Internet Wars

Computer Care: The right ISP, browser can make Web surfing faster

By Arthur Glazer
arthur@glazerthepctech.com

POSTED Feb. 6, 2010 4:16 p.m.

How do you connect to the Internet? You use a browser connected to an Internet service provider, your ISP. In Gainesville, that usually means most of you use either Internet Explorer or Firefox browsers with AT&T’s DSL (digital subscriber line) or Charter’s cable, both considered to be broadband connections.

If you still have a dial-up connection, stop reading now and call one of those ISPs to upgrade. It’s the second decade of the 21st century. There is no reason to be on a slow dial-up connection anymore. Your browser should show images instantly, not load them line by line.

So which is faster, DSL or cable? It’s like the current cell phone ads. They each claim to be the best.
Actually cable is faster than DSL, but there is a caveat. There is a bottleneck with cable; the more users online in your neighborhood, the slower the connection. DSL, on the other hand connects at a slower, albeit constant speed. If you check your e-mail just before dinner, DSL will probably be faster. But wait until after midnight when there are fewer folks online and cable should prove to be faster.

They are both fast, fast enough and way faster than dial-up, including optimized dial-up.

No matter which service you subscribe to, your modem will fail to forward a signal every now and then. When that happens, it is time to reset the modem. This may occur in bad weather or when local construction or maintenance crews are in your neighborhood causing service to become intermittent.

To reset your modem (cable or DSL), just unplug the power cord from the back of the box for about half a minute. Plug it back in and refresh your browser. You should be good to go.

If you have a wireless router, unplug it for 30 seconds as well. After the time is up, first plug in the modem and wait for the lights to settle down, about 15 seconds. Then plug the router back in. When its lights settle down, refresh your browser and try to get online again.

You could of course, call your ISP’s tech support and wait on hold for 40 minutes only to eventually get an agent. They will tell you what I just did. Why the ISPs don’t make this fix general knowledge, I’ll never know.
Unplug the modem and router if you have one. Wait 30 seconds on each before plugging them back in, and then refresh your browser. It is that simple.

Speaking of browsers, I prefer Mozilla’s Firefox to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. It is faster, more secure and highly customizable. It has a Google search bar built in and it is even customizable. There is a plethora of add-ons and themes for Firefox, all free to download. It will even save your passwords if you want it to.

For those of you who just use vanilla-flavored browsers, add-ons allow you to customize page appearance, your connection speed, the tabs, your bookmarks, not just making things look pretty but making practical improvements while enhancing your browsing experience.

Internet Explorer just recently jumped on the tabbed bandwagon with its new versions. Other browsers like, Opera, Safari and Google’s newcomer, Chrome, are also good options. The latter claims ease of use and efficiency with movable tabs. So if you’re stuck with Explorer just because it came with Windows, take one of the others for a test drive. You may be pleasantly surprised.

The Google search bar is not just for searches. You can convert times, weights, currency, languages and more. If you want to look up a word, simply type in the box “define: your word” and hit Enter. It is very useful.

However wonderful a search engine Google is, Dogpile is better for research. It combines the resources of Google, Yahoo, Ask and Bing, offering a thoroughly comprehensive response to your query.

Whichever service you use to search the Internet, you can fine tune it by using a Boolean search. Click on the advanced link to find it. With a Boolean search, you can add search terms like “and,” “or” and “not.” This drastically cuts down superfluous page hits.

If you’re looking at Greece for example, to search for an upcoming vacation, by adding Boolean terms it can save you from scrolling through dozens of useless hits. Use “Greece not history” or “Greece and tourism” to save time.

For now there is only one Internet. Eventually, the folks who made it will make another and keep it to themselves, leaving the likes of us out of it. They built the information superhighway and are now working on the HOV lane with restricted access.

Could you blame them? They are trying to communicate about particle theories and avoiding cosmic collisions. We clutter it up with You Tube videos and spam.

So whichever search engine, browser or ISP you use, it’s all good. It will all get you there. It will also be a lot faster than it was a few short years ago in the last millennium.

