r2i forum

This thread is to share tips for dailylife use of computer and electronic equipments.

(1) Black & White prints
Never use inkjet printers for B&W prints. Buy a laser printer for B&W printing. For me, B&W laser cartridge runs for more than an yr.

(2) Color prints
Inkjet cartridges are daylight robberies. Nowadays, refill is also ripoff. They do not fill it full. Others can chip in whether color laserjet printer is economical than inkjet color printer.

(3) Managing passwords
There are around 30 or 40 websites that I login using passwords. My brain does not come with built in flash drive. I recently bought a flash drive with encryption facility in it and stored the passwords in a file in that flash drive. Hope I will not forget the password I use for encryption in the flash drive.

(4) Data privacy
Be careful while throwing away old hard drives. When you delete a file, the data in the file is still in the disk. A tech savy hacker can reclaim files from your disk. You have to reformat your disk before throwing away the disk. Then only the data gets erased.

(4) Data security
Use WPA encryption for your home wireless. Be careful while sending sensitive information. Do not send through email services that do not use https. Nowadays, gmail turns on https by default. But, again they provide encryption only on wire. They store your data in unencrypted form. Over and above https, it is better to encrypt your data using symmetric keys while sharing with someone. If you are sending pdf docs, there is a way to use password with pdf docs but I have not used.

(5) Battery life
If you discharge your laptop battery completely once in a while and recharge it, it will help to prolong the life of your battery

(6) Restarting computer
In the earlier versions of Windows I have observed that if you do not restart/shutdown your computer for a long time, the computer becomes slow. Nowadays, Windows seems to perform better.

(7) Virus sites
Be careful while using free services. Most of the time free services come with hidden malware or spyware that will cost you more in lost time and repair than paying for the service instead.

layman;318540This thread is to share tips for dailylife use of computer and electronic equipments.

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Thanks for the thread, especially useful for non techies like me who often turn out to be technologically challenged!
Had one question on printers, for regular home use with just the odd printing job would it not make more economical sense to have a inkjet rather than an expensive laser, besides one can get other functions like copy/scan thrown in at a reasonable price point.

layman;318540

(4) Data privacy
Be careful while throwing away old hard drives. When you delete a file, the data in the file is still in the disk. A tech savy hacker can reclaim files from your disk. You have to reformat your disk before throwing away the disk. Then only the data gets erased.

FYI...this is not true.even reformatting does not erase data unless u add new data in that place and that means new data will be there and old data is gone.there are lot of free software's which retrieve the data in case of accidental deletion of partition or reformat the drive.
the free software i like is testdisk software. as a matter of fact i recently retrieved entire hard drive after accidentally reformatting the hard drive.
only way is to use programs which returns hard drive to original binary state to 0's and 1's.

link for this software is
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

after recovering the hard drive use photorec which is on same page above which combines all files jpg,bmp,mp3 etc and put in separate folders.....

my 2cents.....

sumeet;318568Thanks for the thread, especially useful for non techies like me who often turn out to be technologically challenged!
Had one question on printers, for regular home use with just the odd printing job would it not make more economical sense to have a inkjet rather than an expensive laser, besides one can get other functions like copy/scan thrown in at a reasonable price point.

If you find a cheap place to refill inks, it makes sense.

Nowadays, laserjet printer with copy/scan is also available at lower price. I bought one for around $70 about one and a half yr back and the cartridge is still good. You should try to grab one when you visit US during thanksgiving or other sale season.

My Buffalo external hard drive http://www.buffalotech.com/products/desktop-hard-drives/ fell down and it doesn't work. Has anyone opened external hard drive? Any tip for troubleshooting?

layman;318540
(3) Managing passwords
There are around 30 or 40 websites that I login using passwords. My brain does not come with built in flash drive. I recently bought a flash drive with encryption facility in it and stored the passwords in a file in that flash drive. Hope I will not forget the password I use for encryption in the flash drive.

Try Keepass for managing passwords. I have been using it for more than an year. It is really easy to use and secure.

I recently erased hard disk using software from http://www.dban.org/

It is easy to do. Download iso image from the website and burn it on to a CDROM. Boot your computer with CDROM (You might have to change boot order in BIOS if hard disk is above CDROM). Once you boot with CDROM, it displays a DOS like screen. At the prompt at the bottom, type "autonuke". It will overwrite the entire disk with zeroes. It takes 2-3 hrs for filling zeroes.