It’s kind of like an old car – some people might drive a car for 25 years due to nostalgia, laziness, or necessity, but it’s probably not cost effective to keep an average car for that much time.  After a few hundred thousand miles, cars need new transmissions and water pumps and master cylinders.  They leak and whine.  Eventually the mechanic inevitably starts to collect more than the cost of a new car payment on an almost monthly basis.  A 2 year old laptop is like a 10 year old car in this sense.  There are lots of 2 year old laptops that are still running, and some of them appear to be inexpensive, but the likelihood of needing service on a 4 year old laptop is exponentially higher than on a new one.  Desktops fare better, largely because they are made better, are kept cooler, and aren’t subject to drops and shocks the way a laptop would be.

Do you agree with this theory?  Many large companies replace their technology on this sort of schedule.  Should small businesses follow suit?  Let us know what you think in the comments.

6. Clean up your startup queue. Programmers have large egos and expect that you will want their software running all the time.  Obviously, this consumes resources that you might want to use for something else, like what you’re currently working on.  Here’s how to get back to basics:  Go to start>run and type MSCONFIG and hit enter. Click on the startup tab. This is a basic list of stuff your computer is running when you turn it on. Generally it is safe to uncheck most of these boxes. If you go too far, do it again and check the box for the service you wanted to run. On my laptop, I’m currently allowing some printer software, a program that tethers my phone on demand, and our remote support client to run on startup. As far as I’m concerned, everything else can wait for me to click on it.

5. Add memory. Windows XP users should have 2gb, Windows Vista and 7 users should have 4gb, with few exceptions. Memory is a cheap upgrade that will make a big difference when you have more than one program running, especially if you ignored the advice above.  You may also want to fiddle with your virtual memory settings, but that could be a post in and of itself.

4. Get a better antivirus program. Some of the “big name” antivirus software vendors will sell a “corporate” version that is decent, and a consumer version that consumes resources more aggressively than an actual virus would. Our recommendation on this changes frequently, so feel free to ask us which one you should get, but if you need a free one, check out ClamWin.

3. Don’t use Internet Explorer. If I became extremely evil and wanted to write a bunch of malware that would destroy global productivity, help me send spam, and commit identity theft, I would target the #1 browser in the world – Internet Explorer. It gets a little better with every release, and probably by Internet Explorer 10 it will be as good as any other browser. In the meantime, it’s slow, it’s not standards compliant, and it’s a big time security risk, which translates to this: Use any other browser. It doesn’t matter which one. Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera are all fine browsers. If you must use Internet Explorer, at least make sure you have the most current version, which leads me to my next point…

2. Run Windows Update. If you turn your computer off at night, make sure it’s scheduled to run during the day. More than occasionally, Microsoft finds problems with their software, and they fix them. If you don’t get the fix, you are vulnerable to malware.  You can find your windows update settings in your control panel.  It won’t run?  You probably have malware – this is usually the first thing malware will disable.

1. Stay out of bad neighborhoods. Peer to peer file sharing networks are festering cesspools of malware, and generally speaking, so are websites that feature adult content and gambling.  If you must engage in this sort of behavior, use a virtual or spare machine to keep your important data intact.  If you are a business, consider a solution like our Grizzly Secure Gateway to protect your productivity.

Have a great week!

- Nathan

So what is the difference between this router and this router, other than about $45,000?

First, capacity.  A Toyota Corolla is a great car, but it’s not the right vehicle to tow a boat.  Second, reliability.  The $45,000 router will likely never need to be unplugged, in fact it has multiple redundant power supplies and a battery backup, so that even if you unplugged it, it would continue to operate.

You see, a home router is designed to be as inexpensive as possible, and is intended to realistically support 2-3 users.  Home routers, due to the inexpensive components used will occasionally be interrupted by parity errors and unhandled exceptions, which is why they occasionally need to be restarted.  Many micro businesses prefer the occasional interruption to spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on a more robust device.  However as businesses grow, these interruptions become more frequent as these very inexpensive devices struggle to keep up with the demands of 10 or 20 computers, inevitably all trying to stream internet radio while sending large file attachments.  You can actually feel these devices heat up under the stress, as they try to pass along all the tiny individual packets of data to their intended destinations.  Even at home, the use of peer to peer software like Bittorrent will often bring these routers down because of the quantity of simultaneous connections and the massive volume of ones and zeroes that are being pushed through its tiny capacitors.

Part of Bright Bear’s philosophy is that small businesses should have access to the same quality of service that large businesses do, which is why we don’t recommend repurposing home routers for offices comprised of more than a couple individuals.  To this end, we have built a commercial grade router into our industrial strength security appliance, the Grizzly Secure Gateway, at a price that is well within reach for most small businesses.

Bottom line, if you have a very small business, and you don’t mind occasional loss of connectivity, there is no cheaper short term way to share an internet connection than to repurpose a router intended for home use.  If you own the business, and it grows past a couple of employees, you will eventually tire of seeing your employees enjoying unscheduled breaks throughout the day due to outages.  If you’re a large business, you’ve probably already spent the money because interrupting a few dozen people or an e-commerce website, even for just a few minutes, can become extremely expensive.

