Tennessee Is the First State in the Country to Provide
County-by-County Reading of Internet Speeds

Nashville, TN – Today, Connected Tennessee announced the release of the nation’s first county-by-county reading of average Internet speeds across Tennessee. This county-based Internet speed map will give providers of broadband and Tennessee policy-makers a more accurate understanding of which Tennessee communities remain in need of higher quality service in order to utilize the latest applications that benefit local and state government as well as private industry.

Through a collective effort between SpeedTest.net, the Communications Workers of America’s (CWA) Speed Matters Campaign and Connected Tennessee, the project surveyed more than 86,000 people from Tennessee’s 95 counties. Tennessee residents can continue to update the data by participating in a speed test on Connected Tennessee’s website, www.connectedtennessee.org. Speed tracking provides the state of Tennessee and Connected Tennessee with an accurate reading of the types of speeds being achieved by consumers around the state.

“The data gathered by Connected Tennessee allows us to see for the first time where improvement is needed and work to localize our efforts,” said Governor Phil Bredesen. “Technology adoption and economic development go hand in hand, and we want to work to ensure that Tennesseans everywhere can realize the opportunities that are possible when all communities are truly connected.”

The maps reveal that the average statewide upload speed is 575 kilobits per second (Kbps) and the average statewide download speed is 3.4 megabits per second (Mbps). This means that the average Tennessean with broadband service can download a typical 1 megabyte document in less than three seconds. For those on dial-up service, the same process would take almost four minutes. Fifteen of Tennessee’s 95 counties registered significantly lower than the average upload speed, while 30 counties fell short of the average download speed.

“The United States has fallen to 16th in the world in terms of access to broadband Internet,” said Noah Savant, Vice President of the Communications Workers of America. “The data collected by the Speed Matters Campaign and Connected Tennessee is designed to encourage the build-out of high-speed networks ultimately to provide not only all Tennesseans, but all Americans with the ability to access the immeasurable benefits afforded by a high-speed connection.”

State Representative Mark Maddox, Co-Chair of the Tennessee Broadband Task Force commented: “The rural areas of our state are lagging behind and warrant the attention of the task force, and Connected Tennessee and these maps make that very apparent.”

The upload and download speed maps as well as Tennessee broadband availability maps can be accessed on the Connected Tennessee website at www.connectedtn.org/mapping_&_research/availability_maps/.

The data gathered for these maps will help Connected Tennessee take steps to improve technology availability and adoption among Tennessee residents and businesses. Connected Tennessee’s mission is to close the digital divide in Tennessee by creating and growing a collaborative network among telecommunications and information technology providers, public agencies, business and community leaders, researchers and universities in an effort to meet the five comprehensive goals of Governor Bredesen’s Trail to Innovation:

• Affordable broadband technology for all Tennessee;
• Dramatically improved use of computers and the Internet by all Tennesseans;
• The formation of eCommunity Leadership Teams in every county – local leaders who assemble to develop and implement technology growth strategies for local government, business and industry, education, healthcare, agriculture, libraries, tourism and community-based organizations;
• A policy and regulatory framework that encourages continued investment in communications and information technologies year after year; and
• A meaningful online presence for all Tennessee communities to improve citizen services and promote economic development through e-government, virtual education and online healthcare.

Connected Tennessee has also released maps that provide a very detailed picture of where broadband does and does not exist across Tennessee. The first Broadband Inventory Map was released on July 27, 2007. Tennessee is only the second state to benefit from such detailed and accurate maps of broadband availability. Connected Tennessee is one of a growing number of states working with Connected Nation, Inc., (www.connectednation.org) a national nonprofit with a reputation for forming public-private partnerships that help states expand broadband to mostly rural and unserved communities through mapping, research, and program implementation.

Connected Tennessee is leading the way into a new economy for Tennesseans. As Tennessee’s technology-based economic development partnership, Connected Tennessee is a public-private alliance of leaders from private industry, government and education. By leveraging the latest in technology and networking, Connected Tennessee is ensuring Tennessee is a better place for business and an even better place to live.

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About Connected Tennessee: As a public-private partnership, Connected Tennessee partners with technology-minded businesses, government entities and universities to accelerate technology in the state. For more information about what Connected Tennessee is doing to accelerate technology in Tennessee’s communities, visit www.connectedtennessee.org.

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This week, as promised, I am going to teach you some tips that will speed up your Windows XP shut-down time. Again, this tutorial is for those with a bit of experience on the computer. If you are just getting started on a computer or don’t have a lot of experience you may want to avoid messing with registry entries. One mistake in the registry and your computer can become unstable or even unbootable. With that said let’s get started, and speed up our slow Windows XP system.

