Happy Spring! Many of us are getting ready for spring cleaning. We're going to clean the house, get the yard ready, and possibly get more active after a long winter of "hibernation".

You may have noticed that during this "hibernation" time that your computer has gotten sluggish as well. So at this time of year, remember to do some spring cleaning for your computer.

Presenting a spring cleaning checklist for you this year:

• Clean your computer! I don't mean wash off the outside of the computer, I mean clean the inside. Inside there are all kinds of components that don't like dust. As the fans inside the case, which are supposed to cool the system, become coated with a layer of dust they cannot do their job as well and the system starts to heat up. This affects performance and can ultimately lead to the system overheating and potentially damaging the system.
  Prevent this by visiting your local electronics store, or Amazon and buy a can of compressed air. Then remove all the cables from the back (You may want to write down or take a picture of which ones go where). Take it outside, open the case and blast all that dust out of the system. DON'T DO THIS INSIDE YOUR HOUSE!!!
• Double check the expiration of your security software.
  Most virus/security software uses a yearly licence. Check that you are still being protected. This is the time of year that antivirus software goes on sale so keep an eye on your flyers to save a few dollars! Don't go unprotected, if money is the problem there are free virus scanning options, just make sure you always use one.
• Remove any unused programs, if you haven't used it in a long time and probably won't, simply uninstall it. Lots of programs have processes running behind the scenes, if there are too many of those lurking in the background, your system can't reach its full potential.
• Decide if it is time to upgrade any part of your system. Maybe you need:
  • More memory to increase speed
  • A larger hard drive
  • Newer releases of your favourite programs

We are happy to help with any or all of these steps if needed, simply call our office @ 613-869-0505.

If you have done all your spring cleaning and you are still not happy with your performance it may be time for an upgrade. Please check out our previous article Buy vs Build

People don't build their own computers anymore, they just buy a new system because it is cheaper. So says my brother in law!

So thought I would put that to the test. I went online to one of the big box electronics stores and found the following computer (No advertising intended!).
Acer Aspire XC Desktop PC, $450 regular price. It has the following specs;

I went to my local computer parts store of choice Canada Computers (No advertising intended, though I really like them!) and started pricing out the components needed to build a comparable system from scratch.

My first challenge was that I couldn't buy a processor as slow as the one in the advertisement. The slowest I could find was twice as fast.
The rest was fairly simple for an approximate match. Here is what I found;

At this point it looks like building the system would cost an extra $75!!!

So am I off to the big box store to buy this system? NO and here are my reasons;
- I already have a case from the computer I am upgrading that will work just fine so I will take off $60.
- I already have a DVD writer in the computer I am upgrading so that's another $20 off
- I already have a huge hard drive with all my data on it so I wouldn't spend the money for a new one unless it was broken. So another $70 off
- I already own an operating system Windows 7, upgradable to Windows 10 for free for that matter. So another $149 off.
- The cheapest processor I could find was twice as fast as the one in the bundle.

Where does that leave us, $525 - $60 - $20 - $70 - $149.
To upgrade an existing computer to a product better than the bundle $226

Interested in upgrading your computer, or building one from scratch?
Streamline My Office is happy to help.

Written by Jeff Thompson
President @ www.streamlinemyoffice.ca

The idea of Streamline My Office stretches all the way back to 2004 when I had taken a contract with the Canada Revenue Agency. They were using a very old mainframe-based system that used only keystrokes to navigate the multiple review pages that we had to check before clearing a bug. I discovered that this mainframe system had a basic programming system built in, and started to play around with making things easier to use the system.

By the time I had finished, you could use 2 keys to move through the system in the proper flow to make the bug review much quicker. A number of my co-workers saw what I had created and asked if they could use it, and of course I was happy to let them.

Around a week later, it came to the attention of my manager who very quickly dragged me into her office to inform me that what I had created was not something she understood and though it was fine for me she didn’t want me sharing it with anyone else. My attempts to help her understand that it would allow her employees to increase their productivity fell on deaf ears.

Many people would have been discouraged by this experience and throw in the towel on trying to make things better. And I did for a while anyway. My contract ended and I moved on to a job in the private sector. It wasn't long before something caught my eye and I gave automation another try.

Check back for my next post entitled "Employee combines the automation power of Excel and Word with windows automation what happens next has the boss's jaw on the floor"