Tips for a secure password

What do online social networks, online banking and email accounts have in common? They all require passwords.

These passwords act like sentinels, keeping snoops and data pirates away from one's personal data. But bad passwords are as easy to crack as cheap locks. That means one can't be careful enough when picking a password.

“A good password should include a lot of the different options available on most keyboards,” says Lutz Neugebauer of Bitkom, a German technology industry association.

Read more »

Upgrade to Fedora 13

Fedora is a Linux-based operating system that showcases the latest in free and open source software. Fedora is always free for anyone to use, modify, and distribute. It is built by people across the globe who work together as a community: the Fedora Project. The Fedora Project is open and anyone is welcome to join. The Fedora Project is out front for you, leading the advancement of free, open software and content.

 Fedora 13 is right around the corner. Code-named "Goddard," the Fedora 13 release sports tons of updates from Fedora 12 and some really exciting new features that will have Linux power users running for their CD burners. You'll find everything from better printer support to experimental 3D support for Nvidia cards and filesystem rollback. Ready to roll up your sleeves? Let's take a look at the best of Fedora 13.

Read more »

How to troubleshooting blue screen (BSOD) errors ?

First , before troubleshooting blue screen you should enable a complete memory dump on your system after Windows Installation. This is done under the system properties in Startup and Recovery. It's best to do this right after you install Windows, before you start getting any BSODs. Sometimes the blue screen will show the name of the driver that is causing the problem. If nothing else, you can look up the STOP code and see what the problem is.

The most important info to record from the blue screen is the technical info, it will look something like this:

*** STOP: 0x0000007B (0x00000032, 0x00002345, 0xABCDEF00, 0x00000000)

Read more »

RJ45 Patch Cable Configuration

RJ45 Patch Cable Configuration EIA/TIA 568A Colour Scheme  Colour  1. White-Green 2. Green 3. White-Orange 4. Blue 5. White-Blue 6. Orange 7. White-Brown 8. Brown

Read more »

Installing Samba on Linux

1. Start the Service of Samba

2. Configure Samba:

      a). Samba is controlled by means of the configuration file /etc/samba and edit smb.conf

Create a basic configuration file containing the following lines:

Read more »

Ten Reasons to Upgrade to Windows 7

1. Aero Peak : To quickly peer past all open windows to look straight at the Windows 7 desktop, simply point to the right edge of the taskbar. All open windows will instantly turn transparent, making it possible to see what's on the desktop.
2. Redesigned Taskbar : With Windows 7, getting an application icon onto the taskbar is as simple as right-clicking on the icon and selecting "Pin to Taskbar." Voila, it magically appears on the Taskbar.
3. Aero Snap: With just about every laptop being sold now having a widescreen display, have you ever needed to position two documents side-by-side? Rather than tearing your hair out in frustration, Aero Snap offers a quick and easy way to "snap" windows into the left or right half of your screen simply by dragging Windows to the edges. (You can also snap windows vertically.)

Read more »

Plan your Windows 7 migration

Are you thinking about migrating to Windows 7? It’s not hard, but due diligence and good planning are paramount for a successful migration. You need to follow best practices, which includes tapping into Microsoft’s readily available — mostly free — tools and resources

Seven tips will tell you everything you need to know for a smooth transition to Windows 7

1. Determine which of your existing PCs will support Windows 7

2. Determine which of your applications will run under Windows 7

3. Decide which version of Windows 7 is right for you

4. Assess the tasks involved and how you’ll manage the migration

5. Perform a test run with a pilot group

6. Migrate in stages

7. Train your employees

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd560772(WS.10).aspx

What You Should Know Before Buying a New Laptop

5 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Buying a New Laptop

Shopping for a new laptop computer can be a very daunting task for new shoppers and previous laptop owners alike. Follow this five question jog-list to choose which laptop features, models, brands or price is right for the new laptop of your dreams.

