0 Advantages and disadvantages of using Antivirus Software

Nowadays, nearly every computer user is using an antivirus software. The usage of antivirus software is going up day by day as internet keeps becoming less safe compared to before. Compared to past years, there are more viruses, spywares, worms, trojans and all kinds of harmful stuff going around the internet which you -soon or late- might be a victim of. There are many advantages of using an antivirus software since it makes up for your mistakes, (for example a file which you shouldn't have executed, or a website which you shouldn't have clicked) keeps your computer clean and so on. Antivirus software, like anything else, come with disadvantages as well. The main reason I'm writing this article is actually to show the disadvantages of using an antivirus software, since many users seem to ignore the fact.

To list the advantages in a detailed way:

1) Virus Protection: It will protect your computer from being infected by viruses and many other harmful malware. An antivirus software may save your operating system from crashing, your data from being corrupted or deleted, your computer performing poorly in general and other things.

2) Personal Information Protection: There are hackers out there who want to make quick money by taking your credit card information, or your bank information. This is even more of a serious blow compared to your computer crashing since it could end up with you losing all the money in your credit card or your bank account. Many antivirus software come with an integrated firewall which will protect you from being target of such attacks.

3) System Information: If you think there's something wrong with your computer at any point, you can run a scan with an antivirus software to check if a virus is causing the problems which you're experiencing to be on the safe side. Without one, it will be hard to know if a virus is the source of your performance problems or something else.

And now, the time has come for my favorite part, the disadvantages:

1) Cost: It will cost you a lot of money to buy. You will also be required to pay a monthly or yearly fee to use it which is icing on the cake.

2) CPU & Memory Hogging: Nearly all antivirus software will hog your computer's resources, which means that it will be using unneeded memory and processor speed even though it's not doing anything. The reason behind that could be either the fact that the software is coded badly, or the company has the intention to show their software is "working", even though it isn't.

3) Failure Chance: There's always the chance of antivirus software failing to delete or disable a certain virus. If all viruses were successfully deleted, then noone would be bothering to code new viruses all the time. If you go on a software forum with a virus deletion board, you will see lots of threads with people complaining about their antivirus software not being able to delete a certain virus.

4) Conflicts: Your antivirus software may conflict with another software, or with your drivers, which will mostly end up with your antivirus software not working until you remove that particular software, or vice versa. In some cases you can expect your operating system not to boot.

As you can see, it comes with many disadvantages along with the advantages it brings. When we take a close look at the advantages and disadvantages, the first thing which comes to my mind is the fact that with a little bit of awareness, nothing will happen to your computer or you even if you don't use it.

To be infected by a virus on the internet, you actually have to click something which will harm your computer. None of the really harmful viruses which will crash your computer or slow it down will come to you just by going around the internet. You might end up picking little spywares about advertisements and stuff, but that'd be all. Then again, you can clean your computer from spywares by using a spyware cleaner, which is mostly free and won't hog your resources.

Personally, I have never been a fan of using an antivirus software, and I never used it in my life. My accounts never got hacked, my OS never got crashed beyond repair, and my computer was never slowed down to the point where I can't use it anymore. I can say that I've never been infected with a serious virus.

I believe that if you look out for yourself and be careful on the internet, there's a really rare chance that you will be infected with anything serious. (it's not hard, really) Even Windows has an integrated firewall now which will at least protect you from hacker attacks and all the personal information stealing I've talked about earlier.

Many people say that using an antivirus software is good and necessary for a home user, but advanced users mostly find it unnecessary to use it. I say that every user who is just a little bit careful while surfing the internet won't need anything to protect themselves from harmful viruses. Don't click dodgy websites, don't open dodgy files, and if you're in doubt (happens to best of us), use an online file scanner, use a Virtual Machine, be creative. Don't let commercial software take your money and your computer resources!

0 Online Backup Advantages & Disadvantages

Hello everyone! In my last post, I talked about making a hard drive backup locally, which means backing your files up on something you have physical access on, such as an external hard drive or a secondary hard drive. Today, I will be talking about online backup and its advantages & disadvantages compared to a local backup.

Online backup (which also goes by the name cloud backup) is a service provided by many companies nowadays, which allows you to copy your files over to their servers in order to backup your files. But why would you pay for online backup when you can simply backup your files on your own?

Let's see the advantages of making an online backup.

1) Online backup provides a 256-bit encryption, which means noone can touch your files unless they use the encryption key for your files, and you should be the only one who has the encryption key.