Arthur Glazer is a freelance writer and computer technician in Gainesville. His column appears biweekly. Arthur welcomes your computer questions and ideas for future columns.

Speed Up Your PC

Computer Care: Steps to help clean out and speed up PCs

By Arthur Glazer
arthur@glazerthepctech.com

POSTED Jan. 26, 2010 12:24 p.m.

So you bought your spouse a new computer last month and now you realize just how slow yours really is. Or maybe you already knew it wasn’t as fast as it used to be. Even that brand new laptop may be bogged down with unnecessary enhancements. We’ve gone over some of this before, but talking about making your computer faster is worth repeating.

To make some basic adjustments, you don’t need a technician. With a few mouse clicks, your system could be more responsive. There are some trade-offs though. You may have to do without a menu fade or a transparent window. It sure is cool to see your folders spin by on your desktop like a Rolodex, but you sacrifice speed to do it.

What Microsoft calls visual enhancements, I call smoke and mirrors. All it really does in the end is leave you with less system resources to do what you need to do: compute.

Let’s start with XP. Go to My Computer and right-click on it. Go to Properties and choose the Advanced tab and then Settings. Choose Best Performance from there. Then add checks in the boxes with shadow options, leaving the rest unchecked. It just makes it easier to see the pointer and icons with shadows.

Click Apply and then OK. While you are there, look at the General tab to see how much system memory you have installed. About midway you’ll see something like 512 MB or 2 GB RAM. Make a note of it and go back to the Advanced tab where you can adjust the virtual memory.

Click on Change in the center of the box and set both values to 1.5 times what your RAM is, that figure you just wrote down. Click on Set, Apply, OK and close that box. It will then tell you that you need to reboot for it to take effect.

In Vista, right-click the desktop and choose Personalize and then go to Appearance, then Effects. Keep only the shadow option checked.

In Windows 7, right-click on Computer, go to Properties and then Advanced system settings, then first settings option.

A huge resource hog is the Sidebar. If you don’t really need it, you’ll reclaim much lost speed by turning it off. In Vista, click Start and type sidebar and then click on sidebar properties. Uncheck the top box to disable it.

In Windows 7, gadgets are independent of a sidebar. To customize or terminate gadgets, right-click on the desktop and then choose Gadgets.

Some techs don’t believe in defragmenting the hard drive anymore or using registry utilities. The arguments are that with the huge size of today’s drives, it just isn’t necessary to defrag like we used to.

I would agree if you have a 500 GB drive that is only 10 percent full. But there are still 60 GB drives out there and users with huge music and photo collections. They fill up a drive quickly. A hard drive likes contiguous free disk space to operate efficiently and that’s what defragging does. So unless you’ve got scads of empty space, I’d keep doing it.

Speaking of full hard drives; your system won’t run properly if your drive is almost full. Windows needs 15 percent of the disk to create virtual memory or a swap file in order to operate efficiently.

As far as the registry goes, it is indeed a dangerous place to go if you don’t know what you’re doing. In a few clicks of the mouse you can turn a new computer into a doorstop.

But if you use a registry utility cautiously, you can delete unneeded values and reduce the overall size of the registry by defragging it. But know what you are deleting as there is no undo button in the registry.

Consolidate your icons. If you have lots of addresses, docs or pdf icons all over your desktop, create folders for them. Right-click on the desktop, choose New, and then Folder. Name it and just drag the icons into it.

Remember to empty your Recycle Bin regularly and dump your temp files and system caches. There are many utilities that will do it for you.

A bloated system will also slow down to a crawl. If you have programs installed on it that you don’t use, get rid of them. Go to Control Panel and remove them from there.

The best way to speed up your system is to add more physical memory to it. It is inexpensive and (relatively) easy to do. If you’re not comfortable with popping the cover off and looking for your RAM modules, go to crucial.com or memory.com. Those sites will tell you how much memory you currently have, how much your computer can handle and what it would cost to upgrade. In many cases you could double your RAM for $50.

Even if you don’t add RAM, these few adjustments will add responsiveness to your computer. There are more tweaks as well as services to turn off, but like your computer, this column has reached capacity.

