediately and ran a full scan of our malware detetion program.

Yep fake-no malware though on my computer for just clicking on it. Not sure how bad it could have got though if I had gone to the banking site and did stuff, I just closed the window quick.

What can you do when you get these emails? How can you tell when they are fake or not? You really can’t by just seeing it. It looks just like every other Facebook email notification I get about events, messages, etc. It’s pretty sad though that Facebook is getting hacked, has my email address, is sending me fake emails and Facebook doesn’t give a shit. Pretty sad, and I’m tired of it. Soon here I will be leaving Facebook for G+ due to issues just like this.

Here is a picture of it for you all to see…

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How I Organize My To Do List

Lots of people ask me how I manage all of the stuff I have going on with the business and the side projects. It hasn’t been easy in the past year to manage all of this growth! We ended up opening the third store, landed a large contract, hired nine employees + two contractors, grew the LinkedIn group that I own and I published an ebook–all since the new year started. That’s a lot in nine months and that is a lot on the “to do list”.  Not only is that all hard to keep track of, I use many computers for work and keeping one to do list on one computer is not good for me. So I found a nifty solution to help me with this organizational stuff.

Here is what I do to keep it all under control. Below are the steps.

1.) I have installed on my computer (and all my techs computers too) a tool called “Dropbox”. Click on the link to install it for free and use 2 gigs.

2.) Then I create a folder called “to do”.

3.) Then I open notepad (to find, go to the Start menu->Accessories->Notepad) and start my to do list, be sure to save in your new Dropbox folder.

4.) Then go round up your to do lists from other sources (take off your paper list, emails, all the post it notes by your desk, etc) and type them all up, order doesn’t matter right now.

5.) Now after you have the list all typed up, underneath the lists type this in

• Monday
• Tuesday
• Wednesday
• Thursday
• Friday
• Saturday
• Sunday

6.) After that, start at the top of your list and take those items and cut/paste them into the days below. Not everything on your list needs to be done on Monday and as you go through the list, you will see that Monday’s items are more critical and Friday’s are more “back burner”.

7.) Now save your file.

8.) At this point, you should have a nice tidy list of things to do everyday for the week, your paper work should all be shredded and your desk in order. HAH! Or not…but mine is usually quite tidy as I try to keep that file open all day/everyday. When I am on the phone with someone and I need to call them back, I put it on my “day” of the to do list. If I have to do something before that call, I put it in the day or two before’s day and write down “Research Jackie’s email issue” so I know to do that before the call.

Yep, I still use my Outlook calendar. Nope, I don’t use the tasks. Mostly because the task list doesn’t follow me computer to computer at the three locations I go to for work.

Two final tips: Using dropbox is nice because it saves a copy “in the cloud” that you can get from any computer in the world and you can use it on your smart phone. So you are never really without it, its very nice and a time saver.

Which Internet Browser is the Best

How many of you remember “the old days” when we only knew of AOL for internet searching? Then jump a few years, maybe to 1997 and or so and we had Internet Explorer in it’s 4th and famous life. Remember “Best viewed in IE 4.0”. Hah! I remember that oh so well especially since I had to use Netscape Composer for our web design class and not everything would view right in Netscape, so viewing it in IE was best. Ok, that didn’t make sense, but back then that’s how it was.

Moving along 14 years later, we have many choices for our internet surfing. IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera are the most downloaded by the average person. I tend to believe it’s down to what you like best for the look of the browswer, how you like surfing, using tabs, using the add-ons, plug-ins, etc. I still use IE as my main browser, probably because I used it so much in my past life as a corporate brat it’s been hard to get off it. But I have to admit that as much as I am used to IE, this past year I have delved into the world of FF and Chrome. (I have to also admit, that I have troubleshooted FF more than I have used it, so I know it, just didn’t use it).

Firefox (FF) has been around long enough and had enough updates and whatnot that it’s now bringing the business more work than ever. Believe it or not, we have clients who actually pay us to fix their FF over the simple usual fix of “reinstalling” because of their FF  **bling** I call it. All the special settings and all their plug-ins, add-ons, drive people to fixing over reinstalling. And I understand where they are coming from, so we at CTG work hard to not have to reinstall.

Chrome is the new hottie in town and I have to admit, I am kinda digging it too. I am finding it easier to do a few things, it appears faster than IE for browsing,  the look is better and the downloads are eye blinking fast. For the past two months or so I have forced myself to use Chrome on a daily basis and have to admit, it’s now becoming my favorite. Unfortunately, I still have to use IE because some of my internet based programs will not work in Chrome (mostly work tools).

Now, to answer the question posted in the title, which one is best for you? Any of them. Just make sure when you download it, you get it from it’s website and not through another website, could be a link to a virus. Be aware that FF and Chrome use the “download” feature by default, so you will have to look for what you are trying to download to run it (usually in the Tools area (FF) or at the bottom (Chrome). IE users are used to the pop up box that allows you to “Run or Save” the downloads.) This is the most confusing I think for new users. As all programs have settings options, you can change that option in the browsers.

If you are a simple internet user that doesn’t need all the extras, IE is still just fine for you. If you are a bit more interested in seeing what else is out there, download FF and try it out. Go to Google and type in “Firefox” and the link will be at the top for you to download from Mozilla (ok, it was Mozilla back in the day, then renamed to Firefox in 2004). To try out Chrome, just go to Google and you will probably see the download button on the right side if you don’t have it installed.

That’s it tonight folks, just a few thoughts for my clients and fans that are not into all the different browsers yet! Not for my tech buddies who all know way more than me who get the feeds. Just a lil disclaimer:)

Ever Wonder Where the Windows XP Default Wallpaper Came From?

Story shared on LinkedIn through TheNextWeb

One of the most famous wallpaper images is undoubtedly the default Windows XP image showing a blissfully relaxing vista of green rolling hills and a bluer than blue sky. The wallpaper, probably one of the most viewed images of all time, is aptly named ‘Bliss.’ Do a Google image search for just the word ‘bliss,’ and the first result is the Windows wallpaper.

For Dutch Windows users however, the name of the image is Ireland, which has mistakenly led many to believe that that’s where the image was taken. To read more, go to the story here