. ....... You can read this blog in 90 different languages! Welcome to my Microsoft Windows 10 Blog Copyright © 2016 John.Koehler@Yahoo.com all rights reserved. Last update: April 26, 2018 00.) Preface - About this document. 01.) Windows 10 review: Privacy issues, the good, the bad and the ugly. 02.) Tips on building your own computer. 03.) Tips on buying a computer from a computer manufacturer. 04.) Tips on having a computer built by a custom PC builder. 05.) Good practices to keep your computer free of bugs and viruses. 06.) Software to prevent or eliminate computer viruses and trojans. 07.) Highly recommended free software that works with Win10. 08.) Different approaches to computer backups and making clones. 09.) Things you can do to keep your computer hardware running smoothly. 99.) The future of computer technology - quantum computers etc. etc. . 00 - Preface - About this document This document is not intended to be the final word on any issue, rather a starting point to be used in the examination of the operating system from Microsoft called Windows 10. Before you follow any advice or suggestions in this document it may always be an excellent idea to check with Google for suggestions and alternatives or even Scholar.google.com for more advanced research. For further questions about Windows 10 or any Windows operating system, you are welcome to examine or join the free 4,000+ member Yahoo group Windows-Operating-Systems https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Windows-Operating-Systems/info where you are welcome to ask ANY question having to do with computers. Back to the top. 01 - Windows 10 review: PRIVACY ISSUES: Privacy is a huge concern in Win 10 because Microsoft keylogs everything you do and intrusively gathers then sends (or attempts to send) lots of information about you and where you go, what you look at and what you do with your computer back to Microsoft. Here is a partial list of domains that send information back to Microsoft. Most people believe that what they do with their computer is none of Microsoft's business. Be that as it may, the bad guys have become extremely sophisticated and it may be reasonable for governments to be able to see exactly who is going to web pages and Twitter feeds that promote death and destruction to society. The courts and public opinion may end up making the final decisions having to do with this and other Internet issues. The following are some of the free tools that help stop Windows 10 from spying on everything you do: http://bgr.com/2015/08/14/windows-10-spying-prevention-privacy-tools/ http://bgr.com/2015/07/31/windows-10-upgrade-spying-how-to-opt-out/ http://www.ghacks.net/2015/07/30/windows-10-and-privacy/ Here is a comparison of Windows 10 Privacy tools. http://neurogadget.com/2015/08/20/windows-10-privacy-tools/13016 http://www.howtogeek.com/227827/windows-10-is-great- except-for-the-parts-that-are-terrible/ http://www.howtogeek.com/224616/30-ways-windows-10-phones-home/ It no longer takes a court order to look at anything inside your computer. By installing Win10 you have already given Microsoft and it's agents permission to examine anything and everything on your computer. It's a dirty little secret. It may be great to help catch terrorists and criminals but for the rest of us it means that everything we do on our computers needs to be in compliance with those unspoken laws and ideas society thinks are acceptable. "It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong." Voltaire (1694 - 1778) INSTALLATION TIPS http://www.howtogeek.com/224342/how-to-clean-install-windows-10/ In the early stages of the Win 10 install if you choose 'Custom' you can say 'No' to the many requests for your permission to send things back to Microsoft. For the time being it may be wise if you never ever set up or log into or use a Microsoft Account. It has a reputation for sending a lot of information back to Microsoft. You might be wise if you turn off Microsoft Edge and Bing and Cortana. Use google to find out why that might be a wise thing to do. Windows 10 includes Windows Firewall and Windows Defender antivirus, and both are enabled right out of the box. They are the successor to the Microsoft Security Essentials antivirus that was available on Windows XP through Win7. Most experts agree that is the only software you will never need to completely protect your computer - assuming that you never get into computer 'monkey business' defined below. http://www.howtogeek.com/224798/how-to-uninstall-windows-10s-built-in-apps-and-how-to-reinstall-them/ USAGE TIPS Windows 10: The best tricks, tips, and tweaks from PCWorld. How to use Windows 10's Task View and virtual desktops also from PCWorld. How to use Windows 10's Taskbar from Microsoft. http://www.howtogeek.com/197625/how-to-use-virtual-desktops-in-windows-10/ from Howtogeek. If you only use sleep and never hibernate you MAY want to turn off hibernate - hibernate files are in the root and are huge. Here is some information about hibernate from Microsoft. If you