F-Prot Antivirus $30 covers your home for a year.  For business users, its $10 per computer.

MalwareBytes’ Anti-Malware You can download and use it for free but we recommend that you pay the $25 for the pro version which gives you active protection.

Windows Defender This is free from Microsoft.

We have tried just about everything there is out there, including open source, and this is the combination that has brought us the best results.

Just for full disclosure, we have no relationships with any of these companies other than being their customer.  We make no money promoting them.

Despite surviving the severe storms that passed through the area earlier this week, sometime early Thursday morning, our turbine suffered damage to the the mast.  The mast was visibly bent and no longer usable.  We’re not sure exactly what happened but we’re guessing there must have been a pretty large wind gust.  We decided to move the wind turbine to a tripod mount on top of our garden shed with a much shorter mast which should limit the chance of bending.

On a related note, we have raised our sign a bit and added a light to illuminate it during the evening hours for better visibility.  The light is powered by the batteries that are charged by the wind turbine and solar system.

… that we offer a free initial consultation which includes a systems assessment and recommendations?   We will come out to your location, at your convenience, and perform a detailed assessment of your current systems and make recommendations on to improve them.

Whether its to clean a virus off your systems or do a complete overhaul of them, if you are in need of high quality, low priced, network & data security services, please do not hesitate to give us a call at (815) 893-9309 or email us at info@gminter.net.

Incandescent bulbs are inefficient because the vast majority of the power consumed is converted and released as heat and not as light. LED lights are several times more efficient.

via Lights out on incandescent bulb production at Toshiba – toshiba – Good Gear Guide.

This is probably good news.  Hopefully, we will see more LED bulb choices easily available and less expensive soon.

To correct what the article says, LEDs are much more than several times more efficient than incandescent ones.  A 40 watt incandescent bulb is equivalent to a 1.5 watt LED bulb.  The 40 watt incandescent draws 0.3333 amps where the 1.5 watt draws a mere 0.0125 amp.  This means you can use about 26 LED bulbs for about the same energy as a single incandescent one. Just for further comparison,  a comparable CFL bulb is 9 watts and draws 0.0750 amp which means that 6 LED bulbs use the same energy as a single CFL one.

As we noted in our earlier post, we have quite a few LED bulbs and we absolutely love them.  They run cool (both incandescent and CFLs heat up quite a bit) and are much easier on the eyes than CFL bulbs.

First, you need an AC inverter to convert the DC power generated by wind or solar.  Regular AC inverters, like those you can mount in your vehicle, will not work, in fact they will burn out, when the electricity is still on.  To use wind or solar to augment your regular electrical power, you must have a “grid-connected” inverter, which are expensive.  That said, most “grid-connected” inverters will not actually power your home during a power outage.  It seems counter-intuitive but they actually sense whether power is on and only operate when that’s the case.  If you want to use your alternative energy to augment the electricity coming to your home AND during power outages, you have to get a hybrid inverter which is even more expensive.

Second, wind is obviously not, in most places, a reliable source of generating energy.  There are plenty of days that our turbine is sitting still, generating no energy.

Third, solar panels are subject to snowfall.  We didn’t even consider this when we installed the panels.  They are on an approximately 45° angle so we assumed that snow wouldn’t stick to them.  Well, it does.  With most larger, roof-mount systems,  the panels actually lay even flatter.  We foresee owners needing to have some kind of snow broom to clean them off during the winter months.  Now, if you live in a warm climate, this is not going to be an issue.

Last, the technologies are still expensive, meaning that payback will take many years.

Now, our test systems are small and relatively inexpensive.  We’re sure that the more expensive systems will perform better but we confident that they will have the same limitations which is why we opted for energy conservation steps to lower our electric bill.

Starting in late October 2009, we began replacing the CFL light bulbs with LED light bulbs.  They were at least double the price but use approximately 1/9th of the power.  They also run cool and do not “flicker”.  In addition, they are immediately bright unlike CFLs which can take up to several minutes to reach their brightness, especially in cold weather.  We purchased ours from the local Menards.  Our one complaint is that we are not able to get bulbs as bright as we would like.  Most are approximately equivalent of a 40W incandescent bulb.  One solution to this is to install new fixtures that use two bulbs instead of one.  Since LED bulbs are so much more efficient, there is still a substantial savings.

