All is quiet on the PC front

For some reason I've been having a mental block as this next post which will the 200th on this blog. To be honest I've been one part busy with school work, one part busy with work, one part busy with family mixed in with a good portion of procrastination. Also not helping is the fact I've not done a whole lot as far as PC stuff other than playing with iTunes(listening to some Guns n'Roses right now) and surfing on the net. Not exactly productive stuff. I just thought I'd touch base here a little.

Crossloop blog

I'd like to thank the guys(and gals) at Crossloop for the feature on the there blog. Some of you may have noticed the Crossloop badge on this blog and wondered just what Crossloop is. For just a quick refresher Crossloop is remote access program that is very simple to use and very easy to setup. For example I use it with my darling mother-in-law who describes herself as a complete computer newbie was able set it up and we were using it in less than ten minutes. A friend of mine uses it with his 6 year old son to play games. It's that easy. If you wish to keep track of your sessions(or at least have bragging rights) you can even setup an account and post a Crossloop badge(aka:widget) on your website, blog or elsewhere. I highly recommend it.

Recycling computers

Being known as a computer guy i tend to get peoples cast off and obsolete equipment. I don't mind this a bit and I'm always on the look out for stuff. On the other hand though I do end up collecting stuff that just doesn't work or I have no use for. What do I do with that stuff? Well one way to deal with this stuff is to recycle or dispose of it. Unfortunately much of the stuff you can't just throw in the weekly trash pick up. Especially monitors(CRT type) as they contain hazardous materials and such.

Here in Rhode Island they have a program and the central landfill in Johnston, Rhode Island where they collect computer stuff. It's quite easy too you just load up your vehicle with your computer stuff and bring it. You don't even have to get out of your vehicle they come and empty it for you. It's quite painless. I do it at least a couple of times a year. For more info you can check out the Rhode Island Resource Recovery website for a schedule. I just cleaned out my garage today because I'm planning to go tomorrow. For those that live outside of Rhode Island you can check out Earth911.org for further information regarding recycling PC's and other items.

What's inside the box

I'm one of those that are usually curious just what's inside the box. I always try and find out what inside before actually opening cover. Belarc Advisor(freeware) is a great tool for finding out what's inside. Another I just came across from PCMech.com is called SIW (System Information for Windows). It gives a very nicely detailed view what's inside the box for both software and hardware. Both Belarc and SIW are free for personal use. I'm adding SIW to my tool box today!

1988 vs. 2008

$4995($8755 adjusted for inflation) for a 150mb hard drive in 1988. In 2008 you can get a 1 Terabyte HD for under $400. I found that and more in an article from PC World by Becky Waring. To be honest I wasn't much of a geek back in 1988 so I don't remember much about tech from then. I didn't even know about the internet or email back then. Even so the article is interesting and goes on to compare laptops, desktops and etc. It's kind of cool to see just how far we've come just in my own adulthood.

Too many taskbars

On a computer I was working on recently I opened Internet Explorer(7) and low and behold it had at least three different extra taskbars at the top. Yahoo,Google and Microsoft were all attendance. To top it off the browser would never connect or open. I even tried to close the taskbars and it still wouldn't open. What I ended up doing was uninstalling and reinstalling it. It worked great after that. Though I never found a whole lot of use for them personally I think more than one is a waste. On top of that some (even well known ones) I've heard contain spyware.

On a humorous note I received a call from my wonderful mother-in-law needing help with her email using Outlook Express. She wasn't able to send or recieve emails for at least a week or so. We hooked up through Crossloop. Somehow her password got messed up and when she re-entered it it worked. In all it took about ten minutes to fix. The what's the punchline? How did she first try and get a hold of me? By email. :) I love her.