The Refresh Orlando Heirs

It is not rocket science, we all know that we should have a disaster recovery plan in place for our business regardless of its size. When disaster strikes, it seldom discriminates on the size of the company. Every business is vulnerable. Whether the disaster is a hurricane, tornado or the latest virus or worm unleashing fury on your computers and databases, every business faces risks.

A small business is seldom immune, and in many cases a small business is the most vulnerable of all businesses because they simply aren’t prepared for disasters. Large corporations allocate resources (staff and budgets) and are as a whole more prepared to face the unexpected. Most of the fortune 500 companies have disaster recovery plans in place to insure the continuity of their businesses.

So, what’s the key ingredient necessary to recovery from a disaster with the least amount of damage to the business? It’s really very simple. The key ingredient is a having a plan before the disaster strikes. It is virtually impossible, to be organized and strategically think through and implement a disaster recovery plan while in the throws of a disaster.

However, when all conceivable disasters have been imagined and contingency plans are calmly and methodically implemented in advance, a company has a tremendous advantage. Contingencies are now in place to fall back on when and if a disastrous event occurs. You are beginning to get the picture. Protecting the company assets and sustaining the least amount of damage, is simply a matter of planning and making that plan known to all corners of the corporation. It is importing to oversee properly implemented prior to any need. This is business continuity in a nutshell, and business continuity is becoming more and more important as we move into the new millennium.

Business continuity, for the small entrepreneur, doesn’t have to be as complicated as we try to make it.

A few simple questions can help you determine how extensive your disaster recovery system needs to be. One of the first questions to ask is what would happen to the business if all of the data processed in the last hour was lost? How hard would it be to recover if you lost all of the data over the last 24 hours? Or what about losing a week’s worth of data? If you are a banker, or a stock broker, losing even hour’s worth of data would be unacceptable. You can imagine the nightmares that would cause! However, if you are a shoe store, losing data for a day would be inconvenient, but not tragic. These types of questions will help you determine the level of risk your company can live with, and how to move forward in your planning.

If data recovery is essential to your business, experts in this field are available to make sure you have done all that can be done to minimize any damage that could be caused from a disaster of any type. Expert disaster recovery planners and business continuity planners are trained to help find solutions that are not obvious. It is not necessary to re-invent the wheel!

If you are like most small entrepreneurs, you are probably able to put a perfectly good plan in place on your own. Take a few minutes and imagine the most disastrous event that could happen to your small business right now … Do you have a plan as to how your small business would attempt to recover? A scary thought, but isn’t it something that you should take a minute to consider and plan for. This enables you to put into place NOW the very things that you would want and need to have at the time of the disaster.

Pre-disaster planning makes recovering from the unthinkable possible. If you fail to plan, you can plan to fail. It is simple. Don’t think planning for disasters are something to put off until you have nothing else to do. The success of your small business may depend on your taking the time now to review your situation carefully and consider all of the worst case possibilities for disasters that you hope never happen. Remember, disasters don’t make appointments to happen!

What can I do if I didn’t do my disaster recovery planning?

The most common disaster for a company is not the Tsunami or the hurricane, but the simple loss of data. Computer crashes, hard drive failures, and software malfunctions cost corporations millions of dollars every day. Disaster recoveries are completely dependent on the reliability of the backup systems in place at the time of disaster.

Server disaster recovery software is available for those caught without a plan or those who failed to properly implement a data backup plan. It is not always reliable, and often a very costly solution for a business. So, why take the risk. Consider your business continuity planning a top priority. If a disaster should strike, you will be very glad you did!

Renee Rich is a success entrepreneur and freelance writer offering guidance and suggestions for small to mid-sized businesses concerned with business continuity, time management, strategic internet marketing, business & money. Her many articles on these topics can be found at http://www.business-continuity-4u.com She gives information and tips to help grow your business, save money, and make informed buying decisions. You can find more information at: http://www.business-continuity-4u.com/business_&_money.htm

Spies, spyware, internet parasites are among what they are usually called. These are scouts that monitor your web activities. The work undercover to check on your surfing patterns, spending habits, items bought, they extract email addresses, hijack browsers, steal credit card information. These are just some of the things a spyware is capable of.

A spyware is mainly an information hungry parasite determined to gather data from a user or surfer without him knowing it.

