Tag: computer tips and tricks
Hibernation Vs. Sleep Mode: What’s the difference? And why you should know!
Many of our clients at Call That Girl call in with problems and sometimes they tell us that their computer doesn’t come out of sleep or hibernate very well. I have learned from the old XP days that not all computers are comfy in sleep mode. The computers may be sluggish and don’t want to spring back to life so fast, or they are just aging overall. When Vista came out, I called it the “Vista Coma”, and alerted all of those clients to just not use sleep mode as it usually caused them problems. Windows 7 is not so problematic though, I’m guessing because the computers are selling with higher amounts of hardware memory to allow the sleep and hibernate functions to work as they should.
Let’s do a quick review now of Hibernation vs. Sleep Mode in non-techie terms
Hibernation mode:
- Primarily a power saving function
- Saves data to the hard drive
- Turns off the computer
- Uses the least amount of power
- Use this mode when you know you are leaving your laptop and might not have a chance to juice up the battery and you don’t want to lose your data.
Sleep mode:
- This function is also power saving on your battery
- Puts the computer into an “as is” condition so when you come back, everything you were working on should be back to where it was
- Should take just a few seconds to resume back to how you left it
- Use of this mode is great for those that are fast laptop people, who up and leave the computer often, travel and those who need to close their lids quickly due to security purposes.
In a nutshell, as you read in the quick review here, sleep mode is the best to use for laptops. Hibernate is more like a shut down mode.
For those having problems, here is a quick guide:
- XP users with low memory – neither should be used if you are having problems
- Vista users with low memory – avoid using the sleep mode if you are having problems
- Windows 7 should not have problems, and if you do, you might want to get your computer looked at. Primarily, this is the best operating system for Microsoft so far and has the least issues we have seen with sleep and hibernate modes.
Coffee Shop Computing
This morning I had an 8:30 a.m. appt with a client and in a rush, I opted to not go to the office and just hit a local Caribou that was close to my friend’s house. I get in the Caribou and frantically look for an outlet close to the tables. I couldn’t find any! All of the outlets I could find where already being used or a family was sitting near it. I was close to getting a bit frustrated….I wandered around like a fool wondering how this busy little Caribou in Blaine, MN could only have two outlets for all the customers!
Then…doh. I look by the small tables in a row and see a strip right by the tables, installed so sharply that you can’t really see them up close, but they were installed as part of the window frame lol. I thought I had read years ago that coffee places had installed these power strips to accommodate the computers for the customers, but I guess I don’t go to coffee houses much to do real work.
So my doh turns to YAY. I plunk down and start to figure out all my junk and stuff; do my computer set up. Plug everything in, including my phone (my car charger just died and I was down to no juice!), turn on the computer, let it boot up and go get some java finally. Come back with coffee and find I can’t read my screen. UGH.
Go back to the counter, get some wet napkins, and clean my screen up. Now I cleaned all the crap off of the screen, but the glare is horrible (not getting a glare screen, because I barely ever need one in my day to day life), so I have to deal with the bit of glare. My body turns out to be a nice shadow against the windows, and I can see it enough to work.
My 8:30 appt starts. Then the next drama begins, the espresso machines are so loud that I can’t hear my client! LOL. I did really LOL out loud because I didn’t think of that noise before. Only now that I am on my phone I recognize it. I tell my client to just hold tight when they make espressos because I can’t really do anything about the noise.
While I am now done with my appt, I am still sitting here blogging, trying to enjoy the coffee shop experience. Now I can’t help but laugh…the guy next to me just made a phone call and immediately cupped his open ear so he can hear better, he has no power cord for his computer and has no bags to deal with. I can tell he’s a coffee shop pro.
10 signs that your computer may have a virus
Boy oh boy is this getting more and more common. We used to take calls from our clients who told us that they had pop ups and weird notifications, or even a huge flashing graphic, “You’ve been infected”. Seems lately, the viruses are doing more damage underneath, and not showing the usual suspects. And no…your AV program may not be catching these buggers either.
Here are a few ways to figure out if you may have a virus. 
- Your computer is acting up
- Websites aren’t loading right
- You try to Google something, and it takes you to a whole different page
- You see a “web certificate” page on a website you’re trying to get to
- Occasional blue screen of death
- Internet goes in and out
- Internet just completely goes out
- Mouse and keyboard aren’t working as they should
- There is a new icon in your system tray you’ve never seen before
- You cannot log into your online banking
While most people just blow these off as glitches, you may have a virus and if let go long enough, could result in a computer crash, loss of data and spendy repairs. We recommend that you get a tune up where we do a virus spot check included in our 22 pt checklist.
Click here to submit a request today
Delta Airline Ticket Virus Coming Back in Email
Just an FYI to my friends online, just watch for an email that has a zip file attached, Do not open it! Just delete it. It is fake and Delta has already been alerted of it, and sent out a release to their customers with a warning.
