I just got a new Microsoft Natural Ergo Keyboard 4000 for my computer in the office and I am moving my old one to a little used back–up computer. I usually take the opportunity of moving a piece of equipment to a new place, or repurposing a piece of hardware, to give it a good old fashioned clean up. Usually my choice of any cleaning is soap and water but you really can’t use that on electronics so what do you use? — Canned air and Swiffers!! Don’t laugh—I am deadly serious.

Air comes in pressured cans with a neat attachable straw like item that allows the user to point and spray into tiny places. Keyboards are especially prone to itsy bits of dust and dirt and nothing works better than a good shot of that pressurized can. Hint: turn your head away from the spry trajectory as the dust will really fly and go right up your nose—achoo! I use the air on items I can’t move easily too. It’s great on stacked electronics, computer towers-just about anything that you can’t use common cleaning items on. Just point, press and spray—no dust!!

Swiffers are cloths that electrostatic ally attract dust to their fibers and you just take it away. They don’t hurt anything and collect dust like a dream. The Swiffers that you attach to a plastic stick allow you to use them on stacked electronics to get the dust in-between the stacks and under then to dust the furniture they sit on. The instructions say to throw them away (Swiffers) once they are dirty but I cheat and wash them to use again.

Well, that is my cleaning lesson for the week—next week—coffee cups!

Computer cables can be highly confusing, but they don’t have to be.  If computer makers have done any thing correctly, they’ve made sure the different styles of cables have very different connectors so you can quickly identify them just by shape.

Take this cable to the right.  It does look a bit like a telephone line, but if you saw it in comparison, you would see it is quite obviously broader.  We’re starting a series about cables with this one because it is probably one of the most misunderstood cables.

This one goes by many names, but the three most common are “RJ45″, “Cat 5″ and the most popular, “Ethernet”.  If you aren’t connecting your computer via Wi-Fi network, than more than likely you are using one of these cables.

Ethernet cables are almost always “Category 5″ (hence the “Cat 5″ name), meaning they run at 100 MHz and are used for 100 Mbit networks.  In plain English, this means they are perfect for transmission of data over a home network, and most other networks to be quite honest.  You will usually find  the connection on the back of desktop computers, and on laptops they usually are on the sides, but sometimes can be found on the back.

As with most cabling, the price will vary depending on the length you purchase, but do keep in mind that it is not recommended to go past 100 feet; the longer the cable, the weaker the signal, and the more it degrades.  For people who travel extensively, I always recommend carrying a 25 foot cable in their computer bag as that should allow you to wander around a hotel room pretty well.  While you’re at home, or in your office, I always suggest 14 feet or shorter just for the strongest signal, though I do run some 50 foot ones so I can run cables through different floors of the house and have seen no discernible loss of quality.

A lot of people ask me why you should use a cable over Wi-Fi, and the thing is while it ties you down physically, it is a faster connection, and more reliable.  Wi-Fi can be affected by things such as weather, physical obstacles and any other number of circumstances, but the cable just chugs along.  Being connected by a cable may be “old school” but I see no reason to mess with success when you don’t have to.

What other cables do you wonder about?

There has been a lot of talk about what a problem Windows Vista can be for users: peripherals that aren’t compatible, not enough computing power on some systems, a steep learning curve for some users, etc.

The good news is that until June 30th, 2008, you can still buy Windows XP if you just don’t feel comfortable with going to the next operating system, and there is really no problem with that. All of us here at StarterTech consider our selves fairly tech savvy, but you will not find Vista installed on any of our computers.  We just have too many printers, hard drives and more that wouldn’t be compatible with Vista to make it worth it to us.

So, what happens after June 30th?  Microsoft will continue to sell XP in lower-end systems and portable devices, as well as still offer tech support, but there will be no sales of the OS.  However, some computer manufacturers are trying to find loop holes around this, with the most adamant being Dell.

