“The role that passwords play in securing an organization’s network is often underestimated and overlooked. Passwords provide the first line of defense against unauthorized access to your organization,” according to Microsoft. On more personal note passwords provide security. A weak password is an invitation to steal your credit card, social security, and bank account information. Passwords protect you from unwanted intrusion into your private life. Don’t scoff. A weak password is having no password at all, or one that contains your name or your company name, is too short or is a word in the dictionary. The word “password” is terrible password.

You need a way to store passwords in your head, a way to come up with a password in an instant, and one that doesn’t repeat often. I see people struggling with this issue all the time and it doesn’t need to be. I’m going to give you a password plan.

Having a password plan is the easiest way to have a strong password, one that can have strong variations when the need arises, and one that you can remember. The fact is you need lots of passwords and a way to track them in your head.

The first rule of passwords it to use terms of the things you like. Then base your passwords upon it. For example, I like baseball. So, my passwords are based upon things that happen in a game. You could like cooking, or travel, hiking or whatever. The point being start your password thinking with things you like.

To create a strong password you need to use a mixture of characters and numbers with a mix of upper and lower case letters, some symbols like the dollar sign ($) and is NOT a dictionary word. Note: Some special symbols are frequently not allowed so you may want to experiment. Next, use a password with a length of seven or more characters. A password of “home” isn’t strong because its length is too short. A password of “homerun” would be better, but not strong.

Now let’s put together a strong password: Baseball plus mixed characters and numbers, plus length that’s a “H0meRuns” password. That’s a capital “H”, a zero, lower case “me” capital R and lower case “uns”. Let’s do another, let’s say you like cooking. Try this, “C00king4U”. That’s capital C, zero, zero, “king” the number 4 and capital U. This password is simple, strong and easy to remember.

Many times you need variations, start with your basic password then have a little fun with it like this: “3H0meRunz” or “H0m3Run$$”. Again these passwords are simple, strong, and easy to remember. Strong passwords and ease of mind, that’s a great Internet combo.

Ready, Set, Rollout

There is much happiness in tech land these days as the giants of the industry assert themselves by a rollout of improvements and upgrades. This year nearly every tech company has released or is releasing a newer version of their product or service. Facebook readies for their IPO launch in May renewing their effort to make the social media relevant to advertisers. Microsoft readies Windows 8 for release in the third quarter as they polish an already stellar operating system. Apple readies their TV for rollout soon and Nokia finally launches their hi-tech smartphone gadgets to big success.
No wonder the stock market is embracing technology as a front runner sector in this year’s stocks to own. Without a doubt it is a big tech year. But the best rollout news may be local.

A Little Bit of Rollout Here at Home

Our little home town tech company, ComputersUSA, has just re-released its web site and is pleased to announce it is open for business. “I can’t believe we did it,” said Andrew Stuart the technology master at the company after seeing the progress of the new site. “Just six months ago we released our new site, only to have a major failure where we lost everything,” he continued. To their surprise there were no usable backups. CUSA salvaged what it could but it started nearly from scratch. In 6 weeks CUSA has the site open for business once again. “It’s better than ever, go take a look” said Stuart. Officials at CUSA assure me the site is now fully backed up.

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Fans and Moving Parts

Did you know your computer has moving parts? All computers have parts that need maintenance from time to time. Among the parts that require attention is the fan or cooling systems in your notebook, desktop or server. Fans tend to be electrically charged in such a way they attract dust and the dust sticks to the fan blades degrading its cooling ability. When computers run hot, they fail. One must clean or blow out the dust frequently to maintain the computer’s performance. Dust can slow your computer down by as much as 10% so keep it clean.
The best method for cleaning out the dust is a leaf blower, but a dust-out spray available from most computer stores, Walgreens, Kmart and Staples works well. Don’t be shy, shoot a stream of air into every slot, cooling vent and orifice you can see and let the dust escape. Or, take your computer to your local computer expert and have them give it an air-bath. It’s well worth it to preserve the performance and longevity of your computer.

Keep Temp Files Clean

Here’s a tip to keep your computer running at peak performance. Computers collect files from the Internet and store them in a temporary location. The computer will not automatically remove these accumulating temp files unless you have instructed it to. To remove, open the My Computer icon and select your primary drive – logical C:\, go to properties under the general tab. Find “Disk Cleanup”. Wait a moment or two for Windows to display a list of items to be deleted. Accept the defaults being sure that Temporary files are checked and Compress old files is NOT checked. Click OK and let the fun begin.

