Benediktson Computer – Page 3 – Benediktson Computer, Inc.

Windows 10 setup without a password

I was asked the other day how to setup Windows 10 and avoid having to set it up with a password and how to avoid a bunch of the other “crap” Microsoft tries really hard to force you to setup.

I have found what I think is a simple, elegant solution: When you start that initial Windows setup, do not connect to the internet, not by cable and not by wifi (if your machine has wifi, Windows 10 will list available connections for you and in the lower left corner there should be a prompt “I don’t have internet” or similar, click this instead of selecting a wifi) then continue with Windows 10 initial setup refusing any attempts to provide enhanced services (from the internet) and give a user name that is meaningful for you. Under the username is space for a password, it is your choice and you can provide one here or simply press enter or click on next to not have a password required to start Windows on this machine. Eventually, you will get to the normal Windows 10 desktop and have a copy of Windows that starts without a password or a pin. There are also some hidden advantages to this method too; but, most users will never notice. Mostly, this method avoids setting up 5 or 6 services that eat some resources and make the boot-up take longer.

Traveling and using cell service for Internet Service

I have been traveling again and my phone reminded me of an important lesson. I carry a prepaid cell phone these days and rely on it (and a prepaid unlimited plan) to provide me with internet service while on the road. Motel wifi tends to be way too iffy at best and downright useless all too often, so my phone becomes a hotspot and usually provides good service.

Now, I am not going to say that 4G or LTE is fast enough to compete with the office internet and wired network connections tend to be much more trouble-free than wifi; but, when away from the office, my phone provides the next best thing. 5G service, when available, is darned close; but, I rarely find myself in 5G service areas. Just the same, I find I can stream movies, videos, tv shows and the like just fine with 4G or LTE (branding affects what it is called and I tend to get 4G LTE service in most areas while in some towns the carrier just has 4G or just has LTE, in all cases my phone works it out for me)

So, back to lessons learned or reminded of. In medium-sized metropolitan areas and larger towns, cities, any given location may be within range of towers owned by a variety of carriers; and not all carriers provide the same quality of service. My phone automatically selects which tower to use based on the phone carrier signal quality; generally, the one with the best signal quality is chosen to provide connectivity. The automatically chosen tower may not provide the best internet service for you. I was reminded this week (by my phone) that it helps to go in (into settings in your phone) and manually select your service provider when multiple providers are available.

In this lesson, the difference was remarkable with one carrier providing insufficient speed to get an address before it timed out and my “home” carrier providing 72m / 72m service that has been an absolute delight. My phone had auto chosen AT&T for service which for whatever reason (heavy loads by contracted users and I was a roaming user) provided almost no service; but, T-Mobile had a tower providing half the signal quality to my location but clearly had no load on it and provided a tested 72m up and down speed. A Verizon tower also provided decent service with 5m download speeds, but in this specific case T-Mobile was the best choice for me. Which carrier is best will be different in every location. The best choice for you may vary depending on your phone contract as well as location.

It can be helpful to talk with your cellular retailer or tech support to get their hints and recommendations for how to get the best service when you are away from home or the office. Oh, and don’t forget to set your phone back to automatic carrier detection once you are on the move again (assuming that is the default with your carrier and contract).

Magnetic connecting charging cables

Hey, I decided to try one of those magnetic charger cables and the associated dongles that stay in your phone and other devices. First, my smart phone is developing an issue with its data + charging port so I wanted a nearly permanent connection device to stay in it once I insured it had a good connection (to lengthen the service life of my phone) and I often find that I am trying to plug in devices to a cable located in a dark room.

So, I shopped a bit and purchased a kit with 4 cables with lighted magnetic ends and many tiny tips (dongles) to permanently plug into my devices. I plugged one into my phone and plugged the cable into my standard phone charger and voila! the end lit up in a pleasant blue light making it easy to find in any light and bringing it close to my phone caused it to magnetically zip over to the connection on my phone and form a good connection (good meaning the phone started charging at full charge rate). I put one of these cables in my car and I have to admit that little bit of blue light really helps me find the desired end of the cable while not having to see the end to identify up or down on it to get a connection to my phone really helps too.

I think this is a type of product that is well worth the investment and will significantly lengthen the service life of my phone while also making it easier and much safer to connect up in the car.

Some help with computer lingo

The Computer age has spawned some interesting additions to our vocabulary and some of this new vocabulary can be real difficult to properly understand. So, I offer the following to help real people understand some of this new, yet arcane, lingo.

First, some context so we are all firmly planted in the same world. Internet service is provided by an Internet Service Provider (ISP) and may be delivered in several ways; but, in all cases it is still just Internet Service. In your house or business there will be a Point of Provision (POP) and from there Internet service can be provided on a cable (Cat5 or Cat6) or through radio transmission (WiFi) to an assortment of devices (computer, phone, tablet, etc.).

The POP (point of provision or point of presence) is often referred to as a modem (modulator + demodulator) because it converts (modulates) the signal from the ISP into a signal that all of your favorite devices are designed to work with. It may also (in addition) be called a router. A router has the job of assigning addresses to all of your devices so you can request information (over the internet) and receive responses to your requests (and not everyone else’s), direct your requests (traffic) out to the internet and direct responses back to your device. In addition, it may have 1 or more (often 4) RJ45 (big phone plug) ports built-in for connecting devices via a wired connection (Cat5, Cat6, etc.). This router often provides wireless connections to the internet (WiFi) in addition.

WiFi (wireless fidelity) was a term coined for a family of wireless connection types to a Local Area Network(LAN). It was a term picked by the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance (now called the Wi-Fi Alliance) to refer to any of the protocols developed to provide wireless connectivity within a LAN. Thankfully, there is little reason to understand the protocols used in any given WiFi connection, rather it is only important to match them up (802.11 n connects to 802.11 n or 802.11 ac can connect to 802.11 n, g, or ac). In most cases the user of WiFi has no knowledge of which protocol is in use; it is simply WiFi.