The information gathered by these parasites are then sent to the originator without the users consent. Most often, the information gathered by the spyware are used to generate ads and pop-ups on the user’s PC.

Spywares and Adwares aside from being a nuisance and an invasion of privacy can also jeopardize the optimal performance of your PC. They can eat up unused disk spaces and position themselves in an inconspicuous location in your hard drive. They can also eat the bandwidth, crash your system and oftentimes inflict themselves in the Registry or in the memory of your computer.

Spyware and Adwares have become very rampant nowadays. Prevent yourself from being a victim of these by:

* Being careful of Freeware and Shareware Downloads

- Some of these downloads are tagged with spywares which may be unknown to the user. Refrain from downloading sharewares and freewares from unknown sources.

* Installing a good spyware/adware scanner and removal software

- There are a number of spyware scanner and/or removal softwares in the market today. A good spyware scanner can effectively locate all spywares installed on your PC and a good spyware removal tool can effectively remove all the spywares detected.

Spy Scanners are programs designed to detect spies in your PC. A good spy scanner can effectively search through the most unnoticeable embedded files that spy on you.

Most Spy scanners include a spyware removal function. Other spy scanners do not entail spyware removal features but display the logs of the spyware detected in your PC. The information in the logs contains the location and nature of the spywares.

For spy scanners with no built-in spyware removal functions, a manual deletion of the spyware files could also be done since the location and the file type is specified in the logs. Some Spy scanner products on the market today have spyware scan available for non-paying users and the removal tool available only for paying users.

Spy Scanners when installed can be chosen to run on demand or periodically.

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Gina Marie Capatar is a Technical Writer by profession and writes articles for www.isnare.com, also accepts freelance writing jobs. feel free to drop by www.isnare.com or email her at gcapatar@gmail.com
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Making a home safe is not a venture that should be undertaken halfheartedly. Home security requires a multi-pronged approach and when handled correctly, the end results can be not only a safer home, but also a more attractive one, too. Outdoor lights are a great example of a security feature that can also enhance the appearance of a home. The trick is to find the right combination of lights that also offer fixtures that make a home look more attractive.

As you look for outdoor lighting, consider a combination of different types of lights in different areas to make sure security bases are covered. Find the functions you need and then look through the styles. Lights come in all shapes, sizes and colors, so finding what’s perfect for an individual home shouldn’t be a big chore.

Outdoor light add protection to a home by enabling the homeowner to light up the outside of the home , taking away dark spots and shadows. This helps get rid of any hiding places bad guys might have and can help keep you, your family and your home safer.

There are several options for outdoor lighting that can both enhance your home and add to its security.

These include:

Motion detectors: These lights come in all kinds of shapes and sizes for outdoor use. They use an infrared system to automatically turn on lights when motion takes place in the light’s area of coverage. They generally are not sensitive enough to activate when an animal goes by, but they will go off when a person passes within a set area. These lights not only surprise the bad guys; they come in handy when you need a sector of your yard lighted for your use at night, too. They tend to be ideal for covering a more broad area.

Auto timed lights: These operate on a timer to help, automatically illuminating the outside of the house at a set time. They are great for everyday use and are wonderful when a homeowner is away, too. There’s no need to remember to turn the lights on - these do it for you.

Floodlights: These offer a lot of light, a whole lot of it. They are best used in large areas or in combination with mini spotlights for use near entryways.

Used in the right combination, lighting can really add to the appearance of a home while also providing security. Find lighting fixtures that serve the security purpose and also match or enhance the motif of your home and you’ll see the double purpose they serve. Remember, down lighting is great for lighting pathways, driveways and more. Up lighting can make trees and landscapes look fantastic and backlighting, as it is in photography, is fantastic for making a feature stand out.

Outdoor lighting is an important addition to any home. When used correctly it cannot only add to a home’s appearance, but also its level of security. Remember to make sure all vulnerable areas of a home are well lit at night, especially the entryways.

Copyright (c) 2006

Family grows and moves on, but yet our hearts are always together. Getting ready for a family reunion, this poem was written with the heart and soul of a mother waiting for the return of her family from far away places. A son from the danger of war in Iraq, a daughter off in a far away place making a new life for herself waiting for the love of her life also to return from the war, a new grand daughter she has yet to meet.
While nestled in the mountains of Colorado, the horizon is big and far and the pull of the heart will bring the family back to her side, if even for a short while.

