Ray Shaw's  Questions  &  Answers  ---  Page 39 10-10-09 Question: My son installed Windows 7 Beta on my PC and now it has expired. I am told I can't buy Windows 7 until late October. Answer: You can apparently extend the life of the Beta version by using a program called TimerNuke (search Google for this). It may not be exactly legal but will give you some more time to evaluate whether you wish to upgrade to Windows 7 or revert to XP or Vista. Question: I travel a lot around Queensland by car. I take a notebook and would like to use it to access the internet - unfortunately few motels and cafes have wi-fi access. My second problem is that my notebook battery only last a couple of hours and I never seem to be able to find the time to recharge whilst I am driving. I spoke to an auto electrician who suggested I needed an inverter and a separate marine battery (because my car battery was not up to the load) but the cost was very high. Any suggestions? Answer: Telstra Next G has the best rural coverage and you could purchase a USB NextG modem or use a Smart Phone that supports "tethering" to act as a modem instead. This would provide reasonable connection speeds for email and remote access and a 300MB data package costs $29 a month. The Auto electrician's solution was a little overkill. If you want to charge a notebook you only need a small inverter 100-150 watts capacity that will plug into the lighter socket and charge the notebook whilst you are driving. Marine batteries will provide power for longer if the battery itself is not being charged but as you are on road a standard car battery will do just fine. Question: What is the difference between analogue and digital and why is everything going to digital? Answer: Analogue records a sound or image by laying down a "wave" track pretty much in its original form. Digital takes that wave and "samples" it (on a CD the rate is 44,000 samples per second) and stores the wave as binary computer numbers (0 and 1). There are a number of advantages. Digital is the language of computers so all you need is the right digital signal processor software to replay any sound or image. Digital does not deteriorate - as long as the numbers can be read, you will always get exactly the same wave. Digital can also be compressed by finding repetitive patterns in the sound (MP3 or MP4 for example) which is why TV stations are moving to it - better quality images using less bandwidth. There is lots of debate over whether analogue vinyl records reproduce better sound than digital versions. The answer is simply that the higher the sampling rate the closer the approximation of the analogue sound but correspondingly the larger the digital file becomes. Question: I loaded the supposedly free NoAdware to scan for spyware and it found heaps that my other scanners did not. But to remove the spyware I was asked to pay. I felt this was a scam and tried to remove it but it won't uninstall. Answer: According to www.spywarewarrior.com NoAdaware is categorised as Ransomware - malicious software that (a) requires money to remove threats that don't exist or have been installed by the software itself and or (b) encrypts the hard drive of the infected computer or the files holding important information. The software then extorts money from the computer's owner in exchange for (a) the possibility to remove threats that don't exist or (b) to have access to the data again. I recommend that you use the free Revo Uninstaller from www.revouninstaller.com to remove it. Be aware that you should back up valuable data first in case NoAdware has some dirty tricks up its sleeve and renders the PC useless after uninstalling it. Question: There seems to be more choices than ever in central processing units (CPUs) and I find it hard to find the difference between a Pentium Dual Core and a Core2 Duo, let alone add the AMD processors into the pot. Can you explain? Answer: The following is general in nature and you can look up all processors at www.intel.com under Processors. "Atom" - 1 core, 32 bit, drawing up to 2.5 watts giving extended battery life. Most support hyper threading (HT) - a software variant of dual processing. The N series is being phased out for the Z series which support Virtualisation Technology (VT) desirable for some Windows 7 functions. "Celeron D" - 1 core, 32 bit, desktop sized processors drawing up to 80 watts. They are basic and don't support HT or VT. Good for low cost desktops but pretty slow. "Celeron Desktop E series" (not to be confused with the D above) - 2 core, 32/64 bit, dual core with no HT or VT. "Celeron M ULV" - 1 core, 32 bit, drawing up to 10 watts. These are low power in every way and designed for specific applications where CPU Power is not required. The remainder of the M series are single core, 32 bit with no HT or VT. "Celeron Mobile" - 1 core, 32/64 bit, drawing up to 30 watts with no HT or VT All of the above are low cost, low power and not suited for heavy processing use. "Pentium 4" is being phased out. 1 core, 32 bit desktop processors drawing up to 115 watts with HT but no VT. " Pentium 4 Desktop" is also being phased out. 2 core, 32/64bit processors drawing up to 130 watts with HT and VT. The E series is the most common. The new technology is called "Core" (replacing the Pentium Name) and there are Solo (1), Duo (2) and Quad (4) core processors with larger cores to come. "Core Solo" - 1 core, 32 bit with VT drawing up to 30 watts. "Core Duo (T series)" - 2 cores, 32 bit with VT (you don't need HT) drawing up to 30 watts. "Core2 Duo (E series)" - 2 cores, 32/64bit with VT drawing up to 65 watts. These are currently the best price for all round use and have plenty of power for desktop applications. "Core2 Quad (Q series)" - 4 cores, 32/64bit with