LAN (Local Area Network) is the simple network in your house or business that connects your various devices to the internet and to each other. This network is often automatically administrated by your router. The casual user has no control or impact on how the LAN works, the router takes care of all of that including assigning addresses (a unique address for every device 192.168.0.2 for example), directing traffic in and out, and between devices as necessary. The LAN may be composed of a combination of wired and wireless (WiFi) connections.

WAN (Wide Area Network) generally refers to everything outside of your LAN, this is what your ISP connects you to (the internet). Connections in the WAN can be via satellite links, radio links, WiFi links, wired links, fiber optic links, and a few others. The important thing to remember is that all of this (the WAN) is beyond the user’s control.

A Wired Connection is most commonly done with twisted pair cable either Category 5(Cat5) or Category 6(Cat6); for networking, 2 twisted pairs are required and usually a cable consists of 4 twisted pairs with the rate of twist varying along the length of the cable. The twisting of a pair of wires is done to prevent interference in the signal carried by the cable. Both outside interference bothering the signal in the cable and the signal in the cable interfering with the outside world (televisions, cell phones, cordless phones, etc.) are greatly reduced or prevented through the twisting of wire pairs. In Category 5 not only are the paired wires variably twisted upon each other but, each pair in the bundle is also twisted with the other pairs in the bundle. The use of 4 pairs in a bundle (cable) that we see in Category 5 is the result of developed standards for cabling in businesses back when network and telephone were carried together on a single cable, one pair for the voice (phone), one pair for control (phone – choose a line, put on hold, etc.), and 2 pairs to carry network signal. Now, the third and fourth pairs are used to bypass a broken pair or carry a second network signal most often with commercial phone systems using a separate cable run.

A Switch is a common component of a wired network and simply provides a point of fan out for the cabling; that is, one cable in is replicated to a number of outgoing cables. The signal from any cable connected to the switch is sent to all the cables connected to the switch. This comes in very handy when you have more devices than your router has ports; a router with one port can connect to an 8 port switch and connect to 7 devices. If you have a single cable port in a room and want to connect to a printer and 2 computers, connecting a 4-port switch to the cable allows you to directly connect to those 3 devices.

To scan or photograph?

Well, the delayed tax season is upon us and a few folks are scrambling to get “stuff” prepared at the last second. These modern days there are so many more ways of capturing information than were even dreamt of 20 years ago; but, this has led to some interesting confusion. One individual hit me with “I have photographed all my receipts this year; but, how do I get them out of my phone?”. Yet another mentioned having moved to Windows 10 and now their old scanner doesn’t work and so forth.

So, it seemed to me that the same solution applied to both of these situations. Images taken with a phone are no different than those scanned with a flatbed or any other type of scanner. Yes, a flatbed scanner is quite convenient for pressing curled receipts flat and scanning them into the computer; but, the real purpose is often just to “capture” a number and have proof of the associated expenditure, asset, or whatever so perhaps a quick photo of that document or item is all you really needed.

But, wait you say, how do I get those pictures out of my phone, and then how do I get them into some form that is useful? For me, the first step is to get them transferred to a computer (yes, I know how powerful modern phones are; but, I am experienced in solutions using Windows and associated utilities).

My second choice for getting photos off of a phone and into a computer is to sync the phone with a cloud service (iCloud, google-cloud, and so forth) then follow the instructions to log your computer into that same cloud account and you can sync again or copy and paste from the cloud to your pc. This has the advantage that the cloud services are really good at converting names and formatting issues automatically so what you get on your computer is readily useable when it arrives. At this point, you could print them out (ugh!) archive them onto a portable memory device, burn them onto a CD or DVD, or whatever seems most functional for you.

However, some folks like to have all this information in a more standard form like JPG’s or even PDFs (Adobe format). How do I get all of this stuff into the right format, you know, so I can use it? Well, when it comes from the cloud it is extremely likely to come as a JPG which is a nice compressed format suitable for viewing. If, instead, you want PDF, you might have to print all of those photos to a PDF printer (Windows 10 has one built-in, or you can download one of several from the internet at no charge – “cute pdf” has worked well for me in the past). Oh, and you can select multiple photos and have them all printed to pdf files in a single step if you have a lot of them to convert.

For those who still aren’t happy with all these photos of information or pdf’s of information, there is a technique called OCR (optical character recognition) which can convert all of this into numbers that can be used in a spreadsheet or in a myriad of other ways. For this, I usually suggest looking on the internet for a utility program to do this partially automatically and suggest spending a few dollars to get one that reviewers have had success with; or, you could simply type the numbers into whatever application you favor and be just as well off (most spreadsheets allow you to import jpg’s and pdfs so you have the source material and the numbers together).

How does remote work and school change your needs at home?

Very soon school will recommence in the shadow of the COVID specter. Looking at current trends, I predict that much of the coming school year will be carried out remotely using a wide variety of distance learning techniques. For the parents of school-aged children, this will have several impacts.

This spring some learned about the need for more connectable devices as the demand for computers at home suddenly increased when sharing one computer between 3 children simply did not work (and other similar scenarios). Then, as more devices were connected, the need for more bandwidth (simply more speed either in your internet connection or in your home wifi, or both) became apparent (the internet connection that was adequate for shopping online, getting the news simply came to a halt when 2 people tried to operate simultaneous video chats). So how much bandwidth (still just speed) does your household need?

