Computers cause emotional and physical stress; learn techniques to reduce the stress on your brain and body with these tips.

While computers can be a great tool to increase productivity in the work place or home office, they can also actually lead to many physical, emotional and worker productivity challenges.

Computer stress these days is becoming more and more problematic as we all spend increasing amounts of time at our computer workstation or laptop PC.

Here are some ways to reduce that stress and help your day go better.

Types of Computer Related Stress

PC and Computer Problems – Nothing frustrates us more than having PC problems while trying to work. And heaven forbid your hard drive fails and you lose your data. To prevent these frustrations, be sure to back up all your data files regularly! If your machine is slow, consider purchasing a new PC or Laptop Computer or periodically reformat, re-install the operating system, applications, programs and data files; all operating systems degrade over time, slowing the machine and often the installation and upgrade of programs causes system conflicts, so a fresh start is needed every once in a while!

Eye Strain – Perhaps the most common affliction that heavy users of computers suffer is eye strain. To prevent your eyes from going buggy, it’s critical to take a break away from the computer; how often depends on your age, eyesight and other factors, but a five minute break every thirty minutes at least will improve your productivity greatly. If you have an older CRT display and video card, upgrading to a larger LCD monitor and higher resolution video display card may be just the ticket.

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome – Carpal Tunnel and Repetitive Stress Syndrome are the most serious and potentially permanent problem experienced by computer users. Severe cases of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome may require surgery to correct the problem. To prevent stress in your fingers and wrists, it’s important to have the most ergonomic computer desk, keyboard and chair possible. If your hands are way above or below your chair’s armrests, chances are you need to change something. Taking regular breaks from your work is one of the best ways to prevent Repetitive Stress Syndrome.

Neck and Back Fatigue – As with eye strain and Repetitive Stress Syndrome, ergonomics are crucial to preventing fatigue in your neck and back. If you spend eight or more hours a day at your keyboard, definitely invest in the best chair you can afford. An adjustable footrest can also be helpful; try to change the position of your body often in order to keep your muscles relaxed and prevent the stress from building up!

Periodic breaks are the best way to relieve computer related stress!

Writer’s Block – If your computer related job involves design, writing or another creative endeavor, then you know writer’s block happens. When you have a bout of creative block, get away from the computer. Play a game, read a book or get together with co-workers and brainstorm for ideas; anything that helps gets the creative juices flowing!

Lack of Focus – If you check your email every five minutes, IM friends all throughout the day, surf the Net while working, or any of a thousand other possible distractions, you are like most people who lack focus. Try to schedule your time so that you can do all those things, but not while you’re working! Check email once an hour or even just twice a day, turn off Instant Messenger when you need to focus; your productivity will skyrocket if you follow these simple tips.

Improving Your Computer Ergonomics

First, make sure that your computer monitor, desk and chair are comfortable for you to sit and work in. The monitor should be about eye level, so you don’t have to strain up or down looking at it. The keyboard should be just above your lap because that way your hands and shoulders won’t tire as easily. Choose a chair that supports your back and offers a comfortable height that you can adjust if needed.

Tips to Help Relieve Computer Related Stress

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  Now she has the right idea on stess relief on the job!
  Place both hands palms forward on the back of your head. Slowly bring your elbows back and feel the stretch in your pectoral muscles and rhomboids. These two sets of muscles (pectoral and rhomboids) work together and when you work with your hands in front of you at a keyboard the pectoral muscles are contracted while the rhomboids are extended. This stretch allows both of them to relax.
• Interlace fingers palms down and bring your elbows up, this will stretch your fingers. Rotate your wrists in clockwise then counterclockwise circles. This will help combat repetitive stress injuries.
• Look away from the computer and get up every so often to stretch. Walk around and drink some water. Water is important for health especially if you are in a sedentary job.
• Many companies offer seated massage to their employees as a benefit. Take advantage of it; your back and body will thank you. Be sure to mention any health issues with your massage therapist, especially if you are pregnant or have problems with your spine. Start now to become aware of issues that may happen. There is no reason to continue to be stressed out while at the computer.

Electronic waste products are becoming a problem increasingly in many areas of the country.

Computers and computer equipment do have some very significant kids of heavy metal as well as lead that is dangerous to people and to the environment.

There are alternatives to having it hauled away to a landfill.

The smartest and best one is simply to pass it along to someone else.