have 8-16 gigabytes of RAM a swap file slows you down and wastes a ton of disk space so (MAYBE - use Google to get more information) set the swap file to No Swap file, reboot and get all that space back. Swap files use the Disk instead of RAM but that was designed for apps that wanted a TON of RAM (over 4 gigs) on systems with way less than 4 gigs (512mb, 1 Gig, 2 gig) or they would not run at all. Swap files (even on SSD) are not even close to the speed of RAM. Here is a discussion of the Hiberfil.sys, Pagefile.sys and the New Swapfile.sys file in Windows 8 and 10. http://www.howtogeek.com/199990/should-i-disable-the- page-file-if-my-computer-has-a-lot-of-ram/ THE GOOD: Although Win10 is very fast compared to XP most studies suggest that at most it is about 7 % faster than Win 7 or Win 8.1. Some of Win10's best new features include Multiple or Virtual Desktops and a 'live' taskbar. Windows 10 works beautifully with a Windows tablet and a Windows smartphone. You may want to note that if you have or use software that does not have a valid license, Win10 will prevent you from using it! Users no longer have a choice as to which fixes they apply. Starting with Win10 all fixes will be applied to all computers. This is an excellent decision by Microsoft because it will make problem discovery and problem-solving much much easier. I can not even imagine looking at a core dump when the base consists of a hodgepodge of fixes which the user may or may not have installed. THE BAD: Many things are hidden or changed or renamed. Microsoft could have designed Win10 so that it looked and acted EXACTLY like XP or W7 but they chose to honor the needs of their development team over the comfort of their users. Not a good choice. Win 10 did have a lot of problems when it was first released but many have been corrected. Microsoft tries very hard to get your permission to send details back to Microsoft. THE UGLY: Microsoft keylogs EVERYTHING you type in. What that means is that Microsoft remembers and records every key you press on your keyboard and when you press it. You have no choice and can not turn it off. This may seem like an invasion of privacy but on second thought Microsoft software is being used without payment on millions of computers all over the world and it's about time they figured out a way to prevent this. It may take a generation for all old computers to get rusty and stop working but eventually, all PCs will have to run Win 10+. Also, if you are not breaking any laws who cares if Microsoft learns of your favorite chocolate cake recipe. It MAY be value in hunting down and destroying enemies of the civilized world. Has Microsoft intentionally slowed down Firefox and Chrome so their new browser "Edge" looks better in comparison benchmarks? Some think so: http://www.ghacks.net/2015/07/16/is-microsoft-edge-really- the-fastest-windows-10-web-browser/ http://www.laptopmag.com/articles/best-windows-browser But beware - Microsoft has the ability to get into your computer and turn it on anytime it wishes without your knowledge or permission. It can turn it back on if it has been shut down and can turn your WiFi back on if you have unplugged your direct connection to the Internet. This means if you have any Notepad open and not saved, or are in the middle of any project and have not saved your work, if it's time to do an update you will lose everything you have not saved. Back to the top. 02 - Tips on building your own computer. How to avoid common PC building mistakes from PCWorld. Is Building a PC Really Cheaper than Buying One? from Lifehacker. The Best PCs You Can Build for $300, $600, and $1200. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/newegg-system- builder-marathon-q3-2015-value-comparison,4293.html Tom's Hardware has monthly examples of lists of hardware components to build in three categories: low cost (usually around $500, mid-range ($800.) and high end ($1,000. and up). Tom's Hardware has actually built and tested all these computers so you can be confident that the motherboard they suggest will support the processor in that category for example. 8 Reasons to Build Your Own PC. Intel and AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) are the largest processor manufactures but there are many more. One way to start is by choosing a processor. The processor aka the CPU (Central Processing Unit - commonly referred to as a core) is the heart of a computer and it is what: executes instructions, sends input data to the right application, and decides which application is next in line to get some CPU juice. For 30 years most computers have had just one core but now most computers have at least two and four is not uncommon. In the future, one computer may have hundreds or even thousands of cores. Here is a comparison of Intel processors. Some of the important processor considerations are: The MIP speed (how many millions of instructions can the processor execute each second), the clock rate (speed), the number of cores, extras like hyperthreading, etc. etc. etc. Once