Computer Tips

Microsoft Outlook is a software that lets you not only send, receive, and manage e-mail, but also manage your calendar and contacts, such as friends and business associates.

For Microsoft Outlook 2003

To change your Microsoft Outlook password, follow these instructions:

• Open Microsoft Outlook
• Click the Tools menu
• Click the E-mail Accounts menu item
• Check View or change existing e-mail accounts
• Click the Next button
• Double-click the e-mail account for which you wish to change the password
• Under Logon Information, type your new password in the Password box.
• Click the Next button
• Click the Finish button

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For Microsoft Outlook 2007

To change your Microsoft Outlook 2007 password, follow these instructions:

• Click on the Tools drop down menu
• Choose Acount Settings
• Select you e-mail account then click Change
• Type a new password in the Password: field and then click Test Account Settings
• Click Close, then Next and Finish

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Note that changing your Microsoft Outlook password will only change the password in your mail client. It will not change the password in your mail server. To receive e-mail, the passwords in your mail client and mail server must match. If FremontTech hosts your website please contact us to change the password on the server.

Wow, what a night! I got this great idea to do a write up about internet purchases and keeping safe – being its the holiday season and all. I figured I would do a little mock-up of paypal to demonstrate that webmasters can replicate websites to the “T”. Well, in doing so, I got in a bit of hot water. My web host suspended my account, and now my website has this warning saying that it is a phishing site – geez! So my website (not just this one, but ALL of them I own) were down for about an hour tonight. Tonight is the beginning of a 4 day weekend! At first I panicked, then became level headed and started to get this mess taken care of. Needless to say the live demo was to much. Apparently I did to well of a job and was taken down within two hours of the demos launch! That awesome that it was picked up that fast, but, at the same time, it put holes in this evenings plans. So, instead of a real demo, I will use pictures. Not nearly as “cool” but going to prison over the holiday season for a demo is just not worth it

At any rate – on with the story!

Be very careful when doing on-line shopping! It is very easy to build a web page that looks like paypal, but in fact is not paypal. Say I have something for sale. You want to buy it. I give you the good ol’ ‘Buy Now’ button from paypal. It whisks you away to what you believe is paypal. For example; I built this page [removed] to be identical to paypal (with the exception of the big red image saying fake paypal). Now, if that image was not there, you are very likely to think that you are at the paypal site and you want to log in to pay for the item I was selling. Little would you realize that the page you are trying to log into is a fake paypal site, the user name and password you just entered has been sent back to me. Instead of logging you in, you are presented with a “bad password” which normally you just try again. But this bad password is actually on the real paypal site now, so when you attempt to login again, it is successful and you don’t ever think anything of it.

Now that I have your log in info I could log into your account and start bouncing money all around the world <– easier said than done by the way.

Now as I bluntly found out, there is a lot going on behind the scenes to help prevent this kind of theft. First and foremost, paypal has some “phone-home” scripts running that if you try to tamper with their actual page it sends up red flags. Secondly, every web site has to have a host. Unless someone hosts a website from their own personal computer, they will have a commercial host – just like I do. Now, the neat thing I learned tonight is how fast the response is. Heck, I would have to have waited longer for a pizza. My host suspended my account making in accessible to anyone. I was sent an email from my host telling me I violated my terms of service and I had to get in touch with them to get this matter taken care of. After they seen that I was not trying to deceive anyone, but rather help them, they turned my account back on and my website live again. I went back to update this post, and I was presented with a pretty little red box that says my website may try to steal information from you – obviously not the case, but none the less, the warning is there. So now I have to apply to a few different places to have my legitimate site removed from the “bad websites”.

Mozilla FireFox says it best:

• http://www.antiphishing.org/consumer_recs.html
• http://www.en-us.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/phishing-protection/
• http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/safebrowsing/faq.html#q4
• http://badwarebusters.org/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing

Internet speed is rather complicated. To start with, you have two different speeds; Download and Upload.

Download speed is how fast something comes from an outside source (internet) to your computer.Upload speed is how fast something goes from your computer to an outside source (internet)When most people talk about their internet being slow, they are usually referring to their download speed as this is the majority of internet activity. However, their download speed is affected by 4 influences. 1.) Wired / Wireless network. 2.)ISP packages. 3.) Local computer activity. 4.) Remote computer activity.  Allow me to explain these a little more in-depth.