It seems Dell has found a loophole that will allow them to sell you a computer with Windows XP on it, and include Vista on an upgrade disc in the package.  So, technically they are selling you a copy of Vista, you just have to install it yourself, and it’s your choice whether you ever do that.  They currently plan to continue doing this through 2010 when Windows 7 is set to be released.  The one caveat to this is that Microsoft has never released a new operating system on time, so no one really knows when the next system will be ready.

If you are buying a brand new computer, have no old hardware to deal with, and feel like learning a new system, then you have no reason to go ahead and move up to Vista, but for those of us around here, it looks like we will be buying Dell systems only for the next few years.

Twitter is one of those services lots of people are talking about it, but hardly any one ever explains it.

Put as simply as possible, imagine it as text messaging for the web. You have 140 characters to say whatever you want in the box the provide (image here has been shrunk)

It asks you, “What are you doing?”, which most people ignore, but it’s a jumping off point.  Once done, you click “update”, and everyone who has chosen to “follow” you, sees your message.  You, in return, can follow them, by visiting their profile and clicking the “follow” button, and then whenever they post an update, it will show up in your “timeline” which shows your posts as well as theirs.

If someone posts something like a question, or something you just feel like commenting on, you can reply to them by entering “@” before their name, and this will make sure to notify them that you were talking to them.  So in my case, if you wanted to reply to me, you would enter “@seanpaune and then just type your message to me”.

Sometimes you want to send the person a message only they can see, in those cases you would enter “d seanpaune and the message”, and this would go to them as a direct message that they can only see, and it will also notify them by email if their settings are to do so.

At this point Twitter is mostly about fun, though some do use it for business, but it is overly effective.  Is it made for everyone?  Probably not, but it’s worth checking out just to say you know what it is.  You can find me at http://twitter.com/seanpaune if you want to check out what my timeline looks like, and you can see what it looks like when I receive messages here.

When we discussed What Is Gmail, we mentioned one of the side benefits of using the Google email system was you got access to Google Docs. The question is “What is Google Docs?”, and more importantly, why you should care.

Pretty much everyone is familiar with Microsoft Office, and they are also familiar with the cost. Office has become the standard for productivity software like a word processor and spreadsheets, but no one thrills to the price this staple of workers and students everywhere costs them. There has been a free alternative for a while now called Open Office, but for some reason it never seemed to gain wide-spread acceptance. Since Google Docs is integrated into your Google account, it seems to be getting a bit more attention.

Currently you can create a document (replacing Word), spreadsheets (replacing Excel) and presentations (replacing Power Point). None of the three are quite as full-featured as their Microsoft counterparts, but they are working to catch up as quickly as possible, and also giving you some features you don’t have with the Office-standard.

One of those biggest advantages is the ability to invite other people with Google accounts to work on a document with it, or simply view it. This quickly gives you the added extra of a collaboration tool to work on projects with a co-worker, or someone else from your study group, a service you can usually expect to pay a fee for.

Until recently, the biggest drawback to Docs was you could only work while online, but in early April 2008, that all changed.  A copy of your work is saved to your hard drive locally, making them accessible while you are offline.  With the word processor, you do have limited editing abilities, but with the spreadsheets and presentations, for now, you can only view them with no editing abilities.  Even without the ability to work on them, this is still helpful if you want to go somewhere without Internet access and make your presentation.

Is Docs a perfect replacement?  Not yet (as of April 2008), but Google is very actively working on making it better on a near weekly basis, and it is free, so perhaps you should at least give it a try and see how it suits you.

GMail is the email application run by Google, the company best known for its search engine.  Why does everyone rave about it?  Because it is probably one of the best email solutions out there.

It can sometimes be difficult for people to imagine getting excited about how they access their email, but GMail is one of those times.  A simple interface, accessible from anywhere, with superb integration with mobile devices such as the iPhone/iPod Touch and BlackBerry, it’s hard to dislike it.  When you add in that it has over 6 GB storage, a superb search feature, easy filing with the use of their “labels”, ability to store files in their “Documents” add on…

Can you tell we love GMail around here?  For me, someone who does nothing but live on the Internet 24/7 as a writer, I have basically given up all other forms of email for my GMail accounts, they all pale in comparison.  And, oh yeah, did I mention it’s free?

