Welcome to the first installment of the Clerc Computer Consulting Corp. Chronicles for 2001. We hope you find this information useful. The end of this newsletter will contain information on subscribing or unsubscribing.

Homes & Gardens -- and Computers?

We are proud to announce that we will be exhibiting for the first time at the Houston Home and Garden Show this weekend, February 2-4, at the Reliant Astro Arena. We will be the only computer company there, and we will be demonstrating what we offer to all of our home and home office computer users: home networking, high-speed Internet sharing, and most of all – WE ENJOY MAKING HOUSE CALLS!

So join us at the Show and bring your friends. There you can register to receive a FREE* Palm Pilot with one-hour installation and training. (*New customers only can register for the FREE Palm Pilot. You loyal existing customers will continue to receive free movie tickets for each new customer you refer to us.)

The Viruses That Ate Houston

We've been getting lots of business lately fixing PCs that have become infected with viruses. While we really appreciate your business, we would rather help you before your PC gets sick.

Some viruses, like the Kak Worm, are just a nuisance and will continue to infect your computer and files you send to other people until it is removed. Other viruses, like the Navidad virus, will make your PC unusable until it is fixed. If your PC gets infected with this virus, Microsoft recommends that you reformat your hard disk and start all over. We at Clerc Computer Consulting have developed a set of procedures to get Windows running again without having to erase your hard disk.

The best way to prevent these viruses from attacking your PC is to have an anti-virus program installed and updated on your computer before a virus strikes. Norton and McAfee make the two most popular anti-virus programs. They both work well, and we've found that the Norton program is a little easier to keep updated.

It's very important that you keep these programs up-to-date. New viruses are being developed every day, so an old anti-virus program cannot protect your PC from being infected by a new virus. If your computer came with an anti-virus program pre-installed and is more than two years old, it will probably not be able to be updated. You need to purchase and install a new anti-virus program approximately every two years. The program is relatively inexpensive ($50 or so), and you can usually get a rebate when upgrading from a previously purchased version.

So call us at (713) 861-4183 if you have any questions about your computer's ability to withstand a virus attack. We can get those bugs out of your PC and keep them out!

Digital Photography -- an Update

Many of you enjoyed last month's article on digital photography. We received two detailed responses from a professional photographer and a professional archivist who wanted to emphasize the superiority of emulsion photography in several different areas.

Their first point was that digital information is not as stable as emulsion photography. The photographer noted that he was still able to make prints from a glass negative that was made over 130 years ago. The second point was that digital data is harder to keep current. The archivist noted that digital media keeps changing. Through the years, digital information has been stored on punched cards, paper tape, 8" diskettes, 5.25" diskettes, and now 3.5" disks and CD-ROMs. Just like now it's virtually impossible to run a program that was stored on punched cards, it will probably be impossible to recall an image stored on a diskette 30 years from now (much less 130).