The Computer Tutor

After last week’s post and podcast about the dangers of sharing your wifi signal with your neighbor, I had several people contact me about how to keep a computer safe “the other way around”. Meaning, if you are using your neighbor’s wifi signal (with permission of course), what type of precautions should you be taking in order to protect and secure your own computer?

In general, the best plan is to use your computer the same way you would if you were on a public wifi connection and wanted to stay safe and secure.

So that naturally brings up the next question – how do you keep your computer safe on a public wifi connection?

1. Don’t have your computer connect to a public wifi automatically

2. Use 2-factor authentication for sites that offer it

3. Turn off sharing

4. Make sure you know the actual network name

5. Consider using a VPN

There are lots of VPNs available for you to use. Some are free, some you pay for, depending on the features. If you want, use the comments section below to let me know which one you like best and why.

And in addition to those 5 practices, you should also do the things that are considered common sense:

Do you use your neighbor’s wifi? Do you use public wifi? What precautions do you take?

Recently I got an email from Barbara in Maine, with an interesting question. She wrote: “I have a next door neighbor who wants to hook into my internet and share expenses. Is that not legal to do? What do I need to know about it?” Great question, Barbara!

I’ll tell you right up front, if I were asked this by one of my neighbors, my answer would be no. For several reasons:

1. I don’t trust my neighbor enough to justify the risk this deal creates for me

That’s not to say my neighbor (let’s call him Daniel) is not a nice person, or would do anything intentionally malicious. On the contrary, Daniel and his wife are wonderful people. Always friendly, helpful, just nice to have as neighbors.

BUT – I don’t know how secure their computers are. I would be letting their computers into my network, and I don’t know what antivirus or antimalware they use. I don’t know if their software is up to date, or if their computers are even set to install Windows Updates at all. Their computers could already be riddled with viruses and malware, and I would be letting them into the “trusted” side of my wifi router, with the potential to infect all of the computers in my house.

2. I can’t really know who would be accessing the internet through my connection

Even if Daniel and his wife are completely up to date and totally secure against any viruses, what about someone else that comes to visit? I couldn’t possibly trust those people since I don’t even know them. Maybe Daniel’s 24 year old nephew, who just got out of prison and needs a place to stay for a little while, goes online with his laptop that is NOT fully protected. That puts all of your computers at risk again.

3. I could be compromising my privacy

This would depend on how you have your network set up, but in some scenarios, your neighbor (or his wife, or his criminal nephew Daniel, or Daniel’s buddies that come over) could access the files on your computer.

4. I’m responsible for the activity on my internet account

What if whoever is sharing your wifi signal decides to download some illegal music or software? Or maybe they make just a brief (or even an accidental) visit to an illegal porn website? Any activity like that would be traced back to the IP address – and that’s all on you. Are you willing to risk prison time just to share your monthly internet bill?

5. Your internet provider might not allow it

If you check the terms and conditions for your internet account, you might find that your internet provider does not allow you to share your wifi signal with any of your neighbors for the purpose of splitting the monthly cost. Of course they are aware that this does go on all the time, so if they do find out about it, they might cancel your internet account without notice.

6. Your internet could slow to a crawl

At 10 pm when you just want to get some emails processed, or you’re doing some research on the web, and you notice that web pages are loading really slowly. Maybe you’re just imagining it, or… maybe your neighbor has 3 computers and they’re all logged into Netflix with different people watching separate movies.

Hopefully those are enough reasons. For me, I would just rather pay for my own account and have it all to myself.

There used to be a traditional set of guidelines that you could go by, and by doing so you could be reasonably sure that your computer was safe from being attacked or infected by a virus or malware. Use a good antivirus, don’t open email attachments, don’t click on a link unless you know for sure where it leads, and don’t visit sketchy websites. Those are all still good and important, and I highly recommend all of those guidelines. But hackers have another way into your computer – advertising on websites.

That’s right – your computer can get infected simply by visiting a website that displays a malicious ad. And before you say, “That’s okay – I don’t click on any of the ads” – it doesn’t matter. The attack does not require you to click on anything.

This type of attack is called “malvertising”. Here’s why it can be so effective:

1. It shows up on safe, respectable websites

One of the first rules you hear about for keeping your computer safe is that you shouldn’t visit sketchy websites – AKA “internet bad neighborhoods”. These usually include sites that are about pirating software, cracking passwords, downloading music or movies illegally, that kind of thing. When you visit places like that, you should just about expect to get infected.

