Q:
I think I need to add some memory to my computer, but I have no idea where to start. Can you give me some basic information on where to get it and how to install it? It would be greatly appreciated!

A:
Well, I sure can! That's no problem at all. We've all run into this predicament before and believe me, if you haven't yet, you will someday. Here's the scenario: your computer seems to be working just fine, but as each day passes, it starts to run a little bit slower, it freezes up more often, it hesitates whenever you try to do something, etc. If you're experiencing anything like that, it may be time to add some more memory to your computer.

Now, I realize the thought of that may panic you, but don't let it! Adding memory to your computer really isn't as hard as it sounds. With a little help, you can be a memory adding pro in no time at all! You just have to take it in steps. First, you need to make sure you really do need more memory (because if that's not going to help your computer, there's no need in wasting your time); second, you just need to find out where you can get more memory and third, you need to learn how to install it. Lucky for you, I'm going to go over all of that with you in the next couple of days. I will go over parts best generic viagra one and two with you today and then finish up with part three tomorrow. Okay, let's get started!

Part 1

The type of memory you're referring to is called RAM (Random Access Memory). RAM is the temporary working memory that your operating system, programs and documents use to keep your computer running. Over the years, the amounts of RAM that most computers have has grown considerably. It used to be that 32 or 64 MB was plenty, but these days, if you don't have at least 512 MB, you're going to get lost in the dark.

When you're using different applications on your computer all at the same time (for example, you're checking your e-mail, you're listening to some music, you're loading a game, etc.), they're all fighting for enough RAM to be able to run for you. As you can see, if you don't have enough RAM to accommodate all your programs, you're going to run into some problems. Your computer sometimes grabs some of your virtual memory to keep things going, but that's much less efficient than actually having the right amount of RAM on your computer. So, if your computer has been acting funny lately, adding some more RAM should put it back in top performance.

Part 2

Once you've made the decision to purchase more memory, you first need to figure out how much more you're going to need. To do that, you need to find out how much your computer has right now. In Windows, you can check that by going to Start, Control Panel, System. Browsing through that area will also tell you what kind of RAM is recommended for your PC. If you already have a pretty good amount of memory (say, 512 MB), you may only need to add another 256 MB. You don't want to add too much, because your processor may not be able to handle it all. Plus, that would just be a waste of money.

You can buy RAM at most regular computer stores (Radio Shack, etc.), but you can also purchase it online. If you do a search for the type of RAM you need with your favorite search engine, you should be able to find several places you can buy it from. Just make sure the site is secure before you place your order and everything should be fine. Again, every computer is different, so just make sure you're getting the right kind for your PC. Most places will have a phone number you can call to verify that everything is correct for your computer type.

Once you've received your RAM, you're ready to install it. As I said before, I will go over that with you tomorrow. (I love keeping you in suspense!) So, be sure to tune in tomorrow for all the information you'll need to know to add that memory to your computer. You'll be up and running in no time. See you soon!

Chip Camden advises IT consultants to spend less on sprucing up their office for clients and take more time on making their office a productive space. He also discusses what to keep in mind if you’re setting up a home office.

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For a corporation, the physical office space serves as a location for at least two activities: to work and entertain visitors (especially prospects). For the independent consultant, most clients never see our workplace (we usually meet at their offices or not at all), and we hardly ever entertain visitors. (In almost 18 years of consulting, I have only met 42% of my clients face-to-face — the rest of my business has been conducted solely over the Internet –and I’ve only had three clients visit my office.) So it’s pointless to spend a lot of money making your physical address ostentatious or even presentable — focus instead on making your office a productive space for accomplishing work.

Here is a list of the office features that are important to keeping me productive. I also offer tips on what to keep in mind if you’re considering working from home.

The essentials

A good Internet connection
This is critical. But I’ve found that a telephone isn’t as important. You need to be able to use a telephone while at your computers (a speaker phone to keep your hands free is a good idea), but you don’t want it to always be ringing in your face so the telemarketers can break your concentration 82 times a day.

A room with a view
Regardless of whether your office is in your home or not, it needs to be your private cave where you can get into the Zone. That means, for one thing, that you need a window with a view. Not an overly distracting view like Wrigley Field (although that would be awesome in many ways) — calm and fairly predictable would be best: the ocean, the mountains, or the woods are my favorites. Why do you need this? You want to be able to stare outside while you’re thinking over a problem that has hit an impasse, rendering further review of the situation on a monitor frustratingly fruitless. If you don’t have a view from your office, you’re going to have to get up and leave in order to achieve the same result.

More than one monitor
You need plenty of space for all your gear and space on your desk for all your monitors and input devices. Yes, I said monitors — plural. My first 10 years of consulting were conducted with a single monitor connected to one workstation/server, but I shudder to think of all the productivity I lost during those years just from not having a second screen. How often do you need to switch between an editor session, a command prompt, and a requirements specification? If you can keep all three up and visible at once, how much needless window twiddling have you eliminated? Maybe you don’t need six monitors (though that is truly awesome), but two monitors are a huge improvement over one. I currently have four monitors wired to three systems, and I use Synergy to direct all four with the same keyboard and mouse. One of those monitors is my laptop, which allows me to travel with an abridged form of my setup.

