PC Maintenance & Security Lab

The first tutorial I wanted to check out was the “Protecting your Family Online” tutorial.  I chose this one first because I have an eight year old son that will be using the internet more as he progresses through school.  One important thing that I learned is that I can check up on him.  I knew about history checks, but didn’t think about his knowledge of it.  If the history is blank, he might be up to something mischievous.  Also, I learned that I can adjust the Internet Explorer itself to filter out any content I deem inappropriate, which is probably a lot.  I will definitely be passing this information on to my husband so we can double team my son and keep him from dabbling in that which is for adult eyes only while online.  It did surprise me that Internet Explorer gave such control to the searcher.  I knew there were some parental controls, but I didn’t know that much control is available.  I’ll be putting this information to use for sure!

The second tutorial I watched was “Tips for Safer Web Browsing”, which gave me some really good tips.  One important tip I learned was about the Sandboxie software that can stand as a defense against malicious internet trappings.  It will serve as a repository of my internet interactions so that my computer remains safe and secure against malware and Trojan Horses.  I was surprised to learn that this technologyexisted and that it can be free.  Free is good.  I will be passing along information about Live CDs to my students.  This technology will allow them to safely work with an operating system from any computer they use.  Students are often using the computers of others for homework, or using campus computers.  Having an operating system on a CD or thumb drive will protect them and keep their work on hand so they can access the internet and their homework any time, or place, they find themselves.

The last tutorial I viewed was “Clean Up & Speed Up your PC”.  I chose this tutorial because my husband just “cleaned up” my laptop and I wondered if he did a good job or not.  I learned that he made some good solid steps to getting this laptop clean, but there are other areas in which he could clean a bit deeper.  I’m going to pass along to him that uninstalling and deleting “junk” from the hard drive is really good and I’m glad he did so, but that I will be also using Windows Cleanup! Or some other form of clean up tool to compress my files.  There is a lot of space one can gain from such a cleaning job, which is really the only thing that surprised me.  If cleaning up gets me my information in an instant, instead of a slow instant, then I’m all for it.