Arthur Glazer is a freelance writer and computer technician in Gainesville. His column appears biweekly and on gainesvilletimes.com. Arthur welcomes your computer questions and ideas for future columns.

A Technology Retrospective

Computer Care: High-technology use has exploded in the last decade

By Arthur Glazer
arthur@glazerthepctech.com

UPDATED Jan. 2, 2010 1 a.m.

The first 10 years of life goes by the slowest. Think about it. You’re a child and you go to school. Every day is pretty much the same as the last. The monotony seems to go on forever. Every decade thereafter though, seems to quicken the pace somewhat.

In contrast, this past decade flew by. It seems like we were just anticipating the new millennium and here we are looking at 2010. But look back on what technology has given us in the last decade.

The cell phone grew up, along with personal computers and Internet use. We put iPods in our pockets, Bluetooth to our ears and plasma in our televisions. We love them and can’t live without them. Although it seems we’ve had this technology forever, it hasn’t been very long at all.

Consider looking back even further for a moment. We have come a long way. Post-World War II, we still had black-and-white televisions with rabbit ears and dial telephones with cords. We listened to monaural records and loved them. There were no cell phones, microwaves or space shuttles. Blackberries grew wild and computers were giant things that the government used. We are advancing at an incredible rate.

At the turn of the previous century, we were still getting used to the ideas of automobiles and light bulbs. Look how far we have come in that relatively short period of time from Edison and Ford to Jobs and Gates.

In the past year alone, our computers got smaller, faster and cheaper. We got a new version of Windows, perhaps not totally new, but a whole lot better than Vista. Google gave us the Chrome browser as an alternative to Internet Explorer and Firefox. Cell phones matured and got smarter over the last 10 years. Mobile computing has grown to the point that there are now laws against driving while texting (DWT?)

Gmail and the iPhone both grew up and grew in popularity. Facebook took off like nothing before. As of November, it reached more than a quarter-billion users. Consider it has only been around since 2003. To put that in perspective, ponder the following: Radio was around for 38 years before it had a mere 50 million listeners. It took television 13 years to gain that much of an audience. The Internet took only four years, in the U.S. alone, to reach 50 million users.

Computer use is said to reach the 2 billion mark this coming year. It hit 1 billion worldwide in 2002. The iPod sold 20 million units late this year. Facebook surpassed 300 million users in seven short years. The personal computer itself did not initially see that kind of growth.

Not everyone uses Gmail or has an iPhone, but it seems like everyone does have a Facebook account and at least one computer. We do love our technology.

So what will it have in store for us in the future? Well in the next year anyway, there will be some advancements.

Intel and AMD say we will see more cores added to our computer processors next year. We currently have dual and some quad cores. USB 3.0 will be out this spring, supposedly. It will be lots faster than its predecessors. Although backward compatible, the new hardware will come with a new plug. Just what I need; more cables.

Windows 7 will probably have its initial service pack, SP1 in 2010. All the "suites" will have their 2010 versions. I foresee Tune-Up 2010, Comodo 2010, Kaspersky, McAfee and Norton 2010, but I’m just speculating. Office 2010 will be there for certain, as it is already out in beta now.

I imagine touch screens will make more of a presence this coming year. Mobile computing will continue to grow as the ubiquitous cell phone matures.

We will undoubtedly be taking more to the road in coming years. The mobile office is the new wave.

Faster Wi-Fi and Ethernet is just around the corner. More municipalities will offer free Wi-Fi. Currently you may only find it in a few cities or coffee shops. New York City has a handful of free hot spots with more on the way. So does Seattle, Los Angeles, Denver and Cincinnati.

Even locally, until recently places like Starbucks offered Wi-Fi at a fee. But now it is free there, as well as at Panera’s, Atlanta Bread Company, Cici’s Pizza and a few other places around Gainesville.

The new multi-core Star Trek-like products will supposedly enhance our home office and home lifestyles. Many things will be tied together or networked – and not just our computers, either.

Ten years ago we couldn’t imagine hanging our TVs on the wall or communicating like Capt. Kirk. Today it’s a reality. It appears that Scotty is indeed getting ready to beam us aboard.