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It looks like Microsoft’s latest operating system, Windows 8, will be on schedule, on time and deliver spectacular results when the official release date is reached. Microsoft has announced an October launch, but for some adventurist it’s available now. Windows 8 is in beta and if you have a spare computer and some spare time, download it and experience the most advanced operating system ever made.

Windows 8 is the most important operating system (O/S) yet released by Microsoft because it will power more than just your computer, it will power everything. As you are aware there is an explosion of personal devices, smart phones, and tablets invading your wallet. All these devices operate on a different O/S, meaning they all work differently, have different commands and different ways of getting on the Internet, retrieving mail and launching applications. Not anymore. All the confusing differences between devices will soon be a thing of the past when you learn Windows 8.

Inspired by the need to power a new generation of devices that are sleeker, more compact, power efficient and have less usable real estate (space to add specialty chips) Microsoft’s O/S needed to create software that was up to the challenge to be compact, powerful, mobile and easy to use. Smart phones and tables don’t run on big ‘ol Intel processors, so the new O/S needed to get more out of smaller less powerful CPUs (central processor chips).

In addition, smart phones and tablets must emulate everything a PC can do but on a much smaller platform without the loss of function. They have more demanding hardware for graphics and photos, but use less operating system code to accomplish the goal. Therefore, Microsoft had to reinvent nearly everything about controlling these devices. ARM, Qualcomm and other chip manufactures have turned to very low powered chips to run their devices from Android and Apple. Smart phones and tables that aren’t physically much like your typical desktop computer required a new O/S to perform similar functions.

Some of the functions you may like on this new O/S are swipe, slide and zoom. Just like your smart phone fingers are the new mouse. Use your fingers (even on your PC) to control the action. Zoom in, zoom out, swipe and move to other pages, slide up and down to scroll, its fun. Applications are grouped together and not scattered all over a hard drive. Launching existing apps is a snap and Microsoft, along with Nokia, Android, and Apple provide app stores with tens of thousands of mini apps for specific uses. Tiles group things like email, messages, apps, photos of your favorite people and movies all in a tidy easy to get to space.

Is Windows everywhere? Well, yes. Windows 8 can connect you to your files, photos, people and settings, wherever you sign in. Sign in to your smart phone or tablet, see the same settings you use on your desktop PC if you want.

In short, it’s time to upgrade your brain, your PC and your smart phone to Windows 8. Download the beta version from www.preview.windws.com. Have fun, and remember this is beta software so load it on to a PC or tablet you don’t mind messing up, because it could happen. Release is due in October 2012 in conjunction with Nokia’s tablet PC.

This year CES (Consumer Electronics Show – Las Vegas, Nv.) has two standout electronic marvels out of more than twenty thousand products exhibited. Two products stand out of the pack according to more than one-hundred fifth thousand attendees at the Las Vegas convention centers. One of the standouts focus on advances with smart phones and the other is all about the ultra thin notebooks.
And, slim is in.

The first ultra thin was first introduced by Apple Computer nearly two years ago. Apple’s MacBook Air was much envied by many manufacturers and they have responded with a Windows version for everyone. The new ultra thins are fast, sleek, light-weight, and inexpensive.

Let’s see what you get, and what you don’t in an ultra thin. First, as the name implies you get a sleek, thin notebook computer. Most ultra thins laptops on the market today are about ½ inch high (or about 13mm) at the hinge side of the notebook. That’s about half the thickness of the current version of notebooks. This advance was brought about by Intel, a major US chip manufacturer and others, who have trimmed the size of their chips so they take up less space and height when mounted inside the notebook. This re-engineering along with other strides in the industry have resulted in this thin success.

Speaking of the Intel inside (meaning an Intel CPU), these CPU’s are quick and efficient giving the user a delightful response to commands, launching programs and web surfing. The clock speed isn’t as important as your perception of speed. You should be delighted with the specs., but remember notebooks are not desktops and can’t perform at the desktop or workstation level. (Note: Do you want to know why they can’t perform like a desktop? Drop an email to the Clayton Pioneer and request this topic.)

Most ultra thin notebooks sport a 14 to 15” screen so they stay light-weight. The compact size also gives them a bit more durability. However, larger screens, up to 17” are available. The graphics and rich color fills will thrill the most stolid among you. Say hello to mini HDMI the new twist on the high def video out on most models.

Performance features include instant on and instant access to your favorite web portal is achieved by keeping the computer in standby mode for up to fifty hours and full operation for an estimated seven hours. So, you switch it on and the computer screen pops back exactly where you left it in your last session. In addition, the switch from hard drives to solid state drives is most evident with ultra lights providing longer battery life and more impact durability.