To get into the registry editor you will need to click on the start button, click on Run, then type in “regedit” without the quotes. The first thing you will need to do is save a backup copy of your registry. You can do this by Right Clicking on the My Computer icon at the top of the list in the left-hand pane, and select the export option. In the dialogue box that opens, make sure “All” is selected; this is in the “Export Range” box at the bottom of the dialogue. Give the file a name, and choose a safe location to save the registry file. If you have problems with your registry, you can restore it to the backed-up version by running Regedit again, usually from Safe Mode. Select the file > Import menu, and choose your backed-up registry file.

Now, let’s get on with the show.

Let’s Reduce Wait Times Part 1

Windows XP stores some values in its registry which are responsible for

determining how long to wait before killing open applications and

services once the shutdown command has been given.

The first part of this tweak deals with setting the amount of time

Windows will take to kill open applications on shutdown.

By editing these two settings and changing them to lower values, you can

considerably decrease the amount of time that Windows XP needs to successfully

shut itself down.

Open REGEDIT and navigate to ‘HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\’

Highlight the ‘WaitToKillAppTimeout’ value.

Set it to ‘1000′ (the default should be 20000).

Now highlight the ‘HungAppTimeout’ value

Set it to ‘1000′ also.

Let’s Reduce Wait Times Part 2

Now let’s change the settings for all users on the system.

Open REGEDIT and navigate to ‘HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop’

Highlight the ‘WaitToKillAppTimeout’ value.

Set it to ‘1000′ (the default should be 20000).

Now highlight the ‘HungAppTimeout’ value.

Set it to ‘1000′ also.

Let’s Reduce Wait Times Part 3

Now it is time to alter a second registry setting so we can decrease the

amount of time Windows XP will wait before shutting down active services after

receiving a shut down command.

Open REGEDIT and navigate to

‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\’

Highlight the value ‘WaitToKillServiceTimeout’

Change this value to ‘1000.’

This should help to considerably speed up the time windows XP takes to shut itself

down.

Auto kill tasks on shutdown

Windows XP will prompt the user for input if there are one or more

applications which have crashed or are not responding and it receives a shut down

command. This halts the shutdown process entirely until the user OKs the

stopping of the non-responsive application.

By altering the registry slightly, Windows XP can be set to close crashed applications

automatically. While this does not technically speed up the shut down process, it

does streamline it, and ensure that the user will not give the shutdown command

then get up and leave, only to find the PC still powered on because Windows never

received input on what to do with a hung application.

Here is how to allow Windows XP to close non-responsive applications automatically upon shutdown:

Open REGEDIT and navigate to ‘HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop’

Highlight the value ‘AutoEndTasks.’

Change the value to ‘1′

XP will now be able to close hung applications without user input during the

shutdown process.

You should now notice a pretty impressive increase in your shut-down speed if you followed these instructions exactly. I hope you enjoyed this series on speeding up XP’s boot-up and shut-down process.

If you have a slow, problem prone computer or need a hardware upgrade, give me a call at 423-613-5590 or 423-258-7654. If you have any questions about this article or have a suggestion for future articles, email me at xrah2@bellsouth.net . You can access all of my articles online at www.plaintechtalk.com

Today I am going to write about something that should be of concern to anyone with a printer.

The cost of ink cartridges is so high it makes you wonder if it would be more feasible to consider your printer as disposable.

It costs about as much to buy a couple of ink cartridges as it does to buy a new printer that includes the needed cartridges.

So let’s get started and save you some time and money.

Professional print companies often charge a good amount of money for their services.

If you want brochures, business cards, flyers or mailing pieces, it often costs a lot of money.

Even going to a local copy mat can often be an expensive and tedious process! I find that I would rather sit in the comfort of my home office and produce things on my own printer.

These days, home printers are so advanced, that they can produce awesome little business pieces easily.

It helps to have a color printer, but it is not absolutely necessary, and you really don’t need anything fancy…a $50-$150 printer has lasted my business through 2 years and is going strong.

Before we get into the specifics, I think I should mention one thing about print cartridges…there is a simple way to conserve ink, print your items faster, and save paper.

Here’s what to do.

On your start menu, go into the “Control Panel”

Select printers and faxes.

When you see your printer, right click on it and select “Properties”.

What we are going to do is set the default settings to “Black and white” & “Draft” quality prints.

The reason we are going to do this is to conserve ink and save time.

