A Friend

This is the story of a friend. A friend who bought a car. Now this friend decided that he would try and save as much money as possible on this car. So as many financially challenged people do he decided to find a cheap car. He determined that a $500 car, which is about as cheap as you can get one would suffice. So the first car company that he came across he bought his car from them for $500 with a free tank of gas. Now the interesting about his cheap little car is that it seems to have had some corners cut on it. First of all while the car is rather bulky it has a fairly weak engine. While the car manufacturer claimed that it was a 1.3 liter if you were to add up the cubic space of the three cylinders it comes out to about .98 liters. Now this isn't a big deal driving on flat land or down hills. Up hill, however, is annoyingly slow. Sometimes it just sits there engine full rev not moving forward or backward. You wonder if it will ever move again. Also the tires are rather thin and only last about a year before they need to be replaced. The tires actually seem to work very well as the car has only slid off the road once or twice. So after the year this friend bought another set of the same thin tires.

This is actually a strange thing since my friend rarely does any work on his car. He has the idea that his car should just work. Every time with no upkeep. He has never even changed the oil. The car started to have a clankey noise for a while. Rather than figuring it out, he thought it's just what the car does or at least he didn't know anything about it so he'd just let it go. Anyway his entire engine blew leaving him unable to work for 2 weeks while it was being fixed. Thankfully he paid $300 extra for the warranty.

Now you may think that he is a little silly for buying such a poor vehicle and then not take care of it, but it gets worse. He never locks his doors. Now this isn't a big deal since his car isn't worth stealing, but what he leaves in it is. Insurance papers, bank account numbers, family information, credit cards, pay pal accounts, and passwords for everything.

Ok, if you haven't figured it out now, I'm not really talking about cars. I'm actually talking about computers. The wired internet has been out on my laptop for about a week now. Its really more of an inconvenience since my roommates have computers that I can use portable apps on, and the other buildings have WiFi. What brought this e-mail on then? Jeremy's laptop. I will tell you honestly that all computer manufacturers have about equal problems with their laptops, but Dell is the one I love to gripe about the most. (I'll post all the things I've come across with Dells maybe later) Now Jeremy's laptop is a common abomination to electronics. The first of all is the meager hardware. I have said it for nearly 4 years now, 256 is not enough memory to run XP. Yet, cheap computers are put out constantly with 256. Now memory is not memory. It comes in a variety of speeds and sizes. 256 doesn't always come out to 256 for example this computer is said to have 248 MB of memory rather than 256. This comes down to multiple fuzzy definitions of memory. But you get the drift. A few brighter than normal pixels here and a smaller battery there and you have a $500 laptop. Right now I'm looking at the task bar icon for his anti-spyware. It shows that virus scanning is disabled. I was trying to watch some google videos earlier. I couldn't stand the constant pauses while the machine accessed the hard drive. The mouse usually double clicks rather than single clicks or doesn't click at all. Start up takes forever, but when the computer comes to a stand still you wonder if it would be faster just to kill the machine and start again.

So what does this have to do with you? Well

1. productivity. You probably don't think about how much time you waste on waiting for programs to load or restarts when your computer crashes. Miss clicks, letters poping up onto the screen seconds after you push the button. They will add up. If time is money, you are wasting it.

2. identity. If you are like me you probably reuse passwords. You also probably have a pay pal account or buy online. There is a misnomer about hackers they aren't misguided nerds who like to ruin people's lives by making them spend hours fixing their computers. They are thieves. If you don't take care of it they will get into your computer, keep track of everything you do. Passwords, SS numbers, Credit Cards, where you live, where your kids go to school. If you don't protect yourself, they can know all of this. And fixing the results of identity theft is very very very time consuming... as in months.

(ack! the hard drive just started thinking without me doing anything. I wonder what it is doing.)

So what can you do to keep yourself speedy and safe?

1. If you can help it do not buy a desktop from a company. If you are confident and knowledgeable build your own. It will be faster and cheaper. If you cannot do this yourself, have someone who has built other people's computers to build you one. Pay them between 5 and 10% over the cost of the parts. For best price and quality it should cost between $800 and $1,800 roughly. Though your tastes may vary.

2. For a laptop do not buy one for less than $1,000. But not for more than $2,000. Why? Because you want to buy something that is obsolete in a couple years not a couple years ago. In this case bring your favorite computer nerd to help you with your decision. We're here to help!

Side note on obsolete: The state of obsolete is not neccisarily a bad one unless you are set on being on the cutting edge. If that is true disregard the previous two points as you will spend several thousand dollars monthly. Obsolete does not mean useless. The definition I will offer for obsolete is: the state of being no longer wanted though in working order. Example VHS is obsolete. Though it works well, no one wants it because it cannot play quality film.

3. Use Anti-virus. This means keep it updated and scheduled to scan your computer regularly. Your computer probably came with a year's worth of anti-virus. This is good for about a year. Then you need to find a new option. I use a free version AVG which works very well. You may be tempted to just buy whatever came with your computer, but like the tires in my story there may be better options and cheaper packages out there.

4. Use Anti-spyware. Spyware is probably more dangerous than anti-virus in that it is very tricky. It often comes packaged with other software and can in itself look legitimate. I'm looking at you Aol Instant Messenger. I use Microsoft's anti spyware, but it in itself isn't that great. I'd try a different brand.

5. Use a fire wall. Now since SP2 XP does have a firewall, but I don't trust it. I prefer using a free version of Zone Alarm. Which is a software firewall. It is also good to use a hardware firewall such as one built into a router. This however, will cost a little and no one likes to pay more for technology.

6. Use your head. If people used their cars like they used their computers we'd all have to take the train. Take care of it. Think about what you need to protect it. Ask your local computer whisperer. We're here to help! Oh and don't use Internet explorer.