I don’t know about you, but I look forward to knowing what future technology lies around the corner in the coming decade. I only hope this one goes by more slowly.

Mr. Scott — Energize!

Arthur Glazer is a freelance writer and computer technician in Gainesville. His column appears biweekly.

USB Gadgets for your PC

Computer Care: USB port options run the gamut

By Arthur Glazer
arthur@glazerthepctech.com

UPDATED Dec. 18, 2009 10:09 p.m.

I am a gadget freak. This should be no surprise to you since you know that I fix and write about computers. Some of the coolest gadgets for computers come in the form of USB-powered devices. So let’s depart today from the usual "how to fix your computer" and find some practical and unusual gadgets for it instead.

A quick primer: USB is Universal Serial Bus, a device-type and port on computers, invented in 1996. It's the flat, rectangular-shaped plug. We are currently at version 2.0, which is 40 times faster than its predecessor, version 1.1. The latest incarnation, USB 3.0, is already here, but we won’t see the devices for it for a few months. They will be faster yet.

When you hear USB, you probably think of flash drives, maybe a mouse, keyboard, webcam or laptop cooler pad. But there is more than that - much more. I have portable storage devices, laptop lamps, Bluetooth chargers and hubs in my collection, and that doesn’t even scratch the surface.

The pocket flash drives that started with a mere 16 megabytes, now store upward of 128 gigabytes (from Kingston). FYI: 1,024 MB = 1 GB. You can get an 8 GB stick now for $20.

Today’s USB flash drives not only store your data, but can encrypt it, password-protect it and tell you how much space you have left on the device. There are also those with biometric fingerprint scanners or facial recognition for real security. These are a far throw from the old vanilla 2 MB drives of the last decade.

If you’re using Vista or Windows 7, alternatively you can use today’s flash drives to boost your system’s memory instead of using it for storage. This is especially helpful if you don’t have much memory to begin with. Windows will ask you what you want to do with the device when you plug it in.

It’s worth noting that not all USB flash drives are the boring black plastic type they started out as years ago. You can now get them decorated with jewels, carved from hardwood or a chunk of steel. They can be for the keychain or pocket, neck or wrist or double as a pen. You can of course, still get black plastic.

Desktop USB units are able to store terabytes of data now. (A terabyte is 1,024 gigabytes.) But more common are the 300-500 GB desktop devices and the 100-300 GB portables.

If you want fancy, there are more than storage devices built for USB. On the practical side, you might consider getting someone a laptop lamp for late night computing or USB personal fan; a multiport hub (I’ve seen from 2 to 16 ports in all shapes and sizes), a keyboard vacuum, beverage warmer, mini-water cooler or mini-fridge as a gift this holiday season. How about a smoke-sucking ashtray or an aroma therapy dispenser? All are great gifts for the desk. There are also shavers and neck, leg and foot warmers. These all plug into a USB port.

Everyone needs a digital card reader. Most have multiple slots one will most certainly accommodate your cameras card. Some even read your phone’s SIM card.

For fun, you can get a mini-aquarium, a missile launcher, TV tuner, microscope or a lava lamp, all USB-powered. Did I mention lava lamps? How about a Mr. Spock USB Pez dispenser?

The nice thing about USB as compared to other type devices is that you can hot swap them. By that, I mean you can plug or unplug them at will. With other port types (video, PS2, serial), you need to power down the system to do that. If you plug in a PS2 mouse, for example (the small round plug), without turning your computer off first, it won’t work. With a USB mouse, it doesn’t matter if you do or not.

Speaking of mice, there are always wired and wireless USB mice (and keyboards) to consider. For the wireless, you plug one part into the USB port and it talks to the device, sans cord.

So where can you find these things? Mostly online, I would guess. Look on Web sites like thinkgeek.com, cyberguys.com, coolest-gadgets.com and usbgadgets.org. The last two, especially, have an extensive listing of unique and affordable USB gadgets. In the neighborhood, check out Frys, as they always have a good selection.

USB gadgets have come a long way from just being small storage devices and printers. Swiss Army knives now have an option of a USB flash drive folded into them. You can play your old vinyl LPs on a USB-powered turntable or slip on a pair of computer-heated slippers.

