In the show this week, Marcello Sukhdeo shares some tips to enrich your tech life, from RAM to Google Chrome extensions and the four groups of password users that you should not be a part of.
How much RAM do you need for your computer?
An article from ZD Net on how much RAM does your PC need, to run smoothly, caught my attention this week. In looking for a new PC or even upgrading your current one, what RAM size should you consider to get the best out of your computer.
Let’s start at the minimum, if you are looking for basic operations in a computer, like browsing the internet without having many tabs open, email, word processing, and light image editing then, 1GB of RAM is just enough.
Now if you bump this up to 2GB of RAM you should be able to do more than the basic operations, like some gaming, image and video editing, running Microsoft Office, and even having many browser tabs open at the same time.
At 4GB of RAM you will see such a big difference in performance as compared to 2GB of RAM. You will not only get applications to run faster, but you can also run more applications at the same time.
If you're serious about your PC, then 8GB of RAM should be the point that you are aiming for. With a 8GB of RAM system you will have a machine that can do wonders with photo or HD video editing. The 8 GB of RAM is recommended by Adobe for users running Creative Cloud applications as well.
When you think about 8GB of RAM, you may think that it is expensive, and you’re right, if you are getting the manufacturer to fit 8GB of RAM into a new system, you would be paying a premium price for this, think about Apple, but what is really amazing and can save you some dollars is if you get this from an aftermarket supplier, the cost to you will be about $40. Now, that’s a cheap way to get more performance in your machine.
The option to go higher than 8GB is also available. This will be more expensive though but comes in handy if virtualization tools are your thing, like Microsoft Hyper-V or VMware Workstation, or to run multiple virtual machines at the same time.
So there that’s the overview of the different size of RAMs available on the market today, if you are looking to upgrade your current system, you can use system checker such as Crucial.com to find out what RAM is compatible with your system before making your purchase.
Free Google Chrome browser extensions
If you are an avid user of the Chrome browser, there are a few really good FREE extensions that can add so much more to your Chrome experience.
Let’s take a look at a few:
Hotspot Shield VPN
This is a good extension to secure your browser when connected to a hotspot. What is neat about this is that Hotspot Shield is not only free to use, but is ad-free and totally unlimited.
Office Editing for Docs, Sheets & Slides
If you don’t have Microsoft Office, no need to worry, with this extension you can view and edit Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files -- without needing Office to be installed on your computer.
Once the extension is installed, you can drag Office files into Chrome, and it will be opened in Docs, Sheets, and Slides for viewing and editing.
Tab Wrangler
This extension automatically closes inactive tabs and makes it easy to get them back. What it does is to close idle tabs after a set time and it saves the closed tabs, so that you can easily re-open at another time.
Google Keep Chrome Extension
With this extension, you can easily save a webpage, image, or quote that you want to look at later time. It also syncs across all of the platforms that you use -- including web, Android, iOS, and Wear.
SpeakIt!
SpeakIt reads selected text using Text-to-Speech technology with language auto-detection. It can read text in more than 50 languages. This is a cool one especially when we are tired or don’t want to read anymore, just use this to read to you instead.
ExtensionPrint Friendly & PDF
What this extension does is to remove ads, navigation and junk before your print. Pages are optimized for the ultimate print reading experience.
Disconnect Search
Disconnect Search is a service that uses a specialized VPN to allow you to search privately using your favorite search engine. The reason to use this is that they claim they don't log searches, IP addresses, or any other personal info.
HTTPS Everywhere
HTTPS Everywhere is an extension that encrypts your communications with many major websites, making your browsing more secure.
LastPass
LastPass is an award-winning password manager that saves your passwords and gives you secure access from every computer and mobile device. Very secure, and very easy to use.
Ghostery
Ghostery is an extension that reveals "invisible" web, which consists of trackers, web bugs, pixels, and beacons placed on web pages by Facebook, Google, and over 500 other ad networks, basically all companies that are interested in your online activity.
Boomerang for Gmail
Boomerang allows you to schedule messages to be sent or returned at a later date. Write a message now, send it whenever, even if you're not online.
Todoist
A sleek to-do app keeps you organized, focused, and more productive. The perfect to-do productivity app is there wherever you need it: on Google Chrome, mobile device, desktop, browser, Gmail, and more.
Text Mode
Do you find that some web pages have so many distractions on them, with this extension you can browse web pages without distraction. There are no images, no videos and no animation. Not only does this extension make page loads faster, it makes information a lot easier to scan.
Our last one is Grammarly
The free spell checker and grammar checker by Grammarly helps you with your writing on Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Tumblr, and nearly anywhere else on the Web. With Grammarly, you can always be sure that your words are mistake-free and say what you mean.
This is just a few of the free extensions that are available on Google Chrome. Go to this link to see a list of 50 extensions and links that you can download. http://www.zdnet.com/pictures/50-free-google-chrome-browser-extensions/
Four groups of password users
Peter Romano who is the Director of Corporate Security at TELUS recently provided an article to IT in Canada.
In this article, he talks about how for many protecting their companies against cyber-threats, passwords can be one of the greatest points of weakness.
He pointed out how the number of passwords that employees need remember today is constantly increasing with each new device or platform. And not only for work, but they have to remember passwords for their personal accounts.
With such a large number of passwords to keep track of, most repeat passwords or set weak passwords. And this makes it easier for hackers to breach security.
Experts say that the average person has 19 passwords, with more than a third of us having weak passwords, and 63 per cent of all data breaches involve those weak or stolen passwords.
Romano went on to point out that security experts at TELUS group weak passwords into four behavioural categories, making them easy to breach:
The advocate: Someone who is loyal to their work, has a sense of corporate pride, and uses their company name in the password (e.g., TELUS888). This password can easily be guessed, and can be a common practice at some companies. How to correct this, simple, keep your company name out of your passwords?
The number cruncher: This is someone who had to think of a password on the spot, and uses a string of numbers in sequence for their password (e.g., 98765432). This is easy to breach as well. Remember, it’s very important to use letters and special characters to keep the strength of your password high.
The typist: This is a user with so many passwords that they can’t be creative anymore. So what they do is to use the keyboard to create a password with nearby keys (e.g., 1qaz2wsx) – which according to Romano is just as easy to crack as 1234.
And the fourth group is the season sponsor: And this as you can guess or maybe you are guilty of this is someone who bases their password updates on the season they’re in, and uses spring, summer, fall and winter to set passwords (e.g., Summer16). These passwords may be easy to remember, but they are even easier to crack.
What is concerning about this is hackers are extremely resourceful and they are using some sophisticated methods to guess even the most complicated of passwords, so if they can break into a strong password, how much more easier will it be for them to crack a simple password.
Romano went on to highlight that in the past it used to take a few weeks for a hacker to break a password, but today it can done in a matter of a few seconds.
One thing to be cognizant about is that these password trends that we’ve talked about today are well known to hackers so avoid creating passwords using these categories as it will make it more difficult for hackers to crack your passwords.
Romano gave a great suggestion, this is what he said, “As crass as it may sound, we recommend treating passwords like underwear: change them often, don’t leave them lying around on your desk and don’t lend them to anyone.”
That is something that we all can relate to.
Thanks for listening.
