Saturday, February 16, 2008

Unravelling the mysteries behind the new microprocessors

Things were simpler back in the good old days of Pentium III and Pentium 4. It was easy to understand what you were buying in terms of the rated clock speed of the microporcessor in that new PC you had your eye on. That is no longer the case. AMD and Intel now compete fiercely for the market, and in so doing have come up with naming conventions for their new microprocessors that'll have your head spinning.

Fortunately, each manufacturer has a web site you can go to and possibly unravel some of the mystery. Here they are:

Intel Microprocessors

AMD Microprocessors

If you go to these sites and research carefully, you'll most likely find the processor you are looking for, but be forewarned that each company has lots and lots of somewhat confusing names.

Friday, February 15, 2008

Running Disk Cleanup in Windows

Windows XP and Vista include a utility program to remove unneeded files from your hard drive. It is called Disk Cleanup. I recommend running Disk Cleanup once a week. This will remove the clutter that not only takes up space on your hard drive but also, over time, slows things down.

Instructions for running Disk Cleanup can be found here:

Running Disk Cleanup in Windows XP

Running Disk Cleanup in Windows Vista

For the more experienced user, there are better ways to do this by using free downloadable programs. Contact me if interested.

Comments?

I have been asked about why I have disabled comments (or replies, if you will) to my posts.

First, a blog is more like a diary where I post thoughts and, I hope, some useful information for you to consider. A blog is not, by definition, an interactive application, although some choose to allow comments on their blogs.

Second, I do not want to require userids and passwords (who needs another of those?), and I do not want to spend a lot of time moderating comments. Other users of blogs with comments allowed complain - a lot - about the spam they get in comments and the time they have to spend to monitor them.

Third, you can easily contact me on my web site if you wish by clicking on the Contact PC Doc link to the right of these posts under BLOGROLL.

Tom

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Shortcut Keys

Programs running on your PC, including Windows XP or Vista, MS Word, Firefox, etc., recognize certain combinations of keys on your keyboard as shortcuts to get some things done. Googling "shortcut keys" results in an amazing 1 million plus results. The very first one listed (today) looks pretty good to me. Be advised, however, that there are so many keyboard shortcuts, that even printing them out for future reference doesn't make it any easier to find the one you want! I suggest reviewing the site and jotting down a couple of (what you consider) really good ones and use them until they become second nature to you. After that, jot down a few more and practice them.

http://www.computerhope.com/shortcut.htm

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Making Windows XP last for another 6 years

I have a 4 year old desktop PC with a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 processor and 1GB of RAM. I suppose it's possible that I could encounter a motherboard failure of some sort that would cause me to rethink this, but at least for the moment I am planning on having this machine around for a while. I was greatly encouraged when I read an article in Computerworld that addressed the future of Windows XP. Do you know, for example, that XP will be supported by Microsoft through 2014? Check it out at this link: http://tinyurl.com/ypkgz. My machine does very well running Windows XP, but even if it were easy and possible to upgrade this machine to Vista, I know it just doesn't have the necessary resources to run Vista as efficiently as it runs XP.

Vista Service Pack 1

If you are a Vista user, you should read this. The referenced article contains some very good comments about the as yet unreleased Windows Vista SP1. : http://tinyurl.com/yrgtf3

The article deals with the final version of SP1 which is scheduled to be released sometime in March. As always, I recommend NOT installing a new SP when it is released, but to wait a while, at least 3 to 6 months, to let it stabilize. Early problems will be fixed in the regular cycle of updates.

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Hello world!



Welcome to my blog. I am starting this on 2/12/2008.

Some of you know me as the Browns River PC Doctor, and others may know me as the Boothbay Region PC Doctor. Either way my web site http://brpcdoc.com works, and my license plate, BRPCDOC, although green, works well for me in Vermont and Maine.

And either way it is my plan to provide you the best possible service if/when you have a problem with your computer. I can support you from within your home or office as well as from a remote location over the internet.

As some of you know, I reside in Vermont from October through April and in Maine from May through September, but don't hesitate to write me or call me if you ever have a problem. I will do my best to serve you.

Tom