Hey Everyone,
This article is very technical — wayy above those that I have posted previously. Unfortunately, it seems to be necessary if you want to use bluetooth devices in windows Vista. Yes, that means syncing your PDAs, using Printers, or Wireless Headphones/Headsets with Vista (Skype, anyone?). Continue Reading →
Dust is one of your computer’s worst enemies. In order to overcome it you need to blow out your computer on a regular basis. Grab a can of compressed air (aff), take your computer outside, pop open the case and just start blasting compressed air into the machine and get the dust out of the computer. Continue Reading →
One of the things people spend most of their time doing with their computer is troubleshooting. For instance, I have been having some trouble with this new theme constantly switching back to the old theme. I don’t know why it is doing that so I have been wrestling with the stupid website to get it to work. In this situation I’m going to guess that you do one of two things. Continue Reading →
There are five tests for determining a spectacular anti-virus program.
For an anti-virus program to be beneficial to you or your business it needs to be able to protect you from viruses. That seems like a no brainer but the number of viruses that slip past some of the more popular anti-virus tools out there is really quite amazing. Your anto-virus tool needs to protect your computer from viruses, but you should also know that it protects many computers from viruses. It is hard to get this kind of information because you’d have to have experience from many systems and an understanding of the environment they are in. Asking your friends and family for their experience with viruses (not the anti-virus software) will show you how effective their anti-virus software is for them. Get a sampling of what people are using and then see how effective it is. Also, browsing the net for answers can’t hurt. Continue Reading →
Hey everyone,
I wanted to take a moment to tell you who is the best company around to buy a computer from. The answer is: No one. Continue Reading →
If you are setting up to upgrade your wireless network to the new Wireless N that has flooded stores, don’t. Wireless N has not even been completed as a standard. I guess they just couldn’t wait to start raking in the bucks. Continue Reading →
Computer people talk about “open this file” “use that file” and so on and so forth and I bet that you have wondered at some point what exactly a file is. You know what a word document is, you know what an email is, but you don’t know what they are representative of: a file on your computer. Continue Reading →
It seems that one of the most common task people use computers for aside from sending email and writing papers for school is for working with digital cameras or photographs. The confusion that stems from the complex nature of images has caused many people to just give up, frustrated by the computer and unwilling to use it any further. The fact of the matter is that images on the computer are complex but they are not impossible. Continue Reading →
I want to start this post stating that I am not yet a parent. I am married though so parenting is in my near future! I wanted to write this post to show some of the most basic methods that parents can employ to protect and control their children from the internet and their computer in general.
The number one thing people think about when talking about parental controls is website blockers. There are several services which block out bad words, pornography, and other websites which are deemed worth blocking by the service. These services offer up a unique way of protecting yourself from some of the scum that the internet has to offer. Unfortunately they are not perfect systems. They often allow through websites which contain bad content by mistake. They are useful as a general tool for protection, but I think that they are not going to perform well when it comes to actually blocking off someone from trying to access bad content on the web.
The best solution is to monitor your browser’s web history and check in often on your children when they are using the computer.
Another solution would be to install two of the same kind of service from different providers. That way you would have two systems working to block content. Unfortunately this will slow down your system as they both will require a significant amount of system resources.
If you don’t mind you could also block off all websites except for ones that you allow. That would greatly improve the effectiveness of the filter.
Both modern routers as well as Windows Vista now have a new system built into them that can limit the hours a specific user account or the internet can be in use. This article talks about these features in a bit more detail.
Activating these features will help to limit the time that your children use the computer but won’t protect them from anything while they are actually using the computer.
Windows Vista can actually allow or disallow computer games via the ESRB rating. So you could set a rule that blocks all games from installing and running that have an ESRB rating of M or above. I’m not a real believer in the ratings that the ESRB gives out to game titles, but it is a good guide to start with when allowing or disallowing games from running and will allow you to exercise control over what is installed on the machine when you are not available for further comment.
Unfortunately, parental controls simply can’t contain children if the children want to break free from the parental controls. Children are extremely resourceful when it comes to technology and can break through most obstacles. So while parental controls may help to protect your children while you are not around, a computer program simply cannot replace good parenting. So use these software programs in conjunction with a teamwork effort with your children to give them a safer computing experience, but don’t try to “control” your children with these tools — if they have any computer experience then they will be able to bypass the parental controls.
God Bless,
-Daniel Kolansky
MDub, a fellow blogger of mine wrote a great article on how to keep your laptop in tip-top shape when it comes to heat management.
I just wanted to add a quick comment to his topic.
“Because technology works for you, not the other way around.”