I find that more than 93% of the pages I print simply don’t require color.
(Mostly I print receipts and things to read, which I eventually throw away anyways.)

I’d venture to guess that you don’t need high quality for most of your prints either.
You’ll see that the print quality for draft settings are barely distinguishable from full quality black and white, and also that your printer will print the pages much faster.

So, you’ll be avoiding the hassles and expense of getting new print cartridges all the time, and printing faster to boot! Watch your printer zoom through pages with these settings!

This can save you lots of time and money, so I suggest you keep these settings as your default settings.

If you want print something of highly quality, you can manually set the print quality when you are printing that particular job (which is probably only 5-10% of the time).

Often times I find that I start printing something, only to realize that it is set on regular settings, using a lot more ink than necessary for the job.

By setting the defaults to draft quality and plain paper, you only have to remember to change the settings on those somewhat rare occasions when you want to print color or a higher quality black and white print.

Doing this is simple enough: When you want to print, just click the “settings” and “advanced settings” then specify the quality that you wish to have for that particular job.

There you have it, quick, simple, and economical. I hope this helps you in your quest to save time and money while working on your computer.

Send your questions or article requests to xrah2@bellsouth.net or Nathan@plaintechtalk.com .

Please post your comments or tips below.

Save Ink And Time While Printing

This week I am going to continue with some tips to speed up your boot time in Windows XP. Some of these tips are a little advanced so you want to proceed with caution when experimenting with tweaks. If you question your ability to successfully apply these steps, please don’t attempt. The last thing I want is to have you crash your system to the point of not being able to boot into Windows.

With that said, I am not responsible for any actions you may take. If you decide to try any of these tweaks and “mess up” your computer, I can not be held accountable. This article is for information purposes only. Again, proceed with extreme caution. With that out of the way, let’s get started.

Enable Quick POST/Memory Test

Many motherboards have a setting in the BIOS which can instruct the system to skip
through a certain portion of the POST (Power On Self Test), speeding up boot times
considerably. Refer to your computer’s manual to learn how to access the BIOS. A variety of settings performing this function can be found on various
motherboards.

Some examples are: ‘perform quick memory test,’ ‘quick boot,’ ‘quick power on self
test,’ etc. Enabling these options will cause your system to boot faster.
Be advised that you should disable this option when you have made modifications to
your computer’s hardware, especially the memory.

Setting The Primary Display Adaptor

Most motherboards have a BIOS setting entitled ‘primary graphics adaptor’ or ‘Init
display first’ which affects whether the system will attempt to initialize an AGP
graphics card or a PCI graphics card first.

While it has no effect on any other facet of system performance, setting the correct
value here (many boards default to ‘PCI’) may save you a few seconds of booting
time. This option can be found in the ‘advanced chipset features’ or ‘integrated
peripherals’ sections of the BIOS.

Floppy Drive Seek Still Enabled?

The floppy drive seek BIOS option sets whether your PC will attempt to detect the
floppy (a:) drive during boot up. Whether it finds one or not, once Windows has
loaded it becomes irrelevant, as control of hardware devices including drives are
handed over from the BIOS to the operating system.

Disabling the ‘floppy drive seek’ option in the ‘advanced BIOS features’ section of the
BIOS can save you a few seconds on boot up, and since the setting has no actual
effect, you can safely disable it.

Unnecessary Services Should Be Killed

Windows XP runs many, many services in the background. A lot of these are not
actually necessary to the day-to-day operation of your PC, depending of course, on
what you use it for.

The simple fact is, different people will need different services enabled. To judge for
yourself which are necessary, right click on ‘My computer’ and select ‘manage.’ From
the computer management window, expand ’services and applications’ then click
’services’ to open up the window listing all available services.

The ones labeled ’started’ are currently running, and the startup type ‘automatic’
denotes a service which is started by windows each time the operating system loads.
By highlighting each service, you can see a description of its properties, and make an
informed decision on whether you need it or not. If you still have questions you can type in the exact wording into a Google search and do a little research on the subject. Be very careful when disabling any services. If you disable the wrong thing, you may find yourself unable to boot your system or unable to connect to the internet. Use extreme caution when disabling services.

To stop a service from running, right click on it and select ‘properties,’ then stop it
and make the startup type ‘disabled.’ If the description indicates that services which
depend on the service you are currently examining will fail if it is disabled, you can
go to the ‘dependencies’ tab to see which services will be affected.

Good luck, and use common sense.

