This is a reprint from several years ago.

I’m sure most of you have seen compact fluorescent lights (CFL) in the stores, and I’m relatively sure that like our family, you have been using them in your homes and/or offices.

Back when we changed from standard filament bulbs to CFLs our home electric bill dropped about $20/month. Apparently we leave lights on a lot around the house. Still, most everyone should be able to notice at least a moderate drop in their electrical usage since a 60-watt CFL only uses 13-watts of power. That is less than 1/4 the power used for the same amount of lighting.

I have to say the perceived light from these bulbs has greatly improved in the past 5 years as well in my opinion. When we began replacing bulbs as they burnt out in our home, we would only get the 100-W versions (really only 23-W) since they only seemed to actually put out what a ‘normal’ 60-W incandescent bulb did. Now, we can buy the 13-W CFLs and they provide plenty of light to read by in a small room.

In our experience, you still ‘get what you pay for’ with the CFL bulbs. The no-name bulbs that are less expensive also seem to fail sooner and don’t provide as much light as the name-brand bulbs available for just a little more.

Unfortunately, there are some drawbacks to using CFLs as replacements for tungsten-filament bulbs. CFLs do have mercury in them, which can be poisonous to people and animals. To protect us in everyday usage, most CFL manufacturers have begun putting a layer of plastic around the actual CFL tube to prevent mercury from escaping.

However, even with the breakage protection, there is still the problem of how to dispose of the bulbs once they wear out (after a few years). Some larger cities have begun offering recycling for these bulbs so that the mercury does not get to a landfill and then possibly into our water. Thankfully, Lowes will take the bulbs for recyclying locally. Please think about the environment and the future before tossing a CFL into the trash.

Another option is to use light emitting diode (LED) bulbs. LED lights for common use are still very expensive at about $20 per bulb. Also, they are not available that I’ve seen in stores yet. My search for LED bulbs led me to the Internet, where I found quite a few spotlight bulb replacements and very few Edison-type bulbs.

LEDs are great in that a 9-watt using bulb can replace a 100-watt standard bulb, and they can last up to 20 years or more. These bulbs contain no mercury like the CFL bulbs, so there is less pollution or poisoning risk as well.

To summarize, if you haven’t converted to CFL bulbs yet you might consider it to reduce your utility bill and energy usage. Please think of the environment before tossing them out though. If you can afford it, you might also consider the LED technology and its advantages over CFL bulbs.

This article is a reprint from some time ago for the Register-News. I am going through and posting the archives online.

Fifty cents does not buy you a good computer. Some think that they can pick up any deal of the week at the local discount store and go edit home movies. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Purchasing a new computer is quite similar to buying a new car in that there are many options to consider, including what your primary use will be for the new PC.

If you are like a majority of users, the ‘deal of the week’ at your local department store might be okay to use for a little while, but eventually it will slow down and become frustrating. One reason for this is that programmers create software to use future hardware, not current.

If that programmer designs a program that operates on a high-end dual-core processor with 6GB of RAM, then by the time the program is tested, fixed, and shipped, your ‘deal of the week’ PC from a year ago with a low-end dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM will struggle.

Here I will try to offer my opinion of what type of PC you should buy, and include some reasons for minor changes according to your unique needs. This advice may seem extremely simple, but hopefully it helps those of you who will be purchasing a new PC after the holidays or this spring.

The first and most important thing to do before you decide what to look for is to take stock of what you do with a PC. Do you just surf the Internet? Do you edit photos? Are you editing home movies? How fast is fast enough for you? Do you keep (legal) copies of movies on your PC? Is your music collection growing daily? Do you have mail, web browsing, and music running while you watch YouTube videos?

Each of those questions is extremely important in deciding how beefy your new PC must be in order to give you the type of experience that you need. If you are watching or editing movies, you need a better video card. If you are just surfing the web, a simple model may be all that you need.

In terms of processor, most people will do just fine with a 2.8GHz or higher dual-core model. There are subtle differences in the processor models, but they fit within this range. Quad-core processors are out and are quite powerful, but they are not needed unless you are doing heavy gaming or video/photo editing. Wait for them to become commonplace in a few years because they just add price in today’s market.

When you are looking at RAM, be sure to get no less than 4GB. Now, you may buy a 2GB system and upgrade (add) the RAM yourself, but either way I would have a hard time recommending less than 4. Again, the exception would be if you are doing high-end gaming. Gaming likes a LOT of RAM, and I would suggest no less than 6GB for gamers.

