wizdawg

Just recently I was asked to take over a website as the people that were doing it would not act in a reasonable amount of time on updates and such. I already knew that it had problems going into it as my roommate could not access the site with his old IMAC. The problem was java script and a line of code in the top of the site that said "Do not display in older browsers". I have seen a lot of this recently and it displeases me greatly. That is simple snobbery.

I re-engineered the entire site in about a week and now it will display in 100% of computers around the world. I put Google Tracking on the site and now have enough stats to know that one in four people (actually 24%) who were looking at the site could not see it as they have no java support on their computers. Different markets have different demographics and one must account for this. A Lot of the rennie community is very tech savvy but a even larger part really doesn't care about the more advanced stuff as long as they can surf and get their email.

Sad to say I am old school and operate by the KISS principle. I know that most of you know what that means but I still find others who give me a puzzled look at that. It means "Keep It Simple Stupid". Sorry no fancy Flash, Java Script (Except google analytics) or any other stuff. Just plain old HTML and ya know what? It works just fine!
Namaste
Moon)Dawg
Mage of the Majick Box
Keeper of the Pygmypony
Wizard to the Kingdom of Onondaga
Chronicler and Webmaster Sherwood Forest faire
http://www.sherwoodforestfaire.com

One of the biggest problems I see with computers I work on is people not paying attention to what they are doing when surfing compounded by not either letting their Anti Virus do its job due to impatience or not updating and maintaining it at all.

Your Anti Virus goes on-line and calls home every time you start your machine up, let it do its job before you start surfing. It needs to find updates to protect you before you dive into the internet. It only takes a few seconds or minutes depending on you connection and your computers speed as well. If you have a good connection but it still takes a while then look into upgrading your RAM.

Set your Anti Virus to do a major scan once a week whether you think you need it or not, set it to do it in the middle of the night and then check the results in the morning. Another problem is the some let their Anti Virus expire and tell them selves that they will still be okay for a while and then totally space it out.  Even worse is letting your Anti Virus expire and the loading another Anti Virus program on your machine.

Should you decide to load another Anti Virus program on your machine you must first remove your old program. With some this may entail doing a search for left over files and removing them manually after using the Add/ Remove feature in your control panel. Failure to remove your old program will result in the two programs fighting each other and slowing your machine to a crawl.

I make no bones of my preference of Norton for Anti Virus protection even though some do not like it. I have, over the years, discovered that 95% of the problems with Norton are hardware related and not due to the program and the other 5% is mostly user ignorance or intolerance.

The Hardware related problem nearly always are related to not enough RAM. My Recommendations on Ram, in a older machine, is to find out how much RAM your mother board will handle and max it out. This will nearly always take care of 90% of the problems with Anti Virus functionality. Another problem I find quite often with older machines is the hard drives are so small that they have run out of swap space and this kills their ability to function properly. If you can't afford to buy a new machine then, before your machine locks up completely, clone up to a bigger hard drive.

IF you feel you just absolutely have to use a Free Anti Virus my suggestion is to use AVG. You have to do a lot of the functions manually and it is slow but its not too bad. One I advise to avoid at all costs is McAfee, use it and you will see what I mean if you feel brave. Removal of McAfee is also a real pain as Add/Remove Programs does not take all of it away.

My last and one of the most important points and something I see more often than you could imagine is keep your O/S updates up to snuff. I see machines all the time that have not had a software or security update done in months and some never at all. Windows has a funtion in the start menu for updates and an automatic update function as well. USE IT!

Comments Welcome!

Sincerely
Moon)Dawg
Mage of the Majick Box

http://www.moondawgzweb.com
techlite@moondawgzweb.com

I would like to introduce myself. I am Moon)Dawg builder of websites and computers and repairer of both. This is a place for me to vent about different computer issues and to dispell some myths as well as post new stuff I have stumbled upon and new machines I have built.
Moon)Dawg