This prevents having to recycle it and gives a computer that is workable to someone who may not have one at all, and would certainly not mind having one that isn’t state of the art.

Many if not most people would find a way to use it who do not have one and many groups, including in our own state of Nebraska, CPU4All, will fix the small problems, and pass it along to other people who may be in need of one, particularly children and the elderly.

Some computer manufacturers have come out with programs to recycle the computers and if you pay a small fee, they will pick it up for you. Some companies such as Hewlett Packard will even award you points toward a new purchase. For information on that pay a visit to HP Recycle

In the US, if you need a place to put an older but still functional computer, you can contact the the National Cristina Foundation (NCF) who help to provide computers to people with disabilities, and economically disadvantaged persons as well as students at risk.

According to Energy Star these web sites also help to connect computers that are up for grabs, with those who need them.
“Share the Technology Computer Recycling Project – provides a searchable national computer donation database to connect computer donors and charities seeking donations.”
~ National Technology Recycling Project – constantly updated, nationwide directory to find the non-profit computer recycler closest to you.”

Don’t waste the technology and add to the pollution.
Find a way to make your older computer work for someone who may not otherwise have one.

NASA, The DOD, Microsoft, the New York Times, have this in common.

They’ve all been hacked. It’s big business, and even if the hacker makes no profit, it was just good fun for the hacker, its a pain in the neck.

Strange, ironic, Google’s blog had a hacking incident just days after their post telling about their good security was published.

A security flaw permitted it to happen to Adwords in April of this very year, allowing a malicious file to be installed into adwords users systems to retrieve their passwords and some personal information

In the Internet savvy world we live in, where everything can be bought on the web for a price, hacking those sites who may have personal information or credit cards is a huge business worth a fortune.

Small sites, even those which sometimes sell things, tend to rely on a thing that we used to term, security by obscurity.
What it meant was that since they were small, and a faceless nonentity, they just assumed that the site was safe because no one really noticed it, it wasn’t that big and it wasn’t a real target.

Up to a point that’s true, but even one credit card number, even one flaw that lets someone use your site to do something somewhere else, is just one too many when its used in a detrimental way.

Your best defense against the hackers and script kiddies of the world is to find a way to defend yourself, not to hide.

While there are some superb software’s out there guaranteed to defend you, and you certainly should use one of them, one of the best defenses that you are going to have is plain old common sense.

About fifty percent of the hacks today are accomplished using something called social engineering.
One very popular bumper sticker among the geeks of the world says, “become a social engineer, because there is no patch for human stupidity”.

Sadly enough that seems to be true. If you don’t know someone, at least a minimal knowledge, including having their real phone number, and their real address, don’t pass along your web site login information.

That’s common sense right? But it would amaze you how many people meet someone, either online or offline, and pass along their login information, and let the person store files with them, which may or may not be illegal files.

Just a few common sense rules are going to help you get through your Internet experience without big incidents.
IF you sell on your site, make sure you know about the software you are using and check it out for security flaws.

Limit the permission to your site to people who need it, those who work for you or who you know reasonably well, whose personal information you have, and have tested it to be sure its real.

Know how to maintain your own servers and email servers. Having a knowledge of your own equipment will help a lot.

Keep close track of your logs. Don’t check them monthly or expect someone else to do it for you, unless that someone is your assistant. Check them every few days and pay close attention for strange activities there.

ALWAYS back up your site on a regular basis.

Keep all blog and forum site software updated and check for security holes. Software’s such as this are the very best way to enter a site.

There are printers that scan, copy, print to photo printers, include a fax and combine technologies.

So how do you choose the right printer for your particular needs?

To begin with, determine what your needs are. Which type of printer is right for what you are going to use it for.

Considerations in printers might include, scanning, faxing, print quality, speed, cost per page, the quality of the graphics as well as extra features you might want, such as an lcd screen, the ability to connect wirelessly, a memory card reader, or even the amount of noise it makes printing.

In the old days, in other words, a long time ago when I started using one, there wasn’t much choice to be honest and the ones you had were pretty fast to make, because laser printers were so expensive as to be ridiculous to buy and you simply couldn’t afford one. We all had inkjet, and we all liked it, or ponied up the thousand or so dollars it took to get something better.

Today, lase printers start at about 100 dollars and
the line between inkjet and laser has blurred enough to be insignificant.