But what if you go to a well-known, popular website that is popular in the mainstream and considered very safe? An infected ad can easily show up there. Websites for companies such as Yahoo!, CNN, Tumblr, eBay – they are all susceptible to this at different levels.

When an ad can appear on the most highly-visited, trusted websites, you can’t just filter it out based on the website’s domain because you’d be cutting off access to virtually all of the internet.

2. The attackers can usually remain anonymous

It would be easy if a website simply made a deal with a particular company to sell a particular advertising campaign. If that package of ads was found to be malicious, it would be clear who is at fault. But that’s not how it works. Website advertising for the large companies is done by ad networks. This means a website would purchase a “package” of advertising that includes lots of different ads from a wide range of companies. This is a convenient and efficient way of selling advertising, but it also makes it very difficult to dig down and find out which ad served up the malicious content.

3. Hacker attacks can target a very specific group of users

One of the greatest innovations in advertising is the ability to focus on a demographic. But this is also a curse, as it allows the bad guys to target just exactly who their victims are. If an attacker creates a pop-up ad that says “Your client records are infected – click here to fix this immediately” he might want to have that only show up on the computers of lawyers and doctors. When they focus on a certain type of user, they can use much more specific language, and even incorporate terminology and geographical references that make the user less suspicious because it all sounds so legitimate.

How do you avoid this problem?

Since you can’t just avoid going to the websites where malicious ads might appear, how do you keep these ads from infecting your computer?  You can instruct your web browser to not display any ads.

For my computers, I use AdBlock Plus. It’s free at adblockplus.org.

AdBlock Plus is what’s known as a browser extension. This just means it gives your web browser (such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, and Opera) additional functionality.

In this case the added functionality is the ability to block display ads. I’ve been using AdBlock Plus for quite a few years, and believe me – the web is a much nicer place without all the obnoxious ads to distract you. You can get more details about AdBlocker Plus, and install it in your preferred web browser, at the link listed above.

While you’re on that site, click on the “Features” section, and when you scroll down you’ll see this information listed:

This means that not only are the annoying ads not displayed, but also if a website displays content from a known malicious server, that would also be blocked. It’s just another layer of protection against the bad guys. Of course, they are constantly trying to figure out ways to get past security, so this type of protection may not always work (and it may not work indefinitely). So you can’t just install AdBlock Plus and assume it’s safe to visit any website and click on everything in sight.

When you are on the AdBlock Plus website and viewing the “Disable Malware Domains” as shown above, click on the “open this dialogue” link and make sure the feature is enabled. This is what mine looks like:

Those items that are checked are various lists of malware domains and ad servers that are blocked. You can subscribe to any of the lists you want, but I subscribe to all of them.

And a final word about blocking ads. There are some people who feel that ad blocking is an issue of ethics. Their position is that having a website costs the website owner money, and if the site is providing information  or valuable content for free, the site has to have advertising in order to continue. It’s a valid point.

I’m still okay with using AdBlock Plus though, because they have taken this issue into account. The software does not block 100% of advertisements (although you can set it so that it does that if you want). By default, you will still see what are determined to be “acceptable” ads (guidelines here). So you definitely won’t see the ads that are flashing and jumping around on the screen, or the ones that play sound. You know the kind I mean. This way, it encourages the website owners to only display ads that the internet community as a whole considers acceptable. So the site can still make money via advertising.

And as I’ve said before, you still need a strong antivirus and antimalware system in place. And you need to make sure your other software such as Adobe, Java, web browsers, etc. are kept up to date. Don’t give the bad guys any advantage!

Years ago, hard drive space was an issue that I dealt with more often. Back in the days of 40 gb and 80 gb hard drives, it didn’t take a whole lot to fill one up. Then you started getting the warnings “Drive C is getting low on space”. These days, with hard drives more commonly in the 1 terabyte (1000 gb) range, it’s not as big of a problem (but that creates a different problem, which I’ll talk about in a minute). But even now I sometimes see a client’s computer that is getting pretty full. And by “pretty full” I mean that less than 10% of the drive’s storage capacity is still available.

Fortunately, there are a few things you can do quickly and easily to free up some space. In fact, you might even be surprised at how quick and easy it is.

