Ray Shaw's  Questions  &  Answers  ---  Page 35 13-6-09: Question: I have XP Pro (original disk with no service packs included) and need to do a clean install of XP. I can do that but need to know do I have to download all the patches and install them in a particular date order i.e. SP1 followed by SP2 and SP3? Answer: Service packs are cumulative and you only need load SP3. It is a 320Mb download. Get it from Microsoft's site http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsxp/sp3/default.mspx. If you have a copy of SP2 on disk install that first and then Windows Update will only download the new things in SP3 saving a couple of hundred Mb in downloads. Question: I have a new Vista Home Premium PC and purchased a dual DVB-T tuner with dual analogue ports to use with Windows media centre (WMC). I was told that I could connect Foxtel and a DVD/VCR to the analogue ports and watch and record them via WMC but I can't seem to make it work. I have no problems with the dual digital tuner displaying TV and recording two shows at once. Also there seems to be no electronic program guide for Brisbane. Answer: WMC by default only supports either digital or analogue - not both at the same time. I can only surmise that it is to do with copyright and digital rights management because most tuner cards come with their own software that support both at the same time. At this time MS does not provide an EPG but this may change with Freeview. You can get a subscription for a one off small donation from www.epgstream.net (a bit if technical expertise is required to install this) or subscribe to IceTV guide www.icetv.com.au (no technical experience required) for $99 per annum. Both work well with WMC. Question: I'm absolutely drowning in oceans of spam. Could you please advice me, how to obtain a spam filter and how to install it? Answer: There is a tsunami of spam at the moment. I recommend Mailwasher Pro from www.mailwasher.net for about $40. There are of course many other programs and some email clients (Outlook full or Vista Mail) have spam filters as well so check these out as well. Question: I have a new Mac. The sales person said I did not need Antivirus or anti-spyware protection. Is he crazy or what? Answer: Apple has not traditionally been a target for virus or spy/malware writers - simply because its market share of the desktop and server world has not warranted it. But as it grows in popularity, especially since its switch to Intel based platforms and running OSX, surfing the net with an Apple has become like unprotected sex - prevention is far less painful than the cure. Viruses are rare but malware and Trojans to turn your Mac zombie botnet are now in the wild (even if you have to get it by loading pirate software - dumb…). But if you understand security you will realise that it is not just about virus or malware - it is about setting up comprehensive security profile to deal with Browser threats, port/firewall breaches, sensitive data protection, application sandboxing, phishing, and identification of hostile IP addresses. Mac is a target - it is not a case of if rather then when. Indeed Apple has changed its stance and in December 2008 suggested it was prudent to run antivirus software "just in case". I would stick to a well known brand like Norton Internet Security for Mac if only that they have the experience in the PC world that other Mac only providers don't have. See http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/review/norton_internet_security_4_a_comprehensive_suite/ Question: I have been told to buy a Quad core processor but the cost is a little steep. Are they worth the money? Answer: You should always buy a balance of CPU power, memory, hard disk space/transfer rate and graphics power because the power of the CPU is not sufficient in itself to make a huge difference if the other components lag behind. Yes you can put a V8 into a Mini but it won't do very much more than the weakest link in the car. There was a doubling of power between a comparable MHz speed Intel Pentium (single core) and an Intel Core 2 Duo but going to a Quad only gives about three times the total power. PC mark test scores tend to show a 10-15% increase in power over a dual core for real world applications until we get applications that work with quads. Question: I have Vista Home Basic with a P4 2.4GHz, 160GB IDE Hard disk and 1GB (2 x 512MB) of ram and its very slow. The store has recommended 4GB but you wrote something once about it not being able to use that much? Answer: RAM is relatively cheap at present and 2GB modules are the best price per MB. Most motherboards will support matching 2 x 2GB modules but Vista x32 only uses about 3GB. The remainder of unused ram will not cause you any issues. I think however that your problem is more to do with having a single core CPU and a slow hard disk. Rather than just add more ram consider getting a SATA hard disk and see if the motherboard will support a dual core CPU. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 28-6-09: Question: I can't afford the MS Office Suite for my kids. Do you know of any suitable free alternative? Answer: Microsoft Office 2007 Student and Home edition includes a word processor (Word), spread sheet (Excel), presentation maker (PowerPoint). It sells for under $150 and may be installed on three computers. The best known freeware suite is OpenOffice www.openoffice.org which will read and write Office files. It is not a perfect emulation of Microsoft's suite and requires some getting used to. I recently discovered Kingsoft Office 2009 www.kingsoftresearch.com which has an almost identical menu look and feel to MS Office 2003 and is gaining popularity with business and consumer users who find Office 2007 too hard to learn. It also has a built in PDF writer which is very useful. They have released a Home and Student Edition for