you have chosen a processor that represents your computer and financial needs you can use google to find the best price and to find a motherboard then a video card that matches your processor and motherboard (sometimes a very complicated task). Also please note that every processor has many dozens of hardware characteristics many of which need to be correctly matched with a motherboard. Ditto for video cards. Best CPU: 10 top processors reviewed and rated Here is someone's opinion of the ten best computer companies. You can put 'how to build a computer site:.edu' (without the quotes) into google to find articles like: http://www.cnet.com/how-to/the-pros-and-cons-of-building-your-own-computer How to build your own computer from PCMag. How to build your own computer from Puget Systems. http://lifehacker.com/5828747/how-to-build-a-computer-from- scratch-the-complete-guide Back to the top. 03 - Tips on buying a computer from a computer manufacturer. Here are 9 Key Things to Know Before You Buy a New Computer. There are approx 140 major computer manufactures today according to Wikipedia. Most computer manufacturers today load up their computers with lots and lots of software junk (aka shovelware) because they get paid a lot of money to do it. Although most of this is harmless it might be a good reason to build your own computer. Perhaps one of the first things you may want to do with a new computer from a manufacturer or custom builder is to use Google to find out how to rip out all the shovelware like McAfee or Norton or Symantec. The top USA computer manufacturers include: Hewlett-Packard Co. 4.1 million shipped in U.S., 27.0 percent share Dell Inc. 3.3 million, 21.4 percent Apple Inc. 2.1 million, 13.6 percent Lenovo Group Ltd. 1.4 million, 8.9 percent Acer Group 989,725, 6.5 percent. Toshiba 989,600, 6.5 percent + So HP sells 11,263 computers a day. A day! If for example McAfee gives HP one dollar for each computer they install McAfee in, that an extra 4 million dollars profit to HP every year. All these manufacturers probably buy hard drives for example in orders of 100,000 so yes their cost is very very low. Keep in mind that prices frequently change even minute by minute. If they have way too many parts in inventory, disk drives, for example, they may drop the price by $10. or $20. until the volume levels off. Given a particular processor, Dell, for example, may offer many dozens of different combinations: with 8 gigs, 16 gigs, 32 gigs of memory, with 500MB hard drives, 1 GB, 2 GB, with various video cards. If you have the patience to check prices a couple of times a day for a month or so you will surely run into unusually low prices. Dell has been known to offer huge rebates on items they have too many of - TVs or monitors for example just to sweeten up a deal but these deals may only a few hours while supplies last. It is not uncommon to find very nice complete computer packages these days for around $600. with free shipping. Back to the top. 04 - Tips on having a computer built by a custom PC builder. Although building your own may be the best option for many reasons, there are some advantages to using a custom builder. Although there are hundreds of custom builders, here are nine popular custom builders compared. I like http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/ because they give you the FPS for various models which is very important if you are building a gaming computer. FPS or Frames Per Second is the measure of how many frames the machine can deliver to your monitor each second. Movies are typically 48 FPS and TVs are typically 24 frames per second. In one favorite online game, the FPS using XP was 4 - 6. Using Win10 on new hardware the same game produced FPS over 100. Custom builders give you many dozens of options to choose from. Once you choose a processor they will provide you with a list of the best motherboards that support that processor. Ditto for the processor cooling fan, the memory, the power supply, the case and dozens of other hardware features - they will build exactly what you have chosen and will thoroughly test it out and give you a warranty - the length of which varies from builder to builder. Back to the top. 05 - Avoid the following monkey business to keep your computer free of bugs and viruses. Windows Defender and the Windows Firewall (both built into Win10) may be the only software you need to completely protect your computer as long as you avoid all the following dangerous practices aka monkey business. If you let anyone use your computer while you are not in the room you are asking for problems even if they are on a non-administrator userid. They might experiment with things that they might never do on their own computer at home that could cause problems like going to porn sites or downloading undesirable things. Letting anyone plug in a thumb drive into your computer is asking for trouble. Porn sites or sites with pictures of pretty girls can be extremely dangerous. The vast majority of porn sites are built by teenage