Binary Math... musings about 10-10-10

As clients get to know me during the second or third visit, the question usually comes up "... so when did you get started working with computers?"  That always makes me chuckle, as I reminisce back to the days of 3rd grade (in 1964) - while my fellow students were working on multiplication and division, I was already converting between Binary, Hex, and Decimal number systems while doing the calculations.  You see, my older brother (thank you, Bob!) gave me a unique gift for my 9th birthday - a Digi-Comp1 - billed as  the "...first real operating digital computer in plastic."

While the Binary Readout was only 3 digits, the mechanical marvel opened my mind to digital logic; complete with an understanding of accumulators and gates, etc. that has served me well over the past 46 years.  You can read more about this set of plastic tabs and metal rods at the following blog site: www.oldcomputermuseum.com/digicomp_1.html.  That little thing cost my brother about $5.95, but I've seen them selling on eBay for over $100!

And now I've just learned that there are sufficient other "fans" of this little device that they have actually started producing it again.  If you'd like to make a gift of something wondrous for a child in your family, you can order the Digi-Comp1 v2.0 at the following site: www.mindsontoys.com/dc1_main.htm

And when it arrives, if you need some help assembling it - give me a call - I'll be over in a jiffy!

Should I Upgrade My Computer Hardware?

Business Computing Tip
Computer consulting firms, such as MAX Communications, dedicate our careers to advising business owners on when to upgrade their hardware. As with all business decisions, the answer boils down to a comparison of cost vs. benefit. While this may be true, quantifying the costs and benefits of hardware is not always an easy task.

There are 3 factors you should consider when deciding if upgrading your hardware is the smartest choice:

1. The Secret Cost of Upgrading
   In addition to the price tag you are looking at with a new system, you must also consider the time, energy and money it takes to migrate your information to your new equipment. You must plan on worst case scenarios. Can you put a price tag on your company's data if migration goes wrong? In this instance, you will want to rely on a professional to protect your coveted information.
   
   You never want to upgrade unless you have a solid business case to do so. If you are just looking for the "latest and greatest," you should stop now and look to invest your money in other areas.
   
   
2. Compromise Solutions
   If it's "bells and whistles" you are after, your system may not need to be replaced entirely. It's quite possible that an upgrade in your RAM will have a significant impact on your system's performance. If you are inexperienced with installing RAM, consider hiring a professional to perform the work for you.
   
   
3. The Right Time to Upgrade
   Here's the most important advice we can give you on upgrading: Always upgrade when the cost of NOT upgrading exceeds the cost of upgrading. Consider the benefits of new hardware--it helps you work faster and more efficiently. Also, consider the software you are running. Does it require more robust hardware to run itself? If this is the case, than upgrading is the smartest choice.
   
   Other situations that require upgrading are broken PCs and system crashes. Clearly, in each of these cases, the consequences of NOT upgrading will cost you more in the long run. In business, it's always better to be proactive.

When you are ready to upgrade your system, take a look, not only at your current computing needs, but also at what your future requirements might be.

• Will you need a full-featured database program in the future?
• Will you run memory-hogging graphics programs or other special applications?
• Will your new machine integrate with your current network?

Doing your due diligence before you take action will save you in the end.

Call 847-348-3489 to schedule a free evaluation

Virus Removal Prevention TIps

Getting a computer virus is frustrating to say the least, and can be dangerous to the health of your PC. Malicious software can erase your precious data and even wreck havoc to your hard-earned credit rating with identity theft.

You can fight back with the free prevention tips listed below. These tips will help you get rid of viruses and keep them from coming back.

In the event that you'd prefer a professional to handle your virus woes, consider hiring a consultant (such as MAX Communications) who specialize in these types of threats.
Call 847-348-3489 if you have questions.

Free Virus Prevention Tips
(courtesy of About.com):

• How to Repair a Boot Sector Virus - Though boot sector viruses are rare in the U.S. and most European countries, they are still prevalent in other parts of the world.
• Eight Ways to Stop Virus Infection - Prevention. Prevention. Prevention. These are the essential steps.
• How to Make Sure Your Antivirus is Working - Viruses, worms, and trojans often disable your antivirus software when they infect your system. Here's how to check to ensure it's working.
• How to Avoid Macro Viruses - From the SANS Institute, tips on avoiding macro viruses.
• How To Prevent Email Worms - Security configuration changes you need to make to your favorite email client software.

MAX Communications uses Genbook - You should too!

GigaByte defined: the Mystery of the Missing Drive Capacity

This question arises more often than one would think... Why is my drive not showing 160 GB? (or 200 or 250 GB).  Here's an excerpt from another blog that should help to clear up the controversy...
--------------------------------------------------
It's all about Decimal vs. Binary measurements...
For simplicity and consistency, hard drive manufacturers define a megabyte as 1,000,000 bytes and a gigabyte as 1,000,000,000 bytes. This is a decimal (base 10) measurement and is the industry standard.

A decimal capacity is determined by dividing the total number of bytes, by the number of bytes per gigabyte (1,000,000,000 using base 10).

However, certain system BIOSs, FDISK and Windows define a megabyte as 1,048,576 bytes and a gigabyte as 1,073,741,824 bytes. These are binary (base 2) measurements.

A binary capacity is determined by dividing the total number of bytes, by the number of bytes per gigabyte (1,073,741,824 using base 2).

This is why different utilities will report different capacities for the same drive. The number of bytes is the same, but a different number of bytes is used to make a megabyte and a gigabyte.

For instance...