Watching

Watching the horizon

Feeling the distance between us

Pounding Heart, Tearful Soul

Watching

Sleepy little eyes,

Struggling to see the world

Make your mark, Leave your prints

Pounding Heart, Tearful Soul

Watching

Tonka trucks and care bears,

Kindergarden, 4th Grade

High School Dances, dreams being made

Growth and Adventure, Walking down the raod

Make your mark, Leave your prints

Pounding Heart, Tearful Soul

Watching

Returning to my side

Always coming home

Family

Root of Love, Root of Life

Watching the horizon

Feeling the distance between us

Pounding Heart, Tearful Soul

Watching

Victoria Blatzer

Victoria Blatzer, while living in the beautiful Rocky Mountains, finds serenity and inspiration through nature and family. She has been a published poet since 1985 and has recently turned to creating Gift Baskets to extend her creativity and unique style of giving from the heart. The purpose of this company is to make that special person feel just that way, and Victoria specializes in personal requests for gifts.

You have an individual invitation to visit my work at http://www.giftbasketsuntamed.com. Rather than the traditional baskets full of tiny food packages, these gift baskets are individual and are full of wonderful gifts that can be used many times over.
Give from the heart, it’s what life is all about!

You know that you need the help of a technical writing service when you don’t have employees with technical documentation experience, when your in-house technical publications group is overloaded and understaffed and you don’t have the time to hire and train new technical writers, and when your engineers don’t have the time to write customer-focused end user documentation in addition to creating your products. In such a situation, it’s only inevitable, not to mention sensible to hire the services of a technical writing service.

And since your documentation is the first thing that visitors to your organization will scrutinize, you need technical documentation that reflects the organization’s quality and compliance activities. And unlike other pieces of writing, in technical writing of any documentation the use of words play have an important role. Technical writing is not the same as creative writing where use of action verbs and colorful adjectives and imagistic metaphors are encouraged. So, you need a good technical writing service to help you out of the tight spot. And, now you have the option of outsourcing technical writing services to India.

And there are many benefits to outsourcing technical writing services to India. Technical Writers in India are trained for clarity of presentation and materials, thus making the information more easily understood and processed. Also, if you get many people to write your technical documents for you, there’s bound to be inconsistency. Some technical writers will be better than the others and so different documentation will show different levels of quality. But, a technical writer in India can prepare or edit documentation to ensure consistency among the processes.

Also, a paper trail of documented events allows you to monitor and improve your processes, products, and services. And, technical writing in India includes the preparation of forms and other documents related to the completion of work. And finally when you employ a technical writer to prepare or edit your documents, you’ll have more time to spend on your job or with your clients.

However, if you’re not sure whether to trust a technical writing service with your valuable documentation or not, then you can just hire the technical writing service for a small project and see how it works out for both of you. And if you’ve a large project, you can first ask the writer to write on some small topics for your software for free, as a part of the proposal

James Marriott is a finance writer with more than 15 years of experience in writing financial content, including those related to credit cards, mortgages, stocks, investments, and funds. He has been with RNCOS, a premier financial writing services company, for 2 years as head of financial writing. He is also a regular financial columnist with renowned business journals. For your comments on the article and further financial assistance, please contact our staff writer at info@rncos.com.

Woodworking: The Process Of Making Something Using Wood

The art of woodworking is one of the most ancient and widespread. From the earliest days when humans first experimented with the many uses for wood, our civilization has had a connection with this material, in all its varieties and forms. And the growth and advancement of mankind has been closely intertwined with our ability to improve our woodworking skills and to develop new uses for wood.

Primitive civilizations used wood as material for building shelters, tools, weapons, utensils, and other items necessary for survival. As time went on, they began to expand the use of wood to include the creation of creature comforts such as furniture and decorative items. They also built boats and rafts for exploration, travel and trade.

As skills and knowledge continued to develop, and woodworkers began to understand the wide variety of properties of woods from different tree sources, wood became one of the most widely used materials, found in nearly all areas of life, from home to work, production to pleasure. Those who had a talent for working wood became important artisans and craftsmen, and guilds and workshops were developed to help document and preserve the art, train apprentices, and represent the interests of those involved.