around $50 which can be installed on 3 computers. I have not found an Australian retailer that stocks it yet. For more on Office Suites see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_suite Question: I keep hearing about NBN and FTTP and how it is going to cost $200 per month for fast internet. I can't afford that. Answer: NBN is the National Broadband Network and will cost about $43B over 8 years to implement. FTTP - (Fibre [optic cable] To The Premises). Australia's information super highway (like its road ways) is in a state of disarray. Some roads are good, some bad and some yet to be sealed or built. The NBN is a plan to provide an integrated high speed FTTP to 90% or more of the population. NBN will be available to all ISP's to use so competition should keep the prices to a reasonable level but the more speed and more download capacity you want the more it will cost. It is important to Australia because we need a scalable infrastructure that allows those who want ultra high speed to be able to get it. Whilst most home and small business users can get things like consumer grade ADSL/2+ over phone wires for $30-50 per month (and this won't change) businesses who need full duplex speed face charges of several hundred dollars a month for relatively slow business grade SHDSL. The choice of fibre optic cable is a good one as it operates at the speed of light and has a virtually unlimited capacity. For more reading on fibre optics see http://www.arcelect.com/fibercable.htm Question: I have just had a $50 Climate Smart check for my home and it was excellent (even better after the $50 rebate from BCC). I highly recommend it if only for informative power usage metre and the 15 replacement low energy bulbs they supplied was a bonus. The sparky said to turn off all equipment that uses standby mode and I did that but the reduction in power usage was extremely small and the inconvenience of getting to some power points and then resetting things made it a pain. Answer: They say watch the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves. Devices that rely on an internal time clock like a VCR, DVD Recorder, Windows Media Centre (if used to record) should not be turned off at the wall. It is perfectly safe to turn off computers, notebooks, printers (note that some inkjet printers will consume more ink if turned off so they may be best left on in power save mode), Wi-Fi routers, Cable/ADSL modems, Play Station, Xbox 360, Wii, hi-fi systems, PC monitors, LCD/Plasma/CRT TV's - the only inconvenience may be a slightly longer start up time. The easiest way to do this is to get a power/surge protection board with a wireless remote control like the new Belkin Conserve Series. They cost about $250 (which will take some years to recoup) but the convenience of remotely switching on or off appliances is unmatched. Question: Windows 7 has been receiving a lot of publicity because it will run on older PCs and lower powered Intel Atom netbooks. But I was told that it is heavily based on Windows Vista that won't run on these devices. Answer: Windows 7 uses much of Vista's code and will have a similar look and feel to it. Vista is memory hungry because it was written to take advantage of newer processors and plenty of ram and it "loads the kitchen sink" by default. Windows 7 only loads the bare minimum to get to the Welcome screen. Don't expect Windows 7 to run on older XP PC's - it still needs Vista or later drivers to work. Windows 7 will be released earlier than predicted on 22 October but if you are buying a PC now you should have upgrade rights so you don't need to delay. Question: I want to use Street View in Google Maps but it says I need Adobe Flash Player V9 or later. I have installed it from Adobe's web site and it appears to have installed but later it won't work. Answer: Adobe has released an uninstall program at http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/141/tn_14157.html to remove Flash completely. Try that first before trying to install it again. If that does not work it means that it has damaged the registry and a clean install of Windows on a fresh hard disk is the only practical cure. Question: Do you have any thoughts on on-line backup? I would like to be able to put an ISO image of my operating system and valuable files somewhere I can easily restore from. Answer: I tested a reputable on-line back up program on a PC with 63GB of files including Windows (about 25GB), programs (about 15GB) and 23GB of data files (mainly PDF, Word, Excel and some scanned files - no music or video files). The initial on-line upload was just over 15GB (compressed from the 23GB of data files only as you don't back up system files or programs) which took a few days of upload at a maximum of 128kbps (thankfully I started it whilst I was away on holidays for a week and not at home) and 3/4 of the way though it knocked my BigPond Cable Liberty account back to 64Kbps for the rest of the month. Online backup is really for irreplaceable files e.g. selected photos, contact lists, Office documents and accounting files (depending on the extent to which you trust the security of the provider). Both BigPond and Optus standard cable upload speeds are very poor for large files and they count against your download allowance. On-line backup for a whole PC is simply not viable in Australia yet - bring on the NBN. Question: I purchased a 1TB hard-drive to put into an external enclosure and it will not show up in My Computer Answer: You first need to connect it to the SATA connector on the motherboard and partition and NTFS format it using Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Storage and Disk Management. Once done put it in the enclosure and it will be found. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Back to: HOME      Back to: Computers     Back to: Ray Shaw (34)     Forward to: Ray Shaw (36)