Laser printers of course have some advantages

* Speed: They can turn out a lot faster pages

* Low cost: a laser printer will total far less per page

* Noise: A laser printer is generally quieter

* Quality: no matter how much you pay for it an inkjet will never offer the crisp texts that a laser will.

Inkjet printer advantages:

Price: Still cheaper, you can find a great one for well under 100 dollars now, with Hewlett Packard offering some very crisp quality for about 40 dollars.

* Versatility: You can print to craft paper, tee shirt transfers, and even cd discs.

Size: Lots smaller, they are going to fit your home office in a much better way.

Paper sizes: Kick up a few extra bucks and you can get a large sized printer that will print out 11 x 17 inch sheets.

Inkjet printers also produce some incredibly stunning photo colors that are going to be more than acceptable for your printed photos.

Photo printers are designed especially to make your photos the best quality they can be, and some will rival even a professionally done 35 mm print.

They use the best-quality inkjet technology available, or they rely on another technology that is called dye-sublimation .It transfers heated solid dye from a ribbon to specially coated paper, giving you that the same continuous tone that you see in a photograph produced from a negative.

The inkjet and photo printers both use the same basic method for putting ink on paper: Tiny balls of ink are shot directly onto the paper.

Inkjet printers can cost a great deal less, and will not, as in the old days, be wet when they come out of the printer, so the days of the messy photos and texts are just about over.

For my money, inkjet is better because I still find laser cost prohibitive unless its a necessity for your home office.

Canon Printers are crisp, clean and state of the art and are my choice for the best for home PC. YOu can find a Canon PIXMA iP4300 Inkjet Printer for about 100 USD and the print quality is nearly unbeatable in a home printer.

The Epson Stylus Photo R800 is a great little printer for photos, but I personally didn’t find it marketly superior in print quality than the Canon which was odd considering that the retail is about four times the price at about 400 USD.

Hewlett Packard produces some fine printers, but to my eye, they don’t match the quality and speed of the Canon, however, if you are looking for decent quality at a low cost, Walmart offers some Hewlett Packard printers starting at about 39.00 USD.

Virus scans tend to have tentacles in every aspect of your computer and some of them can wreak some real havoc, popping on at inopportune times, erroring or failing to update.

After looking around to find software that would assist me in keeping my personal things personal, I hunted the web to find chat programs and anti virus software that was dependable, professional, easy to use and reliable.

I personally think I’ve found the best of the best.

Having purchased Norton for three years running, I became somewhat unsatisfied when I attempted to renew it after a format, only to find that it would not renew, that when it did my months of updates were no longer there, and that if I wanted to speak to tech support about that, it was nearly impossible to do and was going to cost me significant amounts of money to fix the problem. I liked the antivirus software, and in truth find it very well done, but having

I like open source and I think theres a huge group of people out there who underrate it,thinking that somehow, if its free, its low rent or less than professional.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
ANTI-VIRUS, developed by Grisoft, offers a free version of their excellent antivirus to personal computer users for their home computers.

This is the same award winning software whose corporate version is used by many Internet service providers, by private and public networks and by me, on my networks.

AVG is easily navigated, providing ease of use, easy understanding even if you are new to anti virus sofware, has won not one, but two awars from PC Answers 2007.

“Both AVG Anti-Spyware and AVG Internet Security were given the PC Answers Recommended Award. PC Answers made note of AVG Anti-Spy ware’s removal of all major threats on the infected system, its excellent real-time protection and the program’s clear alert messages.”

While AVG free does not offer technical support, to be honest, it isn’t normally necessary
I have never had an error with my AVG on my personal computer, nor have I ever needed to have tech support because the program is both easy to use and auto updates to keep my virus definitions current every evening.

If you are looking for an antivirus for your PC, and you want the best that is available, pay a visit to the folks at Grisoft/AVG Antivirus. I think you’ll be impressed!

Your computer isn’t going to do its own maintenance much to your great dismay and sure, you can pay the Geek Squad to come take a look at it, but whats the point,when there are so many simple things that you can track down and fix yourself.

kit

Aside from saving you an incredible amount of money, since computer service and repair can run from 30 to 40 dollars an hour, its just fun and intersting to take apart your own personal computer and check out what makes it tick, or in this case, fail to tick.

Anyone can make the simple changes or upgrades necessary to keep their own computer functional with a little time and learning, but the right tools are an absolute necessity to even open the case.