Different specialties within woodworking began to develop, each with their own tools, projects, and techniques. These categories included:

• Wheelwright - A person who makes wooden wheels and spokes.
• Cooper - A person who makes barrels and related goods.
• Turning - Using a lathe and cutting tools to create symmetrical, round or curved pieces such as table and chair legs, pedestals, and candlesticks. Some wood turners, called bodgers, focused specifically on making bowls, cups, and other household utensils.
• Carving - generally refers to any woodworking project that involves removing pieces of the original wood to create a finished product.
• Carpenter - historically a wagon maker but over time the term has come to be associated with woodworking in general and more specifically with home and commercial construction.
• Cabinetmaker - Someone who specializes in making cabinets, shelving, and some pieces of furniture, such as chests, curious and other storage items.
• Shipwright - professional shipbuilder, often assisted by craftsmen from other areas of woodworking.
• Parquetry and Marquetry - Creating beautiful and often complex patterns with different wood veneers. Originally used as decoration on furniture and some homes, but now has expanded to include artwork and picture making. Parquetry typically involves the use of geometric shapes, while Marquetry draws from life images and scenery.

Today, some of these categories have become obsolete as steel, plastic, cement, and other compounds have replaced wood in many situations. While wood is still used in numerous important applications, including home and commercial construction and furniture making, woodworking has become an activity practiced less for necessity and more for pleasure, challenge, satisfaction, and honor.

For some, woodworking is still a means of making a living, but for many, it is a fun and rewarding hobby. In addition, the tools, techniques, and applications have become more advanced and sophisticated. A person just getting started in woodworking could soon become overwhelmed with the amazing number of choices.

Most experienced woodworkers would agree that the art is still a progressive experience, taking many years to learn and advance in skill-level. The knowledge needed to create a stunning and functional chest of drawers, grandfather clock, desk or other fine piece of furniture for example, takes time and practice to develop. And the skills needed often overlap the different areas of specialization in woodworking.

Not knowing where to start or how to focus their interests, many people new to woodworking become discouraged and frustrated and soon give up. In addition, taking on projects that are too difficult or trying to work with inadequate tools can also lead beginners to decide that woodworking is not for them.

Luckily, tips and ideas from expert woodworkers can help those new to woodworking get off on the right foot. In an effort to provide a comprehensive overview of woodworking we have done the work, travelled and talked to experts in their fields, and grilled them over their secrets, their challenges, all their experiences, and their key advice for beginners. Those interviewed include fine furniture makers, master carvers, seasoned shop teachers, and several other skilled craftsmen who have been working with wood for decades.

One of the most common suggestions given was to start with the basics of general woodworking and the use of common tools used, and to avoid getting too complicated too fast. There was strong emphasis on building a solid knowledge of different woods, using key hand tools, starting with simple projects to develop key skills, and learn about safety.

As one expert toy maker, shared, “Getting a good working knowledge of woods and basic hand tools is the best thing a beginner can do to ensure future success. You need to know what type of wood works best for different projects, and if you know how to measure, cut, shape and join with hand tools, you’ll be much better at it when it comes to using power tools and woodworking machines.”

Taking the experts’ advice, comments, and tips to heart we explored those beginning, foundation skills in a manner that is easy to understand and does not intimidate beginners. You will learn about:

• common woodworking terms
• the traits and uses of some of the most popular types of wood
• general woodworking safety
• different types of hand tools and their proper use and care
• basic types of projects for beginners
• introduction to woodcarving and the tools needed

Also provided is a resources list with details on different publications, websites, and other sources of information for beginning woodworkers.

It is important to note that the field is filled with talented and skilled craftsman of both genders. Women are active in all aspects of woodworking and have established reputations for quality work. We spoke with several women in gathering material and their input was an important contribution.

That is one of the beauties of woodworking; it is a field that is open to people of all ages, genders, races, backgrounds, educational levels, etc. Anyone willing to learn and to take the time to practice can become skilled.

Woodworking is a vast and interesting realm with seemingly endless applications and opportunities to learn. Enthusiasts can take their skills to many different levels and interest directions, and even make a living with their woodworking abilities. By mastering the basics and establishing a solid foundation, you take the first, and perhaps most important steps to becoming a successful woodworker.

