SteveMart.in

Often when you buy a new computer, the manufacturer gives you the option of having Microsoft Office pre-installed. This seems rather convenient since you don’t have to install Office after the fact. Your other option is to order a retail version of Microsoft Office separately either online or at a retail outlet and install it after you receive your new computer.

So, which is better to do, OEM or Retail?

The answer is Retail. When you have Microsoft Office pre-installed on your computer, you are getting the OEM version of the software which is licensed for THAT computer and THAT computer ONLY. When that computer dies, that license of Microsoft Office dies with it. You cannot install it on your next computer.

A retail version of Microsoft Office comes with different licensing. Typically with the retail version you are allowed to install it on two computers. The two computers should belong to the same person though such as a person’s desktop computer and laptop computer. The Student/Teacher version goes one step further and will allow you to install it on up to three computers in the same household. Also, if one of your computers dies, you can have your retail license reset by Microsoft and install the retail version on the dead computer’s replacement. It is not tied to the “Original Equipment” it was installed on.

So, if you have more than one computer (and even if you don’t), get a retail version of Microsoft Office so that you don’t have to buy an individual copy for each computer and so you can still use your Microsoft Office license on a future computer when your current one dies.

And, to save even more money, you could install the Openoffice.org office suite for free. It is compatible with the Microsoft Office formats of Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. If you have a fairly complex Excel or Word document, it may have some formatting issues especially if you use pivot tables in Excel or if you are accessing a database. But, for the common everyday spreadsheet and/or text document, it will work just fine.

Posted in Computer Networking | No Comments »

I have just installed Firefox 3.0 on my computer. I used Firefox back when IE didn’t have tabbed browsing. Tabbed browsing is an absolute must in a browser. My problem with Firefox back then was its memory hogging issues. It would use a ton of a system’s memory and had to be restarted to free it up. Once Internet Explorer 7 came out and had tabbed browsing, I switched back. IE7 had much the same issue with memory. The two browsers seemed to stockpile memory and just keep adding to the amount they would steal with each new tab you opened. A big part of the problem was that they didn’t give the memory back even if you closed tabs. So, Firefox 3 claims to have made great changes to the way they use memory. I have set Firefox as my default browser and will use it for a while to see if it really has improved. If it has improved, Firefox will be my new browser (for now). I am betting that IE8 will improve its memory consumption as well and by that time I may switch back. Either way, I find it very useful to keep the two browsers installed and use whichever one serves me best.

Posted in Computer Networking | No Comments »

I have a Windows Media Center PC that I use as our TV hub for the entire house. Through Xbox 360s we can watch TV that is being recorded through the Media Center PCs. It’s a great little setup and makes it so that I can watch any of our pre-recorded TV shows or live Tivo-like TV from any of the TVs in the house. I also have it setup so that we can see our movie library and we can watch any of those with the push of a button.

Well, about a week or two ago, I was adding another hard drive to allow additional capacity for our movie library as I had already filled 1 TB of space with movies and needed more room. I got another 500GB eSata hard drive and had opened the case in order to install the eSata ports onto the back of the computer. The TV tuner card had an extra little input area that was using one of the slots. I did not need this so I was removing it to allow space for the eSata card. After removing it from the slot, I set it on the tuner card just below it so it would be out of the way while I installed the eSata ports. The metal edge touched a couple of contacts on the tuner card. There was a spark and the smell of melting electronics and the tuner card was toast.

So, we have not watched any TV for a couple of weeks. Saw only a few days of the Olympics. Streaming the movies still works fine but TV is a thing of the past. I have ordered a new card that allows both analog and digital TV to be recorded and can record 2 channels of each (double dual card). It was out of stock at the place where I found the best price. I ordered it thinking they would get it in stock and ship it fairly soon. Well, it is still on backorder and we are starting to get a little worried. Our shows will be starting soon and I’m not sure what we’ll do having to watch the shows when they are actually broadcast instead of recording them and fast forwarding through commercials. I can’t imagine going back to the old ways of watching TV.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the new tuner card will ship soon but let this be a lesson to you that even when a task inside your computer seems pretty simple and shouldn’t require you to shut down the computer, shut if off anyway. If not for the sake of the components, then for your own safety. Who wants their fingers fried in addition to their computer components? If I had followed this advice, we would still be recording and watching our favorite shows and I wouldn’t be out another $120.

Posted in Computer Networking | No Comments »

This is the Eee PC by ASUS. I recently bought one to see how viable it could be for certain business applications. It comes equipped with 512 MB of Ram and a tiny 4 GB Solid State hard drive. The processor is an Intel 900 Mhz. It looks like the the video takes 8 MB of memory from the RAM so you are actually left with 504 MB for the computer’s use.

It is preloaded with a custom distribution of Linux which I didn’t find very useful (although others do). So, I loaded Windows XP Professional on it. One thing to note is that you must install XP SP2 or it will not install correctly. I only had XP SP1 so I had to slipstream SP2 into it and then it worked fine. Depending on which Eee PC you get, they will include a driver disk for XP. You install the drivers once you have XP loaded.

