The Older Geek

I addressed the dangers of browser popups in Internet Explorer and how to block them in my post “How to Prevent Popups in Internet Explorer.” You may have followed my advice and set the popup blocker to a high setting, blocking all poipups unless you manually override it or created a whitelist of allowed sites. [...]

Browser popups are much more than annoying. Popups are a security threat. Whenever you go on the Internet, an exchange of information is relayed between your computer and the website’s server computer (and sometimes through a number of other server computers along the way) through open doors called “ports.” Internet Explorer opens certain ports to [...]

Rarely do I suggest that you buy a product or products to solve a problem, but in my personal experience, this has been the only option that worked for me. I had spent years of frustration with the Windows networking options only to throw in the towel after getting Windows 7. I had given up [...]

Windows 7 is a very nice operating system with many improved features over Vista. I was dismayed, however, to realize that many programs no longer sit neatly in the system tray next to the clock, but sit in the taskbar, clogging up my neat work station. I have used Windows Live Messenger waaaay back when [...]

At some time or another, you may need to take a screenshot of your computer screen. It can be an image of your desktop, your computer folder, your browser website, whatever. It can be very helpful for when you are submitting your blog to a blog community (sometimes you have to submit your own images) [...]

AutoPlay is a convenient feature for Windows computers. When you plug in a USB flash drive or CD or DVD into your computer, AutoPlay automatically launches the drive and/or the software on the drive. While convenient, AutoPlay has become a vehicle for the spread of malware. If you insert a virus-infected flash drive into your [...]

I am a bit of a software addict. I love downloading new “toys” to play with and discovering new and efficient ways to do things on the computer. Since so many of you like my previous post, The Ten Best OTHER Free Software Programs, I’m doing it again. Fences This is an incredibly classy and [...]

Windows computers have a built-in compression functionality similar to the brand-name software, WinZip. To “zip” a file or folder is to compress it. All data on your computer is digitized, of course. The data is compressed– not as we think of compressed as in squeezed together, but reorganized into smaller bits. Think of a zip [...]

Introduction I sometimes like to do stuff that is considered ethical hacking, or “white hat hacking.” I’m not computer expert by any means, but I like to tinker with software and operating systems. Sometimes software and operating systems, by default, do not allow configurations through their basic interface. It is times like those that I [...]

Here’s a handy hack and a security benefit: configure Windows Mail or Windows Live Mail to block images from displaying in emails. You can easily choose to view the images by clicking a bar in the email itself, after you have opened it. Emails are the most common means of the spread of viruses and [...]

Did you know that you can configure Windows to keep a record of printed documents that print from your computer? This is very helpful if you print the same documents frequently, or if you want to keep a record of documents that have been printed. You can manage your printer document history through the “Printer [...]