A quick way to check the web sites that a computer has been to in the past several weeks (or more) is to view the history on the computer’s browser.  This can be done in either of the two major browsers:  Internet Explorer or Firefox.

Here’s how:  With the browser open, hold down the Ctrl key and then press the “H” key on the keyboard.  This should pull up the browsers history in the left-hand side of the screen.  It will be formatted like folders.  Click the plus sign beside each date range to see the web sites that were visited on those days.

Unfortunately, once the history gets to be a little older, the pages are sometimes grouped together by month… so if you are looking for something specific, you may be to do some digging.

Sometimes, after giving people that advice, and they come back to me and say “But, there is no history.  It only shows where I have been today!”  This makes things more complicated, because it may mean that your child has either learned to erase his or her history after each browser session or has changed the history settings in the browser.

First, check to make sure that the browser is set to record browsing history.

In Firefox, you want to go to Tools – /> Options -> Privacy.  Make sure that “Remember my browsing history for at least xx days” is checked and the number is 90 days.

In Internet Explorer, you want to go to Tools – /> Internet Options -> General Tab -> Browsing History -> Settings.  At the bottom of this little window, ensure that a number greater than 30 is filled in.

Doing this will tell the Internet browser to keep a record of the sites visited.

Unfortunately, there are ways to circumvent these record keeping processes, and some kids (especially teens) are very savvy when it comes to hiding their tracks.  You may actually need something a little more robust.

Some computer professionals recommend Net Nanny, but I do not.  Net Nanny has no option to be secretive, and will always alert the user that it is installed and watching.  Also, I have seen many ways to bypass the Net Nanny’s security and the information to do this is openly posted on the web.  Any computer-savvy teen can look up the instructions to disable Net Nanny.

For anonymous viewing of a computer’s user’s activity, I recommend WebWatcher Computer Monitoring Sofware.  It’s stealthy and virtually undetectable.  The computer user does not know that it is installed.  The software keeps a log of web sites, instant messaging conversations, screen-shots, and other information and sends it to your e-mail Inbox on a scheduled basis.  It’s what parents use to monitor their children’s browsing habits without them knowing that anyone is looking.  It can even be used to monitor employees.

If you need any assistance in setting up a system for monitoring your kids, or if you are a business owner wanting to better monitor your employees, please give us a call.

First of all, if the computer hardware is functional, then it may make a great gift for a child or grandchild.  I have also seen some families set up a spare computer as a “guest” computer, for people to use when they come over (this works especially well with grandchildren).

If you don’t have any children or grandchildren who are in need of a computer, perhaps you know of a neighbor who who would love to have one.  An unfortunate byproduct of our current economy is that you rarely have to go far to find someone affected by it.

If neither of those options work for you, donating your computer to a school or church is a wonderful idea, as they always know of families in need.  There may even be a tax deduction involved, but check with your tax professional on that one.

If you decide to either donate the computer, you have the satisfaction of knowing that:

1. You have helped someone in need
2. You have given someone (perhaps a child) an amazing educational opportunity
3. You have kept a piece of electronic waste out of a landfill

On the other hand, if the computer is not functional, you may have an extra step involved.

Depending on the age of the computer and what is wrong, you may want to see how much it would cost to repair.  I wouldn’t advise repairing any computer more than 7 or 8 years old, though.  If your computer is between 5 and 8 years old, I would limit the repair to about $100.  If it’s less than 5 years old, you may want to spend a little more as the computer probably has at least a few more years left in it.

If the computer is older than 8 years old, or unfixable, the only thing to do is “recycle” it.  Notice the sacastic quotes around recycle?  I can’t in good conscience tell you about electronics recycling without giving you some scary facts:  According to the EPA, 82% of the 2.5 million tons of electronic debris produced by the United States each year goes into landfills.

However, sometimes recycling is the only option for outdated and broken equipment.  At Aspen Computer Services, we do our best to recycle old laptop parts (the parts can be reused in many cases), so if you have an old or broken laptop that you want to recycle, give us a call us at (970) 292-7501.  We will come pick up your old laptop for free.

Otherwise, Office Depot in Fort Collins and Loveland recycles old monitors, desktop computers, cell phones and other electronic equipment.

Warning:  Do not donate, sell or recycle, any computer equipment before reading our article on computer recycling and identity theft over on our Squidoo Lens:  http://www.squidoo.com/computer-recycling-identity-theft

Feel free to call us anytime to schedule an appointment for computer repair and general computer service in the Fort Collins or Loveland area.