hackers who want to lure you to their site so they can practice destroying computers. Computer bombs are frequently set to go off days or weeks after your visit so you won't know when the bomb was planted. This allows you time to tell all your friends about the great site that you found. Sites that lure you into thinking you can get something for nothing (like getting expensive software free) usually, include a file called a Keygen which if executed can cause extreme damage to your computer. It may be best to completely avoid all Torrents. If you ever click on any attachment or link inside of ANY email you are living dangerously. The reason for this is that there is a class of hacks that will set up a bomb to go off in a week that will disable or destroy your computer. It will then go into your contacts and send an email to each with an innocuous message like "I thought you might want to see this." with a link. It will appear that they got a message from you with a link. If they click on it the same thing will happen - everyone in their contacts will get the same innocuous message with a link. On and on disabling thousands of computers. Sometimes the message is, "Your computer is locked. To unlock send us $200." and in fact, your computer will be locked. Your choice is to re-install everything or pay the ransom. It is always much easier to never click on any email link or attachment. Your Aunt Tilly may love you and may want to send you a nice online birthday card but you never know if she has been hacked or has simply made a really bad choice in online birthday cards. There are some web pages that are so dangerous that just clicking on a link can cause the total destruction of your computer. Perhaps it's a good idea to only go to web pages that have been recommended by Google. Don't fall for any software that guarantees to prevent or remove computer viruses. There are thousands of such sites. This fraudulent business is so financially successful that you can now see TV advertisements guaranteeing to protect your computer if you only buy their product. All are pure horse feathers wanting only to separate you from your money. You can safely ignore the little window that opens and says, "Your computer is infected - click here to clean your computer, free." It is pure nonsense. Be very careful when you download anything. Many download sites add unnecessary things to your computer. Sometimes if you choose a 'Custom' install you can unclick the toolbars etc. they like to install along with the software. Never allow them to add extra things like bing or ASK search engines. http://www.howtogeek.com/198622/heres-what-happens- when-you-install-the-top-10-download.com-apps/ Be careful to distinguish "Free downloads" vs "Free software". Most or all downloads are free. The question is whether the software is free to use without any future payment. Thousands of software advertised as being 'free' will hook you into believing it is of value by giving you false positives telling you that it found a problem but lucky for you, it successfully quarantined then deleted the problem saving your computer. All lies trying to get you to pay a yearly fee for doing nothing. Be careful about what you say in emails or in any kind of text messages. If you hate anyone or anything you can expect to be attacked. Mark Cuban once mentioned in an email that he hated to lose and it cost him $12 million dollars in attorney fees to clear his name when a zealous federal prosecutor tried to use his 'hatred' comment to suggest he was involved in insider trading. The latest trend in high-value software like PhotoShop and Windows Office is to lease the software to you for like $49.00 a month. You can no longer buy it outright. Nearly 1 million new malware threats are released every day. EVERY DAY!!! http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/14/technology/security/cyber-attack-hacks-security/ Back to the top. 06 - Software to prevent or eliminate computer viruses and trojans. Software to prevent viruses, trojans, worms, spyware, adware, and dialers from getting into your computer has become a huge and a very profitable industry. If you are using Microsoft's built-in Windows Defender and the Windows Firewall and you are not doing any monkey business your computer may be completely protected and you do not need to buy or use any of the thousands of products promising to protect your computer. Here's an excellent article from Microsoft on how to prevent and remove viruses and other malware and if you click on "14 Microsoft Safety Scanner" half way down you can download and run MSERT.exe which will examine your computer for problems and bugs. If MSERT.exe calls your computer clean then you are doing all the right things. Millions of people use software protection software like AVG AntiVirus and products from places like Avast, McAfee, Symantec Norton, Trend Micro, and Kaspersky and all of the above are totally worthless crap yet people absolutely love them including the majority of the most popular "Internet