Which is the best browser alternative to Safari?

IBASICS
Which is the best browser alternative to Safari?

Michel Munger
LOW END MAC

The Macintosh platform is blessed with a great selection of browsers. Safari is nice, but it comes with one annoying limitation to many of us. You have to buy a US$129 system upgrade when you want to make the jump to a new version.

There are many other free or inexpensive products that do a great job and could be used on a regular basis, but which is right for whom? Let’s find out. Internet Explorer has been left out of this article because Microsoft is not involved in the Mac browser business anymore. Netscape and the full Mozilla suite have also been left out because all their releases are now based on Firefox.

FREE BROWSERS

Mozilla Firefox

If you liked Netscape a few years ago, Mozilla Firefox could be your favorite today. It now is the flagship browser of the Mozilla Foundation and successor to the venerable Netscape Navigator. Its menu structure and preferences boxes are based on Netscape’s, but the browser itself has evolved a lot.

Firefox is mostly a simple well-thought-of browser. It offers tabbed browsing, password management, a highly customizable interface, strong security, and a great implementation of Web standards. When other browsers are not allowed to access a site that requires forms or secure connections, Firefox usually does the job.

It comes short if you compare its feature set the competition, and it launches slowly because it loads its Mac interface independently from the system’s resources. However, its robustness, its compatibility, its RSS support and its clean looks with Tiger’s unified bars make it a breeze to use.

A major advantage: its swift open source development make it a mainstream browser that evolves very quickly… for free. The developers update it quickly to patch security holes, most of the time before they are even exploited.

What makes Firefox attractive is that every feature seems to be implemented the right way by a bunch of perfectionists. In example: the Find function is nicely located at the bottom of the browser window, making it subtler than a window that pops in your face. You can keep it permanently if you wish, and it won’t get in the way.

As far as the interface is concerned, what I appreciate is the extra space between buttons and other elements to make everything easier to the eye. A minor complaint, however: it does not use Mac OS X’s widgets for submit buttons and checkboxes in Web forms.

What separates Firefox from the pack in terms of customization is the Extensions feature. It allows anybody to create and use other people’s custom features.

Firefox is also available on more platforms (Mac, Windows, Linux and many others) making it a good choice for those of us who want the same setup in different environments. Not only is it cross-platform, but it also is available in more languages than any other. This is great for those who want to use it in languages that are not widely supported.

Mozilla Camino

You can consider Camino to be Firefox’s little cousin on the Mac side. Developed by the Mozilla Foundation, it is free Mac-only product coded in Cocoa, the best programming environment to use in order to fully take advantage of Mac OS X’s features.

For the most part, Camino works like Firefox, but it has a better Mac-like look and feel, and it is a bit lighter and faster.

The big drawback is that Camino’s development pace can be fast at times and sluggish later. You can wait several months for an update while competitors will at least release security updates every few weeks.

COMMERCIAL BROWSERS

Opera

The next option is Opera, and it is a monster. Every browser has strengths but this one gathers them all. Among the browsers I tested, Opera packs more features than any other, and it seems to be the fastest.

I would even label it a heavy-duty, professional browser. It allows users to tweak and personalize it through an extensive set of preferences, and it is robust enough to sustain long browsing sessions without slowing down.

Advanced features include saving sessions. Opera saves all open pages to resume the session later. This acts as a nice complement to the browser history, especially to shorten browsing time.

By pulling down the Quick Preferences menu, you can identify Opera as itself, Mozilla or Internet Explorer. You can also tailor your controls for pop-up windows, Javascript and cookies, among other things.

As for other browser developers, the folks at Opera offer now-standard features such as tabbed browsing, menu bar elements to differentiate secure from non-secure pages, password management, forms autofill, RSS feeds support, etc.

My favorite feature would probably be the full screen mode. When you turn this on, the browser takes the whole screen, which is handy when you want to focus on reading an article or view a movie site, or simply give the browser more screen space to view a large page. I never understood why most Mac browsers overlooked this functionality.

Click on the image for full size

None of the features mentioned above is necessarily groundbreaking or spectacular. What makes Opera special is that it gathers them all in one package.

My only gripes are about site compatibility. Opera was the only browser that was unable to log in at my banking site or my job’s Microsoft Outlook Web access, and it was the only one to display a few pages incorrectly. The folks at Opera said, in example, that the Outlook server software required an upgrade in order to work with Opera, but I can imagine the laughs from the guys at the office’s IT department if I told them to upgrade their server for one user who wants to check his e-mail when he’s out of the office. They’ll tell me to use another browser, simply. Such are the realities of the real world, and this is a weakness for Opera. When you have to pay for it, it makes you think twice before buying it.

Such complaints aside, Opera is a complete package for professional browsing needs. You can download it for free, and if it works well enough for you, it costs US$39 to get rid of the advertising and access premium support.

OmniWeb

How to describe OmniWeb? It probably is the most Mac-like browser on the market. The feature set is pretty complete, and its interface really feels like it was designed for Mac OS X.

One of OmniWeb’s top features is called Workspaces. It saves sessions – Opera also does this – but its session management interface is more detailed. This kind of feature is great for those who need to access a certain set of Web sites at the same time, as I often do at work. It also makes it easier to resume a session if the browser crashes.

My favorite feature in OmniWeb is the ability to customize the site preferences. OmniWeb keeps prefs for just every Web site, so you can change settings for appearance, security and ad blocking. Every site will behave the way you want it to, and that is very neat. No other browser gives you that much control over each site.

I do have a big complaint, however: OmniWeb’s performance in terms of page rendering seems sluggish. In fact, it was the slowest among all my browsers with my favorite sites, and the application itself could be more responsive. The Workspaces feature can save you time, but the page rendering can make you waste time. Given the fact that OmniWeb costs US$29.95, I find this unacceptable.

Conclusion

My recommendation? Mozilla Firefox is the best all-around browser. It always free while new Safari versions come with expensive system upgrades. Unlike Camino, Safari and OmniWeb, it is also available on other platforms. Although it lacks some of Opera’s features, it provides better compatibility with Web sites. It is a photo-finish, and in my opinion, Firefox wins by a nose.

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Links:

Camino
Firefox
OmniWeb
Opera

Maintenance, Part 3: Test Your Hardware

Maintenance, Part 3: Test Your Hardware

Michel Munger
LOW END MAC

After reading my two previous columns about Macintosh maintenance, you became a knowledgeable expert. You know how to maintain a hard drive and optimize your system software. You just need one more thing: knowing your hardware well enough to detect any “physical” problems with your Mac.

If, in the first two parts of the tutorial, third-party software was useful but optional, hardware tests will require one mandatory product: TechTool Pro 4 (TTP4). This piece of software, which Micromat sells for US$97.97, is simply brilliant. I would not recommend it over DiskWarrior for disk directory work, but it is a gem for various hardware tests and verifications.

What you gain from using it is the ability to find out if your hardware deserves a clean bill of health or if it needs repairs and replacement. You should run the tests whenever you want to, or whenever you feel that some of your hardware, even a simple port, may be failing.

There are two categories of tests. To use the first one, launch TTP4, click on the Tests pane and select the Hardware tab.

