No doubt you’ve heard of this computer terminology.

The content of the messages range from mortgage rates to “enhancing body parts, to porn, and their numbers grow every day. Some experts estimate that junk email counts for over 90% of all emails!

Spam is named after an old Monty Python sketch which took place in a diner where everything on the menu had spam in it. A group of people dressed as vikings boisterously sing a song about spam, making conversation almost impossible. Years later, this reminded someone of how email in your inbox can get lost in all of the junk mail, so they named it spam and the name stuck.

It can be hard to avoid getting your email address on somebody’s list. It’s commonplace for people to receive 50 to 100 pieces of spam in a single day – I know some people who get over 300 a day! And the problem is growing worse. 
Hapily here are a few tips for people to reduce the amount of spam they get. Here are a few tips:

*{Don’t risk trying to unsubscribe or ask to be taken off the list. Those emails may have a link or a reply address to unsubscribe, but most either simply don’t function, or you’re just telling the spammers that they’ve got a live one.

*Never order anything advertised in spam, visit the website, or in any way respond to the ad. One of the reasons spammers bother you so much is because it’s so cheap for them to send out the emails. The spammer will send more each time anyone orders.

*Try to avoid entering your email address on websites as much as possible. If you do, consider getting a second email account with Hotmail or a similar service. That way, you can enter that address instead of your main one.
Many websites offering contests, joke lists, free greeting cards, etc. sell your address without your permission.

*Never sign an online guestbook. As an experiment I recently created a new email address and entered it on about five guestbooks I found with a Google search. Within 24 hours I was getting spam, and it grew to dozens a day within a week.

* If you so much as open a junk email while you’re online, you can be instantly telling the spammer who sent it that you did. So if your email client has a “work offline” menu option (You’ll often locate this in the File menu) select it before opening suspect emails. You can also disconnect from the internet completely, but unless you are still making the mistake of using the out-of-date dialup, this may involve unplugging connectors. Really, the best option is to use the “offline” feature of your email program.
Windows Live Mail, you won’t be able to go offline in this way~You can’t go offline when you use a web-based email service~It’s impossible to use web-based email services offline}. Check your mail options for a setting to turn off graphics in emails, or to display mail in plain text only. The wording varies from site to site, but the option to turn on will say something like “block remote images” or something similar.
These steps can help keep the spammers from knowing you’ve opened the message.

*Avoid forwarding emails to large numbers of people.
Not everyone realizes that when you forward a message, the email addresses of everyone who receives the message is visible to every person who reads it. If any of the recipients is a spammer, or if one of a friend’s computer is infected by certain viruses, they can harvest all of those addresses, including yours.
If you do send an email to multiple people, you can avoid revealing email addresses by entering addresses in the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) area instead of To or CC. This will hide the list of addresses from everyone else.
If you’re sending a message from somebody on to others, you should copy and paste just the message into a new email window rather than hitting the forward button — this trims the message down and protects the privacy of others.

*To deal with the spam you already receive, most email clients allow you to create “filters” or “rules” that move incoming email into a specified folder or even right into the trash.
Setting filters up can be complicated, but the newer versions of many email clients, including Mozilla Thunderbird and Mac OS X Mail make it much easier.
The programs recognize patterns in spam, and use your address book as a white list of legit senders. Junk that shows up can be marked as spam with a click. The more spam you mark, the better the program gets at automatically taking care of them. You’l be blessed with an uncluttered inbox.
Many internet providers also provide a spam filter which blocks email before it gets to your computer. The problem with this is that they often block legitimate mail and you may never know about it.
Because of this, I recommend using filtering software on your own computer, such as the two programs I just mentioned.~*Never order anything advertised in junk email, click through to the website, or in any way respond to the ad. It costs almost nothing to send spam out, no matter how many you send, so they can send out millions at once for nearly nothing. The spammer will send more each time anyone orders.

*Don’t bother trying to unsubscribe or ask to be taken off the list. Those emails may have a link or a reply address to unsubscribe, but 90% either just don’t work, or you’re just notifying the spammers that they’ve got a live one.

* Never put your name in a guest book on a website. As an experiment I recently created a new email address and entered it on about five guestbooks I found with a Google search. Within 24 hours I was getting spam, and it grew to dozens a day within a week.

*Try to avoid entering your email address on websites as much as possible. If you do, consider getting a second email account with Hotmail or a similar service. So you can give an alternative address.
Many websites offering contests, joke lists, free greeting cards, etc. invade your privacy by sharing your address with other spammers.

