Thursday, December 9, 2010

CNET to the Rescue: How to tweak your relatives' computers

CNET to the Rescue: How to tweak your relatives' computers

CNET to the Rescue: How to tweak your relatives' computers

Posted: 08 Dec 2010 04:05 PM PST

This week, as we gear up for holiday travel, we have a special show on preparing to help out your less-than-geeky parents, brothers, sisters, in-laws, and assorted relatives. You know they're going to ask you for tech support. How do you talk to them? Do you fix their computer? With what tools? We're joined today by special guest Seth Rosenblatt of CNET.com, who can fill us in.

If you have a tech question for CNET to the Rescue, e-mail rescue@cnet.com or call us to get on the next show: 877-438-6688. No question is too basic.


Listen now: Download today's podcast

Episode 28: How to tweak your relatives' computers

Tweaking tips
First, the approach. How to talk to your less-techie relatives. Their PC, their rules. Their terminology.

Seth's personal tech support pattern: 1) install manageable AV, set to silent/gaming mode. 2) install Revo, clear out all crapware. 3) Run CCleaner, clear out Reg 4) reboot 5) install new apps 6) take prescription from Dr. Whiskey.

The USB key of the the geeks: What should be on it?

Seth: Try our Utility Starter Kit.

Rafe: CCleaner; Revo Uninstaller.

Seth: Smart Defrag (XP only, W7 doesn't require defragging); replacement PDF reader (Nitro or FoxIt); WinDirStat (or Disk Inventory X for OS X)

Useful: Ninite, for getting a bunch of stuff at once.

Antivirus: First make sure relative isn't running multiple. Best free, lightweight tools: AVG, Avast, Panda, Microsoft. See also our Security Starter Kit.

Rafe's meta advice: Install LogMeIn (for unattended remote access). Seth: Try CrossLoop for simple attended remote sharing

Protect! Set up backup (Mozy, Carbonite, Crashplan)

Blow it out: Clean out the computer's vents - bring compressed air with you.

See Lifehacker: How to fix your relative's terrible computer.

Your questions answered
Charles E: I have a small question on bringing life to my old laptop. I have an old Compaq Presario that is about 5 years old will be a perfect computer for my mom. It's clean of all viruses and malware but still preforms very slowly on even small tasks. I was looking to just wipe the old thing and reinstall Windows XP. The problem comes in when I try to make a recovery disc. the disc drive does not work at all. I also tried to boot it from USB but in the system BIOS there is no option to do so. Then i tried to use a external usb dvd drive but with USB 1.0 ports performance is not good at all. So the main question is how can I wipe the computer and reinstall Windows. Worst case scenario, I am willing to put Linux on it -- Unbuntu or any other distribution that is easy for computer a novice.

Rafe: Not recommended. Use this as a project computer for yourself. You could clean up the existing Windows installation to make it usable. But a 5-year-old PC won't do video well and even a fresh update of XP will drag.

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Voicemail: Jacob on saving old movies.

If you can get a projector, see this eHow article. Better bet: Use a service, like Digital Pickle.

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Voicemail: Steve on making iPad a meeting notetaker

Rafe: There are keyboards, but the ones I've seen are lacking. You can type on an iPad, and you will get faster. However, I have stopped using iPad as note-taker. It's obstructive in a whole new way-- you have to look at it. I use my Macbook instead.

Seth: Or Livescribe.

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Pat in Atlanta: I'm more of a geek wanna-be than a real geek. I know I can get good deals on a PC from a white box maker, but how can I tell a good one from a bad one? And, just as important, can I trust a white box manufacturer not to upsell me (perhaps needlessly) on components? I DO want to buy more than I need at the moment or can even use much (i.e. the USB 3.0 controller will become more and more useful), but I don't want to be talked into digitized, anodized, polarized, galvanized, hyper warp-drive "flux capacitors".

Read up on Tom's Hardware to spec out the machine you want. Or make it easy: Just buy a Dell or HP.

Originally posted at CNET to the Rescue

An early look at Chrome OS

Posted: 08 Dec 2010 01:21 PM PST

Although you can download beta, unbranded versions of Google's nascent operating system now, Chrome OS won't be ready for mainstream use until the middle of 2011. That doesn't mean we can't show you some of what to expect. Check out this gallery for an early look at the cloud-based operating system.

A quick look at Google Chrome OS (photos)

Google tunes up Chrome's JavaScript engine

Posted: 08 Dec 2010 05:14 AM PST

Google's newest test versions of Chrome are equipped with a faster JavaScript engine, an increasingly important browser component for running Web-based programs.

