Computer Hygiene - Take Out The Trash!

Written by Earl Gooch


Do you find that your computer exhibits one or more ofrepparttar following behaviors?

- Inexplicable message or warning pop-ups

- Frequent unsolicited reboots

- Your favorite application often crashes

- Applications now start up sluggishly

- Your computer seems to take forever to boot up

- You find new software running which you did not expressly install, and you cannot explain it's existance

Your computer may simply have become cluttered with software to such a degree that all those programs now fight with each other for resources, or a particular type of software installed (with malicious intent or otherwise) could produce adverse side effects and may even compromise your system's health and security. Even if your PC does not appear to suffer from any ofrepparttar 146390 symptoms above, chances are over time one or more of these issues will surface.

So where should we look to findrepparttar 146391 root cause of such problems? In short, we can attribute this abnormal behavior to:

1) Our not being vigilant in monitoringrepparttar 146392 list of software running (or not running) on our system

2) Not being sufficiently mindful of howrepparttar 146393 installed software got there and why

Let me explain further. When one purchases a computer (or you inherit that “hand-me-down” from your relative) you will typically find a potpourri of software already installed. Furthermore, you will probably never use 80% of it. In addition, you may find yourself unable to resistrepparttar 146394 temptation to download and install freeware/shareware fromrepparttar 146395 internet.

All too often we really do not needrepparttar 146396 programs we download, but refraining from doing so can be difficult due torepparttar 146397 software's enticing promo. And regardless ofrepparttar 146398 utility of these programs, many times we don't bother to uninstall them, thinking we may find a use for them inrepparttar 146399 future.

Just recently while browsing through a forum, I saw a post withrepparttar 146400 following opening line: I just had to reformatrepparttar 146401 family computer forrepparttar 146402 second time in three months because of my brother's blatant ignorance of general computer hygiene. I can assure you that such behavior is commonplace. The various computers in my own home are a prime example. On numerous occasions my two children, who byrepparttar 146403 way, are old enough to know better, downloaded and installed software which essentially rendered their PCs unusable, thus costing me hours of work to get them back into working condition.

How To Stop Unwanted Email Spam

Written by Gary Gresham


You can stop unwanted email spam, you can choose to reduce spam email or you can do nothing and continue to be annoyed. Those are your only choices because spam email is not likely to go away. Every single one of us would love to stop unwanted emails but only a very small percentage of people do anything except complain about spam. You might remember a couple of years ago they passed a new federal spam law that was supposed to eliminate spam email. So why is spam still around and why is it so difficult to get rid of it? Email spammers buy lists of email addresses from list brokers, who compile their lists by harvesting email addresses fromrepparttar Internet. Then they send millions of unwanted email messages to these email addresses with one click of a mouse. Email spammers make huge amounts of money from these lists and that's why they do it. These email spammers are breakingrepparttar 146346 federal spam law, The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, in every way possible. This federal spam law, which became effective January 1, 2004, is next to impossible to enforce. Email spammers make so much money they can afford to outsmart The Federal Trade Commission with sophisticated technology. Now that you knowrepparttar 146347 origin of spam email and why email spammers are sending this junk you realize that spam is not likely to ever go away. But that doesn't mean you can't do anything about it. Here are a couple of ways to significantly reduce spam that won't cost you a cent. Don't display your email address in newsgroup postings, chat rooms or in an online service's membership directory. Sometimes email spammers use these sources to harvest email addresses. Another thing you can do is create two email addresses with one for personal messages andrepparttar 146348 other for public use, such as in newsgroups or chat rooms.

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