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Are you finding that your computer has been running slow lately? Have you found yourself sitting around waiting for it to complete a task and you're getting frustrated? The problem might be your hard drive is just about full and needs some cleaning. By determining regaining and freeing up hard drive space you have a good chance to get that computer running faster than it has in a while. 

We've all been there, the mail man delivers the new laptop we ordered and we can't wait to tear the box open, plug it in and get it charged up as fast as we can so we can dive in and be amazed at this great new piece of technology. But wait, what if something happened during shipping, like someone threw the box across the room, or someone missed something during the quality control process? Before throwing away the box (and anything inside that may prove valuable as proof that something went wrong,) read these essential steps to take to verify the computer's operation and that you did in fact get what you paid for...

With the advent of Social Media such as FaceBook, Twitter and other social media sites the chances of getting duped by scammers on the Internet has grown exponentially. The internet has made communicating back and forth between one country and another a normal every day occurance. A person in Boston, MA can instantly chat with someone in England by video or text with no lag in communication time. This all makes staying in touch with family, friends and businesses much easier, yet it also opens up the world to many more chain letters, scams, and other unethical attempts to take advantage of the unsuspecting person. There are ways to avoid the major scams and spams out there between knowing the common attempts and always being vigilant to avoid new scams.

Graphic card technology advances so quickly that you better do your homework before buying.  So it’s a good idea to figure out which type of graphics card will last the longest, how much you want to spend, and whether or not your computer can handle it before you lay down your money. The latter here is a key consideration because if you buy a card that exceeds the capabilities of your machine you have just wasted a ton of cash for nothing, so make sure to note your systems requirements before buying

Have you ever been in a group of friends or at a local gathering and the tech-savvy individuals start to talk shop and all of a sudden you feel like they're talking in another language? How about trying to read a computer magazine article about a device you want to buy but are totally confused by all of the buzzwords and abbreviations? Well, believe me, you're not alone. This jargon is everywhere and learning how to decode computer jargon is a must in this day and age. We have assembled some of the most common terms that you may have heard and decoded them for you.

Each year, we at Northmapton Computer Repair talk and meet with hundreds of businesses and indiviuals to discuss their computer needs. They have come to trust us knowing that we will always give them honest answers and assesments for what they need, not what we want to sell them. During our conversation's they often will ask us who are some of the other computer repair stores in Northampton and the surrounding area.

 One of the first questions anyone wants to know about a product or service is "How much is this going to cost me". When you go on line to research some thing no matter what it is, once you find a site that seems to appeal to you the next thing you do is look for pricing, right. Of course you do, and I do the same thing. I don't know about you, but when I get to the point of liking what I see on a website but can't find the pricing, I just  go to another website. You the consumer have been conditioned to expect to see all of the information on a website and that is how it should be. You don't want to be bothered with having to pick up the phone, dial a number, explain what you have seen on their website and ask about the cost, that's insane in this day and age.

So you think that by having a user account and a password set up, your files and data are safe. Wrong! An intruder can easily gain access to your files by booting into their own operating system from a special disc or USB flash drive. Once they do this they vitually have access to all of your hard drives and files just like you would if you logged on using your password. So how can you protect yourself form this kind of invasion?

We thought it might be nice to go back to basic's and highlight some of the most useful keyboard shortcuts that you can use. For example if you want to highligt text most of us take our hand from the keyboard, highlight the text using the mouse, clicking copy from the file menu and then putting our hand back in place on the keyboard. How about cutting out some of those moves to save time like highlighting the text by holding down the shift key and using your arrow keys to highlight, then simply press the Ctrl + C and you just copied the text you want. By learning some keyboard shortcuts you can work smarter, increase your productivity and reduce repetitive strain. Here are our top ten keyboard  shortcuts that you will use every day.

Ctrl + Home or Ctrl + End

Move the cursor to the beginning or end of a sentence or document. This is much quicker than doing it any other way, it's quick and automatic, no searching.

Ctrl + P

This will print the page you are viewing whether it's a document in Microsoft Word or a page on the Internet.

Ctrl + S

While your working on a document or any other file for that matter, pressing Ctrl + S will save that file. You really should get in the habit of doing this frequently so if you lose power or you accidently close the program your working in you won't lose all of the work you put into that piece.

Ctrl + C

Copy any highlighted text in a document. You can quickly highligt text in your document by moving the cusor to the start of the text you want highlighted, hold down the Shift Key and while holding down this key press the arrow key in the direction you want to highlight.

Ctrl + V

Once you have copied the highlighted text you want you will want to paste it some where else, by pressing Ctrl + V it will paste the text or object into your target file.

Ctrl + F

No matter where you are, in a word document, a Excel sheet or on the internet, pressing Ctrl + F will open a find window that you can type in the text you are trying to find.

Ctrl + Z

By pressing this combination you can Undo any changes you just made, very handy for quick repair. If you just cut some text that you did not want cut, usiing this will bring it back one letter or charecter at a time.

Ctrl + Y

This will Redo the Undo. Pretty cool. So let's say you think you made a mistake by deleting something and you use the Ctrl + Z to bring back the deleted text but then you decide no you were right the first time, use Ctrl + Y and your back to where you were.

Alt + Tab and Alt + Esc

This will enable you to switch between open programs moving forward.

   Tip: Press Ctrl + Tab to switch between tabs in a program

   Tip: Adding the Shift Key to Alt + Tab or Ctrl + Tab will let you move backwards. Lets say you press Alt + Tab and pass the program you wanted just press Alt + Shift + Tab and you will move back to your program.

Page Up, Space Bar, and Page Down

Pressing either the page up or page down key will move the page your on up or down one page at a time.

If your browsing the Internet pressing the space bar will also move the page down one page at a time.

If you press Shift and the Space Bar it will make the page you are on go up one page at a time.

So there you have them, 10 great shortucuts that you learn in no time and make typing easier. If you really want to dig into all the cool shortcuts windows offers check out Windows offical site: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Keyboard-shortcuts