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The proper graphics card can help speed up almost any system by taking the responsibility of many visual functions, allowing the CPU to work more effectively in other areas. Let’s take a look at a few of the key features to look for in a graphics card.

Most all graphics cards are based on an Nvidia or ATI Radeon chip set. For the casual home or office user, any of today’s video cards are adequate. If you’re just doing Excel spreadsheets you might not need to spend $500 on a video card, but if you have a 21″ monitor and want to view that spreadsheet at 1600 x 1200 with a high refresh rate, it may be worth the investment. Where things start to change is on high end games, that’s where the Geforce and Radeon cards make the difference.

Memory Matters

As with every other facet of computing, more is always better. However, you don’t need a 256MB card if you’re just going to be using Quickbooks. For most office applications, a 32 or 64MB card is adequate. For gamers or those doing some sort of video production work, a minimum of 128MB is recommended, with a strong lean to 256. The more memory your video card has, the higher the resolution, and the larger the number of colors it can display.

Connectors and Interfaces

A standard SVGA card is going to have a single VGA connector. Higher end cards will have an S-Video and a DVI connector as well. What this means is that you have to pay attention to what type of monitor you have. DVI is all digital, like HDTV. The S-Video can be used to output to your TV for gaming on a larger screen.

Now a days, you will have either a PCI or an AGP slot for your video card. AGP stands for Advanced Graphics Port and as you might have guessed, means there are enhancements in performance when using and AGP slot. If your current video card is built into the motherboard, it is likely robbing the system of valuable memory because the system RAM is shared with it. This is another good reason to upgrade your video card.

John Gibb manages http://www.computer-and-printer-reviews.com
The site dedicated to computers and printers.

Tags: computer, computer problems, Computer Viruses, computers, software, spyware, trojans, virus, virusescomputer, computer problems, Computer Viruses, computers, software, spyware, trojans, virus, viruses

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I see Danny Burke of PC Magic once a month to sort out any problems on my computer and to help me move ahead with an internet info product business.

Danny spends most of his week rescuing business owners who are having problems with their computers.

Last week I asked him for the advice he would give a business owner who was having trouble with his computer. This is the advice he gave me:

Keep things simple on your computer. Don’t use it for games etc. Just use it for business. Danny finds that half his customers have caused their own problems by the extras they have downloaded from the internet such as:

Additional toolbars for internet explorer.
Unnecessary utilities like internet speed boosters which seldom work.
Eye candy such as wall paper changers, animated cats etc

All most businesses need is

A base operating system
An email client
A web browser
An office suite
A firewall and anti-virus system

Don’t download any old stuff off the internet. The more stuff you put on your hard disk, the more likely it is that you will have problems. Microsoft cannot check all the different applications you might download for compatibility.

Your first graphics package and another graphics package might fight over the file extensions. Try to stick with one package. Similar problems occur with music and video players which should not be on a business system anyway unless you are in that field.

Don’t upgrade unless you could name three good reasons to upgrade. After Danny gave me this advice, I rather guiltily tried to upgrade my BT broadband service to the new combined BT Yahoo broadband service.

Sure enough as soon as I had installed the new service, things started to go wrong. Things that had worked before (like links in emails) no longer worked. I’m not blaming BT Yahoo. I just had too much stuff on my computer! When I uninstalled the new service everything started working again.

Danny comments: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” When you upgrade, the file formats are sometimes different from the earlier versions of the software. This means you cannot go back to the earlier versions because they don’t recognise the new file format.

Do not assume that newer versions are better than the earlier versions. All you have done is make the software producer richer!

Have a firewall and virus checker and keep them up to date

Back up your data. 90% of companies who have a catastrophic data loss go bankrupt within two years. You should have two copies of important data and three copies of critical data stored in three different locations.

One copy should be in a fire safe off site. This should be standard practice. You cannot trust computers. Sooner or later they will get you! If you don’t back up, you are an idiot and deserve all you get!

Today I received this message from an ezine owner:

A lot of you sent me an ad this week, which
I had saved on my hard drive and guess
what?

My computer crashed and I lost every one.

I have a backup computer, but no ads.

Please re-send your ads so I can get them in
the Friday edition.

Sorry for the trouble.

The ezine owner is obviously a nice person but he may lose customers who haven’t got the time to resend their ads. No one likes to repeat their efforts.

Maybe his computer crashed because he had broken not only the back up rule but some of the other rules.

As a general principle, use your machine and don’t tinker with it. Once it is working, leave it alone!

Leave it alone!!!

John Watson is an info publisher on the internet and a martial arts school owner. He taught Religious Studies and Life Skills to teenagers in London schools for about 33 years before retiring in 2000 A.D. His own e-books and those of the English multimillionaire and businessman, Stuart Goldsmith, can be found on his site at http://www.motivationtoday.com

Tags: back up, business comput, computer problems, computer solutions, firewall, Stuart Goldsmith, virus checkerback up, business comput, computer problems, computer solutions, firewall, Stuart Goldsmith, virus checker

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