But, with that being said, many computers are being sold right now with a Windows 7 upgrade option, which will allow you to upgrade the operating system up to Windows 7 once it becomes available.  That’s all fine and dandy, but it also means that you will potentially have to deal with Vista problems for a couple of months.  Even then, the upgrade probably won’t be a fresh install, and you may be transferring Vista instability over to your new Windows 7 upgrade.

According to our testing with the pre-release versions of Windows 7, performing a clean installation of Windows 7 on a PC was much better than upgrading from Vista to Windows 7.  The “upgraded” Vista to Windows 7 computer has slower overall system performance, slower boot times (by about 20 seconds), and there was instability with some of the hardware (especially fingerprint readers and touch screen LCD monitors).

A word of warning:  I’ve been advising my clients (especially my business clients) to exercise some patience with Windows 7.  Just like any operating system, the early adopters will be guinea pigs.  If system stability is important to you or vital to your earning potential, let the early birds sort out the bugs.  Wait a few months before making the leap.  If you want to be extra cautious, wait for the first Windows 7 service pack to be released before upgrading.

Happy shopping.

The ultra low price of this “computer” certainly raises some serious questions about the age-old debate of repairing a computer vs. buying a new one.  But, it also makes me ponder the impact that disposable computers are going to have on our environment… not to mention the security issue that are created when someone throws out a broken computer with all of their personal information still on the perfectly good (and still readable) hard drive.

Aside from all that, however, $300 is a heck of a deal!

Before you burn rubber all the way from your driveway to your Wally World with credit card in hand, you should know what you are getting yourself into.

Here are a few things to consider:

First of all, the keyboards on netbooks are sometimes smaller than a standard keyboard.  If you “hunt and peck” for keys anyway, then if may not be a huge concern.  If you have large hands, you may want to opt for something that has full-sized keys.  I suggest you use one to see if you can adapt.  Type a full paragraph of two, right there in the store.  Be sure to use the shift key to capitalize a few letters, too… a big pet peave of mine is when laptop manufactures shrink the shift key and I’m contstantly hitting the Enter key by mistake.

Seondly, the screens are very small.  The more popular ones are about 10 inches diagonally.  If you already have a hard time reading the screen, you may want to opt for a desktop.  With a desktop, you can throw a 24 inch LCD monitor on for less than $200.  That’s more than twice the visual real estate for tired eyes.  Think about it.

Third… and probably the most important point.  You get what you pay for.  Don’t expect top quality from a sub-$300 computer.  As long as you don’t expect fine china at a paper plate price, then you will probably be okay.

Warning:  The data on the computer is usually more valuable than the computer itself (photos, e-mails, geneology projects, book projects, etc).  So if you are buying an ultra-cheap computer BACKUP YOUR DATA on a very regular basis!  There… you’ve been warned.

On a more positive note, ultra-portable netbooks can be very handy to have if you are looking for something small, cheap, light, and has a good battery life.  The netbooks with built in 3G cellular data connectivity are very nice, but you won’t be getting those for $300.  They will be even better when 4G enters the picture (4G is going to be a game-changer).

Long story short, if the idea of a smaller keyboard and smaller screen doesn’t turn you off, then check them out.  But, please test it out thoroughly before purchasing.  Type on it, go to some web sites, anything.  But, most importantly, don’t trust any single computer to keep your data safe – especially a cheap one.  Always keep your important files in at least two locations.

If you need help deciding what computer is best for you, give us a call today.

Happy shopping!

One of the hardest things I have to do is explain to people WHY their computer is so slow.

Without some background information about computers, cpus, memory, hard drives, etc… it’s difficult to convey the reasons behind dramatic decreases in performance without a full-blown class on computer basics.

One the most common questions people ask me is on the subject of defragging.

I get a lot of “What is a frag?”, or “Should I defrag?”, or “How often should I defrag my hard drive?”

Well before I get into the whys and hows… let’s start with a good explanation.

I like explanations that you can see in your head.

Let’s start by imagining that your computer is a large office building.

In this office, you have many filing cabinets, in every room, and on every floor.  In these filing cabinets, is where you keep your files.

Now, let’s say that for the sake of speed, everyone puts their documents in whatever filing cabinet is closest to them.  But, to keep track of where things are, they record the locations of the documents in a huge index book.  So whenever someone needs a file, they consult the book, find out where the file is, and then fetch it.

