My Digital Team

Battle of the ISP

2009-06-03T07:40:00.001-07:00

Internet is becoming more and more of a requirement in people's daily routine. It is therefore often crucial to select a provider that has a good balance between pricing and dependable service.

There is nothing worse than badly needing Internet and not having it.

The choice in Internet services, for the most part throughout the US, is an oligopoly between Comcast's cable options and AT&T's DSL services.

If you ask any technician or specialist in the field which is better, you will get mixed reviews. I myself am biased towards AT&T's services by a long shot for several reasons:

You get what you pay for - AT&T offers several packages differing in speed, and offer simple and hassle free upgrading and downgrading between these packages without contracts and outrageous charges. Comcast on the contrary offers multiple packages that are very complex in nature, never fully explaining themselves to the customer.
Reliability - This is a HUGE deal when it comes to being connected. In the Houston area, Comcast recently took over Time Warner's network and attempted to transition all of their equipment and infrastructure into an already established network. This is till causing loads of problems and has made their Internet services extremely unreliable (constant service interruptions, degraded speeds, email problems, etc.). AT&T seems to have reliability down as customers hardly ever seem to be down due to a wide area network problem.
Equipment - Last but not least, most of us want a wireless network so we can hook up all of our laptops, game consoles, etc. For this, AT&T offers a fantastic and all-in-one solution with their 2Wire products. These are DSL modems, routers and wireless access points all in one simple aesthetically pleasing package. Comcast, on the other hand, isn't only lacking a similar solution (without crazy rental fees for a generic wireless router), but also block anything over 3 devices from accessing your cable service if you do happen to go out and buy your own wireless router! They do so in order to limit bandwidth per customer they claim.

All in all, my intent here is not to push you in one direction or the other, but to educate you on the many things to keep in mind when choosing a particular ISP. So keep your eyes out for the aforementioned pros and cons when picking any Internet provider, and most of all keep in mind that service reliability can be greatly affected by where you live or do business so be sure to get feedback from other local residents and/or offices before making your decision.

Maintenance (Not just your car needs it)

2009-05-06T11:41:00.000-07:00

We often wonder why it is that our computers are not as quick as they used to be fresh out of the box.

Allow this simple analogy to explain the cause of this problem: Imagine if your car for 3 months, non-stop, without ever turning it off or changing the oil. Unless you're really lucky and drive a Japanese car, it will not be happy and will most certainly not run the way it did the first few miles.

This is very similar to running your computer non-stop without doing some simple maintenance here and there. It will become bogged down and slow.

How can MDT help?
We are going to offer you a few quick tips and tricks to speed that thing up and get it going the way it used to run. Do remember to always backup your important data before making any system changes such as this one.

First we are going to grab a free tool which will help us with this process. It is coined "CCleaner" and is a great utility. To download it, click the icon below.

Find it here

Once you have downloaded the above file, proceed to install CCleaner. Be sure to de-select the check box next to installing the "Yahoo Toolbar" unless you want to add it.

Find the CCleaner shortcut on your desktop and double click it.
From here, make sure nothing in your recycling bin is of importance. Once you are ready, make sure the Cleaner button on the top left is selected and click "Run Cleaner"
You may receive a warning as shown below which you can accept by clicking ok. This simply reminds you again to make sure no important files are saved in places like the recycle bin. If you don't want to see this message in the future check the box on the bottom of the window.

When complete, CCleaner will notify you in it's detailed report. It will tell you how much it deleted as well as what it deleted.

Why does this work?
Over time, your computer will collect temporary files (files the computer needs at a particular point during a process but not for a permanent basis). These files start to quickly pile up and not only take up space but also slow down your system as many of them continue to run.

Run CCleaner on a weekly basis to keep your system free of temporary files and processes.

Stop by next week for some more help in the computer maintenance department!

If in doubt, get a Netbook!

2009-04-17T21:23:00.000-07:00

Electronics are ridiculously easy to sell these days because instead of needing to worry about some type of built-in obsolescence, engineers simply make the same thing only better, faster and more importantly: smaller and cheaper.

Well they've done it again. It is called the Netbook.

"A netbook is a new type of laptop that is purely designed for wireless communication and access to the internet" (Wikipedia).

It is important to realize what the second part of this definition entails. "Access to the Internet" is an extremely broad phrase. As I will explain, these days the internet contains everything most computer users need.

Bear with me for a moment as we look into the near future:
Computers are quickly becoming close to only one thing - A tool for accessing the internet and all it has to offer. We are approaching an age wherein everything in our lives will be somehow linked to the world wide web. No matter whether it is our jobs or a trip to the grocery store, you will soon not be able to do any of these tasks without the internet somehow knowing about it.