Let me start by describing one cause of confusion. For news, streaming movies, reading email (the stuff we used to do), download speed is all that matters; but for video chatting, video conferencing, video phone calls, most forms of classroom “sharing” you use as much upload speed (previously unimportant to most) as download speed and this is a gamechanger for you and for the ISPs (Internet Service Providers). So a 20mb down by 0.5mb up service used to be great and as soon as distance learning started in your home it was woefully inadequate to the point of being non-functional. Just as cloud-based services do much better on connections with much more upload speed, say 20 by 20 MB, so virtual classrooms of various forms also work much better with symmetrical connections (same up speed as down speed).

But, how much is enough? Voice phone calls need 256K x 256K per active phone call, video chats vary somewhat but generally 2MB x 2MB minimum and 5MB x 5MB for full screen and 10MB x 10MB for high resolution per active “chat”. If you have 3 students at home using standard resolution remotes into school, 15MB x 15MB will be consumed upfront with internet searches, videos (watching), cell phone connections all piling on even more demand. If you run a business from home and rely on the internet to interact with your clientele, add even more. So, in my example maybe 30MB up by 50MB down will keep everything flowing during peak demand.

Based on what you have been previously offered by your local internet service provider, these numbers may seem ridiculous; but, let me assure you this is a real part of what distance learning does to your internet usage. Until ISPs catch up with this sudden change in demand, some sacrifices will be made (doing low-res remotes when possible, waiting till later to stream videos or catch up on social networking, etc.). Start by checking with your ISP to see if they have upped their offerings to meet this demand or plan to in the future. If not, then looking to competing service providers may be necessary.

Stick Computers, when internet access is all you need.

This time around, I want to talk about turning an extra or lightly utilized television into a computer intended for internet access, email, remote learning, and similar functions. Let me be clear, none of the devices I will describe is intended for gaming, CADD, CAM, photo editing, or video editing. These devices (computers) are designed to get you internet-based content, display videos (even movies), and provide a portal for video conferencing (the basis for much of current distance learning).How does this work? Miniaturization of computers has come a long way and you can cram everything you need to make a good computing device into a 4″ stick with an HDMI connector built into one end of it (see a picture of just one such device below). To run Windows 10, 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage are sufficient, though I recommend 4GB of RAM and 32GB or even 64GB of storage, and devices configured this way are available and inexpensive.What is needed to complete the package? I recommend you start with the stick device which Amazon (among other sources) sells for under $150. (brands like Intel, Azulle, Terryza, AWOW). Add wireless keyboard and mouse combination (using a combination or set makes it easy to add wireless keyboard and mouse with one USB dongle) at $30 or less from a variety of manufacturers including Logitech. Finally, add a camera (conferencing implies that you can send video or photos) at $30-$50 along with a simple multi-outlet extension cord $10 ish and $220 or thereabouts gets you a complete kit to turn any HDMI TV into a computer.What can I expect such a computer to be able to do? Well, it will be plenty powerful enough to run Microsoft Office or Apache Office (free), store numerous documents, photos, even a few videos (setting up a cloud connection can greatly increase this ability). It will do quite nicely browsing the web, accessing your email, streaming videos (HD or UHD available in some devices and a few tv’s) and will come with Windows 10 pre-installed or ChromeOS if you so choose. And yes, it should be able to smoothly handle video conferencing and other remote school functions.

The AWOW pc stick — small, with fan, ac networking

Tiny Computers for students or as a second or third machine

Hello out there, this week I want to discuss or even propose the purchase of tiny computers to fill out your computer needs as the need for remote computing causes the desire for another computer or two. Generally, I think of tiny computers as using a television for its monitor instead of a dedicated monitor, though either choice works equally well. One of the benefits of tiny computers is that they can hide behind the display unit and not clutter up a workspace or family space.

Various providers have a considerable backstock of tiny computers and you can find them “new”, “refurbished”, or “renewed” usually with Windows 10 installed and a variety of “ports” built-in so you can accessorize as necessary. The one drawback to any of these small devices is that they tend to be too small to include an optical drive (cd, DVD, blueray, etc.) which can be dealt with by transferring content onto USB drives or pushing it up to the cloud or by acquiring a USB-DVD device. This backstock can make the price quite attractive with renewed Intel i5 based units with 8gb of RAM and 240gb of SSD drive going for under $200.

For scale, tiny computer shown with golf balls — small enough to tuck away behind almost anything

It is this pricing for a so much more capable machine than a stick computer that makes these tiny computers so attractive. One additional cost involved with the tiny machines is the video cable to match /connect the computer to your choice of a monitor ($20 or less) and then it is all the same as setting up a stick computer (wireless keyboard + mouse, etc.).
If you don’t already have a spare TV hanging around, you will find that 27″ – 43″ televisions are quite affordable in HD and even UHD configurations. Some advantages of a TV over a monitor are the built-in speakers and the tuner which can allow it to take on multiple roles (supporting gaming consoles, over air broadcasts, etc.).

Another approach is to get a low-end Laptop or even consider a refurbished or renewed mid-range laptop (notebook or similar). This is where some guidance can be assistive; because laptops tend to use low-power components that negatively affect overall performance choosing a CPU like an Intel i5 or AMD A-series or even a Ryzen5 will go a long way towards a good overall experience with a laptop. In addition, choosing a model with an SSD for main storage will provide a better user experience and longer quality service. Intel and AMD both produce lower-end CPUs with other family names (N2000, E3500, etc.) and while these have applications where they are appropriate, they can be frustrating slow when asked to support distance learning and other interactive applications.

Tablet / laptop — Intended for a wide range of uses, this low end laptop doubles as a tablet

Warning from FCC regarding scammers

Oh wow! I am amazed at how sophisticated the scammers have become. Faking the caller id to match the actual business they are pretending to be and then taking control of the unsuspecting scammee’s accounts, phone, etc. Some of these scams are just too well done to believe.