Cache: The L1, L2 (and sometimes L3) caches are types of memory that react much faster than your computer’s RAM. The caches are central to computer performance because your processor stores frequently-used instructions in them, to the point where any dysfunction would cause serious problems. This test verifies that the caches are present and makes sure that the memory is working well.

Clock: The clock speed of the processor (and bus) is a well-known bit of information. It is one of the keys to processing and its improvement makes computers faster as long as the processor architecture keeps evolving. This test verifies that the circuits are working well.

FireWire: You probably are very familiar with this interface that allows you to plug in external devices such as hard drives and CD/DVD drives. This test verifies that the internal FireWire circuits are working well, but it does not verify the ports themselves.

Main memory: Of course, your RAM is another central part of your computer. The faster the RAM, the more system performance you can enjoy, and the more you have, the better it is. If it gets corrupt, however, your computer may behave as if a nuclear bomb had been dropped in your backyard. This test verifies every RAM chip from top to bottom. Any damaged RAM chip has to be thrown out as soon as it is detected.

Mathematics: This test verifies your Mac’s ability to make calculations correctly. This is another thing that makes your Mac behave badly when damaged.

Network: This test makes sure that your Ethernet interface is available and gives you its status.

Processor: The processor is on top of the list in terms of hardware importance because it is like the brain in the human body. The tests make sure that your processor is handling all instructions the right way.

USB: This is the same thing than the FireWire test, but it applies to the USB circuits.

Video memory: Video memory is necessary for your monitor to display everything correctly. If it is damaged, there will be dead pixels, noise, freezes, or even crashes.

The second category of tests is related to hard drives. To access it, just click on the Drives tab.

Disk Controller: This is a key hard disk drive test. It verifies the mechanism of internal and external drives, and some of its verifications will even work on CD and DVD drives. If this test fails, you may be dealing with a dead disk.

Read Write: You guessed it, this test performs some reading and writing tasks to make sure that your disk can read and write data reliably at all times.

Surface Scan: This can be a long and annoying operation, but it is absolutely necessary for the safety of your data. When bad blocks are detected on a disk, your Mac will avoid using them - this is called “mapping out” - to prevent data loss. Good blocks can go bad without a warning sign. Run this every three months.

There are also other things you can do to make sure that your hardware is working properly.

Did you just print a color document, only to see that the colors on the screen do not match the print itself? If you did everything you could to set the software preferences, you may need to calibrate your monitor and make sure that it has the right ColorSync profile. Read the display manufacturer’s instructions and try the following trick:

Go to the Applications folder and open the Utilities subfolder. Launch the ColorSync Utility and click on the Profile First Aid. Click on the Verify button. After the verification process, any damage will be reported in red and you should click on the Repair button. These steps are necessary when you have a damaged color profile, and it can mess up the colors when you print documents.

You installed an additional disk on your Mac or plugged in a new device and your Mac cannot “see” it in any way? Open the Utilities folder mentioned above, and launch the System Profiler. Alright, this is not a thing of beauty, but it will list all the hardware inside and connected to your Mac. If anything is suspiciously missing, you have diagnosed a hardware problems. Great, isn’t it?

That’s it for maintenance, folks. You know quite a few things to maintain your Mac without the help of a technician. Nurture your Mac and it will reward you with extra years of use. Enjoy.

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Link

TechTool Pro 4, US$97.97

Maintenance, Part 2: Optimize Mac OS X

Maintenance, Part 2: Optimize Mac OS X

Michel Munger
LOW END MAC

Now that we know how to protect a hard drive and its data, it is time to find ways to maximize the performance of Mac OS X itself. The following maintenance tips should allow you to keep your system software lean and mean, making your Mac faster, more reliable and keeping more disk space available.

My first tip is a hardware tip, even a UNIX tip. As most of you probably know, Mac OS X is a UNIX-based system. UNIX is known for its robustness, security and stability, but it is a resource-hungry system. It particularly requires large amounts of RAM to deliver the best possible performance. As they say, size does matter… for these things anyway. Therefore, I recommend that you install as much RAM as you can afford on your Mac. You will thank yourself for it because it makes a genuine difference.

The way you allocate your RAM also has an incidence on your system’s performance. When your launch applications, they use the memory and divide it between themselves. Memory hogs such as Photoshop generally need to eat up solid chunks of RAM to offer their best performance, so keeping a minimum of applications open is always a good thing. If you have to work with several open applications, you should really install all the memory that your Mac can handle. RAM is cheap nowadays anyway.

Among applications, Classic can slow Mac OS X down when it is open. Keep it closed when you are not using your legacy software. If Classic slows your Mac down to the point where your productivity level suffers, it may be time to shop around for a replacement for your favorite Mac OS 9 applications. For years, I thought I would never find a simple and suitable replacement for GoLive 4, and yet, I found a magnificent open-source solution recently. (We will expand on open-source software in a later column.)

No matter how much RAM you have installed and how you use your applications, there are further ways to keep Mac OS X zippy.

Save disk space

The first one is to have the smallest possible number of files on the startup disk. Why? As we explained in the first part of this tutorial, your disk keeps track of your files in a directory. When your directory is too large, it does the same thing than when it gets messy: your disk has to work unreasonably hard and it slows down the overall performance. Just imagine that you have to search for a book in different libraries. It will take you less time to find your book in a small and organized library than in a large and disorganized library. Another important motive to keep in mind is that Mac OS X uses virtual memory, and having plenty of free space on the startup disk is a great bonus for your system.

Therefore, the leaner your startup disk is, the faster your Mac will be. You have learned, in Part I, how to organize the directory. Now, you may want to consider how to shrink the amount of used space. Do not hesitate to use my previous tip to divide your drive into a “system” and a “data” partition to achieve this goal. Separating the files from the system is great for speed as well as security.

Another burden your Mac shouldn’t have to carry around: logs, caches and histories. Don’t get me wrong. Those files are useful, but if you never clean them up, they will become cumbersome and they may even corrupt.

Mac OS X behaves as a server because UNIX is server system software. If you leave it on from 3:15AM to 5:30AM, it will perform background daily, weekly and monthly maintenance routines. If you do not like leaving your computer on during the night, there are two ways to trigger the routines manually.

The simple way: download and purchase the Cocktail utility. Launch it and click on the Files icon. Then, select the Caches tab, make sure that User, System and Internet are checked, and click on Clean. Once this is done, click on the Logs tab and click on the Delete button. Do this every other week or monthly.

The geeky way: when logged in with an administrator account, go to your startup disk, open the Applications folder, and then the Utilities subfolder. Launch the Terminal. Without quotes, type “sudo sh /etc/daily” and enter your password. Let your Mac run the routine and wait until you see your username again. Repeat the drill with “sudo sh /etc/weekly” and “sudo sh /etc/monthly”.

If you have been running your Mac for months or years without doing any of this, you should save plenty of disk space and you may notice a difference in terms of performance.

By the way, don’t forget to clean up and reduce the size of your Web browser’s cache. Erasing the browsing history, reducing the number days kept in the history and minimizing the number of stored cookies will also help. Those can really slow you down when browsing.

