Getting a new computer? Look at our tips!

Many students have been coming to us for advice for different virus protection, flash drives, computer programs, external hard drives and other ideas on what to look for in a new computer.

A lot of people think they know a lot about computers, but deep down don't. I'm not trying to make fun of those people, but spending that much money on a computer that could die the day after your warranty is up is a scary thing. Hard drives are formatted to run and save computer programs. Flash drives are not, they are formatted to save things on, pretty much anything. If your hard drive on your computer does crash, it is cheaper for you to go to the store, spend between $40-150 on an internal hard drive and install it yourself. All you have to do it take the back panel off, unplug the hard drive and put the new one back in and install your operating system and any other programs.

If you want to buy a brand new computer, there are some things you want to consider. You want to look at is the hard drive itself. Make sure it is big enough for everything you want it to do. You also want to look at the RAM (memory), which is the speed of the computer. Windows XP needs about 512 mb to run, vista needs 3 GB, windows 7 needs 1 GB and MAC OS-X needs 2 GB, plus you may want addition RAM to make the computer faster. Another thing is look at is the processing speed. When you look at a new computer, there a lot of numbers that are available, but you want to look at is the GHz. I recommend anything above a 2.0 GHz. When you get below that, your computer will be slow to process the information sent to it such as loading more than one program or switching tabs on the internet and everything between.

For virus protection, why waste your money and buy something? You get viruses for free so why not get a free anti-virus. With many students coming to us saying that have problems with Norton, all those problems are true. Norton will slow down your computer because it has programs running in the background that takes a lot of memory or speed to run on your system. If you get any other anti-virus, that have a smaller version of it but it works just as good or better. Here, we suggest Antivir or AVG. Every program has its problems, but you will have to find one that works for you.

If you need any other tips on how to keep your computer running strong, no matter how old it is, stop into the STC and we'll tell you how to keep it running. We cannot do it for you or show you how to do it, but we can tell you how if you would like.

New iPhone worm can act like botnet say experts

Attention iPhone users! There is a worm exploiting Jailbroken iPhones when unsuspecting owners access online banking through their iPhone. This is currently a problem in the Netherlands and elsewhere, but it could eventually spread to the United States.

People are reporting money missing from their bank accounts when the phone gets this virus. There are some ways to detect if your iPhone has been compromised. For more information on this virus, read more at BBC News or Mashable.

If you own a (Jailbroken) iPhone, here is a quick, step-by-step article by Chris Leckness of iPhoneMVP that will help you protect your phone by changing its root password.

Google Chrome Operating System

Google has been hard at work an open source operating system for low cost netbooks. According to Google representatives, they have designed the OS to load each program in the tab of a browser instead of a window. This and other features of Google Chrome have been designed to optimize performance and impact speed, providing a load time of a mere 7 seconds! Read the complete article from Technology reporter, Jonathan Fildes, on BBC News.

Google Chrome OS demonstration

A look at PhotoShop Mobile

Once you are stuffed with Turkey and find yourself sitting around with nothing to do but peruse through the Black Friday ads, take a moment and read up on the sweet apps that are being developed for mobile phones equipped with the Android OS and iPhone, like the PhotoShop Mobile app for the iPhone and now Adroid equipped phones.