A friendly reminder

You can always ask for help on any technical issue by emailing
help.d.myst@gmail.com Responses will be sent back to you via email and
posted to the site as well, with your personal information omitted.

Howto...

Today we start something new for us, in what will be an ongoing series for this blog. How to Better Understand Geeks. For this initial post, I'm going to break down the basic parts of you PC and explain them in easy to digest analogies. Without further ado: How to Understand What Makes up Your Computer - Part 1.

Kilo-, Mega-, Giga-, Tera-, Peta-
If you see these prefixes before a word, it's basically just telling you how many there are. Kilo is 1,000, and in the order that the rest appear, they are 1,000 times more. So Mega is 1,000 Kilo, and Giga is 1,000 Mega and so on. We are just starting to see items with Terabyte hard drives(more on that later) hitting the market, so you may come across this term, but for the near future, you might not need to remember what the Peta- prefix means.

Megahertz VS. Megabytes(and Gigahertz VS. Gigabytes):
These two terms are often confused among the technologically uninitiated, and if you can't keep them straight, you will stick out like a sore thumb to a geek. Basically, hertz is a measurement of how many "cycles", or thought processes, a device can perform in 1 minute. More is definitely faster. A byte is a unit of data, or information, that the computer remembers. You'll see bytes(Megabytes or gigabytes, usually) describing 2 different aspects of a computer most frequently; RAM and hard drives.

RAM(Random Access Memory) and Hard Drives:
Simply put, this is your computer's short term, and long term memory. Another way of thinking about ram is comparing it to your desk at work. If you have a very small desk, it can be hard to keep organized and get anything done quickly, but with a larger desk, it's easier to keep your tasks organized and separated and you can get work done much quicker, regardless of how sharp you are. Hard drives are your storage for everything that you want, and your computer needs, to keep on hand. These are your filing cabinets, your bookshelves, your desk drawers, and anything else that you use to store your stuff, all combined. Both of these are measured in bytes, but just remember that RAM is like the random stuff you have to remember over the course of the day to get things done, and a hard drive is everything you need to remember for long periods of time.
What more RAM means to you: The more RAM you have, the more programs your computer can run at once. Not all programs are created equal, and some take more RAM than others to run smoothly. More RAM also means these needy applications will run smoother.
What a larger hard drive means to you: The more stuff you can save on your computer. If all you do is check email and browse the web, you don't need much. If you've got a family computer, your kids will use a lot more than you do. Having more storage space means the difference between having a few songs saved on your computer and having all of your music, pictures and videos saved onto your computer. If you're not that ambitious, or plan on keeping the computer all to yourself, you can probably get by just fine with a smaller drive.

The Processor(CPU):
This is easily the brain of your computer. Its speed is measured in Hertz(nowadays from 1.2 to 3.0 gigahertz is common), and number of cores. Not too much to be concerned about here, just that more of either >means faster, and less power usage on the electric bill.
What a faster processor means to you: less waiting. There are still other things than can slow you down on your computer, but a faster processor means that your computer will respond to your commands much quicker. And having multiple cores is just like adding another processor to your computer, it'll respond that much faster. Still with me? You're doing great. Don't forget, you can always bookmark this or print this off to read later.

Wireless(WiFi):
Don't let the name fool you, you will still have at least one wire running to your computer. This just means one less wire adding to the mess. This always comes with a letter describing what kind of WiFi it has(if any), and the later in the alphabet, the faster it can access information from elsewhere, and the further it can be from the access point(the source of the signal). It's basically a walkie-talkie just for computers to talk to each other in their own language. By the way, their alphabet skips several letters, so don't worry about the gaps, just remember later means farther and faster.
What the letters mean to you: "A" means the two computers(or a computer and a router) need to be right next to each other, and don't share very well. "B" is fine for across the same room if all you want to do is browse the web or check email. "G" is enough to cover a small house with good transfer speeds, and "N" means you can stream videos from your back porch to your laptop without many hiccups(see earlier posts if you aren't sure what that means).

Up to this point, you've been armed with enough knowledge to compare the hardware in prebuilt computers that you would find in any retail location, but that still isn't quite enough to help you make a decision if you aren't sure what you need when you are looking to buy.

What are your needs?
Let's start with what you *want* to do with the computer: If you want to go online, do your taxes, pay bills, check email and the news, and maybe watch some videos on YouTubeTM, chances are really good that you'd be happy with what's commonly called a netbook or a nettop. These tasks are not very demanding at all on a computer, and these computers are built with scaled-back components with that in mind. Don't confuse "scaled-back" with "lower-end"; these are new parts designed for low demand usage. They are state of the art, and best of all, inexpensive.

If you'd like to branch out a little bit and do a bit more demanding tasks such as editing pictures you've taken with your digital camera to get rid of red-eye or maybe just brighten it up a bit, record backups of your DVD's(legally, mind you), or record your music collection to your computer, you fall into the range of most computers out there for sale today. A faster processor, and more RAM will really help speed up these tasks, but if you plan on doing a lot of them, you'll need a spacious hard drive as well. How spacious really depends on a lot of things, but100 to 300 gigabytes will please most casual users.