Another way to save disk space: if you reinstall Mac OS X, make sure to select only the frequently-used languages and printer drivers before installing. This will prevent the installation of a very important number of files on your system disk. If you haven’t used Simplified Chinese in the last few years and that none of your friends or relatives are familiar with it, keep it off your hard drive. You can always add it later on.

You want to save even more space? Whenever you install software, always keep the original installer around, even when it is shareware. Most products will offer you an Uninstall option right in the installer, or a separate Uninstaller application. When you stop using software, get rid of it. It will save disk space, and a proper uninstall process will also remove all the now-useless related files.

Fix your files

Among Mac OS X’s UNIX characteristics, there is the use of file permissions. When these get messed up, you may be unable to use all the functions of your favorite software or you may have problems handling some files. To keep such annoyances out of the way, repair your permissions every month with the Disk Utility.

Lastly, corrupt files, depending on which they are, can cause their share of problems. It is always good to find out if you have any, in order to toss them out. TechTool Pro 4 does a fantastic job testing files and reporting issues. While using TechTool, why don’t you also run the File Info test to see if your file icons and other information need to be fixed? Both tests can easily be found in the Tests category, under the Files tab.

Among corrupt files, look out for corrupt fonts. They can make your applications unstable. And when you have too many of them loaded, your Mac’s performance will decline. I suggest looking at this list of basic system fonts (for Tiger) and disabling all other fonts until you need them. The Font Book (introduced with Panther) is located in the Applications folder. Launch it, select the fonts you want to disable, and click on the checkmark button in the middle of the window. You can always turn a font on later.

Job done!

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Links

Cocktail, US$14.95
TechTool Pro 4, US$97.97

Maintenance Part 1: Protect your hard drive

IBASICS
Maintenance Part 1: Protect your hard drive

Michel Munger
LOW END MAC

In order to squeeze as many years of use as possible out of a Mac and to keep it zippy, you need to do some basic maintenance. In this three-part tutorial, we will cover some hardware and software maintenance, and this first piece is about the hard disk drive.

Your drive is the most important to maintain because your data resides on it, and is the one where potential human intervention is the most extensive.

Here is a brutal reality: your hard drive has mechanical parts that will fail one day. You should not ask yourself if it will fail, but when. There are two cases of data loss that you can prevent. Number one: your disk gets confused by damaged directory structures. Number two: your disk’s life has been shortened by abusive wear and tear, and it crashes.

Protecting your directory

The first step is maintaining the directory structures, and it is the easiest one because unlike a crash, directory damage can be fixed. Basically, your directory keeps track of all your files, from the system to your tiniest JPEG or Word document. If the directory is “broken”, your hard disk doesn’t know where the files are, and can overwrite or damage them.

Directory damage is sly. It comes in without knocking and it doesn’t let you know about its presence. In fact, data loss can happen several weeks or several months after directory damage, which makes directory protection a mandatory preventive maintenance task.

To avoid data loss, you first have to start with the right formatting and journaling. This feature, available under Panther and Tiger, monitors your disk’s activity and keeps it in a log. Should your Mac shut down unexpectedly or should you go through disk problems, recovery will be faster and repairs will be easier.

If your disk is already formatted, start up your Mac from the Mac OS X Installation CD – hold down the C key at startup - and use the Disk Utility to turn journaling on. TechTool Pro 4 and Cocktail, in example, can also handle it. If you are reformatting your disk, choose “Mac OS X Extended (Journaled)” before going ahead.

On top of journaling, I add another recommendation when formatting: splitting your drive in system and data partitions. Partition 1 should be used for nothing but the Mac OS X system and applications, and Partition 2 for your documents. Why? With that kind of setup, should the system partition run into serious trouble, you can still access your documents partition to salvage data in case you didn’t have a full backup.

Ideally, this kind of split should be done with two hard drives – a “system” drive and a “file deposit” drive - but I recommend partitions if you are on a budget.

Disk utilities

Journaling isn’t everything. You still have to do preventive maintenance to detect potential directory damage before it is too late. Firstly, you should know that Apple’s basic Disk Utility can do a fine job unless it runs into severe damage. To use it, start up your Mac with your Mac OS X Installation CD and launch the Disk Utility. Then, choose a disk, click on First Aid and click on Repair Disk. Running this test every two weeks or once a month is a smart idea.

If Disk Utility reports damage that it cannot repair, you have to decide whether you want to back everything up and reformat your drive, or if you prefer using a utility to fix it. Most people like to use a utility. Several of them are available, but which one should you adopt between DiskWarrior, Techtool Pro and Norton SystemWorks?

The answer is tricky because each of them has strengths and weaknesses.

Alsoft DiskWarrior is the pound-for-pound champion. It draws a graph of your disk directory to let you know if it needs to be rebuilt. If you rebuild the directory, a task that takes a bit of time on a system disk, all potential damage disappears because DiskWarrior discards the old directory and replaces it with a new one.

If you have DiskWarrior handy, just start up your Mac from the DiskWarrior CD. Click on the Directory button, then click on Graph to see the graphic and click on Rebuild to go ahead with directory rebuilding. Doing this once a month or every other month should be enough.

TechTool Pro 4 works differently because it separates the job into parts. Under its Tests panel, TechTool can scan and rebuild volumes structures (this takes a long time to do). It can optimize the directory separately, with the feature called Maintenance, found under the Performance panel. TechTool Pro 4 does some nice work, but personally, I have had some trouble with its slow execution, and it sometimes damaged my directories. On the other hand, it comes with an amazing set of hardware tests, which we will talk about in a future column.

Where does Norton SystemWorks stand? I know, it has a bad reputation, in part because Symantec is not a good Mac developer, but there are reasons to like it.

Norton, with its Disk Doctor component, tries to “patch” your disk directory instead of rebuilding it from A to Z. Therefore, Norton is the fastest utility for preventive maintenance. The big drawback is that patching is not easy, it is not always a permanent solution and it even exposes your directory to additional errors. This is why, in part, Norton caused trouble when “fixing” some people’s disks.

Don’t demonize it, however, because apart from speed, it has another major strength. Do you remember the old days, when you used Mac OS 9, and saw a flashing question mark at startup? Your Mac was unable to mount your disk, even if any utility was able to “see” it.

This can also happen under Mac OS X, with the difference that when starting up, you get a “Please restart your computer” screen, a UNIX crash known as a kernel panic. Believe it or not, Norton Disk Doctor is the best tool when this happens. It fixes a series of major errors and mounts your drive. Just when things looked hopeless, Norton saved your butt…

The final verdict on utilities? If money is not a concern, buy all three because each of them has different strengths. If you have to stick with just one, DiskWarrior is my recommendation. And if you cannot mount your disks correctly, Norton is probably less expensive than bringing your Mac to a technician…

Minimize the workload

As I stated above, a hard disk drive can crash because of wear and tear. To prevent this, you have to minimize your disk’s workload. The first way to achieve that? Know when to put your Mac to sleep and when to shut it down. The jury is still out on this one, mostly because there are many credible theories about the amount of wear and tear caused by different user habits.

