During the year 2013 we covered a wide range of topics and moving forward we think there are many suggestions and recommendations that can be used in dealing with PC issues you may be facing right now. So, we embark on a two-part adventure: to review the best of our articles and to highlight what PC tips and tricks you can take advantage of immediately. What better way to step up to the plate when asked: What is your New Year’s resolution? We hope it’s to take charge of your computing needs so that your PC works for you! This summary of our top PC stories for us is a celebration of a year’s correspondences to you our readership.

The following topics include our top stories that we find will give you an upper edge on PC good practices and regular use:

Security & Privacy

Digital security – updates and trends
Edward Snowden hit the news this past year and opened up a whole can of worms in relation to surveillance and the reams of digital information that is readily available. Our information article broached the subject of the digital universe and our level of exposure to surveillance. We have become participants and are increasingly more involved in the creation of digital information that can be accessed from online means. We need to ask the question: With the amount of focus directed at gathering digital information can we feel that our private data – including financial data such as credit card information – is in fact secure? Read the full article…

How to protect your privacy
Not only did we reference Edward Snowden but also major companies like Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and Target and how each have used technology to track and monitor activity. In our How To article we provided five steps to being more PC secure. We looked at: 1) How to make your web browser more secure, 2) email security, 3) data encryption, 4) virtual private networking, and 5) clean up. The last item is likely the most important – no one can access what is not there to begin with. Read the full article…

Backup Your PC

Are you ready for Cloud Storage?
There has been considerable attention given to “cloud” storage and we delved into this topic with both feet. The beauty of this topic is that we have, in other articles, made reference to backing up data to another location and cloud storage is one method of backup of items. We would suggest backing up items that are difficult to replace; a backup copy of family pictures for example would be ideal to store “in the cloud”.

Cloud Storage: In basics terms, this is a method of storing data on servers that are made publicly available through an Internet connection (in the cloud) rather than having the data stored locally on your PC.

We covered the basics of cloud storage including: reasons to use cloud storage (sharing files or backing up data), cost, size, access and more. Read the full article…

Choosing an online storage solution
We also looked at some of the free cloud storage that is made available to anyone. All of these are starting places and any of these storage offerings may suffice for one’s basic needs. Cloud storage can be used as a means of preventing data loss – although by itself it is not sufficient enough in our minds. We find the best use of this technology is to take advantage of the ability to share files. While we outline several cloud storage providers we give the thumbs up to Dropbox as our top pick. Read the full article…

A free local PC backup solution
We brought up the importance of backing up your PC in several articles. The act of backing up your data is a daunting task when considering the numerous files we create and modify on a daily basis. Even making the attempt to manually synchronize files is something we would not do. A viable alternative is to use a free synchronization tool called SyncToy.

Our article on this subject contained a lot of information that we were able to present in one file. It included the following: 1) what data to backup, 2) when, why, and where to backup, and 3) how to use SyncToy. The third area offers step-by-step instructions with screenshots. Read the full article…

Clean Your PC

Too much junk? Keep your PC lean and clean
The creation of free space. Hand-in-hand with removing items from your hard drive to is the need to effectively deal with the accumulation of junk files. In our first article we systematically look at:

Potential symptoms: slow startup time, slow launch of programs, computer crashes, freezes, etc.
Cause and effect: unwanted files remaining on your system, uninstalled remnants, orphaned registry items, and more.
Solution: clean and uninstall. Read the full article…

The Clean and Uninstaller Tools
The companion article covers the steps on backing up, using the PC Clean Maestro Clean Tool and the Uninstaller. Not rocket science by any means… just a good, effective management regime. Read the full article…

Speeding up Your PC

Understanding defragmentation and optimization
Likely the most technical articles we have written were on the subject of hard disk drives and optimizing them with the Disk Defrag tool. Despite the complexity of the subject manner we feel this article is a very good synopsis of the process involving fragmentation of data and its impact on hard drive performance.

Fragmentation: is a condition which occurs when files are stored in scattered sections throughout the disk. This is a result of frequently creating, deleting, and modifying files. Read the full article…

How to Defrag Your Hard Drives
Fragmentation can be a bottleneck to system performance. If you are experiencing slowdowns in opening applications and overall responsiveness along with a shortage of overall disk space, you need to look at the Best Practices section and the steps to defrag your system. For those of you suffering from a bogged down system, you will be impressed by the performance gains. Read the full article…

Guard Your PC from Foistware

Understanding Foistware
Funny how the little things can be completely annoying and such a pain in your side! We introduced “foistware” (also known as crapware). The fact is many beginner users find themselves experiencing these fraudulent little annoyances all too easily. In our first article we looked at what you can expect to see including changes to your PC such as a hijacked browser home page, extra browser toolbars, flashing ads, and more. The result is a slower PC; slower performance and a system that has been customized to use a homepage and search engine that you do not want to use. Often this points you to sites with advertisements and warnings that your PC has errors or you need to backup your PC. Read the full article…

Remove Foistware and restore your PC
With our previous article we looked at identifying the intruder and pointing out detection and some hints for prevention. This article follows up on removal and restoration. Getting your PC back to how it was before the foistware invasion occurred is fundamental to a decent solution. After all, your PC was hijacked and you want it to be returned in good working order. Read the full article…

We have enjoyed providing articles that are packed full of useful tips and tricks to get your PC operating in a manner that best reflects how it first performed when you first began using it. We will continue to introduce new technologies in a manner that is not beyond the reach of average, everyday computer users.