Newsletter

Happy Thanksgiving

Everyone here at Alpha Geeks would like to wish you and yours a very happy Thanksgiving! Enjoy the time with your families and say a special prayer for those who cannot be with their families on this holiday due to distance, work, or other obligations.  Our thanks and thoughts especially go out to all of our brave servicemen and women who are protecting our country and the world from those who wish to bring us harm. 

November 2005

Buying A New Computer

The holiday season is the biggest time of the year for new computer sales. More people buy new computers at this time of the year than any other. If you are in the market for a new computer, our New Computer Purchaser Program is definitely for you.

Buying a new computer can be very confusing, especially at this time of the year. Every retailer has specials and packages all just a bit different than the other.

When you don’t know what you need, who can you trust? The 19 year old "computer expert" in the polo shirt and khakis at one of those big box stores? Your uncle who just bought a new computer? The 12 year old neighborhood “computer whiz”? The truth is, the computer that you need is as unique as you are. The computer that is right for someone else may not be the right one for you. But how do you know which computer is the right one?

This is where we step in. Through a well defined series of questions, we will help you narrow down the best system to fit your needs, and once you purchase your new computer, we will come to your house and set it up for you. In addition to setting up your new computer, we will install and configure your software and optimize your system for premium performance.

Topics We Will Cover:
- Buying a Laptop vs. a Desktop
- What type of Operating System and Processor      are right for you
- How big of a Hard Drive do you need
- How much memory do you need
- What accessories do you need
- Which software accessories are right for you
- The truth about extended warranties (service         plans)
- The four critical items that every computer            needs to help protect against viruses, spyware,     hackers, and identity theft
- Which brand name computers are reliable
- What will you be doing with your old system

Another big worry is that the computer you buy today will be obsolete this time next year.  We will help you purchase a system that will remain “technologically valid” for years to come.

Pricing and additional details can be found on our website on the Pricing page, which can be found by clicking this link.

Tip Of The Month

Many independent companies have voted Webroot’s Spy Sweeper as the best antispyware utility available on the market today.  But the program is only as good as the version that you have.  Webroot provides upgrades to the latest version of Spy Sweeper for free as long as your subscription is current. 

To ensure that you have the most current version of Spy Sweeper, first open the program, then click on the “Options” button  on the left hand side.  Next, click on the “Update Program” option and follow the instructions on screen.  The newest versions of Spy Sweeper will automatically check for the most current version for you.

It seems that everybody loves Google.  It is the most used search engine on the internet with tens of millions of searches each and every day, a Wall Street darling with over 400% stock growth since its IPO a little over a year ago, and its toolbar is one of the most downloaded freeware programs on the internet.

But Google is much more than just a simple search engine.  This month is the first of a multi-part series examining the meteoric growth of one of the biggest companies the world has ever seen, and some of the exciting features that Google has to offer besides search results.

Google’s humble beginnings started as a research project by two Stanford Ph.D students named Larry Page and Sergey Brin in January of 1996.

Google.com launched in 1997 as a search engine, and its clean user interface quickly became a favorite among the growing number of internet users.  In 2000, Google started selling advertising to help enhance search results and that is when the company really took off.

At its peak in 2004, Google handled nearly 80% of all search requests on the internet through its own website and by partnering with other companies such as AOL, Yahoo!, and CNN.

Since then, several of its key partners have severed their relationship with Google in order to become competitors, but Google is so entrenched in our web surfing culture that their name has become synonymous with searching the web as in “I Googled it this morning” or “I’ll just Google it”.

Today, less than 10 years since its beginnings, Google employs roughly 5000 people, and in 2004 had sales revenue of 3.19 billion dollars. Its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, are tied at number 55 as the wealthiest people in the world each with a net worth of over 7 billion dollars.

Google continues to forge ahead with unique and exciting tools and services such as GMail, Blogger, Google Maps, Google Mobile, and Froogle just to name a few.

 As you can see, Google is much more than a search engine, but its search features are what we will examine in next months article. Until then, happy Googling!

Next Month:
Getting the most out of your Google searches.