Description:

Your computer is like your car, you don’t know how it works but you know many of the parts and what they do.

This article will be edited on a periodic basis due to the ongoing changes and upgrades with computers. Because computers are made of various types of plastics you can not expect all the components to last more than 2 years. They get brittle and crack.  I have kept our Windows 95 computer for historical reasons with our family but it is terrible to work with these days.

 WAYS TO SPEED UP YOUR COMPUTER CONNECTION

If you experience anything abnormal while viewing Ace Wigs, please refresh the page up at the top of your browser. We edit text and images daily and this may cause your computer to display a broken up picture or disoriented text. Your internet service provider should provide you with free phone Tech-support to coach you with how to maintain your computer by clearing the history and deleting the cookies in your computer on a monthly basis. This will help to speed up your computer a little. You can locate these settings at the top of your browser in “TOOLS,” then select “INTERNET OPTIONS.”  This is where you can clear the history yourself. Make sure to save your favorite sites first and add them to your “BOOKMARKS” or “FAVORITES” which is also located up at the top of your browser.

 WARNING!! DO NOT CLICK ON POP-UPS!!!!

Pop Ups are dangerous and will destroy your computer -- this can get expensive. When a webpage loads onto your screen, you often will see little extra boxes appear. A pop-up is a little box or window that will appear somewhere on top of a webpage.  They often will tell you that you have won something or offer to give you something for free. Even if they don’t, be careful. We keep our children away from important administrative computers because they will click on Pop-Ups for fun.

 When you click on a Pop-Up, the programmer who developed it has written in a little program that downloads onto your computer’s hard drive. This is very, very bad! The programmer will often write a backup program that will re-install the Pop-Up if you try to delete it, and another back-up program to protect that one (this is called a worm). So… you can never get rid of it!

 This should be more illegal than spamming because Pop-Ups slow down the performance of your computer. If your computer is infected with enough of them you can’t even use the internet.  The Pop-Ups will keep re-appearing on your screen, preventing you from getting to the information you are seeking because they keep reloading on your screen. When this happens, you have to spend money at a repair shop to clean up and delete the Pop-Ups from your computer system.

 Pop-Ups basically ruin the equity you have built in your computer.  To repair a badly infected computer you may have to reinstall all your programs, as well as your Windows or Mac operating system. This is often the only sure way to get rid of them.In our office we use two filters to protect our computers. The first is Norton Antivirus, a program that protects your computer from becoming infected with viruses and worms.  If you keep this service current, it will update your computer every Wednesday automatically to protect your system from new viruses.  We also use Ad-Aware, a program specializing in preventing Pop-Ups. You can get it at www.download.com  This website is one of the sites where computer repair shops will get the latest updates and programs to repair your computers. Ace Wigs does not have any pages which cause Pop-Ups to appear on your screen, nor do we ever spam our customers. Ace Wigs has only one small window for our larger imaged pictures, and this window can easily be closed manually by you. This window has no programming behind it, and will never reappear on its own.

 INSPECTING AND CHANGING COMPUTER COMPONENTS

You should get used to changing and inspecting components in your computer. For example, changing a graphics card on a yearly basis may increase clarity for your screen. If the room your computer is in ever gets over 100°F then your computer is undergoing a lot of stress. This will break down the materials like plastics and thin films of micro circuits on your motherboard. Your Ram (temporary memory) should be no less than 250mb these days.  All our computers have at least 1 Gigabyte (GB) of Ram, which is 4 times larger than 250 Megabytes (MB). Your hard drive (main data memory storage) should be backed up to another computer in case it fails. We use Serial ATA hard drives with a capacity of no less than 80 GB. The systems with larger hard drives (i.e. 250 GB) may have problems with overheating, as well as a slower response time than the 80 GB or 120 GB drives.  We advise a 80 GB as your boot drive, and a 120 GB drive for storage of your programs and files. This means you should have two hard drives per computer. Our computers have up to 4 hard drives in each system. Anything that is very, very important on your computer should be backed up onto either a hard drive that you remove from the computer and shelve, or a disc. Most people back up to a  CD or DVD, and the most current is the small cards you plug into your USB connectors that can store up to 4 GB. The USB connector is the same type of connector as your mouse or keyboard uses.

 INTERNET CONNECTIONS

Today’s internet connections are also evolving very fast. The old phone jack connection (56k modem) is a frustrating and slow way to go. Most of today’s websites will not load properly with this type of connection. We suggest for $19.95 a month that you get a DSL connection if your phone service provides it in your neighborhood. If you have Cable for your TV, then ask your cable company if they can get you an internet dial up. We have found that the Cable internet connections are as good, if not better, than the DSL connections from the phone company. With either one of these two internet services for your dial up, you will have a lot more fun surfing the internet because web pages will load quickly and completely -- with all the images and text the web developer intended for you to view. Also, the speed in which the information loads will be able to keep up with your curiosity/interest, instead of waiting forever for the page to load.

 WATCH THOSE EMAIL VIRUSES!

As far as emails go, you really should have a spam filter. If your specific email address is not important, then changing to a different address will get rid of the spam for awhile. However, sooner or later your email address will likely be sold by your internet service provider for advertisement spamming. It should be illegal to sell email addresses, but  Congress has not yet passed legislation to prohibit this. Here at Ace Wigs, we have heavy spam filters at our main hosting facility, as well as on each of the computers in our office. The best way to protect yourself from infection via incoming email, is to never, ever open up an email attachment unless you are fully trained in how to scan the attachment in Norton Antivirus before you open it up. Even if you know the person who sent the attachment, their computer may be infected and they don’t even know it. Ace wigs has never spammed any customer, and we do not open up attachments, nor do we send attachments to our customers.