Category Archives: Computers and the Internet

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These Ecommerce UX Goofs May Kill Your Business

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Messing up on the creation of a regular business website is one thing. But messing up the business website when you run an e-commerce business? Well, that’s a whole new level of messing up! After all, your website is the business. A lot of businesses make basic user experience goofs in this field. Here are the common goofs you need to avoid.

Forcing users to register before they buy

I get how this makes sense. You want people to register to your website, after all. And it doesn’t sound like that big an ask if they’re already willing to purchase something from you! And it’s not as if some of the most popular e-commerce businesses don’t already do this. Just look at Amazon, for example. They’re the biggest business in this game. If they do it, surely you should emulate it?

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Flickr

The problem here is that Amazon is a well-established, very famous brand. And most people seem to have an Amazon account anyway! With smaller websites, people are more willing to simply make a purchase as quickly as possible and be done with it. People are reluctant to register to more websites these days. Especially when registering is often nowhere near as quick as websites claim! Consider offering users the option of checking out as a guest.

Swift information entering

When it comes time for a customer to give their information to you, they want to get it done as quickly as possible. But a lot of e-commerce websites get this part wrong. Forms are one of the most frequently ‘mis-developed’ features of any website. And there are plenty of opportunities to get things wrong here.

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First off: you need to allow for autocomplete to work on your website. Some businesses make the bizarre decision of disabling this on their website. Don’t do that. Secondly, don’t make users rely entirely on text fields. Give them drop down lists to make the process easier. Finally, don’t over-rely on drop-down lists! When an American wants to enter their state, for example, it’s so much quicker to let them enter those two letters.

Better photos and product descriptions

Heck, even Amazon sometimes has blurry product photos. But this problem appears on such a  small number of products. The fact is that you have to remember that people like to interact with things before they buy them. They like to hold them and inspect them before sealing the deal. Obviously, you can’t replicate this experience in e-commerce. But if you provide high-quality photos of your products from several angles? Then that goes a long way to scratching that particular consumer itch!

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Pixabay

Of course, you can’t tell everything about a product from simply looking at a photo. You need to make sure there’s plenty of in-depth product information. In fact, this is even more important that the pictures! You have to make sure as many possible questions a consumer could have about the product are answered. You should include technical details – don’t assume the customer doesn’t want to know them! And do try to get to the point. Writing some long introductory text before getting to the actual details will simply turn customers off.

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An Introduction To The Biggest Problems Facing Online Businesses Today

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These days, a lot of businesses live on the internet. The rise of online business has been dramatic and seen lots of success stories. However, running an online company isn’t as easy as it seems. There are many problems in the way, and here are the main ones:

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(Image from: http://bit.ly/1IDvTRQ)

Poor Search Engine Performance

As consumers, we look at search engines in an entirely different way to online businesses. We just use them to find websites and search for things. For an online business, it’s a ranking system that helps determine success. They want their web pages to rank highly for keywords relevant to their business. This boosts their chances of gaining traffic and converting it to customers. After all, how many of us actually scroll all the way down to the bottom of the search results page? I can guarantee the majority of you will never look at any results that are on the second page or further. We look for the first few results and usually click on those sites. So, poor search engine performance means an online business does badly in the rankings. They appear low down and don’t get as many customers as their rivals in better positions. To counter this, an online business should look at improving their SEO. You can do this on your own, or, hire an SEO agency to make life easier. Give your rankings a boost, and start seeing more success.

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(Credit: http://bit.ly/1Nvq0yE)

Website Crashes

For an online business, a website crash is equivalent to an office fire. It puts everything on hold, and nothing can get done until the fire is put out. When your website is down, no one can visit it. You’re missing out on so much potential traffic, and so many potential customers. Think of all the revenue you could lose during a website crash! It’s something every modern business wants to avoid, and there are steps to do so. Some people have considered getting things like a Network Failover to help avoid site crashes. Others employ a full-time IT support team to monitor their servers and keep everything up and running. It doesn’t matter what steps you take, just ensure you’re actually taking steps to prevent crashes.