This is already happening in many ways. So how does the introduction of the netbook symbolize a new age of technology? Simple. No matter whether its email, programs, documents, music and entertainment...It's all online. How often do you go into the store to purchase software anymore? Most of us haven't done this in a while unless it's just for nostalgic purposes. This is where netbooks come in. they are a type of newly evolved form of laptops without the soon-to-be outdated components such as CD drives, thus saving you a lot of money (average netbook price approx. $350, with Windows XP).

So why still buy a laptop?
Many still prefer the full capabilities of a laptop computer, including a bigger workspace/keyboard, and a bit more power. They are still a different style of computing that many will need to get used to but in the near future, most laptops will merge with netbooks in style, design and portability.

Good Antivirus, or just good marketing?

2009-02-19T21:07:00.000-08:00

How often have you come across a pre-installed program claiming that if you dish out a few bills you will be fully protected against all the nasty threats out there? Its only 2 clicks away. However, the old proverb says, if it's too good to be true it probably is.

Have you ever wondered why Anti-Virus programs such as Norton (by Symantec) and McAfee spend so much money on advertising and promoting their products? If you were to ask me for my opinion, if they spent half the money on improving their products that they do on marketing, they may actually catch a virus here and there.

The most important factor that makes or breaks any Anti-Virus product is what is most commonly referred to as it's "real time" protection. In laymen terms, it is key that your Anti-Virus programs is good at stopping a virus BEFORE it installs and infects your computer.

In my field of work the most common concern is most certainly "How to I stay secure?"

Without any affiliation whatsoever to the company, I gladly recommend Grisoft's product line: AVG Anti-Virus. AVG has for many years now blown other products out of the water in threat prevention and detection. Besides that, AVG's products also have a light footprint meaning the program doesn't slow down your computer nearly as much as most of the other products on the market - a very important quality. However, the best part of all is that they offer a free version (for home and personal use only). Give it a test drive, you will not regret it. Besides the fact that it has an excellent scanner for both viruses and spyware (malware, rogueware, etc.), it also has many other rich features such as their link scanner which instantly checks all links found on websites to verify they aren't hosting threats.

Copyright Notice:
All Symantec and Grisoft content posted is in no way affiliated with MyDigitalTeam and belongs to their affiliated companies, Copyright © 2009 All rights reserved.

Mac Attack (Mods to make an eMac "bench-friendly")

2008-12-04T22:42:00.000-08:00

As Apple's marketing team just seems to keep getting better at what they do, Macs are simply becoming too popular not to service.

As a computer technician, I come across this fact on an almost daily basis now. The demand for Mac repairs and data recovery has dramatically increased. The tech bench, however, has not yet become Mac-savvy. What do I mean? Lets get a little technical:

Macs love to be different in EVERY way possible. Many will argue that this is what makes them so appealing. One of such ways is Macs HFS/HFS+ file system. In leyman's terms, the way that files are saved and managed on a Macs hard drive is very different than that of a PC.

So to get back to the bench being "Mac Ready", this basically means you need an OS X based operating system installed on a computer which gives you access to it's innards. Given the budget for such a demand, I wanted to do something with what we already had: an eMac

Now to be honest, this is hardly an ideal Mac to mod, as it has been INCREDIBLY well engineered to fit entirely in what would usually have been only the monitor. This means a tight fit, many screws (approx. 300), hardly any "case" access to the system board, and to top it all off, a very dangerous high-voltage exposed Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) assembly.

With all of the aforementioned considered, I still proceeded to open up this contraption. The goal, essentially, is to provide external hard drive (IDE) and power connections thus allowing us to hot swap other hardware (ie. HFS/+ partitioned IDE/SATA hard drives, airport cards) more easily in order to diagnose/extract data.

Why not simply use a USB to IDE/SATA adapter you might ask?
The answer is simple: They are extremely unreliable (I've seen them damage hard drives), and USB transfering hogs CPU resources which could otherwise be used by the recovery program to do it's tasks, therefore slowing the entire process. This is the last thing you want happening on a rapidly failing hard drive.

After much thought, I decided the CD drive access bay was the best place to provide an exit for the data and power cables. With a few careful cuts, melts and a bit of patience, I tapped into the power and IDE channel originally dedicated to the eMac's internal hard drive, fed the cabling through the CD bay and pieced it all back together.

Voila! Never say never. You can always use what you have at your disposal, as long as you are open minded and bit creative...

Copyright Notice:
All Apple related/mentioned content is in no way affiliated with MyDigitalTeam and belongs to Apple Inc., Copyright © 2008 All rights reserved.