First, you can delete temporary internet files. When you visit a website, your computer will often store the images from that site temporarily on your hard drive. That way, if you go back to that same site tomorrow or next week, the site will load more quickly because you’re loading all those images from your hard drive instead of downloading them from the internet again. As you might imaging, storing those images can take up a chunk of space on your hard drive. You can get rid of them.

Second, you can empty your Recycle Bin. I must confess, I don’t do this very often, and my Recycle Bin gets pretty full. Whatever is in there is taking up valuable hard drive space.

Third, you can delete temporary files. Wait a minute – isn’t that what we did in step one? Nope! In what might seem like a confusing choice of terminology, these are two different things. These temporary files don’t come from the internet, they come from programs installed on your computer. Some programs are designed to store some files on your computer for a period of time, but they aren’t really necessary for your computer to function properly, so you can get rid of them to save space.

Fourth, you can delete Windows Updates that are already installed and working. Don’t worry, deleting them doesn’t actually remove the update itself; it just removes the installer file that was originally downloaded. Sometimes these can take quite a bit of space, and you don’t need them any more since they have already been installed.

So there you are, four ways you can immediately save some space (maybe a lot of space). It sounds like you’ll have to jump through all kinds of hoops and follow a lot of complicated steps to do all those things, right? Wrong. It’s easy!

(Note: the steps below are based on Windows 7. If you have Windows 8 or 8.1, go to Control Panel and click to open Administrative Tools. Then double click on Disk Cleanup. Then start with Step 4 below. And yes, there are other ways to get to that same place. For another option on how to do this, listen to today’s podcast by clicking on the “play” button above.)

Here’s how you free up space on your Windows 7 hard drive:

1. Click the Start button (the MS logo in the lower left corner) and type: cleanmgr

2. At the top of the Start menu, click on cleanmgr.exe

3. Choose the drive you wish to clean up (usually this will be drive C):

4. The program will go through and analyze several areas of the drive:

5. Now you will see the results of the analysis. This is the window where you will look at the 4 areas we mentioned above, check the box for each one. You will see that there is a calculation of the total amount of disk space you will gain by deleting these files. In my case, it was a little over 7 gb. To proceed, click OK and then confirm by clicking “Delete Files”.

6. You’ll see a little progress window as the files are deleted:

When that’s finished, you’re done. If you want, you can go back and check it again and see that the totals have been reset back to zero (or close to zero).

You can run this and delete these files as often as you wish. But if you find yourself constantly running out of hard drive space, this is really only a temporary fix – you really need to either replace your drive with a bigger one, or add a second hard drive just for storage. Or, you could just get a new computer – the new ones come with huge hard drives and you’ll probably never lack for space.

One more thing. I mentioned above that the newer machines with the really big hard drives cause a different problem. That problem is disorganization. When your hard drive is small and you only have limited storage space, you tend to be organized, and frugal about what you put on the drive. Now, with the larger drives, many people just download everything and store stuff all over the place. Since they don’t have to be concerned with running out of space, they tend to be careless about how much they download and where it all goes.

You can of course use your computer any way you want, but my recommendation is that you keep it organized. This will save you time and potential headaches down the road, when you’re trying to remember where you stored a particular file or folder.

I have 3 mysterious questions for you this week. Don’t worry, there will be a computer-related tip before we’re done here.

Mystery number 1: Why can’t I add simple numbers in my head?

This is just a simple addition problem. But you cannot use a calculator or a pencil and paper. This must be done completely in your head.

Try it:

Take 1000 and add 40 to it. Now add another 1000. Now add 30. Add another 1000. Now add 20. Now add another 1000. Now add 10.

What is the total?

I’ll put the answer at the end of this post. No cheating! Come up with the answer in your head and see if you got it right.

Mystery number 2: Where did the other dollar go?

This one has been one of my favorite word problems for many years. It seems so simple, but can be so confounding.

Here’s the story:

Three men are traveling and stop for the night at a hotel.

They decided they want to save some money and share a room. The clerk tells them that a room for the night is $30.

So each man pays $10, and they go up to the room.

A little while later, the clerk realizes that he made a mistake. The room was only supposed to be $25.

So he gives the bellhop $5, and tells him, “I overcharged the 3 men – go and give them this $5 back.”

The bellhop heads toward the room, but he’s not very honest. On the way to the room, he decides to keep $2 for himself. He goes to three men and only gives them back $3 (which of course is a refund of $1 each).