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(Source: https://flic.kr/p/BgGv9R)

Bad Conversion Rates

Web traffic is great for an online business. It means your business is seeing many visitors, and your site is performing well. However, traffic isn’t going to help your business be successful, customers are. So, the aim is converting your traffic into customers. If you have good conversion rates, then you’re going to convert a lot of your traffic into paying customers. A problem for many businesses is that they have bad conversion rates. No matter how much traffic you have, if your conversion is poor, it will be wasted. To improve your conversion rates, you need to study your web traffic and customers. See what makes people become customers, and implement it on your website. You could also employ an agency that deals with CRO for even better results.

Pay attention to these problems if you have an online business. Use my advice to ensure these issues don’t stop your company from being great.

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Identity Theft: Prevention Techniques For Businesses

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It seems like the world of business is constantly being attacked with identity theft issues. How often do we see the story of a company-wide hack in the news? How often are we told to change our passwords because gigantic companies have put our data in disarray? Unfortunately, security is becoming even harder to guarantee in today’s digital world. Identity theft can cause a business to shut down for good, so you need to do everything in your power to prevent it.

Let’s take a look at a few prevention techniques.

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Link 1 (NY – http://nyphotographic.com/)

Ultra-Secure Passwords

For years, we’ve been told over and over about the need for secure passwords. Some of us take it seriously, while others brush it off as needless worry. Those who fall into the former category are doing the right thing. Hackers will try to break your passwords, and they’ll have an easy time if it’s a simple one. Plenty of tools are their disposal in the process, so breaking a short and simple code can be done in minutes. Always protect your passwords thoroughly.

Document Protection

As a business, you’re often required to store confidential data about your customers. Unfortunately, every bit of data you collect puts your business at greater risk. If you were to lose those documents, important data could get into the wrong hands. In addition to protecting it thoroughly, you need to think about how you store that data. Once it’s no longer valid, equipment like Intimus shredders can help to destroy it for good.

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Put Policies In Place

The reason why many instances of identity theft are caused by the policies of a business. We’ve heard of documents being left on trains and insiders leaking information in famous instances. Ultimately, with efficient business policies, this sort of thing shouldn’t happen. So, make sure your employees understand the rules surrounding data protection. Only provide access to those who are both trustworthy and need access for their roles.

Use Encryption

There are some business owners out there who believe that encryption is an unnecessary concern. Again, that’s a myth that should be resigned to the past. Digital safety is getting harder and harder to achieve all the time, so we need to go the extra mile. Encrypting our passwords and business transactions can prevent a catastrophic incident. Even if the criminal still gets access to the data, it’ll hopefully prevent them from using it.

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Keep Your IT Systems Up To Date

It’s an obvious point, but keeping your IT systems up to date is a must-mention topic. Not only should you be thinking about antivirus and firewalls, but OS updates as well. Your internal IT use policy should be in place to protect the business from criminal activity online. If you’re unsure about how to go about this, bring in the experts from outside the company. Get them to do an audit of your systems, and they’ll quickly identify any issues to be concerned about.

We’re about to hit 2017, and there has never been a more important time to think about identity theft. It’s becoming more prominent, so we need to protect our businesses as best we can.

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Safety First! Security Measures You Need To Take If You Want Your Business To Succeed

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If you run or own your own business, you will know how much you value it in your life. For many people, they put so much time and effort into building up a business from scratch that they nurture it and care for it as if it was their child. This might sound extreme, but how many times have you heard a businessperson refer to their work as their ‘baby’?! If you are someone who has built your own company from the ground up, it’s only natural that you would want to protect it. Security is one of the most important things you can invest in as a business owner. Thieves and hackers are more skilled than ever these days and the last thing you want is to be outsmarted by one of them at the expense of your business. Take a look at the following hints on how you can keep your business safe and secure, for the good of everyone.

Keep the premises safe

If you’re just starting out, you may run your business from the comfort of your own home. Or, if you are climbing the career ladder, you may have moved to an external office where you have started to house some employees. Either way, the physical protection of the property is paramount to your business’s success, and your own safety. Look into security systems such as alarms and CCTV to see what would be best for you. If you work from home, read alarm reviews home security experts to give you something that works for both your business and your personal life.

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Image source

Keep equipment safe

In an ideal world, trespassers wouldn’t even get past the front gate, let alone in your front door and up to the office. But if your business involves expensive equipment such as Apple Macs, it is vital that you do all you can to keep them safe. Always lock internal doors as well as external ones when you leave the business premises and if you can, get heavy-duty doors installed that will be difficult to break into. In terms of money, you absolutely need a safe. It’s simply not practical to take the company money with you everywhere you go, nor to have it all stored on just one bank card. But you can keep any cash, even if it’s just petty cash, secure in a safe to protect from thieves.