Various Drive Sizes and their Binary and Decimal Capacities

Drive Size in GB Approximate Total Bytes Decimal Capacity
Approximate Binary Capacity (bytes/1,073,724,841)
(bytes/1,000,000,000)

10 GB ----------------------------------------------------------------------------9.31 GB
20 GB -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 18.63 GB
30 GB -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 27.94 GB
40 GB -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 37.25 GB
60 GB -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 55.88 GB
80 GB -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 74.51 GB
100 GB ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 93.13 GB
120 GB ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 111.76 GB
160 GB ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 149.01 GB
180 GB ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 167.64 GB
200 GB ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 186.26 GB
250 GB ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 232.83 GB
-------------------------------------------------------

I think if you read the “fine print” on the packaging, it may make reference to the fact that 160 GB is a Decimal Measure.

Another mystery solved…!
- Jim Kirschenmann
- MAX Communications
- 866-591-5557
- 847-348-3489 ext. 3
- FAX: 847-307-8490
http://www.helpmemax.com/

Managing Social Networks in Microsoft Outlook

There has been a bit of a buzz developing about Outlook 2010 and some of the things it integrates.  Well, you don't need to upgrade to Office 2010 to take advantage of the "Outlook Social Connector".  Microsoft has been kind enough to make it available as a FREE download and it is compatible with Outlook 2003, 2007, and is built-in with 2010.

To download the OSC, simply follow this link: Outlook Social Connector 32 bit (February 2010 Beta)

Facebook inside of Outlook

Be aware that this is for the 32-bit versions of Outlook.  Not a problem, but if you only have 512 MB of RAM, this may make Outlook rather sluggish. 

With the introduction of Outlook 2010, Microsoft is making a 64-bit version available that will run very nicely with Windows 7 64-bit (if you have 4 GB or more of Physical Memory).

So... what does this "social network connector" do for you?  The panel that opens up at the bottom of an email preview (or when you are composing an email) will now show 'connections' from previous emails, appointments, tasks, file attachments and conversations logged in the journal (see the image above for an example).  In addition, this opens up a platform for the Social Networks to allow information to be fed directly into Outlook. Those adopting the interface are LinkedIn and MySpace (available now) with Facebook to be coming onboard shortly.  Also, there is a facility to pull in from SharePoint, so your enterprise blog posts can also be drawn into the connections panel.

What about Twitter and Hoovers? Fortunately, there is another utility that actually nicely complements the OSC, and that is available from XOBNI (inbox, spelled backwards).  While it may seem that XOBNI duplicates some things, in actual practice I found it to be rather nice to see both.  While XOBNI shows the Company Name, Position/Title and Current Location from a contact's LinkedIn profile, Outlook Social Connector actually lists the recent status updates.  And XOBNI allows you to specify the Twitter Feed that you want to associate with a contact.  I have suggested to them that they make this same option available for Facebook and LinkedIn, and that may be available in a future release.  So the COMBINATION of the two add-ons makes a very nice "at-a-glance" overview of everything related to your contact.  When I get things approved with XOBNI, a link will be available at our website for a FREE Download to get you started.

Is there more? You guessed it!  I have a couple of other FREE utilities that I've found to be quite helpful as add-ons to Outlook.  They are both available from TechHit and pop nicely into Outlook as a Toolbar that you can position where you want.  The first is TwInbox and that pulls the updates from all those I am following on Twitter and drops them into folders under the name of the Twitter Account, as well as providing a quick view of the latest tweets, as they arrive.  The second is FBLook and that allows a quick view of those posts made by your Friends.  Both of these utilities allow you to Post (or Tweet/ReTweet) directly from Outlook.

Better Time Management: The combination of all these tools really helps to minimize the time you need to spend logging (and getting lost) in your favorite Social Networks.  With these tools, you can keep an eye on everything right from outlook, and still only spend about 30 minutes 3-4 times a week keeping up with your networks.  Cool, huh?!  I thought so...

Share what works for you... I'm still searching for the best Social Network Aggregator, but thus far, none of them seem to have all of the pieces together.  So if you come across some better mechanisms for staying on top of all these Social Media resources, please post your comments here and share what you've found!

Give a shout if you have any questions... 847-348-3489

Gateway XHD3000 30-inch Monitor Fix

When the search for a fix for the Xbox 360 'Red Ring of Death" led to a number of unsatisfactory solutions online, there was one that really made some sense to this old electronics engineeer...  that was to "reflow" the solder on the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit).  That, along with a couple of other adjustments will be documented in a separate post, once I have confirmed that the fixes are holding for more than a couple of days of game play.

As it turns out, the same problem seems to be plaguing the Gateway XHD3000 30-inch Hi-Def Monitor.  Since Gateway has been "merged" into Asus, this product line seems to have been "orphaned", leaving no tech support available from the supplier.  But the "output" board suffers from a malady of having the display degrade from the center vertical to the right side by getting darker and almost completely black, with an occasional vertical green "stripe" appearing near the right side of the display.

The "fix" that was implemented for the Xbox 360 provided some experience with the proper methods for using a "heat gun" to carefully raise the temperature in the affected area of the "BGA" (Ball Gate Array) solder joints to effectively "reball" the joints and return the unit to full function.

For the Gateway XHD3000, this meant using a similar technique to reflow the solder joints in the area of the ribbon connectors (four connectors) on the Output board (at the top to the chassis).  The process takes about 45 minutes, plus it is necessary to let the board completely cool down for about 30 minutes.  But, it saved an expensive device and the display is now crisp and clear across the entire range.

For the XHD3000, a search for fixes resulted in about 32,000 links, most of which were complaining about the fact that Gateway Tech Support offered NO HELP.  And there are few, if any, service centers accepting repairs for this device.

If you need your LCD Flat Panel Display checked out and would like to have us determine if it can be  fixed, give us a call at 866-591-5557, or email us through this Support Blog.

- Jim Kirschenmann
MAX Communications
http://www.helpmemax.com/
Facebook: http://bit.ly/Facebook-HelpMeMax