* Spammers can send out special messages that “phone home” and let them know when they’re opened. So if your email application has a “work offline” setting (You’ll often locate this in the File menu) select it before opening dubious emails. You can also disconnect from the internet completely, but unless you’re still trapped in the backwaters of dialup, this could involve unplugging connectors. Generally, the best option is to use the “offline” feature of your email program.
Windows Live Mail, you won’t be able to go offline in this way~You can’t go offline when you use a web-based email service~It’s impossible to use web-based email services offline}. Check your mail options for a setting to turn off graphics in emails, or to display mail in plain text only. Turn on any option about blocking or not loading remote images.
These steps can help keep the spammers from knowing you’ve opened the message.

*To deal with the spam you already receive, most email applications allow you to create “filters” or “rules” that move incoming email into a specified folder or even right into the trash.
Setting filters up can be complicated, but the newer versions of many email clients, including Mozilla Thunderbird and Mac OS X Mail make it much easier.
The programs recognize patterns in spam, and use your address book as a white list of legit senders. Junk can be cleared from your inbox with a click. The more spam you mark, the better the program gets at automatically taking care of them. Your inbox will end up much less full of junk.
Many internet providers also provide a spam filter which blocks email before it gets to your computer. The problem with this is that they often block legitimate mail and you may never know about it.
Because of this, I recommend using filtering software on your own computer, such as the two programs I just mentioned.

*Avoid forwarding emails to large numbers of people.
Not everyone realizes that when you forward a message, the email addresses of everyone who receives the message is visible to every person who reads it. If any of the recipients is a spammer, or if one of a friend’s computer is infected by certain viruses, they can harvest all of those addresses, including yours.
If you do send an email to multiple people, you can avoid revealing email addresses by entering addresses in the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) area instead of To or CC. This will hide the list of addresses from everyone else.
If you’re sending a message from somebody on to others, you should copy and paste just the message into a new email window rather than hitting the forward button — this trims the message down and protects the privacy of others.}

Ultimately, spam is a fact of modern life, and it’s next to impossible to avoid all of it, mostly because of what other people are doing with your email. If your current email address is about to collapse from the amount of spam you get, you might be forced to get a new one.
After that, if you follow the suggestions and basic computer tips above, you’ll have a good chance of keeping it under control.

cpu is

In this article, I’d like to talk about a little bit about some computer terminology “CPU,” which is short for “central processing unit.” It’s also sometimes just referred to as just “the processor.”

A lot of people don’t really get this term, so I’m going to use some very basic, plain-English methods of explaining it that will make a lot of sense, probably more than what you may have heard before.

I’m also going to make clear to you why it is your PC seems to have slowed down from it used to be. This article will also make clear why it is computers seem to become obsolete so fast.

computer’s processor~The processor will make a lot more sense with my help~Reading this article will help you understand the CPU better~I’ll share with you a better understanding of the CPU~The processor will make a lot more sense with my help~Reading this article will help you understand your processor better~I’ll share with you a better understanding of a computer’s processor}. Once you understand this, you can better choose the right computer for you. This really depends on how you’re using it.

You can think about the CPU as a brain because it is the closest equivalent to a brain in a computer. Metaphorically speaking, this is the part of the computer that does the actual thinking.

Another way of thinking about it is to think of it like muscles. The under-powered computer is like the weakling getting sand kicked in his face in the old Charles Atlas ads. A high-end computer’s processor is sort of like a Charles Atlas or Arnold Schwarzenegger, someone who is very strong, maybe takes steroids and is very big and muscular.

Think about those two people, the 98-pound weakling and the bodybuilder. Obviously a book doesn’t weigh much, so anyone could carry it pretty easily. Either one of them can easily carry a book across a room.

However, what if the person is trying to lift a giant, 100-pound bag of concrete, the98-pound weakling might not be able to get across the room or might not even have a hope of lifting it.

If they can get all the way across the room, they’re probably going to stagger slowly and barely make it since they’re trying to do something that’s just too much for them to mange.

The bodybuilder, on the other hand, will surely notice} that the weight is much more than a book, but they’ll be able to carry it across the room much more easily than the 98-pound weakling.

That’s one way to relate to it. A high-end computer is like the bodybuilder. The average level computer is like a person of average strength. cement~They could easily lift a book, but walking with a giant back of cement would be really hard to do~While a light book would be no problem to carry, they might not be able to do so well with the heavy cement bag~The concrete bag obviously would be a nearly impossible chore, and much harder than a mere book~While a book would be an easy task to carry, the concrete bag wouldn’t be so easy~They couldn’t carry something as heavy as a bag of concrete nearly as easily as a simple book, if they could at all~It would be easy for them to stroll accross a room with a book, but they’d be staggering if they tried hefting the giant concrete bag}.

So what do I mean by the {concrete?~OK, so you may be wondering what the cement or the book are in practical terms?~In real terms, what do the cement and the book represent?~What’s the cement?} What’s the book~What do I mean by the book~What does the book represent~What is the book like~Are you wondering what the book represents~Wondering what I mean by the book~Are you asking yourself what I mean with the book example~What does the example of the book represent~Just what do I mean by the book}? Let me give you one or two examples. Most people are doing a few things with their computer. They’re writing, using a word processor like Word, or reading their emails.

