TechGuy News

As many of you will have recieved new or re-gifted machines for Christmas we at TechGuy thought it would be a good idea to provide a few tips and tricks that will help you improve your computer's performance. These tips and tricks apply to both new and used computers.

Working with Michael at Cermak Technologies, we regularly receive complaints from residential clients about their computer's performance. These vague statements usually revolve around slow Internet browsing or gaming. Even if you are not seeing pop-up windows randomly or being redirected to other sites while browsing the Internet, your computer could still have been compromised by a virus, trojan, spyware or some other type of malware.

There are several tune-up tips that can be found throughout the Tech Support Guy site that will work to improve your computer's performance.

First and foremost, you must have anti-virus software! Surfing the Internet these days without some front line protection is very risky and certainly asking for trouble. AVG is a top-notch anti-virus application without all of the bloat and resource intensive requirements found in other anti-virus applications. Best of all, for residential or non-commercial users, it's free! Download AVG Free here.

It should also be noted that more is not necessarily better when it comes to anti-virus and anti-spyware software. Having more than one anti-virus program installed will cause conflicts and reduce the efficiency of both programs with potentially undesirable results. You should also not be running the real-time protection component of more than one anti-spyware program at a time for the same reason.

If your computer is running slow and you have just now installed an anti-virus application, it's a very good idea to run a full scan of your hard drive. Make sure your virus definitions are always up to date. I recommend running the full scan in Safe Mode (without networking support). Safe Mode places your computer in a limited use state often diminishing the effectiveness of any virus that might be present.

Equally important to have is a good third party firewall that will block both incoming intrusions and outgoing packets. There are many free ones available such as ZoneAlarm and Sygate, to name just a couple. Unfortunately, firewalls do tend to slow things down a bit but the trade off in added protection is well worth it.

Another good piece of software to have lying about is an anti-spyware program. There are many anti-spyware and adware programs out there, such as Ad-Aware, Spybot - Search & Destroy, AVG Anti-Spyware, SUPERAntiSpyware, etc. as well as diagnostic tools such as HijackThis. I have found a great bit of luck using a free Microsoft add-on to XP, Windows Defender. Windows Defender is built into Vista. If you are running Windows XP, grab a fresh copy of Windows Defender here.

Another way of enhancing computer performance is to reduce the number of programs that are running at start-up unnecessarily. Many applications do not need to run at start-up and can be started as needed. Having a bloated start-up list will substantially increase the time it takes your computer to boot up and shut down.

It's also important to defragment your computer's hard drive as, over time, files get scattered all over the place, slowing down the process of reading them. Defragmenting on a regularly basis will enhance performance.

You should also remove any old programs that you are no longer using to free up some space and be sure you have sufficient RAM for the operating system you are running and the use of your system.

Also, remember to delete Temporary and Temporary Internet files and clear out cookies on a regular basis.

The traditional view of a project success is triangular; cost, time and quality. The triangle view is a frequent expression of stating that two of the three elements can exist simultaneously, but not all three. Meaning, you can have low development time and high quality, but the cost will be very high; you can have low cost and high quality, but the development time will be long; lastly, you can have low cost and low development time, accompanied by low quality.

However, Sam Newman offers a slightly different approach to project success. The "The Five Variables of Project Management" lists five key elements that determine the viability of project success. The five aspects that affect the success of a project are scope, time, process, people and risk management.

As you may know, the only real constant in software development is change. Changes are continuously imminent and it is essential to be open to change. Changes are beneficial and the ability to be nimble is fundamental.

In this article, we will focus on one of the elements Sam Newman highlights; scope management. Even though change is a good thing to embrace, scope management teaches us how to best prepare and foresee upcoming changes, thus lend project success.

Think of project scope as the contents of the project. High-level scope defines the framework and separates what is relevant to your project from that which is irrelevant. This can be broken into two main components; deliverables and boundaries:

Deliverables: At the bare minimum, list your deliverables. Defining your deliverables goes a long way toward defining the overall scope of the project. This also provides a basis of identifying tasks and assigning resources to the project.
Boundaries: You should also try to define the boundaries of the project. Boundary statements help separate the things that are applicable to your project from those areas that are out of context. Examples of boundary statements include:

* The institution currently does not utilize a software system to conduct business and they perform all of their processes manually. Therefore, there is no need or basis to convert existing data.