Here are the main points:

• Every time you start up your Mac, the cold hard disk receives an electrical charge and works very hard to get your Mac ready for use. This puts a lot of stress on a drive.
• If you leave your Mac on at all times, your disk remains hot and it keeps spinning, wearing it out slowly.
• If you put the computer to sleep or put the disk to sleep, every wake-up process will put some stress on the drive.

Therefore, there is no perfect solution. Apple recommends to shut a computer down it you do plan to use it for 8 hours or more. Otherwise, you may put it to sleep or leave it on. Personally, I have been observing this advice and it always served me well.

Optimize your files

Another method to reduce your disk’s amount of work is to defragment your files and optimize your data. When your files are fragmented and in a mess, your hard drive has to work harder to read and write them. Imagine that all your tools are scattered in your house. Putting them all together in a basement room, for example, will spare you a lot of time and efforts when picking many of them up at the same time. The difference, with a hard drive, is that the additional wear and tear actually makes it crash earlier than it should.

What can you do about it? Optimize your data’s location on the disk. I know two tools that do this well: Norton Speed Disk (part of Norton SystemWorks) and TechTool Pro 4’s Optimization feature. Both will analyze your files and rewrite them to make file access a lesser pain. Your system will also run faster as a result.

There is no consensus about file optimization because the operation is demanding for a hard drive. Therefore, it is crucial to take a good look at the graphics produced by the optimization tool before going ahead with the whole process. Defragment and optimize your disk only when fragmentation is severe. For most users, this will be necessary two or three times a year.

Verify your S.M.A.R.T. status

Are you smart? Actually, what I mean to ask is whether your disk passes the S.M.A.R.T. test. The Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology can allow the smallest piece of software to take a quick look at your drive and let you know when it is about to fail. When you get a warning, it means that your drive may soon crash. It is nice to know it beforehand.

My product recommendation is free and it is called SMARTReporter. Once installed, it checks your disk at startup and displays a small icon in the Finder’s menu bar. The green disk means that everything is OK, and the red disk means… well, I’ll let you guess.

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Related links

Computer Equipment: Turning It Off Versus Leaving It On
Alsoft DiskWarrior
TechTool Pro 4
Norton SystemWorks
SMARTReporter (free)

Once a leader, Apple now follows the pack

MACINTHOUGHTS
Once a leader, Apple now follows the pack

Michel Munger
LOW END MAC

When you take a phenomenon and look back to put the whole picture in perspective, the landscape can reveal some fascinating shapes and colors.

More or less a decade ago, the Macintosh was a closed, tightly integrated platform. Today, it increasingly looks like a PC - minus hardware clones and the Windows operating system.

For almost a decade, the Macintosh was in a world of its own. With its object-oriented operating system; Motorola processors; NuBus slots; Apple Desktop Bus; nonstandard serial, network, and video connectors; and SCSI hard drives, the Macintosh was a bit of an oddball in a computer industry that revolved increasingly around the Windows/Intel standard.

Conformity

Apple’s focus was on ease of use and performance, even if it meant selling machines at higher prices. Its competitors cared more about price and didn’t catch up with Apple’s user-friendliness obsession until much later.

In the mid-90s, Apple started building the Mac around a more open architecture by adopting some standard PC components - and by licensing some vendors to build and sell Macintosh clones. The clone licenses were terminated when Steve Jobs came back to Apple a few years later, but the movement toward industry standard components hasn’t stopped.

If you look at today’s Mac, you can see how the platform has changed. Apple gradually adopted IDE/ATA drives, PCI slots, standard video and network connectors, and USB, among other things. Some “Windowsish” features have become part of the Mac OS. For example, when Mac OS 8 came out, contextual menus and “sticky” menus became part of the Mac OS.

The biggest change ever looked scary at first: Apple announced that it will dump the PowerPC processor in favor of Intel’s chips.

Even one-button mouse couldn’t resist the revolution when Apple realized that it needed to offer its own programmable multibutton mouse (the Mighty Mouse) to the general public.

In two years, Macintosh hardware will almost be the same as a Windows PC - except that it will run Mac OS X. Apple’s philosophy shows itself more in its system software, software-hardware integration, and general innovation than in building the best possible machine.

Mistakes?

Was Apple wrong with its initial choices?

That’s a tough call to make, especially since every step toward industry standards has been followed by loud boos from some of the Mac’s most loyal fans.

If Apple sacrifices overall hardware quality for better prices and slowly realizes that it sometimes has to follow the PC herd, it also means that the company is eliminating barriers to the Mac’s adoption. Fundamentally, it means that standardization can be a key to survival, especially when Apple’s market share stands at 2.5%.

Many questions remain: Why choose more expensive components when, in the end, Apple’s philosophy shows through its system software? Why ignore the multibutton mouse for so long when there was demand for it? Why choose the PowerPC architecture, only to dump it after hitting a development ceiling?

The answers may not be obvious.

More importantly, how much further can Apple take the Mac towards standardization without hurting its credibility? The switch to Intel chips leaves many of us scratching our heads, especially when we remember Apple’s claims that the PowerPC was technologically superior to anything x86.

Identity

Are we just running PCs with a Unix-based operating system? Are we realizing that as the years go by, our platform is taking the road to conformity?

Do we still “Think Different”? How different are we thinking nowadays?

One of the elements that makes the Mac attractive is the impression that Mac users are different from the masses, the black sheep who escape the conformity of Microsoft’s powerful software monopoly.

In a way, it’s hard to admit that the dissimilarity dwindles with time. It makes some Mac users feel like rebels without a cause, and a few even think that if Apple keeps adopting PC standards, getting a PC may be the right thing to do in the future. I find this argument ridiculous, but I have heard it often enough to know that there are Mac users who are serious about it.

In my opinion, Mac OS X that stands out as the main reason to stick with Apple. The security offered by the current Mac OS, its ease of use, its larger commercial software selection than most Unix systems, and Apple’s swift development give the Mac a unique mix.

Apple’s innovations have to be kept in mind, too. It’s always great to be among the first to benefit from the neatest products to hit the market, such as the iPod.

I do have the impression that Apple could make a little effort to strengthen the Mac identity again. A new campaign designed to be the successor to Think Different would certainly be appreciated, so that when we acquire our next Macs some of us “forget” that they have “Intel inside”.

How to Troubleshoot Your Home Network

Wi-Fi that crawls, connections that come unconnected, and printers that stop sharing — our expert provides remedies for these common network woes.

Having a hard time with your home wireless network? In this installment of "Answer Line," Lincoln Spector tackles some of our readers' most pressing networking questions. Got your own tech puzzler for Lincoln? Send it to answer@pcworld.com.

Why can't my PCs see each other on the network? They can all see the Internet.
-- Chris Kwon, Dumont, New Jersey

Since all of your PCs can see the Internet, we can safely assume that you don't have a network hardware problem.

Let's start our sleuthing with Windows' network troubleshooting wizard — not because it's likely to help, but because it's quick and easy. In XP, select Start, Help and Support. Click Fixing a problem and then Networking Problems. In Vista, select Start, Help and Support. In either version of Windows, click Troubleshooting, followed by Troubleshoot problems finding computers on a home network.

