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Vol. 6, No. 36
8-31-06
1 IE housecleaning /Apple batteries
2 Sony Fire Department
3 Google=The Anti-Disney, ingenious engineer, sayonara Sony?, Vista
4 Amazing system info tool
5 Wait for Vista?
All browsers, Internet Explorer included, generate enormous amounts of junk files. Every website visited leaves behind each current .jpg, .gif and .htm file associated with it, to name just a few file types. Each picture, banner ad, animated graphic, Java and ActiveX applet, cookie and font is stored on your PC in what’s called the browser “cache”. Back in the day this was a handy feature in that it allowed pages to load more quickly since half the graphics were already housed locally.
With the ubiquity of broadband access available now the cache has become more a waste of space than anything, and emptying it frequently, as well as limiting its size as much as possible, is a good idea.
Luckily you can perform both activities from the same location. With IE open click Tools and Internet Options and you’ll see the Temporary Internet Files section in the center. To empty the cache click the Delete Files button, then tick the box next to Delete all offline content and click OK. If you’ve never done this it could take quite a while.
Once done click on the Settings button and reset the Amount of disk space to use. If you’re a constant browser and seldom visit the same site twice I would suggest around 100MB. If you tend to visit the same few sites every day 50MB should be plenty. When finished click OK and OK and that task is complete.
Keeping your Favorites organized and up to date is another good habit to get into, especially if you save every useful or interesting page you stumble across.
Before we start making folders for sorting let’s look at a utility for culling the dead links from your list. AM-DeadLink from http://www.aignes.com/deadlink.htm will check each link to make sure it goes to an actual page rather than an error site or no site at all.
Once you install it just click the green checkmark button in the toolbar and it will start testing. When it finishes it will show a log of each site in your Favorites and how it responded, sorted by folder and date as far as I can tell. Once the list is complete click the Bookmarks entry in the text menu and choose Sort Bookmarks with errors to the top of the list.
After the sort click on the first item that generates an error, then scroll down to the last error entry and, while depressing the Shift key, click it. That will select every erroneous entry. Once you have the long list selected click Bookmarks again and choose Delete. When prompted if you want to delete the selected bookmarks choose Yes.
Working with the newly accurate list you can start deciding on categories to sort into. In IE click on Favorites and Organize Favorites and you’ll see immediately how everything works. Click the Create Folder and make as many as you need to cover all your chosen topics, and then scroll through the list on the right to your actual links and move each one to the proper folder.
After everything is nice and tidy you can keep it that way by saving new links to the proper folder. On a website you want to add as a Favorite click on Favorites and Add to Favorites, click the proper folder in the Create in list and click OK.
Next week we’ll clean out some other types of temp files and from that point on you’ll have a lean mean computin’ machine :)
Kevin Mefford, Editor
Follow up: A couple of week’s ago I mentioned the Dell recall of nearly 5 million laptop batteries manufactured by Sony. Last week Apple issued a recall for up 1.8 million batteries, also manufactured by Sony.
Check to see if this recall affects you at:
https://support.apple.com/ibook_powerbook/batteryexchange/
Terry Wise
Tech News of the Week
Google on
Wednesday began offering full downloads of out-of-copyright
books in PDF
format, enabling users to read at their own pace or use
an ebook device.
Currently being offered are a handful of classics and
obscure titles in the
public domain:
http://www.betanews.com/article/Google_Now_Offering_Book_Downloads/1156960887
Engineer
warns Lockheed-Martin, his employer, of problems with their
new Coast Guard
cutter design. He then tells Congressman. No one
cares.
Engineer puts video up on youtube.com, now everyone
cares:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/28/AR2006082801293.html
The
company that created the transistor radio and the Walkman is at
the
precipice. If Sony's new $600 console doesn't blow gamers away, it
may be
time to say sayonara:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.09/sony.html
Consumers
will have to wait until the end of January for Windows Vista
if the
availability for the OS listed on Amazon.com's Web site is
accurate, but you
can pre-order right now:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,126963-c,vistalonghorn/article.html
Copy
us on the good stuff ;-)
Matthew Dattilo
thepcgurus@gmail.com
www.mattstodayinhistory.com
Download of the Week
This week's download is for those geeky types amongst us. It's called "System Information for Windows" or SIW. Find out what you need to know about your computer's hardware, operating system, installed programs, and more with this utility. SIW provides detailed information about your PC's properties and settings, as well as specs for your CPU, motherboard, chip set, BIOS, PCI/AGB, USB and ISA/PnP devices, memory, monitor, video card, disk drives, CD/DVD devices, SCSI devices, ports, network cards, printers, operating system, installed programs and security patches, processes, services, and serial numbers (CD keys).
It also provides information about your system's users, open files, system uptime, network, and network shares. It offers real-time monitors for CPU, memory, page file usage and network traffic. It displays currently active network connections, passwords hidden behind asterisks, installed codecs, and more.
Because it requires no installation, you can run the program directly from a USB drive, but what you do with the information it provides is up to you--SIW doesn't offer any diagnoses or advice. It's free here:
http://www.gtopala.com/siw_download.html
Art Maley
Email Question of the Week
Q: I currently have a desktop from 1999
operating on Windows 98 and
waiting to upgrade to Vista on a new laptop. So
long as my current
system continues to function, is there any reason not to
wait for
Vista? Thanks for your reply! And thanks for all the "gurus" do
for
the rest of us. You've been helping me for about 8
years.
A: If you have survived this long with
Windows 98 (God bless you), you can certainly wait a few more months to get
Vista on a new laptop. Despite
all the delays, Vista will eventually
get released sometime in the 1st
quarter of '07. Of course this being
Microsoft, it will take another
year of service packs to get it "right", but
what's a few service packs
among friends? :-)
Hash
hash@ucanweb.com
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