Age catches up with all of us. Our backs start to get sore, our pants get a bit tighter and hair gets a bit whiter. Your computer is not immune to the ravages of time. Even though it might not lose any hair nor need to get a case that's a size larger, computers do not age well. However, there are ways to slow the deterioration and improve performance that are easy, cheap and relatively painless. There are some simple things you can do to maintain your computer and get it running faster if it is slowing down. The biggest thing you can do is to do some cleaning of both the hardware and software that makes up your computer.

Before we start anything, you will want to back up your hard drive just in case something goes wrong and turn off your computer. The first thing to do is a simple matter of maintenance and that is dusting out your computer. We will start with the case. If you have a desktop unit, the outside of the case can be wiped down with a damp cloth as can the bottom, sides and top (back of the screen) on a laptop. An important note is that you should never spray ANYTHING on to your case, desktop or otherwise. This risks getting liquid inside, which is never a good thing. Spray it on to the cloth instead and do not use too much.  Another thing to mention is that alcohol is recommended for general cleaning as it evaporates quickly and doesn't leave residue that can be problematic. If you prefer to use water, try to get distilled water as it doesn't have the contaminates that come in tap water. Whichever you use, less is more and shouldn't be over used.

Now it is time to exterminate the colony of dust bunnies that are turning your computer into their burrow. The best tool here is a can of compressed air. They can be purchased online or from most hardware stores. There are a few precautions to take before you start to clean the case. First, make sure you're somewhere that can get dusty and is well ventilated. Do not touch the components inside the case or use a vacuum as you may inadvertently discharge static electricity, damaging your computer. Make sure that you keep the can upright while you are blowing out the dust as leaning it to the side can cause it to excrete liquid. Do not clean your fan by just blowing compressed air on it as it can cause the fan to spin faster than it was intended to. You can wipe the blades with a cotton swab with a bit of 99% alcohol or wipe it with a dry cloth. Now that you're set, remove the side of your case and blow the dust out . Be careful to blow dust out of the case and not blow it farther into the case. If you are working on a laptop or unibody Mac, run a vacuum over the ventilation area to get the dust out. You do not have to take anything apart.

Click here to see how to properly dust your computer.

While we have everything turned off, this is a good opportunity to clean your mouse and keyboard. If you are using a laptop, running a vacuum over the keyboard and wiping them down with a slightly damp cloth should do the trick. If you have a traditional keyboard, again wiping the keys with a slightly damp cloth will help and you can use a cotton swab with a bit of alcohol to clean between keys should there be a need. For your mouse, if you have an older mouse with a ball, you can take off a piece at the bottom allowing you to remove the ball. You can clean out the area holding the ball, the ball itself and the cover with a dry cloth. If you are using an optical mouse, you can clean the lens with a cotton swab and alcohol. If the outside of your mouse is really dirty, a cotton swab or cloth with alcohol can be used along with some elbow grease to get it clean. Otherwise, a quick wipe down with a dry or slightly damp cloth should suffice.

For your screen, whether an LCD flat screen or attached screen on your laptop, care needs to be taken. The best method is to use a soft, dry cloth to gently wipe the screen. Do not press hard on the screen or use chemicals like Windex on the screen. If there is a mark you can't remove, use a bit of distilled water, a mixture of equal parts water and vinegar or alcohol or store bought cleaners but don't use too much force on the screen or you may damage it. If you are still using a traditional CRT monitor, you can clean the screen with a soft cloth and most glass cleaners. The outside of cases can be cleaned with a damp cloth. 

Now that the physical cleaning is over with, we can plug everything back in and do some software clean up. The first thing to do is to go to your control panel and select either add or remove program or uninstall program. Go through the listed programs and uninstall any programs that you don't use any more (this includes all those toolbars clogging up your internet browser). Go to your desktop and clear up any clutter you find there by deleting files you no longer need and arranging files do you need in folders will allow your computer to operate better. Running a program like CCleaner is a good idea as it will help you to clean out extra files from your computer. Next, you need to make sure all your system files are up to date. Windows update can be run from the Control Panel if they are not set to automatically update. Updating your flash and java also help with improving performance and should be kept up to date as this also helps prevent security issues. Flash can be downloaded directly from Adobe's site and Java can be downloaded from java.com. 