Multiple systems
You also need more than one system, even if some of those machines are virtual. If you try to do all of your work on a single system, it will get completely overgrown with crap in no time. Even though I have separate machines for my private server and two workstations, I still use VMware to create individual virtual machines for testing purposes. Not only does this prevent conflicts between software-in-testing and my production systems, it also insures that my testing is performed in a clean, controlled environment. If you’re going to run virtual machines, you need enough horsepower in terms of CPU and memory to avoid bringing the whole thing to a thrashing crawl.

Lighting
The right lighting makes a huge difference. Windows with a southern exposure can create too much glare — a northern exposure works best, because no matter where the sun is in the sky or how brightly it shines, you only get it indirectly so it’s more consistent. Artificial lighting needs fine control. My office has ceiling-mounted track lighting with a dimmer switch, so I can control both the intensity and direction of each light source.

Ergonomics
Ergonomics are extremely important. You’ll be sitting in that same chair, staring at that same set of monitors, and manipulating those same input devices all day long every working day of the year. All of your chairs should be comfortable and arranged to promote good posture. It’s also important to have all of your equipment (monitors, keyboards, and mice) positioned to promote good posture. If the monitor is too low, for instance, then I’m hunched over no matter how ergonomic my chair is.

Storage space for equipment and media
You should have a closet or other enclosed space where you can keep all your spare gear, cables, manuals, media, and books; otherwise, they end up all over the desk and floor. I don’t have the neatest office in the world, but I do avoid permanent clutter. Anything that is meant to stay in my office has an assigned place therein.

Music
Some people work better in silence, but I’m more productive with the right music playing. Not too loudly, though. Jazz seems to work best for me — it’s not overly intense, and it easily fades into the background. But, occasionally, an entire day of J.S. Bach will help me to make the stunningly complex amazingly comprehensible.

Close proximity to coffee and bathroom
The bathroom and the coffee pot (or beverage generator of your choice) should be readily accessible. If you have to traverse a significant portion of the building for either one, expect to get side-tracked on your way.

Be realistic when setting up your home office

While you certainly don’t alternatives to viagra need to rent a high-priced office space in order to create a “presence” for your clients, you do need to consider whether working out of your home is right for you. (Check out my post, Four issues to consider before becoming a remote IT consultant.) Sure, it’s convenient to have a 50-foot commute from the breakfast table to your desk without even needing to stop by the shower on your way, but you must impose some boundaries between home and work. If you allow yourself to be interrupted frequently by non-work-related activities, your productivity will suffer. I’ve found that I need to be able to at least close a door and enforce the rule that it shall not be opened or knocked upon unless someone is bleeding, or the house is on fire.

It also helps to have some physical distance between your office and the rest of your house. This not only curbs interruptions, but it also blocks noise from your family members. My office is currently at the end of a hall beyond all of the bedrooms and that’s just about the minimum amount of space required, as far as I’m concerned. A separate structure would be ideal — like above a garage, for example. In one house we rented, the lower floor was completely separate from the upper floor; you had to go outside to get from one to the other. The landlord planned to rent the floors out separately, but we rented both and I made the lower floor my office. I’ve often considered renting office space away from home purely for the separation factor, but that’s a big expense for what it buys you.

TechRepublic member Glen Ford recently mentioned that “being with the family while working is sometimes helpful.” I haven’t found it to be so, unless by “helpful” he means “helpful to the family.” In my corporate days, I never had to break away from a big project in order to unclog a toilet. But if you want to be able to work close to your family members at times, I suggest setting up a wireless LAN and roaming with a laptop. That’s also nice for a change of scenery, like working outside on a pleasant day.

In one fell swoop, Apple updated its entire desktop line this morning. The 24-inch iMac now starts at $1,499 (the previous price of the 20-inch model) and the Mac Pro workstation gets the first Xeons in Intel’s Nehalem family. Meanwhile the Mac Mini is alive and well, and it gets new Core 2 Duos and Nvidia 9400M graphics. All of these updates were sorely-needed, and should give Apple desktops a quick performance boost, but since the alternative to viagra designs remain largely unchanged, they lack the wow factor usually associated with an Apple announcement.

Despite some initial reports stating the new iMacs had Core i7 quad-core processors, the new line continues to use the same dual-core mobile processors, which are much better-suited for the thin all-in-one. The new 20-inch iMac starts at $1,199 with a 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo T9550, 2GB of memory, Nvidia GeForce 9400M and a 320GB hard drive. The $1,499 24-inch version has the same processor and Nvidia integrated graphics, but with 4GB of memory and a 640GB hard drive. There are two pricier models with faster processors (up to a 3.06 GHz Core 2 Duo), and you can configure any of them with up to 8GB of memory, 1TB of storage, and on the 24-inch models, Nvidia GeForce GT120/130 or AMD ATI Radeon HD 4850 discrete graphics. All of the new iMacs also have a Mini DisplayPort connector for attaching an external Apple Cinema display.