I not only look forward to the upcoming USB technology, but I’d like to see what they think of putting it in next.

Keep this information in mind while shopping this week. Have a happy computing season and to all a good byte.

Arthur Glazer is a freelance writer and computer technician in Gainesville. His column appears biweekly. Arthur welcomes your computer questions and ideas for future columns.

Computer Trash

Computer Care: Take out the trash on your computer

By Arthur Glazer
arthur@glazerthepctech.com

POSTED Dec. 5, 2009 1:30 a.m.

Everyone uses their computers with little regard as to maintenance. I’m not talking about running virus checkers or scanning for malware. That was another column and we’ve already covered it. What I’m referring to is the regular task of taking out the trash.

It involves more than just right-clicking on the recycle bin. There are hosts of other places where garbage accumulates in the computer. Utilities exist to assist in this task that you may or may not have, but it can be done manually as well.

Junks files to consider deleting on a regular basis include temporary Internet files, temporary system files, the history cache from your browsers, old e-mails and their attachments, downloaded programs, music, photos and videos.

Now I’m not calling your music or video collection junk, but once you have them, it’s best to move them off of your hard drive to a safer location. It will keep your drive clean and protect your files should the computer crash.

Copy your collection of files you don’t want to throw out to an external hard drive, flash drive or burn them to CDs or DVDs as size warrants.

The more clutter you have on your system, the slower it can be. It decreases overall performance and slows down boot time.

Personally, I am a sucker for downloading free programs. I like to try new things out and among other sites, subscribe to downloadoftheday.com. It’s a great site, and every once in a while, I find a program that I can use and need to keep. It’s the others I need to be careful with. Programs can accumulate and before you know it, the desktop is full of icons and suddenly it takes five minutes to boot again.

So I’ve learned (the hard way) it’s best to immediately delete what I download and find I won’t be using. I tend to forget about them otherwise. It’s easy to tell yourself you’ll delete them later or that you might use them one day. You won’t.

A good place to look for unused programs and their installers are on the desktop, in the Download folder and in Program Files, under the Windows or Users folder, depending on which version of Windows you have.

Remember to delete both the installer package you’ve downloaded as well as uninstalling the program itself.

Think of programs you may have downloaded like Adobe Reader, Firefox, an Internet Explorer upgrade or a Windows update. Each leaves an installer icon behind after its installation. Even if you keep the program, you don’t need that installer.

If you do want to get rid of the program, use the uninstaller that comes with windows or a third-party application that uninstalls programs. You should also check the program in doubt. Occasionally they uninstall themselves. Look in the Start menu for that option. Deleting the desktop icon only does just that.

A good, free tool is Decrapifier that you can find on the Internet. It will help you delete a plethora of unwanted applications from your system.

After you’ve deleted some, it’s a good idea to run a registry tool to tidy up any remnants left behind from the programs you just got rid of. Those tidbits of data can contribute to affecting the performance of your computer.

E-mails tend accumulate on everyone’s system. It’s not just the letters themselves, but as I mentioned earlier, the attachments that come with them. The video that you downloaded and thought was initially so amusing will most likely never be watched again. Get rid of it.

The photos your mom sent you of the dog are great, but don’t need to reside on the hard drive. Move them to another permanent location.

Your e-mail client (Outlook, Outlook Express, Mail) will archive your old e-mails for you. Even if you use Web mail (AOL, Yahoo, Gmail) there should also be a choice to be able to archive your old incoming.

Your browser has a setting to automatically dump its cache when you close it. It’s a setting worth changing.

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s worth saying again: There are almost always programs in your start-up group that don’t need to be there. By getting rid of them, you won’t necessarily cut down on system clutter, but your computer will start faster.

From the start button, click Run, type msconfig and go to the startup tab. All of those items with check boxes start when Windows does. Uncheck what doesn’t need to start each time the computer boots up.

These programs are running in the background all of the time. So it’s not just a slower boot time, but a degraded overall system performance allowing all of those items to run.