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Consider online safety

Many people who try to infiltrate businesses these days don’t even need to leave their homes. Website and portal hacking is the easiest way for experienced thieves to access important company information and thus steal from local businesses. Don’t just build your company portal via a website where anyone can log onto it. Invest in a firewall, along with anti-phishing software to prevent hackers from accessing the inner workings of your business. It is also your duty as an employer to ensure that your employee’s personal details are kept safe. So, using the intranet means they can rest assured that their data isn’t accessible to the outside world.

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A Virtual Reality: Hiring A “Virtual” Assistant For Your Home Business

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It is difficult if you’re running a business from the comfort of your own home. It may sound like an ideal situation, but in many cases, it is not. When you start out in the Big Wide World of business, it can be a testing time for you. Having a small amount of staff, or even if you’re just running it by yourself can cause undue stress and tension. And it’s not necessarily the best starting point for your startup. A popular method getting tasks done efficiently and quickly without straining your business finances too much is to hire a freelance contractor or what is known as a virtual assistant. Essentially a virtual assistant is someone you can delegate duties to via your computer. There are certain advantages to this, but there are also disadvantages.  For both, they are as follows:

The Minor Tasks Are Delegated

Having a virtual assistant to complete the smaller admin duties saves you many hours so you can carry on with the more important and pressing tasks. Instead of you banging your head against the wall trying to remember the Excel shortcuts. As well as the basic tasks, having a virtual assistant gives you the opportunity to assign research tasks. So this can give you an upper hand regarding the competition and the market research. Another benefit to tasks like this is that you can assign them a deadline to complete it by so you don’t have to spend weeks waiting for the outcome.

You Have Many Choices In Who You Want To Hire

A lot more people are switching from permanent employment to freelancing as it is more lucrative. So when it comes to hiring your ideal staff member, using websites like Guru or People Per Hour it is never easier to do.

Ending Contracts Are Easier

When you hire a virtual assistant, it is a lot easier to end a contract in comparison to the standard employer route. In doing this, there is a lot less investment in the working relationship as you are just providing a task for them to do. If they do not do it your standards, then it is less likely they will take it personally when you end the contract. In the virtual assistant arena, even if you had a disgruntled employee, you are able to go through a company that provides virtual office addresses. This makes it more discreet for you if you are operating out of your home.  If you are interested in an alternate Mail address, click here for more information.

Distance Is Easier

Depending on the type of business you’re running, you may want to keep your distance when it comes to hiring freelance contractors. If you are a one man band and you needs a virtual assistant that asks no questions and get on with the tasks, this will be an ideal setup for you. The downside to this is that if you are looking to run a personal and interactive organisation this might not be the best approach for you to take.

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Technology In Business: How To Avoid Common Entrepreneurial Errors

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Even the biggest technophobe can appreciate the array of benefits that modern tech can bring to their company. The business world is now more reliant on digital communications and facilities than ever before. Consequently, failure to embrace that connection will see your venture left behind.

The vast majority of modern businesses now utilize computers and modern tech in some shape or form. However, very few unlock the full capabilities of those systems. In many cases, it’s the simple mistakes that come back to haunt a venture.

Avoiding those should be top of your to-do list. Here’s what you need to look out for.

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Getting Lost In The Crowd

With over one billion active websites in existence, it’s no surprise that so many companies struggle to make their mark. In many cases, it’s not through shortcomings of the business website. Instead, it’s through a lack of presence on other platforms.

For example, there’s more to Google than Gmail. Learning to make the most of this platform through Apps, advertising, and SEO can only boost your levels of success. Similarly, YouTube and social media can become fantastic resources for boosting your presence.

Both brand awareness and sales figures will struggle if you don’t maximize those capabilities. In fact, these elements should also influence offline ventures. If that isn’t an incentive to work harder in this area, what will?

Downtime

Computers and modern tech aren’t only used for selling and customer relationships. They also play an integral role in the workflow and productivity of the entire venture. If your systems are down, you’re essentially shutting vast sections of the business down until a solution is found.

