Do you still bring your computer into the Tech shop, or call someone in to fix your computer?  Thanks to the Internet, that will be a thing of the past.  There is a program called CrossLoop, which is a remote assistance tool, which means that you download this very small application, that allows techs from the CrossLoop website, to connect remotely to your PC.  You have this unique code, that must be given out before connecting, so nobody can connect to your PC without that code, and also the program has to be running, so you don’t have to worry about someone unauthorized accessing your PC.  This program is so great because usually what happens when you bring  a computer into one of those tech shop’s, they might fix your problem in less than 1hour and bill you 4 hours or more for the problem, they just let your PC sit there for awhile, since they know the customer is not there watching them.  When you find a helper on CrossLoop, you watch exactly what the person is doing, you will see the mouse move around, and applications opening up.  Also if you know about computers, you can also be a tech on that site and help people fix there computers and make a little bit of money off the side.  Also each time a session is complete a customer writes a review about there experience with the tech, if they were helpful, so I suggest taking the techs on there that have the best reviews.  Of course the CrossLoop application does not have to be used exclusively for help from there site, you could let a friend on your computer from overseas who knows about computers to take a look for free, it is a great free remote assistance application.  The only negative part of CrossLoop is that, if there are hardware errors, of course you can’t get those fixed online, but they can be diagnosed, but not fixed, so you will most likely have to bring your PC into a shop, if you do not know how to fix it.  But most of the basic problems such as virus infection and spyware infections can be setup by someone on remote assistance, even router configuration can also be done, for wireless networks.   It is a great idea that they made this program/site because now people can save a lot of time getting there computer fixed, rather than the hassle of disconnecting everything bringing it into the shop then have to reconnect everything back. As always if you need help you can contact me using the contact form above or post a comment under this post, and I can try to help if you have a computer problem.

Find a helper, get the program here http://www.crossloop.com/

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The PC Decrapifier is pretty simple to use, it works on Windows XP and Vista, and it detects the bloatware, and removes what you want, it does not delete anything when you run it, you have to confirm it, it also may be picked up by Virus Scanners, but it is harmless. It is also free, and this is what it picks up, it is constantly updated, with user input on bloatware that is getting on newer PC’s, since those companies are constantly adding more and more. Here is the link to see what it removes. http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/apps

Here is the link to download The PC Decrapifier http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/download

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You probably already read my review about Folding@home in my PlayStation 3 Review,  basically Folding@home is a way of understanding protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases with the use of simulating all this on computer’s around the world.   The research is done by a team at Standford University in America.  The great thing about this is that they use the computer power of everyone around the world who uses the program, instead of local super computer’s there is nothing greater than this.  Especially now since computer’s are now very powerful, and have up to 8 cores, and they also figured out how to use the massively powered GPUs in computing the folding of protein’s.  One of the greatest Folding@home computers was the PlayStation 3, they broke records with it, being the best machine to do folding due to its cell processor, that is very powerful, but now that has changed, since they can use the GPU now to do the work, which some GPUs can outperform the PlayStation 3.

You might be asking why I am writing a review on this, well the fact is that I know a lot of people do not donate money to organizations because they think there hard earned money isn’t arriving at the appropriate, place, well this just uses your Electricity power in return for research.   What they are trying to find cures for are, Alzheimer’s, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington’s, Parkinson’s disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes.  Of course they won’t find a cure the next day for any of these, but they aid in the research of this, as you can see if you visit there website http://folding.stanford.edu/ they have a Results page, on that results page they have all the written articles on there research available to anyone in the world, so researchers can take these results and use them to help there research.  Most of the articles there are confusing to the average person, you have to be a scientist/researcher to read them and understand them, since its  for that kind of people.  There’s millions of people around the world supporting this effort, since almost everyone in this world has a computer and Internet, and most people leave there computer’s on, well this is great to run if you are one of those people, eventually they will find a cure with the more Computers running the application.

There forum’s are great, and they have the Vijay Pande the director of Folding@home post frequently there and responding to user’s posts, they have a big community.  They have won awards from various organizations, even the Guinness World Record on September 2007 for the researching 1 petaflop or 1 quadrillion floating point operations per second, on the power of people’s home computer’s as well as their PlayStation 3 innovation to simulate the processes inside living cells that can lead to diseases.

