Sunday, October 31, 2010

Keeping up With Virus Software





We have several computers in our house, and they are not all on the same renewal time for their virus software.

Three are on one license, and three are on another one that expires sometime after the new year.

I use the Norton Internet Security for the virus protection and the firewall.

I do not want the 360 protection software or any other upgrade they keep trying to force on me.

And it costs the same price as the 1 year subscription renewal so I am sure they get many takers on their offer.

The one I use already takes too much control of my computer, I can only imagine what the upgrade does.

Seeing the list of all its "accomplishments" really scared me - I would never be able to get into my computer if I installed it.

My son has the Vista operating system on his, and I find that quite restricting - I wouldn't want him to make it more so with this upgrade.

Hopefully they just keep letting us renew each year, but I think that option will be going away in the future.

I dread the day we HAVE to do that upgrade.











Saturday, October 23, 2010

New Game System





For years our family has used the Playstation console to play video games.

The family has tons of games - most of the ones from the older console can be used on the newer machine.

Well, the current unit has begun to have a few problems.

Perhaps from too much use or just age itself, so the search began for a new console.

If we stayed with our current brand, the unit was going to cost between $350-$400.

We didn't see much use in picking up another used system like we have because it would be just as old as the one we already use.

My son decided that since he was buying it, he was going for the best deal he could find.

We now have an Xbox 360.

I really don't see much difference between it and the Playstation.

The graphics are a bit better.

Storage space on the hard drive is easier to use than the individual cards on the old system.

It was quite a bit less expensive for this system.

And I really like the wireless controllers. The rechargeable batteries last quite a while in them too.

Even with the hard drive, I don't see where this system is any faster than the old one though.

And the biggest problem we have - we don't have many games to chose from in our house at the moment.

But, as long as everyone is happy, I guess that is all that matters.













Sunday, October 17, 2010

Blog Clean-up





This blog is only a few months old, so there isn't a whole lot of cleaning up I need to do with it.

My main blog, Photography by KML, has been in existence for almost 4 years.

My second blog, Let's Jump Together, has been around for almost three, and my third blog, Frugal Healthy Choices, will be two this winter.

Since I am not really big on change, the photo blog has kept itself pretty much the same, adding more to the sidebar as I went along.

Some of the stuff on there was pretty old.

Some of the links no longer existed.

It needed major work, so some house keeping was on the agenda.

The Let's Jump blog had only a few links that needed removing, and the Healthy blog was still looking good.

Hard to believe so much "junk" had accumulated on it.

The search engines frown upon bad links so it is important to keep up with the housekeeping.

I'm sure there are some bad links left on some of the old blog posts, but with almost 600 posts on that blog alone, I think I am not going to worry about them too much.

Perhaps someday when I don't have anything else to do I can start in on it, but I don't see that happening in the near future, or far future either for that matter.

Hopefully the search engines will just overlook the old ones.













Monday, October 11, 2010

System Battery





Just when one computer starts to feel better, another one in the household begins to have problems.

For the last week, my husband's computer, which is about the same age as my back-up computer, has not been keeping time.

This machine, about 10 years old, is used mostly to browse the internet.

Plenty of storage space, and not a lot of programs on this machine.

Now, you would think that the system clock would be updated each time the machine is connected to the internet, and with DSL, it always is.

Even when we do a direct update under the date and time program in the control panel, the clock still lags and the date also gets left behind.

And it just got to the point that the machine would not even boot up in the morning.

It would not even try to. It would just sit there quite dead.

We had a hard time finding the correct battery that was needed, but we finally did, and bought two of them - I suppose it must be about time for mine to go too.

It was very easy to find on the motherboard, so changing it was no problem

After a thorough cleaning we hooked it all back up again and fired her up.

She recognized the changed battery and we had to manually set the system clock before the computer would even begin to boot up.

It was so good to see that this was a simple fix.

The computer is happy, and best of all, the user is too pleased to have everything back to normal.

I just hope the next problem is this easy!













Sunday, October 10, 2010

Secure the Ram





It has been a week since I made sure that the two ram cards were securely in their slots on the motherboard.

I honestly saw nor felt any difference when I inspected them and wiggled them around.

When I last posted, it had only been a couple of days and things were still working correctly.

I think it is safe to say that problem has been fixed.

The system has been closed back up and put back in it's spot beside the table.

It took a while to figure this one out, and it was so simple a solution.

Keeping things simple is always the best!













Monday, October 4, 2010

Perhaps it is the Ram?





Okay, from my last post, I thought perhaps a good cleaning had cured my computer from it's new ailment.

It certainly didn't hurt it, but the going on and staying on only lasted for two days, then she was back to her old tricks - sometimes she wouldn't even make it through the whole boot-up routine.

Back to the drawing board - the internet search engines.

I read in a couple of different places that loose ram could be a cause of a computer just shutting down.

I was thinking, I really don't think that is the case.

I remember when we upgraded the unit many years ago, it was a real job to get those ram pieces in and out of their slots.

They are secured by a clip on each side, so I really didn't see how they could possibly have come loose.

But, since they are easy enough to locate on the motherboard, I checked them.

Gave both of them a little jiggle and made sure they were in tight.

They seemed pretty secure to me.

Don't know how they could have wiggled out of their slots anyway.

So, the computer has been sitting open, next to the desk for the last two days.

All has been great with it.

No shutting down.

No problems what so ever.

But it has only been two days - just like last time.

I will give it a few more days before I button it back up and put it back beside the table.

Since it wasn't the dust, I am really hoping the jiggling of that ram fixed her up.

Time will tell!