See how to uninstall programs here.

See how to take out tool bars in Internet Explorer here.

The next and likely most important step is to run your anti-virus program and do a deep scan of your computer. Most scans are not a full, deep scan of your system so a deep scan is a good idea from time to time. Running malware detection software like Malwarebytes' Antimalware or Ad-Aware is also a good idea. Viruses and other malware can cause massive slowdowns in addition to other negative consequences. If you don't have an anti-virus program, there are some very good free options available. The two most popular free options are AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition and Avast Free Antivirus 7. Both are very effective and powerful and will provide you the assurance you need in an Anti-Virus program. The down side is that the free versions don't have much in the way of support, aside from forums and some documentation scattered across the internet. Microsoft has an Anti-Virus program called Security Essentials that has been getting better with every iteration and comes close (even surpassing in some estimations) to the AVG and Avast offerings.  Windows has a built in firewall and it is a perfectly viable option. However, it can be difficult to control and change as needed. A third party firewall, like the free Zone Alarm offering, is a very good option and will allow you better control over your firewall. 

Finally, you can run disk cleanup and then disk defragmenter. These processes, especially the disk defragmenter, can take a lot of time but will help to increase your system's performance. If, after all of these steps, your computer is still running slowly,  it may be time to look at your actual hardware. Two of the cheapest and most effective options are to upgrade the amount of RAM in your computer and the hard drive. RAM is usually the more effective upgrade. If you are running a 32 bit operating system, getting over 4 GB of RAM is a waste as the operating system cannot use any more memory than that. Even with a 64 bit operating system, often going over 8 GB is going to see no real improvement but going to 16 GB, if the price is right, not a bad idea. When buying RAM, it is important to match the size of the sticks. What this means is that if you are getting 8 GB of RAM, two sticks of 4 GB each will run better than a 4 GB stick and two sticks of 2GB each.  If your hard drive has less than 10% free space (15 - 20% is preferable), you need to either delete some files or get more space. Options for more space include replacing your drive all together or supplementing it with a second internal drive or an external drive that plugs in to a USB port. The big rage right now is to install solid state drives (SSD) for your operating system. These do offer speed increases, but are expensive for the amount of storage they offer. If you just want speed, this is a decent option, especially since you can get a drive now for around $100. If you need storage, a traditional HDD (hard disk drive) will be cheaper for far more storage space. 

These are just a few simple, easily affordable ways to speed up your system. If you are running an older system, these steps may help to extend its life cycle but there are limits to what can be done. Hardware not only doesn't age well, but newer software is needing more RAM, disk space and processor power every day. Eventually, upgrading is something that has to happen. Some programs are making it easier to run older hardware, like Windows 8 has faster boot and shut down times than Windows 7 running on the same system, but the rest of the operating system functions at essentially the same pace. These things are also good to do every few months to keep your system running and well maintained. Keep the case clean and your drive clean and you will see better performance.

Website evolution has been interesting to say the least. They started out as file directories with links to files. As the pages themselves evolved, we started with a lot of very drab, mostly academic pages consisting of walls of text. People soon started to add colours and decoration to the site which led into the horror of gifs (the little moving images that repeat) that still makes developers cry to this day. Slowly but surely, sites evolved, adding interactivity and becoming easier to use as each day passed. Now it is common to have a fully interactive site with video and multiple feedback options, including email, various social media outlets and commenting right on the site. With so many different options and expectations for sites growing every day, your site becomes more essential and complicated as time goes on. WordPress is an invaluable tool allowing you to manage your site. Let's take a look at that now.

We'll start by taking a look at what WordPress is. Originally, WordPress was developed as a blogging platform. The emphasis was on blogging and it allowed for focused development. Since it is open source which means that anyone can use, modify and edit the code however they would like,people have taken advantage of this and developed other uses for the platform in addition to blogging. There are a ton of amazing tools (called plug-ins) that make building and managing your website easy without the need for a lot of code. 

