About my affiliates

  I just wanted to take a moment to let you know a little about the affiliate links you see on the right column of this page. These are trustworthy companies that I have personally done business with. I will not endorse a company that I have not used or researched just to make a dollar. I value you, my reader and strive to bring you the best info and content that I can. Please feel free to provide me with feed back, good or bad. My goal is to make this  the most informative and interesting site on the web, so stay tuned!
  Got a question or comment? email me at thecommongeek@gmx.com

CPR for yor PC

Trinity Rescue Kit is a great rescue program for you pc. It can get you into a computer when all else fails. Check it out at TRK.

Copy files fast and easy

I recently learned of  a new program thanks to Snubs at Hak5. This great little program is called Teracopy, what it does is copy files fast and without all of those error messages that you get when copying files with the default Windows method.

Microsoft DreamSpark

Well, I haven't been blogging lately because I just started a few classes for the summer semester. While in search of affordable software I came upon the website called DreamSpark by Microsoft. You must verify your eligibility with your student email address and the you can download several Microsoft programs for FREE. I have verified my account, but I haven't yet downloaded anything because the hard drive on this pc is full. I will write more when I get a chance to grab a few downloads, feel free to check it out for yourself. DreamSpark

My Norton rant

Well, I had the opportunity today to try and walk my dad through installing Log Me In on his computer so that I could gain acces and make some repairs.  It seems that somehow, someone install some version of Norton Antivirus on his machine and it was draining the system resources, making it almost useless.

I spent about an hour and a half on the phone with him because the Norton software was blocking every step of the installation. Needless to say we both had better things to do so we let it go for today. (before I started banging my head against the wall) Please, if you aren't very tech savvy, please do not use programs like Norton, it will slow your computer down considerably.

FYI I personally only use FREE antivirus solutions, such as Microsoft Security Essentials, provided by Microsoft. If you want to do some further scans for malware, download Malwarebytes, also FREE.  Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions, I would be glad to recommend a free solution. Here is a list of just a few of my favorite freebies. Toolbox

Boot from a USB stick

There is a great little free program that will load an .iso onto your usb stick and make it bootable. It's call Unetbootin and it works great. Just plug in a usb stick, make sure that it's formatted in FAT32 then select an operating system from the dropdown menu, or you can choose any .iso image that you already have and click ok. It's simple and FREE.

Note: When booting your pc, you will need to enter BIOS and make sure that your machine is set to boot from USB first.

Cheap Software!

If you are not aware, Microsoft gives huge discounts on software for active students, or any student with a .edu student email address. I just bought Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 (with Microsoft Office 2010 upgrade) for $59 when it lists for $539.  Back in January, I bought Windows 7 for $29.  I just wanted to share this with everyone, it's a really great deal. You can get to the page here.

Serial Keys

It is a good idea to locate the serial keys on each of your machines and store them somewhere safe just in case you lose your original disc and key. I found a great little free program that will scan your system and locate installed software on your pc that includes a serial key. It's called "Magic Jelly Bean" I know, it's a weird name, but a cool little program.

It runs fast and grab the keys from your system, then you can just store the keys off site. It's another great tool for the toolbox.

Backup those drivers

I recently learned of a great little program to backup all of your drivers. This will make things so much easier the next time I need to reformat a computer, this program is called Double Driver

Just run Double Driver and store the file that is created off-site so that it will be available to you in the event that your system crashes unexpectedly. Also, it's a good idea to rerun the program and replace this file periodically as you install new devices and update drivers,

To give credit where credit is due, I learned of this great program from Shannon Morse of Hak5. If you have never heard of Hak5 you should check it out, I have learned a lot from them.

Have too many passwords?

If you are like me, you have tons of passwords. It seems that every website that you go to these days requires that you register. I have basically 5 passwords, each on a little more secure than the last depending on the type of website. Even though I can usually guess what I would have made my password, it helps to use a password manager.

A great password manager is LastPass. I use this daily at work and home. It has a plug-in for Firefox, Safari, Chrome & Internet Explorer  (Just in case anyone still uses Explorer). You only need to remember one master password, which you should guard with your life since it will allow someone to access ALL of your accounts online. I also recommend that you change your master password often. One suggestion for people who hate to change their passwords is to use the same password, but add something like the month, i.e:  (passwordapril, passwordmay, etc.) That way you will be able to remember it more easily. Check it out, it's FREE as is 95% of the software and programs that I use daily.

