Users of Microsoft Money should be aware that Microsoft has discontinued Microsoft Money. As a final farewell, Microsoft released the Sunset Edition of Microsoft Money. This final release of Microsoft Money does not include any of the online features that Microsoft Money had in the past. People with older versions of Money will still be able to get online updates through January 31st, 2011. After that, everyone should upgrade to the Sunset edition. If you don’t use the online updates, you can upgrade to the Sunset edition now.

If you wish to download the Sunset Edition, please use the big hairy link below. Copy and paste recommended.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=60302e1e-207e-4710-ac80-d19c22e47488&displaylang=en

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When you hear the word RAID, you probably think of the bug spray. Us techno-geeks, however, think of Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. Originally, RAID was invented so that you could put together several small, less expensive disks and make them work as one larger disk which would cost more than the cost of all of the smaller disks combined. Later, RAID was expanded to include other uses. One of those uses is Mirroring.

To perform RAID mirroring, you need to identical hard drives. You set one up to the primary, and one to be the mirror. Everything that gets written to or changed on the primary also gets done to the mirror. The big advantage to mirroring is that if the primary hard drive fails, you can simply boot off the mirror and work like nothing bad every happened. Then  you come back later and replace the failed hard drive and put the mirroring back in place.

Many consider mirroring to be the best type of backup because it automatic and always up to date. However, RAID mirroring isn’t without its problems. For one, it slows down writes to your hard drive a little since it now has to write it to two hard drives instead of one. In addition, some implementations of RAID are buggy. Another problem with RAID is that many computers do not support RAID. Sure you can purchase a RAID controller to install in your computer, but they aren’t cheap.

Luckily, there is an alternative. Bounceback is a software product that kind of does the same thing as RAID mirroring, but without using RAID. With BounceBack, you still have to have a second hard drive, but that hard drive doesn’t have to be identical to your primary hard drive. In fact, it can even be an external hard drive which anyone can install.

BounceBack will create a mirrored copy of your primary hard drive on a secondary hard drive. You can set it to check every few minutes, or every hour, so it’s not always updating. That’s better for performance.  Just like RAID, if your primary hard drive fails, you can boot off of your secondary drive, and continue to work.

BounceBack comes in several different editions including BounceBack Essential and BounceBack Ultimate.  If you just want to mirror your hard drive, the cheaper BounceBack Essential will do the trick. If you want to do more fancy things like synchronize folders between computers, you’ll want to get BounceBack Ultimate.

If you are interested in BounceBack, click on the link below:

http://www.cmsproducts.com/products/backup_software/bounceback/default.html

One important note about all of this. When you backup to another hard drive, or any media, that stays in the same building as your computer, you are protecting yourself against hard drive crashes, but you aren’t protecting yourself against disasters. If your computer and your backup are in the same building and that building burns down, you’ve lost your data. Hurricanes, tornados, floods, war, or burglary can also rid you of your data along with their backups. This is why we recommend that you have a remote backup in addition to having a local backup. For more information about that, see our website at www.ct-cp.com.

By the way, Computer Troubleshooters is not affiliated with BounceBack or CMS products in any way. We just like their product!

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We have had Office 2007 now for a few years and in June of this year we will get the newest version.  You guessed it, Office 2010.

We thought we would tell you a little bit about it.

The biggest news, if you can believe it, is that there will be a free version. That’s right. A free version which will be called the “Starter Edition”. The Starter Edition of Office 2010 will include only Word and Excel. These versions of Word and Excel will have limited functionality and will also include advertisements. In addition, the Starter Edition will only run on Vista and Windows 7. If you don’t mind the advertisements, the free version might be fine for many home users who just need to do basic editing with Word and Excel.

I don’t want to bore you with a lot of details of the new features, but I will tell you that if you have Office 2003 or 2007, there really isn’t a compelling reason for you to upgrade to the 2010 version. If you purchase a new computer after Office 2010 comes out, you will at least get the Starter Edition of Office 2010.

Pricing for Office 2010 will be $149 for the Home and Student edition, $279 for the Home and Business edition, and $349 for the Professional edition.

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Any plant that is in your yard or garden that you didn’t want there is called a weed. By the same token, any software that is on your computer that you don’t want or need, or didn’t install yourself is like a software weed. This unwanted and un-needed software takes up space on your hard drive. If that weed software starts up when you boot your computer, then it’s slowing your computer’s performance down as well.

