Broadband – Cable vs. DSL – inQuo’s Tech Tip Tuesday Newsletter

Broadband internet service is a part of many people’s daily lives, whether at home, at work, with our phones and even at coffee shops and other public locations.  Many terms are used by advertisers and computer nerds, but what do they mean? Cable and DSL Cable broadband travels over the standard COAX cable that is usually buried and ran directly to homes.  Cable internet can offer faster speeds than DSL, but the broadband internet for a neighborhood is a shared connection, which may mean that during peak times, the internet may slow down. DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) is a broadband internet service that works over regular copper telephone wires.  Most homes in the US have copper phone wires that are run (either underground, or overhead) directly to them.  Those lines run from your home to a DSLAM (a building or box that feeds the internet to homes).  DSL speeds can be slower than cable, however, because of how the network is setup, there is not much variation in that speed. Bandwidth, Upload and Download Bandwidth refers to the capacity or speed of a connection.  Imagine your internet connection is a pipe.  The diameter of the pipe is your bandwidth. Upload speed means the speed in which your computer or network can send data over the internet.  When sending emails, accessing websites (typing the address), or sending large files over FTP or file sharing networks, you are uploading. Download speed means the speed in which your computer or network can receive files and information over the internet.  When you are viewing a video on a website, you are downloading the stream to your computer, temporarily.  When you open an email and save a file to your hard drive, you are downloading that file.  When you type in a web address, as the page begins to load, it is downloading the information to your computer in the form of text and graphics.

Cable and DSL Broadband are priced differently, and depending on your individual needs, either one can be a good fit for you.  For the average home computer user that is surfing the internet for news and email, DSL is probably a good solution.  For online gaming, downloading large files, and heavy internet streaming (movies and video), cable may be a better solution.  Cable is typically more expensive than DSL.

Sharing Your Bookmarks – inQuo’s Tech Tip Tuesday Newsletter Volume 9

Wouldn’t it great if you could access all of your internet browser bookmarks from any computer?  Now you can.  There is a great program that works on Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari web browsers.  It is free, and lets you access your bookmarks from any computer.

XMARKS Bookmark Sync
You can download this program for free from www.xmarks.com.
The program will need to be installed on all computers to be synchronized.

Once the program is installed, create a free account.  Then choose the synchronization options for each computer.  You can even set up multiple sync profiles.  For example, create a profile called “work” for your work computer, and “home” for your home computer.  You can choose which profile to use for access to the bookmarks that are saved to it.  You can even use XMARKS on your web-enabled mobile phone.

For more useful programs and add-ons for web browsers, check out these links.

Top 25 Firefox Add-Ons

Best Internet Explorer Add-Ons

The Passwords That We Love to Hate – inQuo’s Tech Tip Tuesday Newsletter Volume 1

Passwords have you frustrated?

Ahhh passwords.  What a great idea.  Protect our sensitive data, emails and other personal information with a special password that only we know.  Of course, it seems as if we need passwords for nearly everything we do on our computers.

Many of us have fallen into the trap of using easily guessed passwords, and/or using the same password for multiple accounts.  There are dangers in both of those scenarios.

1. Using a password that contains a word can be quickly and easily hacked with simple software programs that are easy to find on the internet.  Even if you throw the required number or symbol on the front or back of the password does not make it that much harder for these programs to crack your password.
2. Using the same password for multiple accounts increases the risk of having one of your accounts compromised, and once they have that password, they may be able to access other accounts with it.  This is especially true for email accounts.

It is likely that if a hacker was able to get into your email account, they could find other passwords and account information by searching your saved emails.  How many times have you sent yourself an email with your account login name and password?

A good way to create a password that is easy to remember for you, but hard to crack is to use an acronym.  Come up with a sentence that you would remember, like My kids love to play soccer.  Now, turn that sentence into an acronym like this;  Mykdsl2plyS0cr or Mikl0v2Ps0cer.

There are also several software programs that allow you to store passwords in a highly secure database, allowing you to only have to remember one password to access that program.  A software program we recommend is Password Dragon (Free Download).   This is an easy to use intuitive program for windows users.  For Mac users, try PasswordVault Lite (Free Download).

Passwords can be a pain, and many of us may hate using them, but they are necessary to keep your ever increasing amount of personal information in cyberspace safe and secure.

inQuo. Computer Support Services for Salt Lake City Utah