2) You have online access to your files anytime and anywhere. If you need to use your files in a regular basis, instead of carrying an external hard drive around, you can simply access your files via the file server whenever you want to.

3) The data is usually compressed when you backup your files to an online servers, which means they will be less in size overall. That saves you from buying more backup space, and also allows you to download your files in a faster fashion.

4) After the initial backup, the online backup method is actually faster than local backup unless you own an expensive software, since many companies use a method where only the changes in a file is uploaded to the server rather than the whole file itself every time. So if you have a file of 100MB, and you increased it to 120, only the 20MB part will be copied to the server, saving you time.

5) Scared of your electricity going off or something? You can choose to have real-time backup, which sure drains your computer's resources more than a scheduled backup, but this way, your files will be copied to the server as soon as you have made a change to them, preventing you from losing anything at all.

Of course, with all the good things we listed, there are some disadvantages to online backup.

1) Since the only way you can restore your data is over the internet, if you are in a situation where your download speed is slow, you have bandwidth issues, or you have issues connecting to internet in general, then there's no way you can access your backup at that particular time. (Some companies offer to send you a disk with your backup in it.)

2) If you lose your encryption password, your files are gone forever. There's no way that you will access your files without your encryption password, except if your backup company provides managed backup. In that case, losing the password shouldn't be a problem.

3) If you have too many files you have to copy, and a slow upload line, then it will take you limitless amounts of time to back your files up. So, if you are planning to store terrabytes of files on a cloud server, maybe you should think about going back to local backup.

4) There's always the risk of the company being in a downtime, which means you might not be able to access your files in a critical time of need.

In my opinion, if you have a good internet line with high upload/download speeds, then the advantages of online backup outweigh the disadvantages of it. In the disadvantages I've listed above, the biggest one would be the upload or the download process taking too long because of a slow internet line.

All in all, I would prefer online backup compared to local backup any day of the year, especially because of the fact that I can reach my files anywhere I want, and I'm sure this is the biggest advantage of this method for anyone. Real-time backup is also another good feature, especially for someone like me who experiences lots of power outages.

I hope you enjoyed the read!

0 How to make a hard drive backup

Hello there! After a long time, I will be talking about making a hard drive backup, which is essential for many people, (including myself) as everyone knows how bad it would be to lose your important work files or anything important in that sense. Backing your hard drive is up is a simple thing and it can be done in many ways with many different softwares. I will show you a few methods to walk through this simple process.

First things first, you will need another hard drive that you can store the backup on, since the whole point of making a hard drive backup is the fact that if your primary hard drive is unreachable, you can access your files via the second hard drive.

First way to do this is a fairly simple, and orthodox way. A copying script will do just fine if you aren't looking for anything fancy, and it works pretty well. All you need to do is to open a Notepad up and copy these lines:


cd X:\
xcopy X: Y:\backupbatch /s /e /t /h /D

Where X: is the hard drive you want to back up from (for ordinary users, usually C:), and Y is the destination hard drive where you will be forming your hard drive backup. Now save the notepad file as a .bat (your file name should be backupbatch according to this example), which will make this a batch file which you can run at will. Whenever you run the batch file, the computer will copy all the files you have from X to Y. You might say the process will take too long to do this every time, but I got good news for you! The /D switch enables the script to only copy the files which have been changed, so it won't copy everything all over if they are untouched. You can even automate this process with a software called Xecutor. What it does is, in simple words, running your script every time before you shut your computer down. You can also use the scheduling software of Windows to customize the timing closer to your liking. (I won't go into detail)

The second way of doing this would be to use a commercial software which are commonly used by most people who want to make a hard drive backup. I would suggest Paragon Backup & Recovery which you can find here, as it is the most complete of the backup programs I've used. The software comes with many features which makes life easy for you when you want to make a hard drive backup.

Using this software is pretty straight forward, all you need to do is to run the program, go to the Backup & Recovery menu, and click Smart Backup. After that, click Disk or Partitions in the menu which comes up, choose the partition(s) you want to back up, select where you will save your back up (local drive is what you should be going for if you have another hard drive), choose where the archive will be saved, and decide the time for the back up to start.

To use the back up file you made, click the restore option this time, and choose the archive you made earlier. Follow the steps and you will have your back up restored in a matter of minutes!

These, in my opinion, are the simplest ways to make a hard drive backup. The sole difference between these two methods are the fact that the first method uses the simple principle of copying and pasting files to another hard drive, while the second method creates an image file where your files are kept in (less chance than first method for your files to be infected in a case of a virus). Also, if you are planning to keep your whole Operating System intact and ready to use, I recommend to use the second method. The first method is only good to keep your important files.