Video cards are generally optional – as they should be today. Many computers have built-in video processors that can handle quite a bit of demand. Used to be that built-in video was a joke, but not so much anymore. My advice is to get a 256MB video card if you plan on watching movies, especially in HD. Gaming geeks will probably opt for at least a 512MB card to keep their sessions going strong.

Hard disk drives are unbelievably inexpensive today. No one should buy a PC with less than 500GB in HDD space. Storage is incidental today. Personally, I have a hard time filling a 100GB drive, but movies and games will eat storage quickly, so get a big drive to eliminate concerns. It is generally not a big concern in desktop models, as you can purchase a larger drive cheaply and put it in the tower yourself. In laptops, however, be sure to get a good, large drive when purchased so you don’t have to muck around in those tiny machines.

Those are some base numbers that cover both desktops and laptops. None of these items are set in stone, and you may need more RAM or a faster processor for your own needs. Everyone is different in how they use the PC and what they expect in terms of performance.

If you are shopping, go to a retail store and play with some of their demonstration models. It might involve a trip to Saint Louis, but that’s better than making a large purchase decision and having to mess with returning it.

My experience in designing my next laptop (I can dream) has shown me that I will need to drop no less than $1000 on my purchase. That amount is NOT for my dream machine, but for a well-built machine that is expandable in the future. To be frank, know that I imagine most people should plan to spend at least $800 for their next PC. It’s not cheap, but with good planning it is an investment that will pay off more than spending $500 every other year.

Let me know what questions you have about buying a PC via email, and I’ll see if I can’t get them answered for you. Hope you all have a Happy Holiday and a great New Year!

How many of you know what a browser is? No, it’s not the lady who comes in and looks over everything and never buys. A web browser is the software that reads information (usually from the Internet), and makes it pretty on your screen. That is an overly-simple explanation, but I think it covers what we need here.

Almost everyone I know is using Internet Explorer(IE) by Microsoft. Primarily, this is because Microsoft pushes IE out with its operating system Windows. IE is just ‘there’, and works, so people use it. Unfortunately, the bad guys know this too and write malware (viruses, etc.) for Internet Explorer more than the other browsers combined. I have to admit, I first surfed the Internet using Explorer myself. The great news is that there are many free browsers to use for surfing, and they may suit you better.

Opera (opera.com) is a browser that has been around for some time. They are about to release version 10 to the public, but 9.6 is the current release. Some of the perks of Opera are that it can synchronize your information across different computers, check mail using the built-in email client, and preview news feeds from your favorite sites before you subscribe.

Opera also makes the claim that they have the fastest browser engine. This claim is hard to verify, but if speed is important to you, it might be worth downloading for a better experience.

A new entry for those using Windows is the Safari (apple.com/safari) browser from Apple. Safari has its own pros and cons. Most of its pros relate to being ‘pretty’ and being able to pass standards tests. The standards are important so that websites work properly across all browsers and everything works as it should. Unfortunately, this doesn’t really mean much to the average user. Also, Safari claims to be the fastest browser available. Are you noticing a trend here?

The last browser I will mention is Firefox (mozilla.com). Firefox (Fx) is an open-source browser from Mozilla. Since Firefox is open-source, anyone can look at the code that makes it run and find problems or fix them. Firefox also has an extensive range of ‘add-ons’ that people contribute to make Firefox able to do more than just surf the Internet.

For example, I use these add-ons: AdBlock, Xmarks, Twitterfox, and NoScript.

AdBlock stops me from seeing ads on websites. Imagine the Internet with no ads, and that’s how you can see it. Xmarks synchronizes bookmarks and passwords across different PCs like Opera does with ‘Opera Link’. Twitterfox updates me with my friends’ tweets from Twitter. Finally, NoScript stops Javascript from running without your permission, and I would not recommend using it unless you don’t mind learning how to allow scripts to run that you want.

Those add-ons make my browsing much cleaner and more useful for me. There are a great many more that do these same things, just in a slightly different way. There are also add-ons to do everything from posting to your blog to listening to music at Last.fm. Put simply, Firefox can be customized by adding and removing add-ons until you find what works for you. With its 3.5 release, Firefox promises to be faster and easier to use.

Put simply, there are choices out there to be had. My suggestion is to give one or each of these a try to see what works for you. After all, isn’t that what a ‘personal’ computer is all about?