Category Archives: computer tips

What does a firewall do? ANSWER

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Question. Thank you for the help…my firewall is enabled. Does this keep hackers from seeing what I’m doing with online banking, etc? (Just curious) What exactly does a firewally do? Answer. Here is a simplified explanation of firewalls as they relate to your personal computer: A firewall’s main purpose is to provide a barrier between the internet and your computer. Specifically, a firewall is supposed to only allow approved applications to transmit and receive data from your computer to the

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How to remote control PocketPC / Windows Mobile devices

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Here are some apps that allow you to remote control your Pocket PC or Windows Mobile device: MyMobiler – program that allows you to do a LOT of stuff on your mobile using your PC  (desktop or laptop)… View your mobile screen on your desktop. Control your mobile by using desktop keyboard and mouse. Copy/Cut/Paste text between mobile and desktop. Capture mobile screen. Drag and drop files to your mobile. Support ActiveSync / IP Connection Support Mobile Explorer (File Browse)

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Sony VAIO Z Series Notebook Model Numbers

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The Sony VAIO Z series laptop is one of the best laptops ever made: absolutely gorgeous screen (one of the best laptop screens I’ve ever seen) LED based backlight excellent color gamut bright and saturated like a glossy screen but NON-REFLECTIVE like a matte screen!!! durable screen (with a protective coating) decent resolution options lightweight powerful (dual core, 2GHz+) plenty of storage (can support dual SSDs, HD, or potentially a combination) upgradeable (memory, CPU, storage, [but you void the warranty

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Access XP share without password, from Vista

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Question: Tonight I was trying to access, via Vista, a folder that was shared from a Windows XP Pro machine. I kept getting a username/password prompt, but there isn’t a password set on any of users! How can I access the folder? Answer: by default Windows XP Professional won’t allow network users shared folder access without a password. So here’s how to allow network access using a blank password: First, on the XP computer that is sharing the folder make

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SOLUTION to Dreamweaver problem: The document you selected is very large and would take too long to import

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Question. I’m trying to paste a large Word document (or even copied web pages out of Firefox) into Dreamweaver and I get the following error: “The document you selected is very large and would take too long to import. We recommend you use Copy and Paste to insert parts of the document into multiple web pages.” Answer. Edit the Dreamweaver file InsertOfficeDoc.js to adjust the file size threshold upwards. After editing that file and restarting Dreamweaver, you should be able

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Building a PHP and MySQL search function

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I’ve been working on the search feature of komparison. Specifically, making sure multi-word searches like peanut butter crackers work well. Let’s say we have some a food item stored as Crackers, wheat, sandwich, with peanut butter filling and the user searches for peanut butter crackers. If the search is coded simplistically  like: SELECT * FROM some_table WHERE some_field LIKE ‘%peanut butter crackers%’ or: SELECT * FROM some_table WHERE some_field LIKE ‘%peanut%butter%crackers%’ Then we won’t get any results because the ordering

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Install (or “downgrade”) to Windows XP on Sony VAIO-Z series

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It’s that time of year again. Time to reinstall Windows after my laptop has finally succumbed to the mass of programs I’ve installed or evaluated. It’s getting slow, not painfully slow, but slow enough that I crave a clean install. Currently the laptop has Vista on it. Rather than paying for a Windows 7 upgrade, I’m considering “downgrading” to Windows XP. I would have done that a long time ago, as I am not a Vista fan… but at the

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