Dennis Faas

Infopackets Reader Robert W. write s: " Dear Dennis, I read your article in the Lockergnome newsletter about McAfee Virus Scan. I have had problems in the past with both McAfee and Norton virus programs and abandoned them a while back in favor of a ... better and FREE antivirus program. It is AVG AntiVirus and can be found at grisoft.com . I work as a computer technician and have heard of many complaints for both McAfee and Norton products not finding viruses even when you have the latest update. I have also seen this first hand in servicing computers with viruses on them. I highly recommend ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader "Jeff" write s: " Dear Dennis, I read your eZine with great interest. One thing I would like to see addressed is how does the average person without a great deal of technical knowledge, handle Windows updates. Six weeks ago, for ... example, I purchased a new PC with Windows XP. Every day I am told that there are updates waiting! My conundrum is that the PC works fairly well at this time. Should I update and risk having something go wrong? Should I just update blindly downloading and installing everything? I have tried to read the technical notes for each ... (view more)

Ron Smith wrote in and had a few comments to make about a past issue of the Infopackets Gazette, concerning whether or not Windows is transferable onto another machine using the same hard drive. While I still feel that installing Windows freshly on ... a new machine is a better choice, you may want to try Ron's suggestion if you're willing to get your hands dirty. Here's what he had to say: " Dear Dennis, With deep respect, I feel that your answer was incomplete when you advised that Annette couldn't take over her hard drive to the new computer. Last week, I did exactly that, and it was ... (view more)

Last week the last issue of the Infopackets Gazette was sent out. At the same time, a configuration change was made to the web server which hosts infopackets.com. What happened? It's a long story, but I'll try to reiterate in simple mumbo-jumbo ... without too much techy-talk. As you may already know, infopackets.com has experienced a major growth spurt in the last few months and has outgrown its current web server configuration. Therefore, it was decided that infopackets.com should be moved to a dedicated web server which offers unlimited bandwidth to fit the needs of its users. A purchase was ... (view more)

With regards to the last issue of the Infopackets Gazette which informed our users of a Data Recovery program called Drive Rescue , I wrote a comment: " If you accidentally delete a file, don't write anything else to your hard drive -- even if you ... are attempting to install Data Recovery software in the first place! Otherwise, the drive may overwrite the area of the data you're attempting to retrieve, making the rescue operation impossible. " Denise R. wrote in with a response to the above comment: " I have Drive Rescue on a floppy for use in recovering files on the C: drive; ... (view more)

I'm sure you've at least heard of Napster, and the more popular Napster-like spin-offs, such as Kazaa, Morpheus Music City, WinMX, and Bearshare. Each program has the ability to swap files with other users around the world. Although Napster is now a ... subscription-based music trading service, it was the first of its kind to offer users free access to thousands of music files at the click of a button. In comparison to Napster, Kazaa goes a step farther by allowing users within its file sharing community to trade not only music files, but movies, programs, and anything else under the sun. Kazaa ... (view more)

Have you ever wondered where you are connected to when you're visiting a web site? Believe it or not, every web site in cyberspace resides on a computer which is physically located somewhere in the world. Each server is "hosted" by a company which ... dictates the configuration of each server, such as: how many web sites reside on each web server, server-to-Internet connection speed, how much information can be transferred per site per month (also known as bandwidth limitations), and the like. Different web-hosting packages are offered by different web-hosting companies and define the ... (view more)

Earlier this week I sent out a very controversial article to a few other online ezines (electronic magazines) in hopes of syndicating the Infopackets Gazette to help increase our readership. If you haven't visited infopackets.com recently, you might ... have missed the intriguing article about Mcafee Anti Virus. The article questioned whether or not McAfee purposely mislead users to purchase an update to their Virus Scan software ($39.95), when in fact, it was not required for some users. The article was an instant hit. It was published on a few major web sites and generated quite a bit of ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Derek C. asks, "How can I load and run WINDOWS 98 and XP on the same computer? " My response: As far as I can remember, Microsoft does not recommend running two different version of Windows on the same hard drive partition (IE: C ... drive for Windows 98 and C drive for Windows XP) because files end up over writing themselves. I personally experienced this -- and WinXP even warns against this during install. The only way to overcome this was to create a new hard drive partition (D drive) by slicing my existing C drive into two separate pieces (a C and a D drive on the ... (view more)

" Increase your download speed with software X! " At some point, you've probably come across a program that claims to download programs faster: Download Accelerator (Speedbit), Marketscore (previously Netsetter), and GetRight (Headlight Software) ... are just a few popular titles. But did you know that these programs do more harm than good? How download speed is effected by a download accelerator When a file is being downloaded, it is sent to your computer using a single connection: you are connected to the web site, and the web site is sending you a file. A download accelerator works ... (view more)