gurus". They all get 5 stars out of 5-star ratings right and left and they have received the highest awards given out by famous and reputable computer companies. Is it all a huge money making scam? Definitely. Are these millions simply willing to believe the false positives this software presents to its users? It sure looks like it. Are they people who desperately want to believe their computer is safe and protected using this software? Yes. Would these millions of people be much better off by using Google to find ways of ripping AVG out of their computers and rely on Windows Defender and Windows Firewall to totally protect their computer? Definitely yes say the folks at DARPA. Ditto for the hundreds if not thousands of scam software that people buy, use and love. The problem is that if your computer is clean and if you are using any of the scam software you will be convinced that your computer is in good shape because of the scam software. This is probably not true. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is an agency of the U.S. Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. They publish a yearly report suggesting procedures to protect the 400,000 Windows computers doing business with DARPA and it's affiliates. According to their recent yearly security report if your Windows computer is clean and if you are running Windows Defender and the Windows Firewall and if you don't get into any monkey business you do not need any of the popular products that promise to keep your computer clean via false positives including all the popular software listed here. They are all relatively useless, expensive, take up computer resources and are of no value notwithstanding all the false positive lies they opine according to studies released by DARPA. The DARPA guys don't have a horse in the race. Who are you going to believe? The experts or those who have fallen for false positives? Who are you going to trust? The guys who designed and wrote the software (Microsoft) or the guys whose job it is to get you to buy their software. Here's an article on how to watch out for fake virus alerts. Here's an article on how to Remove spyware from your computer. Here's an article from Microsoft on how to protect yourself from malware. Here are lists of hundreds of rogue anti-spyware If you do have an infected computer, Microsoft, Panda, Webroot, Malwarebytes and HijackThis all have good reputations for getting things back to normal. The free Malwarebytes is a particularly good choice to help protect your computer from regular everyday surfing problems. Back to the top. 07 - Highly recommended free software that works with Win10. For each of the following programs you can get more information from google. For example 'agent ransack tutorial site:.edu' or 'agent ransack review site:.edu'. Everything Search Engine is an absolutely magnificent program that can very quickly help you find files by giving it a string. I frequently supply a string followed by a space then txt or jpg or html etc. etc. or just the string by itself. Everything indexes your hard drive(s) the first time you use it after a boot which takes about one minute and after that searches take less than one second. Agent Ransack is an niceprogram for finding files on your entire hard drive or individual folders. For example "abc".txt will find all your text files with the string "abc" in the name. You can also search the contents of files for strings. However 'Everything search' (above) may be a much faster alternative. Agent Ransack has two advantages over Everything Search. Agent can search for a string within a file and you can search for files that were created before or after a specified date. For most searches, however, Everything will take one second and Agent can take a few minutes to find things. Whenever you start a new search using Agent always go to File, new, blank search. CCleaner is the world's favorite PC optimization tool! Easy to use, one-click cleaning so beginners can optimize their computers in seconds. But be careful: if you take the defaults you may have to re-enter all your passwords etc. Defraggler - Windows has it's own defrag built in but I like Defraggler because it also shows the total number of hours the drive has been spinning and how many times it has been booted. It also gives the internal temperature. Defraggler can be used to clean up entire hard drives, or individual files. Works with HDD and SSD and supports NTFS. Gimp is a free GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages. It has many of the same features as PhotoShop. Click here to see 20 gimp tutorials from beginner to pro. Irfan View 64 is a fast and simple freeware image viewer, editor and converter that supports all major graphic formats. Macrium is a free program with a great history and reputation that can be used to make an exact clone of your C drive. Revo Uninstaller is a much faster and more powerful alternative to "Windows Add or Remove Programs" applet! It has very powerful features to uninstall and it can