Digital Wild West

What ‘breaks’ a computer?

You new "pristine" computer will work perfectly for years .. BUT other than parts failure, to keep it working requires a little care and knowledge from YOU.

You can ‘break’ a computer just by using it.

To avoid this simply  DO NOT install new programs and DO NOT connect it to the outside world.

Sure, in a perfect world.

Inevitably data simply must to come to your computer from outside. A friend gives you a thumb drive or CD or you download an MP3 or open an email - Hello Virus!

Connect to the Internet to email and surf - Hello Spyware … and worms, Trojans, BHOs, active-xploits, etc. - all nibbling away at the computer with blissfully unaware until suddenly it crashes.

And so does your project, career or business.

Flowchart

If your PC is not connected to the Internet and ..

Working fine, go here

NOT working fine, go here

If your PC is connected to the Internet and ..

Working fine, go here

Not working, erratic, or very slow, go here

A few years ago the retail price of a NEW computer fell below the cost of repairing and old PC. By ‘repairing’ I mean restoring the computer’s software to new; and by ‘cost of repair’ I mean paying someone to do it.

Why does your computer need repairing?

Why shouldn’t it simply keep running? You strongly feel, after all, that you are using it quite within safe working parameters.

The answer is that computer software is more complex than any human - even the smartest programmers on the planet cannot prevent every possible unforeseen error.

Therefore, after numerous program installs, virus and spyware damage, user accidents like deleting vital operating system files, your PC gets slower and slower and starts having accidents all on its own (overwriting its own vital files, for example).

You have two choices when your computer ‘breaks’: throw it away and buy a new one, OR fix it.

If you buy a new PC, however, and you have learned nothing from the experience, it will be a short time before the same happens again - and your new PC is a doorstop.

This website is for the rest of us (author included) who cannot afford to discard their computer and buy a new one every year.