Copyright © 2005 by Ferhat Gul. All rights reserved. You may redistribute this article in its unedited entirety, including this resource box, with all hyperlinked URLs kept intact. Ferhat Gul is the publisher of the brand-new “Woodworking Beginner’s Guide - Tips From Experienced Woodworkers to Help You Get Started”, made just for people who love woodworking. This comprehensive, yet compact woodworking introduction for beginners is easy to read and helps to save time, money and effort.

The Internet is said to be the pool of information wherein you can find information on any topic. It is the best place to gain knowledge and information along with being in constant touch with your dear ones. Despite of many advantages and benefits still Internet is considered to be the unsafe zone for the kids as they may fall prey to the criminals in the world of immense pain and treachery.

Since the advent of Internet there has been a significant increase in number of kids falling into this trap. Despite vigilance over them either by friends, parents, law enforcement bodies still the count is on a rise. In certain cases the relationship is put to a stop by the timely intervention but there are times when there are kids who are not subject to vigilance. And if they by chance happen to meet these individuals they meet the torturous fate of being abducted, raped, tortured or even killed.

By sensing this danger many Internet companies like America Online, Yahoo and Netscape have started offering a feature of parental vigilance. This restricts the kid’s access to the Internet and parents get the chance to monitor them. Simply stated, if you don’t allow your kids to watch obscene shows on television so they won’t be allowed to access or open any unsuitable site.

It is advisable to inform your kid about the Internet safety techniques and make them feel free to discuss with the people who are trustworthy. But make sure to monitor them during that conversation for knowing the current direction. Build a comfort zone for your kids so that they feel free to come up with the questions regarding Internet and in case any individual from the Internet is trying to contact them.

These days there are strict rules and guidelines to follow for accessing the Internet in schools and libraries. If they are allowed to access web by any means then a constant observation over them is must. In case there is a case of careless and negligent management then you should contact the school authorities.

Internet vigilance over kids is not only restricted to schools and homes but also to those places where your kid is visiting. If your kid is going for the party at a friend’s place then make sure that his parents know your attitude regarding Internet access. Majority of the parents allow their kids to go to those friends where there is complete parent supervision.

The best way for constant supervision is of placing the computer in that room where everyone can view the screen. It is always advisable to place computer in a living room or family room so that there is complete vigilance. This confirms that your kid is not alone while accessing the Internet.

Never hesitate in teaching the evil effects of Internet to your child. Instead of scaring them intentionally make them free to ask Internet related problems they are facing. Also teach them a set way of reporting the problems or screen names of people indulging in obscene and indecent communication.

Complete vigilance and supervision over the kid while accessing Internet not only makes you relax but also keeps you tension free. Internet can prove wonders to your kids but be sure to warn them about the perils of the Internet.

The author is budding web content writer and has much experience in writing quality content for many websites. You can view his blog for more information.

Coin collecting is not a hobby that you can learn over night. It takes time to do, but if you have the passion for it it is well worth doing and something you will get a lot out satisfaction from.

If you only collect coins as an investment it may work for a while but soon enough you will give up because like anything in life there bumps along the way and if you do not have the passion to see them through this might put you off persisting with it.

To be successful you need to take in as much information on coin collecting as you can. Reading magazines, subscribing to on line or off line newsletters and talking to dealers are good sources of finding and gathering information. On the net you can find lots of news sites that relay the latest information as it happens. Using these resources effectively will make you a successful collector, but trying to collect without applying the basics will lead you to failure.

You must learn to know what is the value of the coins so “grading” coins is a skill you need to learn as soon as you can. This is a skill you will need if you intend to trade coins for greater valued coins when the opportunity arises, as well as making sure that you never get scammed.

Patience is a prerequisite for a successful coin collector. The best collectors in the world have often waited years for the opportunity to buy a coin they wanted for their collection. Less patient collectors have been known to buy a fake coins to complete their collection simply because of their impatience and this can be costly and disheartening.

Gaining the mentality of a successful coin collector is something you should strive to achieve. Being too eager can make you rush into buying without checking up on the coin you are wanting to add to your collection. So always make sure you trust the source you buy from or that the information you received about a coin you received is also genuine and trust worthy.

