'Tis the season, so the so called journalists need to strike fear into the general public and make you think it's safer to shop in a store instead of online. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen all of the same tips on every “news” show on TV. The media’s fear mongering tactics irk me to begin with, but when they rehash the same stories without any more research year after year I get seriously annoyed.

It is safer to shop online then shopping in a store or using a credit card at a restaurant.

Many stores keep paper copies of your credit card info, then they throw them away. There are many people who love to dumpster dive this season. If you don’t know, dumpster diving is when someone sifts through business garbage looking for useful items such as credit card info, post it notes with usernames and passwords, etc.... When that server at that restaurant takes your credit card up to pay for your meal, they could be scanning it twice; some servers get paid up to $125 per card swiped.

Most data theft comes from an inside job at some company that has your identity information. Credit card companies, school loan companies, hospitals, doctors offices, government offices, etc…

As long as the website you are buying something from is one of the bigger sites that has been around a while, you have less to fear about getting your identity stolen. Everything is done electronically, less people at the business has access to your data, and most of the time everything is completed automatically.

Be safe this season, shop online.

Merry Christ's Mass!

Many people have been becoming frustrated with their new computer systems. They are finding that once they start using the new system, they are much slower than expected. Some manufacturers are simply not putting enough RAM into their baseline systems that can handle all of Vista's new features.

• Buy a PC or laptop with a at least a dual core Intel processor, 1.5+ GB RAM, and stay away from Intel Celeron and AMD processors
  • Celeron and AMD processors do not have enough built in processor memory (on-board cache)
    
• Remove all support software put on by a manufacturer or Internet Service Provider
  • These programs often run in the background and cause the OS to slow down considerably
    
• From Windows Vista's Welcome Center
  • Click "View computer details"
  • Click "Show more details" near the upper right of the window
  • Click "Advanced system settings"
  • On the "Advanced" tab, click the "Settings..." button under Performance
  • Click the radio button "Adjust for best performance", then click "OK"
  • Vista does have some pretty cool features in the performance settings that you might really like, read down the list and turn them on one or two at a time. See how performance is affected and uncheck them as necessary. If you just have two or three windows open at a time, you can skip this performance tweak provided that you have enough RAM.
    
• In most cases, programs that are not "compatible" with Vista can still be installed on a Vista system.
  • Once the program is installed, right click on the desktop shortcut and click "Properties"
  • Click the "Compatibility" tab
  • Under the "Compatibility mode" section, click the checkbox "Run this program in compatibility mode for:"
  • Select Operating System, then click "OK"