VT drawing up to 105 watts. These are more expensive but give desktop users that added power for video editing etc. "i7 series" - 4 core, 32/64 bit with the "kitchen sink" almost all available features and of course are the most expensive and need special motherboards (Core, Pentium and Celeron will run in the same style of mother- board). There are more than 300 different models and prices in the processor families above depending on the speed of the front side bus, amount of cache memory etc. Very confusing. The big problem is that some of the lower cost processors are finding their way into the wrong use i.e. a Pentium (hot and power hungry) being used in a lower cost notebook. My advice: Netbooks and Nettops - look for the new Z series Low cost notebooks - the Core Solo or Core Duo Better notebooks - the Core2 Duo Desktops - Core2 Duo or Quad If money is no object - i7 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 22-10-09: Question: Where can I get a driver to run a Sony EyeToy camera with an XP PC? Answer: There were three models of EyeToy cameras, SLEH-00031, SCEH-0004 and SLEH-00030 that were specifically designed to operate with the PlayStation2 and its software. They use the older USB1.1 interface and really only work properly with the EyeToy software. Search the internet for Sony Eyetoy EOCP XP drivers and you will find them. Question: I have used CleanUp for a number of years but a recently bought a new PC with Vista Home Premium and it appears that it may not run on that OS. Answer: Cleanup free from www.stevengould.org has been tested with both 32 and 64 bit versions of Vista and works very well. I run it daily. Question: Can I install Windows 7 and use my entire hard drive without any partitions? I currently have three partitions on a 500GB drive. Answer: When you install Win 7 it will bring up a disk partition menu where you can remove all existing partitions (care this will delete all content) and use the whole disk. Just select NTFS for the file system type. I do recommend that you set up a small D: partition where you can backup information that you would not want to loose if doing a reinstall on C:. Note that you can also use Win 7's own partition manager to join the partitions once you have installed it. Question: I have a computer with Windows XP SP2. I have done a back-up of some Word documents to a CD and want to also back-up changes to them daily. When I go to File, Save As, etc, I am told the files are Read-Only. Is there some way I can back-up the changes? Answer: A CD-RW is read only memory so the files are set to that state. Use Windows Explorer to copy the files back to a folder on your hard disk (which is read write). Then select all the files in the folder (pres CTRL A or by clicking the Edit menu and Select All), then right-click any one of the items and click Properties. At the bottom of the dialog box you will find the Read Only property check box (to the old DOS enthusiasts this is the same as using Attrib -R command). Untick this and they will be read/write. If you have selected any sub-folders these will be fixed as well. Alternatively you can use a freeware program called Attribute Changer free from www.petges.lu that integrates into Windows Explorer. That does not answer your backup question and you should use a program like Acronis (commercial program) or a free program like Drive-Image from www.runtime.org Question: I had Advanced SystemCare Pro installed on my computer before installing Norton AV 2009. Each time I run Advanced I have lots of registry fixes, junk files and spyware fixes, etc, to be repaired. Is this system any good or am I wasting time? I have recently installed CCleaner and CleanUp. Answer: I can't comment on the product as I have not used it. It appears to do similar things to PC Tools Registry Mechanic and Spyware Doctor. CCleaner is fine for basic registry cleaning and CleanUP is great for hard disk cleaning and both overlap with Advanced. I suggest you continue to use Advanced as well, as it probably does more than both of the other programs despite the overlap. Question: I have never had a problem with junk mail until now. I am receiving 20 to 30 emails each day and while they get redirected to my junk mailbox I still have to physically delete them. I have tried to block mail from certain email addresses, but they keep appearing in my junk box. Answer: There is yet another Tsunami of junk mail driven by Zombie botnet PC's that has managed to get around the junk filters. Regrettably there is nothing you can do apart from keep your email filter up to date. Most of the junk mails you will find have spoofed addresses - they usually come from you! Question: I am writing a book using Microsoft Word. The book is subdivided into chapters, with each chapter starting on an odd page. When numbering the pages in Chapter 10 using Headers and Footers, irrespective of automatic or manual mode, at a certain page (#492), the numbering system automatically replaces the correct number sequencing previously assigned two pages back (#490). I have tried removing all formatting, such as columns and page breaks, to no avail. Answer: There is no limit to page numbering and it does appear to be a hidden formatting issue that can be very hard to track down. A possible solution is to break the book up into single chapter files and manually start page numbers in each. The other possibility (if there is not too much formatting or graphics) is to copy the whole book into Notepad then back to a clean copy of Word (you first need to delete all copies of normal.dot from your system to clean up Word). --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Back to: HOME      Back to: Computers     Back to: Ray Shaw (38)     Forward to: Ray Shaw (40)