The aging Mac Mini was most in need of an overhaul, and the addition of Nvidia GeForce 9400M graphics should make a big difference. The $599 starting configuration includes a 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 1GB of memory, Nvidia integrated graphics and a 120GB hard drive. The $799 model has twice the memory and a 320GB hard drive, but is otherwise identical. Like the iMac, the Mac Mini now has Mini DisplayPort, as well as mini-DVI, for connecting an LCD display, plus five USB ports. There had long been rumors that Apple was planning to discontinue the Mac Mini, but instead it has dusted it off and re-packaged it as the “most energy efficient desktop in the world.” Apple claims the Mac Mini uses only 13 watts of idle power or 10 times less than a typical desktop.

The new iMacs and Mac Mini are both available immediately.

The big change in the Mac Pro is the addition of Nehalem quad-core processors. Intel announced the first Nehalem chips, the Core i7-920, i7-940 and i7-965 Extreme for desktops, last November, but it hasn’t officially released Xeon versions for servers and workstations. The Mac Pro now starts at $2,499 (it previously started at $2,799) with a 2.66GHz Xeon 3500 series quad-core processor, 3GB of memory, Nvidia GeForce GT 120 graphics with 512MB and a 640GB hard drive. A dual-processor configuration starts at $3,299 with two 2.26GHz quad-core Xeon 5500 series chips, 6GB of memory, Nvidia GeForce GT 120 graphics with 512MB and a 640GB hard drive.

You can configure the Mac Pro with faster processors, more memory, larger hard drives and ATI Radeon HD 4870 graphics with 512MB. Apple says it will be up to twice as the old Mac Pros, which is probably a stretch, but because of many architectural changes in the Nehalem chips–including two threads per core (or 16 total threads in the 8-core Mac Pro)–these Mac Pros should be significantly faster. The new Mac Pros will be available starting next week.

Posted by Larry Dignan @ 2:09 am

Microsoft Online Services’ GlaxoSmithKline win is a nice victory for the software giant, but it may be a bit premature for too much chest thumping over Google Apps. On the other side of the equation, Google is likely to have a helluva a battle on its hands. 

But the cloud is big enough for both players–especially if you believe that Google and Microsoft play in two entirely different markets. 

As Phil Wainewright noted, Microsoft 100 mg viagra Online Services, the company’s hosted Exchange, Sharepoint and LiveMeeting division, won a 100,000 seat deployment. In addition, Microsoft Online Services are going global (statement). Meanwhile, Ron Markezich, corporate VP of Microsoft Online Services, took a few shots at Google’s efforts to penetrate the enterprise. Markezich said:

“Google we really do not feel is ready for the enterprise. They’re offering three-nines SLA and they’ve missed three of the last six months.”

Last week, Gmail outage backs that statement up a good bit. 

And honestly, I don’t think Google is enterprise strength. Microsoft won because its hosted business already plays to its enterprise strength–Exchange and Sharepoint. Google has no real answer for those applications. 

Instead, Google will play in the small office, home office market and appeal to small businesses. As these small fries grow up perhaps they turn into big businesses. For now, however, Google Apps will play downstream. If anything, Google Apps is designed to take on Office. But Microsoft will have an answer for that too. 

Add it up and you have:

• Microsoft continuing to be the enterprise juggernaut whether it’s hosted or on-premises apps;
• Google continuing to be a pain in Microsoft’s rear by giving it a small run with Google Apps. But let’s get real: Google Apps is there to distract Microsoft from search. 

What would change that equation? A Google acquisition of Zoho. Zoho could be a real pain to Microsoft and could give Google entry into higher end SaaS markets. But even then Microsoft has the enterprise leverage. The real battle between Google and Microsoft will be for the next generation of corporate America. My hunch is that both sides could win simply because they are massive and well capitalized. While zero sum outcomes may be good entertainment it’s highly unlikely that Microsoft or Google will grab all the spoils. 

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 8:09 pm

Gabriel García Márquez wrote: “Everyone has three lives: a public life, a private life, and a secret life.”

Sometime these lives intersect on the Internet. And this is why people are encouraged to be watchful about what they do on the Internet. The advice is to not engage in anything that might come back to haunt you because Google, in its zeal to index everything it can find, will find things that you might not want to be found.

But is this really true? I did an experiment and Googled “Tom Foremski.” Google found 135,000 references. I started clicking to see if I could find the very last search result, number 135,000. But I couldn’t, I could only get as far as 552 results before I got this message:

In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 552 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.

I clicked on the “omitted results” and got even fewer results, just 196 links. Either way, the most pages viewable that were indexed “Tom Foremski” was 552 — just 0.4 percent of the total index.

So it’s not true that an employer, or anyone else, can easily find potentially embarassing things about you through a simple search.

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While being careful about what you post is still good advice, I have even better advice: be very active on the Internet — anything bad will be diluted into the long tail of you.