June 2007, Week 3

    By Bob and Joy Schwabach
    A syndicated newspaper column now in its 26th year.


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	June 2007, Week 3 --The Past is Still There
	If your computer is getting slower, one of the things that helps is to shut down programs running in the background. We use TUT, ("The Ultimate Troubleshooter") to check up on those. This costs $29, from AnswersThatWork.com .

	In a recent check, Bob found 46 programs running the background of his Windows XP computer. He stopped the five worst offenders (the ones using the most memory and processor time), which still left 41. That seems like a ton, but actually it's pretty normal. The TUT program informs you about whether a program running in the background is part of normal operations or not; these are color-coded with "safe" and "not safe" readings.

	Joy had 57 programs running in the background of her Vista computer, many of them having something to do with Apple's iPod and Adobe's Creative Suite 3. Since both the Creative Suite and the iPod are seldom being used, she removed them from the Start menu. Other pointless programs were from Apple's QuickTime, Google's toolbar, and a "LeapTag" browser assistant we installed for testing and forgot to remove. The TUT program informed her she had only 37 percent of the computer's memory available for other tasks. And for a while her CPU usage was 100 percent. Time to get out the axe.

	If you don't own TUT, you can use Windows Task Manager to see what's running in the background. Hold down the "CTRL", "ALT", and "DELETE" keys in that order to launch the task manager. Then click the "process" tab, highlight a process on the list and choose "end process--" if you can figure out what that process is doing.

	The nice thing about TUT is that it provides a description of the running programs (though sometimes it doesn't recognize a program) and tells you whether or not it's wasting the computer's time and yours. If you want to kill the worst offenders, you can click on the "Tasks" tab at the top of the TUT screen and remove them. If you're worried about removing them, you can choose "suspend," which does just it sounds like, and reactivate them when you think you need them. This is a new feature. The new TUT also launches faster, works with Vista and removes bits and pieces left behind after you uninstall a program.

	One last, and important comment about TUT: At the bottom of the main screen, there's a little box that tells you how many other computers currently have access to your computer. If that number is not zero, it could be very bad news.

	Tech Support

	Since we're on this retro trip right now, let's revisit a tech support service we wrote about several months ago. We liked the test drive so much, we signed up, paying real money for a remote technical support service that charges $1 a minute. That sounds like a lot, but it turns out to be a bargain. For instance:

	When Bob tried to update his Windows operating system, he found that Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom and close-out-all-others policy, would not let him update unless he connected to their site with their own Internet Explorer Web browser. Of course, IE didn't work. Four other browsers on the computer all worked with no problem but turning on Microsoft Internet Explorer always produced a message that it couldn't connect to the Internet. Who's kidding who here?

	So we turned to YourTechOnline.com. We sent them an e-mail, "stating," as the Beatles used to sing, "point of view." Naturally, we had to send it from a different browser.

	A few minutes later a nice young woman called and asked for permission to take control of our computer with remote access software. We said sure, and she went to work on the Internet Explorer problem. Four minutes later it was fixed. Total cost: $4. Now we could have spent half a day trying to fix the problem, or a couple hundred dollars and a couple hours taking the computer into a repair shop, but we thought it better to spend $4 and have it done in four minutes. Great service; worth the price.

	Betting on a Winner

	Have you ever heard a new singer, seen a new actor, read a new book, etc., and said to yourself: "If I were a gambler, I would bet that this is going to be a big winner." Well, here's a fun and free way to do that. It's called MediaPredict.com.

	When you sing up at MediaPredict.com you get $5,000 virtual dollars. (That's "virtual," not real dollars.) You get to look at sample chapters of books, movie and TV trailers, and you get to buy shares in their possible success. The number of shares you buy are votes, and if others vote for the same book or show, your shares go up in price. If something looks really great, the shares may already be expensive, but they can go up to a maximum of $100.

	The site is reportedly being used by publishers and entertainment show producers to gauge audience response. You can also submit your own proposals for share purchase in this audience participation market.

	This kind of "opinion stock market" has been done before by academics testing the viability of political candidates and has proven to be quite reliable. The problem, of course, is the possibility of packing the ballot boxes, or in this case of getting friends, family and colleagues to wildly buy shares in your own book or idea. As they used to say in old Chicago at election time: "Don't forget to vote early, and often."