Your computer professional would like you to believe that his or her toolkit cost hundreds of dollars and when they produce their often gigantic inflated and very often unused set of tools, you will well believe that it cost them the earth to collect, whent he truth of the matter is, if you truly watch one of us operating, we use only a few of the tools we own, and the rest,.as the saying goes, is just gravy.

To tell you the truth, having done computer work for several years, I can honestly admit that my own kit is overflowing with unnecessary, (but lovely and brightly colored) tools that only I can appreciate, but which often remain unused for weeks, if not months at a time.

For about 30 dollars you can have all that you need in a single kit to keep your computer functional and running at peak efficiency for months to come.

Absolute necessities in your tool kit even for the beginner are going to be:

Compressed, or canned air
a mini maglight
a set of precision screwdrivers
a smaller flat head screwdriver
a smaller sized phillips head screwdriver

the regular sized screwdrivers will be necessary to open your case, while the mini drivers will be what you need to remove a hard drive from its moorings or to take out your dvd or cd player.

THe mini mag light, is a personal favorite of mine in that there is NEVER and I do mean never enough light regardless of where your work bench is unless you are using focused track lighting which is the ideal situation, but we often aren’t working in ideal situations.

Lighting is always less than adequate and we always need more of it, which means, carry a small flash light, with a bright beam with you when you open a case anywhere at all.

I promise you it will save you a vast array of naughty words when you can’t see what you are working on for lack of light.

The can of compressed air is probably the most self explanatory tool for your computer, being the easier way to clear away months of dust from the mainboard and expansion cards. If you open the personal computer after a few months of not being cleaned you will be amazed at the accumulation of dust that lives inside it.

Spritz the canned air inside across the surface of the mainboard , but stand away from the air flow, as what you see, is definitely what you are going to get if you don’t.

Just by using that canned air on your computer every other week, you are going to add literally years to the life of your computer, preventing dust from building up inside the computer that can infest the cpu fan and prevent it from cooling adequately and perhaps saving yourself from having to purchase a new cpu for your computer.

These very basic tools can be found at nearly any good tool supply place, as well as online, particularly from folks like Tiger Direct who specialize in computers and computer repair and upgrades.

Purchase the minimum first and then decide if learning how to maintain your own pc is something you have an interest in.
If it is you can always expand later to all the neat little tools that you wont really need.. But they do look oh so impressive.

Happy Tinkering!

Each computer requires a power supply, which takes the electric from your home and converts it into a type of current that will work with your computer. The electric cord that comes out of your computer comes out of the power supply and plugs into the wall. The computer is made of various circuits, which all work together to save information and process it.

The first is the main board, or mother board, which gets its name from the fact that it is the mother of all the other circuit boards found inside your computer. Many computer companies such as Dell Computers, Compaq, and and Mac/Apple each have their own version of main boards, on board sound and so on so that it is sometimes necessary to purchase parts directly from them or from a warehouse.

You will usually find the main board, or motherboard standing up on the tower or lying down on the very bottom, if you have a desktop PC. It is the largest board in the computer and will hold the many other smaller boards which cause the computer to be able to do things.

Some of the items you may find plugged into the main board are the modem or network card, which will help you gain access to the network of computers known as the Internet. Another expansion card which you might see there is a sound card, although many motherboards now have what is known as on board sound and video, which means that rather than needing an expansion card, it is built into the motherboard, and another card is not needed.

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Motherboard The motherboard gets its name because it is like a mother to all of the other circuit boards. Found at the bottom of a desktop case or the side of a tower case, the motherboard is the largest circuit board and has many smaller boards plugged into it.

It holds all of the most important parts of the computer.

The video card displays graphics that are shown on the monitor. There are also expansion cards for other computer components including the drives and ports.

The “mind” or brain of the computer is what is called the CPU, or central processing unit, which is a chip that determines how fast or slow your computer will operate as well as controlling the information that it will process.

The CPU generates a great deal of heat, so there is usually a small sized CPU fan either seated on top of it, or nearby to cool it down.

Another very important aspect of your computer is the BIOS chip. BIOS stands for Basic Input Output System. The
BIOS chip wakes up the computer and when it is turned on, jogs the memory of the computer to tell it what it needs to do and what parts it has to do it with

ROM & RAM Have you ever heard the terms RAM and ROM? They sound very similar and are usually confused by
beginners.

