Here
are some Tech Tips I have come up with, and I hope you enjoy them..
Cable
Modem and router with MAC address
I
was helping a friend configure a router for there cable modem. I had some
trouble getting it working. I figured out that Comcast is saving your MAC
address. For those whom do not know every peace of LAN hardware has a
unique MAC address it is like an electronic serial number. So every LAN
card and router, etc have unique MAC addresses. Most things on the net
ignore the MAC address. It is used mostly for assign IP numbers. Comcast
is saving your MAC address when they issue you an IP address. So if you
change your LAN card you have to call them to get reactivated. Since a
router has its own MAC address they will not assign it an IP. Luckily the
router we were configuring allowed us to clone the MAC address which made
the router look like the PC to the net.
Maxtor
PCI cards and MAC don't mix
Maxtor
has been putting free PCI controller cards in there retail hard drive
kits. The packaging leads you to believe that it is MAC compatible.
It is not! The hard drive itself is MAC compatible but not the PCI
controller card.
MAC
is a no WAV zone
I
ran into a problem with trying to use a WAV (sound wave format) sound file
on a MAC.The problem is MACs don’t use WAV sound
files while you may find a few programs that can let you here the WAV you
can do little else with it on a MAC.The problem is
that MAC uses a deferent file type for WAV files called AIFF (Audio
Interchange File Format).The two file types are
similar in function but are not compatible with each other.There
seems to be no easy answer on how to get around this problem.Luckily
we where trying to decode a MP3 to a WAV so all we had to do is find a
utility that would decode to AIFF.Gee it sounds easy
now but we really had a hard time with it.The utility
that we used is called Audecity, and the best part is it is free.Check out the links section I will post a link for it.So
just remember a MAC is a no WAV zone.
Spy-ware
For
those who don't know spy-ware is software that is used to gather
information about your online habits. This software is usually
deposited on your system while installing something else. Most would
think an antivirus program would stop this from happing, but most if not
all antivirus programs will not stop spy-ware. Again
for emphases antivirus and or a firewall will not protect you from
spy-ware in most cases. That is because it is viewed as a
user installed program not a virus. While the term spy-ware implies
that it is done in a covert manner in most case you have giving permission
for it to be installed and run. The reason most of you don't know
about it is because most people don't read the install dialogs. For
example say you install a free program called BareShare as you are
installing it if you read the install dialogs you can see that it is
asking you if you agree to have the so call spy-ware installed. The
are counting on the fact that most people don't read the dialogs and just
keep hitting next until the program is installed.
So
how do you find out what spy-ware is running on your system and / or
remove it. The program I have seen that does the best job of this is
called "Ad-Aware". You can download it for free from http://www.lavasoft.nu/