TekBusters Blog

Some of the big computer manufacturers are having sales at the moment. It happens every year in July and August. Lots of businesses have people off on vacation so they dont buy much new IT equipment and the manufacturers need to sell something to keep going. So they have a sale. You can save anywhere from 10 – 50% off regular prices depending on the system, but this wont last long. In September businesses will be back with a vengence, catching up on all those shelved projects so the prices will go back up. If you’d like some help why not give us a call, or you can try the Dell PC Advisor Tool which can help you pick the computer that’s right for you.

Living Wellness Clinic just opened up in South Surrey and asked TekBusters to help with a website. They are a team of healthcare providers from different healing modalities who are passionate about integrated wellness and helping others. With naturopaths, chiropractors, massage therapists, meditation teachers and accupuncturists they offer therapies ranging from customized othotics to hydrotherapy. You can visit them at their new location at Elgin Corners Plaza at the corner of 140th Street and 32nd Avenue in South Surrey and get more information from their website. Just click on the image below.

As a member of the Lower Mainland Yacht Co-Op I got asked to help update the website. So TekBusters volunteered some time and now have the site changed to a Joomla based system and running quite nicely.
Click on the picture below to see it.

Thanks to all those at Lou’s networking breakfast for listening this morning.
TCO is Total Cost of Ownership and includes the cost of buying a computer and software and also maintaining it. Getting TekBusters out to fix it, and loss of productivity while it’s down all adds up and this is what TCO is. So here are some things to do to minimise TCO.
1. Get a business PC. There is a difference between business and home PCs. Business PCs are better designed and better up to the job of being used 40 hours a week. Also they have less ‘extras’ installed to slow down your PC and cause problems. It does cost more initially but in the end will cause you less trouble and reduce TCO. Usually a business PC will come with a business operating system installed, so Windows 7 Pro or XP Pro, not Home.
2. Pick your software. When you buy a PC you can get with it OEM software. This is a special licence only available with a new PC and usually about half the price of a regular license. The drawback is if you replace your PC you cannot transfer the software. If though you expect your PC to last 3 years then you can move to the newer version of the software anyway.
Also there is a lot of free software out there, I’ve listed some of them in this blog, click here to see.
3. Keep away viruses. You have to have anti virus. There is no way around it and no excuse since there are so many freely available (check the free software link above) and now Microsoft have released on called Microsoft Security Essentials as well. It’s not a bad idea to occasionally do an extra scan for malware and we recommend Malware Bytes for this.
4. Maintenance. Once every 1 – 2 months you should defragment your hard drive. Again I’ve posted about this before, so click here to see how. Also cleaning off the vents on your computer when they get dusty is necessary. Cans of compressed air are available at most electronics stores.
5. Remember to backup. I’ve discussed this here.
6. Picking the right printer can be important if you print a lot. Laser can save you a lot of money. Click here for more information.

TekBusters is pleased to announce that we’ve furthered our relationship with Dell and are now Registered partners. One of the advantages of this is we can now offer the Dell PC Advisor Tool. Just click on the logo below and you can get a very simple step by step guide to choosing the right Dell PC for you. TekBusters will get a copy so we can help you review this, and help with ordering it and setting it all up.
Dell offers a great service with customisable PCs and excellent warranty and customer support. And with TekBusters we’ll not just deliver it to your door, we can set it up, get it on your network and transfer over your old emails and files.

One of the nice features of Windows 7 is that it allows us to install in compability mode. While we wait for all the manufacutrers to update their software and drivers to work with Windows 7 we can still install the older drivers once we tell Windows what version the software is. I recently was installing a HP 2025x printer but when I ran the CD I got some strange error messages. “This program cannot be run using the Run As command”. I had to log in as administrator to run this. Which would be fine but I was logged in as administrator. It turns out the software does not have a Windows 7 64 bit version available. So I checked HPs website for the latest software (always try to get the correct version) and since there was none I installed it by telling my computer this was a Vista install. Just right click on your install file and choose Properties. Then in the Compability tab choose the version you need. In this case I used Visat Service Pack 2 and it installed (and works) just fine.

Microsoft’s new version of Office is now availbel to beta testers. The Beta edition is one that is free to download and install, usually has a limited period before it will stop working and is usually full of bugs. This gives Microsoft a chance to get lots of testing done for free and lots of feedback. It gives everyone else a chance to play with the new Office before it comes out and make up their minds on it.

I liked it. I think it’s going to be pretty nice. It is again a new menu layout, but it is a mix of Office 2007 and older offices. With the older offices you had your nice menu bar – File, Edit etc, across the top and some shortcut toolbars underneath. Then came Office 2007 which had tabs which were meant to make things easier but really meant you had to search for the print button.

Now it is tabs again but more laid out in the File, Edit etc. It’s quite nice and easy to use.

I am back to Office 2007 though. Outlook, which I rely on heavily has a few too many bugs. Neither of my main syncing applications like it. Google Calendar just refuses to work with it while Mobile Me keeps throwing up errors and warnings. So I uninstalled it and will put it on a test machine again later.

For now? Office 2010, I like it and I think it will be good if all these bugs get sorted before the RC edition. If you’re interested in testing it out, you can download it here : Office 2010 Beta.

Outlook 2010

At TekBusters we clean a lot of computers. Ones that started off nice and shiny and fast and are now going slower and slower. As well as removing malware and blowing out the case we also delete old files and run a disk defragment (see here for how to defragment a hard drive).

Sometimes though even after we delete temporary files the disk defragment wont run as there is not enough free disk space, well it will run but miss a lot of files. Disk defragmenter needs at least 15% free space to run properly. To free up space on XP you might consider disabling System Restore.

System Restore remembers changes you made to your computer so you can restore it to an earlier known good point. This is useful if you install some software that crashes your system. You can then restore your computer to how it was before you installed the dodgy software.

So is this safe? Yes, if your PC is running well. Once you have your updates installed and cleaned out temporary files, ran virus scans etc then reboot. Make sure your PC is running well. Now you can disable System Restore and run defragment. After the defragment you can enable system restore again (though you could use the option to use less space). Since you have checked that your PC is good up to this point, now when you restore it will go back to how it is now.

To access System Restore in XP click on Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> System Restore

I just finished moving the blog over to WordPress from Blogger today. Along the way I created a new template to more match our main site. There are still a few tweaks to be done but it was all easier than I thought. For anyone else affected by Blogger stopping FTP publishing we can help you move if that’s what you want. Give us a call.

When Gerry and Ursula got married last summer they got their cake (all 150 of them) from Babycakes. Tasha does great cupcakes. So when she asked for a website, we were only too happy to help out. If only we could get the taste in a browser it would look like ummmmmmm, maybe just one more. Check out Babycakes cupcakes and let us know what you think.