1. What's will you do with your laptop?

2. Do you travel a lot or will you be homebound?

3. What's your budget?

4. What are others saying?

5. Who has the best price?

Read more »

Intel WiDi Wireless Display Technology - HOT

Intel's new WiDi (Wireless Display Interface) technology will start to be bundled with various Core i5 and Core i3 notebooks and it promises to address the Home Theater and Multimedia PC markets with a solution that will enable wireless connectivity of your notebook over HDMI to an HDTV. Using standard 802.11n wireless technologies for transmission of data, Intel describes the product as "a solution that requires a laptop PC based on select 2010 Intel Core processors, Intel HD Graphics, and Intel Centrino wireless with Intel MyWiFi Technology enabled. The laptop needs to have Intel Wireless Display software installed and also an adapter featuring Intel Wireless Display is required to receive the signals from the PC that display them on the TV. This adapter is connected to the TV via either HDMI or standard AV cables." 

Netgear has stepped out early with a receiver product dubbed Push2TV and their block diagram below lays out the solution for you here... 

System Requirement:

Windows 7 Minimum System Requirements

1 GHz or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor

1 GB of RAM (32-bit) / 2 GB RAM (64-bit)

16 GB available disk space (32-bit) / 20 GB (64-bit)

Direct X 9 graphics processor with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

DVD-compatible drive

Note: Some product features of Windows 7, such as the ability to watch and record live TV, BitLocker, or navigation through the use of “touch,” may require advanced or additional hardware. Windows XP Mode requires an additional 1 GB of RAM and 15 GB of available disk space.

Could Windows Vistas Pretty Looks Be To Blame For It Running So Slow?

If you have switched over from XP to Vista you surly will have known by now that Vista is much slower. This lack of speed has to do with Vista dedicating a lot of its resources to trying to “look pretty”. Making the operating system look nice is great and all but when it comes time to actually get some work done it can be a huge problem. In this article I am going to show you two quick ways to make your Vista perform a it faster but you are going to have to be willing to sacrifice some of Vistas looks in order to get more function. Keep in mind that there really is no point in having your computer look really nice since you are the only person that is really going to be seeing it.

If you are using the Home Premium, Enterprise, Business or Ultimate more likely than not you have the Aero effect turned on. This effect is designed to make your computers windows have a glass like effect that looks cool. It also allows you to have Windows Flip 3D which is just a fancy version of the Alt + Tab combination which allows you to cycle through your currently opened programs. If your not sure what the Flip 3D is, just open a few programs, hold down the Windows Button and press the Tab key a few times – that’s Windows Flip 3D. Now hold down the Alt key and press the Tab key a few times – that’s the old way of cycling through your programs. Here’s how to get rid of the Aero effect:

Read more »

Why Cleaning Up After Windows Can Make Your Slow Computer Faster

So your computer’s slow and you have no clue where to start to make it faster? Try cleaning up your Temp folder. Your computer’s operating system is designed to run as quickly as possible but after time it will start to slow down (don’t worry this is natural). Why does this happen? See when your first get your computer it is completely “clean”. Then after you have used it for a while what happens is that it will start to slow down since it starts to accumulate “junk” in different areas of the computers operating system.

All you really have to do is to just go in there and clean up all of that junk – yes it’s that simple (well for the most part, you do also have to know how to tune your computer but that’s more in depth and beyond this article). This is why the idea of registry cleaners is so attractive – it cleans one area of your computer (your registry) to make it faster – but the big problem with registry cleaners is that they only clean one area while there are many different areas that need to be worked on to make your computer faster.

Read more »

Registry Cleaners Can Provide Numerous Advantages

Registry cleaners happen to be software programs that are used to resolve certain problems that affect the Windows operating system. Such programs will remove those items that are unwanted and even redundant and in doing so will help in restoring the Windows registry to its normal state. Even though most people agree that using such programs is helpful, there are some people that believe that these programs are neither necessary nor effective.

Registry cleaners are used to solve problems related to configuration data present in the Windows registry and which is no longer required or wanted by the computer operating system. The data that has to be removed can be of any kind including information left behind by software that has not been uninstalled. Moreover, the data can also be any item of information that is no longer needed or it could even be malware oriented settings.

Read more »

Image Spam

Image spam is junk email that replaces text with images as a means of fooling spam filters. 

Image delivery works by embedding code in an HTML message that links to an image file on the Web. Image spam is a larger drain on network resources than text spam because image files are larger than ASCII character strings. 
Larger files require more bandwidth and, as a consequence, cause greater degradation of transfer rates. 
If the recipient's email program downloads images automatically, the image appears when the message is opened. The image itself may be a picture or drawing of alphanumeric characters that appears as text to the viewer, although it is processed as an image by the user's computer. Many spam filters, especially older or less sophisticated ones, rely upon certain text criteria on which to make judgments. 