They’re looking at web pages, listening to some music, watching some little video like a DVD or looking at some photographs. These are typical things. Those are equivalent to carrying a book or something light across a room. Today’s computer can handle tasks like these with ease.

Things like or making changes to a large, super-high-quality photograph from an expensive pro camera, is a bigger, heavier task for the computer to work with.

One other example would be doing high end computer gaming. Those activities are more like carrying that big bag of cement, so they do need a high-end computer.

The last thing I want to speak about is why, over the course of time, what used to be a high-end~powerful computer goes from being Charles Atlas to being a 98-pound weakling.

Most programs get more complicated with each version as they add new features. Understand that just because they’re more complex doesn’t always mean more complex to use.

Think of it as if they are becoming heavier over time. The typical “weight” has grown over time and so becomes harder for the computer to deal with.

I hope that makes sense, even if you’ve never had much luck learning basic computer skills before now. It actually can be a lot simpler than you may have thought with the right choice of computer training.

why hard disk

In this article you’ll get a plain language explanation of an idea which confuses people pretty frequently. First, we’re going to demystify some computer jargon & terms .

I will also make clear why there seems to be a difference between the size of your computer’s hard drive when you buy it, or what’s on the label on the drive, and how much its capacity, when you’re there looking at what it says on the computer screen, why it seems to be smaller.

So, I’ll just define a couple of computer terms. These terms are “erase” and “format.” Both of these terms fundamentally are synonyms, so you can use them interchangeably.

A hard disk drive is the part inside the computer which actually stores all of your data, your documents, pictures, music and the OS of your computer itself, which might be Windows XP or OS X or anything else. Most times, everything that’s saved on the PC or Mac is going to be found in the hard drive.

Hard disks have been measured for some time in gigabytes and are already into the terabyte range, which is a thousand times larger than a gigabyte.

A byte is basically the smallest unit of measurement when it comes to computers (technically, a bit is the one thing smaller than a byte).  A kilobyte is around one thousand bytes. A megabyte is basically 1,000,000 bytes. A gigabyte is essentially 1 billion bytes. A terabyte is essentially 1 trillion bytes. It’s going to go well past there but not for a few years, so let’s forget that .

For example, you have a computer that is years old. A person might have the idea you have a certain sized drive based on the label on the drive, or the number on the receipt that you got when you purchased the computer.

Let’s if you want to find out how big your hard drive is. If you’re on a Mac, you can do this by clicking on the the drive icon on your desktop, going to the File menu and then clicking on “Get Info.” That opens a window with the size of the hard drive..

When using Windows, you open the My Computer icon and click once on the hard drive. It will generally tell you how big the drive is on the left side of the window.

If you find seeing something done is easier than reading the steps, I suggest Windows computer how to training or Mac OS X how to, but specifically video lessons that show you the steps.

Once you’ve seen how big the drive is, it will turn out smaller than it seems like it should be.

This is because of what happens when the drive is first set up for use. “Formatting” or “erasing” is getting the drive ready to be used. Beforehand, the drive is sort of like the foundation of a house or a house pad before the house is built.

You can’t obviously live on a bare house pad because there are no walls or a roof. In other words what you do when you setup a hard drive. You “partition” and format it. You may have heard the word partition as one of those little screens that divides one part of a room from another. A partition is fundamentally the same thing.

When you are partitioning and formatting a hard drive, or erasing it, whichever term you prefer, you’re basically constructing the walls. You start off with the house pad, and then you put up the walls and the roof and you get it ready for use. Until you do that, a person can’t live in it.

For the same reason, if you have a hard drive that’s not erased, you can’t store anything onto it because there aren’t any walls or roof.

If you think about erasing or formatting a drive, that is, prepping it for use, as being like raising a house on of a foundation, you might already begin to guess why a hard drive’s size seems smaller than it should be.

It’s almost like you’ve lost space when you format it, when compared to what the drive says it is if you look at the actual physical drive label, the box it came in or the machine that came with that drive inside it. It’ll say a larger number than you actually get when you checking the drive’s size once it’s been formatted.

So in other words you start off with a house pad that is one thousand square feet, once you put up the walls, you no longer have 1,000 square feet left, not in real, floor space. You have some of that space taken up by the walls.

Fundamentally , that’s what happens when you format a disk. It gets partitioned and formatted and ready to use. In that process, it loses some of that space. You may find it’s a simple way to think about it, and it helps people understand.

Hopefully that clears up a little bit of a mystery. A lot of my clients have asked me about that — this is how I explain it, and it seems to make sense to them. I hope it makes some sense to you, too.