Okay, I admit that the title looks like some spam advertisement, but it is true. I have seen hundreds and hundreds of people working with their computers, and my God, they were ineffective.

Being effective while writing a paper with Word, running a program, or whatever job you are doing with the computer is crucial. You can save hours of work if you implement these small changes I'm suggesting. The core of the problem is that usually, most people are using the mouse excessively.

Alone, there is no problem with using the mouse, but there is almost always a keyboard command to serve as a substitute. It takes much less time to use these commands, and these seconds add up, trust me. So, enjoy my compilation of keyboard shortcuts! Some of them may seem obvious to you, but remember, this is for everyone, not just you :)

We encounter with the expression "just download it via Torrent" every day, but do we know what it really means? Is Torrenting really an illegal activity, or is it just in the gray zone? Can other people have access to my computer's data while I'm downloading from them? How do I download something from a torrent file?
Let's find out.

I have a "side-project", which is a website about video editing. Mainly it is a recording/Sony Vegas guide, and the pages are uploaded weekly. Currently, Fraps, Youtube and the general intro pages are up. If you'd like, check it out :)


I have to say though, that this is a really-narrowed down guide, as going into details would fill a book.

As I've promised it last week, we are going to take a sneak peek into the history of the second most common operating system, Linux. Most of you encounter with it at libraries and other places where one can publicly access a computer. This is because, as you may know it, Linux is a "free" operating system (I put that in brackets as some distributions of it are not free). And this fact about Linux usually concludes people's knowledge about the system, leaving its history mysterious.

Most people hate this system, as it is "too complicated", "slow", "breaks down way too often", and so on. Sadly, these facts are almost never true for Linux but for the computers they are installed on. As libraries and such places usually have old, slow PCs, and hundreds of people are using them every day for various stuff, it is no wonder that these systems are often faulty.

So, how did Linux began its history, and what is it capable of? See below.

Whether this is good or bad, creative or scary, I can't decide... nevertheless, it's funny as hell.

Okay, this may seem as a bit too basic, but hey - there is always new stuff out there to learn.

Today's post will deal with the Operating Systems (OS) of the PC. This is the basic software that turns your PC into an actually useful pile of metal. There are many operating systems out there, but let's just stick to the most common ones:

• Windows
• Linux
• Mac OS

As I have mentioned it in one of my earliest blogposts, we can cross out Mac OS off the list, as it is mostly exclusive to Apple computers. You can set up Mac OS on a PC and Windows on a Mac, but who in the right mind would do that? Anyways, these operating systems all have distributions, which means the different versions of these OS-es. Let's go through the brief history of these systems!

Last week we have looked at the very basics of PC defense. However, there are many more things to cover, so I felt that another post in the topic is necessary.

To conclude upon the previous week's topic, having an antivirus software is essential, but many say that having only one antivirus software is not sufficient. A couple years ago I would've agreed, but now I see that many people use an abundance of firewalls, antivirus systems without knowing which one is proper and which one isn't. My advice is that you should have the software I've mentioned in my previous post and nothing else. Windows Firewall is not the best, but it does not mean that it isn't good. Sadly, for some people, good means shiny with a lot of popups so the user can see that "it works". This is not the case.

An antivirus software/firewall/spyware detector works when you see nothing at all and your PC works normally.

Having that cleared up, let's move on to the follow-up section.

Viruses can infect your PC in a number of ways, like so-called "backdoors" that were installed onto your computer by previous malicious programs, but the most common ways are masked links, e-mails (although those are becoming old-fashioned), and vulnerabilities in your browser. Therefore, it is important to get a good browser. Internet Explorer is by far the best... oh God, I can't just write that down with a straight face.