That’s not too bad, right?

It gets even better.

What if they went a step further and put different parts of a single file in different filing cabinets?

Even if they updated the huge book on a continuous basis, it would make things very complicated.

If your boss ever gave you a seemingly simple command, such as, “Please fetch me the file on XYZ, Inc,” you would have a real project ahead of you!  Let’s look at the steps this would take:

1. You would need to run over to the huge index book, find out where all the pieces of the file are located.
2. You would then need to take this information and gather all the pieces – one by one.  Each piece of the file might be in a different floor of the building, so this might take you a while.  There could be thousands of pieces to a single file.
3. You would then reassemble the pieces into something usable.  As stated in the previous step, some files may be separated into thousands of pieces.

Some would say that this is probably the most inefficient office filing system ever.

Well, surprise!  This is almost exactly how your computer stores data on the hard drive, and then retrieves the data when you need a file.

PROBLEMS CAUSED BY FILE FRAGMENTS

The only difference between our office example and your computer is that your computer can grab each piece much faster.  It might only take a high-speed computer a few milliseconds to gather each piece… and maybe a few milliseconds to reassemble the pieces.

But, consider that in a course of using a computer to accomplish a single task (checking your e-mail, for example) the computer is accessing hundreds of files.  All those extra milliseconds add up quickly.  Over time, this can slow a system down considerably… especially on a computer with an already slow hard drive.

If that weren’t bad enough, the extra work your computer’s hard drive does in scavenging for those bits and pieces will shorten it’s life.  Some experts estimate that a severely fragmented hard drive will shorten the life of a computer by 1 to 3 years.  You have backed up lately, right?

Even if this is an exaggeration, file fragmentation can still cause:

• Sluggish performance
• Slow boot
• Slow shutdowns
• Failed CD recording
• Slow or aborted backups
• Corrupted registry
• Freezes, lockups and crashes

Why so many problems?

The hard drive is one of the slowest components in your computer.  It’s the only major component of a computer that has moving parts.  That already makes it the bottleneck of most system operations.  If the system has a sufficient amount of RAM, it probably is THE bottleneck.  Slowing down a hard drive even more will bring a computer down to it’s knees.

It may sound strange, but file fragmentation was once considered an amazing feature.  Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) originally designed this method of organization as a key part of its RSX-11 operating system.  DEC designed this as answer to storage space “challenges”.  Hard drive space was VERY limited back in those days.

THE DEFRAGMENTATION DEBATE STILL RAGES ON

Defragmenting (often called “defragging”) a hard drive is like having a crew of people come into the office over the weekend, and reorganize those little pieces back into consolidated files.  So, when you come in on Monday morning, everything is in order.  When you need a file, all you have to do is consult the newly written index book, go fetch the single file, and use it.  No running all over the building to gather hundreds (or thousands) of pieces.

No reassembling, since it’s all in the same place.

It’s more efficient and fast.  How could it not be?

Despite the evidence in favor of defragmenting, there are still those who believe that it doesn’t do much.  This belief has been perpetuated by some rumors floating around the internet.

There was a rumor once, back when Windows XP was young, that fragmentation of the hard drive would no longer affect the performance of a computer.  Back then, the reasoning behind this myth was that the XP operating system was so efficient in managing and caching data.

Recently, it has been rumored that Microsoft stated that Vista did not need to be defragmented.

BOTH of these statements are FALSE.

Perhaps this belief has kept up isn’t momentum because the impact isn’t always so dramatic.  The difference defragging makes isn’t always night and day.  Sometimes a computer may have other problems, which affect the system in worse ways.  But defragging still makes a difference… especially with badly fragmented drives.  You’ll also see a big difference on slower drives.

Both XP and Vista need defragmenting.  In fact, both XP and Vista come with built-in defragmentation utilities!

Although these defragmentation tools aren’t as efficient or beneficial as some of the 3^rd party utilities, this fact alone should be enough to prove that Microsoft sees the value in defragmenting drives when needed.  Vista actually comes preconfigured with the defragmentation tool scheduled for once per week, showing that Microsoft has taken an even stronger stance on the importance of defragging.

THIRD PARTY TOOLS ARE BETTER

As mentioned above, Windows XP and Vista may have built-in tools for defragging the hard drive, there far better tools available.

