Droid X

Ok, I love my Droid. I love it. I don't miss my Blackberry at all. My Storm served it's purpose. It was a great phone at the time. I have worked with the Storm 2 a bit. Honestly, I feel poor RIM got passed. Not to mention that I think they really messed up when they released their tablet, the Playbook, with a screen with lower resolution than all of it's competitors. Nevertheless, they will sell them as a more Professional tablet... Not to mention RIM will stay afloat because they are planning to offer support for other phones, and droid apps on the playbook.

Wait, what was I going to talk about? Oh yeah.

I love my Droid. I noticed that there are a lot of Top X number of app lists, and the truth is that most of them are good accurate. However, I want to contribute my list of favored and necessary apps to the list. There is no best, only those I like and use. I'm not writing an article with details. I suspect you will find one or two on this list that you would like to know more about and go look it up.

Apps I could and do use every day

Advanced Task Killer - I use this frequently to close all open apps which saves battery and memory. I use the widget on my Widget Locker screen (see below).

Amazon AppStore. They give away a paid app for free every day.

Amazon Kindle app - I hear you can read books with it or something.

Barcode Scanner - It is a barcode scanner

Bible - YouVersion - many translations - many downloadable

C:Geo - A great GeoCacheing App.

Dolphin Browser - Tabbed browsing with gestures

Fancy Widget - it is fancy, I also use this my WidgetLocker screen

FlexT9 Text Input - A replacement keyboard that combines the touch keyboard with DragonDictate voice, and Swype input. Pretty cool.

Google Goggles - Words can not describe the awesomeness

Google Earth - Google Earth

Google Books - Google Books

QuickOffice (pro) - Allows you to create and edit Office documents. The standard version only allows you to open and view the documents.

Pandora - Customized Internet Radio.
Photoshop Express - Great photo editing right on your phone. Must have app.

LogMeIn Ignition - If you are a LogMeIn remote desktop user, then this app is worth the money. It allows you to remotely control your LogMeIn connected computer. Very cool.

Skype and Skype mobile - I have them both installed.

Tiny Flashlight + LED - turns your flashlight into a phone, or the other way around. I use the
widget on my WidgetLocker screen (see below)

Trapster - A community of users that informs other Trapster users of speed traps as you travel. I like it, but it is a power hog.

TriCorder - Just a fun and cool app for Star Trek fans. Plus, the WiFi anaylizer is pretty cool.

Widget Locker - A really cool app that changes your lock screen to a lock screen with apps. The default sliders allow you to open the camera without unlocking the screen, dim the screen, change from ring to vibrate to silent, and more. Some people think this is a good idea, some don't like the idea of the pictures and apps being available without unlocking the phone. I like the features and flexibility this app creates, and I will not be without it on all of my future phones.

WiFi Manager - A much better WiFi manager for the Droid.


Games
Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons, Angry Birds RIO. If you don't know what it is, just get it and try it.
Super Dynamite Redneck Fishing
Hungry Shark 1 & 2
Collapse
aTilt 3D Labyringh
Chalk Ball
Guns and Glory
Majesty
NFS Shift
Pool Break Pro


Love my AniPet Aquarium background
The ASCIIQuarium is pretty cool too
Christmas Tree Live Wallpaper, it is what it says
I have a lot of site specific apps installed, like IMDB, Amazon, Ebay, Craigslist Notifier, eHow, Fandango, Onn, OPB
I have a compass app installed, it works.

Kids being rowdy, I'll finish this later.

Defragging programs (broken out from the post below)

Ok, defragging the computer. If you don't know what it is, Google it. If you don't want to Google it, then Bing it or Dogpile it or whatever your flavor or search engine. If you don't want to know what it does, just do it. Run defrag. Windows Vista and Windows 7 automatically do this for you. XP can be configured to run defrag as a scheduled task. However, in both of these cases, I am finding that an after marker defrag program can still make a difference.

DiskKeeper (pay software) still claims to be the best. I wouldn't doubt it. But most people aren't going to buy it. So, check out Pirform's Defraggler, ioBit's Smart Defrag 2, and this other one I had not heard of until recently called Auslogics Disk Defrag. They all seem to do a good job, you don't need them all. Auslogic is fast. I honestly don't know who does the better job. The reviews are scattered. I'm not going to go any further into this as you have Google, and none of these companies is sponsoring my pages/blogs.