What about games? The answer to this really depends on what you mean. If you play the game by going to a website, or simple puzzle or card games, your needs are met simply by having an internet connection and a computer. If the games involve 3D graphics and look like a real-breathing world inside your computer monitor, you will need a decent video card, and a computer fitting of one of the slightly more demanding users. Video Cards have specifications very similar to the computer itself. It has its own processor and memory, and the good news is, upgrading or installing a video card to your desktop computer is a fairly simple process these days, and can be done long after you've bought your computer. If you are thinking about buying a video card to play games, start by looking at the boxes for the games themselves. They always have a "minimum" and a "recommended" configuration for your computer and video card. Find the games you want to play, read the recommended specs, and find a card with at least those specs.

Now I'm going to make the very safe assumption that you don't need a top-of-the-line, bleeding-edge computer. There are a few people who could really put those to use: people who work with graphics at a professional level, and video game fanatics. Both of these groups have a pretty good idea what their needs are in a computer already.

Tech Glossary: Online Video

We've all heard of YouTube, and may have even watched a video on it. We're hearing more and more about other sites like Hulu and want to know more about watching videos online, but the lingo may sound a bit intimidating. Here are a handful of words you may come across when looking for videos online:

Streaming: basically, this means that your computer is playing the video directly from the website it's on, and not being stored on your computer. It's not a get-now-watch-later situation. The pro is that it doesn't take up any space on your computer, the con is that you generally need a really good connection to watch video this way without interruption.

Buffering: speaking of interruptions, this is the standard way of dealing with slower, or less reliable connections. A buffer is basically a way to give your computer a head-start. If the video is a high quality, your network connection is slow, or some combination of the two is happening, the time it takes to get the video is longer than the actual video itself. A good analogy for watching a video online is like rolling a matchbox car downhill. It won't make it down on the pavement, so you have to lay track down for it. The speed that you can lay down track is like your network speed, and the speed of the matchbox car is the video's playback speed. If you started laying track at the same time as releasing the car, you would have to stop a lot. Buffering gives you enough time to lay down the track before letting the car go, hopefully enough time to let the car make it all the way down without stopping.

Torrents: some of you may come across this term if you are looking for a particular video online. A Torrent is a way of "packaging" a video to download to your computer. You'll need a program that can handle torrent files(BitTorrent, or the browser Opera, are a couple of the more popular options). There's more to these files than I've explained, but this is enough to let you use them.

Codecs: These are like instructions for your computer to assemble the video. If a video was made using a certain codec, your computer will need that same codec to make sense of the video. There are a number of codecs out there, but if you have Flash, DivX, and QuickTime(iTunes) installed, chances are good that you won't have a problem playing videos because of a codec problem.

Another thing to be aware of is the legality of watching videos online. If the videos you watch have commercials in them, chances are fair that it's a legal way to view them. Torrents are frequently used illegally, but not always, so if you have moral objections to watching videos illegally, you're better off avoiding torrents. If you do choose to watch videos illegally, chances are very good that nothing will happen to you, but your computer faces a greater risk of infection from malicious software should you go that route. I'm not going to advise you how to better protect yourself in those situations, as that's a form of encouragement. If you're not very adventurous, but are still curious about viewing videos online, stick with sites such as YouTube and Hulu. YouTube does a pretty good job of making sure the videos on their site have their owner's permission to be there, and Hulu only has videos that are supported by the studios that own them. There are plenty of other sites out there, but these two are pretty low-risk for the uninitiated.

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Digital Cameras

Ok folks, it's time for me to attempt to clear up the mud filled waters in the world of camera shopping. If you've ever even looked at a camera on display or online in the last 4 years, you've heard the buzzword "Megapixel" thrown at you at least a dozen times. Don't be fooled, it's not a measurement of quality, but *quantity. *It's not as simple as how many pictures the camera can store, but actually how much info is stored in each picture. *If you have a nice lens* on the camera, having more megapixels will mean a more detailed picture. So how do you know if it's a nice lens? Easy. Manufacturers call this part Optical Zoom, which on digital cameras is measured by how much it can magnify the image coming in. For example, a 2x optical zoom means that it can magnify the image twice as large as normal. I've come up with a simple little gauge to evaluate cameras, it's pretty easy to remember: Add the Optical Zoom to the Megapixels, save that number. Multiply the same two numbers, and take the average of this answer and your first answer.

Now what does this all mean? If you get a result that's less than 16, this camera is good for those of us who are happy with the pictures you get from those one-time-use cameras you see in the check out lines. If the number you end up with is between 16 and 25, this is a camera that's probably good for those of us who like a sharper picture, and might like to hang up a few around the house. Results greater than 25 are not likely to disappoint anyone looking for great quality from a consumer grade camera. If you're looking for a professional grade camera, chances are you've already got better resources guiding you than this little equation.

Rules to Surf By

Email:
1. If you get an email with a link in it, no matter how compelling, DO NOT CLICK ON IT! Exceptions to this rule are when you have discussed the link with the sender outside of the email. In other words, if someone hasn't told you they are going to send you a link to something, and you haven't asked them about any unannounced links, it's not a good idea. Also, if signing up for a website, it's common practice for them to send a confirmation email containing a link. Since you know that it's coming, this is also OK.