The best one that I know of is called Diskeeper 2009 Professional Edition.  They are currently on Diskeeper 2009, but they have been around for a LONG time.  The Diskeeper corporation has essentially mastered the defragmentation process by defragging the hard drive in real time.

Basically, the program runs at a lower priority (in the background) and defrags your computer’s hard drive without affecting performance in any way.  As far as I know, no other program besides Tune-Up Utilities has this feature – especially not the built-in Windows defragmenter.

KEEPING YOUR FILES WITHIN EASY REACH

Here is where Diskeeper really shines.  Not only does Diskeeper reassemble the files on the hard drive, but it also does something better.

To increase performance even more, it monitors which files are accessed the most, and then rearranges those files in such a way that the most often accessed files are placed near each other.  Diskeeper calls this “Intelligent File Access Acceleration Sequencing Technology, or I-FAAST.”

In our office example above, it would be similar to keeping the most commonly needed files closest to your desk.  This decreases the time it takes to retrieve each file, giving your system a subtle but noticeable boost.  Unfortunately, Diskeeper only does this in it’s 2009 Professional Edition… not in it’s 2009 Home Edition.

DECISIONS, DECISIONS…

If you want to keep your hard drive data organized, extend the life of your computer, and make your entire computing experience better… you need to defrag your drive.

You can either do this manually or automatically.  The choice is yours.

If anyone ever gives me that choice, I choose the automatic method.  My life is complicated enough already!  It’s always better when I can simplify my life by getting a little more OFF my plate.

When it comes to automatic defragging, very little beats Diskeeper’s REAL-TIME defragmenting (although Tune-Up Utilities comes close).  What’s better than automatic AND immediate?  Not much could beat that except placing the commonly used files together on the hard for even faster access.  Oh wait, Diskeeper does that too!

Although Diskeeper comes in a 2009 Home Edition, I can’t wholeheartedly recommend it due to the absence of the I-FAAST feature.  The Home Edition also lacks the Frag Shield 2.0 feature, which keeps those critical system files from becoming fragmented.

So, stick with Diskeeper’s 2009 Professional Edition instead.  It’s only $59.95, which is a little more than the Home Edition, but it’s infinitely better.  It will be one of the best investments you can make in the health of your computer’s hard drive.

Bradley Chapple, IT Consultant & Owner of Aspen Computer Services, Loveland Colorado

Every day advertisers are finding new ways to get into your e-mail Inbox. Most of them want to sell you something.  When doing this door-to-door, it’s called soliciting.  When doing this via e-mail, without a prior relationship with you (or without your permission), it’s called spam.

Why do they do it?

Why do these advertisers send out all of those messages?

They do it because it works.

If after sending out countless unsolicited e-mails, people didn’t buy anything… spammers would have stopped long ago and we would all be living much happier lives.

If advertisements were the only problem, it wouldn’t be quite as bad (although still very annoying).  But, the truth is that some spam messages can transmit viruses, Trojans, Rootkits, Hijackers or Spyware (collectively known as Malware) on to your computer and cause problems.

HOW TO AVOID SPAM MESSAGES IN THE FIRST PLACE

Although there is no way to completely avoid spam, there a few things that you can do to stay off the major spam lists that are floating around on the web.  The best piece of advice I can give you is NEVER EVER, EVER put your e-mail on a web site that will display your full e-mail address on the site.  Signing up for newsletters, or using it to purchase something is fine… but, posting your e-mail address in a way that it continues to be displayed on the page is not okay.

Here are a few tips to help you avoid getting spam in the first place…

• If you have a web site or home page, DON’T put your e-mail address on it… Instead, have your web programmer design a web form that LINKS to your e-mail.
• If you must put your e-mail on your website, use the Hive Enkoder at http://hivelogic.com/enkoder.  The Hive Enkoder will encrypt your e-mail in JaveScript to protect if from e-mail harvesting web bots.
• Don’t put your e-mail address on any of your social networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc.
• If you post to forums, don’t put your e-mail into the comment.  Blog comments are okay too, as long as you don’t put your e-mail into the comments box.
• If you already get some spam, don’t try to reply to the message.  Some spammers make their living by sending out to random addresses.  If the spammers actually get a reply, you have just verified that they have a live body at that address.
• Also, don’t hit the “unsubscibe” link in the bottom of spam messages.  It does the same thing that replying does.  It gives the spammers more incentive to e-mail you, and sell your address to others who will overwhelm your Inbox with advertisements.

