My Bits and Bytes.

In the good old days, cleaning a computer screen was dead easy. The glass front of your monitor could just be wiped over with a bit of window cleaner and an old rag. You could give it a bit of elbow grease if there where any persistent finger prints, and in a couple of minutes it was as good as new. But what is the best way to clean a LCD/TFT type of screen? They are not made from glass, but plastic, and it is very fussy plastic at that. Window cleaner would probably be a bad idea since it has things in it that can eat plastic. Instead, I often use a little cotton wool which has been very slightly dampened with a drop of pure water. This is a good way to get of the dust that seems to always end up on my screen. Perhaps it is static electricity or something, but there is always fluff, hairs, and dust on my laptop screen. Cotton wool is better than using a rag because not only is ultra clean, but it is the least abrasive substance I know of. Soft tissue paper might seem like a good idea,...

I always get phone calls about laptops and how to know if it is a good laptop or a dud. There are several things I look at before I purchase a laptop. 1. Amount of memory - I will not purchase a laptop without at least 1GB of DDR memory. (I Prefer 2GB in order to have my laptop running super fast) 2. Hard Drive - Now this depends on what you use it for but for a family computer in today's market 120GB hard drive or higher is what you should be looking for because music downloads, Internet surfing, and pictures will fill a hard drive faster than you think. 3. Brand - Stick with the names you can trust: HP, Compaq, Dell, Acer, Sony, Toshiba are my top companies for laptops. 4. CPU Speed - Since it is hard to tell these days the speed of a motherboard due to AMD verse Intel, and new technology, just shoot for 3.0Gz P4 or higher. I have used AMD and Intel and they both get the job done, so I will save the money and get the AMD Processor instead in most cases. 5. Ports - make sure that ...

You are very serious about your computer's security. From anti-spyware software to firewalls, your computer has it all. There's no way you'll open an email before it is checked for viruses and you have anti-virus software installed just in case. You are completely protected, right? Well, there is one other thing you should do to protect all the data on your computer's hard drive. From digital photos of special memories to important documents, you could lose it all if you don't do regular backups. After all, the most secure computer won't be able to do a thing to protect your data if something happens to your hard drive. You'll need to be sure you have a safe and secure copy of your computer's data in another location. There are just too many physical risks to your hard drive to neglect data backups. Anything from a power surge to a house fire can rub out all of your hard work in seconds if you don't have a backup for your files. The time to rectify t...