Looking at the basics posting and thinking to myself, man, that's not even close anymore.

First of all, I highly recommend that you be prepared to / actually do wipe your machine out and start from scratch.

I get a lot, and I mean a lot of questions related to basics of computer troubleshooting. The problem I am finding is that almost 100% of people want a push button solution. Said another way, nearly 0% want to put forth any thought, effort, etc. or want to pay for someone to care about their solution.
So, here we go again, in a much more basic form. You may Google the howtos if you can't figure out how these work.

I used to say restart then ask. This is now wrong. Much like doctors we are flip-floppers on what works best at this moment. Some viruses and malware really harden themselves in the registry (and other places) when you restart after they install behind the scenes. If you suspect you are infected, clear cache, and virus scan before a reboot. Some viruses corrupt your virus scanners, some viruses lock the machine and all you can do it reboot. Not going to cover every aspect of what my crazy brain thinks every time I sit at a computer. Just keep it in mind...

Use Common Sense.

Keep your dang virus program up to date. Can't afford it? Get a free one. Do something:
AVG free
Avast free
Other free ones

Make them scan on a scheduled basis if they don't already.

Ok, enough rant format, let's educate:

Spybot on a regular basis. Run the updates. Figure out how to make it update AND scan on a regular basis. Once a week on Wednesday at 12:00am works great for me.

I have fallen in love with Advanced System care. The (now paid) version does many of the things I used to do in the registry for people to speed things up. The advantage to the way this program is laid out is that it makes it as easy as push button, or as complicated as you want to drill down.
Say what you will, I think they did a great job.

The makers of Advanced System Care, Iobit also make a great defrag program. I will talk about this later.

Ccleaner, which is short for Crap Cleaner, is a great utility to cover your tracks. It removes many of the traces that your normal cookie / cache / history removal does not remove. If you do not know that the index.dat file is on your computer, you should Google it some time when you get a free moment.

Beware of the toolbars, if you don't want them, don't let the programs, or any install them. Pay attention to this on all of these apps.


If you are brave, and you just can't get the virus removed, and you don't want to reformat, you might try Multi-AV and Combofix. You will need to read up on them and run them at your own risk. Again, Google it.

I am officially never working on PCs for free ever again.

So, here's the thing. I get asked to do trivial work for people from time to time, and it really stinks. Here's why:
People think when there is an issue the sky is falling.
People think when the issue is fixed, the fixer owns the PC and all subsequent issues.

Now there are a few exceptions (grandparents, close friends, etc). For those people, I will happily help at my leisure. For the rest of you, I will encourage you to e-mail me and consult my blog, and/or Google it.

Look, I removed your virus, scrubbed your machine, etc for free already. By the way, either you know your husband's password, your he likes many flavors kinky porn. Your cat wouldn't like the sites your computer has been to, and he wasn't just clicking on yes to install toolbars, ok? Now, you can't send an e-mail message because you don't know how to properly type "hotmail.com?" Not my problem.

Speaking of which, time to redo the post from a couple of years ago.

Time to reformat my Windows 7 box. It is my beloved machine that has seen me through may stages of the Windows and Linux world. Now, thanks to some unknown issue, it is time yet again to nuke and pave.

I wanted to fix it, but again, with what time? It is so much faster, better, and cleaner to just drop the bomb on the thing and start from scratch. All my data lives on a second hard drive and/or in the cloud anyway. So, off I go to locate CDs again. S#17

Lazy bloggers - It turns out they earn nothing. Go figure.

I like most other Americans wish for a job doing whatever I want in which I get paid enough money to do whatever I want. Sadly, this is not the way the world works in this universe, and so I must get back into blogging. Not that I really don't want to, it is just a matter of time. With what time do I have to blog? I guess I had better figure it out.

Ok, so I am home not feeling well and wondering what to do. I am tired, but I can't sleep... I guess that is a topic for my other blog.

By the way, I am totally stuck on demotivational posters at the moment. I have seen the posters at http://www.despair.com/viewall.html for a long time now. Wishing I could order them all for my office.

I guess the photo frame filled with hijacked goodness will have to do for now until the blogs or my other financial hijinks pay off.

At the moment I am viewing the entire site:
http://www.motivationals.org/demotivational-posters-4477

As you can see I am in the middle.