If that operation doesn't help (and it probably won't), check your firewall. Third-party PC firewalls like ZoneAlarm and Norton Internet Security often block local networks. As a safety precaution, begin by disconnecting your Internet connection, either by turning off your DSL or cable modem or by unplugging the cable that connects the modem to your router. Then turn off each PC's firewall.

If the computers still can't see each other, the culprit isn't a firewall.

If possible, turn on just one PC's firewall. Does the problem return? If so, check that PC's firewall settings and documentation to see how to make it local-network-friendly. You may have to add your other PCs to a "Trusted Zone" or some such group.

Repeat this process with each computer. Don't reconnect to the Internet until all of your firewalls are back up and working.

Here are some more steps to take to troubleshoot other potential trouble spots.

Make sure that all of your PCs are in the same workgroup: Press Windows-R, type sysdm.cpl, and press Enter. Click the Computer Name tab. If the workgroup name there doesn't match the workgroup name listed on your other computers, click Change.

Make sure sharing is on. Press Windows-R, type ncpa.cpl, and press Enter. Right-click the appropriate network connection, and select Properties. If File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks isn't checked, check it.

If you're using Vista, you should also select Start, Network, and click Network and Sharing Center. There, you can fine-tune your sharing settings.

Make sure that you're sharing a folder: In XP's Windows Explorer, go to the folder you want to share. If the folder's icon doesn't have a little hand under it, right-click it and select Sharing and Security. In the resulting dialog box's Sharing tab, check Share this folder on the network, and complete the other options as you see fit.

If your operating system is Vista, the folder's icon should have a tiny picture of two people in the lower-left corner. If it doesn't, right-click it and select Share. In the resulting dialog box, type everyone into the text field, click Add, adjust the permission level (if you wish), and click Share.

If the computers still don't see each other, try a last-ditch stupid trick that shouldn't work but sometimes does: Press Windows-R, type the other PC's network path, and press Enter. The network path is probably two backslashes and the computer's name on the network, such as \\chris.

If this gambit succeeds, you can map the computer as a network drive or create a shortcut to it.

How do I share a printer over a network?
-- Irving Waldorf, San Francisco

I know of three ways to do this. Let's start with the free one:

You can easily attach the printer to one PC and share it with others at no extra cost. But there's a flaw: You can't print from any of the more distant computers unless the directly attached PC is left on.

If you're OK with that, follow the printer's documentation to install it on your chosen PC. Then, in Control Panel's Printers and Faxes applet, right-click the printer, select Sharing, confirm that Share this printer is checked and click OK to accept the default sharing settings for your printer.

On each of the other PCs, open Control Panel's "Printers and Faxes" applet and click Add a printer. In the resulting wizard, select the network option. It should find the printer and walk you through the rest of the setup.

If leaving the connected PC on all the time is a problem for you, consider buying a mini print server. Priced at $50 or less, a mini print server is a little box (often smaller than its own AC adapter) with a parallel or USB port at one end and Wi-Fi or Ethernet at the other. You plug it into the printer and the network, install a driver on all of your PCs, and everyone can print.

That's the theory, at least, and with a mini (or full-size) parallel print server, it's pretty much the reality. Any parallel print server should work with any parallel printer. For more about these handy devices, see Robert Strohmeyer's blog entry "Ease Small Office Growing Pains with a Mini Print Server."

Things aren't so simple with USB. If your printer lacks a parallel interface, you'll have to find a USB print server that supports your specific printer. You may have some luck searching on your favorite search engine for your printer model and the text string print server. Alternatively, you might check with the printer vendor and see which server it recommends.

Using a print server creates two other problems: It introduces yet another juice-wasting, always-on electronic device; and it leaves you with one more wall wart taking up surge-protector space.

If those problems turn you off, or if your printer lacks a parallel port and you can't find a compatible USB server, you can either accept the necessity of leaving the connected PC on at all times or turn to the most expensive option: buying a network-capable printer.

A printer that comes equipped with Ethernet or Wi-Fi is the simplest and most versatile solution, but the only way it makes sense economically is if you need a new printer, anyway. Just keep networking capabilities in mind the next time you go shopping for a new printer. Network-capable printers are available in all price ranges.

Why does my wireless speed vary so much, and why doesn't this variation seem to affect Internet performance?

-- Fritz Clayton, Las Vegas

If you've ever tried listening to the radio while your car was going through a long tunnel, you know that environmental variables affect wireless signal transmission. A family member turning on the microwave oven or a neighbor booting a Wi-Fi-equipped PC next door can degrade the Wi-Fi signal in your home.

And that interference -- if it doesn't kill the signal outright -- results in a slower connection. So it's not surprising that your Wi-Fi signal may be slower one day than another.

Why doesn't this reduction in data transfer speed appear to slow your Internet connection? The 802.11g Wi-Fi standard tops out at a transfer rate of 54 mbps. Even if interference cut the actual rate to a fifth of that speed, it would still be faster than almost all American household broadband connections. If you lived in Japan, where speeds of 60 mbps and higher are common, you probably would notice the difference -- and the lower transfer rate will certainly hamper the performance of such non-Internet network chores as transferring files from one PC to another. Hope for a strong Wi-Fi connection on the day when you want to transfer several gigabytes from one PC to another.

Or if hope isn't enough, see "25 Questions, 25 Answers" for tips on how to improve your Wi-Fi signal.

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6 Steps to a Faster Broadband Connection

Even if you're paying top dollar for high-speed Internet service, you may not be getting the performance you expect. Follow our guide to boost your broadband speed.

If you're serious about the Internet, chances are you spend anywhere from $30 to $99 per month for a broadband Internet connection. But regardless of how much you pay, are you getting all the speed that your Internet service provider promised you? And does your connection persist reliably without dropping out frequently or requiring modem reboots? With our quick guide, you can squeeze every last kilobit-per-second (kbps) of throughput out of your broadband modem and keep your connection running smoothly.

1. Test Your Connection Speed
Before you start tweaking, get a baseline reading of your downstream and upstream connection speeds at Speedtest.net. If possible, measure the speeds at different times of day, especially during the hours when you use the connection most frequently and at least once after midnight or 1:00 a.m. (when competition for bandwith is likely to be at its lowest level).

2. Update Your Firmware or Get a New Modem
If your cable or DSL modem is more than a couple of years old, ask your ISP for a new one. The exchange will probably be free; if there is a fee, you can usually waive it by agreeing to a new one-year contract. The latest cable modems meet the DOCSIS 2.0 (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification) standard. If you have a 1.1 modem and a high-throughput plan, you'll likely experience a large speed increase just by swapping modems.

Even with a brand-new modem, make sure that you have the latest firmware installed. I upgraded my two-year-old Efficient Networks 5100b DSL modem from firmware version 1.0.0.39 to 1.0.0.53 and immediately saw my Speedtest throughput increase from 5.3 mbps to 5.9 mbps, just a hair below the 6 mbps that I'm paying for. Cable providers such as Comcast usually push new firmware to modems, so there's no need for most cable modem users to perform upgrades themselves.

