writings on computer hardware & software

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For many the software they use depends on “The Cloud.” For others they want to only use local soft. That is, software running locally on their computer.

What’s the issue. In one word its security. Those using the cloud say the operators of the cloud is better positioned to maintain high-level security.

Others say which is more likely to get hacked the big guys (ATT, Microsoft, etc.) or Joe’s Cafe (local storage)?

The choice is yours.

Managed Computer Services is offered by Pedalogic, Inc. You’ll find them at https://www.pedalogicmsp.com.  Che,k them out.

Coming soon – better software.

Lets say you’re an owner of a small service-oriented company– one person, five, 10. The most common business software for running your business will be QuickBooks or Quicken.

Have you actually tried to use either. Its hard.

Lets say you do landscaping. Further, let’s assume you provide a variety of services: lawn maintenance; sod installation; tree pruning; spraying against insects; etc. So let ‘s say you did twenty installations of sod last year. You say you did more?… Ok, lets say you did 200 installations of sod. Wouldn’t you like to make sure that those 200 customers have the opportunity to also use your lawn maintenance software. Can you find the one’s who don’t use that service so you can call them and encourage them to do so? I defy to to try. Its really difficult. But should it be?

Let’s suppose you have a salesman, a bookkeeper, and an office manager in addition to your outside staff. Should the software look the same to each of the three? Nope.

The salesman wants to know things like, who haven’t I called in six weeks or who is not using my lawn maintenance services. The bookkeeper wants to know who is in arrears. Which turkeys haven’t paid their bills. And the office manager wants to know other information. So no, they should all not be using the software in the same way and should not be seeing the same information.

In another article I will talk about software that will permit exactly this.

Sure, I know that if you travel for business or even for personal travel a laptop or tablet might be your best friend. I get that. In fact I have a laptop and I use it when I travel. So what don’t I understand. Lets say you’re an artist and you do your art on a computer. My artist friend has uses a computer for her art and its a laptop. And its that that I don’t understand.

Apple is popular with graphic artists and what is Apple’s most popular computer? A 13-inch laptop. And remember, that 13 inches diagonally. This is a small surface on which to do your work and that’s what I don’t understand. Wouldn’t you want the largest surface you could manage. My laptop is an 18-incher from Toshiba and if I could have gotten a bigger one I would have. I don’t understand the desire for small amounts of real estate or perhaps its the lack of desire for large screens. Whatever it is, I don’t understand it.

Robert Frost poet extraordinaire said that fences make good neighbors. Its true with your computer desktop too. Over time you install more software that you use and it becomes harder to spot the icon you need in that morass of icons you call a desktop. Stardock has created a product call Fences that corrals your icons.

With Fences installed on my computer I always know where to find an icon. Check it out here.

 

You know that area where all your icons are? That’s your desktop. You typically have one but with Windows 10 you can have more than one “virtual desktop” and switch between them with each desktop having different programs open. But virtual desktops are not new. I’ve used virtual desktops at least since Windows XP came out. In the early days Stardock.com had a virtual desktop (no longer supported). The one I started using and still use is from Goscreen. It has features I really like such as the ability to name each virtual desktop.

In the figure you see that the first virtual desktop has one program active (Spotify), The second virtual desktop has three open including Vivaldi (a browser), and Skype. I can drag an icon from one desktop to another and if I click on an icon I am transported to that desktop with the active window being the program I clicked on.

I work with seven virtual desktops. These are: 1 Office, 2 Browse, 3 Internet, 4 Prog 1, 5 Prog 2, 6 Remote, and 7 Other. Typically my browser is open on desktop two. On desktop 5 I open  VMWare Workstation where I work in two different environments for specific programming needs. I use desktop 6 for remoting into people’s computers to help them solve problems and I rarely use desktop 7.

You can do something similar simply using Windows 10 virtual desktop feature.

 

Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, Opera, Firefox, Chrome, Vivaldi, Brave, Safari, Silk… There are a bunch of browsers. Does it matter which one you use? Maybe.

The Browsers

Mosaic… what’s that?… was the first browser. That’s nice but its where we are today that I’m interested in and, I suspect, its also what you’re interested in. So we’ll look at some of the browsers and help you know that you’ve made the right choice.

  • Internet Explorer (IE) – Dead… Perhaps that’s a bit harsh as many people are still using it. But, in fact, since Microsoft has release Edge as their new browser there won’t be any new releases of IE.
  • Microsoft Edge – I nice browser from Microsoft and for some that’s enough reason not to use it. But just as true, its enough of a reason for many to use it.
  • Chrome – Google’s entry into the browser field sparked a lot of interest. Again some use it because its from Google and others avoid for the same reason.
  • Firefox – The next of the key browsers, Firefox, based on the mozilla code, is popular and used by some because its not from Microsoft or Google. But beyond that, its a solid, well done browser.

These are the top browsers but not the only ones and not the one I use. The most usual reason for using a different browser beyond those above is that you want a feature that those don’t offer.

  • Vivaldi – Based off the Chrome engine, Vivaldi has a feature that makes it my favorite browser. It allows you to “Pin” pages to the tab bar.
Pinned Pages in Vivaldi

Pinning on the tab bar

 

 

 

Happy 11th Birthday is my first tab but before it I have 6 pages pinned. The first is google email, followed by Facebook, and then others. What I particularly like about the pinned pages is that many of them fit in a small area on the tab bar. When you click on one the page is immediately available and is updated.

  • Brave – This browser is designed to be very secure having options to block phishing / Malware, block scripts, require HTTPS only, block ads, etc. Its a fairly new browser and is only in Alpha release. An interesting aspect is the ability block features on a per site basis.
  • Safari and Silk are not available or updated for current Windows so I’m not discussing them here.

Desired Features

  • Speed – One sought after feature is speed. But there are three aspects to speed. First, how fast does the browser open after clicking on your desktop icon. Second, how fast does the initial site page load, and third, how fast does it handle the navigation between pages on the site. For example I find Vivaldi slow to initially open but quite fast navigating the web once open. So if I need to do a quick lookup on one site and I don’t have a browser open I will usually choose to open FireFox because it opens quickly. However, since I ususally have Vivaldi open I use it for most of my work.
  • Ubiquity Across Platforms – One reason for using Chrome is because there are versions for it whether you’re running Windows or Linux, or even a Chrome netbook. On the other hand Edge will only be found running under Windows.
  • Plugins – Edge, FireFox, Chrome, and in some cases, by extension Vivaldi, there are add-in apps that add additional features and if there is a feature you particularly like you may find yourself gravitating to a specific browser.

Do you have a favorite browser?

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