After you uncheck the one you don’t want (keep the antivirus and anti-malware ones), click Apply, then OK and reboot. When it reboots you’ll see a message advising you a change was made, Just click OK and continue.

So if you remember to empty the trash at regular intervals and run a few utilities or do a little extra work, your system will thank you for it. It will be healthier and will run faster.

Arthur Glazer is a freelance writer and computer technician in Gainesville. His column appears biweekly.

Computing and the Internet

Computer Care: Even with its ails, Internet has changed our lives forever

By Arthur Glazer
arthur@glazerthepctech.com

UPDATED Nov. 21, 2009 12:18 a.m.

Some say the Internet is our downfall. Others insist it is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Although I’m not a huge Facebook fan, haven’t really used eBay in years and don’t download music, I think the Internet has changed the way we communicate and do business. I’m an e-advocate for certain.

Sure, it has its evils. It is a community and just like any town, it has its seedy parts. There are those waiting to steal our data and identities. There are pedophiles stalking its dark streets and the Internet makes it easy for them. But also thanks to the Internet, we can find out which, if any of them live in our neighborhood.

Some computer/Internet users sit in front of their monitors for hours on end, never seeing the light of day. This, of course is the extreme. You’ve got to know when to shut down and walk the dog.

I’ve made a living from the Internet for many years now. Many of you read this online. I fix your computers that allow you to access the Internet. I can also remotely repair your computer via the Internet without leaving my house.

I have traversed the Information Super Highway since it was a dirt road. It’s been good to me. I buy things online, from clothes to prescriptions. I do banking, pay my bills and have video chats online with my daughter who lives two states away. I even met my wife and found my last dog online.

Before I had a GPS, I printed maps from the Web. I’ve planned vacations, made hotel reservations, bought airfare and rented cars from my computer. I’ve visited virtual places that I couldn’t drive or fly to. Some cities have webcams in real time. You can see the Eiffel Tower from your laptop as it is right now.

Some of us will remember when we had to rely on multivolume encyclopedias with annual updates to do any kind of research at all. Now we can find virtually anything online and it is updated daily in most cases.

Classified ads, too, have evolved. Not only are there auction sites like eBay, but we have sites like Criagslist, that make finding things to buy (or free) easier than before. There are job sites like Monster and Career Builder for those in need of employment.

Whether looking for a job, across town or across country; or seeking a part for your ’70 Camaro, what used to take hours or days now takes seconds or minutes.

I often read the news online, look up phone numbers, facts, words, the weather and even do research for this column when needs be. I use the Internet for research, from recipes to finding computer parts or for keeping up with the latest technology.

To aid us with these searches, we have engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. Even a novice can find what they need in minutes with their help.

And there is fun to be had as well. I’ve reconnected with friends I hadn’t seen in 30 years in the little time I’ve spent on Facebook.

Gamers play each other online, often across town or even the country.

We can also watch TV online now thanks to sites like Hulu and Fancast. We can also download music, books, magazines and newspapers to listen or read on our computers or portable devices.

The Internet has manifested itself in mobility products as laptops, netbooks, cell phones and portable computing devices like the Blackberry and Iphone.

E-mail is probably the single most used part of the Internet. When was the last time any of you actually penned a letter to anyone? Why bother; we have e-mail. We can attach photos, videos and music and audio to our correspondences. It’s easy, fun and it is quicker than snail mail.

Thanks to e-mail, I have stayed in contact with friends and relatives I might never have written to otherwise. Call it impersonal if you must, but it keeps us connected.

Yes, I get viruses, adware, spam and letters from the Nigerian Treasury Minister as we all do. But I think the good far outweighs the bad.

Although admittedly, I would rather hold a magazine, book or newspaper in my hands, I still read my fair share online.

The computer and the Internet are a couple of incredible tools that have changed our ways of life, like it or not. They have opened doors that were not visible or even there a mere 20 years ago. They have broadened our horizons, opened our eyes and enriched our lives.

Things will never go back the way they were. The Internet will continue to grow and emerge. I wouldn’t want go back to how it was before we had cell phones and I certainly wouldn’t want to do without my computer and the Internet.