Such filters typically watch for predetermined words in the subject lines of e-mail messages, suspicious word patterns and word frequency. Image spam is not stopped by such filters because it contains no words that can serve as the basis for blocking messages. 

There are a number of approaches to dealing with image spam. In current versions of Outlook, for example, images are not automatically downloaded into messages unless the user has specified that messages from the source can be trusted.

Read more »

What is eSATA??

External Serial Advanced Technology Attachment or eSATA is an external interface for SATA technologies. It competes with FireWire 400 and universal serial bus (USB) 2.0 to provide fast data transfer speeds for external storage devices.

SATA replaced ATA legacy technology as the next generation internal bus interface for hard drives. The SATA interface is more streamlined than ATA and provides serial architecture for greater speed than the older parallel technology. eSATA cables are narrow and can be up to 6.56 feet (2 meters) in length, whereas parallel cables are much wider and limited to a length of 18 inches (45.7 cm). With eSATA, the speed of SATA expands to encompass exterior storage solutions.

While eSATA reaches transfer rates of at least triple those of USB 2.0 and FireWire 400, it does have one drawback. eSATA requires its own power connector, unlike the aforementioned interfaces. It is still an excellent choice for external disk storage, however. Unlike USB and FireWire interfaces, eSATA does not have to translate data between the interface and the computer. This enhances data transfer speeds, while saving computer processor resources and eliminating the need for an extra off-load chip.

Read more »

Lenovo plans Android tablet PC in growth push

Lenovo was developing a tablet PC, known internally as LePad, that would run on Google Inc's Android operating system, Lenovo spokeswoman Wu Hwa said on Wednesday, adding that no launch date had been set and the name of the product may change.

DDR-SDRAM memory specifications

DDR-SDRAM memory specifications:

DATA clock speed (FSB) DDR Ram speed Name:
100 MHz 200 Mbps PC-1600 or DDR-200
133 MHz 266 Mbps PC-2100 or DDR-266
150 MHz 300 Mbps PC-2400 or DDR-300
166 MHz 333 Mbps PC-2700 or DDR-333
200 MHz 400 Mbps PC-3200 or DDR-400
216 MHz 433 Mbps PC-3500 or DDR-433
225 MHz 450 Mbps PC-3600 or DDR-450
233 MHz 466 Mbps PC-3700 or DDR-466
250 MHz 500 Mbps PC-4000 or DDR-500
266 MHz 533 Mbps PC-4200 or DDR-533
275 MHz 550 Mbps PC-4400 or DDR-550
283 MHz 566 Mbps PC-4500 or DDR-566
PC-3200: theoretical Bandwidth is 3200 MB/s

Read more »

CAT6 Cable??

Even though modern home networks are connected using wireless technology, there are cases when you will still need to use LAN cables. When a wireless signal can’t reach a portion of a house or an office, cables might be your only option.

You’ll encounter several cable type designators with names like CAT5, CAT5e, and CAT6. CAT5 cable is the minimum required for the current Internet standards. CAT5e cable is a higher grade version of CAT5, and CAT6 cable is commonly used for Gigabit Ethernet, an up-and-coming version of Ethernet that operates at 10 times the speed of Fast Ethernet. CAT6 cable costs more than CAT5e but is worth the extra money if you want to future-proof your cable installation.

Read more »

Intel Huron River CPUs coming Q1 2011 with integrated WiMAX

Early details of Intel’s next-generation mobile processor platform, codenamed Huron River, have emerged well ahead of its expected launch in Q1 2011. Huron River will be based around the 32nm Sandy Bridge process silicon, and be made up of dual- and quad-core processors supporting Intel Turbo Boost.

In addition to the main cores, the Huron River chips will integrate various forms of wireless connectivity too. Bluetooth is one such technology, as well as WiFi and even WiMAX on certain models. There’ll also be support for Intel’s wireless display technology, too.
Intel are expected to position Huron River processors as suitable for both regular laptops and ultrathin models. It will replace the Calpella platform, first launched in 2009, as the seventh-generation Centrino.

Read more »