Now let’s think about this. We started out with the men paying $30 total, right?

So originally each man paid $10. Now each man got a dollar back, which means that each man has now paid $9.

$9 x 3 men = $27. The bellhop kept $2. That’s $29.

Where did the other dollar go?

Mystery number 3: Why do people continue to pay for a service that they no longer use?

This question is the one that’s computer/internet related.

A long time ago, back when the internet was still a new toy to a lot of people, America Online was a very popular Internet Service Provider. Most people still had dial-up service. And no matter where you went, there was a display of AOL computer discs – always free – that would install the AOL software on your computer. This would create an account for you to connect to the internet, and back then it was like $9.95 per month. It gradually grew to $12 and later $15 per month.

That monthly fee was what allowed the customer to actually connect to the internet.

Fast forward to today. Most people now use cable or some other type of high-speed internet connection. There are still some people (like those in very rural areas) who use AOL’s dialup internet service, but that number is steadily declining as high-speed access spreads.

But guess what – many of the people that no longer use AOL to connect to the internet still pay AOL for that monthly subscription.

It’s true. The average AOL “subscriber” currently pays $21.35 per month and AOL continues to increase the monthly fee by adding on additional “services” such as antivirus and premium tech support. But millions of those people don’t even use AOL’s service because they have switched to a high-speed internet connection.

In fact, in the most recent fiscal quarter, the division of AOL that includes dialup service took in $139 million. With a continually declining user base, the one thing keeping AOL alive right now are these millions of people that are paying for nothing.

For some of these people, I know the reason why because I have talked to them personally. They think that in order to keep their AOL email address they need to keep paying their monthly subscription. This is not true. AOL email is free (and in my opinion, even that is overpriced).

So here’s the computer tip for today: if you are still paying AOL just to keep your email account, stop! Cancel your AOL subscription. You won’t lose your email address. And when you do cancel, check your credit card statement to make sure they don’t just “forget” and keep charging you anyway – that’s the standard practice for AOL.

And the correct total for the first mystery question is 4100. Most people, myself included, come up with 5000. Get a calculator and check it.

There was a time when I used and recommended AVG as a reliable option for a free antivirus. I stopped using it about 4 years ago, mainly because the software itself wasn’t really compatible with all Windows computers. When I make a recommendation, I try to make sure it’s something that won’t freeze up your PC. Now, AVG has given us some new reasons to not use their software. AVG has become one of the “bad guys” – now they’ll try to sneak malware and junkware on to your computer.

Kind of ironic, isn’t it? One of the companies that asks you to trust it to keep your computer clean of viruses and malware actually ends up trying to put that junk ON your computer.

To verify this for myself, I went through the process of installing the free AVG antivirus program on my computer.

At the AVG web page, the first button to click on is a big tipoff:

You can see that the big green button indicates that the download is not coming from the AVG website, but rather from CNET – probably better known as Download.com. Back in the early days of the internet, CNET was a great source for technology news. And I used to go to Download.com all the time to find new software and try it out. But that has all changed, a good while ago. Download.com is one of the biggest sources for deceitful junkware and malware on the internet. Rather than delivering quality content, they now make their money by sneaking garbage on to your computer.

I downloaded and ran the installer. Of course, the first thing that comes up is to accept their terms and conditions. Nothing to be surprised about there, really – just about every software installation has this now.

I was a bit surprised at the size of the Agreement, however. I copied it into a Word document and checked the size, and it came to 23 pages – 11,814 words. That’s a lot of legal talk for a free program. Wonder why their lawyers had so much to say?

Here’s the big “fork in the road” during the installation process where many people make the wrong choice. You can do the “Standard” install or the “Custom” install. Of course “Standard” is pre-checked because that’s what AVG wants you to do. And look at the “Custom” option – it says it’s for “advanced users”. How many people would consider themselves “advanced users” – just that phrase would intimidate some people and they would choose the Standard install just because they assume it will be easier.

Here’s a tip for whenever you are installing software on your computer: ALWAYS choose the custom installation option. Here’s how you should really read it:

But for the purpose of this review, I chose Standard installation like a lot of people would. Now the real download begins:

When the download was completed, I was graciously offered the chance to give my email address and get another program – “Quick Tune”. It says Quick Tune can speed up my PC by fixing common computer problems. This is crapware that you don’t want, but the makers of Quick Tune have paid AVG to offer it to you as a “benefit”. I declined.