To update your DSL modem, you'll have to connect to its Web interface, which means that you'll need to know the IP address of the modem on your local network. This information should be in your user manual; alternatively, you can find default settings for most modems on the Internet. The address will probably look something like 192.168.100.1 or 192.168.0.1. Enter this character string into your browser and the Web interface should come up. You'll likely have to sign in, using either a security code printed on the bottom of the modem or a default username and password (unless you previously changed it). Write down the login information for future reference.

Once you've logged in, check the firmware number on the status page and see whether a newer version of the firmware is available on the manufacturer's site. If it is, download this more recent firmware to your PC and then find and run the firmware update procedure from the modem's browser utility. Reboot, rerun Speedtest and see whether your data is traveling faster. Besides boosting transfer speeds, using a new modem or updated firmware can solve a host of nagging connection issues, such as intermittent dropouts.

3. Check Your Modem Parameters
While you're updating the firmware, check some key parameters. First, the maximum allowed speeds (both downstream and up) should match your service plan. If they don't, your ISP didn't set your service up properly. Give your ISP a call and ask it to fix the setup remotely.

Second, look for signal-to-noise ratio (or SN margin) and line attenuation, both measured in decibels (dB). The lower the signal-to-noise ratio, the more interference you have and the greater the number of packets that will need to be re-sent because they didn't come through the first time. For this reason, a noisy line can dramatically cut throughput. Line attenuation measures the drop in voltage that comes with splitting the signal (especially for cable modems) and with long runs of cable or older wiring. Excessive signal loss will cause a drop in throughput.

For DSL modems, anything above about 50 dB for line attenuation is poor and 20 to 30 dB is excellent. For signal-to-noise ratio, 7 to 10 dB is marginal and 20 to 28 dB is excellent. My modem's SN margin registered at 12.5 dB, barely reaching the good range, and its line attenuation reading was 30.5 dB, which rates as very good. Note that acceptable ranges may vary depending on your service level and modem type (faster connections need to be cleaner), so check with your cable or DSL provider to see what numbers you should look for.

4. Troubleshooting Line Quality
If your off-peak Speedtest numbers didn't measure up to your plan's specifications and if you found poor signal-to-noise or line attenuation numbers, it's time to troubleshoot your wiring. Excessive noise may cause intermittent dropouts, too.

Your first task is to determine whether the signal is already degraded when it reaches your house or whether your own wiring is at fault. To test this, move your cable modem as close as you can to where the wire first splits. If possible, take a laptop and power cord for your modem outside to the junction where it connects to the house. Retest and see if things improve. If they don't, call your cable company. If your own wiring looks to be at fault, reduce the number of splits that occur before the wiring reaches your modem and/or replace the wire itself, which may be faulty. The ultimate solution for cable modems is to create a split directly after the junction box and then run a clean new cable directly to your modem, using the other split for all of your TVs (which are less affected by noise).

For DSL modems, noisy inside wiring tends to be due to the other phone equipment on your line. This interference is supposed to be controlled by the filters placed between the wall jack and each device. Make sure that they are all in place. If you still have too much noise, the best solution is to install a "DSL/POTS splitter" immediately after the phone box, where the wiring comes into the house, and then run a dedicated "homerun" wire straight to the modem. This arrangement will completely isolate your modem from the regular phone wiring -- and the new wire should help, too.

If you don't want to do this job yourself, you can ask your cable or phone company to perform both tasks for a fee.

Finally, improper grounding can be a source of noise, especially on cable. Make sure that all of your TV equipment is plugged into properly grounded outlets, with polarized plugs oriented in the right direction and without any three-prong-to-two-prong adapters. If you have an electric outlet tester, use it to check for excess voltage on your cable wiring. An electrician can find and fix any grounding problems, which are safety concerns as well.

5. Optimize Software Settings
Now that your cable or DSL line is as clean as you can make it, you're ready to tweak your system and applications for maximum performance, too.

For optimizing network performance parameters in Windows XP or Vista, we like TotalIdea Software's Tweak-XP Pro Premium and TweakVI Premium. Both programs simplify optimization without requiring you to understand Registry editing or hidden Windows settings. Both packages include dozens of tweaks in addition to network and browser adjustments. The Pro version of Network Magic, an excellent network monitoring utility, includes optimization capabilities as well.

System-level optimization is less important in Vista than in XP, since Vista tunes your TCP stack dynamically. In fact, Vista users can probably get away with just optimizing specific applications, especially their browsers. To speed up Firefox page displays, try Firetune or Fasterfox. Both are free and one-click easy. Fasterfox adds a few more customization options for expert users. Both tweak low-level Firefox settings such as cache memory capacity, maximum simultaneous connections and "pipelining" (performing multiple data requests simultaneously).

6. Accelerate Your Downloads
Frequent downloaders can save huge amounts of time by using a download manager like our favorite, FlashGet. FlashGet creates multiple simultaneous download links and then puts the file together afterward. All you do is click or drag download links to the FlashGet window; the program does the rest. It integrates with Internet Explorer and works with Firefox using a companion utility called FlashGot.

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Quick PC Fixes

By Lincoln Spector, PC World

Swift and easy cures for unwieldy Start menus, virus-infected USB drives, and five other PC problems.

Our answer man provides fast, practical solutions to seven problems that put users at odds with their PCs. On this page, he addresses the delicate task of removing important files from a malware-infested flash drive without transferring the aliens too. He also identifies the steps involved in adjusting the settings for the Recent Documents list in Windows' Start Menu, and reviews techniques for identifying third-party cookies in Internet Explorer and Firefox.

s there a way to get valuable documents off a virus-infected flash drive?
Muhammad Salau, Lokoja, Nigeria

What a problem! It's scary just to plug in such a drive. Since most malware is operating system-specific, it's a good idea to perform the file retrieval on a non-Windows computer, such as a Mac or a Linux machine. For an easy and safe way to boot Linux on your own PC, browse to my Answer Line column "How Can I Tell if My PC Has Caught a Virus" and scroll to the subhead "Boot Without Windows."

If you must plug the flash drive into a Windows PC, do it very carefully. Before you attach the infected file, update Windows itself and all of your security programs. Next, unplug all of your Internet and local network connections, so your computer can't communicate with the outside world.

Now turn off AutoPlay for your flash drive. Windows XP users should do this with Tweak UI, a free Microsoft Powertoy. Once you've installed and opened Tweak UI, navigate its left pane to My Computer, AutoPlay, Types. Uncheck Enable Autoplay for removable drives, and click OK or Apply.

If you use Vista, click Start, type autoplay, and press Enter. For 'Software and games', select Take no action and click Save.

Plug in the drive and move the files you need onto another removable storage device (not your hard drive). The documents themselves could be infected, so move only the ones you're sure you can't do without to a folder on the removable medium, and scan that folder with every security program you have.

Finally, shut down the PC, remove and throw away the flash drive, plug the PC back into the network, and reboot.

Always be mindful of Spector's First Law of Safe Computing: Never rely on one copy of anything. If you had made backups of those important documents before the infection, you could have thrown the unclean flash drive away at the first sign of disease.