If you already get a lot of spam, there is not much you can do to stop it.  You can, however, filter it.  Filtering e-mail means that you are categorizing the e-mail, much like you would your own post office mail…

“Bill… Bill… Junk Mail… Letter from Aunt Maggie… Bill… Junk Mail…”

Where does the junk mail go?  In the garbage, of course.  The same will apply for e-mail.  You are going to want to toss that spam and keep your Inbox clean!

The only problem is, spammers can be tricky.  Sometimes spam can look like a legitimate e-mail… and then sometimes, a real e-mail can look like spam.  So, you don’t want a spam filter that is goign to just delete anything that it “thinks” is spam.  You are going to want it set off to the side, in another folder… just in case.

Any good spam filter will do this.  Even the built in Outlook spam filter has a very rudimentary detection system that filters spam into another folder, down below your Inbox.  But, the built in spam filter isn’t very good.  It doesn’t detect and remove nearly enough spam messages to be effective.

And, THAT is the hardest part about picking out a spam filtering application.  Finding one that is accurate, without catching too much legitimate e-mail is very challenging.

There are 4 things to look for when picking out the best spam filter for your computer.

What are these 4 things?

• The best spam filter blocks e-mail that is known to be spam – Many companies have already created a list of known spam.  It is usually updated constantly and rapidly.  A good spam filter will use this information to keep your Inbox safe and clean.
• The best spam filter will block “sporn” – All good programs allow you to block a high percentage of spam pornography – called “sporn”.  Some will also filter out “adult” content e-mails or block adult oriented images. Some even have picture analysis and can detect and delete pornographic pictures before you see them.
• The best spam filter allows you to LABEL what you think is spam or not spam – YOU, and not the spam filter, should be the ultimate judge of what is spam and what is not. When you have absolutely no control over what you see and what gets tossed out, you could be missing a very important e-mail from a friend, family member, or co-worker.
• The best spam filter has a self-learning system - Great spam filters will be able to keep the pace with changes in the shady world of spamming. It will be able to adjust its perception of what spam is and is not, and raise or lower the bar when deemed appropriate.

Now that we know what the best spam filters will have, let’s move on to what we recommend here in our office.

Software Recommendations

Personally, I’ve used a lot spam filters.  I still have my very first Hotmail account, so over the course of 13+ years, I’ve gotton onto a lot of spammers’ lists.  That Hotmail Inbox is so overwhelmed with spam, that I HAVE to have something to help weed out the spam.

Because I’ve used a lot of spam filters, I know the best from the mediocre.  And, when I find a good piece of software that excels at what it does, I don’t hesitate to preach about it to anyone who will listen.  This is what I recommend to anyone who is ready to take back their Inboxes…

SPAMFighter

SPAMFighter is the way to go.

It works by using a very unique principle to reduce spam.  SPAMFighter’s claim is that it will reduce spam by over 90%.  This is actually better than what most spam filters actually rate, without getting a lot of good e-mails getting caught in the wide net.

I’ve been using SPAMFighter for years, and 90% is pretty accurate.  Basically, if you get 10 spam messages per day, you might see 1 slip through… maybe two on an off day.  If you get 100 spam messages per day, you will probably see around 10 or so slip through the cracks.

How does it work?

You see, when you download SPAMFighter, you join an online “community” of other SPAMFighter users. You never see these people. You never talk to them.  You don’t even know who they are. But, they help you identify and flag suspected spam messages.

Here’s an example: Say that Larry, Moe, Curly, and YOU were all using SPAMFighter.

If a spammer sends out roughly the same message to 100,000 people, chances are good that Larry, Moe, Curly and you are among that list of 100,000 people.

Larry might get the message and flag it as spam. Moe gets the message second and flags it as spam. Curly gets the message third and flags it as spam. At that point the SPAMFighter system would kick in and say, “OK. These three users of the Spam Fighter community flagged this message as spam, so it must really be spam.” So, when you open your Inbox, you will never see the message, because the SPAMFighter system blocked it, based on other people’s opinions of what is considered spam.

This simple concept behind SPAMFighter is amazing, and very effective. I love it when programmers can find ways to harness the collective intelligence of millions of internet users and utilize it for the common good.  It’s like letting the millions of Internet uses out there be the spam filter, each person contributing a tiny bit of the computing power.