scan for leftovers after the standard uninstall. TeamViewer 10 is a program that you can use to transfer files from one computer to another even if the computers are thousands of miles apart. TreeSize is a free disk space manager for Windows. The software shows you the sizes of folders including all sub-folders. VLC Media Player is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVDs, Audio CDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. WinAmp is a windows music player capable of playing MP3s, MP2s, WAVs, VOCs and MIDI files. Provides free download, community skins and plug-ins. Audiograbber is a great free program to convert files into MP3s. Back to the top. 08 - Different approaches to computer backups and making clones. There are many ways to make backups and clones of your hard drive(s). Google can show all of them to you. I have long used Acronis True Image software to clone my hard drives - it used to be free but now it apparently costs money to buy ($49.99). However, you can get a lot of information about cloning hard drives here. Or click here to see a list of five free and reliable cloning tools. Take a look at Macrium or Acronis. They are both excellent tools to clone your hard drive - Macrium is free. They are both self contained in that they offer both cloning or imaging and recovery media to restore when needed. Macrium and Acronis are sometimes included free when you buy some types of hard drives like from Western Digital. Yes the 'black' versions of WD hard drives are the most reliable and have the longest warranty but they are a little more expensive. The 'Green' is the most environmentally friendly. Question: What is a good way to protect, clone or duplicate my hard drive? Answer: There are many ways to do this: One way is to buy a larger or exact duplicate hard drive, install it inside of your case (Google can help - you may also need a diagram of your motherboard so you can see where to plug in your new drive) then clone your C drive onto the new one using the free version of Macrium then put one of them in your closet for safe keeping. You can repeat this once a month and switch hard drives. Or: Buy an external USB hard drive enclosure, put your new hard drive into it, clone it once a week or month then switch drives. Both ways require you to get inside your computer but you will always have a complete copy of your system in the closet which you can use in an emergency. Both ways - if you have a power surge that destroys your hard drive, or if you get hacked you can always go into your closet, mount that hard drive into your computer and whala. Many people use a differential or incremental backup system to keep their system safe. Here is a discussion of the differences between the two from Acronis and here is a description of full, incremental, and differential Backups by Microsoft. Back to the top. 09 - Things you can do to keep your computer hardware running smoothly. Run a defragger once every few months or so. To defrag means to reorganize files so that all the parts of each file are stored in contiguous sectors on the disk, thereby improving computer performance and maximizing disk space. I like to use Defraggler. There are various places that give you the opportunity to 'clean' your computer and get rid of things you don't need. For example, if you right click your "C" drive and choose properties you can click on "Disk Cleanup". You can clean your computer before a defrag. CCleaner also does a very good job of cleaning things but be very careful because it is very powerful. You can get lots of information from Google about CCleaner. At least once a year use a vacuum cleaner to remove dust from all external openings. If you are brave you can open up your computer and very very carefully remove the dust from the inside of your computer - always unplug your computer then touch the metal power supply to ground yourself before you touch anything inside your computer. Sometimes the bottom of video cards has little fans that can get clogged with dust. You MAY have to take out the video card, clean it then carefully re-seat it. Google can help you do this. Always turn your computer off if it starts to rain. Power surges from electrical storms can quickly fry a computer. Home Depot sells whole house power surge protectors for about $25. but you need to hire an electrician to install it. Back to the top. 99 - The future of computer technology Albert Einstein - The Quantum Theory - Documentary Quantum entanglement Quantum Entanglement & Spooky Action at a Distance - Einstein referred to Quantum Entanglement as "spooky action at a distance". IBM research on qbits is a good place to start. http://www.wired.com/2012/10/ff-inside-google-data-center/ http://computer.howstuffworks.com/quantum-computer.htm http://www.theplatform.net/2015/07/22/google-sees- long-expensive-road-ahead-for-quantum-computing/ What Is the Future of Computers? by Lifescience. Back to the top. Back to John's Blog x Fin .

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