How do I control the Start Menu's Recent Documents list?
Keith Kushnir, Provo, Utah

To turn this list on or off, right-click the Start button, select Properties, and click the Start Menu tab. In XP, click Customize, Advanced, check or uncheck List my most recently opened documents, and click OK twice. In Vista, check or uncheck Store and display a list of recently opened files, and click OK.

It's trickier to set the maximum number of items that the list can display. The following works only for Administrator accounts, and you should do it only after backing up the Registry. For instructions, go to my Answer Line tip "Block Spying Cookies, but Keep the Helpful Ones" and scroll down to the sidebar "Back Up the Registry in Windows XP and Vista."

In XP, select Start, Run, type regedit, and press Enter. Navigate the left pane to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer.


Select Edit, New, DWORD Value. Name the new value MaxRecentDocs. Press once to save the name and again to edit the value. For the Base, select Decimal. Enter the desired number, and click OK. Close the Registry Editor, and reboot your PC for the change to take effect.

In Vista, select Start, type regedit, and press Enter. Navigate the left pane to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies. If this folder doesn't already have an 'Explorer' subkey, select Edit, New, Key; name the key Explorer; and press Enter. With the Explorer key highlighted, select Edit, New, DWORD (32-bit) Value. Name the new value MaxRecentDocs. Press once to save the name and again to edit the value. For the Base, select Decimal. Enter the desired number, and click OK. Close the Registry Editor, and reboot to implement the change.

Bonus tip: For a better look at your recent documents, try Flexigensoft's free ActualDoc. The program lets you filter the Recent Documents list by file type or date, go to the folder that houses the document, and secure the list. The Pro version (priced at 20 euros) includes file viewers, custom categories, and search.

How do I identify third-party cookies?
Jon P. Lorbach, Blue Ash, Ohio

As I explain in my tip "Block Spying Cookies, but Keep the Useful Ones," most of the cookies that violate your privacy are owned not by the sites you visit, but by advertisers.

Internet Explorer doesn't provide a good way of identifying these third-party cookies, but Mozilla Firefox does. If you're concerned about controlling cookies, Firefox is the better choice, anyway.

In Firefox, select Tools, Options, Privacy, Show Cookies. Close the Options dialog box, but keep the Cookies window open. Choose a cookie to read its details, including the domain that owns it and when it expires.

To see what site is placing third-party cookies, clear your cookies, but keep the Cookies dialog box open and visible as your surf. The cookies placed there by the current page will appear at the bottom of the list.

What's up with recalcitrant CD rewrites, bulky browser add-ons, and more

The question and answers continue with a look at the history of the compact-disc format. Other topics include what you can do to dial up music volume in Windows XP or Vista while keeping the OS's system sounds comfortably pianissimo, how to uninstall or disable browser add-ons in Internet Explorer and Firefox, and how to set up faxing in Windows XP and Vista.

Why are supposedly rewritable CD-RWs read-only?
Peter Segel, Fort Myers, Florida

The compact-disc format was designed originally as a read-only medium, and the ability to erase and rewrite discs had to be added to the format after the fact. That's why you need special software to write to CD-R and -RW discs, and why--even with this software in place--CD-RWs behave like reformattable CD-Rs, and not like editable storage devices along the lines of flash drives.

Packet-writing programs get around this limitation of the format by running in the background and, in effect, fooling Windows into seeing an inserted CD-RW as a hard drive. Ahead Software's $80 Nero 7 Ultra and Roxio's $70 Easy Media Creator 9 come with packet-writing programs, though Nero's InCD isn't part of the default installation. Roxio calls its program Drag-to-Disc. Flash drives may be a better choice than CD-RWs as erasable, portable media because they don't have this problem.

How do I get loud music and soft Windows sounds?
Tom McGilligan, San Clemente, California

In Windows XP, there's not much you can do to customize your volume levels. Make sure that the volume in your media player software is cranked up as high as it can go. To turn off Windows sounds entirely, select Start,Run, type mmsys.cpl, and press Enter. Click the Sounds tab, choose the Sound scheme No Sounds (or alternatively, save your existing scheme), and click OK.

Vista has a Volume Mixer that allows you to set different audio levels for different programs that deliver sound (XP's Volume Control looks similar, but it doesn't do the job). To reach Vista's tool, right-click the speaker icon in your system tray and select Open Volume Mixer. If you don't see a speaker icon, click Start, type sndvol, and press Enter.

What's the best way to uninstall browser add-ons?
William E. Tarkington, Midwest City, Oklahoma

If you're using Internet Explorer, you probably can't. The best you can do is disable them. To do so in IE6, select Tools, Manage Add-ons [Tools, Manage Add-ons, Enable or Disable Add-ons in IE7]. Select the undesired add-on, choose the Disable radio button, and click OK.

Internet Explorer 7 allows you to remove ActiveX controls--provided that they're ones you've downloaded and installed (as opposed to those that came with the browser). To remove them, select Tools, Manage Add-ons, Enable or Disable Add-ons. In the Show pulldown menu, select Downloaded ActiveX Controls (32-bit). Select the unwanted control, and click Delete.

You may have other options at your disposal for deleting these programs. Check Control Panel's Add/Remove Programs applet (Programs and Features in Vista); An uninstaller for the add-on may be there. And if the program has a reputation as malware, you may be able to remove it by using a security program such as LavaSoft's AdAware.

On the other hand, if you're using Mozilla Firefox, all you have to do to uninstall an unwanted browser add-on is select Tools, Add-ons, choose the unwanted item, and click Uninstall.

How do I send a fax from Windows?
Fred Weil, Toms River, New Jersey

Both XP and Vista come with perfectly serviceable fax programs. Of course, to use them, you'll need a dial-up analog modem plugged into your telephone line. To set up faxing in XP, open Control Panel's Printers and Faxes applet. In the left pane, click Set up faxing (the option may be identified as 'Install a local fax printer'). The fax configuration wizard is self-explanatory. When it's done, you'll see the Fax icon among your various printer options.

From now on, you can fax anything that you can print. Just select Fax from the list of available printers. Vista Business and Vista Ultimate come with a program called 'Windows Fax and Scan' that makes faxing extremely easy.

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More from MSN Tech & Gadgets

• 12 great do-it-yourself PC projects
• Shift any version of Windows into high gear
• Junkbusters: Trash unwanted freeware
• 15 great, free security programs
• Sound off: What are your favorite PC tips & tricks?

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Tweak System Restore to Perfect Your PC Protection

By Lincoln Spector, PC World

Overcome your system's reluctance to create new restore points in XP or Vista; maximize the life of your LCD monitor.

Problem

How do I fix System Restore? My old restore points vanished, and Windows won't create new ones. - George Vipond, White Rock, British Columbia

Solution

System restore should back up the Registry and many important system files frequently and automatically in Windows XP and Vista. But various conditions can prevent System Restore from creating backups or (as it calls them) restore points:

Tight drive space


To create a restore point, you need about 200MB of free space on the system drive or partition (usually the C: drive). When this space is unavailable, your PC may stop creating restore points and may delete existing ones.