If you have opened it, the virus attacks fast. It deletes all of your icons and hides your programs and data. To schedule an appointment with us to remove it remotely, click the image below.
We are here to help!
World Backup Week, Are you backing up your stuff?
Today is World Backup Day, but of course it’s on a Sunday and barely anyone is going to do it. They should have scheduled it on a Tuesday or Wednesday when people aren’t relaxing and spending time with their families. Anyway, it’s April 1 and although my joke on Facebook that Best Buy sold Geek Squad and hired Call That Girl for their Minnesota onsite support got almost 60 likes in just an hour…. backing up your data…is no joke! Theft, fire, hard drive crashing, deleting your own stuff by accident, it all can happen…any time, any day.
Let’s talk about backing up! Solutions and stuff like that.
If you have never backed up your stuff, now is the time to consider it, at least do it once! Just think of all those pictures you would lose, memories gone forever. If you have never cried over missing memories, it’s not something you want to experience. Let’s also add in all the documents you have created, tax forms you have done, music collections you built, the list really can go on and on. So let’s get started….
For home users, I recommend monthly backup
For business users, I recommend daily backup
Here are some solutions
- External hard drives, they work great but can break and fail. The bonus of external hard drives is that you can take them from one computer to another fast and moving data in general is faster than online back up and restoring files.
- File sharing from two computers, using software such as Dropbox or other online sharing programs. I would not recommend this as your only backup solution, but it’s a good start.
- Online software such as Mozy. Click here to start a free 2 gig trial
- If you test it and buy it today (April 1) use this code to get 25% off your subscription Code: WORLDBACKUP
- Use this code for the month of April Code: MOZY4ALL
- Click here to just buy Mozy. Use the codes! They offer these randomly and I usually try to promote it as it’s a great deal. Also, as a preferred vendor of ours, we can help you set it up too for $59 if you would like our help. Their monthly payment plans are as low as $9.99 or $5.99.
- Click on the icon to get started or submit a request with us to help you do it. Sometimes it’s just easier for you if we do it. Many of our clients are thankful we have set them up with Mozy. And if you’re a Carbonite fan, I have had only problems with their software. I’m not a fan of Carbonite at all.
Click here to have us help, that’s what we are here for.
Are you a data hoarder, like me?
(pictures coming! they got lost in the website upgrade!)
That’s a picture of my hard drive on my laptop. Nice huh? I didn’t even think to look at the size of it until Windows alerted me that I was “very low on disk space” and earlier…my Dropbox told me that I was out of space there and I have a 50 gig account. Just because I run a technical business, doesn’t mean that I am technically perfect with my data. I do back up though, and that is important…but things are pretty sad when your assistant tells you that you are a hoarder. I can’t help it, I’m very creative, I’m a quick thinker and most importantly…I’m savvy enough to do a lot of things myself and FAST. If you’re like me, you may have the exact same issues. Our email boxes are clogged (because we are communications freaks and can never delete anything), our documents folders are insanely packed with little screen shots of everything we have made, images off the internet or just random thoughts of insanity (I have 100′s of text files from notepad lol). My beginnings have no ends! Well, they do have ends because I get stuff done, but now I need to really reign in these issues and take control for once. Stop the data hoarding. I will not hire a therapist!!!
It’s time for me to have a “data tune up” of sorts. Get some data off this computer and get things all squared up. …it’s time to let go. Free myself of years of data and stupid ideas that never went anywhere or worse yet, just OLD stuff that I MADE NEW to replace it. Why do I need that? The big question is, what do I need to keep and what can I pitch? I can’t pitch anything…I fear I will want to use it again or need it and there is no solid solution for me but to get yet even more data storage and figure out a way to search it fast and use it fast. Or…do the impossible and delete old data. <insert a tear here>
I started the data hoarding clean up with moving everything off of my laptop and into the Dropbox account. Then I went through the Dropbox data and moved anything past 3 months out of it and on to the computer at the office. That computer is also getting backed up daily from Mozy.com
What to do after that? Now I have moved all the data, but have I done anything that will help my data hoarding issue? I have to “go through” (my aunt’s favorite words) the data that I don’t need to use in my daily life yet again and delete, delete, delete unfortunately. I seriously do not need all of this data anymore! I still can’t delete, it’s like giving up a part of my soul.
Everything is in order for data deletion. Now…I can’t pull the trigger. But my laptop is now free of all that unused Dropbox data and it can breathe happy again. I gave the computer a whole tune up as well and it’s running quite nice now! Watch for part 2 next week of how I deleted my data and what steps I went through to get it cleaned up. I plan on doing it over the weekend, and it will be a tough one for me!