Being open source, it also means that there is no additional cost to use this platform on your website. You can download and install the software quickly and easily on to your server yourself but many hosting services have auto installers that will install WordPress with a few quick clicks and no downloads required on your part. There is premium content available for various fees that have various applications but these are always optional and never required. 

Choosing a look for your site is as simple as picking a theme. There are literally thousands of themes available free of charge through your WordPress dashboard. They are easily applied to your site with a few simple clicks. Depending on the themes you are changing to/from, you may need to tweak your content slightly to fit the new design but a drastic change to your site's look is very easy. There are a few pitfalls of using free themes. The most important one is that if you download free themes from random websites, they can often be used to store malicious code or other things that can get your site flagged. The good news here is that the free themes provided by WordPress are free of issues like that. The downside here is that a lot of people use WordPress and use the free themes. You can pick up premium paid themes for reasonable amounts so that your site doesn't look like everyone else's. 

The editor for the pages is known as a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor, meaning that what you see in the fame is what you will see on the site. This allows you to place things as you want them and WordPress takes care of the code. For making posts, the interface is very similar to MS Word. You can change your font (which are limited but this is due to the way font selection works with websites), make it bold or italic and change the size of the font. Inserting photos is a matter of uploading them through the image button and then dragging it where you want. You can also edit other options for the image in a separate menu. Whether it is making a post or a new page, the process is similar and with plenty of easy to understand options, you can make quick updates to your content easily.

Something important to mention are widgets. Widgets are commonly used to display information and bring up controls. Widgets are available in a variety of applications (including Windows) and function similarly here. You drag and drop the widgets to the areas you want them and they add functionality to your site. This could be something like buttons for social media, a list of previous blog posts or even to display recent tweets on your Twitter account. There are over 100,000 widgets available from WordPress and they do a bevy of different things. This makes it incredibly easy to add features to your website, including dynamic content.

There are a lot of other plug-ins that can add all sorts of functionality to your site. Plug-ins can let you collapse content, play media files, register users, accept donations and much more. When you want to add a function to your site, not only do these tools make it easier to do so, there is also a massive WordPress community to help you accomplish your goals. They can recommend plug-ins, give you coding options, help to troubleshoot issues and even improve your overall  results. WordPress receives regular updates and is showing improvements all the time. Many plug-ins are developed to either fill a need or fix an issue with WordPress which they often fix with new releases. They also like to integrate the more commonly used plug-ins to improve the product and allowing you to use less plug-ins.

With more information being put on to sites all the time and the need for better functionality and more dynamic content, a CMS makes sense. WordPress is free, supported by an incredible community and very powerful. With a WYSIWYG  editor, drag and drop widgets and a familiar, Office like environment for posts, the system is intuitive, easy to use and requires next to no knowledge of code, although you will have to learn the software to some extent. You can also keep your site feeling fresh with themes and change them as time goes on quickly and with limited reworking of the content and features of your site. We can get you started with your very own WordPress driven site right here at GreenIT and provide support. Contact us for more information.  

The world is shrinking  every day and distances that once made certain things difficult are now less of an issue. Better access to phones and the internet have made access to people easy, even when they're on the other side of the world. People are working from remote locations and it can be hard to identify with someone that you generally only deal with over phone calls and emails. Video chat has become increasingly popular as webcams have been integrated into many devices. They allow you to get a version of a face to face meeting when other elements, like distance or weather, might have otherwise prevented it. We will take a quick look at a few of the more popular (and affordable) web chat services and look at some of the advantages and disadvantages to each.

When Apple releases a new product, it tends to become the "must have" item of the season. With each new release seems to come a new software product that can often get lost in the new hardware releases. FaceTime was released with the iPhone 4 and has been slowly catching on with people. It is now available on essentially any modern iOS or OSX device and it is a good product. It works very well, even on the smaller mobile devices. You get a good picture and good audio, typically only affected by the connections of the people talking. But there is a major problem with FaceTime: it is only available on Apple products. This means if you have an Android tablet or a PC, you don't have access to this communication tool. And with the majority of computers still being Windows based and a large number of mobile devices not running iOS, this really limits FaceTime's usefulness. 