For most SMEs, outsourced IT support is the best way to avoid those problems. Professional services like SKYE Technologies will give your systems the best chance of remaining active on a 24/7 basis. Perhaps more importantly, those experts can find quick solutions for when problems do occur.

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Those systems won’t serve any purpose if they aren’t working. Quite frankly, this would be one of the biggest sins that you’ll ever make in business. Go the extra mile to ensure that they’re continuously up and running in style. You will not regret it.

Poor Security

The growing importance of computer facilities does arguably make them more vulnerable than ever.  Hackers and fraudsters are a common threat, and you must not ignore them. After all, just one breach of data protection could cause major damage to the reputation of your business.

It’s imperative that your systems are protected by firewalls, antivirus software, and other features. Likewise, choosing the right host and e-commerce systems for your company website is vital. If the customers cannot trust your services, they will not use them. It really is that simple.

Apart from anything else, repairing the damage will consume more time and money than getting it right in the first place. Running a business brings responsibilities, and this is one of the most important. Given that this will put your mind at greater ease too, perfecting those security elements should be top of the agenda.

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Data: The Key To Effective Communication Online

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Communication is the internet’s gift to the world. We’re all able to get in touch with a lot more people than ever before. Whether you’re running a business or hosting a blog, that visibility is something you want to strive to keep. But the digital world has taken the human art of communication and added a calculated twist to it. Now, the data you collect behind the conversations can help you communicate more effectively than ever.

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Photo sourced by WDnet Studio

The person behind the data

The idea of using data to improve your online communication seems cold. Data is inhuman and it’s objective. But that doesn’t mean you have to use it in an inhuman way. Rather, you can use data to better understand the human side of communication than ever before. A lot of businesses and writers do this nowadays by creating a buyer persona. This means taking in all the data they collect on their readers and customers. Then taking that data to create a mental image of their average or ideal customers. By better understanding this ideal customer, you can hone your marketing and your writing voice to better suit them. It helps you create a brand that’s less generic and make content that really hits with that ideal customer.

Impact is measurable

Before the advent of data, advertising was a hard thing to really get a grasp on. You couldn’t be entirely sure whether a campaign actually worked or not. You just had to put it out there and hope for the best. Nowadays, however, the data captured from one message helps inform the next. Nothing goes out without being measurable, its lessons ready to be implemented. Businesses like CandidSky and other professionals don’t take chances. If they launch a pay-per-click ad, they’re using analytics to measure its impact as soon as it’s live. What parts work, which elements don’t? These measurements are the kind of steps you need to be taking on your message as well. Don’t leave anything to chance anymore.

Getting your presence just right

The same can be said of your website. Design is subjective to a degree, so you often need to keep switching it up to see what works best for your online presence. That’s why a lot of businesses use methods like A/B-testing. Switching between various elements of design and testing them to see which are best at keeping the visitor’s attention. In particular, paying attention to which designs convert more visitors into customers. Little changes like text size, button color and the location of a call-to-action can have a big impact on the overall cohesion of a page. Making these subtle changes over a long period of time can help you slowly but surely nail down the best version of your site.

Data helps you do more than just gauging the reaction to what you say and how you say it. It helps you better understand the people you’re talking to, as well. Take the impersonal and make it personal. You’ll be surprised how effective it can actually be.

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More to Google than just Gmail and Googling

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With my use of Google Chrome and now my having a smart phone, I’ve learned that there’s more to Google than just Gmail and Googling people and things.

Google has a lot of different applications, or “apps”, as you often hear.

In addition to Gmail, these include Google maps, play music, play movies, play books, play games, play newsstand, Google plus, hangouts, docs, YouTube, Google drive, and calendar.

These often come as a package on Android phones as does the Google Play Store, where these and a great many other apps can be found, many of which are completely free to download and use!

And, you don’t need an Android smart phone to access the Google apps or the play store.

The Chrome Web browser can be installed for free onto any computer. And of course, you can access all the Google apps from here, though you can set the Google search bar page as a home page or bookmark or favorite using any browser.

I haven’t explored all the apps but I am exploring more all the time.

For instance, I’m using Google Docs to write this post. It’s the first time I’m using Google Docs to write a post. In addition, I’m writing this on my phone!