And now the onslaught begins.

Shortly after the installation, I got a pop-up on my screen:

This is where the true irony comes in.

One of the primary purposes for having security software is protect against something called browser hijacking. Browser hijacking is what has happened when you suddenly notice your home page has changed to a different website. A true hijack also changes your default search engine and your “new tab” page (the website that shows up by default whenever you open a new tab in your web browser).

That pop-up from AVG wants to do all of those things. If I allowed this (as a lot of people do, when they see the big “OK” button there), then every time I open up my web browser (Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, etc.) it’s going to automatically go to the AVG Secure Search page, rather than whatever page I currently have it going to. And when I open a new tab, that new tab is also going to display that page. And whenever I do a web search, I won’t be searching on Google now – I’ll be searching on “AVG Secure Search”.

So by clicking on the AVG pop-up that is offering to protect my web browser, that very thing is going to infect my web browser with all those changes that I don’t want. No thanks, AVG.

What we’ve gone over so far is more than enough to tell you that AVG is no longer one of the good guys. They are just another company that has given in to the temptation of sacrificing their customers’ user experience on the altar of making money.

But they’ve only just begun!

Check out the interesting link right in the middle of their program window:

Have you ever had a problem with your computer’s performance? Maybe it was running too slow? That’s by far the biggest complaint I hear when someone brings me their computer. So of course there are TONS of people that will click that button, thinking they are going to speed up their computer. But what really happens?

When I clicked the button, I suddenly see a new program – one which I did not request, or even know about. It’s called PC Analyzer. And there it goes, supposedly checking my registry for errors, my hard drive for defragmentation, etc. And what a surprise – it found “Severe” problems with my computer. As you might already know, this is a standard practice for scam malware programs to make money. These are the basic steps:

And that is exactly the process that AVG is using. It found all of these supposed dangerous errors on my computer, and right next to the “Fix Now” button was this little explanation:

So they are offering to sell me the solution to the problems that they “found”. I guess if a scam works, there’s no point in changing it. I would love to know how much money AVG makes just from this one small area. Again, so many people will just click the “Fix now” button without reading the fine print – and that’s what AVG is counting on.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go uninstall some garbage from my computer.

And if you’re looking for a really GOOD antivirus solution that truly protects your computer (and keeps your other critical software up to date), scroll to the top of this page and click on Scott’s Managed Service Plan.

This is a scenario that’s repeated many thousands of times on the internet, every single day. Someone has a file on their computer, and it’s in a particular format, and they need it to be in a different format. For example, they have an MP4 video, and they want it to just be an MP3 audio file. So they go on Google and search for “how to convert mp4 to mp3” and they see lots of free software that offers to do this. They click to download and install one of them, and within minutes their computer is infected with pop-ups, fake virus alerts, and in some cases, actual viruses.

There are some actual legitimate programs that will do this, but depending on what type of file conversion you need, it can be like finding a needle in a haystack. You could spend a lot of time experimenting with the ones you find by searching Google before you find one that does what you want without putting a bunch of garbage on your computer.

I recently came across a service that offers file conversion, and it’s entirely web-based – which means you don’t install anything on your computer in order to use it. And it’s free (though the free option has some limitations – I’ll get to that in a minute).

As you know, I don’t recommend anything here unless I’ve used it myself. So I tried it out.

The site is called Zamzar. You can see it at Zamzar.com. No idea where they came up with that name, but that doesn’t really matter. On the home page of their site, they claim to be able to do over 1200 different types of file conversions. If you click on the link at the top of the page that says “Conversion Types” you’ll see the list of the conversions they offer, and it’s pretty impressive.

As I was browsing that list, trying to decide which one I wanted to try as a test, I saw that one of the options was to convert a video file (MP4) to an audio file (MP3). That sounded like a good one to try. This would come in handy if you have a video on your computer, like maybe your nephew giving a speech in school. But you want to listen to it in the car, so you only need the audio portion rather than the whole video.

So I chose a video file that I had already stored on my computer, and began following the simple instructions on the Zamzar website:

Step 1: Choose the file

Step 2: Choose what format you want to end up with

Step 3: Enter your email address so they can send you the link for the converted file

Step 4: Click the Convert button to start the process (Zamzar’s Privacy Policy includes: “Zamzar does not rent, sell, or share your personal information or email address with any other companies.”)

