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Vol. 5, No.41
10-13-05
1 Guru contact hints
2 If J. Edgar Hoover were alive today
3 DARPA challenge, Yahoo! Blogs, Yahoo/MS IM, bad poetry
4 Updated Karen’s Powertools
5 Is updating the BIOS needed?
With the arrival of Fall we at Guru Central are gearing up for our busy season. The cooler temperatures tend to lead to more indoor activity, including computer use, which invariably results in more questions for us about errors and glitches, comments on certain software or hardware and the occasional flat out system crash.
With that I bring you my semi-annual collection of tips for contacting us and getting the most from our free services.
The easiest way to drop us a line with a question is the email form at www.thepcgurus.com. Just click e-mail us at the top of the page, input your name, email address, the subject of the message and ask away. This forwards your message to all team members. This insures that everyone from technicians to programmers to lawyers to talk show hosts will see it and give you the best chance of a definitive answer on the first try.
That “best chance” comment may sound a bit odd but it ties in to my second comment. Over the years many of you have developed a history with individual team members and often send your questions directly to them. That’s also fine but keep in mind that this is a volunteer group and as such we have (kinda sorta semi) personal lives, which may take us away from our email now and then.
As an example, if you’ve emailed Hash directly over the last few weeks you likely haven’t received a response. Of course he recently got married (to the lovely and newly minted Kim Venkatachalam), got a new job and is currently packing to move to Paducah. See how easy it is for us to lose track of emails? Hash’s email address is hash@ucanweb.com in case you would like to get in touch with him <grin> ;) and all of us here at the Guru’s wish he and Kim the best of luck in their new life together!
What I’m getting at is sometimes we all go on vacation, rebuild our PCs, go out of town on business etc. All of us strive to answer the emails you send directly to us but sometimes we’re just not available for a few days or weeks. That’s what makes the web form the most reliable way to reach us. Even then very specialized questions best answered by an individual member may be missed because that member is unavailable.
Even if that’s the case one of the other members will likely respond with an offer to research the issue. If you don’t get a response don’t despair, just give it a few days and post the question again.
Another email tip, don’t respond to the newsletter. That goes to the remailer and none of us ever see it. If you have a comment or question concerning the newsletter you can forward it to pcguru@microdome.net, thepcgurus@gmail.com, daniel@thepcgurus.com etc., depending on which section you’re referring to. The email address of the author is listed below each section. If there’s no address that would mean I wrote it so you can email me (the microdome.net address).
The chat room has long been a source of instant help every evening after 8:00 EDT but the outage during the Guru website revamping has really cut down on traffic for that resource. It’s available again and can be reached from www.thepcgurus.com by clicking chatroom at the top of the page. Just click the “Click here to join the chat” link and accept the installation of the Java client (if that message comes up) and you’re in. You can ask questions in there and get real time answers.
On the same page you can click on forums and post questions on the bulletin board. This venue displays your question to anyone else that accesses the forums and can get you an answer from anyone, not just Guru members.
Lastly I’ll touch on the actual questions. The more information you can give the more likely you’ll get a quick resolution. If you include the exact error message text, the version of Windows/OS X/Linux that you use, what security programs you’re running (antivirus, firewall etc.) and the circumstances that lead to the error we can usually track it down in short order. A message that asks “When I turn my computer on I get a blue screen with a bunch of stuff on it and it stops, what should I do?” doesn’t give us much to go on.
Hopefully I haven’t burst any bubbles but that’s us, warts and all. We’re here to help, we’ll do all we can but we’re only human and we have real jobs and real families to take care of. We formed the Gurus after 84 Online folded for one reason only; you were faithful to us and we refused to just go away and abandon you. Rest assured that as long as you stick with us we will stick with you.
Until next week…
Kevin Mefford, Editor
Editor’s note: The link last week for FasterFox was incorrect. The correct link is http://fasterfox.mozdev.org/.
If you received two copies of the newsletter last week or it was a day late don’t panic. Some readers received the email Thursday evening as usual but many did not so I reissued it Friday evening.
Terry Wise
Tech News of the Week
Stanford has
won DARPA's robotic race across the desert---and scored $2 million:
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-5892115.html
Yahoo!
is getting into blogging in a big way, including the personal
sites as part
of its news portal:
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=172300251
Microsoft
and Yahoo are joining forces in the IM world. Your IM
client will now
be assimilated:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1870170,00.asp
Nine
updates/Get 'em while they're hot/Unless you use the Mac OS/Then
worry about
it not:
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/78538/nine-new-updates-in-microsofts-latest-security-bulletin.html
I
promise never to rhyme again...at least until next week.
Matt
Dattilo
thepcgurus@gmail.com
www.mattdattilo.com
Download of the Week
My favorite programmer, Karen Kenworthy, this week posted updated versions of two of her very useful and free Power Tools utilities.
WhoIs will query over 200 top level and regional Internet domain databases for information on websites by both IP address and actual site name. Get owner, contact information and physical address of nearly every website in the world.
Replicator is one of my personal favorites and I use it on a nightly basis to back up my documents, email, address book and favorites among other important files. This program will automatically synchronize any folder or entire drive between any two locations for backup purposes on a scheduled basis. This is highly useful with CD-RW or DVD-RW disks, removable hard drives or external backup devices.
You can get them both as well as all of Karen’s other free offerings from http://www.karenware.com/powertools.asp.
Email Question of the Week
Q: I read that one should regularly check for updates to the motherboard BIOS. Is there a diagnostic tool that will determine the make and model of the motherboard?
A:
I wouldn't
necessarily agree with that. If you aren't having any problems and don't
plan on making any hardware changes I would leave the BIOS
alone.
If you want to add a new huge hard drive or
upgrade your processor to a faster chip it might be good to check the current
BIOS revision at the manufacturer's website to see if it will handle the new
equipment.
Belarc Advisor will give the make and model
of motherboard for you, as well as a ton of other information. You can get
it from http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html.
Hope that helps and keep us posted
:)
Kevin Mefford
Contact info and legal
stuff
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