The Everyday IT Blog

With the release of Windows 7 in time for the holiday buying season I’ll bet that more than one of you plan to purchase a new PC this year.. and you may already have. Congratulations! You’ll certainly

Photo by ercwttmn

enjoy better performance and increased efficiency from your new system, no doubt.  So, what do you do with your old system?  You could pass it down to a family member – many folks do that.  You could keep it and use it for the kids.  You could prop a door open with it.  The list goes on and on.  If you’re like most folks though.. you’ll gather up that old PC and take it down the street to your favorite charity and donate it for the good feeling and the tax writeoff.  If this is your plan, STOP!  Charity is a great thing.. but you need to think this through.  You have personal data on that PC.  You’ve done your online banking on that PC.  You’ve probably allowed your browser to save some of your passwords on that PC.  Just a few of the above items are more than enough information to allow someone to gain access to your entire electronic life at your expense.  Did you attempt to delete the data?  That delete key on the keyboard probably doesn’t work the way you think it does.  For example.. say I keep a Word document on my hard drive that has all of those passwords that I don’t want to forget in it.  I’ve decided after some time that I’m going to sell my old computer at a yard sale, so I go to “My Documents” and delete the file before I sell it.  The file doesn’t show up in “My Documents” anymore and I’ve emptied my recycle bin, so it is gone, right?

Wrong.  Very Wrong.

What really happened inside the guts of your machine is this: your operating system marked the spot where that file lives on disk as “overwriteable” so the space on disk can be used later.  The file is still very much there, only hidden.  Theoretically.. I could purchase your machine, take it home, remove the hard disk and plug it into my already-running PC with an adapter.  I can run one of several programs I have for examining your old hard disk and “undelete” those files.. and Voila!  I have your password file.

I’m going to do a little experiment.  I’m going to head to my local donation center and purchase a used PC.  I’ll bring it home and do just what I illustrated and see what I can see.  I’ll chronicle the experience here to illustrate what I’ve been talking about and I’ll then properly destroy what I’ve found.  Stay tuned!

PS.. by now you know that I support my little blogging habit with affiliate advertisements.  Basically.. if you click a link or ad on this site and make a purchase I get a small cut.  Please take a look at the ads.. there are some big names there.  If you plan on making purchases with those advertisers anyway I’d appreciate it if you’d click on my ads to make those purchases.  Thanks!

My first hands-on experience with a netbook was just this past summer.  Our babysitter was headed off to college and had just won this little thing – she needed my help to make sure the software she needed was loaded up and it was generally ready to go.  I agreed, so I got to test-drive her netbook for a week.

If you haven’t looked into a netbook yet – you really should, especially if you think you’re in the market for a laptop.  First and foremost, netbooks are small.. screen sizes on netbooks are usually in the 10.1″ widescreen range which is similar to some of the nicer portable DVD players out there.  Most netbooks are built on the Intel Atom processor which was purpose-built for mobile computing devices.  As far as other specs you might be more familiar with – netbooks usually come configured with a few gigs of memory, a sizable hard drive (sometimes substituted for a SSD), wired/wireless networking, a few USB 2 ports and a webcam.  Before the general release of Windows 7 most netbooks came with the Windows XP home operating system we’re all familiar with though now the newer versions of these devices come bundled with Windows 7.  I wouldn’t be concerned by that last bit.. the hardware spec of the older models seem to be the same as the newer versions with Win7.  What they don’t come with.. a CD/DVD drive – though they work fine with external drives.  This is by design.. USB memory sticks are so ubiquitous now that I prefer them over CD/DVD.

Netbooks are designed for mobile connectivity, pure and simple.  They are perfect devices for students because of their low cost, battery life and portability.  For example.. the netbook that our babysitter is toting around has a battery life of about five hours so she can leave the power brick in her dorm, and the outside case is ruggedized with rubber so that she can lug it around in her backpack without worrying about scratching it up.

But, Mr. Blogger.. are they slow?  Not at all.  These things are perfect for web surfing, skype, email, and office-type programs and it does those jobs happily.  Don’t try cpu-intense operations like gaming on one.. that will never work.  Feel free to sync your music player to it or download photos from your digi-cam.. that works just fine.  Linux folks.. Fedora 12 just dropped and it has specific enhancements for netbooks!

At around $300 for a decent netbook these things are going to be hot for Christmas.  One word of warning though.. don’t fall for the ads that some wireless companies are touting where they’ll give you a netbook in exchange for a contract on a mobile data plan.  You’ll do much better getting your own netbook and having the free will to choose who you might want to use for mobile connectivity assuming you need that.

Got a netbook?  I’d love to hear from you, so post a comment!

Want a netbook?  Check out the Gateway LT2022u NightSky Black 10.1″ WSVGA Netbook over at Newegg.com.

Its the latest, greatest operating system from Microsoft.. and while IT folks don’t normally get fired for purchasing Microsoft.. Windows 7 isn’t necessarily the best OS for the job.  There is a zero-cost alternative out there.. Linux.  Linux in its many distributions was derived from the UNIX operating system originally written for minicomputers in 1969 by AT&T’s Bell Labs and modified into its current form by Linus Torvalds.   I’ll delve into the history lesson another time, but suffice it to say that Linux is a highly-developed open-source (more on that later) operating system that is very efficient and very powerful – and over the past few years and release cycles has become easy enough for home computer users to be able to operate without difficulty.  Will it work for you?  To know the answer to that, we need to examine the way you use your computer..

Image by Leonid Mamchenkov

Are you a PC gamer?  I’m sorry to say that unless you are already proficient with Linux (and those folks may not have read down this far) you’re going to be disappointed.  PC games can and do work thanks to a software package that emulates Windows.. but not all games will work.  That situation gets better with each passing day.. but it isn’t there yet.

Are you hopelessly tied to Microsoft Office or Internet Explorer?  If you know nothing else but IE for browsing or Microsoft Office for office functions you’re going to have a slight learning curve to tackle to be able to use Linux effectively.  If you are willing to learn then read on.. the alternatives to those programs are built in to most desktop distributions of Linux.

Do you live on the Internet?  Are you never more than 5 minutes between checking your Facebook or Tweeting?  Do you use Firefox as your primary web browser?  You’re in luck.. Linux for the home user is perfectly suited for you, whether you are on a desktop machine, laptop or netbook.  Most distributions of Linux use Firefox as their default web browser and it operates in the same way.. you can be instantly productive.  Linux is also much more efficient than any version of Windows would ever hope to be.. it requires much less than Windows in the way of computer hardware to operate on, which translates to extra computing power and better speed for you.

Here’s the best part.. Linux is open-source.  That means FREE!  It is maintained and updated (under Linus’s watchful eye) by its users.  For more about the concepts behind open-source software, go here.

Will it work on your system?  How do you give it a test drive?  Why.. you download a Live CD of the Linux distribution of your choice, burn it to disc (with the proper software), pop the disc in your CD drive and reboot your computer.  Linux will boot up and run off of the cd without touching your existing Windows installation or files.  If you like it you can go back to Windows, get your files and then use that Live CD to load Linux.  You can even dual-boot Windows and linux if you have the drive space to do so and run both systems.

As far as Linux distributions go, I’ve had the best experience and success with Fedora.. go here to have a look.  There are many other Linux distributions geared toward different types of users.. if you want to have a look at those and are familiar with downloading files via BitTorrent then pop over to Linuxtracker.org and have a look.

If you have questions, I’m here.. @neilster1 on twitter or leave a comment here.  I’d like to hear about brave souls who take the plunge!