Since my file size was nice and small, I almost immediately got the notification that the file was successfully uploaded to their server:

They say their goal is to do all conversions in 10 minutes or less. For this one, it was less than a minute – the email showed up with a link for me to click.

I clicked the link, downloaded my newly-created MP3 audio file, and it played perfectly in my media player program (I use VLC Media Player, but you probably already have Windows Media Player installed on your computer for this).

Overall I was pretty impressed at the speed. A larger file would probably take longer of course. But the thing I really liked about this whole process is that there was never any chance for me to accidentally click to install malware or junkware on my computer. The website is supported by ads, but I didn’t see any deceptive ones that tried to trick you into clicking. Your experience with their ads might vary (and when I turned AdBlock Plus back on, I didn’t see any of their ads anyway).

The ads are one way the site makes money. But probably the bigger revenue for them is selling the paid version of their services.

As you might expect, the free version (the one I tried out) has some limitations:

Their least expensive paid account is $9 per month. They also have an “intermediate” account for $16 per month, and a top paid account at $49 per month. Here’s a comparison chart for the various paid accounts (click the image to see it larger):

Personally, I really can’t see that it would be cost effective to pay monthly for a service such as this. If I’m doing that much file conversion, I’m just going to go ahead and purchase the software to do it myself. Maybe for some people and some situations it would be worthwhile, just not for me. But for the occasional times that I need this, it could be handy. And like I said, the big advantage is there is nothing to install.

They also offer conversions from a URL (for example, you want a YouTube video converted and saved to your computer). And if you want, you can even get a file converted without going to their website – they’ll do it with a specially configured email (you just attach the file you want to convert). Those services are described in the Tools section of their website.

If you try out the Zamzar service, let us know your opinion in the comments section.

There are a lot of reasons why your computer might be running slowly. But one of the biggest reasons is that you have too many programs running at the same time. This can be deceiving, because you might look at your screen and it seems like only a few are running. It’s the ones that are running that you DON’T see that could be causing the problem.

Here’s the basic fact: the more programs you have running, the slower they all run. That means you don’t want to have any programs running if you don’t need them at the time.

The secret is to find the list of programs that run automatically every time you boot up the computer, and tell them not to run every time.

Here’s how you find that list:

In Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7:

1. Click the Start button (the Microsoft logo in the bottom left corner)

2. In the field with the blinking cursor, type: msconfig and hit Enter on the keyboard

3. In the new window that comes up, click on the “Startup” tab. There’s your list.

In Windows 8 or 8.1:

1. Hold down CTRL and SHIFT, and tap the Escape key

2. Click the “Startup” tab. There’s your list.

So now you’re looking at the list of programs that run automatically, every time you boot up your computer. Getting to that list is the easy part. Now you have to decide which items you should disable.

Important note: disabling or unchecking a program in this list does NOT remove it or uninstall it from your computer. It’s still there. It just doesn’t run automatically every time you hit the power button.

The items that I see all the time and disable or uncheck include:

There are others for sure; these are just the ones that come to mind because I see them fairly often.

Of course, you might leave one or more of those checked based on your situation. Some people like to have Skype on all the time, so that the people with whom they communicate can see when they’re online. Or maybe you want Spotify to automatically start streaming your music every time you boot up. There’s no problem with that.

What causes the problem is that so many of these programs insert themselves into the “auto startup” group without needing to be there, and without even asking your permission to be there. Like Adobe Reader. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever for Adobe Reader to be constantly running in the background on your computer, but if you check the MSCONFIG startup list, it’s very likely you will find it there. So what happens when you UNcheck that box to disable it? It changes nothing as far as your ability to use it. When you click on a PDF file, it will open up in Adobe Reader just like it always does.

But Adobe doesn’t care about how fast your computer runs. If you take Adobe Reader out of the startup list, guess what happens after the next Adobe Reader update? Yep, it’s right back in the list again. AND – you’ll see an icon on your desktop for Adobe Reader. This is absolutely the most useless desktop icon ever. No one clicks on that to open the program. You just click on a PDF file, and it opens in Adobe Reader by default (unless you use a different program to read PDF files). But we’ve known for a long time that Adobe doesn’t care about your computer’s performance – every time you go to Adobe.com to get an update to Adobe Reader or Adobe Flash, it will still try to sneak other junkware on to your computer – like McAfee or Ask.com garbage.