So, I will repeat some of the advice offered by an FCC representative who put on a small seminar on how to avoid or survive the current family of scams and scammers. First, if someone calls you and identifies themselves as being from a particular agency or business, hang up on them. If you feel there is reason to believe the call was valid, look up the published number for that agency or business, call that number and inquire about any issues. I can not stress this strongly enough, there is no way to know where an incoming call has actually come from and you simply can NOT trust that the call is in your best interest. Once again, hang up, do not provide the caller with ANY information.

As another repeat, Microsoft does not have any teams or facilities to call computer or device owners to alert them of any issues. You will never receive a phone call from Microsoft, any calls that seem to be from Microsoft are a SCAM.if you do become aware of a phone-based scam, or heaven forbid get involved in one, the FCC would like to know about it; your local law enforcement may want to know about it also. The FCC has a customer portal available through www.fcc.gov (https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us) where you can make a report with any information you may have.

The FCC has several facilities to assist you in identifying or dealing with scams and scammers (start at www.fcc.gov). In addition, they are in the process of making new rules to assist in scam prevention and (hopefully) prosecution. Additional information about FCC activities follows: The Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau is seeking comments for a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for the one-ring scam. Comments are due June 19, 2020. Reply Comments are due on or before July 6, 2020. More information is available at https://www.fcc.gov/document/cgb-announces-comment-dates-one-ring-scam-nprm.Chairman Ajit Pai’s May 18, 2020 blog regarding the digital divide is available at https://www.fcc.gov/news-events/blog/2020/05/18/bread-and-butter.The fifth meeting of the Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council VII (CSRIC VII) will meet electronically on June 10, 2020. More information is available at https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-announces-csric-vii-meeting-june-10-be-held-electronically.The FCC has partnered with the Institute of Museum And Library Services to address the digital divide during COVID-19 by working together to keep libraries and their communities connected.

More information is available at https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-imls-partner-support-libraries-and-address-digital-divide. The FCC and the Federal Trade Commission demand that robocall-enabling service providers cut off from routing COVID-19 related international scammers. These scams include COVID-19 related funds, loan reductions, and social security threats. Gateway providers who do not cut off this kind of traffic face serious consequences. More information is available at https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-ftc-demand-robocall-enabling-service-providers-cut-scammers.Please be careful and remember to never give out your social security number, account passwords, or other critical access information over the phone.

Sudden Jeopardy for Social Networking users?

I wonder how many people appreciate what happens when you post something on social media. Doing so is publishing that information. Yes, you can restrict the audience (in general terms) by carefully setting and managing your privacy settings. I read through a change in privacy policy recently tagged from Facebook and noticed one glaring change; photographs are now considered the property of Facebook when they are stored on Facebook (in a post or on your personal page).

I have long been concerned that someone would pull the rug out from under the various protections we as users (publishers) on social media have (perhaps inappropriately) enjoyed. A 1996 law that essentially holds publishers, social media system operators, Internet service providers, and portal providers (those who make internet cafe machines available) harmless for the content published on social media. My notion of the worst-case situation here is that everything ever posted (and not permanently deleted) would suddenly be exposed to a plethora of legal challenges from both law enforcement and civil opposition.

It now appears that the Whitehouse is going to test its ability to modify laws once again by altering those protections through Presidential action to modify “Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act”. Now that act may not have been aimed at protecting the true authors of memes and other posts; but, it has certainly protected the services (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and allowed the posting public to assert or state most anything one might imagine with little to no expectation of reprisal.Waking up one morning and learning that you need to be more circumspect in your posts is one thing, and frankly, I have no issue with this becoming the case; but, suddenly being liable (no coincidence in my choice of words here) for everything you have ever posted, is a very different can of worms and one we are likely to face very soon.

So, to my way of thinking, two threats to our long-standing practices on social media; one, photos we upload may get used in a manner not in keeping with our privacy settings and two, we may all suddenly be held accountable civilly and legally for all content we have posted over the years.

Windows 7 end of life?

Wow, so Microsoft continues its campaign to push all of us regular consumers out of Windows 7. I suspect that money and resources (more money) they have to invest in keeping Windows 7 current is behind the push on their part. The question I get asked often is, does this apply to my computer?

My current answer is kind of a long one, so let me start with a summary. If all of the programs you use work in Windows 7 and you are comfortable using Windows 7, don’t change just to make Microsoft happy. At some point you may have reason to upgrade a program you are using or add a new program to the ones that you use; and, if that upgrade or new program requires Windows 10, then you need to upgrade from Windows 7 at that point. In my opinion, Windows 7 is not at the end of its service life yet.

What will you be missing? Windows 10 does have a number of built-in apps, programs, and so forth that can be helpful for some folks. Some modern accessories already require Windows 10, and Windows defender will soon require Windows 10. As I have already hinted, some programs also require Windows 10.

How would upgrading my current machine to Windows 10 affect its performance? Let’s face it, Windows 10 is much bigger than Windows 7 and does need more memory, more storage, and a more capable CPU; so, your computer will run slower with Windows 10 than it did with Windows 7. Reliability should be quite similar with the two OS’s, though it does seem that I need to reboot less often with Windows 10 than with a very similar machine running Windows 7.

If you decide to stay with Windows 7 for another year or so, what do you need to do to remain safe and secure? With Windows Defender ceasing support for Windows 7 you will need to choose a different anti-virus + anti-malware product or suite going forward and I can recommend Sophos Home or Malwarebytes. Both products have their advantages and support Windows 7 at this time. Another step is to stop using Internet Explorer and switch to Edge, Chrome, or Firefox for web browsing (once again security issues). Other than those concerns (changes) very little if anything should change for the Windows 7 user going forward for a few years.