Most junk software like this gets on your computer in one of two ways. Either it was on your computer when you bought it, or it was installed along with other software or an update to software.

Whenever you update some software or download and install new software, be very careful to read every screen and check all of the options because many times extra software is installed that you didn’t want and didn’t need. Sometimes changes are made to your computers settings you may not have intended. That extra software makes your computer boot up slower, makes it run slower, and takes up storage space as well.

For example, if you download or update Adobe Flash or Adobe Reader, if you don’t deselect the option for installing the Google Toolbar, it will install the Google Toolbar on your computer. If you download or update Java, you might get the Bing toolbar if you don’t deselect that option. Other add-on’s I have seen include the Ask Toolbar, MSN Toolbar, OpenOffice Installer, acrobat.com, Adobe Air, and many more. Thanks to this trend, I have seen people who had 5 toolbars in their Internet Explorer taking up half the screen and leaving little room to display web pages.

Instant messaging programs like AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) or the Yahoo Instant Messenger also will install similar things you don’t want. Many of these will also change your default search provider and your home page if you don’t deselect that option.

Basically, any time you install or update software on your computer, take the time to read the options during the install. Deselect any options for installing toolbars, changing your default search provider, changing your home page, or any other options you don’t want.

If you’ve got software on your computer that you don’t want, you can uninstall it. But make sure you know what you are uninstalling. You wouldn’t want to accidentally uninstall something important. Here’s how to uninstall software from your computer:

Windows XP

1.       Click on Start.

2.       XP Professional only: Click on settings

3.       Click on Control Panel

4.       Double-click on Add/Remove programs.

5.       You will now see a list of software on your computer. You can click once on one and then click the remove or change button.

Windows Vista or Windows 7

1.       Click on the button formally known as start.

2.       Click on Control Panel.

3.       Click on “Uninstall Programs”

4.       You will now see a list of software installed on your computer. Click on one and then click the uninstall or change button at the top of the screen.

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You are probably aware that several years ago, Google unseated Yahoo as the most popular search engine. Google has some very popular software like the Google Toolbar, GoogleTalk (instant messaging), and Picasa.

Although Google’s Gmail is very popular (currently ranked #11) and gaining market share very quickly, it’s not yet number one. However, it is consistently picked as the best. And if you look at the statistics, there isn’t a long way to go to get to the top. Yahoo Mail is #1 with just under 10% of the market share , Microsoft is second with about 3.5% while Gmail is at 0.9%. But considering Gmail is still fairly new, that’s pretty good.

Last year, Google introduced their own mobile phone operating system called Android. Android phones are currently only available through T-Mobile much like IPhones are only available through AT&T. Android phones have garnered much praise and are rapidly gaining in popularity.

Last year Google also introduced their own web browser which is called Chrome. Chrome is now being used by about 6% of people when accessing websites. This doesn’t seem like much compared to Internet Explorer’s 40% share. But Chrome is new and it doesn’t come with Windows which gives Internet Explorer a huge advantage. In case you are interested, Internet Explorer is no longer the most popular web browser. This year Firefox passed it and currently has a 47% share of the browser market.

If all of that wasn’t enough, this week Google announced the Chrome operating system (Chrome OS). In case you don’t know, an operating system is the software that provides the user an interface to the hardware. Microsoft Windows is an operating system. Google’s new Chrome OS is in direct competition with Microsoft Windows. No release date has been announced yet, but this should get interesting.

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The most recent version of Microsoft Office for Windows is the 2007 version. The next version is Office 2010. Makes me think of the movie “2010: A Space Odyssey”

Office 2010: A Space Odyssey

Maybe not.

What’s new and exciting about Office 2010?

Microsoft isn’t saying anything specific. Just general marketing mumbo-jumbo like:

The new version of office will make it even easier for people to create and collaborate in real time using the web, the phone, or their PC.

As I said, nothing specific.

Microsoft has not published a release date for Office 2010. But we do know the year we make contact will be 2010 (little joke there referencing the movie).

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Microsoft Office is a product that, depending on which edition you purchase, may include Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher, and other similar products. But if you have ever priced Office, you know how expensive it is. The cheapest edition of Microsoft Office is the Home and Student edition. It’s only available for residential customers. It generally goes for $150. The professional edition of Office generally goes for $500.

