Help save the planet, turn off your computer

Shut down your computer to save energy and save the earth. If you are the type of person like me that wants to save what is left of the earth and reduce the carbon footprint. We just had Earth Day and it was mentioned in several articles I read that it was asked for everyone to shut down their computers on April 22 to help reduce the carbon footprint.

There is a lot of talk around the computer world about whether or not shutting down a computer every night helps or hurts the computer. Here is an excellent article about this, “Is it better to turn my computer off when I am not using it or leave it on all the time?

If you are an environmentalist and looking to help save our planet please remember to shut down your computer nightly and also your monitor.

Intel Light Peak Technology

Are you looking for something that is much faster than USB 2.0 but do not have the patients for USB 3.0 to come out. Well it will be here before you know it and it is called Intel Light Peak. “Light Peak is the code-name for a new high-speed optical cable technology designed to connect your electronic devices to each other. Light Peak delivers high bandwidth starting at 10Gb/s with the potential ability to scale to 100Gb/s over the next decade”.

Light Peak is optical and with optical technology the speed is extremely fast. The other advantage is that it overcomes distance limitations that electrical cables tend to have.

Light Peak is suppose to ship to retailers later this year. We shall see if retailers and manufactures will embrace this new technology. Time will tell.

Walmart looking to purchase Vudu

Comcast, Amazon and Best Buy were in the hunt to purchase Vudu, but the winner looks to be Walmart. It is rumored that Walmart is looking to spend $100 million dollars for the purchase of Vudu.
With the sale of thousands of televisions and DVD’s around the world this is an awesome purchase for Walmart. This will be there first push of movies over the internet and it makes a lot of sense.
I am in the market to purchase a new tv, but I may wait and see if they embed Vudu into there future televisions.
We will have to wait and see what this largest retailer has up its sleeve.

FCC to boost broadband service

Probably by the time you read this it is expected that the FCC will have presented to Congress a proposal that will make it universal to have high speed broadband in every house around the country like cable tv and telephone. With all sorts of price gouging and unfair practices in market of high speed internet it only makes sense that the government steps in and puts together some policy to regulate the industry. Another wait and see what happens by Congress.

NEW THREATS FOR ANTIVIRUS

With over more than a million viruses on the Internet, it is a wild zoo out there for antivirus programs. Virus like the LoveLetter virus overwrote files and inserted viral code on hard drives around the globe two years ago and is still active today. Nimda - Concept Virus attacked ten of thousands computers world wide.

Each day there are new viruses and worms and Trojan horses attacking the computer systems around the world. In my shop I see hundreds of computers coming in monthly with viruses, worms and Trojan horses. Some of my customers have no idea that they have been attacked by these menace bugs in their systems.

With all the antivirus programs on the market, I find customers that r don’t want to spend the few extra dollars for a good antivirus program. Or they have a good program but have the updates turned off. Some customers are several months behind on updates to there antivirus definitions. If you just miss a month on updates to your antivirus system you will be exposed to hundreds of new viruses attacking your PC.

The best line of defense is to install a good antivirus program, keep it updated daily, do smart computing and make sure you back up your system on a regular basis. 3

In the near future we will be taking a look at some of the top leading antivirus programs on the market today. So stay tuned and check back often.

HARD DRIVES LARGER THAN 2TB

If you are looking at investing in a new hard drive larger than 2TB think again. There is a flaw in the operating system of PC’s that is hard to answer. With sectors of 512 bytes and the 32 bit partition table can only address a maximum two terabytes.

Another problem is that you cannot boot to a GPT partition from a 32 bit Windows operating system. The only two Windows operating systems that can boot from a GPT partition is Windows vista with SP1 and Windows 7 both at 64 bit.

The only way these two os will boot from a GPT is if the mother board has UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) support, instead of BIOS booting.

So be careful if you are looking at investing in a larger than 2TB hard drive in the future.