Google Drive saves documents and other things to the “cloud”, that is, on the web in your own section,so you can access them from any computer using your Google account.

Google plus and Google Hangouts let you connect with other Google users.

Google Play music gets you access to music from your favorite artists and music genres, and you can create your own playlists, though I still need to figure out some things about that. I do find that it won’t play music stored on my phone’s SD card, only music on the phone’s internal memory. If any of you know how to get Google Play music to recognize the music on my SD card, please let me know.

Google maps is great, especially when your Garmin or tom-tom fails, as I’ve mentioned in my earlier post, “Garmin or Google-Which is Best?” , comparing Google maps to Garmin.

Google maps also will guide you using real-time traffic, can show your movement, and the street view ability combined with the ability to virtually “walk around” a location, really helps you to recognize the physical location when you get close to it!

Then you have You Tube. It is part of the Google family, and you can see all kinds of things on it, from old movies to people’s travel videos, to car and house tours and reviews, to videos that show you how to do all kinds of things from how to tie knots to driving a stick shift car to basket weaving!

Finally, there’s the Google Play store, which not only gets you access to Google apps, but many others as well, and many are free to download and use! So far, I’ve never had the need for an app that wasn’t free! And I have lots of them. As they say, “There’s an app for that.”

Now, where your phone is concerned, you do need a data plan and you need to see how much data an app draws, as some, like You Tube, will use more data. Most apps don’t use a lot, but it’s good to know. To give you an idea, I get 3 gigabytes of data monthly with my plan and use between 1.5 and 2 GB per month.

I’ve seen how useful both the Google apps and other apps can be, and it seems Google is the best place to start checking them out.

So, get Googling and have some fun!

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Smartphone Not Acting Right? Don’t Ditch It Yet!

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Hi everyone! And a Happy Easter to all of you! If your smartphone starts acting up, all may not be lost, though it may take a factory reset to make things right.

A factory reset? So I’ll have to re-type all my contacts and download all my apps again? Time to get a new phone?

Well, not necessarily. It all depends, but one rule to always follow is:

If your phone is acting up and you can’t figure it out, go to your provider store and ask for help first! No need to pay for another phone if you don;t have to!

Of course, everyone’s case is unique, but, here’s what happened with my phone over the last week.

My battery started discharging faster than normal to the point where I had to charge it up each morning and night. Well, I hadn’t changed my usage patterns nor did I download any new apps or anything else that would have gobbled up extra battery power.

I then checked my settings, including the battery usage to see if anything stood out as suddenly developing an enlarged appetite for battery power, but nothing stood out as such.

By the way, it’s a very good idea to get familiar with the settings of your phone, and any other similar electrical device, like your computer or car. This can help you greatly when you need to find out what is causing a problem, and can help those who are helping you as well.

So, not being able to pinpoint the problem, I went to my provider store, in this case, Verizon Wireless, and they were very helpful. I told them what I’d checked and they did some checking of my phone and suggested that it might be the battery, so I went to the battery shop and got a new one, being sure to hang onto my receipt and not discarding the old battery.

I charged the phone with the new battery that night and the next morning, it had drained as much as my old battery was now doing, so I saw that it was not the old battery but the phone itself that had a problem.

But it was not yet time to ditch the phone. Verizon Wireless had one more thing to try, and that was a factory reset. This erases everything on the phone and resets it so it would be in the same condition as when it was first taken out of the box. Again, the staff was very helpful in showing me how to save my contacts, photos, and many of my apps using my Google account, and it worked. They also helped me through the reset, and setup afterwords, which only took a few minutes. My contacts came back as did most of my apps and photos. I’d made a list of my apps so that I knew which ones to re-install using the Google Play Store.

So, what was wrong? They weren’t sure but they did say that sometimes phones will do strange things after a software update and that the factory reset is a last resort fix.

Luckily, the factory reset is not as scary as it may seem at first. And all the help was free.

And best of all, in my case, it seems to have worked, I was able to return the new battery and get my money back, and my phone is working good as new again. And I’m glad because I really like my current phone!

So, do become more familiar with your phone, learn how to save your contacts, and don’t ditch your phone at the first sign of trouble!

Happy calling!

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About That WiFi…

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For a long time, I was confused about how WiFi worked and also afraid to use it because of security issues brought up by articles on the internet. I’d heard all these stories about how WiFi exposes your computer to others and so on.

