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LAN, also known as Local Area Network, is very important for those who have at least two computers at home. LAN can come in very handy. It will be very useful if you want to send data from one computer to another, if you want to play a computer game with a member of your family and it features many other interesting things. I find LAN to be very important in my life for many reasons. LAN is also very useful in offices and school labs where people should share information with each other. The good thing about LAN is that you do not need any internet connection to have your computers joined. I know that most of us have internet at home anyway, but LAN gives us this great option that internet is not needed.

An operating system is one of the most important parts of a computer. While technically it may not be a part of hardware, it is a software which is really necessary. Windows XP is still a very popular operating system, even thought Windows Vista was released some time ago. The question is: when will Windows XP disappear? It may not be easy to answer the question fully, but Microsoft has stated some time ago, that it will stop selling/ allowing to preinstall Windows XP in 2010. There is an exception to this rule, specifically when it comes to very cheap computers being sold in China and India. Such computers will still contain Windows XP to make it possible to keep the price as low as possible.

Most of us want to be rich and even if we are rich according to world standards, we still want more and more money. Other people know this fact and some of them would do anything to cheat other people from their money. This is basically how the Nigerian confidence trick scams emerged. They are also called advance fee fraud and are based on the fact that the target is persuaded to advance relatively small sums of money in the hope of realizing a much larger gain. Don’t be fooled by such scams, as it is easy to loose your hard earned money. There are a lot of scammers on the internet and you should be careful with whom you are doing business.

Due to the massacre that took place at Virginia Tech last year, many have taken steps to improve the security systems in colleges. However, students seem to sabotage those steps. One solution that would help alert the students would be to send them text messages to their cell phones. As attractive and effective as it may sound, the solution did not find many advocates as students are not interested in enrolling for the service even in an age when they consider their mobile phones to be indispensable. For example, Omnilert, a company that provides an emergency alert system to more than 500 campuses reported that only 39 percent of students enroll for the alerts. I must admit that I am alarmed at the lack of interest in such campaigns among the US students. Hopefully the awareness of the existing danger will increase the enrollment rate among students and faculty.

Of course, it is up to a person what he or she wants to back up, however there is a general consensus on what needs to be backed up on your computer in the first place. Here are some of the files and folders that definitely need a good and reliable back up so that you will not lose the data:

1. My Documents – probably your most important documents and folders.
2. Outlook folders and settings.
3. Registry – by this I mean backing up Windows as well as other registry files.
4. E-mail – especially your Outlook Express, but others too.
5. Messenger back up – this might contain precious information too that you might not want to lose.
6. System – this includes configuration folders as well as core system files.
7. The content of your blog.

There is nothing worse than losing valuable data, so back up anything you might need.

It seems so obvious that each computer user should back up the data of his PC, but do people really protect their computers from data loss on a regular basis? Here are some of the reasons why you might want to consider a back up to be part of your regular routine:

1. You can lose your data anytime due to even a single virus on your PC.
2. Power failure and hard disk problem might also contribute to significant data loss.
3. Do not indulge yourself thinking that computers nowadays are secure. This false sense of security put many businesses out of business.
4. You should back up any valuable data for your own profit. You will be able to sleep peacefully knowing that your valuable information is safe.
5. If you do your back up on the disk outside of your PC, store it in a safe place so that no one will be able to get hold of it.

If you are wondering at this stage how often you should back up, I am going to say that there is no magical number. Once per month is generally considered to be OK, but if you want to be on the safe side you may want to back up every week. Some decide to make a back up on a daily basis, but it actually might be quite excessive, so in the end it is your choice.

Making transaction on the internet is nothing new, but scammers are not a new thing either. There are some ways to protect yourself from scammers, but you should never buy anything from someone you don’t trust. Here are some things which you may do:

As long as you adhere to the guidelines above, you shouldn’t have that many problems.

Many passwords nowadays are being hacked usually due to inability of its owners to create them properly. If you will create responsibly your password and will follow a few simple tips, the chances that it will be cracked will drop dramatically. Here are a few tips on how to create a password that will be a lot harder to crack:

1. Avoid first names and surnames.
2. Avoid things that might be easily associated with you like your hobbies, phone numbers etc.
3. Avoid common words in any language whether it be English or Chinese.
4. Use a combination of letters and numbers. Try to mix them.
5. Create a password that you can remember so that you will not have to write it anywhere.
6. Make your password long. The longer it is, the better.
7. Do not use keyboard sequences like “qwerty’ for example.
8. Plan on changing your password from time to time.
9. If possible, have one password that you will use for all your accounts in different places. That will prevent the confusion.

I am certain that all of the above points are quite logical.

Protecting your computer form viruses, trojans and other malicious infections is an important thing to do in order to keep your computer safe. There are many different antivirus programs available, as well as a wide choice of firewalls. Often you will find both an antivirus and firewall packed in one software, usually called a security suite. While it is debatable which firewall/antivirus are the best to use, I would like to make some recommendations based on personal experience. First of all I would not use a security suite, because the best antivirus and firewall is not available in any security suite. I recommend using NOD32 as an antivirus, as it offers the best active protection and using Comodo Firewall because it protects as well as any paid firewall, but is completely free.

Firefox is a great browser and I would recommend it along with Opera for several reasons. First of all it is the safest browser if you are using the “king of all plugins”, specifically NoScript. Secondly it allows a lot of customization, again thanks to plugins. The question what I want to answer today is whether Firefox can protect your privacy. I believe that the biggest issue with lack of privacy exists when you are sharing the computer with other users. I think that there is a pretty easy solution to the problem and all you have to do is clear private data after you finish surfing. In order to do this you should go to “Tools” and choose “Clear Private Data”. This will erase any data which could be considered as confidential.