Far and away the most famous video chat software is Skype. The name itself is synonymous with video chatting.  It is a very affordable product and used by millions on a daily basis to stay in touch with people around the world. The first thing to note is that Skype offers both free and paid services. A paid subscription offers more features but the free version of Skype is still feature rich and offers high quality visuals and audio. The setup and installation process are simple. You can chat with friends, family and colleagues over video, voice, text or a combination of the three. This makes staying in contact in any situation easier as you always have options. The best thing about Skype is that it offers a fantastic mobile experience across multiple devices. It really can keep you in contact with just about anyone from just about anywhere. 

While the paid version of Skype can seem expensive for what may look like the same product, it actually offers good value, particularly if you pay for a year. The full premium subscription starts as cheap as $4.49/month on a 12 month purchase and can range as high as $8.99/month. There is a daily option but it is very expensive comparatively ($4.99/day). They all include the option to video chat with up to ten people (free version only supports two people with video although you can do more with just audio), ability to make conference calls, live customer support, gets rid of advertising and all the other features included with their free offering. The three and twelve month subscriptions do offer an advantage aside from just the significant discount. They also include unlimited calling to Canada and the US. This could save you a lot on long distance fees both at home and on your smart phones. 

A service that seems to have slipped the notice of a  lot of people is Google's offering called Hangout. Hangout is a completely free service that Google offers. It supports up to 10 people on a single call and offers the ability to have an unlimited number of spectators (meaning they can watch the call but not say anything). This is done through either a YouTube stream or Google+ stream and is very easy to set up and join. While spectators can't directly participate, they will be able to experience the chat without slowing down performance of those directly involved. If you do want people interacting, you can try things like Twitter and Facebook to get real time feedback. You can also share things like YouTube videos easily with a few quick clicks of your mouse.

One of the best things about Hangout is that it is free. You can use all of the features right out of the box with absolutely no fees. The service rivals Skype for quality and in some cases surpasses Skype. One downside is that, at least for Canadians, we can't use Google Voice yet to make free long distance calls but that is a feature available in the US. It doesn't offer nearly the mobile support that Skype does, which is a downside for those of us who like to use our mobile devices to communicate. It can also be more difficult to set up a private chat as Hangout is by nature an open forum where people can drop in and out of the conversation but it can be done without overexerting yourself. When you are done, you can record and post your session directly on YouTube. If you are trying to reach an audience, this can be an excellent tool. re to edit.

The last service we will take a look at actually caught me by surprise. We all can remember the sounds of "You've got Mail" that AOL made famous and the discs that were sent out in the thousands that we all threw out as soon as we got them. AOL has not been a revolutionary company and hasn't offered any significant offerings since the days of dial-up internet. When Microsoft bought Skype in 2011 for $8.5 billion, AOL announced a new service called AV. AV is AOL's video chat service. It is browser based and doesn't require an account or any software downloads to run. You simply go to the site, click as instructed and you'll be given a link which can be sent via text message, IM or email and will bring people in to your session automatically. 

The system is very intuitive and easy to use. While trying the service, I had a friend log on and join me. She'd never used her webcam before and is not overly tech savvy but was video chatting with me quickly and easily. The only issue was that the shockwave plug in would crash occasionally (and this was a common issue on all the systems we tried this with)  but it was easily solved with a quick refresh of the page. But this is a flash based service and that creates a problem as a lot of mobile devices cannot run flash, meaning the choice of devices is restricted. The video quality isn't as good as Hangout or Skype, but it isn't meant to be. It works well and for something you can get up and running in seconds with no account or software needed, this is a great tool because of its simplicity. Another downside is that it doesn't allow screen sharing, which the other two do. This can be problematic for productivity meetings where screen sharing is a real asset. You can also have a maximum of four people in a session. 

They all have their advantages and their disadvantages. AV is incredibly quick and easy to use but doesn't have the fully fleshed features of the others and if video quality is a key concern, AV won't be your choice. But if you want to video chat with a client who is not technologically inclined, the ease of use may win out. If you want to broadcast your chats or archive them simply on YouTube, Google Hangout is likely your best bet. If you don't mind paying for a subscription and will use the long distance feature, Skype might be your best choice. The best way to know for sure is to try them out and pick the one or ones that work best for you.