Well, I had the unit that powers my internet router go out on me about two weeks ago and had to have a technician come over to fix it. So, I decided that would be the time to ask about WiFi. And I’m glad I did.

So, What is the truth? Well, my main concern was security. And I found out that, if you are using a router provided by an internet provider such as Verizon, Frontier, or AT&T, you are safe using the WiFi connection to that router and don’t need any extra security in addition to your anti-virus program or software. (You do have some kind of anti-virus program or software on your computer, right? I hope so.)

Your provider provides the password or key. (You do need to check as each provider may be different as to where or how the info is provided.)

Since this is encrypted and the router and provider have their own protection, you are safe using your router’s WiFi network.

With WiFi, if you have a laptop, you can ditch the Ethernet or CAT 5E cable, plug in your battery, and access the internet from anywhere in your home, including using Skype or any other communication. I did this last week using Skype and it’s great!

Of course, your battery has to have enough of a charge, but, you can still plug in anywhere instead of only at your computer desk.

Even if you are using a desktop PC (If it does have wifi, most desktop pc’s don’t.), this can eliminate one cable. Also, more and more printers are being made WiFi capable, so this has the possibility of eliminating another cable. And, if you have more than one computer, they may be able to connect using the router’s WiFi network. Your mobile phone may be able to as well if it, too, has WiFi capability.

Now, there are security concerns, of course. If you turn on WiFi on your computer, you will notice that several networks show up as “available” One of these will be your router, if it is WiFi capable. The others are neighboring networks, usually from nearby homes, apartments, and possibly businesses, too.

Can they access your network? No, because they don’t have the codes. And you probably cannot access their networks, either for the same reason. And besides, you wouldn’t want to access networks you don’t know.

So, if you do connect to your router, you are the only one. And no one else can connect to your router’s network unless you give them the codes.

What about these places with free WiFi, like cafe’s and hotels? Here is where you have to be careful, as this network, even if secured against “outside” access, is still shared by those customers who are given the code by the management or employees. So, if you connect with the network at the coffee place, you are sharing that network with strangers you don’t know and your files and info are more vulnerable to being hacked. For this, you may need additional protection on your computer.

One solution? You can purchase your own “hot spot”, usually a small portable router that many internet providers sell, along with the service, which allows you to access WiFi from just about anywhere. It, too, is secure and again, only you would have the code for accessing the network.

Another couple of things to know about WiFi, is that, if you are downloading new software, especially if it is large, it will download faster using an Ethernet cable than it will using WiFi, so it’s best not to discard your Ethernet cable completely just yet.

For phones with data plans, using WiFi when it’s available means that your phone is not using up its allotted Data, since it is being provided by the network and not the phone’s own data plan. It’s like getting extra data for your phone for free. But you do have to be in range of the router or hot spot your phone is connected to.

One great thing I’ve found is that you only have to put in the codes for the network once on your machine. Then, when you use WiFi, your machine will automatically connect to the network and you have access to the internet!

So, how to activate WiFi on your computer? Fortunately, most WiFi capable computers already have their WiFi activated, which does not mean they’re connected to a network, only that the capability is turned on.”

If it’s not turned on, or has been turned off or deactivated, you need to turn it on. If you have a Windows 10 computer, just click on the Start button, then select settings, then Internet and go from there. Or you can simply click on the internet icon on the right hand area of the task bar and this will bring up your Internet/WiFi controls on the right hand side of your screen. (At least on an HP Computer. Some computers may be different.) If you unplug your Ethernet cable, the internet icon will change to a WiFi icon and you may see the message, “Networks are available”. Clicking on the icon will bring up the available networks.

To connect to your router’s network, and it will be there if your router has WiFi, just click on it. You’ll be presented with fields for your password or key. Enter that, and you’re set.

On a Windows 7 computer:

  1. Click the Start Button, then select “Control Panel”, then “Network and Sharing Center”.

  2. On the left hand column, select “Change Adapter Settings”.

  3. Click on “Wireless Network Connection”.

This “turns on” your WiFi. A small icon will appear on your task bar on the right side. Clicking on this will bring up the available networks. As above, just click on your router’s network and enter the password or key, and you’re set!

Hope this clears up things for those of you who are wondering about WiFi.

Happy Computing!

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