How do you know which items to uncheck or disable?

My general rule is this: if you don’t know what it is, leave it there. But even if you uncheck something that you shouldn’t have, you can always just go back to the list and check it or enable it again.

Some things are obvious. The items I listed above don’t have to run all the time, just when you need them. Other programs in the list you might not be so sure about. What you can do is note the program name, and then do a little research on it. Find out what it does. You might discover that it’s part of the software program that goes with a printer or scanner that you don’t even use any more. Or it might be malware.

On the other hand, you will probably see your antivirus program listed there – definitely want to keep that one. You should of course also keep your program that you use for automated online backup, since that should run without you having to manually activate it.

It’s a good idea to check the MSCONFIG startup list maybe once a month or so, just to be sure things haven’t gotten in there when they shouldn’t be there. Usually there’s a pretty good chance you’ll find something that you’ll want to disable.

I love Google Chrome. I use it as my default web browser and it works great. Probably what I love most about it is how I can customize it with extensions. I can put on ad blockers and all kinds of things so that websites look and behave based on my personal preferences. Chrome has one drawback though – it tends to use a lot of the computer’s memory (RAM).

Here’s how you can see this for yourself. Open Google Chrome, then open a website in a new tab. Then open another web page in another new tab. And another. And keep doing that until you have a bunch of tabs open, each one on a different web page.

For this example, I opened 15 different tabs and each one is displaying a different product on Amazon. So the top of my Google Chrome browser looks like this:

Now, with those 15 tabs open, let’s see how much memory is being used by Chrome. To do this, we need to open Windows Task Manager. The quick way to open that is to hold down the CTRL and Shift keys, and tap the Escape key. When Task Manager opens, click on the “Processes” tab. If you look in that list of processes, you should see Chrome listed several times (once for each tab you have opened in Chrome). And each one will tell you how much memory is being used. Mine looks like this:

I didn’t add up all that, but you can see that it can pretty easily get into several gigabytes of memory. That will tend to slow things down. Of course, you might not typically have that many Chrome tabs open at the same time, but there are probably situations where you have quite a few open. I certainly do sometimes.

Thankfully, there’s a way to save the website or web page addresses for each of the tabs, but combine them all into just one single tab. It’s through a Chrome extension called OneTab. You can get it free at One-Tab.com. Just go to that website (using Chrome) and click to install it. You don’t even need to restart Chrome. When it’s running, you’ll see a little blue funnel at the top of the window:

When you click that funnel, it takes all of those individual web pages and puts them into a list of clickable links – on just one single tab. At that point, you can restore each one individually if you want, or you can restore all 15 tabs back to the way they were originally.

And the big benefit – the reason we did this in the first place – was to save on memory. Take a look at Task Manager now:

That’s a big difference! If your computer has lots of memory installed, like 8 gb or 16 gb, you might not notice a huge change in the speed of operation. But if  you’re working with 4 gb of memory (which is pretty common on most computers these days) but difference in speed might be very noticeable.

And by the way – OneTab is available for Firefox also.

Check it out and let me know what you think in the comments!

I had an experience recently that I knew almost immediately would end up as a blog post and podcast episode. It’s another example of how someone came up with a great idea about yet another use for technology, and we can all benefit from it.

When you go on vacation, what are the biggest expenses for which you have to plan? Airfare of course, if you’re flying. But the next biggest one could be where you’ll be staying. Obviously you need a place to store your stuff and a place to sleep every night. Typically for most people that means finding a hotel. The price for a week or two in a hotel can vary widely. You could stay in a very nice one and pay a few hundred dollars each night per room, or you could find a cheaper place for possibly less than $100 per night. Either way, it’s going to represent a pretty big part of your travel budget.

What’s really nice is if you’re traveling to visit family or friends, and they have extra rooms so you can just stay with them. Think about this: wouldn’t it be nice if you had some family or friends to stay with wherever you went? That’s kind of what we can do now. Kind of.

Let’s say you’re traveling to Clearwater Beach (one of the greatest beaches in the world, of course). You can obviously book a hotel room (or several) and stay right there on the beach. And you pay for that service and convenience. If it’s around Christmas, or Spring Break, you’ll pay even more.