Android – when updates aren’t what you expect

Well, I learned something interesting yesterday and the ramifications are just starting to hit home. When Android devices update to the latest version of Android, that doesn’t mean what many of us might think. I have a tablet on Android Version 6.01 that reports being completely up to date; its security update is identified as being a 2017 version along with a number of other modules dating back 3-4 years all reported as completely up to date. How can this be?

It turns out that Android only updates within its major version, so 6.01 is the current (and no longer supported) version for Android 6. Android 7 is a completely different product and must be installed (a surprisingly arcane and complicated install) by the user. A quick search on the internet reveals that Android 10 is available though many sources are reporting that Android 8 is the stable and current version for most devices. A quick visit to the manufacturer’s website reveals that Android 6 is the most recent version of Android that they support on my device.

Imagine if your computer had Windows Vista on it and would not load some applications unless you update to Windows 10, but your system won’t pass the compatibility test for Windows 10. Oh yes, this is also a very real problem and one I encounter regularly. The result is that a perfectly functional device with no reason to replace except that new programs won’t run it. My tablet ran afoul of this problem over the yahoo mail app. Nothing changed on my end, the folks at Yahoo produced a new app and set their servers to require the new app and the app won’t install on Android 6.

So, sometime tomorrow I will be learning if I can install Android 8 on my 2-year old tablet or if it will turn that tablet into a decoration, after I backup all the data on it, make enough free space to perform the new OS install. If it works, great and I will have learned another valuable skill. If not, well I will have another piece of technology that is good for nothing beyond cluttering up may desk.

This all reminds me that there really is a reason for fearing change. I was reading about Author George R R Martin yesterday and how he still uses a DOS machine with Wordstar 4 to write his books; I guess he really has resisted change with success. If well cared for, properly maintained (replacing parts that are prone to wearing out) hi tech devices really can be used for a very long time; but beware of products that require regular updates, they will force you into upgrading your entire world of electronics.

Seek and you shall Find

The advance of new technology is always exciting for me. Seeing the latest breakthroughs finally used in new and interesting ways to give us new useful products really does put a smile on my face. Unfortunately, many of the most exciting products fail to make it to retail for general use for one reason or another.

Two years ago, when we rescued a dog, I purchased a locator device for him. It had limited range but it was small, inexpensive and worked perfectly well on 2 occasions when it was needed. This winter I bought a much-updated version of that device that has reasonable range, replaceable batteries and a few new features that I hope I won’t need but are there if and when I need them. The current device is called a Tile Pro. The range on this device while much greater than the original is still limited, but for finding a lost dog or wandering or confused senior citizen it really is quite adequate.

I have seen advertisements for a few competing products of late that have the ability to post an actual set of GPS coordinates back to the searching folks that promise to provide far greater flexibility than the Tile products, but they are still in development and will carry a monthly subscription fee to make that ability possible. If one or more of these make it to actual retail exposure, I am sure they will be a sought after product for many folks who have a desire to track and locate family members, devices, etc.

For those who don’t want to wait, you can look at the various offerings from existing location device providers including a cell phone. Remember that modern cell phones are much more than just a telephone. A careful choice of a phone for grandma or an appropriately aged child can give you excellent tracking ability or emergency locating ability in an emergency or simply add to your peace of mind on a daily basis. And, yes, I do keep a locator in my wife’s purse also.

Guidance from the FCC

Howdy all, I had the opportunity to sit down with some FCC representatives visiting the Silver City Library and hear their recommendations regarding what to do about phone scams, slamming and a few other issues that they are concerned about. It was a small gathering and informative.

If you start getting phone service bills and don’t recognize the company billing you, the FCC wants to hear about it and help you correct the situation or (in case it is appropriate) help you understand what has happened. www.FCC.gov/consumers is a good website to visit if you are concerned or looking for help or guidance on any form of scamming related to communications. The FCC has a Consumer Affairs and Outreach Division that is there to help you and you can reach them through that website or call them at 1-888-225-5322, 8 am to 1 am Eastern time.

Another topic covered was robocalls (scam robocalls), the cell carriers and the FCC are working hard to reduce the prevalence of these, but we the consumers are the first line of defense. We can arm our selves with knowledge and common sense. If you get a robocall (or a cold call) asking you for money for any reason, it is a scam. Microsoft will not call you, The IRS will not call you, and folks offering free vacations over the phone are scammers. If we as consumers quit falling for these scams, they will stop making money from them and the scams will cease to be profitable. So, if you get a call from any organization asking for money, give them nothing, don’t give them money, don’t give them your name or any other information about you and do not engage them in any other way, simply hang up. What do you do if some organization you trust or wish to support calls and asks for donations? Find a valid means of contacting them (phone number, local location, etc.) by looking them up some other way (do not use the number supplied by them when they call you) and contact them using the publicly provided number, address, etc. to provide whatever is in your heart to provide. Please do not trust any information provided by a cold caller or robocaller.

The FCC continues to update their website as they encounter new types of scams and going to the consumer portal of their website is a great way to keep educated on what is currently possible and what kinds of scams are common. If you are concerned about any communications related issues the web portal is a great resource to help you decide if you are being scammed and if you need more help, their phone number is active to assist you and I, so use either or both if you have any questions or concerns. www.fcc.gov/consumer and 888-225-5322.

One last quick tip, if you have issues with a carrier or communications provider or broadcast TV, or radio the same web portal has a link for filing a complaint. These complaints are extremely important as they are a primary way for the FCC to gain information regarding licensed providers who are not meeting the needs or properly servicing the individuals or groups whom they are licensed (by the FCC) to serve.

Holiday Sales

Happy Holidays to all. It has been a bit quiet around our house this year (empty nested) and I have still not had time for some of my intended projects yet. I did receive the Cyber Monday laptop I decided to add to my household collection. It is delightful testimony to the industry coming around to my point of view on what a personal computer should be and should be capable of.