2. If you receive an email stating that you must forward it on for any reason, you will not gain any kind of benefit from forwarding it. For all intents and purposes, it's as if someone whispered a message in your ear and told you to repeat it to all of your friends, and if you did, some other person would give you money. This doesn't work in "the real world", it doesn't work online, either. Unless you get a funny joke or something you just feel like sharing with your friends, it's probably best to ignore the forward button.

3. If you get an email with an attachment, treat it like you would a link per Rule 1.

Browsing:
4. Know what subdomains are. For example: http://mail.yahoo.com "mail." is the subdomain, and "yahoo.com" is the domain. Remember that the site you are at is always the domain. If the subdomain sounds legit, but the domain doesn't, beware! It's a common practice for scammers to setup bogus websites designed to mislead you into thinking you are at a reputable site when really they are trying to gather personal information about yourself.

5. Try to stick to websites that you know are safe. Don't assume that the sites you have been going to are safe just because you have been going there for some number of days/months/years/etc. Safe assumptions are the sites that everyone has heard about(Yahoo, Google, MSN), poor assumptions are sites that have a lot of popups, loaded with ads, or "require" you to install their own software to view the site*.

*These are called plugins, and many of them are OK. Flash, Silverlight, JavaScript are the most common safe ones, and their are others, but it's best to be skeptical when asked to install anything on your computer.

6. Arm yourself! Get a safer browser(Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari), get spyware protection software(Spybot, AdAware, etc.), virus protection software(Avast, AVG) and a good, but simple firewall(ZoneAlarm). All of the programs listed here are free, and fairly effective.

That's all for now, but I may revise this list in the future. Feel free to print out this list and put it up right next to the family computer.

Media Extenders

Heads up all you intermediate-level gadget geeks, here's a nice project that some of you may have already started, but may need some extra guidance, or you're just looking for some ways to flesh it out a bit.

So you've got an Xbox 360/PS3/Roku SoundBridge/etc. and you want to make use of the media extending features of it. The easiest way to do this is share your folders in Windows(XP, Media Center, or Vista), but this is really only a good option if you plan on having the computer on at the same time as your extender. So what if you want all that extra media to always be available?

Build a server. Trust me, it's not as hard as it sounds. You can put one together using your old parts, just as you would any other desktop computer, but instead of installing Windows or OSX, throw on a (relatively) user-friendly version of Linux like Ubuntu(For free! Legally, too!). Then it's just a matter of starting up a service like Samba to let your other computers talk to the server, and pointing a UPnP Server application in the direction of your files. Don't be daunted by this, you can take your time, and if you get it wrong, you're not going to be wiping out any files, and you're not going to be wasting any money to tinker around a bit. It also doesn't take that long if you like the default settings on some of these programs as well, and with a little guidance, you could could reasonably expect to finish this project in a day.

As far as UPnP servers go, I highly recommend MediaTomb, it works well with all the examples I mentioned above, it's fairly easy to use, and easy to navigate and administer from any computer on your home network.

That's just a taste for now, I'll provide links and greater details later this week.

Portable Players

It used to be that everything was a "walkman". Then came portable CD Players. There were even a few MiniDisc players out there, but all in all, you knew what each of them were, and what to call them. Now, there are Portable Video Players, Portable Media Players, MP3 Players, Digital Audio Players, IPods, some of them play this but not that, some of them need memory cards: it's very hard to keep up with all the terminology and technology.

Digital Audio Player - This is any device that plays audio from a digital source, such as a file on your computer. This term applies to every digital audio player, and not just the portable ones. Some of these may be designed to be added to your home entertainment center, or they may be smaller than your wallet.

Audio Files - WMA, MP3, AAC, OGG, etc These are all examples of different audio file formats. MP3 is probably the most popular format, and allows you unrestricted use. Studios are often a little concerned about formats without Digital Rights Management(A feature of certain file formats that restricts how and where you can access the file), so rather than selling songs in MP3 or Ogg Vorbis(OGG) files, they group up with Microsoft and release them in WMA, or Apple and their AAC files, which have DRM. Chances are good if a player can handle a specific type of DRM file, they can handle MP3s as well. It doesn't always work the other way around.

Portable Video Player - Any device that can play video files falls under this category. Like audio files, there are a number of different formats for video. I won't go into a lot of detail on this, but the most common formats are WMV, AVI, DivX, XviD, and Mpeg-4(MP4).

Portable Media Player - This has multiple functions, often meaning it will handle both Audio and Video files.

IPod - You've head this term, you've seen the commercials. If you still don't know what exactly it is or does, hopefully this will clear things up for you. Ipod is a brand name device, made by Apple. Every one of them will play audio files, and depending on the model, video files as
well. They are easy on the eyes, and generally considered to be the easiest to use of portable players(of any type). They have other features as well, but that's the gist of it.

Now, this all should be considered just a cursory guide to the terms, and not as a suggestion on what to buy. Hopefully now you can at least know what to ask the clerk when shopping around, and maybe even understand his/her answer.