The result is faster-loading pages, more powerful Web applications, and another round in the browser performance competition with Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Mozilla's Firefox, Apple's Safari, and Opera.

Chrome Canary uses the new Crankshaft version of Google's JavaScript engine. On Mozilla's Kraken test, where shorter bars are better, it wins handily over the current stable version of Chrome. This and other tests are on a Dell Studio XPS 16 with a 1.73GHz Intel Q820 Core i7 processor and 6GB of memory.

Chrome Canary uses the new Crankshaft version of Google's JavaScript engine. On Mozilla's Kraken test, where shorter bars are better, it wins handily over the current stable version of Chrome. This and other tests are on a Dell Studio XPS 16 with a 1.73GHz Intel Q820 Core i7 processor and 6GB of memory.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)
The new JavaScript engine works better on Google's V8 benchmark, too.

The new JavaScript engine works better on Google's V8 benchmark, too.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)
On the SunSpider test, now in disfavor in some circles for being obsolete, the two browsers are tied.

On the SunSpider test, now in disfavor in some circles for being obsolete, the two browsers are tied.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Chrome's browser engine, called V8, is being upgraded to version 3, called Crankshaft. It uses a technique called adaptive compilation that translates JavaScript into native instructions for a processor and then concentrates more energy on improving the parts of the code used most often, Google said.

"Crankshaft uses adaptive compilation to improve both start-up time and peak performance. The idea is to heavily optimize code that is frequently executed and not waste time optimizing code that is not," Google programmers Kevin Millikin and Florian Schneider said yesterday in a company blog post.

The result: "pages that contain significant amounts of JavaScript code" load on average 12 percent faster, the programmers said. And when it comes to how fast JavaScript programs run once they're loaded, they said, "this is the biggest performance improvement since we launched Chrome in 2008."

JavaScript has become such a competitive feature among browsers that they're using brand names. Up against V8 is Microsoft's Chakra, debuting in IE9; Apple's Nitro; Opera's Carakan; and Mozilla's JaegerMonkey, debuting in Firefox 4.

JavaScript performance is important, but it's only one facet of browser quality. Others include support for new features such as WebGL's 3D graphics; the ability to accelerate display of graphics and text; privacy and security; how fast it can handle the increasingly important CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) technology for formatting; and performance of interacting with a Web page's DOM--or document object model, the hierarchical description of its elements.

All these areas and more are getting ever more attention. And if it wasn't clear what's at stake, look no further than Google's Chrome OS and Chrome Web Store. The first is a browser-based operating system that runs Web apps only; the second is a distribution mechanism to find and buy those apps.

There are plenty of uncertainties about how well Google will succeed in its ambition to transform the Web into a foundation for applications, not just static Web sites. But there are some things that aren't so unclear: more and more of people's work and personal life is being spent doing things within a browser. That trend is enabled by better performance and, at the same time, encourages even more advances.

The programmers specifically pointed to improvements in Gmail loading times, which I've found excruciatingly slow in recent months. However, my not-terribly-reliable stopwatch tests showed Crankshaft actually slower with that site: 2.4 seconds to load on an average of five runs loading Gmail on Chrome Canary 10.0.603.3 compared with 2.1 seconds for the newest stable version of Chrome, Chrome 8.0.552.215. Given the variability in the results (less than 2 seconds to more than 3), though, I wouldn't read too much into that result.

Of course, there are plenty of benchmarks for broader if more more artificial tests of JavaScript performance: Mozilla's Kraken (version 1.0), Google's V8 Benchmark (version 6), and WebKit's SunSpider (version 0.9.1).

Here, Crankshift definitely shows a difference, except on the SunSpider test whose influence has waned as browser makers' advancements have rendered it out of date. Bear in mind, though, that this was a test just on a single machine, a quad-core Dell Studio XPS 16 with 6GB of memory and that other machines will produce different results.

Browser benchmarks are a thorny issue. It's always tough to represent the full breadth of computing challenges in a single convenient test, and there's always the risk that engineers will design products for good benchmark scores even when the approach has little or no bearing on real-world work. Indeed, Firefox leveled benchmark engineering charges at Microsoft with IE9.

Chrome is gaining in popularity, on the verge of 10 percent of browser usage on the Web today for third place after IE and Firefox. It took years and a somewhat subversive effort to convince Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt that the company should release a browser, but it's clearly a force to be reckoned with on the Net.

Originally posted at Deep Tech
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