DynDns

DynDns is a great company that will allow you to obtain a free url that will follow your ever changing ip address. This allows you to run a home server without having to constantly check your ip address.

If you call your internet service provider, and request a static (always the same) ip address they will charge you double the price. Check them out at www.dyndns.com

Eye-Fi SD Card Review

Well, I got my eye-fi card today and started to play around with it. It started having some problems and would get errors and only send some of my photos to my Picasa Web Album.

My wife decided to go to the website support page, where she learned something very important. If you purchase the 4GB SD card as I did, your camera MUST be SDHC compliant and must also be listed on the eye-fi compatability list found here

Needless to say, I just got back from Sears where I put a new 12.1 megapixel Canon Powershot on layaway which was on the compatibility list. Apparently if you buy the 2GB SD card then you will not experience any compatibility issues because  2GB SD cards aren't classified as SDHC.

Other than this minor setback this is still a great little gadget and I can't wait to get my new camera.

Win an iPad!

Go to digg.taptaptap.com then follow and tweet the phrase on that page. There are 8 more chances to win, one chance each day and you can only tweet the message once per day. Check it out!

Konboot

Ok, here is a little program that I found extremely useful.  First, I would like to say that I don't condone the use of this program for illegal practices.

The program is called Konboot and it is designed to be burned as an iso image to a cd. You insert the cd into a pc that is set to boot from cd and this program will alow you to boot any pc without having to enter the windows password. This comes in handy in the event that you have forgotten your password or bought a used pc and don't have the password to get into it. There is also a new release of the program that works on Windows 7 and Linux.

The Dave Ramsey Show

Just wanted to share a link to an awesome guy that has inspired me to get my finances in order to be a better provider for my family. I owe a lot to Dave Ramsey and his awesome team for opening my eyes.

Think Geek

If you have never been to the website www.thinkgeek.com you should really check it out. They have lots of great little gadgets for just about everyone. My son loves the Annoy-A-Tron which is a prank gadget that you hide somewhere and it beeps at different intervals and drives people nuts. My son thought that he would be funny one night and hid one in my bedroom before he went to bed. Later, when I went to bed I kept hearing that annoying chirp, so I woke him from a dead sleep and made him come show me where he put it. It really is a fun gadget. Check it out, I'm sure you will find something you like.

Get a FREE Eye-Fi SD card!

 

It's a match made in heaven: the Eye-Fi card and Google's Picasa. (Credit: Eye-Fi)

In reference to my last post about the awesome little gadget known as the eye-fi, I thought I would share this with you.

I was recently adding photos to my Picasa album and noticed that I was running out of my free 1GB capacity. I decided to see what it might cost to upgrade my storage amount. I then learned that I could upgrade to 200GB for just $50 and by doing so, Google would send me a FREE eye-fi SD card. The SD card itself costs $49.95 so this is definitely a no-brainer! I just updated my account to 200GB and I will be eagerly awaiting my eye-fi to arrive. I will post a little review when I have had a chance to use it.

Eye-Fi

Well, in about 2 hours I will be headed to Orlando, FL for an awesome weekend at Disney World with my family. I really wish that I had purchased an awesome little device called an Eye-Fi it's an SD card that has a wireless transmitter built-in. It allows your photos to automatically be sent to your pc or your Flikr account as well as some other options. They start at $49.95 you can check them out at www.eye.fi

Limewire?

It seems that every time I get a call about a computer not running like it should, I find that someone has installed Limewire on it. Now, I'm not saying that Limewire is a bad program or that just installing it on your pc will cause you to get a virus. But the problem is that most people who use Limewire, at least in my experience are doing so to download illegal music and movies. In case you are unaware, illegal downloads are where all of the hackers hide their viruses and malicious tools. So do yourself a favor and don't use or download illegal music or software.

Remove Malware!

One of the biggest complaints that I get is "my computer is really slow" this is usually caused by malware. Malware usually consists of several malicious programs running on your computer in the background without your knowledge. These programs consume valuable resources and slow your computer down. A great free program that I use often is called Malwarebytes you can download it for free at www.malwarebytes.org it works great!