How it works is that you download the client and it downloads the current work unit on your computer or PlayStation 3 and it starts simulating the protein folding, it shows a percentage of it being completed, once its completed it’s sent back to the servers at Standford and then all gathered and organized they preform the research and post on there results page the findings. They also have this team’s function that anyone can create a team and anybody can join it and contribute, what this does is it adds some level of competition that always brings out people, people like to compete and get top standings.  The nice feature of Folding@home is that it also has a personal stats page, that shows what units have been completed and gives you more information on which protein you have completed and folded, and gives you a global rank of where you are, you can also show the page off to anyone, to show how much you have contributed.

Hopefully one day they will find a cure and cure all these common diseases in the world such as cancer and the great thing is you can contribute to it as well, So I suggest that you download the client and run it and help, even if your computer is not that fastest in this world, you can still make a difference.

Here is a video of a very cool setup this guy has, he has 23 Nvidia GTX295 GPU dedicated to Folding@home that’s a lot of money invested, great job for a good cause.

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The New Web Browser on the market, made by our favorite search Engine

Google the search engine that we just use to know has released a web browser, I think they are a bit late on this release, if they have released this browser before Mozilla FireFox, they would probably be the most popular browser used besides Internet Explorer.  I decided to test this Google Chrome browser, because of seeing the download google chrome now link at the bottom of google search, lets how good it is I thought, even though I love Firefox, and probably would not switch to a new browser, unless it is 100 times better than FireFox.

The install went fine, even did the routine check for importing files from other browsers, and asked to make it default browser of course I said no.  When I opened up the browser at first I thought, it was very basic, I was expecting a little more, for being a new browser trying to compete with FireFox, It just seemed very bland the design, it defiantly did open up very quick and the browsing was quick too, of course it was because it’s such a light weight browser.  At first to me it looked like a simplified version of Internet Explorer.  Just like Internet Explorer it as no menu like File, Edit,View, History, it has just the buttons on the right hand side, which I don’t like, I prefer the Old fashioned menu, this reminds me of the new Microsoft Office that has no menu, which I hate, just has a button.  Another thing that i noticed was that I was seeing a lot more of the web page, they eliminated the status bar on the bottom, that is a minor thing though, it doesn’t increase the page view size by a lot it just makes it look like it.   The browser also records what web page’s you visits the most, it shows it in small pictures of the web page’s you  visit most at opening it, a little helpful, but not required.  Google has of course integrated the search inside the URL entry bar, that is not bad, but I usually like to separate my search from the address entry bar, I like FireFox’s setup of the search engine to the side.   The browser also has this mode called incognito, which supposedly opens up a link without leaving any traces on the computer’s history and cookies, etc, the way to use it is to right click on a link and click open link in incognito window, I don’t see much use of this unless you are at work and visiting sites that you don’t want your boss to see.  The tabs in the browser different from all is that you can drag them around and make it an open window, advantages of this is that you don’t need to open up another FireFox to get another site off a tab.

Pros
-Quick Browser, Pages open up quickly, browser opens up quick, fast web surfing light weight browser.
-Uses little amount of RAM
-The Tab setup is good, moving tabs around freely
-The most visited website feature at starting, showing pictures and direct links to the pages
-More Viewing size for web pages
-surprisingly it doesn’t have google branded everywhere on the browser or its famous AdSense

Cons
-The Browser looks like a Internet Explorer knockoff
-Missing the File, edit, view, history, bookmarks, tools, help menu at the top the traditional way
-Made to easy, seems to basic, good for a new person new to the Internet
-Ads blocking is weak
-Lack of plug-ins
-Basic, expecting more.
-Too late to be coming into the browser market

So in all the strongest selling point of the Google Chrome web browser is its speed, and less use of resources, so it’s a great browser if you have a slower computer, or a slower Internet connection.  The new things it has doesn’t make it worthwhile from going from FireFox to this, unless you are still in Internet Explorer and do not like FireFox, I’d give this a try, since it does have that Internet Explorer feel to it.  I know its new so this browser has some potential in the future to be great, but as well as more things are added to it the slower this browser will get, which is its strongest thing at the moment.  Would I dump FireFox to go to Google Chrome? no I would not, I enjoy my FireFox plug-ins, and the most importantly the file, edit, view, history menu at the top, that is why I do not use Internet Explorer, I hate not having that.  would I recommend Google Chrome to someone? No I would only recommend it to someone who does not like FireFox, and who has a very slow computer and slow Internet Connection.   Google was a bit late on the market for web browsers, FireFox has established a strong market in the field.