Picture of Ideapad 330s — The Lenovo Ideapad 330s in grey

With time, I have had some exposure to the 1909 build of Windows 10 which actually has been behaving itself for me. It can be difficult getting to that version with some of the intermediate versions making a real mess of some machines so I would look for a cumulative upgrade to 1909 if you are still running an 1803 or 1806 build of Windows 10 and see if you can avoid the intermediate steps. At all times, but particularly with the summer upgrades of Windows 10, please make good backups before granting permission for it to load new versions.

This particular laptop is 15″ with a decent keyboard and keypad, 8gb RAM, 256gb m.2 SSD, an assortment of ports including USB-c and HDMI and Lenovo went with an AMD Ryzen 5 for this laptop which is a favorite of mine for home computers and office computers alike. Battery life is a tad less than I had hoped for at only 4 – 4.5 hours on a full charge, but that is adequate for most applications. I see that Lenovo is discontinuing this product line the Ideapad 330s and replacing it with the 340 series so it may reappear at wonderful prices for a bit yet. $300-$400 depending on the exact configuration seems reasonable to me.

Hacks that endanger your safety

OOOps, Yahoo is admitting to being hacked again; this time it is a double whammy. They are alerting their customers a fair bit after the damage was done. They are also being as private as they legally can be about it; “if you or your information was involved, we will contact you with details”. Details? If account information fell into the hands of persons or entities outside yahoo proper and you happened to be one of millions of people who store their investment portfolio, investment account information, email account information, or personal information on their servers (to make day to day news, financial, activity, etc. easier), then that information may well have been compromised yet again.

Let me be clear, if you are one of the folks whose information was involved, the damage may have already been done, or it may be used in a month or a year. I know it is tempting to maximize the convenience offered by services like Yahoo financial, or Bing, or Google, or Scott Trade, or any of hundreds of convenience services provided out in the web; but, we (the consumers) need to be mindful of the fragility of our personal information and therefore careful whom we trust it to. The more information a service collects, the more attractive it becomes to hackers (thieves by any guise) looking to make big money quickly.

Your personal computer(s) represent a target containing information that might allow cleaning out one family; Yahoo’s servers represent a target containing information for more than a million families. Even if it is harder to get into Yahoo’s computers, isn’t it clear that it would be worth the effort? Now most of us have heard of someone who’s personal computer was compromised (causing the wise sufferer to cancel credit cards, change passwords, change account numbers, etc.); it seems a small step to me to understand why hackers would put forth the effort to raid Yahoo or Bing, or any of the other service holders out there.

Now comes the painful part; if you are alerted to the “event” within 24 hours, you have a real good opportunity to prevent any real damage. You will experience a lot of anxiety and inconvenience to protect yourself, but you can stop it all before any permanent damage is done (you would hope). On the other hand, if you aren’t alerted to the event until 6 months or a year have gone by (heck, one week would be bad let alone these longer periods), the damage could already have become painfully obvious by the time you are alerted.

All of this brings me to two points; one, choose carefully what you put on “helpful” websites; and two, be careful which of them you trust. When one of the big banks was hacked a few years back, they alerted clients on the next business day after they found out; Yahoo, started alerting clients last week for a hack that occurred last year. As consumers, we can pressure these companies into better practices through choosing carefully whom we do business with.

As always, if you have questions, Benediktson Computer is delighted to answer your questions before you have problems and ready to help after the trouble has started.
Benediktson Computer, Inc.
Help@benediktson.com
(575) 956-9723
and check us out on facebook.

Web Advertising part 3

Web Advertising Part 3.

In this installment I will try to describe what is perhaps the most important step you can take to get search engines to favor your web presence; keeping it alive and relevant in the electronic eyes of those search engines. This is important for numerous reasons but let us focus on this one aspect first. The search engines preview content continuously so they can instantly show you relevant responses to your queries; in doing so, they visit web pages (remember when we registered our page(s) with the search engines) to verify that the page is still relevant and to see if it has changed. A couple of impacts occur as a result; if nothing has changed, the score for the page is reduced based on, among other things, how long it has been since the page was changed. If it has changed, the search engine will re-score the page based on the new content and then on its over all content including words, tags, descriptions and so forth.

This score I am talking about is a measure of what sorts of things the content of the website is relevant to. The search engines are completely mechanical in their scoring; no human interference, no human intuition, simple brute force data collection and tabulation combined with a measure of how fresh that data is, and how well the website embodies certain measures of accessibility (does it optimize for different devices, does it provide alternate text for non-text items, does it contain multi-media content and other factors are valued). Now, each search engine is a little different, each one scores differently; but, the intent is the same. The search engines provide quick direction to websites that are most relevant for the search criteria provided by a user; in addition to websites that have paid to be included in searches for some or all of the search criteria. Exactly how important each aspect is varies with different search engines; but, that freshness is always an important factor. You don’t really want to be shown websites that haven’t changed in five years (is that company still operating if their website hasn’t changed?) and this is one part of the score we can influence easily.

Over time, what you provide or how much you charge for products and services may change; updating your website to reflect that is a great idea if only for this reason. Bonus, updating that website also creates new interest on the part of the search engine and serves to potentially increase your score simply because your website is showing life, growth, freshness! As time goes on, you may get new improved media items to replace old ones or think of better ways to describe your offerings; don’t be shy, this is all positive in terms of increasing the score of your website. If you join a new organization pertinent to your offerings, add a link to that organization, get them to link back to your page, add a post or a paragraph to your page describing how this relationship improves your offerings. All of this keeps your website alive and interesting to the search engines and consumers alike.