I hope you all enjoyed the read and learnt how to make a hard drive backup successfully! I wouldn't want you to lose your important files by accident and I'm sure that you wouldn't either. Thanks for reading!

1 Solid State Drive and its advantages

Storage devices are very important for a computer system. Usually a hard disk drive is used as the main storage device. Hard Disk Drive is also called as HDD and Solid State Drive as SSD. Both of these storage devices are non-volatile. That means data will be there, even the power is turned off. The solid state drives are comparatively newer than the hard disk drives; hence, they are expensive. Solid state storage have many advantages over the hard drive storage.

It will be helpful for the readers, if the components of the devices are stated here. An HDD has several moving parts including the spindle, which holds flat circular disks, read-write heads, and rotating motors. Here, one motor is used to spin the disks and one motor is used to move the read-write heads. In a solid state drive, there is no moving part. An SSD has three basic components including capacitor, cache, and controller. Almost all the smaller computing devices like smart-phones and tablet computers use solid state storage.

Many of the laptop computers are coming with SSDs. There are also desktop PCs, which are using SSDs. The first advantage of an SSD is that it is lighter than an HDD, as there are no rotating parts like motor, spindle or disks. Another important advantage of a solid state drive over a hard disk drive is that it consumes lesser electricity. An HDD need more power to drive the disks and move the heads. As SSDs do not have any moving parts, virtually they do not produce heat or noise.

Solid state storage is more reliable than hard disk storage. The motions of the heads and disks increase the chances of head crash. This can be happened for these reasons – sudden power failure, electronic failure, wear and tear, physical shock, poorly manufactured heads and platters, or corrosion. SSDs are more reliable for another reason. When an HDD comes close to powerful magnets, it may lose data, but an SSD is out of the risk of magnetic distortion.

A computer with an SSD is faster than a computer with an HDD. According to Intel, SSDs are eight times faster when compared to HDDs. To keep the HDDs in fast performance, defragmentation is needed; otherwise, the speed will slow down. Defragmentation is not needed for an SSD. If you can bear extra prices for SSDs, then you can enjoy all of these advantages. However, in future SSDs will be available at lower prices. Another limitation of solid state drives is their capacity. A 1TB SSD is very expensive and rare, whereas you can get an HDD with the same capacity almost in every computer-shop.

You will achieve more benefits when you will use solid state storage in your computer. Nowadays, there are many online storage services. Hence, you need not a storage device with huge capacity; you just need to maintain the storage device effectively. Use solid state storage in your computer and enjoy faster boot up and noiseless performance. As an SSD has longer life than an HDD, maintenance cost will be lesser if you use an SSD.

1 Why should you choose Windows 7 computer operating system?

Modern hardware and software are coming to meet the future needs. If you want to discover yourself in the latest software and hardware world, you should think to shift to Windows 7 from your existing system. It will need extra money, extra RAM, extra memory to install this operating system on your computer. Your computer will be ready to face the upcoming software and hardware versions.

A new thing comes with many possibilities; people can go with that new thing if it is reliable. Windows 7 is one of the latest operating systems from Windows. It has come with a number of promises. It supports almost all the modern computing technologies. The computer users who have become bore with the XP, they will certainly enjoy the new look and new features of this new operating system. The users of Vista who are not satisfied with its features and functionality will also enjoy this new version of Windows.

According to many users, Vista was a great mistake of Microsoft. Vista is chunky, it is slow, it unresponsive in many cases. Most of the users who were using Vista have upgraded their computers to Windows 7 operating system. One of the most attractive features of this new operating system is that it boots faster than any of its older versions since the 3.1. It needs almost same hardware support as Vista. If your computer has the configuration to install Vista, then you need not to buy a new one to use this new operating system.

After using this new operating system for several weeks, you will feel its advantages over other operating systems. You can run it on your Netbook comfortably. If you are worried about that, all of your past software will be useless in Windows 7; then you should know that if the programs run on XP, they would also run on this operating system. The enterprise or the ultimate version supports virtualization. If you were using Vista on your computer, then you can upgrade it to 7 comfortably. It is not so easy in Windows XP. You may need a third party support or a fresh installation.

The future versions of the most popular office management application programs MS Office 2013 will not run on Windows XP. There are also many other programs which may not run on Windows XP. Hence, to use all of these programs on your computer enrich it with the 7 operating system. Considering all the reasons stated above you can think to use this new operating system on your computer.

