Our Anderson service center handles, on average, 20+ computer repairs each week (not counting  iPhones & iPads or the network services our on-site team handles). Of those lets say 22 computers, on average 20 of them are infected with at least some sort of virus, spyare, or adware.

So the most common question we get is – “How did this happen?  How did I get infected?”.

Here’s a great infographic sent to us by Computer Troubleshooters North Kentucky that does a good job explaining the most common ways people get infected:

The latest issue of our Clever Tech newsletter is available here.

SMB PC magazine, a national publication for IT Service Providers, even mentioned our newsletter in their Q2 edition here!

If you’re like most people, you use Google a lot.  80% of us use it to search the internet and find what we need, but very few people know about the special tools Google provides to help you find what you need faster and with less effort.

The good news is it’s incredibly easy to “Google Like A Pro”.  All you need to do is remember these seven tips:

1)    The minus sign.

Sometimes Google finds TOO MUCH.  Let’s say that for some reason you want to learn more about grease, the oily substance.  If you just Google grease the first page of results will be about the movies and musicals named “Grease”.  You could keep scrolling to page 2, and page 3, and page 47 looking for what you really want, OR you can use the minus sign to tell Google what you DON’T want.

Use the minus sign to tell Google what you don’t want to see in the results.  For example, if I google

Grease –film –musical

I’ll get the same results as if I just google grease but without ANY websites that talk about the film or the musical.

2)   Quotes

I use this one all the time.  Let’s say you remember part of a song lyric, or a news article, or a quote from a famous person, and you want to learn the rest.  If you’re sure about the phase you remember, put it in quotes and Google will only show web pages which have that exact phrase on them.

For example, if I want to look up information about Jim Carter, an actor in the TV show Downton Abbey, I could just google his name.  Four or five listings down will be the information I want, underneath information about a Jim Carter auto dealership and Jimmy Carter, the former president.  If I want to exclude the Jimmy Carter listings I could search on

“Jim Carter”

which will only show pages that have those words exactly in that order and with that spelling.

3)   Quote single word

Another helpful use of the quotation marks is when you quote a single word.  Why would you do that?  Well, Google is always trying to be helpful and sometimes it can be too helpful.

For example, try googling the word Amazzzing (with two Z’s).  Google suspects you meant to type Amazing (with one z) and will show results accordingly.  But maybe you really did want to find New York Comedienne Mandy Mazzeo, who goes by the Twitter nickname aMAZZing.  How do you force Google to show what you asked for without trying to be helpful?  The answer is to put the word in quotes, so in this case

“Amazzing”

will show the results you want.

4)   Site:

Maybe you know what website has the article or information you need, but you can’t find it on the site.  Or it’s just too time-consuming to browse through that site’s menus or directories.  Google’s site command was built for exactly this situation.

For example, if I know there was an article about Computer Troubleshooters in Entrepreneur magazine, I can google this:

site:entrepreneur.com computer troubleshooters

This will show me any references to Computer Troubleshooters on the website entrepreneur.com.  Very helpful, especially when looking for news articles.

5)   Capitalization & Punctuation Don’t Matter

This is an easy one: Don’t waste time capitalizing or punctuating your search terms, because they almost never matter.  Capitalization almost never matters. Google just  ignores it, usually, so searching on “Greenville Drive” or “greenville drive” or even “gReEnvIlLe DRIve” will all yield the same results.

Punctuation does not matter 99% of the time.  Adding a period or exclamation point won’t generally change your searches.  There are a few exceptions though – if you’re searching for a price then adding a dollar sign ($) will change things.  (Try searching “1942” vs “$1942” to see the difference).  And periods in a number are searched, so 100.14 will show any website that uses that particular number for some reason.

6)   Wildcard *

Sometimes you might remember a phrase but forget one word. Or maybe you want to look for variations on a phrase.  When you include the wildcard character * in your search, google looks for all possible replacements for that word, and shows the results.  This works best when combined with the quotes tool to search for a specific phrase.

For example, the literary quote “It was the best of times” is pretty well known, but let’s say you’re drawing a blank on some of the words. Googling

“It was the * of *”

will bring up the quote you’re looking for as well as other phrases that fit that same format, like “It was the blurst of times” (quote from The Simpsons) and “It was the culmination of an ongoing struggle”.