Starting out in coin collecting can be initially hard to do but if you study the market carefully for at least 3 to 6 months to get the basics right, then when you start trading for real you will not make the same mistakes many new comers make.

When starting out and throughout your coin collecting hobby you need to set goals every step of the way. Never run before you can walk is a phrase that applies very well to this hobby. Learning and applying the basic slowly and steadily will make you an expert in the long run and you will reap the benefits by becoming a successful coin collector if not a rich one.

James Ross is the web master of Collectible coins info a website totally dedicated to coins collecting. For more articles and information please find out more at http://collectible-coins.info

For a long time now Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has ruled as ‘King of Internet browsers’. Like many of Microsoft’s products an initially brutal marketing campaign pushed Internet Explorer into the mainstream’s consciousness and from then on it was the logical, default choice. It’s free with the operating system, works well, loads any page and is easy to use. Other web browsers soon faded into obscurity and sometimes even died in the shadow of the new king of the pack. Netscape Navigator, the former ‘King of the browsers’, has now ceased commercial operations and has been taken over by the fan base. Opera is fading into obscurity and Mozilla was facing a similar fate, until recently.

Mozilla Firefox (formerly known as Firebird) is probably the largest threat that IE has faced in recent times. Currently, according to http://www.w3schools.com, IE is the browser used by 69.9% of Internet users and Firefox is used by 19.1%. This might not seem like much, but according to http://www.nua.ie/surveys/how_many_online/ an educated guess at the number of people that use the Internet is somewhere around 605,600,000 users (or was in 2002, the number will have increased substantially by now). That means that (after some erroneous math) a rough stab at guessing the number of people using Firefox is probably over 115,064,000, which isn’t a bad user base at all.

When a friend of mine from university first tried to convince me to switch to Firefox I wasn’t particularly interested. Basically, IE has done everything that I’ve wanted in a web browser. He went on at great lengths about the security aspects, the in-built popup blockers, download managers and so on, but I’d spent a fairly large amount of time and money on anti-virus programs, firewalls, spyware removers, and my browser was secure enough. I also have a download manager that I’m very happy with and refuse to change from. After much cajoling I finally agreed to try this newfangled software. I’m glad I did too, because now I have no desire to go back.

Firefox is very easy to install and use. There’s nothing complicated, you simply download (for free) and run the install file and then when you run the browser for the first time you get presented with the option of importing your IE favourites (a nice feature, with the click of a button everything is moved across to ease your transition) and also the option of making Firefox your default browser. My initial reaction was fairly apathetic; Firefox seemed pretty much the same as IE and in essence, it is. It has all the basic features of IE, but then I discovered it adds so much more.

The first feature to really grab me is the tabbed browsing. Many alternative browsers and even IE plugins support tabbed browsing (where the new pages can be opened in a tab in the one window, instead of filling the task bar with buttons) but Firefox seems to make it so easy and useful. All you do is click a link with the middle button on your mouse (most newer mice have three buttons, the third often being placed under the scroll wheel) and a new tab opens up containing the page requested. Middle clicking on any tab in the window will close it, without having to actually go to the tab and click close. Ctrl-T will open a new blank tab, and Ctrl-Tab will cycle through them (similar in fashion to Alt-Tab cycling through the open programs). What this all leads to is a much neater Internet experience, with you being able to group certain pages into browser windows, leaving the start bar much cleaner and easier to navigate.

The next feature that caught my attention was the search bar built into the browser. It’s small, sleek and simple, built into the right-hand side of the main toolbar beside the address box. You can add many different sites to the search bar and then select the site you wish to search from a drop-down menu. Then it’s simply a matter of typing your query in and hitting enter to be taken directly to that page and your search results. This makes searching Ebay, Google, Internet Movie DataBase, Amazon etc. very quick and easy as you can simply type in the desired search criteria as you think of it and get the results back fast. You can get search bar plugins for IE but they tend to take up lots of room, contain ads, and you can usually only have one site per search bar.

There are more features than I could write about here but I will tell you that Firefox has impressed me greatly. Browser hijacking: the act of a malicious website script changing your homepage or search page (particularly common on IE, sites will change your default search page so that every time you type an address into your address bar their site gets a hit) is now a thing of the past (at least until someone gets vicious enough to work out backdoors in Firefox, an unlikely event for at least a little while given the massive market share still held by IE). Since changing over I have received substantially fewer attack notices from my Firewall. Sites load quickly, and if you get an address wrong you don’t have to wait for a page to load, you just quickly get a message informing you that the site doesn’t exist. Then there are the extensions that can be downloaded to add all sorts of new features to the browser.