Post your comments, what do you think of Google Chrome?

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One of the most frustrating things there is with a computer is when it starts to run slow.  I do a little bit a of computer tech repair on the side and this is one of the most common service calls I get when people call me.  Usually the slow computer, happens to people who are running outdated systems and people who have there computer infested with spy-ware and viruses.   The biggest problem is the spy-ware, people don’t run or update there spy-ware scanners enough.  Another problem is downloading a lot of programs and not uninstalling them correctly or programs that did not uninstall correctly.  Another thing is you have to know your computer limitations, your computer that was new 3 years ago could probably run a lot of programs on your task bar and a lot of programs open at once, or many web browsers open, but as time goes on the computer cannot, because of the new software that does more now and requires more computing power.  There is also a lot of unneeded services that load up during startup, that can be disabled safety and will improve your computer speed, which I will talk about more later on this article.  One major problem, which still happens, is if you buy a computer from manufactures, such as Dell, Compac, is that they come pre-loaded with unnecessary trial software and applications which are needed but just slow down the computer. Another evil thing they do is they make there computer parts and boxes small, and also have custom parts built for that computer, which means that in the future when you want to upgrade, you find that motherboard is custom fit, and that the power supply cannot handle more than what you got, or if they included outdated parts and maxed them out with the fastest processor that won’t allow you to upgrade to a newer one, they also lock the BIOS so you cannot overclock.  So I suggest that you always build a custom Computer, or get someone you know to build one for you, or a local small computer shop that specialises in it.  A good custom built computer costing around $1000 can outlast a pre-built computer from the big manufactures that cost $2000.  And it’s not difficult to build a computer, and there is a lot of support online where they sell the parts, one of the big major computer parts store in the US, is NewEgg, www.newegg.com But I won’t go in detail in this article, that is for another day.

Registry cleaner/Cleaning up Temporary files
When a program is installed on the computer, it installs files and registry entries into the computer, as more programs are installed more items are added.  When you are done using the program or find no use for it, you uninstall it, usually the uninstaller leaves traces behind in the registry, or the program does not uninstall correctly.  What happens is that as time goes on, the computer registry gets full of entries, and the registry is where a program goes into to grab the details.  The more program’s in the registry that are not there anymore, the slower it is for the computer to locate the programs that you have installed.  Also browsing websites overtime you collect temporary internet files, cookies and other things, which slows down the browser.  There are severial ways of solving this, in your browser, for example Firefox, under tools, menu it has an option to clear private data, that will delete the temporary Internet files and cookies, in Internet Explorer, it is under tools, and first on the list delete browser history.  One program that I like to use and is free, is called CCleaner, http://http://www.ccleaner.com/ CCleaner (crap cleaner), is a great program because it does that all for both browsers and it also deletes System files that are not needed anymore, it basically gets rid of the “crap” that your PC does not need safely. Another good thing that CCleaner has is it’s registry scanner, the registry scanner will scan the registry for invalid registry entries and delete them, don’t worry about deleting them, it has a backup option before deleting them, in case there is any errors after the registry clean.  Also want to note that Windows has a built in disk cleanup tool, under start, accessories, tools, that will also cleanup old windows files.  There are other registry cleaners on the market, but I don’t believe in paying for them, because registry scanning is very basic, they all follow the same rules, scan for registry entries that a program does not exist anymore, just remmeber to clean the system up once in awhile.  An interesting new thing CCleaner has now, is Wipe free space, option, you must enable it, what it does is it makes sure that files are permanently deleted, when a file is deleted in recycle bin the file is actually not deleted, it is recoverable, of course this wipe free space, will not be completely wiped, the most secure way of deleting data from a hard drive is to destroy it.