Once I had XP installed and all the drivers, I applied the available updates for XP. This included installing SP3. By that time, the hard drive was getting pretty cramped (I was afraid SP3 was not going to install because of so little space available). I went through and deleted just about anything I could that would still let XP run without errors. After everything, I actually have about 1.4 GB of space left on the 4 GB hard drive.

One possible use for this little guy is to allow remote desktop (terminal services) connections to a remote computer in order to run certain applications. In this instance, the Eee PC doesn’t need to have much hard drive space as nothing gets stored locally. For the sake of speed, I would recommend formatting the drive to FAT32 instead of NTFS when installing XP. While NTFS has some additional features, it tends to run a little slower. This is really felt on a little computer which doesn’t have the fastest processor or very much RAM.

For now, my kids enjoy having a tiny laptop they can play games on. They play lots of games at sesamestreet.com. This is a picture of my two kids playing pinball on it.

So, if you don’t need a ton of hard drive space for your particular application and you are looking for a small form factor, this is a very inexpensive solution. Total cost was about $350. I already had an XP license allowing me to upgrade it to XP. If you do not, you need to factor in that cost as well.

9-4-08  Update. I showed the EeePC to my client that I was testing it out for and he thought it was perfect. They are using it every day now. My poor kids were in tears when I told them that I sold it to my client. Maybe if they ask Santa…

Posted in Computer Networking | 2 Comments »

I just upgraded this blogs software to version 2.6. Upgrading with WordPress has been very easy in the past and once again, the process was very simple. I have been very impressed by the WordPress software. It is far superior to blogging software I have used in the past. If anyone needs help setting up a blog, I’d be happy to help. Just let me know.

Posted in Computer Networking | No Comments »

I must admit that I never really saw the need for a blog in the past until I had my own. My wife was the same way. Why would she want to write a blog? It’s not like we believe ourselves to be great writers or anything and who would want to read our blogs anyway? To me, it is a way to write down helpful tips or fun memories. My wife loves to be able to record her memories and place them with some pictures. She always just figured “Oh, I’ll remember that”. Well, as much as we hate to admit it, we forget things all the time. Memories that we had of Abby, our oldest, have been forgotten and since we never wrote them down, we may never remember them. So, if for no other reason than keeping a record of our memories, I would encourage everyone to have a blog. You don’t necessarily have to make it public but it is a much easier way to share your thoughts and memories than keeping a written journal. There are many free online blogging sites such as http://www.wordpress.com and http://www.blogger.com. It’s easier than you may think to get started. You could be blogging in less than 5 minutes. Check it out.

Posted in Computer Networking | No Comments »

We are traveling to Jackson, WY on a business trip / mini vacation as I write this. Jenny is driving so that I can work on the way. I thought I would write a quick post about mobile broadband. About a year ago, we decided to order mobile broadband through Sprint which is our cell phone carrier. The idea was that it would help me to be more available to my clients from pretty much wherever I am. Sometimes it is more difficult and time consuming to try to talk someone through a problem than it is to simply hop onto their computer and take care of it. And, since time is money for both me and my clients, saving some time helps everyone involved.

So, we purchased mobile broadband and haven’t looked back. It is awesome! I love being able to browse the Internet, check and reply to e-mail, hop on clients’ computers to resolve problems…from anywhere. Right now, I am doing all of this while traveling 75 MPH. On several occasions I have pulled off the freeway to take care of something for a client real quick so they don’t have to wait for me to get back home or to my next location. It works great right now but should continue to improve over time. Sprint has upgraded much of their network to take advantage of Rev A speeds. Before Rev A there was Rev 0. The basic difference is in upload speeds, not download speeds. Rev 0 had a very slow upload speed. It was basically as slow as a 56K modem but the download speeds were burstable to 2 mbps. With Rev A you get equal download and upload speeds of 2 mbps (burstable). The average speed is probably between 500 kbps to 1 mbps. That’s pretty decent for mobile broadband.

In researching mobile broadband, I found that Sprint is actually a very good provider. They do not limit the amount of bandwidth people are allowed to use where Verizon caps you at 5GB per month. Most of the message boards I visited rave about the Sprint service and tout it as the best out there right now. Others are slower, not as reliable, and/or limit your use of the service.

The cost for the Sprint mobile broadband service when I signed up was $60/month when you sign a 2 year contract and $80/month without a contract. So, if you have a need for it, I would highly recommend getting it.

Posted in Computer Networking | No Comments »

I am not the kind of person that installs a whole lot of plugins on an Internet browser but I have found one that is a must for anyone running Internet Explorer 7. It is called ie7pro and puts several things into IE that should have been in there in the beginning. You can download it from http://www.ie7pro.com. It is free and quick to install.