If you want to give it a shot and see if it works for you, they have a fully functional trial of SPAMfighter Pro available for download.  Although the company provides a completely FREE “standard” version, I recommend the SPAMFighter PRO Edition because it provides better protection and doesn’t attach a SPAMfighter advertisement to your outgoing messages (that’s my only gripe with this program).  Besides, $29 is definitely a small price to pay for a cleaner inbox.

They have a Server Exchange Module, too.  I use this on a few of my clients’ Windows Server 2003 boxes.  I haven’t had a chance to test it on Server 2008 yet, but I probably will just any day.

Luke Sinden, IT Consultant, Loveland Colorado

“I need to buy my college student a laptop for the upcoming fall semester. What should I buy?”

A friend of the family asked me that the other day, and the question is a bit more complicated to answer today than it might have been in years past.

For one thing, you have the Apple products to take into consideration. Also consider how people despise Windows Vista, and whether Windows 7 will be legitimately better than Windows XP. But aside from choosing which platform and operating system to choose, you also should consider whether a netbook would be a better choice than a full sized laptop.

So let’s break some of these things down.

As for Windows 7, most of the hardware vendors will provide an upgrade path from Windows Vista. Sure, you’ll have to pay for it, but just about any hardware out today will be fine with the new operating system. In other words, you won’t need to buy an entirely new laptop or upgrade the RAM just to load Windows 7. But the larger question is whether it will be really any better than Vista. A good friend of mine has been running a pre-release version of Windows 7 on his laptop for a while and swears it is better. However, I have also seen it, and there are things I wasn’t so fond of, such as the naming convention for all the folders in My Documents. Microsoft made – in my opinion – a mess of the naming scheme. Moreover, a survey was just published indicating only about 60% of IT departments have any plans on the table to deploy Windows 7 (it’s coming out in October this year). So the answer to this is really convoluted. For most people Windows XP is still a perfectly functional operating system – beloved, even. Vista is kinda sucky, and “7” is not getting rave reviews yet, even if you can get a cheap upgrade.

As for the form factor question, I think netbooks are incredibly convenient. Your college student can throw it in a backpack and run off to class and take notes on the darned thing. How cool is that? The battery life will leave you wanting, and the cramped keyboards are a few of the issues you’ll need to keep in mind, though. And you’ll also probably need to fork out a few extra bucks for an external DVD drive (they will almost certainly be required to install some software for some class with a “progressive” professor who expects them to keep up with the times – sheesh!). But the benefit of a smaller screen is that they’ll be less likely to watch movies on it or play video games on it. They’ll be forced to go to a friend’s dorm room and play on the big screen TV. You can almost hear the complaints now: “How cumbersome my social life is, dad.” *sigh* So, the benefits of a netbook are pretty compelling, if you look at it in just the right light. Another compelling factor: most netbooks still ship with Windows XP. Bear in mind though that Windows 7 will change that, as “7” was designed to run well on netbooks. So hurry, while supplies last…

Finally, as for the Apple Mac question, we should take a moment to consider what a Mac really is. A Mac is an expensive, user-friendly UNIX computer. Without equivocation, a Mac computer is a well designed, stable creature. But that comes at a price. Furthermore, some websites are programmed with certain features that do not work on a Mac, and some programs simply won’t be compatible with the Mac OS. Period. There are hoards of Mac loyalists whose blood pressure just shot up when I mentioned that, and I understand their protestations. You can buy Microsoft Office for Mac (but the equivalent of Outlook, called Entourage, is crap), or you can set the Macbook up as a dual boot to load Windows if you really must (but you have to purchase a license for the Microsoft OS), or you can use a virtual machine (a program to run Windows as if it were an application loaded inside the Mac OS). Those are all fine options for people who are interested in fooling around with technology, or don’t have expectations in terms of productivity. But if you really want a machine that is going to do everything you need for a college degree program, you cannot – I repeat: cannot – guarantee that with a Mac. I love Apple to death and wouldn’t trade my iPhone for free Starbucks for a year. But I do not think productivity should be thrown under the bus for style and trend.

So keep those things in mind when you go to buy your college student a new laptop. Netbooks offer a great price point and you can still buy them with good ol’ Windows XP. But there’s a good likelihood that they’ll be interested in buying a new laptop within the next few years… or upgrading to “7”…Oh, and as for Linux, don’t even think about it unless your student already has considerable experience with Linux.