We also replaced a large, 30-something year old, chest freezer with a new, smaller model.  Additionally, this winter, we lowered our thermostat from 68° to 65°.  The savings we saw for all these changes were immediate and substantial.  The chart on the left is from our ComEd account.  We have changed some of the graph colors to better highlight the difference.

For conservation, we spent approximately $500.  We estimate that we’ll easily save that within a year.

We have been considering some real solar and wind solutions.  With the conservation changes that we made, we have estimated that our costs for such solutions will be cut in half.  Basically, we only have to generate about half of the power that we did before.  In the case of a solar power solution, this means a $5,000 savings for us.

While alternative energy is interesting, we suggest that you first look at energy conservation.  Having things as efficient at possible could substantially cut the cost of an alternative energy solution in addition to providing you with real savings much quicker.

If you need any assistance in making your home or business as energy efficient as possible, please contact us.  For a small fee, we will come out to your location, conduct a site survey, and provide you with the advice that will save you money and recommend the type of alternative energy solution that would work best.

The other reason that we like online backups is that they simply work.  Far too often, we have found that when we went to recover data from a physical backup media, such as a tape drive or a CD-ROM/DVD, the data is unrecoverable.  Also, tapes and CDs/DVDs take up space, decay over time, and optimally should be stored off-site (at some distance away if you are in an area that could get hit by a widespread disaster like a hurricane) in a fireproof media safe.  You’ll spend far less time, money and effort using an online backup service.

There are a bunch of online backup services out there.  We have tried most of them and the two we like the most are iDrive and Mozy.  Both support Windows and Mac.   iDrive’s pricing model is a little better, especially for business accounts, and easier to understand.  They both offer free 2GB personal backup.  iDrive will give you an additional 10GB for free if you recommend it to 5 other people.

The most obvious issue with failing to use WiFi security is that it allows access to your network and thus access to your information which they could steal or damage.

A less but just as important issue is that failing to secure your WiFi connection also allows anyone to use you Internet connection.  Allowing anyone to use you Internet connection is bad for several reasons.  First, unauthorized users can “eat up” your Internet bandwidth thus causing connectivity issues for you.  Second, and much more serious, is that those unauthorized users may be doing “very bad things” online, such as hacking other networks or downloading child porn.  This could lead to an unexpected and unpleasant visit from a police or government agency.

While no security is infallible, you should take steps to secure your WiFi network as soon as possible.  If you are not sure if you WiFi network is secure or if you need it secured,  call us at (815) 893-9309 and we’ll schedule a free evaluation.

MyOfficeStatus.com, is an low-cost online office status/time clock solution.  This solution is web browser-based, meaning there is nothing to install or maintain on your end.  Starting as low as $5/mo, you can easily keep track of your employees and their hours.

Lawn Games Tournament Creator help you quickly and easily build a tournament pool for any lawn game which involves 2 players per team (i.e. washers, ladder toss, beanbag toss, badminton, etc.).  For only $10, things like blind draws and figuring brackets is no longer a hassle.

Before opting to buy a tablet computer, think hard about how you will be using it.  If you want something small to jot notes on, draw/edit pictures and surf the web, go ahead and get a tablet.  If you want something to use for business, consider something else or consider a ‘convertible’ model, one with a keyboard where the screen swivels to cover it when you don’t need it.

1. Uninstall all the anti-virus and anti-spyware that you currently have on your Windows computer. They obviously did not do their job so don’t bother keeping them.
2. Download following programs (all are free and work as good if not better than the paid programs):ClamWin Antivirus
   http://www.clamwin.com/

   Windows Defender
   http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/defender/default.mspx
   
   Malwarebyte’s Anti-Malware
   http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php*

   * Technically, this is $25 but you do not need to pay for it unless you want to use the active protection feature.

3. Run Malwarebyte’s Anti-Malware. Do a Full Scan. It will take quite a bit of time. When the scan is finished, have it remove all the found items.
4. Reboot.
5. Install ClamWin Antivirus.
6. Install Windows Defender.
7. Download and install any critical Microsoft updates.
8. Reboot.

After that, your computer should be good to go and will find that you have less of these types of issues in the future.