The Week In Computing

by Bob Seidel

* Well, another week goes by here at bobseidel.com. As I predicted, all of the calls that I received to eradicate the Sasser worm were from people with dial-up Internet connections. I said last week, it's time to upgrade. I see that Time Warner Cable is offering a special on Road Runner, with free installation and only $29.95 per month for six months. BellSouth now has 3 tiers of residential service - DSL Lite at $24.95, DSL Ultra at $39.95 and DSL Xtreme at $44.95. These packages have increased amounts of bandwidth, but the Xtreme package also includes a static IP address, if you need one. See www.fastaccess.com for BellSouth DSL and www.rrhighspeed.com for TWC Road Runner. But, DO IT NOW.

* I have noticed that the PC world has been getting fairly stagnant over the past few months. Prices have stabilized, and there is not much new on the horizon. Processor speeds are holding fairly steady and in fact Intel has cancelled its next processor family to concentrate on enhancing the architecture of its current products. As I have said before, the only application challenging PCs these days is video processing (creating DVDs, etc). And even with my (fairly) new, high-speed PC, it still takes hours to render one hour of video. So, a processor that is a few percentage points faster is not going to make a lot of difference. The message here is that, given the current prices and performance stability, its time to upgrade your PC also.

So, if you listen to Bob, you will have a new PC and high-speed Internet service by this time next month!

* I have gotten a fair number of calls from people who do not understand that the anti-virus software that they got free with their new PC was probably a demo or limited time version only, and has probably timed out by now. Remember: an old anti-virus program is useless - it's the NEW viruses that you need protection from. If your anti-virus software is not current, head to the local store and spend the $40 or so for a new package - to me, its well worth the money for the protection you get. Getting frequent anti-virus and Windows updates is also another key reason to have a high-speed Internet connection.

* The wireless adapter in my wife's PC recently failed and so I was motivated to upgrade my home wireless system from the older 802.11b standard to the faster 802.11g. I got the latest product offering from Linksys that claims to increase 'G' performance a further 35% by being a more efficient user of the radio transmissions. Although the router (and built-in wireless access point) were fairly standard, I was forced to buy an internal PCI card for my wife's PC as they did not have the enhanced 'G' adapter in an external USB version. I do not like the PCI cards for wireless, as they tend to have less signal reception due to the antenna being down at the back of the PC and due to having the circuitry inside the PC. Being inside the PC can cause a lessening of sensitivity to do internal electrical 'noise'.

But the combination did not work well at all. With the 'B' setup, the signals to my wife's PC were never great but they were definitely worse with the 'G'. So I am probably going to send the 'G' stuff back and just get an external USB 'B' adapter for my wife's PC until this all sorts itself out.

* I added a network print server to my network. This is a little box that costs about $50 and allows you to connect a printer directly to the network instead of a particular PC. If you have your printer connected to a PC and share it on your network, then you have to have that PC turned on all the time for others in the network to use. With a print server, that is no longer the case. Note that you will probably need Windows XP to use it - I have seen drivers for previous versions of Windows and they occasionally hung up. The necessary support is built in to Windows XP. You can get print servers in a variety of connections, and also wireless.

* That's all from bobseidel.com this week!

(Bob Seidel is a local computer consultant in the Southport / Oak Island area. You can visit his website at www.bobseidel.com or e-mail him at bsc@bobseidel.com).