If you haven’t tried it yet, you really should, you’ll find it difficult to go back.

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is the method by which people can talk over the Internet in the style of a phone call. There are multiple ways this can be accomplished, whether is be by using a headset with your computer, a physical handset connected to your system, or even stand-alone devices that don’t even require your computer to be on.

A lot of people are put off by the idea because the traditional landline has been around so long, but when you see how much cheaper VoIP is, a lot of those misgivings go away.

The way it works is very technical, but nothing that the common user needs to concern themselves with. In the simplest of terms: your voice is turned into data by the input device, transfered to the recipient, and the device on their end decodes it. It is not that dissimilar to traditional phones, it’s just done in a different manner.

There are two types of phones: soft phones and physical phones.

A Soft phone is a piece of software on your computer, such as Skype, that require you to use your computer as the interface for your phone calls.

Hard phones can be phones that plug into your computer, stand alone, or, in more and more cases, a phone that you can take with you. Examples of stand-alone services would be companies such as Vonage, Lingo, Voip, and numerous cable companies. For an example of one you can use even outside of your own house you unfortunately have to look outside of the United States at this time to mobile carriers like 3, which allows you to use Skype anywhere they have mobile phone service.

What about the money it can save you? All of us here at StarterTech are big believers in Skype due to its ease of use, and the fact you can mix traditional calling with your Internet calls. Calls from one Skype user to another are always free, and if you use their soft phone, you can even do conference calls of up to 20 people. If you want to add a regular phone number so non-Skype users can call you, you can do that also as well as get voice mail, and make unlimited calls around the world to select countries for $9.99 a month. The possibilities with this service are truly endless.

Once Philips came out with their VoIP841B system, things got even more interesting because you now could have a cordless phone that still allowed you to use Skype even when your computer was off. The system allows you to have up to four handsets working off of one base station, giving you the freedom you get from any traditional cordless phone. You can still make free Skype calls from one user to another with it, use your Skype phone number and more.

The other brilliant thing about all VoIP services is that your number will work wherever you are. Say you are on a business trip to Japan and you have a soft phone service on your computer, with a phone number attached to the account for your hometown in California, if someone makes that local call to your number, it will still ring on your computer in Japan. The caller will never know the difference, and it is treated just like a call made while you are at home. Moving cross country? No problem, the number from your old home will still work.

So while all of this may sound like the perfect answer to get away from the burden of a traditional phone bill, there are caveats to it also.

No emergency service – I have yet to find a VoIP provider that can handle calls to an emergency service because it can’t figure out where you are and route you properly.

Calls are only as good as the slowest connection – If one person in the call is on a slow connection, such as a dial-up connection, then your call quality will suffer.

There can be some delay – Even on the best of connections, you can still sometimes detect a delay in the talking.

The technology is constantly improving, and as more, and better, bandwidth is added around the world, the calls will continue to improve.  VoIP may not be ready to completely replace your main phone line, but it is certainly ready to be your second line, and an answer to the the prays of people that travel frequently for business.

I recently purchased a Dell Vostro 1500, and while I love it, I am beginning to wonder about the size of some laptop’s screens.

The physical size of the screen is 15.4″, which is a great size, but the resolution is 1680×1050, which is causing some websites, such as my personal blog, to format oddly when I view them. If you click on the image to the right, you will see my screen in its actual size, you will see how an image from one blog entry is colliding into another entry.

Why do I bring this up? If you’re someone who surfs the web a lot, it’s something you should probably consider when buying a new laptop. And as someone such as myself who produces content for the web, I should have considered it more. It’s making it difficult for me to judge how things are going to look once they are published.