I wish to offer a cautionary note at this point; particularly if customers use your website regularly for reference or their commercial or personal activities. Changing the overall structure of your website, which may keep it fresh, may also cause some frustration for your customers. Adding and enhancing content is one thing (a positive thing); but, making major changes on a regular basis can prove frustrating to folks for whom your website is a regular resource. Keeping the navigation of the website consistent and the type of content consistent can go a long way to maintaining customer loyalty. If you are thinking about providing an entirely new type of content, this is a good place to create a new website and then provide a link to it (the new website) on your current website (remember to provide an obvious return link on the new website). A quick tip; most hosting plans allow for free subdomains which can be a great place to test new content, new business ideas, with only your time as an investment as far as web presence is concerned. If you need help with this concept, your hosting help line or favorite consultant is likely to be very familiar with this and related topics.

Keeping your website and other web offerings up to date is one of the easiest tasks you can undertake and it offers numerous advantages related to why you created a web presence in the first place. I recommend that you set aside time each month to review all of your web assets with an eye to making small improvements on a regular basis; and remember the web itself is constantly changing, growing, and adapting to the demands of a huge audience; you can grow with it and prosper.

Web Advertising Part 1

Web Advertising Part 1.

This will be a multi-part project from me; this week, in part 1, I will discuss building up the base or basic infrastructure. There are some assumptions I will make; some familiarity with web browsing, links, basic navigation on the web, and an understanding that web pages represent one form of inexpensive advertising. Many of the tools or features I will discuss are available at no charge or you can choose to pay fees to enhance their impact; I mostly recommend the “at no charge” part of these tools. I will leave it up to the user of such tools to calculate whether or not paid advertising is of positive value for them.

Step one (perhaps already done by most) acquire a name (domain or domain name) for your primary website and arrange for a place to host it. For a commercial website, this might entail registering a catchy name (benediktson.com for me) and buying web hosting (maybe $8.00 / month – perhaps less or at no charge). I prefer web hosting that includes email service so I can set up equally catchy named email addresses (help@benediktson.com, john@benediktson.com) that help with company recognition and simplify the whole branding part of advertising. A quick word about these names; my example is a ‘.com’ (top-level-domain) but many others exist for improved identification and name recognition. For example ‘.biz’ for a business, ‘.net’ for networking providers, ‘.org’ for organizations, or the very common ‘.com’ for commercial. If you are looking to avoid annual fees, you may choose a sub-domain provided “under” someone else’s name (john.computer4u.com, or john.mt.gov).

Step two is to identify services that already are providing websites or web-presence’s for you, or would if they knew you existed, and claim or take control of these sites or presences. This can require some research and some luck; but, trust me, it is worth the effort on your part. Google provides a contact page or website for every business (sort of); find yours and take ownership of it so you control the content on it and can link it to your website from “step one” above. Facebook, Yahoo, Bing, and a host of special interest groups and service providers also provide similar services. Yellowbook provides a range of services, many at no charge (in the hopes you will also buy some of their advertising products); this is one way to get your business phone number (assuming you have one and want it to be easy to find) published so that it appears in web searches. As much as possible, you want to add references from all of these back to your website and to each other (remember to try and put consistent information on each of these).

Step three is to contact organizations that provide recommendations or assistance in the field you provide service or products for. If you are an attorney, for instance, there will be numerous professional groups that you could join and many of them will assist you in being easier to find for those interested in your specific offerings. There are also a few commercial groups who provide lists of specialists, referral services, etc.; you may wish to exchange links with some or all that you can find. In each case, you want to get accurate information about you and what you offer (including your website address and email address maybe) in their listings.

Step four is to go to each of the major search engines and register your webpage with them. There are services that will do this for you (usually for a fee) or you can spend an hour some evening and learn about all the other services these engines can provide to you while you describe your offerings to them. These are designed to be used by non-technical people and should represent no unusual challenges. Okay, there is one challenge involved, you will need to think about your offerings and how your would-be clients view those offerings so you can tell the search engines which kinds of queries they should recommend you (your webpage) as a response.

With these four steps initiated, you should have several “pages” displaying your name, desired contact information, and information about services, products, or whatever that you offer. There may be opportunities to improve these as time and feedback suggest or add new ones as you become aware of additional services. As much as possible, all should link to your website and you may choose to link your website back to some; particularly if they provide additional information or incentive regarding you and your offerings.

In part 2 of this series, I hope to explain how to make your web presence more attractive to the search engines and help you advance up the list the search engines provide.

Web Advertising Part 2

Web Advertising Part 2.

I have been told that it is an arcane art getting your webpage selected for prominent display by the search engines (getting the first listing or on the first page) and that it requires the efforts of a highly paid professional. I reject this notion; my experience has shown that a few straightforward and common sense tactics can get any web page favored by the search engines. The various search engines are sufficiently open about what they “score” highly for selection. Recently, Google and Bing posted notes regarding changes to their scoring schemes; both now favor pages that include content for the vision challenged in addition to favoring “living” and “dynamic” pages.

This is good news all around. The web has become very visually oriented; to the extent that, until recently, the sight impaired, and those with limited motor control (and a vast array of other situations that create challenges to experiencing web content) experienced the web in an extremely reduced quality. Whatever the reason you are building a web presence, providing your message to the maximum audience is desirable. Being mindful of the newer guidelines for the search engines not only helps you get higher on the page but also allows you to include more of the potential audience. A marketing specialist can help you get a higher percentage of reached individuals to engage with your content, while building pages that the search engines favor helps you reach a larger audience; both factors are extremely important in forming a successful campaign.