Once the project kicks-off, most of the scope change requests received are changes to the business requirements. Business requirements help define the detailed scope. The project deliverables are used to define high-level scope. Business requirements, in turn, describe the details of the deliverables.

There are two types of requirements:

Product requirements (features). Product requirements describe the characteristics of the deliverables. If you were building a parking lot, for example, most of the requirements would be product based; such as, how many cars the lot would be able to support, color of lines, number of parking lamp posts, etc...

Process requirements (functions). Process requirements describe how people interact with a product and how a product interacts with other products. For example, when you discuss how data gets moved and how business transactions flow from one point to another, you are describing process requirements.

If you remember how these pieces fit together, you'll have an easier time defining the scope for your next project. The 30,000 foot, high-level, view of project scope is defined in your business contract and consists of boundary statements and deliverables. The granular, low-level scope is defined by your business requirements. These components, together, comprise the scope definition for your project. Once you have definition then you can begin to perform and achieve the tasks defined in your project plan.

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Windows Mobile 6 Internet Connection Sharing by Daniel McCarthy

I have a Treo 750 smartphone provided to me by my company with service through AT&T. When the phone was purchased about a year ago the installed operating system was Windows Mobile 5. While I use the Treo 750 and reference it through this article, the ability to share your phones internet connection should apply to any Windows Mobile 6 device.

With Windows Mobile 5 the Treo 750 did have the capability to act as a modem. Through a somewhat convoluted process the user could enable internet connection sharing by running the modem link program on their phone and setting up a dial-up-networking connection in Nework Settings. At my office our sales team was provided the same phones. We have yet to have a sales person who could, with detailed instructions provided, successfully set up their phone for acting as modem.

When Windows Mobile 6 was released AT&T and Microsoft were kind enough to offer a free upgrade to the Treo users.

Windows Mobile 6 offers many advantages over the older Windows Mobile 5, not least of which is greater stability and for Treo 750 users: USB charging, however the new and improved internet connection sharing capabilities are the focus of this article. Before getting started with internet connection sharing on your Windows Mobile 6 based device you will need to grab the latest version of ActiveSync.

Once you have the latest version of ActiveSync installed connect your Windows Mobile 6 based device to your laptop using your USB cable. Setting up internet connection sharing is now as easy as clicking Start on your mobile device, going to Programs, scrolling down to Internet Connection Sharing, and clicking connect. That's it. No configuration needed on your laptop, no dial-up-networking needed. You will see a small balloon window in your System Tray on your laptop letting you know that Windows has detected an internet connection sharing device.

With my Treo 750 I have achieved connections speeds up to 256kb. In fact, I am using my Windows Mobile 6 powered Treo 750 at Borders to type up this article in Google Documents!

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What is New Years without resolutions? Everyone wants to improve themselves, and the web is full of sites claiming to help you do just that. LifeHacker is one that actually does just that - and for free. Every day, LifeHacker posts new tips, shortcuts, and tutorials that help you to work and live smarter and more efficiently.

While a lot of the information is centered on computers, you'll find that the purpose of most of the articles is really to make your life more productive, often in clever and unexpected ways. You'll find articles ranging from how to "Wake Up Early with Ease" to "Ideal Ways to
Store Fruits and Vegetables". This might be a good time of year to "Choose a Charity".

Naturally, they have a whole section dedicated to New Year's Resolutions , which includes tips on how to actually stay motivated to keep your resolutions. Also, check out "Free Tools to Manage New Year's Resolutions".

Finally, if you're new to LifeHacker, you should have a look at their
"Twenty Top 10's of 2007" that includes top free downloads, recovery tools, USB thumb drive tips, Ubuntu applications, ways to clean up your PC, and much more.

If you find something interesting on LifeHacker, be sure to share it
with your friends at Tech Support Guy! Here is one LifeHacker thread at
TSG - check it out for tips on lucid dreaming!

If you've already made a New Year's resolution, LifeHacker might have
tips to be successful. If you haven't made a resolution, maybe you should resolve to visit LifeHacker every day. You know, right after you visit Tech Support Guy. =)