But think about what else is in the area. There are some privately owned homes that are sitting empty. Either because the owner is traveling somewhere, or the property is no longer occupied because it’s for sale, or a variety of other reasons. Wouldn’t it be great if you could just contact the owner and stay there, at a lower rate than a hotel? It’s good for you because you’re saving money, and it’s good for the homeowner because he’s making some money from this house that would otherwise just be sitting there empty.

What’s been missing in the equation is how the property owners can be connected with the people that need a place to stay. That has now been solved, thanks to a service called AirBnB. You can access it at AirBnB.com.

The basic premise is pretty simple. The website summarizes it in 3 steps:

Step 1 is to decide where you want to go, and what kind of place you want. There are actually hosts in 190 different countries, and TONS of them here in the US. You’ll find more options in highly populated areas of course, but even in rural locations you should have a few places to choose from. You can filter your choices based on location, price range, and whether you want a private room, an entire home, or even a shared room (sharing a room – that sounds like more of an adventure than I would probably want).

Step 2 is to book the reservation. This is where you actually send a request to the host and tell them what dates you want to reserve, how many people, those kinds of details. At this point, all of your communication is done through the AirBnB website. You don’t have any direct contact with the host until your reservation is accepted (hosts have the option on whether or not they will accept a reservation). Payment is also made through the website. AirBnB will charge you the advertised room rate. Added to this in some cases is a cleaning fee charged by the host. And, AirBnB will add their own “Guest Fee”, which ranges from 6% to 12% based on the room rate.

Step 3 is – go! Show up on your check-in date, meet your host, ask any final questions, and then enjoy your stay.

As I mentioned, I recently had my own first experience with this type of travel accommodations. I was scheduled to attend a writer’s conference about a month ago over in Delray Beach, Florida (about a 4 hour drive from where I live in the Tampa Bay area). Getting there was no problem of course, since it was a reasonable driving distance. However, the conference was Wednesday through Saturday so obviously I needed to find a place to stay for 3 nights.

The conference was at the Marriott right on Delray Beach. Beautiful facility, but at $200 per night plus tax, it was more than I wanted to spend. So I started looking around for alternatives. There were hotels that were less expensive, but they weren’t very close by. That meant I would be driving 30-45 minutes each way from the my hotel to the conference hotel. Not exactly ideal either.

That’s when a friend told me about AirBnB and I started checking out the possibilities there. There were several hosts within just a few miles of the Marriott, and the prices were very reasonable. Since I was traveling alone, I only needed minimal space so I limited my search to private rooms rather than a whole house or apartment. I decided on a host that offered a private room with my own full bathroom – and it was only $60 per night.

The experience was wonderful. I had my own key so I could come and go as I needed to. I had full use of the kitchen (although I only really used the fridge to store some food). Before I showed up, I sent an email asking the host if there was a television in the room. She replied, “No, but you can always use the big TV out in the living room.” That was fine since I hardly watch television anyway. But then, when I arrived and she was showing me around, she said she went out and got a TV for the room anyway since I had asked about it. So there was a flat screen television, hooked up to cable, right there on the dresser in my room.

In my case, I got to know the host and we became friends. I’m sure not all situations are like that. In fact, you might never actually meet your host face to face if they have someone else in charge of handling the guests. Each scenario is a little different.

There is one big factor that is essential for something like this to work: trust. You have to have a sense of trust in the host, that they are going to provide a safe place to stay, and that their description and pictures are accurate. And the host has to be assured that you are not some psycho, scammer, or other manner of lowlife that they would not want to deal with.

AirBnB has safety mechanisms built into the process. As a guest, you are encouraged to provide as much information as possible. This includes linking to your social media accounts such as Facebook and LinkedIn, as well as providing your phone number, address and other direct contact information. Also, every time you travel and use AirBnB, the host has the opportunity to give you a rating and review as to what kind of guest you were. That gives future hosts a better idea of whether or not they want to accept your reservation.

Hosts are also encouraged to provide as much detail as possible in order to make potential guests more comfortable and likely to want to stay there. And the same rating/review system is in place for hosts. They want to build up a good collection of positive ratings in order to improve their reputation and increase the likelihood of future reservations.

I know that this type of travel arrangement is not for everyone. There are those that would say, “Just go and stay at the home of a stranger? No way!” That’s fine, that’s why hotels are in business. But if you have a little flair for trying something new, I suggest giving it a shot. You might just like the experience.