It looks like this at the bottom of your IE7 browser window (the little ‘e’):

To change any of the features of ie7pro, you simply go into the tools menu of Internet Explorer 7 and choose “IE7Pro Preferences”. There you will be able to set and change any of the many features of ie7pro.

My first favorite feature is the “Crash Recovery” feature. I don’t know about you, but my Internet Explorer browser does crash from time to time. Either it dies on it’s own and closes or it freezes up and I have to force it to close. Well, ie7pro remembers all of the tabs that you had open before the crash. So, the next time you open Internet Explorer, it will ask you if you want to restore your previous session. I generally keep at least 10 to 20 tabs open all the time in Internet Explorer and it is a major pain to even remember what I had open let alone the time to go through and re-open them all up again. with ie7pro crash recovery turned on, I simply say “yes” after I re-open IE and all of my tabs open back up again right where I left off.

My second favorite feature is “refresh current tab”. It is pretty self explanatory but basically you choose a tab that you want to auto-refresh, go into the “refresh current tab”, and choose an interval from 5 seconds to 30 minutes. ie7pro will then refresh that particular tab according to the interval you set. This works great for sites that log you out after a certain amount of inactivity. I have several sites I use frequently that do this but with ie7pro, I never get logged out anymore. The refresh makes the site think that I am still actively using their site and keeps me logged in.

There is also an ad filter that will filter out a lot of the ads you see on different web sites. I have not turned this feature on simply because sometimes those ads are very worthwhile and actually help me save money on things I buy anyway. But for those that prefer fewer ads, you could turn it on and skip a lot of the advertisements.

Being a free product, I highly doubt there is any tech support for the product but I haven’t run into a need for it either. The software works as promised. So, if any of the features sound useful to you, check it out.

Posted in Computer Networking | 2 Comments »

It just keeps getting better. I have now used the magicjack at a few locations to make support calls on my client’s behalf and it has worked great. I wanted to give a couple of updates regarding the feaures that impressed me. First of all, the voicemail. Yes, this cheap service even includes voicemail. You can either check it by dialing your number and hitting star or just listen to the attachment that gets e-mailed to you after someone leaves a message. Since I don’t ever plan on using my magicjack for incoming phone calls, I recorded a special message for my kids. My children are a little afraid of jolly old St. Nicholas. He freaks them out. The only time they have sat on his lap is before they knew any better (like maybe before they turned one). So, in order for my kids to tell Santa what they want for Christmas, they call and leave him a voicemail. Previously, I was using an old Vonage line for them to do this with but now that I found Magicjack, I cancelled that Vonage line and Magicjack will replace it. If you want to let your kids call Santa to let him know what they want for Christmas, my Magicjack number is 801-738-0668. I don’t sound a lot like Santa but it fools MY kids.

Another feature that improves the pricing for Magicjack even more (I didn’t think that was possible), is that you can prepay for future years of service at quite a discount. I logged into my Magicjack account and found that I could pay for the next 4 years of sevice for only $50. That’s a $30 savings. I now have unlimited phone service for the next 5 years for only about $90.

Posted in Computer Networking, VoIP | 2 Comments »

I have been using Windows Vista for about a year now. I was due for a new laptop for work and decided to take the plunge into Vista more for support reasons. If I was going to be supporting Vista users, I figured I had better know a thing or two about it.

So, what do I think? I like it. I don’t LOVE it, but it’s not a BAD operating system. I think Microsoft went the wrong direction in prettying up their OS without adding any new useful features. In fact, I actually turned off the Aero features because they weren’t helpful enough to justify any additional strain on my computer. I don’t care how pretty my OS is, I care how useful it is. I have run into only minimal back compatibility issues but still, I think Microsoft should have spent more time in this area. Overall though, it is a good OS.

Now, should a person upgrade their current OS to Vista? NO! Why would you? As I said, they didn’t really add any new useful features. So, if you are already running Windows XP or even Windows 2000, I don’t really see any reason to upgrade that OS to Vista. Then again, I have never really been a big supporter of upgrading an OS on any computer. Typically a computer has the hardware to run a certain OS. It is designed for that OS. It has the horsepower to run that OS. Use that computer with it’s intended OS until the hardware starts becoming obsolete. Perhaps upgrade RAM to keep it running speedy but don’t upgrade the OS. When you are finally ready for a new computer, go ahead and buy one with the latest OS. So, all you Windows XP users (probably most of you), don’t install Vista on your existing hardware. Just get Vista by default when you buy your next computer. Computers are designed to last anywhere from 3 to 5 years. If you get more time out of yours than that before things start falling apart, great, but you should probably be on the lookout for a new one.

With all the negative feedback on Vista, will Windows continue to be the dominant player in the OS market? Probably. Should you avoid Vista because of the negative feedback? No. It really isn’t that bad once you’ve played with it for a while and gotten used to it.

Tags: Aero, upgrade, Vista
Posted in Computer Networking | No Comments »