No Task Scheduler


System Restore uses Windows' Task Scheduler to create system restore points automatically every day. To make sure Task Scheduler is active, select Start, Run (or Start in Vista), type services.msc, and press Enter. Scroll to and right-click Task Scheduler, and choose Properties. If 'Service status' isn't set at 'Started', click the Start button. And make sure that 'Startup type' reads 'Automatic' before you click OK.

No rest for the OS


System Restore creates restore points automatically only when your PC is turned on but idle. If the system is always off, hibernating, or in use, you get no automatic restore points.

Even when System Restore works properly, not all restore points are usable. Restore points aren't complete backups. Each holds only the changes since the previous restore point, and System Restore may need to use all the restore points on your hard drive so as to revert to any one of them. In that case, if one restore point is corrupted, they're all useless.

If you can't get any of your restore points to work, remove all of them so you can start over; to do this, turn System Restore off and then on again. In Windows XP, select Start, Run, type sysdm.cpl, and press Enter. Click the System Restore tab in the System Properties dialog box, check Turn off System Restore, click Apply, uncheck Turn off System Restore, and click OK. In Vista, click Start, type sysdm.cpl, and press Enter (or select System Restore from the list of programs that appears as you type). Click the System Protection tab (or choose open System Protection), and uncheck Local Disk (C:). The exact name of this option varies, but it should end with '(System)'. You may have to wait a few seconds for it to appear. Select Turn System Restore Off in the System Protection pop-up, click Apply, recheck Local Disk (C:), and click OK.

Maximize LCD Life

Problem

Does repeatedly turning my LCD monitor on and off wear out the light source, and thus shorten the life of the monitor? - J. Trent Corbett, Chesterfield, Virginia

Solution

Almost certainly not. The fluorescent light bulbs that are used to back-light LCDs continually pass through an on-and-off-like cycle while your monitor is in operation. The less time they spend cycling on and off, the longer they'll live.

But maintaining the screen at too bright a setting for a long time can leave yellow marks on the LCD itself. To extend its life, keep the display as dim as you can without causing discomfort as you work. Of course, your eyes are harder to replace than your monitor, so don't dim it to the point where it causes eyestrain.

Notebook LCDs, which are more expensive to replace, normally run with a dim light anyway to increase battery life.

Tell Windows to Knock Off the Restart Nags


It seems that every time Windows updates, it issues annoying reboot reminders every 5 minutes. To stop the pop-ups in XP Pro and Vista, select Start, Run (just Start in Vista), type gpedit.msc, and press Enter. Navigate in the Group Policy Object Editor's left pane to Local Computer, Policy, Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, Windows Components, Windows Update. In the right pane, double-click Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations. In the next dialog box, select Enabled, and set the number of minutes to something very high, such as 600. Click OK and close the Group Policy Object Editor.

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How To Survive The Worst PC Disasters

Can't get your PC to boot? Forgot your Windows password? Or just sent your boss a really embarrassing e-mail? Here's how to recover from these and nine other potential catastrophes, plus advice on avoiding trouble to begin with.

When it comes to computers, sometimes things go south...and sometimes they go to Antarctica. If your computer won't boot or your data's gone astray, panic is soon to follow, and you might find yourself making things worse in your haste to solve the problem.


To prepare for that inevitable day, save this article: The next time some piece of hardware or software decides to take an unexpected vacation, pull out and consult our handy guide to see how to deal with some of computing's most devastating debacles.

Of course, this advice won't solve every tech-related problem you may come across, but it includes some neat tricks that you may not have thought of, such as freezing a bad hard drive to get it to boot one last time so you can retrieve your data, baking your wet mobile device in an oven set on low to make it functional again, and putting a delay on your outbound e-mail so you have a chance to reconsider the flame you just wrote.


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• How to avoid being a PC disaster
• 10 fast fixes for nagging PC problems
• Sound Off: What's your worst PC disaster?

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If you're interested in a particular problem, here's a list of what we've included in the following pages:

• Your computer won't boot
• You just told off the CEO in an e-mail and instantly regret it
• No PCs show on the network
• Your identity has been stolen!
• Your Net connection is dead
• You're being sued by the RIAA/MPAA
• Your device just got doused with water--or worse
• You're inundated with pop-ups when you boot your PC (adware/spyware infestation)
• You deleted a critical file--and have no backup
• Your hard drive has crashed
• You forgot your Windows password
• Your presentation just croaked

Don't forget to dip into our readers' tales of PC disasters, and browse to our forum on the topic.

Many PC troubles, of course, fall short of a disaster but remain real headaches, nevertheless. For some quick tips on them, see "10 Fast Fixes for Nagging PC Problems."

Finally, here are a couple of links to related site features on PC disasters:

• Step-by-Step in Pictures: How to Clean Up a Tough Spyware Infestation
• Video: Disaster! How to Salvage a Wet Gadget

Problem: Your computer won't boot.

Likely Cause: Could be anything. Determining whether the issue stems from hardware or software is part of the fix.

The Fix: You'll have to play Sherlock Holmes to figure out what's dead. Take it step-by-step.

• First thing: Check all cables (including the plug into the electric socket) to make sure everything is hooked up nice and tight.

• Next, see if the power supply turns on. Listen for the sound of its fan or of your hard drive spinning. If you hear nothing, your power supply probably needs to be replaced. To confirm, consider testing the voltage output with a power-supply tester such as PC Power and Cooling's $10 ATX). Of course, you should also check your home's circuit breaker before doing major PC surgery, and try powering another device from that outlet to make sure it's getting juice.

• If your power supply is okay but nothing appears on screen, plug in a different monitor (borrow one if you must) to ensure it's not your display that's blown. If the monitor proves to be good, try replacing the video cable. Still nothing on screen? If your drive is spinning normally, your video card is probably bad. To replace it, see our video guide, "How to Replace a Graphics Board," or use the video output integrated into your PC's motherboard, if it has that feature. While your case is open, make sure all the fans inside work when you power on the PC. You could have excess-heat issues.

• If your monitor is working but you detect no hard-drive activity and see no display (or you see a display but the PC can't get through boot-up), reset the CMOS. Shut down the PC, unplug it, ground yourself, and take out the battery on the motherboard (click on photo above). Wait 5 minutes, and consult your PC manual or go to the vendor's Web site for instructions on resetting the CMOS jumpers. Reboot and see if that fixed the problem.

• If the PC is still not functioning, bad RAM could be the culprit. Remove one memory module at a time (or replace each module with a known good one) and reboot after each test. Alternatively, create a free MemTest86 boot disk on another PC, and try using it to test the RAM.

• If none of this works, your motherboard or CPU is probably damaged, and will need to be replaced (cost: $80 to $300 or more). However, your data is probably still intact and can be recovered if you install your hard drive on another system. Consider going to a repair shop for an estimate on the repair; it may be more cost-effective to replace the PC. Also, a repair shop might be your best (and only) option if your PC is a laptop.

• Finally, if the PC's BIOS routine runs but the drive won't spin, your drive may have crashed. See "Problem: Your hard drive has crashed" for help with that.

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