Did you know that there is an alternative to Microsoft Office? No, I’m not talking about WordPerfect Office, although that is an alternative. What I am talking about is OpenOffice.org. The best thing about OpenOfficej.org is that it’s absolutely free! You heard me. Free. OpenOffice.org includes a word processor (like Microsoft Word), a spreadsheet (like Excel), a presentation creator (like PowerPoint), and more.

The one component that is in Office that OpenOffice.org doesn’t have is an e-mail client like Outlook. But, if you don’t care about Outlook, OpenOffice.org might fit  your needs. And the price is right. One of the best features of OpenOffice.org is that it can read files from other office programs. So, for example, OpenOffice.org can open and edit Microsoft Word files.

If you are in need of Office type software and you don’t want to pay a lot of money, give OpenOffice.org a try. If you don’t like it, you can always get yourself a copy of Microsoft Office. But if you do like it, you’ve saved yourself a lot of money. For more information on OpenOffice.org, or to download it and install it on your computer, click here.

By the way, watch out for people who sell OpenOffice. They will come up with names like OpelOffice that sound like OpenOffice to trick you into paying for something that’s free.

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We are always evaluating new security software so that we can recommend the best for our customers. Right now, that’s Vipre. In the past we have recommended AVG. AVG is still good and we recommend it as well. But Vipre provides slightly better protection in our opinion.

Vipre generally sells for $30/year per computer. You can purchase licenses for longer periods of time (2 years, 3 years) and get a discount. You can also purchase licenses for more than one computer at a time and get a discount. And Vipre Enterprise, for businesses with servers, is a fantastic product.

But there is also a licensing option called the Home Site License. It’s only available to residential customers. For $50/year, you can put Vipre on all of the computers in your home, no matter how many computers you have. If you have 2 or more computers, you save money by getting the home site license. It doesn’t matter if you have 2 computers or 10 computers. It’s just $50/year. A great deal!

If you are interested in the Vipre Home Site License, please contact us.

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As you know, Internet Explorer is the program you use to view websites. Most people should have version 7 of Internet Explorer. You can find out what version you have by clicking on Help (might be a circle with a question mark in it) and then clicking on “About Internet Explorer”

If you have Automatic Updates turned on (which we recommend) you will soon get Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) if you haven’t already gotten it. IE8 is faster and has better security. However, with any new version of software, there can be problems when it’s first installed. Just like we had with version 7, some computers have problems after installing IE8.

We recommend allowing the install of IE8 because it’s only a few PC’s that will have a problem with it. And any PC that has a problem installing IE8 has some other underlying problem that needs to be addressed anyway.

If you want more information about Internet Explorer 8, click here.

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In case you don’t know, Vipre is security software that provides protection against viruses, spyware, and other malware. We currently recommend it as the best protection available at this time. If you don’t have Vipre on your system, you may want to skip to the next article.

If you do have Vipre, you may have noticed that the icon may change color or that a second yellow Vipre icon may pop-up from time to time. Here’s what each of the icons looks like, what they mean, and what action you should take, if any.

 Everything is good. No action needed.

 Vipre is scanning your system. If you don’t want it to scan right now, right-click on the green Vipre icon and choose “Scan” and then choose either “Abort Scan” or “Pause Scan”. You may want to adjust the schedule for when scans happen. On Vipre’s overview screen, click on “Schedule Scans” to set or change the schedule. We like to schedule scans during times when we know we won’t be using the computer. For most people, 1am works well.

 This means that either Active Protection or E-mail Protection is disabled. To fix this, open Vipre. You will be able to see what is disabled. Click on “Edit Settings” next to whatever is disabled to enable it.

 This icon will show up in addition to the regular icon, so you will see two icons. If this icon appears, that means that there is something that Vipre wants to alert you about. Double-click on the yellow icon to see what’s up. If you see that Vipre was not able to update it’s definitions, but later on was able to, just close it and don’t worry about it. You may see that there was some sort of error with the service, but it is now corrected. If so, just close it and don’t worry about it. This icon can also alert you that there is a new version of Vipre available to install. It may also be telling you that your subscription is about to expire, or has expired.

It’s very important to pay attention to what Vipre, or any other security software, is telling you. Don’t ignore it or your computer may become infected.

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