Joseph Moran

When you open up the Windows Task Manager and examine the Process tab, you’re likely to find dozens of different processes running on your system (I counted over sixty running on mine.) Many, if not most, of them will have unfamiliar or even cryptic names and offer little if any indication of what the process […]

If you run your business out of your home and plan on setting up a network for the first time — or expanding an existing one — installing inexpensive and ubiquitous Wi-Fi (802.11-based WLAN) equipment is a logical choice. Therefore, at first glance it might be hard to see why a product like the Actiontec […]

The amount of accumulated information on even the most well-worn PC can’t begin to compare with the vast and seemingly endless repository of information we call the World Wide Web. But knowing that usually doesn’t make the job of finding a particular file or scrap of information on your hard drive any less daunting or […]

If you spend a lot of time out on the road and use a PDA (or plan to get one), you’ve probably considered buying a device that combines both phone and PDA functions. Here’s something to think about before you buy — screen size matters. Smartphones that evolved from cell phones have extremely small screens […]

Remember when “work” meant spending the hours between 9 AM and 5 PM inside an office? These days, a small businessperson likely spends much of the day in the field performing sundry tasks including visiting clients (or securing new ones). Remote access, the ability to connect to your office PC from a client’s location or […]

Sharing a PC-connected printer over a network is still widely practiced by many small businesses, but there are many practical reasons why this isn’t the best approach. First, you have to make sure that the attached PC is always turned on and working properly. This seems simple enough but in reality, that’s sometimes easier said […]

Ask any network administrator what the toughest part of their job is, and he or she will likely respond that it’s trying to keep up with the never-ending torrent of security vulnerabilities that plague today’s networks. For every well-publicized security hole you’ve heard of, there are many others that you haven’t, and they could be […]

If you have a business and you have a network, you probably also have a firewall in place to protect it. (If you don’t, stop reading this article right now and go get one.) Of course, a network firewall can only protect those devices that are actually on the network, and if your employees’ computers […]

If you don’t back up your computer regularly, then it’s a safe bet that you’ve never experienced the horror of a hard drive crash or similarly catastrophic event that indiscriminately massacres application and data alike. If you do perform regular backups, you know that backing up to old-fashioned tape makes tectonic shift look fast by […]

It’s hard to imagine there was a time not that long ago when moving files between computers could be achieved only with slow, low-capacity, and high-hassle options like floppy, Zip, or CD-R drives. The proliferation of USB Flash drives over the past few years, on the other hand, has made possible quick and easy transport […]

If you own a PDA with a Secure Digital (SD) slot, and you’re looking to add Wi-Fi to it, you’re probably aware of a few SD-based Wi-Fi adapters now available. Dedicating your SD slot for this purpose, however, relegates you to the mere 64MB of RAM internal to most PDAs. Most people that use a […]