So when you are shopping for a new mobile computer, you need to ponder this, and if you are unsure how large a size is going to be, search around in Google Images for an image of a size similar to what your new screen will be, and get some idea of what you can expect.

My Mother called me today because she needed something right away. Is this an unusual occurrence? No, she calls me a lot to help her out—she is 88 and afraid of falling so she calls me to do the heavy stuff. The interesting thing is that she called me when I was in my car on my way to the bank. Yep, she called my cell phone from her cell phone. For some people cell phones are like an appendage for my mother they are a mystery and for her to actually call mine was a giant step forward in her tech training.

I researched phones of every kind with every payment program until I was dizzy. She wanted simple—no bells and whistles and certainly no big monthly bill. After days of searching I finally found it—pay as you go. Beautiful in its simplicity and brilliant in its service—you can make calls if you have paid for the time. You can buy very little time or thousands of minutes and most of the purchases can be made on online. The phones are generally very simple and therefore do not cost an arm and a leg. The amount of minutes you buy are your choice and there are no extra doodads you don’t want. Simple, simple, simple!!

Many service providers for full service plans have ‘go phone’ or pay as you go plans—the one I chose is done by T-mobile. I was so impressed with their service and plan that I also got one for myself to use when my ‘bells and whistles’ phone is out of power or has no service. The beauty of these phones is there is not a great financial investment to make you feel bad if you find that you hate the phone or just decide you are not a cell phone kind of person. Don’t feel bad if you decide that cells phones aren’t for you—it happens!

At that point you can just store the phone away and if your minutes expire (look into the deals for minutes that last a year) and you decide you want to try again all you have to do is contact the provider again and buy more minutes. There is absolutely no reason for you not to be able to try a cell phone and see if it is for you. New territory can be scary but there are very few unknowns with these plans and that should be a comfort.

First of all I want all of my readers to know that I am not on the Apple payroll. That being said, I invite you to visit the new glories of the Apple iPod Touch.

This week has been extremely stressful for me as I once again prepare to leave town for the road part of my job. Yes, I am a road warrior. I stay in too many hotels, eat too much fast food and up until now I carried way to much equipment with me in and out of said hotel rooms.

As I have stated, my laptop weighs a ton and that weight plus the weight of my computer bag is sometimes too much to face when I roll into the hotel at midnight. I admit I have let my e-mail go for two or three days because I didn’t want to drag that laptop out. Most hotels have a business center but there is almost always someone using it for hours checking out eBay or playing blow up the aliens for hours and I don’t have the strength to wait.

So now I have a new piece of equipment that allows me to leave the ten pound weight in that 20 pound bag while I check my e-mail and make sure my website is up to date without waiting to see what new aliens have attacked New York. My iPod Touch is my new friend. Since I have been home for a week (a grand amount of time in my world) I decided to treat my evenings as though I was on the road. I have checked my e-mail, surfed the web for wholesale product and even looked at pictures of the same puppies that were licking my feet at the time. It is so extremely simple that I often check with my son (my own personal techie) to make sure I am not breaking it. Turn it on and off with one button—turn it off without having to close programs. That is right –just push the button when you are in AOL or on a website and there you go—you are off! When you turn it on again it goes back to where you were, but there is no problem in going back to your icons to choose where else you want to go. I don’t have to provide passwords for e-mail—the iPod Touch knows what to do. E-mail takes half the time—more time for a hot shower!! The only glitch I have found in the AOL e-mail area is that once you read an e-mail it is transferred into your old file and no longer shows up on the new page. This seems to be peculiar to AOL only but I have not researched my other e-mail providers.

As more cities are attempting to Wi-Fi their boundaries I am sure that internet connections will become super available and simple, but while I wait for the whole country to be one giant connection I am going to research various businesses for connectivity. As I start this next series of road warrior adventures I am going to visit various advertised locations to check out their purported consumer friendly connections and the untapped glories of my Touch. I will, I hope, be happily reporting that everything works as advertised and that I am a happy little warrior. I’ll be back soon.