1.) You get the best speeds with a wired connection. Wireless is convenient, but costly – both speed an monetarily. At the time of this posting, we are in transition between “Wireless G” and “Wireless N” also known as 802.11g / n respectively. “Wireless G” supports 54 Mbps and “Wireless N” is over 100 Mbps – equivalent to a 10/100 (wired) network. These numbers far exceed what your ISP can provide for an internet connection, but, these are ideal numbers. Most wireless devices don’t actually connect or hold connections at these speeds. In reality, wired will out perform wireless – especially with the 100/1000 networks. For the rest of this article, we will assume that everything is on a wired network.

2.) ISP (Internet Service Provider) Package. There are 3 choices here in Fremont. TimeWarner Cable (cable), Qwest (DSL) and a few different dial-up providers. We are going to take a look at TWC as this is the majority of Fremont users service. TWC offers different speed packages, Most commonly, 10 Mbps. This means that the customer can download 10 megabytes in one second – Not to bad. What they don’t brag about is the upload speed that is connected to the 10Meg package. It is only 1Mbps. In geekland we call this a 10/1 setup. 10 down, 1 up. For residential service through TWC for this particular package runs about $60 a month. What all this boils down to is the fact that we can have 10 megabytes coming from the internet to our computer.

So, we have now established a base line connection speed. Lets look at what happens after we pay for our 10/1 connection.

3.) If we are watching a video on youtube and listening to our favorite online music station, this is going to greatly affect our download speeds. Lets just say that the youtube video is streaming down at 5 megs a second and our music is streaming at 3 megs a second (these are high numbers by the ways, but for simplicity, we’ll use them). That is consuming 8 of our 10 megs of downloading speed a second. This means that we only have 2 megs left to download Windows latest update. Lets all it a large update of 100 megs. If we only have 2 mbps to use, then it is going to take 50 seconds to download, provided that Microsoft’s server can maintain that speed. If we were to disconnect from the music service, we would free up 3 megs of bandwidth and therefore, it should only take 20 seconds to download that update from Microsoft, again, provided they can maintain that speed.

So, we have determined our download speed is 10/1 subtracted from our overall usage. Lets see what happens when we inject the remote computers activity.

4.) Just like you and I, the remote computer (usually called a server) has an ISP as well, though, they have different down/upload speeds. The majority of the servers activity is going to be uploading information. So they have high upload speeds and sometimes rather lacking download speeds. Servers give out more information than they take in, so this type of package is appropriate for them. Lets just assume they they have a 3 mbps download and a 10 mbps upload speed. This means that they can send up to 10 megabytes a second through their ISP. We are gong to pretend that there are 5 people (all have they typical 10/128 package) connected to this particular server at the same time, all download the same file. This means that the server is going to have to divide its 10 mbps upload speed between the 5 people, each of them getting just 2 mbps. Assuming that these 5 people are doing nothing else with their computer, they should be able to download that file at the full 10mbps speed. Well, because the server is restricted to 10mbps and there are 5 people connected at once, these 5 people will only be allowed to download that file at 2mbps even thought they are capable of download faster, the remote server is not. Now, if 4 of these people leave the site, then the last person will (theoretically) be able to download at the full 10mbps they think they should.

Whew! Still with me on this?

So, We take our 10/1 connection, divide it up between our different downloads, and then factor in the remote servers ability to upload (divided by its number of connections) and we are left with our actual download speed – usually in the kilobyte area).

So why are we paying $60 bucks a month for our 10mbps internet connection when all we actually get is a 1 to 200 Kbps? Well this is because we can connect to 10 different servers and if each of them give us 1 mbps download then we will be capping our download ability. The real question is, how many of us actually connect to a slew of different servers downloading from each of them at the same time? Well it really depends on our internet usage. If you read your email and catch up on the local news at www.fremonter.com, then you have connected to 2 servers. If you are a bit torrent user, then you connect to dozens of computers (though – generally – these are consumer (just like you and I) computers being bottle necked by their ability to upload) but you get the point.

