I read a lot about people who download software that they either buy or get free to help them fix their computer problems. I wrote the E-book below to help, Is your Computer running slow, I have links in that book to free tools I have been using for many years and they are all free. If you buy or get free software programs, before you download or buy them do a Search on Google and see what people are saying about it. Check a lot of sites so you get an unbiased option of the Product. If you think it is alright and people are happy with the product then try it. Most have a trial version, try it and if it does what they say it will then buy it. If it starts creating problems with your computer, remove it right away.

I just finished writting a couple E-Books for the site. One is about how to Clean Your Computer, the scrub a dub dub clean. Here is a link to it Clean Your Computer.
The other one is about fixing your computer when it starts slowing down from surfing and neglect. It is a Guide on how I keep mine running fast and smooth, here is the link to it Computer Running Slow. They are written in PDF form so you can download them to your computer and print it out and save a copy. If you use it and have any suggestions or comments use the Contact Mike link under Message in the Java menu. Hope they are helpful and informative, enjoy.

As I mention in the post below I installed Ubuntu 7.10 (Linux) on one of my computers. Just to follow up on it I thought I would mention some more aspects of it. I use Dreamweaver CS3 for my website editor, in Ubuntu I downloaded and installed, automatically lol, Quanta Plus a free open source editor. To my amazement it is a lot like Dreamweaver, I also use Photoshop CS3 for my Graphics editor and in Ubuntu I downloaded and installed GIMP Image Editor and to my amazement it is just like Photoshop, I can layer, splice, clone tool, it has it all and again it is free. There are free firewalls, Open Office, Firefox, Kstars a free program to look and track stars and planets, Evolution Mail, plus hundreds of other free software, WOW! But the coolest part is that you just go to the Add/Remove, choose a program you want and Ubuntu fetches it and any other dependent software and automatically installs it for you. I did find out that not all the software is stored on your computer, some is left on the DVD/CD so when searching for Adobes Flash player for Firefox I had to have the DVD install disk in the drive. Other then that and there was a problem when it first installed from the Desktop, when I had to reboot there was no loading screen, pressed Ctrl-Alt-F1 to show it, after everything was updated that was fixed. Another cool thing is that you can run Ubuntu from the DVD/CD and if you like it you can click the install Icon on the Desktop to do a full install and like I said it is automatic. If you want to check Linux out and have no idea what Linux is or like, try the Live version of Ubuntu, it runs off the CD and if you like it install it. There is a lot of support for this OS also, so if you do have questions Linux users are very helpful. If you have an old computer laying around give Ubuntu a try and remember it is FREE. Oh ya also I noticed now that they have a lot of educational games for kids and they are Free. Here is the Article I wrote about Ubuntu has screenshots to!

I have had people ask if I will be having info on Vista. I do have some info on vista under XP. I personally have not bought Vista nor do I have a desire to have vista as my OS. I do realize that most computers you buy today have vista installed as the OS and many people are not pleased with it, some have even removed Vista and installed XP. Why? If you had software that ran on 98, you could get it to run on XP using the Comparability Mode. With Vista if software was not designed to work on XP it will not work with Vista. Also you need min 512 megs of ram for XP, really 1 gig is best, with Vista you need a min of 1 gig, I know they say 512 and it will run but min is 1 gig and you should have 2 gigs or more if you play games. Vista is a really secure OS to the point of being annoying and they have changed where things are compared to XP, so it takes awhile to figure it all out. The main thing that bugs me is they changed the rules on OEMs and because of those changes I would have to buy the retail version when I build a computer. If you buy a computer with Vista installed or I build a computer and the Mobo dies, you nor I can reinstall the Vista we had on that computer, you have to buy a new Install CD, you can reinstall with the retail version. Also Vista will not let you do all the things XP and 98 would let you do, one person said he went to defrag his drive and because Vista said it did not need to be defragmented, he could not defrag the drive, What? MS just dropped the price of Vista, (because not enough people are buying it) to try and boost sales, unfortunately most of the sales of Vista are the versions that are preinstalled and some of those are being removed and replaced with XP. I have checked online and Vista Home Basic is $170.00 and Premium is $210.00 Retail Versions, OEM is Home $79.95 OEM Premium $108.00 but if I build a computer and it dies, I gotta go buy another copy of the OEM, so they have changed the rules to force me to now buy the retail version, not happy and to be honest XP is rock solid and I like it a lot better then Vista so I for now, will only use XP.
I’m starting to look at Mandriva Pro OS (Linux) for $60.00 or Ubuntu 7.10 which is FREE and now I can run windows programs on it with Wine and when the computer dies I can reinstall it legally. It comes with every kind of program you can think of and is more secure then XP. MS change the System Builder Rules for OEMs and maybe I will try Vista. I did see a cheap used computer at my local computer store for $269.00 with Vista installed on it, maybe I will buy vista that way, after I use it for awhile I can remove vista and replace it with a different OS, at least I get a computer out of the deal.

I installed Ubuntu 7.10 and was amazed, it is fully automatic now, very impressed. Once I had it installed, which was all automatic, it updated my Graphic’s driver and downloaded and installed 199 updates, automatically. It has an Add/Remove where you can download software or remove software, automatically, WOW I actually had to search for a terminal to do command line work. The root acct is not accessible unless you really want to get into root (Administrative Acct) which is a great way to protect the OS from someone not knowing what they are doing. There are no restriction for my acct, if I do need to use root I can use sudo — in a terminal and I have 15 minutes to get it done, then it locks root back up. My Desktop looks like Vista, after I downloaded a new Background and Theme, still checking it out but have not found any negatives yet and it is FREE, gotta love that!