There are also some issues; if they are in your computer, you should not use the 7 version of Microsoft Windows operating system. If your computer does not have enough hardware support, you should not go for Windows 7. Another simple reason is that it is expensive. Why will you spend several hundred dollars if you can do all the tasks on your XP operating system? In many cases, to fix different issues it may need rebooting.

So, why do you wait? Switch to Windows 7 already if you haven't!

0 HP Officejet Pro 8600 Plus Review

Today, I will be talking about HP Officejet Pro 8600 Plus printer, the prodigy of all in one printers (at least in my eyes!) at the moment. May it be performance, design, or price, HP doesn't disappoint us once again.

Let's start with what everyone would like to know first before buying anything, which is the price of this printer. The price varies depending on where you want to buy it, but if we are to name a common price, the printer is 300$ based on Newegg's prices. Some may say 300$ is expensive for a printer, but just wait until you see what it has to offer.

First of all, the printer supports AirPrint which is kind of a popular thing in our day with the iOS devices taking over the world slowly. For those who don't know, AirPrint is a feature which lets you print documents from your iOS device wirelessly provided that you are in the same network as your printer.

Another interesting feature is the ePrint feature which is something HP came up with. You can assign an e-mail address to the printer and send documents to be printed with email from any device connected to the same network as the printer. The downside is that you can't directly print Web pages, but many people will find a workaround for this easily.

The 8600 comes with a 4.3 inch touchscreen where you can choose to print, copy, scan, or fax in an easy fashion. The screen requires you to press the buttons harder than just giving a touch, which saves you from the trouble of touching the wrong button time to time. Besides the standard functions, there are also applications which you can access by using the touchscreen, such as Yahoo, Reuters, Disney and many more. You can download documents, templates, coloring pages and relative things directly from the printer without using an extra device.

The Officejet Pro 8700 Plus also has the feature to connect to the network via Wireless or Ethernet, which saves you from the trouble of buying an extra USB cable to connect it to your computer. The wireless/ethernet detection is fairly easy and straight forward, since it doesn't require any software to be installed on any computer, both on Mac and PC.

The speed of printing is quite good, especially compared to many other printers. Approximately, the 8600 prints a black text page in 5 seconds, a page with color graphics in 12 seconds, a photo in 40 seconds, and a presentation in 10 seconds. What catches the eye is that the photo printing speed is a bit slow in terms of comparison, but then again it's only a few seconds which doesn't really have an impact in daily life terms.

The scanner/copier is 8.5x14 inches, with a resolution of 4800 dpi. That means you can scan pretty much anything you need without losing any quality at all. You can save your scans to a memory card, to network, to e-mail, or most commonly, to your computer. An interesting mechanical addition is that the machine can flip pages for double-sided documents.

All in all, if you need a printer with many functions and a high quality document and photo printing feature for a good price, then the Officejet Pro 8000 Plus is for you. The printer comes with absolutely no down-sides (some might say the price is a bit too high like mentioned, and maybe the large size can be considered as a down-side for some people) in my opinion, and I highly recommend it for those who look for a professional printer. 

0 Printing documents via wireless with your iOS device

Hello! Today, I'll tell you how you can print documents with your iOS device wirelessly. There are two methods to do this depending on your printer, (if it supports AirPrint or not) and we will be talking about both of them, so don't worry.

First of all, let's check if our printer is AirPrint supported by going to Apple Support here. If your printer is in the list, then what you have to do is fairly easy. All you have to do is to connect your iOS device and the computer which is connected to the printer on the same wireless network. After that, simply browse to the document you want to print, tap the Print button, select the printer in the list and print your document!

If your printer isn't AirPrint compatible, then it will take a bit longer to set it up, but it works either way. Download FingerPrint here. (both for Windows and Mac) Install the software and run it. The software has a free trial but it leaves a watermark on the printed documents so if you want to get rid of the watermark, just buy the license (20$), it's totally worth it rather than buying a new printer.

Next thing, you're supposed to check your printer in the list. That way, FingerPrint will let the printer be recognized by iOS devices in the network.

Rest is pretty straight forward, keep your computer and FingerPrint running, connect your iOS device and your computer to the same network, tap the print button, choose the printer you want to use and print! Note the speed depends on your wireless connection, so if the connection is unstable it might cause interruptions or slow printing.

Now you have everything set up, you can print whatever you want from your iOS device. You can print your Notes, a Safari page that you might be interested in, your photos, the screenshots you took, your iWork files and many more!

I hope you found this useful and enjoyable!