Mastering The Device Manager

A quick fix that can make XP boot faster is to disable any unused devices in the
Windows XP device manager. For example if you have an integrated sound card or
video card that you have upgraded, or if you do not use a floppy drive on your
system, it pays to disable these devices in device manager.

The same goes for extra network cards. Of course, the standard rule of thumb
applies here: If you do not know what it is, leave it alone.

To disable unneeded devices in device manager:
Right click on ‘my computer’ and select ‘properties.’ From the ‘hardware’ tab, select
‘device manager.’ Expand the various categories to locate unused devices. Right click
the devices and select ‘disable.’ Click OK.

I really hope these tips prove useful to you and shave a few seconds off of your boot up time. Next week I will talk about speeding up the Shut Down process in Windows XP. Have a great week and happy, trouble free computing.

Today I am going to give you some tips to speed up your Windows XP computer. This should have a big impact on your boot up time but please be careful. I can not be responsible for user error or any other errors that may occur from following these tips. I consider these tips to be useful for someone with moderate computer abilities. This tutorial is not intended for newbies. Let’s get started.

Eliminate unwanted programs from boot up

You will find that many of the programs you install on your system set portions of
themselves to run automatically when you start up your computer. Each program
that runs on startup not only consumes system resources but also extends the length of time it takes your PC to fully boot.

Since it is generally unnecessary to have any programs running in the background
(other than security software like virus-scanners or firewalls) disable your unwanted
startup programs to increase your startup speed and conserve system resources.

The easiest way to go about this task is to use the MSCONFIG utility, which may be
familiar to users of Windows 9x. This handy program contains a list of software
which is set to start when you boot your PC. You can then easily disable and re-enable (if necessary) these items.

Go to ’start\run’ and type ‘msconfig’ to access the utility.

The ’startup’ tab in MSCONFIG provides access to several other applications that are
started at boot up and are running in the background. By examining their Filenames
and directories, you should be able to get a feeling for what is necessary and what is
not.

Be aware than several viruses and worms have a habit of disguising themselves with
authoritative sounding Windows system file names, such as the Win32.spybot.worm
as MSCONFIG32.EXE. Leave these for now if you are not sure.

The next place you should go is ’start\programs\startup’ which is a directory
Windows XP uses to launch application shortcuts on boot-up. If you remove the
shortcuts from this directory, the applications will not load on startup. This directory
can also be a repository for various badness such as spyware and virus software, so
if there are files here which are not shortcuts and you don’t recognize them, you may
wish to consider removing them anyways, as Windows will not place critical files in
this directory.

Scan your PC for spyware and Adware

Along the lines of the above tip, various programs may also be operating on your
computer without your knowledge, transmitting information about your surfing
habits to interested commercial enterprises.

These spyware and adware programs (including the infamous Gator) are bundled in
with many popular freeware programs like Kazaa Media Desktop, and can also be
‘caught’ from websites which host the software as part of their entrance
requirements. Beware of text boxes asking you if you would like to install so-and-so
program while you are surfing.

If you are interested, we wrote a whole article on the topic at www.plaintechtalk.com. To summarize, these
programs can compromise both your privacy and security, as well as your Internet
performance, so removing them is a good idea. To do this, you should use either
Lavasoft’s Adaware or Spybot Search and Destroy.

Both programs are fairly straightforward and easy to use, and will effectively rid your
PC of pesky parasite programs. See the article for more details.

Disable boot virus detection

The boot virus detection setting is a holdover from the early days of computer
viruses, when the greatest threat was from virus programs that wrote themselves
into the boot sector of hard disks or the partition table. Some motherboards are
equipped to monitor any attempt to write to these areas during boot up, and halt the
process with a warning for the user.

Since every version of Windows after 3.1 needs to write to these areas during install,
and the modern virus style of choice is the email worm, this feature is now obsolete.
Disable it for convenience and increased boot speed. It will commonly be found in
the ‘advanced BIOS features’ section of the BIOS.

Change boot sequence.

An easy and effective way of speeding up your loading time is to change the boot
sequence in the BIOS. By altering this sequence so that your system hard drive is
the first device the computer attempts to boot from, you save the precious seconds
needed for the computer to check other devices for bootable media. If you wish to
boot the system from a CD or floppy, you will need to change the order in the BIOS
again, however.

Some BIOS versions include a menu that can be accessed from the POST which
allows the user to choose the device he or she wishes to boot from. To do this, go to
the ‘advanced BIOS features’ section of the BIOS and change the ‘first boot device’
setting to ‘hard disk 0.’

