Popular:

• Google Product Search – Our first stop most of the time.
• RetailMeNot – Where we find quite a bit of coupons.
• Slickdeals – Very popular deal finding website.
• Pricewatch – Know your product? Search for it here too.

Now lets do an example. One of our customers wanted us to purchase Quicken Deluxe 2010 for them and install it on their laptop. Our first stop was to Google Product Search.

1) Goto Google.com
2) Click on “Shopping” at the top left (Or Click Here)
3) Search for your item (Here we will be typing in Quicken Deluxe 2010)

Wallah! Cheaper than heading down to the store. The bad part is, your going to have to possibly pay for shipping and wait for the item. The customer needed it the same day. Since Quicken has a download from the website, we had to purchase it there. This is where the coupon comes in handy!

1) Head to RetailMeNot.com
2) In the search box above, enter the website your purchasing from. (Ours was “quicken.intuit.com”)
2) Search bellow for the matching product. (We clicked on “CLICK HERE TO CLAIM” $20 off)

There we go, saved the customer $20 on the product with a couple clicks. Depending on your coupon… You might either have a code to type near the product checkout screen from the website your purchasing from, or a link you clicked from RetailMeNot that Redirected you to the website with the coupon applied automatically.

Sometimes RetailMeNot might not have a coupon for your product, so we just do a Google search instead. Example: “Quicken Deluxe 2010 Coupon”. When searching for coupons: Try not to go past the first couple pages on google. Don’t download and install anything. If it’s too good to be true, probably is.

Another thing to look at is deals. I gave a couple links above (Pricewatch & Slickdeals) where you can browse for some cheap deals. Most of the information is submitted by people like you, and confirmed the same way. I may choose to update this article at a later time with more websites, but this should get you started!

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Be Smart

• Be very careful when clicking on any advertisements, many are fake and will take you to a virus download
• Be very careful when “googling” anything, just because it’s at the top of your google search, doesn’t mean it’s “virus free”
• If you see any type of “scan” started when you go to a website, do not touch anything! These are definitely fake and will download a virus if you touch any part of the screen. Right now, it’s “fake” (appearing to be real)
• Change all of your email passwords, make sure they are unique and are not the same as your Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn accounts
• Many email accounts are getting hacked into, so be very careful when getting emails from friends with “just a link” in it. The hackers are getting lazy and not even sending out text anymore. Just a link, be careful!

If you happen to see an attack/infection going on, your best bet to stop it:

• Press the “control, alt and delete” buttons” at the same time on your keyboard or…put your mouse down on the bottom of your screen (the task bar) and right click
• Start “Task manager”.
• Go to the “applications tab” and then you will see what you have going on with your computer.
• Click on the Internet E or Firefox and then hit “end process”. Do it for all of them.
• You will see the scan windows go away.
• Update your anti-virus software and do a scan

Now, you may or may not be infected still. If you do all of the above and see symptoms of a new program on your computer or it acting very slow, then you probably have a virus.

You can do the following:

• Ignore it and it will get worse, no question
• Fix it yourself, some folks do a good job with that
• Get the neighborhood kid to fix it, not a good idea
• Call Computertech, get protection ahead of time!

Related posts:

1. BitDefender Anti-Virus 2009
2. Virus Removal + Tuneup/Cleanup – $75

Norton Internet Security, Norton 360 – Basic Norton Anti-Virus is OK
Anything that says McAfee on it – Labs don’t like it, we don’t either
Toolbars – Losing real estate for the convenience of something your browser does already
Firewalls – They are too advanced for basic users
Most Registry Cleaners – Can be too thorough, cause issues
Driver Scanners/Updaters – Can cause useless drivers to be installed, blue screens later
Fix it all Utilities – “Run Twice as fast!” – Too good to be true, sadly
Windows Defender – Will not keep your PC “Defended”, not even a little

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Cleaning Utilities. We use one, called CCleaner. You can find it on our downloads page. This will get rid of most, if not all, of your temporary files that your machine gathers from doing all sorts of tasks. Taking up space and in some cases, slowing you down. Cleans all sorts of other information that I could go into for hours but I’m just going to keep it simple. Download it, Run the Cleaner. We ourselves run it about once a day, after we are done surfing for the day.

Keeping your Hard Drive Organized. Defragging. You probably have heard that a lot. It takes your files scattered all over your hard drives platter (imagine a CD) and places them as close as they can get together so your hard drive has a faster time accessing the data. Download and Run Defraggler from the downloads page. We run it about twice a month because we are nerds, you can run it once every 3 months.

Stop all those start up items from running. They all take up a certain amount of memory, and a bit of CPU usage too. If you don’t use them till you need them, you could save your poor machine from a 5 minute start up time. CCleaner has a place where you can disable certain start up items under the Tools section (Left Hand Side). I haven’t seen a machine that wouldn’t boot if I disabled all the start up items. I typically keep my anti-virus tray icon, and that’s about it. Play around with it, if it stopped certain features like hotkeys, turn the item back on.

Don’t Use a Overkill Anti-Virus (like Norton 360). If your going to buy Norton, buy just the anti-virus. A CPU & Memory hogging anti-virus is typically something that comes with a bunch of overkill features that you can either do for free or can cause issues. Ask us what we recommend, I can’t tell you here because we only sell what does good in the independent labs.

Clean the inside of your machine. Buy a can of Compressed Air, we use Dust-Off (By Falcon) or a Air Compressor (Be Careful, some have high pressure). Go outside. Blow the can into the vents, bursts are best. Desktops, blow everywhere. We have seen machines come in with a good 2 to 3 inches of dust-bunnies on the bottom. If your a smoker, its going to be worse. Save your computer from heat issues and dead fans by blowing the suckers out.

Upgrades are nice too…

We can do a lot more to your machine to speed it up, but those secrets will have to die with us. Or you could bring your machine in.

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1. Keep your Windows Up-To-Date
2. Products to Avoid

XP / Vista / Windows 7 are always updating. A lot of times, those updates are Security Updates. Those keep those holes plugged in the software so you don’t have to come see us as often.

Before installing a service pack, try to grab all the latest critical updates first.

Windows XP as of 2/2/10 has Three Service Packs. These Service Packs are a large bunch of updates thrown into one pack. Before we let a Virus Removal machine go, we update their machine to SP3 (Windows XP Service Pack 3). We also run the latest critical updates from: http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com

Windows Vista as of 2/2/10 has Two Service Packs. You can find both of these service packs on our download page. You should try to install all the updates before these large ones, using Windows Update (From Your Start Menu).

Windows 7 as of 2/2/10 does not have any Service Packs out. It has been rumored one is in the making already, already beta testing on it is being done. Just do the same thing as Windows Vista and run Windows Update (From the Start Menu).

Stick with critical updates, and stay away from Optional Updates. Also for drivers from the Windows Update Screen, don’t download them “it if it aint broken”.

Related posts:

1. Windows 7 Free Upgrade Option – Expired
2. Windows 7 Review – Gizmodo
3. Windows 7 Review – Engadget