The Weekly Geek

SPAM is one of the biggest problems facing computer users, as a result there are a lot of SPAM fighting tools out there. I wrote a couple of articles about prevention that are published here. SPAM part 1 and SPAM 2.0 and of course businesses can purchase devices just for blocking SPAM, this is rarely affordable for home owners though.
But, it is my thought that tools alone won’t solve your SPAM problems, along with those tools, you should know a few key facts about SPAM.
Let’s look at some details of SPAM so that you can “know your enemy” the advice of Sun Tzo in The Art of War. [Read more →]

With the upcoming release of Windows 7 on October 22nd 2009 I felt this article was about 4 months overdue.

Over the last 18 months or so, several readers have asked me my opinion on Vista and or if I was going to write any tips about it. My personal responses have varied but were basically  “I’m testing before I recommend”. You see, too many people “test” products then give wrong reviews. For example my Palm Treo 700 phone is quite frankly a piece of junk but the reviews in the first 3 months of its release said it was gold. The same with my HP iPaq Travel Companion with Tm Tom GPS, “oh goody it’s the best think since Star Trek” – WRONG! [Read more →]

Well, it seems a couple of you caught me, almost. In my last article (on backing up) I referred to scheduling the backup which requires schedules tasks and a password. I just noted “If you don’t have one, look for my article on creating one and how to automatically logon without entering it every time.”

Well, I have not written a complete article on the subject. The needed information is actually in at least three different articles. One is on defragmenting and another on running disk clean and of course the Auto logon article. So I figure that I should write one article on just XP passwords.

You do need a Windows password to run the task scheduler. If you don’t have a password, you can easily create one.

[Read more →]

It has been a while since I wrote about the critical function of backing us so I figure I had better get to it.
In a previous post I wrote how to backup all of your files, this time I want to cover how to back up just some of your files, the ones you have recently changed.

Suppose you want to run a full backup of a group of files at the beginning of a week, and then back up only the files that have changed on the remaining days of the week. To do so, you have the choice of Incremental or Differential backups.

There are also several types of backup routines available. The most common are normal, copy, differential, incremental, and daily.

[Read more →]

Over the past few years, the focus of computer security has increased. Microsoft is no exception as is evident with the security enhancements in Vista and the upcoming Windows 7. However, in some cases, some of the security options may be overkill, especially if you are the only one who uses the computer.

In many case people do not use passwords, however for many scheduled tasks to run, passwords are required. In an effort to meet in the middle (not needing to enter a password everytime you logon or boot and scheduling tasks) you can change one setting and be on your merry way.

If you do not share your computer with any other users and no one else has access to it, you can configure Vista to log you on automatically just like in XP. If you share your PC with multiple users (like your kids) then I would NOT suggest using this tip. [Read more →]