Disable the XP loading screen

To speed up your boot process slightly, disable the Windows XP loading screen. This
can be accomplished easily by opening the MSCONFIG utility (’start\run and type
msconfig’), selecting the ‘boot.ini’ tab and checking the /NOGUIBOOT option.

When you boot your system, you will see a black screen in between POST and the
welcome screen from now on.

Eliminate unwanted fonts to increase boot speed

The Windows XP control panel contains a ‘fonts’ directory which holds all the fonts
currently installed on your system. These can come from Windows itself or from an
application such as Word.

Windows checks and loads these fonts during the startup process, therefore having a
large amount of font files can cause performance to drag during startup. The simple
solution for this (if you do not expect to use the majority of these fonts constantly) is
to move the unnecessary fonts to a new directory elsewhere on the hard disk,
preserving them in case they are needed, but preventing them from loading upon
startup.

To do this:

Create a new directory called ‘font backup’ or something similar on your c: drive.

Go to ’start\control panel\fonts’ and select all fonts (for now, we will be more
selective later). Drag and drop all the fonts into the backup folder you just created.

Things will get garbled for a moment, never fear. Windows XP will automatically reinstall the base fonts that it needs to display text into the fonts folder in a second or two.

Now you have the bare minimum of fonts installed. Go through the backup folder
and cherry pick the fonts that you are sure to use (like Times New Roman or Arial).
If you removed a large volume of fonts, your system should now boot faster.

Turn off BIOS disk detection

Most modern motherboards will attempt to detect any IDE devices, such as hard
drives and CD drives, during the POST sequence each time the computer boots. By
configuring the BIOS with the correct drive information, you can shave a few seconds
off your boot time by avoiding this detection process.

To do this, enter your system’s BIOS setup screen.

Depending on your motherboard, you may have an IDE drive auto-detection menu.
If you do, simply select it to automatically set your drives. If not, configure the
drives through the ’standard CMOS settings’ menu.

Note that some motherboard chipsets (like Nvidia’s Nforce 2) do not allow this auto-detection to be disabled.

A lot of you probably received a new video game system for Christmas and are still hypnotized by the pretty pixels. If you find yourself playing video games day-in and day-out, you might be a prime candidate for establishing yourself as a gaming expert. All you need is a good knowledge of a wide range of games and gaming systems, and of course, a lot of patience. The rewards are phenomenal and in the end, you’ll be a better person for it.

So what is an expert anyway? Just what is it that qualifies anyone to be an expert on anything? Since there aren’t any colleges that offer degrees in this genre, we can qualify any gamer as an expert who has the qualities described above. So if you have the knowledge or ability to play a game skillfully - and you enjoy solving problems, you could probably claim the rights to expert status.

You will want to ensure your own growth in the gaming industry. Part of being an expert is admitting that there’s always more to learn. In the gaming industry, this should never be a hard thing to pull off. By exposing yourself to new games and new game systems, you can turn every opportunity to play a video game into an opportunity to learn more than what you already know. In doing so, you’ll learn tons of new strategies which will widen your ability to help others.

You could also make multiple efforts to collaborate with others involved with video games. Get off the game and get out into the public so that you can network and discuss your discoveries with others. Networking gives you the wonderful opportunity to share or swap secrets, teach others, and learn a little something new at the same time. The relationships that you build as a result are simply invaluable. There’s probably no other way you could gain access to little known gaming secrets than to network among the best gamers around.

If you’re completely dedicated toward becoming a gaming expert, consider taking some classes in game programming. Seek out an apprenticeship and find training programs that are offered in both your local area and the gaming industry as a whole. This is an excellent way to learn everything anyone would ever want to know about gaming, and it’s a good entrance into the gaming industry if you aren’t too crazy about making a commitment to a full time gaming career.

You could also subscribe to gaming magazines, participate in online discussion boards, or sign up for book clubs that focus on gaming material.

Take note that your status as a gaming expert may not always be appreciated. Strong criticisms - whether right or wrong - come with the glory of being perceived as the “answer to everything.” As an example, you may be rejected for an opportunity that you feel you’re perfect for, or you may experience the spew of a less-than-experienced heckler. The first rule of thumb is to not take rejection or criticism personally. People may be jealous of your position, or they may want to test you just to see how much you really do (or don’t) know. The reasons behind these reactions to your assistance don’t really matter as long as you’re confident about the quality and value behind your help. A true expert looks past these things and they constantly look for ways to improve themselves.

Build yourself a website and start posting your own game reviews and tips. Post links to your site on gaming forums and submit your articles and reviews to article directories with a link back to your site. Before you know it, you may be the one in the magazine.