PCGURU

Extend your Laptop life

Wednesday, 10 March 2010 12:01 Jason Jordan

JJ - Full Length - Transparent BG (200x500) If your laptop (or notebook) is less than 3 years old but is performing poorly - don't go and spend on a new one when there's two things you can do to speed it up that cost a lot less.

Add some RAM:
Whilst Laptop RAM is slightly more expensive than Desktop PC RAM, it's still a lot cheaper than it used to be - and probably a lot cheaper than when you first bought your laptop. Assuming you're running a 32 bit Operating System, we can organise to get 4GB of physical RAM into your machine for less than you might think. RAM is the best bang for the buck in terms of improving performance.

Use a SSD Hard Drive:
Your current hard drive is slow. Most laptops use a 5400rpm spinning platter. Consider that Servers often use 15000rpm and you can see why they read and write data slower. It's also a moving part which in a laptop just isn't a good idea. SSD (Solid State Disks) have no moving parts. They're really fast and won't suffer head crashes. They're no longer hugely expensive. Capacities around 128GB are now available at prices that will make you smile.

If you spent $1500 or more on your laptop, you can give it a whole new lease on life simply by adding RAM and an SSD.

Of course, there are always standard tunes & tweaks that can be performed as well. And never forget that your choice of Antivirus can also have a large effect on the performance of your machine. I personally use and recommend Trend Internet Security.

Give us a call today on 1300 724 878 and we'll pump some life back into your ailing machine!

Last Updated on Wednesday, 10 March 2010 12:28

Full Screen Weather

Full Screen Weather is a new tool from the folks behind the Weather Underground weather forecast web site that's ideal for anyone who has ever wanted to play at being a TV meteorologist from the comfort of their own home.

In a nutshell, the web site does away with all those charts, photos, banner ads and other things you find on the Weather Underground web site. Instead you're presented with a map that takes up the whole browser window, courtesy of Google Maps. Just enter a location and Full Screen Weather will give you the current conditions and a brief forecast for your region.

But here's the cool part. You can also see the temperature in a number of nearby locations. Zoom in and out of the map to see more details, or click on any temperature to see the conditions for that area.

If you happen to have a 60 inch LCD display, you can also stand in front of it and point at different areas of the screen while telling your dog what the chance of precipitation is in each of the surrounding counties.

Full Screen Weather is a very cool new website from the team behind Weather Underground. This is a web site that's perfect for those who has ever want to play at being a TV Weatherman from the comfort of their own home.

This web site does away with all the charts, photos, ads and other things you find on most Weather websites. Instead you're presented with a map that takes up the entire browser window, courtesy of Google Maps. Just enter a location and Full Screen Weather will give you the current conditions and a brief forecast for your region.

But here's the really cool part. You can also see the temperature in a number of nearby locations. Zoom in and out of the map to see more details, or click on any temperature to see the conditions for that area. Much of the content is provided by people who have their very own home weather stations!

If you happen to have a 50" Plasma, you can also stand in front of it and point at different areas of the screen while telling your goldfish what the chance of precipitation is in your local area.

http://www.fullscreenweather.com/

PCGURU Online Backups

Regular Readers of the PCGURU Newsletter and Website will know that I regularly soapbox over the lack of backups that most computer users have. This is usually instigated by yet another data disaster where we get introduced to a new client because they've lost critical business files or digital photos.

We can usually recover the files in about 75% of cases. But for the remainder, the news is usually very upsetting. It means lost memories or lost customer records - and lost customer records can be an expensive failure.

For our customers on GuruCare, we implement onsite backups to external USB hard drives which are taken off site each day. We monitor for success and failure and we're on the phone hassling people if backups don't work properly. We consider backups to be the single most important task you can perform each day. Good backups mean that should the very worst happen and you physically lose your home or business - we can still get you backup and running again FAST.

But people are always the weak point in backups. People forget to change USB Backup Drives, they drop & break them, they use the same disk every day and they leave them in the car to get stolen. So we've fixed it.

We now have Online or "Over-the-internet" backups and you can trial it for free! Visit http://www.pcguru.com.au/backups and download the right version for your computer. You can use it for a month and if you agree that it's an awesome, fully-automated system - we'll sign you up and you'll never need to think about backups again. It's really not expensive.

I have no other way of convincing you to do backups than to tell you the horror stories we see each day. Please don't be yet another sob story. There's are two types of people in the world. Those who have lost data and those who are going to. Try our online backup software. It's free to test out and it may save your business/marriage!

Timeleft

timeleft_small TimeLeft is a countdown, reminder, clock, alarm clock, tray clock, stopwatch, timer, sticker, auction watch, web countdown and time synchronisation utility.

It lets you count down to specific events, even if said event is months away (such as when you'll next get to see your long-distance girlfriend ... just saying). It also works as a stopwatch and can be used as a clock with multiple time zones. As for skins, it's skinnable via Winamp skins. The fact that it can pull fonts and colors from an existing library of a gazillion skins written for another application is pretty clever in itself.

All in all, if you need to keep track of time in any way which is more complex than what the default Windows system clock provides, TimeLeft is a great tool to check out.

It lets you count down to specific events, even if the event is months away. It also works as a stopwatch and can be used as a clock with multiple time zones. It's even skinnable via Winamp skins. Pulling fonts and colors from an existing library of skins written for another application is pretty clever in itself.

If you need to keep track of time in a more complex way than what the default Windows system clock provides, TimeLeft is a great tool to check out.

And it's free!

http://www.nestersoft.com/download/timeleft.exe

The Domain Shop

Even wanted your own domain name? Whether you're a business or you're doing it for the family, having your own domain name fixes the problem of not being able to change internet provider. If your current email address ends with your ISPs name - you'll lose it if you do decide to go elsewhere. SO the solution is - get your own domain name and it goes with you wherever you go.

It's also a lot more professional - especially important if you're a business.

Domain names are cheap, easy to set up and best of all if you get one through PCGURU, you'll be able to get a stack of mailboxes for FREE.

On the same site, you can also organise web site hosting at very competitive rates.

So inside of 30 minutes - you could have your own domain names, multiple mailboxes with different email addresses AND your own website.

Go on - have a look. It's not that hard but if you do get confused, give us a call and we'll step you through it.

http://domains.pcguru.com.au