Arthur Glazer is a freelance writer and computer technician in Gainesville. His column appears biweekly. Arthur welcomes your computer questions and ideas for future columns.

64-bit Computing v 32-bit

Computer Care: PCs speeding up, bit by bit

By Arthur Glazer
arthur@glazerthepctech.com

POSTED Nov. 6, 2009 10:55 p.m.

Here we are, leaving the era of 32-bit computing and entering that of 64-bit. It is more powerful, uses system resources more efficiently and doesn’t cost much more. One drawback is that hardly anyone knows what it is.

Although 64-bit technology has been around for years, only Linux users or those running servers really use it. Even today, there are not that many applications written to take advantage of all that 64-bit computing has to offer.

Enter Vista and now Windows 7. The operating systems are shipped with two discs, one 32-bit and one 64. Until recently mostly everyone, myself included, used the 32-bit option. That’s what our computers were. We had a 32-bit operating system with 32-bit processors, running 32-bit apps.

Now it’s all about to change. Not only has the core doubled, but the processing power as well. With a true 64-bit system you should be able to process things twice as fast as before.

So which do you have? If you go to the My Computer icon and right-click on it, then go down to Properties, you’ll see somewhere in all that technical jargon where it says which of the two systems you are running.

OK, but what does it all mean? A bit is a binary digit of either 0 or 1, which is the smallest unit of data in a computer. There are eight bits to a byte and in most systems, four bytes, or octets, that form a 32-bit word which is the instructions in a computation. Until now that is, when 64-bit computing enters the picture.

Most computers process data in bunches of 32 bits and could handle only four gigabytes of system memory, or RAM. Not only can they now handle 64 bits of data at a time, but these computers can handle – ready for this – 192 GB under Windows 7, theoretically much more. That’s 48 times what we are currently used to. Remember when we thought 256 megabytes of RAM was considered a lot? It was only a few short years ago.

But there really is no need to jump on this consumer treadmill. If you’ve got something that works, stick with it. The chances of most of us needing that kind of processing is slim, unless you do video editing, work extensively with Photoshop, use Computer Aided Design software, or you absolutely must have the fastest computer on the block. Then in those cases, 64-bit is for you.

To take full advantage of this technology, you will need a 64-bit processor running a 64-bit operating system with matching drivers and 64-bit apps to go with them, the last of which is difficult to come by. You can though, run things backward compatible. A 32-bit application (most of them) can run in a faster environment, but not vice versa. You can’t run a 64-bit program in a 32-bit environment.

There are differences here between Windows and a Mac. The latter 64-bit is actually a hybrid, having both 32 and 64-bit components to it. For that reason, it will run any type of program. Windows 64-bit is only that and is the reason it will occasionally have problems running 32-bit apps.

If you are a home user with a computer that has 4 GB of RAM under a 32-bit architecture, there is really no need to upgrade your hardware.

If you have a 64-bit system, 4 GB of RAM will prove inadequate, as it needs more memory to process. Not only will it take more RAM, it will demand it. The biggest drawback is that there are few 64-bit applications written.

I don’t think the 32-bit system will be taken off the market just yet. The new stuff is there if you want it, but until there are lots of apps to run under it, 32-bit computing probably won’t be going away anytime soon.

Even if you get a new 64-bit computer, you can install the 32-bit version of Windows 7 if you like, with most of your old software. There is a caveat. Your antivirus and drivers will be ineffective and you may not be able to find what you need. Many 64-bit drivers are as hard to come by as the programs. It would be like driving a Ferrari with regular gas and bad spark plugs. It will run, but not well. It defeats the point of upgrading.

One thing I would do though is upgrade your memory. I have seen more systems that don’t even have a gig of RAM installed. It’s cheap, it’s easy and it will make an incredible improvement on how your computer operates.

Get a gigabyte or two if you are running a 32-bit system. With a 64-bit system, get as much as you can afford if you think your programs warrant it.

Until 64-bit computers become mainstream, developers won’t be writing many programs for them. Unless you really need it, I’d be content with a fast 4 gig, 32-bit system.

Arthur Glazer is a freelance writer and computer technician in Gainesville. His column appears biweekly.