Disk Defragment
When a bunch of programs and files are installed with time, the disk becomes cluttered with files on the hard drive, files end up in the wrong places, the computer has to work harder to load up the program because of finding the program files.  Also this is due to file fragmentation, what you have to do is run a Disk Defrag weekly to solve this, Windows has a built in disk dragmenter, the Windows Vista one works well, but if you are still on Windows XP and earlier Windows, it does not, and can take hours to complete.  One of the best programs I have found is Diskeeper  http://www.diskeeper.com/ Diskeeper is an amazing program, the difference between Diskeeper and the built in Disk Defragmenter in Windows is that it is constantly watching your hard drive, it detects when you are not using your computer and automatically starts working, also the Defrag time is quick. I actually heard that Diskeeper’s basic defragment was added to Windows Vista, but I am not sure. Unforuantly Diskeeper is not free, but it does have a free trial so you can try it out, you might think that since its running all the time it will slow down your PC, but it does not, try it for yourself. There are a few things I suggest, many people do not know the correct way of running a Disk Defragment, the correct way is to first of all, is Run CCleaner, and clean up registry, and delete temporary files, schedule a disk check on your hard drive, then reboot into safe mode, and run the defragment, you might ask why reboot in safe mod, the reason why is because in safe mode, only the core system files are loaded, and also because the defragment requirement is to move files around, it has the ability to move those files that would be normally in use in regular Windows. Also while in Safe Mode, I suggest to run your Virus/Spy-ware scanners, safe mode is the best mode to find and repair that stubborn spy-ware or virus that does not want to get deleted.

Remove Startup Programs and programs hidden in the background
Does your computer take awhile to load up Windows?  Well you might have too many programs loading when Windows Starts up, they usually end up on the right hand corner of the bottom of the screen, or end up invisible on your running processes. This requires some knowledge of what you are disabling from starting up or what is running in the background, you cannot disable something that is required for a program you need and installed, or a core Windows component that has to run.  Every computer is different so I will give you some resources on how to tell, this will require some investigation your part.  The old way of removing startup programs is by going into run and typing MSCONFIG, in vista type it right in the search bar in Start menu.  Click on Startup tab, you will see a lot of programs in there with check marks, Remove the check mark and it will not start when Windows Starts.  Another way is by using CCleaner, open up CCleaner go to tools, then Startup.   Most of the programs have names you might recognize, you don’t have to worry about breaking a program by disabling it from starting up when Windows does, the program will always be there, and you can manually run it anytime.  The ones you do not know what they are, you can use Google or any search engine to put in the name of the program and startup file next to it, and you will see various topics on the file, and find out what it is.  Programs in the background are programs that are hidden you cannot see them, they just sit there and use up valuable RAM, and CPU power without you even knowing it.  This is a hassle but once done it can really make your PC faster, click on taskbar or CNTRL ALT DELETE, select task manager, then processes, and then you will see a bunch of files loaded in the background and how much memory they are using.   You have to be more careful here than in startup, some of these files are required by Windows to operate, or Anti-Virus scanners that are always monitoring your computer.  One way to see if you can disable a item in the process, is to put the name in google and you will instantly see if it’s a required process, and information if you can delete it, for example, when I search explorer.exe in google I get http://www.liutilities.com/products/wintaskspro/processlibrary/explorer/ Tells me its a normal Windows operating system file, not to end process.

Upgrading
Sometimes doing all those things above, does not cut it, and you want to hold off on a new PC, well the next thing is upgrade.  This is for the simple user who does not play games, but for someone who uses there computer for applications and other tasks.  If you game you will need a new graphics card and ram at least, but if your PC is too old, forget it, and buy a new PC.  But for the simple user who does basic tasks, the best way of upgrading the PC is simple.  The only thing that you should consider to upgrade is the RAM, Random Access Memory, it is usually cheap, and will greatly increase the speed of your computer, such symptoms of slow startup of programs, and not being able to run many programs at a time.  RAM is also very easy to install, it is basically plug it in, but make sure you get the right type.   Some people might say replace the CPU, but I don’t think that is good idea, usually the CPU you want to replace it with will not work on your old computer anyway, and if its an old CPU it supports it will probably be very hard to find one, or get one at a good price.

Other things, Spy-ware, Virus Scans
Be sure to run spy-ware, virus scans that is one of the biggest slowdowns you can have on a computer, refer to my article on Computer Security below to find more details on that, if your computer is infested it will defiantly be slow and more RAM and all those things I said above will not work, spy-ware and viruses can slow down even the newest and best computer out there,  so make sure you run those scans!

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