Is the $60 bucks for the 10 meg connection really worth it? Only your patience can answer that! Me, personally, I think so.

Here is a speed test internet site that is very popular. http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest In my opinion, these are extravagantly generous on their download speeds.This is provided by TimeWarner Cable and seems to produce more accurate speeds http://speedtest.peakview.rr.com/

Files:
Each file on a hard drive is represented by a record in a special file called the Master File Table (MFT). This record stores the file name along with its exact location(s) on the physical drive known as sector. Files that are on your computer are not physically located inside of a folder. In fact, there is no real folder. So when you open a file, the operating system takes the name of the file you are asking for, scans the MFT, gets its sector address and then displays the information that is located at that address. I think its easiest to think of the Master File Table as a phone book. You look up a name and get an address.

Delete:
When we delete a file, typically, it gos to the recycle bin / trash can – which – more or less is just a “folder”. The MFT still tracks the file in the same manor as above. When we empty the recycle bin, essentially, all we are doing is removing the file name and address from the MFT. With the phone book analogy, we are just putting “white out” over that name and address. Just because we remove the name from the MFT (phone book) does not mean that the data (or house) is destroyed – it is just simply unreferenced.

Recovery:
In the even of a delete, and a recycle bin flush, the data is still present on the hard drive – for now… remember – all we did was erase the file reference in the MFT. With special software we can scan the entire hard drive (sector by sector) looking for blocks that contain data, but are not referenced by the MFT. The recovery software creates its very own file table and allows us to access these bits of data – therefore, recovering the file. It is not always “This Simple” but I think you get the idea.

Recovery Catch-22:

Yes, we have the ability to recover our data – for a limited time only. As soon as you (intentionally or unintentionally) write to the hard drive, the Operating System scans the MFT looking for a place to park the new data. If it finds “vacant” sectors that have enough room between two non-vacant sectors, it will park the data there. Beings that the deleted file is no longer in the MFT, the operating systems sees its sectors as being unused and may very well park the data right on top of the file that we want to recover. The file is now irrecoverable as it has been written over.
Unintentionally – you just deleted an important file – you fire up your web browser to figure out how to recover it. Your browser caches every thing you view – your cache is written to your hard drive – your hard drive is where your important, but currently deleted file is! So in an attempt to recover that file, you may unintentionally overwrite it on accident – yet there again – if your computer hibernates – it writes information from the RAM to the hard drive – also possibly over writing your important file. And there you have your Catch-22 You cant use your computer, but you cant not use it either. If you discover a file has been deleted you have to decide the importance of that file. (any backups? is it in the recycle bin? etc.) If you shutdown without saving anything, it is more likely to be recovered – but you will lose any work that is not saved. If you have software that executes at shut down or log off I would suggest that you do a hard shutdown by holding in the power button for a few seconds or by pulling the plug from the wall. 

Formatting is not Secure Wiping:
If you are going to sell or give your computer to someone else, you really don’t want them to recover your information, especially if you have personal info on there! Pictures, Credit Card numbers, Passwords saved by your web browser etc, can all be recovered with the right tools, patience and luck. I see computers for sale all the time that say “Fresh Reinstall of Windows” meaning the owner (or tech) reformatted the hard drive and reinstalled an operating system – expecting all personal info to be destroyed in the process. If you took a few minutes to read everything above this paragraph, we know that is not true. A “Quick Format” just wipes out the Master File Table we learned about at the top of this page. A standard Format wipes out the MFT as well, but it will also scan for bad sectors and not allow data to be written to them via the MFT. So if you know that you should format your computer before selling it; you are only half informed. Think about it for a moment. The first thing that happens to a hard drive, either at the factory or by a tech, it gets formatted and Windows 7 installed on it. This usually takes up the first 20gigs of the hard drive. Then you start creating all your personal files after that. Well, when you format and reinstall, you will only end up overwriting the first 20 gigs again – meaning most all of your personal files would still be recoverable.

