Started work today on our new Vista Blog’s site. It is going to be a blog that covers all the vista operating systems:

vistabusinessblog
vistaenterpriseblog
vistaultimateblog
vistahomeblog

Hopefully we will have it up and running shortley. It will cover all new about the Vista operating systems.

Dan
Computer Medics of Northern Virginia LLC
www.cmonova.com

Ex-Hacker Kevin Mitnick has written a nice article on tips to help secure your desktop while on the internet. This is a must read for any novice.

On a side note if you do not know who Kevin Mitnick is then you should take some time and read about him also. Very interesting read.

Read Kevin’s tips here

Well finally got the customer’s Starband all setup and working. But the speed is terrible. It’s bascially an expensive dial-up access. Will call Starband again and see if there is anything they can do about it but I am pretty sure I already know their answer.

Worse part is the router they sent is suppose to be faster than the last one the customer had purchased from them.  Keep this in mind should you have to venture into the world of “Dish Internet”.

Dan
Computer Medics of Northern Virginia LLC
www.cmonova.com

Had to do an upgrade yesterday for a customer to Norton Internet Security 2007. How wierd is it that you have to uninstall the old version prior to loading the new one. I’ve encountered this a few times now. Not only does it take forever but once you have it loaded the pc seems to crawl in startup.

I think Norton uses way too many resources on a computer. Personally i’m all about Trend Micro’s PC-Cillin which is located here

Dan
Comptuer Medics of Northern Virginia LLC
www.cmonova.com

Looks like Vista will be available on 30 January in retail stores. Late October Microsoft started an upgrade program for anyone buying a system so they could get a discount or free upgrade to Vista when it comes out.

Personally I think you might want to wait to get Vista already installed on your new system.

Read more about it here

Dan
Computer Medics of Northern Virginia LLC
www.cmonova.com

Amazing concept but Jim Allchin, Microsoft co-president has recently came out and said that he is so comfortable with the lockdown features in Windows Vista that he would let his own seven-year-old use Vista without antivirus software installed.

Need to read the article to get the full effect of it. But, having children myself I really don’t think i’m going to trust a Microsoft product enough to not have anti-virus software installed on our systems.

Read the rest of hit here

Dan
Computer Medics of Northern Virginia LLC
www.cmonova.com

Had to work on an internet connection upgrade today. The customer has Starband (it’s a dish provider) for internet access. Now if you have cable modem or DSL you should be thankful. This is an amazing setup to install. Starband sends a new Starband 480 so it should be as simple to take out the 360 and put the 480 in place of it.

Well,,,,Nothing is ever easy. The old setup had a USB from the 360 to the computer. Now with the 480 you can’t use USB (even tho the USB is on the 480) instead you have to use a cross-over cable from the 480 to the computer. Of course they don’t send a cross-over with the new 480. I guess they expect you to have one in your house.

Overall my feelings are the Starband is a poor service to have, tech support is terrible (slow, provides no answers), and setup is crazy.

If you need a dish type network you might want to consider Direcway instead.

Dan
Computer Medics of Northern Virginia LLC
www.cmonova.com

We have another new site up and running. If you are interested in computer repair and technical articles this is your one stop shop.

The site is PC-Repair and the website is www.pc-repair.info . There are hundreds of articles and up to date news feeds provided.

Dan
Computer Medics of Northern Virginia LLC
www.cmonova.com

Lately there has been a rash of junk email people have been getting. If you log into your email and you notice the “subject line” saying something like:

Hi Pete
Hi Jane

or anything like that more than likely it is “junk mail” and can be deleted without being read. Your best bet is not to open these types of email. Hopefully your interenet service provider is doing their best to keep those types of email out of your account.

Dan
Computer Medics of Northern Virginia LLC
www.cmonova.com

Sold another custom built computer today. As you can see from the picture they are extremely sharp looking.

Here is what is in them:
* Black & Silver Case with Blue LED Light in Fan
* Gigabyte Socket 754(800MhzFSB) Motherboard
* AMD Sempron 64 Bit 3100+
* 512MB PC3200 DDR Ram
* 250 GB Sata 7200RMP Hard Drive
* 52X24X52 CDROM-RW DVD
* ATI X550SE 128 MB Video Card, 3D Sound
* 56K Modem, 6 USB Port, On Board Gigabit Lan Port
* Cordless keyboard & Optical mouse
* Multimedia speakers built into the tower
* Windows XP Home
* MS Works 2006
* Norton Anti-Virus

Very nice system with high quality parts inside. This is our most popular seller.