PC ProSchools – TechTalk

It all starts out innocently with the phone call from my little sister about needing to come over to my house to use my computer because of some problem or other at my parent’s house. She needs to research and write a paper that is due tomorrow and I am her only hope, so of course I acquiesce and help her out.

Four hours later she finishes and with a quick peck on the cheek and a “Thanks Bro.” she flies out the door. So there I am again, left sitting in front of my computer, wondering just what my teenage sister did to my computer in a span of four hours of “doing homework.” My virus software is going haywire, informing me of the 150+ new threats detected. I have 15 new toolbars on my web browser, allowing me in height about three inches of content. I also have twenty new shortcuts on my desktop leading to various media applications I never downloaded. I realized then, that even with her logging in under a limited user profile, it still wouldn’t protect my computer well enough.

After spending a greater part of the day fixing everything, I vowed that I would never let this happen again. Then I heard the phone ring, it was the “human virus” again needing to revise her report. I tell her to come on over, but this time I open Microsoft Virtual PC, set up one of my XP virtual machines with what she needs and have it up and running when she shows up. Four hours later she leaves in a whirlwind again, and I am left looking at another decimated computer. But this time all I have do is turn off the virtual machine and delete the changes made to the virtual hard drive. In less than a minute I am staring at my pristine base machine ready for me to log on and play WOW with no problems.

Because virtualization software insulates the open sessions from the parent operating system it is a great tool for those with kids or siblings. Give them their own virtual machine; they can do anything they want to it, it has the same capabilities as your base machine and the virtual disks are even portable by flash drive. Let them feel like they have the reins and keep your computer safe and functional.

I was watching TV the other day, and happened to catch an old episode of Green Acres. At one point in the show, the phone rang, and Oliver, one of the main characters in the show, had to climb up the telephone pole to answer it. Naturally it was a telemarketer. That got me thinking. Trust me, I hate that. I started thinking about how far the telephone had come in the last forty years. Time was a call had to be pretty important to climb up that pole to make a phone call.

There was also a time when if you were not at home, and the phone rang, it went unanswered. That changed with the advent of the answering machine, invented in 1935, by Benjamin Thornton. That technological improvement made it possible for people that you were trying to avoid, leave you a message, making them hard to avoid. At least the phone was in the house.

Next came voice mail. Now that person you were trying to avoid can leave you a message while you were on the phone talking to another person you were trying to avoid. Not that’s progress! At least the phone was still in the house. That was soon to change.

In 1973, Dr Martin Cooper invented the cell phone. He is also known as the first person to ever make a cell phone call. I wonder what kind of a calling plan he had. Now, whether you were home or not, people who you are trying to avoid can contact you.   More progress.

Now we have phones that send text, twitter, play music, access your email, surf the net,  take pictures, and I am pretty sure allow that person you are trying to avoid reach you no matter where you are.

Me, I am never stooping down to the level of owning one of these modern intrusions into my life.

For one very important reason.

My wife won’t let me.

Question: What are the main differences between a router and an access point?

Answer: Technically a wireless access point is just that, a device that allows you to connect to a network wirelessly. An access point connects to an existing network and by itself is not a router, HOWEVER (and this is a big however)….

Most of the wireless access points (WAPs) you are going to see are built into a home router, home routers are devices that are designed to make networking easy and contain a lot of features and abilities beyond just routing.

In addition to being a router (a device that connects two or more networks together), home routers are also a switch (a device that connects computers on the same network together), DHCP server, Firewall, DNS forwarder, NAT server, and if it is a wireless router, a wireless access point.

You “can” connect a WAP (Wireless Access Point) that is built into a home router to an existing network although it requires that you turn off a lot of the services (DHCP in particular) of the home router so that they don’t interfere with the existing network services OR alternatively you can just connect the wireless router and allow it to create a separate wireless network that is connected to your wired network.

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