ADELAIDE'S TECHGUY

Macbook Air Fanspeed Problems

I have a Mac Book Air and wondered why the fan speed and hence the CPU would start to spike every so often.
If I transferred large amounts of data or in reality any amount of data from 100MB to 1 GB to even 7GB to the Air ,away the fan would go.
If you turned the machine off and then restarted, away the fan would go after a while.
I had even gone to the extreme of formatting and reinstalling .
However if you transfer the data and then leave the machine running , not doing anything to it just leave it open and running after a while sometimes up to an hour the fan speed decreases and the machine goes back to normal with no fan spikes.

This is because it takes time for the machine to process all the data you are sending to the laptop.

Remember the Mac Book Air , is basically a " net-book " , slim and should be used for internet browsing and writing , nothing that is too intensive for the cpu.

At least you can here and see when the Mac Book Air is struggling unlike the netbook which just appear's to grind to a halt.

It will be interesting to see how these perform when Snow Leopard comes out as you should be able to get more power out of the mac-book Air with Snow leopard installed.

Keep Your Bookmarks Organised

When you switch between various computers , and browsers , you sometimes struggle to keep all your internet favorites synced and organized.
I like the cloud solution so that if i am on the internet it is all there for me and that is why I like Delicious.
By installing the add on's for Delicious to Internet Explorer and or Firefox I always have my bookmarks and I can also log onto any computer and save items to my bookmarks.
Delicious also lets you check what others are bookmarking by popularity and by subject.

Find The Software Installation keys

Are you about to reinstall your operating system ?
Then you will need your software's product keys.
Sometimes you may have misplaced the disk covers which have the product keys on them , so what do you do?
Try the Magical Jelly Bean finder which will be able to retrieve your Windows and Office keys.
Especially helpful if you have misplaced the  product stickers

Ram Will Help You Run

 

So the computer is running a bit slow and you only have 512MB of ram on your computer and you have decided to invest in some ram.

How much ram should you have?

Windows XP and above 2GB is what you need.

Here is the problem , how do you decide which ram to buy.

Go to Crucial and run the memory scanner.

This will then tell you the exact sort of ram your computer takes and this is what you will have to buy.

Here in Australia you can then take this information to a computer store or go online to someone like Upgradable and find your ram.

Now you have to install it and it's not that hard , if you have a laptop get the instruction book or look for instructions on the net.

If you do not want to do it then pay someone or get a friendly computer person/ geek to do it for you but remember you need ram to run properly.

Looking For Old Versions Of Software

Sometimes you are not happy with the current version of software you may be running and are looking for the old version.
Then try looking at Old Version
This was brought to my attention on Tekzilla , another internet show from Revision 3.

Image Your Hard Drive

So you have reinstalled your operating system and done all the updates , installed your software and it is just the way you want it.

Why not remember this by " imaging" your hard drive now so that you have an exact duplicate of you hard drive so that if you run into problems and need to reinstall you can do so from your " image ".

This is not the same as backing up your documents but is a way of getting your computer back to it's fresh install quickly.

Software to do this  is  DriveImage XML Backup Software and it's free

However don't forget to read the instructions.

Guide To Audio & Video Connections for High Def Televisions

So you have bought a a new plasma / LCD television and are wondering among other things:

• Which cables go where
• What is an HDMI cable
• The difference in analog vs digital connections

Then this short video on The Dummies site should answer some of those questions for you.

Which Antivirus Should You Run?

So you are after an antivirus solution but are not sure which way to turn.
Firstly I would not buy one of the big , bloatware versions from Symantec or McAfee which promise that they can do everything such as fix your hard disk , tune up your pc etc.
Remember you are after an antivirus solution "not the bells and whistles" that will slow your computer down as some have done in recent years.
Buy one that is just an antivirus solution , Symantec do have one ( if you must ) that sells for $50 - $60 for 1 year.
My recommendation and the one I use is NOD32 from ESET which costs about $90 for 2 years.
There are free solutions , such as Avast , AVG Free and ClamWin , links to which can be found on my site.
Now for the ' cat amongst the pigeons ".
Microsoft is about to release it's own Antivirus Solution called Microsoft Security Essentials and will be giving it away for FREE.

I have been using it on one of my machines for several weeks and it is quiet good.
Microsoft Security Essentials  will change the antivirus landscape when it is released to the general public with I suspect big movements in pricing and services offered from the large companies as a result of this product being on the market.

Learn How To Type

Everyone will get more out of their computer , be more productive and achieve more by learning
how to type and you can achieve this for FREE by going to Typing Web

Most of us can type but here you learn the proper typing technique and increase your word speed , and accuracy.

Need To Play A Video

So you need to play a video file that you have been given and are experiencing problems with Windows Media , Quicktime etc.

Try Videolan with the VLC Media Player which can play  "most audio and video formats (MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264, DivX, MPEG-1, mp3, ogg, aac ...) as well as DVDs, Audio CDs VCDs, and various streaming protocols. "

Check out the website for the full list.