This weeks tip is for general maintenance and making sure your system doesn't get slow. The number 1 cause of computers slowing down is "Virus/Spyware/Malware" all those nasty things you don't want on your computer.
At one point while working at my current place of employment they thought it would be a good idea to dip their feet in to the general consumer support rather than just businesses. They have sense changed their minds "with a big relief to me" but while they were poking their head in places they shouldn't they had purchased a company called iTOK (pronounced: "I Talk") iTOK was a Geeksquad type company but was web based. You could just go to their website and request help with any issue you might have with your computer and one of their techs would jump on your computer and fix it for you. For a while I was one of the techs that would be doing the fixing it was one of the worst few months of my life but that's for another post.
To get to the point of my babbling one of the big services that iTOK provided was computer maintenance. For just a mere $80ish per month a computer tech will jump on your computer and run maintenance to make sure your computer is running at peak performance. Before you all go running to get singed up for this service let me save you all lots of money, in fact all your money. The secret to iTOK is that everything they do can be done by anyone for free with little effort and/or computer knowledge. Every single program used by this company to keep your computer clean is available to the public for free. Aside from the legal issues with them doing this it's practically theft providing a service that you can do your self for free. It would be a different story if they used a program they had developed or if this was something difficult to do but it's not. Sorry if I go off on rants.
What I am going to do is provide everyone a list of tools you can install on your computer that will help keep your computer free of nasty things and everything in the list is free and legal to use. (what isn't legal is using these programs for commercial use.) This list will be up on the right side listed as recommended Anti-spyware/virus/malware tools. You can install all of these on your computer and they won't conflict with any other software that is already installed. There is one exception, you should only have 1 anti-virus software installed on your computer at one time. They have a tendency to compete with your system and cause lots of performance/stability issues.
The only Anti-virus software I recommend is AVG, it is free software and works just as well as if not better than other Anti-virus software. If you already have software like Trendmicro, McAfee, or Norton you shouldn't install AVG. If your not sure if you have any anti-virus it would be a good thing to check. Most store bought computer will come with a free trial of either Norton or McAfee and if your computer is more than 6 months old these have probably expired by now. You can check by opening your Anti-virus software it will probably tell you in big red letters if you have expired and will probably encourage you to purchase a subscription. Between Norton and McAfee I would go with Norton and would avoid McAfee at all costs (I prefer the AVG over the other 2). I may do another post going into more details on anti-virus preferences another time.
Here is the list of computer skills required to use the programs that are listed: web-browsing, program-installing, launching programs, and clicking the scan now button. So if you feel comfortable doing these things you can run these on your computer your self (even if you feel like you can't I bet you could if you tried). Once installed all you need to do is open the program and click the scan now button. This may take some time so it's a good idea to start them before going to sleep or while doing other stuff (unless you find real joy out of watching progress bars fill, I know I sure do!). Once completed the program will tell you the results, if it finds something it may ask you what you want to do and the answer is almost always "Delete", "Quarantine", or "Remove". Some of the programs like AVG will scan automatically and it will usually ask you to choose the time it scans when you install the program.
For the rest of the program you'll need to run the scans manually, the frequency is determined by what type of web browser you are. If you check a few of the same websites once a week or less and rarely download anything, then scanning once ever other month or even every 4-6 months would be fine. If your a moderate web browser who tends to stick to the sites that your familiar with and only download things from people or places that you trust, then running a scan once a month would be recommended. If your the kind of browser that love to type random words in Google and open up every page you find and loved to play whack-a-mole with pop ups and can't help but download anything and everything, I would recommend you run scans on a daily basis also I would recommend you give me a call and I can give you more tips on safe web browsing habits. (This may be a computer tip of the week soon)
Thanks for reading I know I can blab a bit and I'm not the best writer but hopefully this can help a little. Also you can feel free to give me a call anytime and I can help you out with any of your computer issues I love to do it. (if you don't know or can't find out what my phone number is, IE your not a friend or family member send me an email: warclark@msn.com and I'll see what I can do.)
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