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Toward a Better Computing Experience |
Smart Computing magazine |
Automated spyware and antivirus tools are great, but they're no substitute for a little bit of vigilance on your part. A little watchfulness goes a long way. Got an email from someone you don't know? Immediately trash it without opening it. Even if your email program automatically opens your new messages in a reading pane, it's a good idea never to download an unexpected attachment. Consider using Yahoo! Mail (mail.yahoo.com) for your personal email, as it adds an extra layer of protection by immediately scanning all incoming and outgoing attachments for virus threats.
Also, no matter what the pop-ups tell you, don't click anything that jumps unsolicited onto your screen claiming to be able to fix a virus or spyware problem. These pop-ups themselves are more often than not carriers of spyware and viruses in the guise of an actual message from your operating system. A general rule of thumb is that if it opens in a browser window and you didn't specifically point your browser toward it, don't click it. Just close the window and go about your business.
Thankfully, the newest version of Internet Explorer, IE7, blocks most of these pop-ups. If you have not already upgraded from IE6, take a few minutes and visit www.windowsupdate.com. If you prefer to use Mozilla's Firefox browser instead, drop by www.mozilla.com and pick up the latest version of the browser. Both IE and Firefox offer excellent security just out of the gate, and both are great at making sure you never see those pop-ups.
Windows Explorer is probably one of Windows' most helpful features, letting you browse around your hard drive with ease. You can increase its value even more if you customize the details on folders with specialized contents. To customize folder details, open Explorer (right-click any folder or the Start button and select Explore). When Explorer opens, navigate to a folder you want to customize and click it to open it. From the View menu, select Details, and select Choose Columns (WinMe or Win2000) or Choose Details (WinXP). Click the myriad checkboxes to select or deselect details. Available details run the gamut from standard (Name, Size, Type) to highly specialized (Copyright, Album Title, Date Picture Taken). If you want to change details on the fly while you are browsing the folder, you can also right-click any detail heading and make selections from there.
If your external storage device works with Windows, but you can't access it on Macintosh operating systems, your drive is most likely formatted in the NTFS (NT file system) file format. To use external storage on both Windows and Macintosh operating systems, it must be in the FAT32 (32-bit file allocation table) format. You'll need to reformat the drive and choose FAT32 when prompted for a file format. To reformat the drive, right-click it in My Computer and click Format.
Reprinted with permission from Smart Computing. Visit www.smartcomputing.com to learn what Smart Computing can do for you and your user group!