RAM stands for Random Access Memory. RAM are chips that are inside your computer which will remember what you tell them and hold onto it for a time. When the computer is turned off, RAM forgets everything you told it and starts over again when the computer is turned on, which is what makes it so imperative that you save all of your work prior to turning off your computer so that you don’t lose what you were working on.

ROM means Read Only Memory. ROM is good at holding information but it is not changeable. It is burnt onto cds, and must be read, and is usually not changeable.

Ports are the places outside the computer that connect to your modem, video and audio expansion cards.

Disk drives are available in several different kinds, but what you will most likely have on your computer is a hard drive, where your operating system and software information is kept permanently, the cd drive where you add a cd and read the software from it, or a floppy, which is a small square disk that is also read.

The hard drive, however is hidden inside the computer because the disks are not meant to be removed. Information that you save on your computer is stored on these hard disks.

All of these components work together to permit your computer to read software, play games and work on graphics or other things that you use your computer to do.

If you subtract most of these components the computer simply won’t work. Keeping them in good condition is imperative and fortunately easily accomplished. To fix one of the parts of the computer that are not operational it will of course be necessary to determine which component isn’t working, however fortunately that too is easy to do.

In the next installment we’ll determine how to accomplish some hardware troubleshooting techniques.

This is also where your files are put by a computer to be worked on.. Consider it a work table for the PC. The bigger your work table, the more things you can do on your PC.

In computer terminology, the more RAM that your computer has, the more jobs it can do at one time, or the easier it is to do one very big job.

You can view how much RAM that your computer has by going to your Windows “my Computer icon and right clicking it and selecting properties system information, or click your Start button (bottom left) and click Settings, then Control Panel (in XP, click Start, then Control Panel). Then click the System icon and look at the info listed on the General tab. The amount of RAM in your system will be listed in megabytes).

One of the very best ways to increase the performance of your computer, make it faster, run easier and overall just behave better is to add ram to the system.

Inside the computer is one or several slots, that are normally black in color which contain memory chips, or ram.
You can easily check online, or check the chip itself to identify what kind of ram that your computer will accept.
Some kinds of RAM are DDR, DDR2, SDRAM, FPM, EDO, DRAM, SDRAM SODIMM, RAMBUS, DRAM, and VRAM.

Once the RAM is installed, your Windows 95/98/ME/2000/NT/XP/Vista system will automatically detect the new memory and start using it. Apple computers/Macs do this as well.

While I may take it overboard on some occasions, maintenance done on a regular basis is absolutely imperative to keeping your PC in tip top shape. Even if you only game with yours, the interminable hangs, the grinds and drags are just not something you want to work with.

Note I do say, maintain, not repair, or upgrade. Those are another article for another time. I am talking routine, common sense things that will help to maintain your PC at a reasonable level of usability

First things first.

Maintaining your computer assumes that you have some level of competent virus scan and something that protects you from malware and ad-ware. If you don’t, no amount of computer savvy or maintenance is going to keep you safe in today’s Internet usage.

One perfectly wonderful virus software is AVG Antivirus, which is available to the personal computer home user free of charge.

It auto updates and is comparable in every way to the paid varieties such as Norton. Make sure your antivirus scan, whatever its make, is set up to run nightly and to update daily, when it comes online. It can’t help you if its not updated with the latest virus definitions and each night as you log off, make sure that you clear out the quarantine and check on your system scans.

Next, keep it clean, smoking, if you smoke, over your computer is just a no no. I have cleaned up computers that were so completely gunked up with smoke I thought I would never get them clean.

Vacuum out the keyboard and the back of the computer at least weekly. The dust is going to build up there, regardless of how immaculately you keep your home. Use canned air to clean off the keys and the mainboard at least monthly.

Cookies and cream ice cream or mini oreos and Pepsi are probably a bad snack to eat if you are hanging over the keys.

Sticky+Keyboard=BROKEN.

Keep it cool.

Heat is your computers worst enemy. Beside the radiator or furnace vent isn’t the right place to park your electronic tools.

If it has to sit by a window, where the sun will hit it, buy cellular blinds or put it in a case where the full sun can’t hit the back of your monitor or the tower.

If you take reasonable care of your PC, it will be there waiting for you when you need it. chances are it is going to be functional until it is obsolete.