Secure Wiping:

If you are still with me on this, you are serious about secure wiping – so lets get this one figured out. First and foremost, only secure erase when you need to. Excessive wiping can lead to premature hard drive failure and/or cause the disk to have bad sectors. Most of the programs I have used have options, number of passes, random, Zeroed etc. Lets look at Random Binary and the number of passes first. This visual representation of passes is not exactly how it works, but it is easiest to demonstrate. Lets say we have a file with the contents being the word “Test” and we want to secure wipe this file because we have nothing better to do with out time – or for practice If we tell our special little program to secure wipe this file with 1 pass, this is usually enough to keep (especially free) programs from recovering this file. Which, if all the file contained was the word “Test” I would be fine with 1 pass. But if it was more sensitive info, I would give it a few more passes. The more passes the more difficult it is to recover. I like UltraSentry for simple file and folder wipes. If you want to wipe your entire hard drive and have the the ability to understand technical instructions You better read all the instructions when you have a look here.

Final Disposition:

Multiple passes using a secure wipe/erase program are not guaranteed. Each program has its benefits as well as faults. Once something is securely wiped, chances of recovery are slim. So make sure that you really want to wipe something because once its gone – its probably gone forever.

These little keyboard shortcuts will save you a lot of typing!

Navigation

Description Basic Alt + Left Arrow or Backspace Back Alt + Right Arrow or Shift + Backspace Forward Alt + Home Home Ctrl + O Open File F5 or CTRL + R Reload Ctrl + F5 or Ctrl + Shift + R Reload (override cache) Esc Stop

Description Action End Go to Bottom of Page End Go to Bottom of Page Home Go to Top of Page F6 Move to Next Frame Shift + F6 Move to Previous Frame Ctrl + U Page Source Ctrl + P Print Ctrl + S Save Page As Ctrl + + Zoom In Ctrl + - Zoom Out Ctrl + 0 Zoom Reset

Editing

Search

Windows & Tabs

Tools

Miscellaneous

Media shortcuts

One of the limitations of pretty much all computer applications is the need to target for a general audience because of the wide array of computer components and varied network infrastructure. This is where tweaking comes in. Firefox by default is aimed at a general audience too and hopefully we can tune it more to the needs of the individual. The majority of the information comes from an excellent thread over at the MozillaZine Forum.

This is how to change the settings for FireFox. Use this method with all of my articles about FireFox Tweaking.

Types

1. 1. Using FireFox, Open a new window (ctlr + n) or tab (ctrl + t) and type “about:config” into the browsers address bar and hit return.
2. 2. If adjusting the settings for a pre existing preference, type that name in the Filter bar, just under the address or tab bar.
3. 3. Alter the entries as follows:
• If the Preference is of a boolean type with the value of true/false then all you have to do to change it is double click on it.
• If the Preference is of a string or integer type, with the value of a number, or word, then double click on it and make the changes in the dialog box that pop’s up.
• If the Preference is not in the list, shorten the filter word to the first few characters, double check the spelling. If it is still not there, right click on any whitespace and select new, following the instructions, choose one of the three types,  and give it a name. These names much be exactly as they are typed in the instructions, and click OK, and enter the value exactly as it appears in the instructions.
DO NOT copy and past the space or equal signs.

These were some settings I ran across sometime ago. Pipelining does multiple data requests at once and should speed things up. I believe IE did this before and this was partially attributable to the speed advantage that IE had over older versions of Mozilla/Netscape. Initial Paint Delay actually slows down the rendering of the ENTIRE page but since users tend to start reading before the entire page is rendered, setting this to a low value gives the impression that the page loads faster.

This will reduce the RAM usage when firefox is minimized.

How To Edit FireFox Preferences

1. Open Firefox and go to the Address Bar. Type in about:config and then press Enter.
2. Right Click in the page and select New -> Boolean.
3. In the box that pops up enter config.trim_on_minimize. Press Enter.
4. Now select True and then press Enter.
5. Restart Firefox.

This will suit fast computers with fast internet.

How To Edit FireFox Preferences

{code}content.notify.backoffcount = 5
plugin.expose_full_path = true
ui.submenuDelay = 0
content.interrupt.parsing = true
content.max.tokenizing.time = 2250000
content.notify.interval = 750000
content.notify.ontimer = true
content.switch.threshold = 750000
nglayout.initialpaint.delay = 0
network.http.max-connections = 48
network.http.max-connections-per-server = 16
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy = 16
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server = 8
browser.cache.memory.capacity = 65536{/code}