But wait… There’s more. Actually there’s less. Ultra slims are truly remarkable, however, don’t expect the ultras to be the same as most laptops because they lack features like CD ROM drives, high speed cooling systems, USB links, video outputs and printer connections have been eliminated so they can be thinner and lighter.

These computers are remarkable, reliable and fun to use. Along with the ultra slim size and light-weight design you’ll enjoy bright full screens, Dolby sound and years of service life. With features like these it is understandable that ultra light-weight notebooks were one of the two showstoppers of the CES show this year.

CUSAs lease expired without successful negotiations to renew, so it was determined to close the store and find a more favorable location.

CUSA has been in Brentwood since 2003 and intends to reopen when the climate is more favorable. Until then, CUSA is providing free pickup and delivery for all East County customers.

So, why are we re-releasing our web site? Well, to be truthful – it’s because we screw-up with the old-new one.

People liked our new look but found it a little confusing. So, we began to clean it up and make adjustments, and – well, we wound up deleting the entire site by mistake and didn’t have a backup. Imagine that, a computer store without a backup. Therefore, we lost everything.

Well, just goes to show you, no one is perfect. To make amends, we are working long and hard hours to get our site up and running.

Anyway, we hope you like the re-release. Please, be patient while we populate the site and fix the multitude of bugs we are likely to have.

The 2012 CES (Consumer Electronics Show – Las Vegas, NV.) had two standout electronic marvels one was the ultra slim notebook that we explored last time and the other is a new smarter smart phone made by Nokia and running a Microsoft Windows operating system. The Nokia Lumia 800 won best of show, and accolades from attendees, this year and it bested more than two thousand products on display.

Nokia is still the world leader in the phone handset business (just a phone with some features) but has lagged sorely behind Apple and Android in the smart phone business (a phone with Internet access, etc.), but that’s about to change. Apple is the current market leader in the US market but Nokia still outsells them in shear numbers of handsets worldwide. Nokia has about 29% of the world market share of phones, with Apple half that. Apple still dominates the apps business and Android is apps strong, however, Nokia is gaining ground on apps fast, very fast and may overtake Android by the end of this year. I’ve never seen anything like it from nearly zero apps to 50,000 in just over one year.

About a year ago Nokia and Microsoft teamed up to push the Windows 7.5 Mango operating system (OS) as a replacement to Nokia’s home grown OS. The Nokia chief executive, Steven Elop, was an executive at Microsoft before being drafted by Nokia as its new CEO so he knows first hand what Microsoft is capable of in the OS field. Don’t doubt this.

The new OS, known as Windows Mango, is a tile based visual view of all important functions of the phone. For example, rather than pages of icons reporting on phone calls, several icons for music, games and programs one tile tells you that phone calls have been received, music is available, and games are in progress. Touch the tile and up pops a list of your important events. That means rather than separate icons for each program the tile summarizes the activities within the group and reports it to the main page. This is much faster than using tiles, and gives you a summary of your activities. Important for a phone especially if you’re totally hooked on information and check your phone activity frequently.

Mango is also a forerunner of the newest computer OS known as Windows 8. When Windows 8 is released later this year it will integrate into the smart phone business, meaning what you see and do on one device, like the smart phone, you will be able to see and do on the other device, like the computer. So, one operating system for both means the beginning of a unique ecosystem. By the way, the ecosystem is the holy grail of the smart phone business. Think of Amazon offering the Fire to sell books, the iPad to sell music, etc.

It is my most intense recommendation if you’re a Microsoft user for your business to get in line for this product and prepare your computer systems and networks for Windows 8. I can’t make this point more clear, get your plans in place now. An informed IT tech should be able to help you make a plan to migrate your business to this new reality.

Now for the best part, price. Nokia has always been known as a leader for low cost extremely high quality hand sets. While Nokia’s offerings are not yet fully capable of some of Apple’s coolest features, or Androids hype, they make up in price and a rapidly growing list of features and apps. T-Mobil is offering the Nokia Lumia 710 at $49.99 and Wal-Mart has it for free with a two year commitment. This price point for a smart phone is a clear winner.

New entries on the low end will be the Lumia 610 (working name) and on the high end to compete with the best in the world the Lumia 900.

In conclusion, smart phones are getting smarter. They are beginning to consolidate the world of operating systems so work on one platform is compatible with work on another. This is something Microsoft does best, wait for the market to develop, then dominate it. RIM and to some extent Android are dead or dead-end platforms. Only Apple and Microsoft will survive.