7)   Add Location

Very often you don’t just want any search results, you want to find search results close to home.  For example searching on “mechanic” or “computer repair” by itself will bring up lots of general information on the topics and maybe a few national vendors.  You might even see the Google Map results showing companies that Google thinks are near you – but that’s not always correct. (When I’m in the office Google thinks I’m in Greenville, even though I’m in Anderson).

To get more specific, add your city & state to your search terms.  A search for “mechanic Anderson, sc” will show you the local options for auto service in Anderson, South Carolina.  (If you leave off the “SC” you’ll also find listings for Anderson Indiana so the state is important).

(By the way, if YOUR business isn’t coming up when people do this search for your category, you may be missing out on potential clients! Ask Computer Troubleshooters for help getting listed properly in the search results).

Have some fun!

Google’s engineers are a clever bunch, and they’ve included some “just for fun” search results too.  Try going to www.google.com and entering either of these search terms to see the results:

·      Askew

·      Do A Barrel Roll

By (very) popular demand we’re bringing back our computer classes this summer! Based on feedback from our customers we’ve planned four courses:

“Protecting Yourself from Spam, Spyware, and Viruses”
Saturday, June 2 at 9am http://bit.ly/Jz9LOk
or Wednesday, June 6 at 8am http://bit.ly/Kpl9vI

“Choosing The Right Computer (or iPad)”
Wednesday, June 20 at 8am http://bit.ly/KT70nd
or Saturday, June 23 at 9am http://bit.ly/JiEJab

“Microsoft Excel, Tips & Tricks”
Saturday, July 7 at 9am  http://bit.ly/JiEOdV
or Wednesday, July 11 at 8am http://bit.ly/IFooNl

“Easy Cloud Computing: How To Share Calendars, Contacts, Documents, and More”
Saturday, July 21 at 9am http://bit.ly/IT5ntE
or Wednesday, July 25 at 8am http://bit.ly/JBz8ix

For more information contact our service center at 864-225-1888, or contact Chip at chip@ct-anderson.com.

Hurry, space is limited!

Once upon a time, large corporations began moving away from mainframe-based systems and started using servers and PCs instead. As technology improved and became more affordable, small and mid-sized businesses invested in servers. Today, even the smallest business has one computer that’s considered ‘mission critical,’ and would negatively impact the business if it failed.

One of the complications of computing software is its reliance on the specific computer hardware on which it is installed. For example, in the past, software files could not be copied from one computer to another with the expectation that they would automatically work. However, this changed with the introduction of “virtualization” in 1999.

Virtualization lets a computer operating system and software run independently of the hardware it uses. The actual physical computer is called the Host, and the computer instances that run on top of it are called Guests. With virtualization, we can now move entire computing systems from one physical box to another with ease. If the hardware is powerful enough, more than one computer can be run on the same physical box.

Apart from being a pretty cool technical trick, virtualization delivers real business benefits, such as:

Less downtime/Faster recovery time: In the event of a hardware failure, you can copy your virtual computer across to another physical box, start it up and away you go again. This can keep your business running while your original hardware is getting replaced or repaired. The only caveat is that a spare physical computer to copy is necessary, but that box can also perform another function (like serve as the bookkeeper’s PC) if it is powerful enough.

Software testing with no business impact: If your business software is being upgraded, take a copy of your virtual computer and run the upgrade on this test copy first. It will include all of your live business information, but enables the upgrade to happen during business hours with no impact to your staff and can prove that everything will go smoothly. When the test is successful, you will have more confidence about upgrading your real system.

Do more with less: If you run multiple pieces of software in your business, a second server may be necessary. Virtualization lets you run two servers on one powerful Host, which will allow you to save physical space and electricity consumption.

Under the covers of many cloud computing services, you will find virtualization. This helps Cloud providers isolate information and software programs from one client to another, using the same common piece of hardware. They can even spread the demand load from their clients across more than one Host during peak times, using hardware virtualization.

Talk to your Computer Troubleshooters rep about whether virtualization could benefit your business, or for any of your technology needs.  864-225-1888