May 19, 2012

Is the IPAD All that its Hyped Up to Be?

To Buy or Not To Buy?

Recently Apple has released its next market changing product the IPAD. A large sized version of its recent recreation the iTouch.

With a full screen size of slightly smaller than a sheet of paper (roughly 7.5 x 9.5 inches) it is the newest tough computing addition to hit the market since the tablet pc.

I have reviewed it and looked it over in the apple stores, and I have to admin it looks sleek, is a lot lighter than a laptop, and can be very handy for mobile computing in office and data entry environments.

Is it really worth it?

After the wow factor wore off, I had to really ask myself – is this really worth it to spend another $500 for a touch tablet that can’t run most of my existing software.

Can I really justify using in a regular office environment any more than my trusty laptop has already done for me. And at a lower cost to maintain!

Think real hard and consider what you are paying for. Don’t get me wrong, if I had the money to blow on a new computing device, all shiny with the fresh out of the box smell, then yeah.

Otherwise why did I buy its older yet small cousin the iTouch for…?

It all comes down to how you use it.

I’d make a joke about how size doesn’t matter, being a guy and all, but when it comes to getting a job done (for a computer) size DOES matter.

More power, more MIPS (that’s a measurement of computing power, look it up) and storage space all add up to a well though out machine.

But the one thing that puts my wallet back in my pocket is the $500 price tag for the base model. I can buy a fully loaded laptop for that price, and I don’t have to worry about scratching the glass screen while I work on it.

So you have a choice…

You can stick with a time tested computing platform that has all the bells and whistles you can shake your wallet at.

Or you can be the first to own an untested, undetermined computer that who knows how long it will take you to see that shiny glass break and make it all come to a screeching halt.

If you have one, or would like to share your experiences with the IPAD or iTouch  leave your comments. I want to hear from you.

Camtasia Studio Upgrade is More Trouble than it's Worth

I  tried to use the Camtasia Studio 6 versus my trusty Camtasia Studio 5.

What I found out bothered me so bad I had to let you know…  I have created a lot of videos for the web and membership sites.  I use camtasia to record, edit, enhance, and produce 90% of them in Camtasia Studio  5.

I then took a chance to upgrade to version 6.

So I downloaded it, tried it out, and found out that you CAN’T make FLV’s from the new version.

It only creates SWF / MP4 videos.

Now if you are making content for Ipods or other portable devices that might be great. But not for me, I have another tool that batches those jobs just fine.

And I got it for free!

Not like this Camtasia Upgrade. It would cost me over $150 to upgrade and it doesn’t have the one feature I use the most.  With an exception to the added coding to make re-rendering, resizing and producing videos more smoothly with less errors or redo’s [ I hate wasting time on redo's] then Camtasia is a pretty nice peace of software.

Also I have to hand it o techsmith for coming up with some pretty awesome tools, when there were way overpriced, under performing tools that couldn’t do half the things camtasia or snagit for that matter.  That being said is still no excuse for removing the FLV option. I can’t use SWF’s for what I do, and most of the videos your looking at online are streaming FLV’s anyways, so save yourself the trouble and DON’T Upgrade to Camtasia 6.

At least not until they put the FLV back into it.

As the saying goes, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take it any more…”    so I did something about it. I stopped upgrading and went back to the version I like best, version 5.

Lets hear what you have to stay.

Important Facts About Spyware & Adware

Does your computer run much slower than you when you first got it?

Are programs taking too long to load?

If your answer to any of these questions is YES, then you probably have some kind of bug in your system.

Your computer slowing down isn’t a natural degradation of your PC, only if you fill up your hard drive should you notice a change in your computers speed.

The problem is more than likely to be parasitic software that is eating your computers resources and slowing it down. The culprits are most commonly called spyware or adware. And together these nasty programs are classified as Malware.

They do a lot more than just slow down your computer however.

There are a few telling signs that you have some sort of spyware or adware on your computer (almost all web connected computers have at least some form of it.)

  • Your Computer runs much slower than it used to
  • If you’ve ever downloaded music or movies off of the web from an ad filled webpage
  • You often find yourself closing obnoxious popups or removing software that you don’t recall installing
  • You find your default web page changed without your approval
  • The websites you want to look at suddenly changes to another page you didn’t click on or want to go to?

Sound familiar?

If you think these are just expected, when in fact it is most likely due to viruses such as spyware and adware infecting the system.

Just because you often browse the internet and popups fly out of every direction doesn’t mean that it’s the website’s fault. In most circumstances (for good sites anyways) it is actually some code on your PC causing it.

Hearing the word spyware tends to evoke an image of never-ending popups for most web users.

The biggest problem with these parasites is that most users don’t know just how dangerous they can actually be. The truth is, you have way more to worry about than just those annoyances. Not only are you risking your privacy by having spyware, but you’re risking your life as you know it.

That last statement may seem a bit drastic, but it isn’t.

What spyware is really capable of is a very scary notion for your security and safety online.

Not only can it track every website that you visit, but it can track the information that you provide to said site. If you go to your online banking account and enter your information, spyware has the ability to transmit all of your bank information back to its creator.

It doesn’t stop there either. More often than not, once this information is transmitted to the spyware’s author, they then sell it to hundreds or thousands of individuals. That means your bank information, social security number, and charge card numbers could be sitting in hundreds of people’s emails.

That is how identity theft really happens.

Spyware and adware are beatable.

There are free tools that will help you get rid of it. In order to keep your privacy on the internet, you’ll need to rid yourself of any spyware and adware that is on your computer.

There are so many tools these days that say they get rid of spyware and adware that you just don’t know which ones to trust.  I have spent ears searching and testig the right programs that remove the malware, spyware, adware from your computers for free if you do it yourself. Or you can have me do it for a low cost, see Computer Repair to find out more.

So don’t wait for you to have your computer break down from bugs and spyware, clean it out before it’s too late!