There are simple things we (as builders of the website or blog) can do to achieve favor within these new guidelines. When posting a photograph, try fully describing both the photo and its association with the text or other materials surrounding it; often this can be entered as text in the “alternate text” field associated with the photo. Similarly, when embedding a video or a table of numbers, or a graph, fully describe it and how it applies to the material it is meant to enhance or exemplify. If you are using WordPress, media items (photos, videos, sound recordings, charts, etc.) can easily be annotated as you place them from the media library with a title, a caption (visible to all), alt text (used by screen readers, search engines, visible to those requesting text mode or whose browser settings prevent picture loading), a description (available to same group as alt text). All of these can assist in getting search engine favor and in helping to identify the importance of that media to both the search engines and all viewers. A quick hint for WordPress users; if you will use a media item multiple times and want different annotation, create multiple copies because the annotation stays with the library entry, not the “instance” on the page.

As you format the “page” remember that we want the page to be dynamic; in this case I refer to the ability of WordPress and other page layout products to format the page differently to optimize its appearance and function for various kinds of viewing devices (smart phone, tablet, PC, Mac, etc.). This can involve choosing larger fonts (14pt and above recommended for the small displays and the visually impaired); avoiding hard to read fonts (artsy but more difficult to read for all), and good white-space balance (this is many things but it amounts to adding white space to make paragraphs easier to spot, photos, tables, and graphs easily identified with the text they enliven but not jammed into, and more). Understanding that the page will be reformatted based on the viewer’s device might lead to using larger or smaller elements (media or text); but, generally the use of a moderate sized and easy to read font for all text will go a long way here. Breaking up parts of the page to separate different thoughts you are expressing may also assist the reader (particularly after the dynamic page layout engine shapes it for small displays).

In addition, you want to include “tags”; this is your chance to give the search engines words or phrases that you think your content explains or is the answer to. If someone was searching for “this tag” I want my page provided at the top of the list or prominently in the list. This makes “tags” an important consideration and a powerful tool to get your page presented to those searching for your offerings. Depending on what tools you use to create your pages, “tags” will be available in different ways; in WordPress, each post and each page has a field that you can paste your tags into. A quick step back; when we were filling in the alternate text and description fields for media earlier, we would like to include (smoothly, artfully) those same tags in the descriptive text for those media. Back to “tags”; these are not sentences, the search engines are looking to match a key word or 2, maybe, 3 word phrase and the “tags” themselves are primarily here for the search engines. It is extremely rare for a viewer of a page to dig in deep enough to ever see the tags associated with it.

Now that we have some content on our webpage, hopefully very attractive to reader and search engine alike, it will help to go to the various search engines and “register” our page. In this step the search engine is, once again, informed of the “tags” for our intended content and audience and you may choose to pay for higher placement or for advertising space. Some of the engines will allow you to enter a description or even a lengthy briefing designed to grab attention to your link(s) and provide business and or personal information (address, hours, phone numbers, email address, etc.). This is a process you can do or have a service or even an app do for you; I prefer doing it myself as it often gives me hints about what the search engine is looking for and what other entities are doing that might be in competition with me.

In part 3, I hope to discuss keeping your page alive; strategies and the need for updating the content on your page.

Wifi Signal issues

For those of you who have wifi that works perfectly all the time; Lucky you! For the rest of us, I have done some research and wish to share some of what I have learned.

Simply enough wifi is wireless internet via radio signal; as such, it works great if you are in direct sight of the signal source and less well otherwise. Wireless a,b,g,n (standard wifi) all operate at 2.4ghz radio frequency; so do cordless phones, microwave ovens, some remote controls, bluetooth devices, and IOT (internet of things) devices. Wireless Dual Band and wireless ac wifi (the newer standards for wifi) operate at 5ghz and 2.4ghz or (under user control) at just 5ghz; some cordless phones (expensive, new) and broken microwave ovens can emit 5ghz signal (if your microwave significantly interferes with your wifi, it would be a good idea to consider replacing that microwave – it can mean its radiation shielding is breaking down). In the future I expect to see a lot more devices using 5ghz transmission; but, not in the narrow band used for wifi. As a rule of thumb. A given quality of signal (speed and reliability of wifi) requires half as much power at 5ghz as it does at 2.4ghz; radio signals at these frequencies do not bend, do not go around corners (thus my earlier comment about being in direct sight); but, they do bounce off some materials and will penetrate with some loss others.

What will wifi signals bounce off? Most metal surfaces, some types of rock (generally with metallic content), foil backed insulation, aluminum foil, tin cans and similar objects. What will wifi signals go through? Most wood surfaces and structures, craft-backed insulation, plastic encapsulated insulation, bare fiberglass, rockwool, paper based insulation, and, to a lesser extent, gypsum board (sheetrock). What will simply block wifi signal? Brick, tile, adobe, rock, cinder block and similar materials are excellent at blocking most radio signals including wifi. Of interest is that 5ghz will penetrate materials somewhat more readily than 2.4ghz and can work even after going through a 6″ adobe wall but with greatly reduced speed and reliability.

What do I do if I can’t get my wifi to cover the entire area where I want it? First, look at relocating the source (usually your wifi router); often you can get better coverage by moving it to a more central location. Second, try getting it up higher; on the floor all wifi behaves poorly. (I know I hate the trial and error method too; it takes time and effort). Next, you can try reorienting the antenna(s) on the router and, possibly, increasing the transmit power of the router (many routers have variable output settings -high,medium, low), or adding better antennas to your router. If you still don’t have what you want for coverage, you can use network over AC wiring devices (plug one device in next to your router and run a cable to it, then plug another one in near the device you want to have internet access and connect it by a cable from the plug-in device), or you can use one of the newer wifi range extender devices; these come in a wide variety in order to deal with most any situation. Sometimes it will take a combination of devices to cover a large building or area.

If you have a lovely southwestern adobe house, rejoice! You are pretty well protected from stray radio emissions, but your internal wifi area may be restricted to one or two rooms unless you are quite creative and go to some effort to expand your wifi area. In large homes it is often necessary to run network cable and use multiple routers to get good signal throughout; this is where a network or cabling professional can come in handy.