The only downside that I have found is the fact that because IE is the dominant web browser, some websites are coded in such a way that they don’t work properly on other browsers. These sites are few and far between, but occasionally you will still need to fire up IE to view a page. The infrequency of this occurring is enough that it doesn’t annoy me too much, but it will be nice when everything works 100%.

At the end of the day, it’s probably not a vital switch. Both programs suffice in allowing you to plug in and explore the vast world of the Internet with ease and accuracy. However, it’s worth a look though because what starts off initially as “I have no real reason to change back” quickly becomes “I am never going back”. So, as the official Firefox website encourages, “Rediscover the web”.

Daniel Punch - M6.Net
Daniel Punch is a university student always looking to overthrow the man and support the underdog, provided it doesn’t actually cost him anything.

It was supposed to be so easy, wasn’t it? Windows and easy in the same sentence !! Sometimes, for some reason, Windows just doesn’t want to play ball. Here’s a quick guide to what to do when you’ve plugged in all your wireless equipment but it’s not connecting as it should.

Insert the CD

It’s not enough to just plug in your wireless card the first time you use it — you need to put in the CD it came with and install the drivers. If you’ve already done that and there’s still nothing happening, then you might need to update your drivers by paying a visit to the manufacturer’s website.

Note that the instructions below apply to Windows XP. If you’re determined not to use Windows XP, then what you need to do next will be different depending on your wireless equipment’s manufacturer — you should take a look at your manual.

Use the Wireless Network Setup Wizard

While it’s easy to use Windows to connect to an existing wireless network, you still need to create the wireless network to begin with. Don’t worry — once you’ve created it once, your whole network will be able to connect to and remember it, even if the computer you used to create the network is never switched on again.

The easiest way to open the Wireless Network Setup Wizard is through the Start Menu: go to All Programs, Accessories, then Communications, and you’ll find it there. If you can’t find it, you might need to visit Microsoft’s Windows Update at http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com to get it.

The first thing to do when the wizard appears is read the welcome message, and click Next. Type a name for your network — anything will do, as long as it’s relatively unique to you. You’re allowed up to 32 letters to express yourself, but remember that your neighbours might get to see this name at some point! If you bought equipment with WPA (stronger encryption), tick that box. Click Next again.

Unless you have a USB flash drive (it’s unlikely), choose the option for manual setup. Don’t worry — it’s just a matter of printing out some settings and entering them into your other computers. If you don’t use encryption, you can usually skip this step.

It Still Doesn’t Connect

On one of your other computers, right-click on the wireless icon in the bottom-right corner of your screen — it looks like a small computer with two lines on the right of it. On the menu that appears, click ‘View Available Wireless Networks’. Now, you should see a list of the wireless networks your computer is in range of. Look for the name of your own network. This will be the name you typed in the setup wizard earlier or, if you use a router, it will probably be the name of your wireless equipment’s manufacturer.

Note that this is the screen to come to if you ever want to connect to a wireless network other than your usual one — just double click the one you want, wait a while, and it should work.

The most common problem is to find that your computer is trying to connect to another network near you, usually one belonging to your neighbours. If their wireless network has an unnecessarily wide range, it’s not at all unusual for you to be able to receive their signal in your house — I sometimes find as many as five networks in my area available to connect to. Fun as it would be, though, to go through all their shared files, your priority right now is getting their wireless network out of the way to let you connect to your own.

Getting on Your Network

To make sure Windows knows which network is yours, you need to click ‘Change the order of preferred networks’ on the left of the available networks screen. You should click the ‘Add’ button to add the name of your network to this list, and use ‘Remove’ to take away any that aren’t yours.

When you’ve highlighted your network, click Properties, and then go to the Connection section. Make sure ‘Connect when this network is in range’ is ticked. If all else fails, you might have to take your printout from the Wireless Network Setup Wizard and enter that information on each computer.

Original Source: Articles-Galore.com

Information supplied and written by Jason Keno of
Eclipse Domain Services
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