How do you remember your passwords?  It’s a pretty bad idea to use the same password for everything.  If your password should be compromised, you would want to limit the exposure to one service.  Most of us have more than one key in our pocket for the same reason.  You might not want to leave your house key, office key, and the key to your safe with the valet.  Still, if you have more than 3 or 4 passwords, you might be tempted to write them down.  Another bad idea.  Even worse, some people tape their passwords to their monitors or keep them on their desk, which means anyone with physical access to that computer can get to their bank account.

passpack.com [link] offers a secure, accessible way to keep all your passwords straight.  This is a good start.  While storing passwords on the web may seem counterintuitive, keep in mind that the passwords are encrypted with the same technology used for credit card transactions, which is very secure when used correctly.

Here’s one great way to manage lots of passwords.

1. Pick a short phrase that is only meaningful to you and isn’t made of dictionary words.  Make sure it has letters and numbers in it, and ideally one capital letter.  For example, let’s say your college dormitory was called Emerson Hall, and your room number was 116.  For this example, let’s say emerson116 is a password you would like to use.

2. Change out a couple letters for numbers or symbols.  For example, em3rs0n116

3. Add some non-alphanumeric characters, for example **em3rs0n116**

4. Add the name of the service to the password, and capitalize it, such as **em3rs0nGOOGLE116** or **em3rs0nGOOG116**

You now have a reasonably strong password that is unique to each service you use, and is easy to remember.

1. Mobile Integration

Twitter gained a lot of users and attention early on because they made it easy to post from a cell phone.  Before everyone’s children and pets had their own smartphones with push notifications, twitter did a great job of integrating plain old SMS text messages with their system.  Today, there are smartphone applications that rival their desktop counterparts in features, but sometimes it’s still easier to send a text message to 40404 than to fire up an app and navigate it.  Conversely, you can turn on device notification for someone you want to follow closely, and their messages, called “tweets” will appear as text messages on a cell phone that you have associated with your account.  It becomes addictive to pull out your phone, see what your friends are doing, and update them in on what you’re up to, all within a few seconds.  There is a novelty factor there that helps new users stick, but seems to wear off after a while.

Twitter's "fail whale" shows up when their service becomes overwhelmed with new messages called "tweets".

2. Poll Your Friends

If you have friends on Twitter, and they are following you with device updates or push notifications, your tweets hit them instantly.  For example, if you work in a music recording studio, you could send out a message like “what’s a good microphone to use on a trumpet?” and your contacts, many of whom are interested in the things you are, might respond in seconds with specific suggestions that you might not be able to find on google.  Sometimes your friends are a better source of information than the entire internet.  Twitter makes it easy for people to get back to you with information you need fast.

3. News Right Now

In Southern California, sometimes the earth under our feet seems less than stable.  During a recent earthquake, if you fired up twitter you would see within seconds where the epicenter was, the magnitude, and how it was affecting your friends.  Or you could wait 15 minutes for the television to interrupt the regularly scheduled programming.  You don’t know how to access a live streaming feed of the Richter scale at Cal Tech?  One of your friends does.  In 2010, even major news networks like CNN are reporting what is being said on Twitter.  It’s becoming a credible source, which is a little bit scary, but also worth understanding and participating in.

4. Annoys Fascists

Once in a while you see someone whose profile photo on Twitter is tinted green.  This is left over from the Iranian Election Riots when many twitter users went “green” in support of the people who were attempting to bring democracy to Iran.  Despite the government’s attempts to silence the reformers, including disrupting internet connectivity, people used Twitter to let the world know what their government was doing to them, how to get around road blocks, and where violence was happening.  The U.S. State Department sent a carefully worded memo to Twitter, advising them of the importance of what they were doing for the people of Iran, and asking them to delay a scheduled off peak update that might have disrupted service to tweeting Iranians.

5. Trust

In 1995, people searched the internet to find a travel agent.  In 2005, they booked airline tickets themselves.  In 2010, they ask their networks where they should go on vacation and how to get the best deal.  Ironically, sometimes the person who responds first is a travel agent.  People give 140 character reviews of movies, music, restaurants, and businesses frequently.  A recommendation from a friend is worth more than an ad.  Savvy marketers are working on ways to influence influencers, in order to properly capitalize on this phenomenon.

6. Get To Know Your Competitors

On Twitter, unlike other social networks, you can follow anyone.   Although you can send private messages to individuals or groups, this is not really what the service is famous for.  You can follow your favorite author or chef to get insight into what he or she is thinking about, reading, or eating this weekend.  You can also follow other businesses and get an idea of what they are investing in, thinking about, or even what account they just landed.  A lot of entrepreneurs like to brag.  Conversely, anyone can follow you and read your posts, so watch what you say, and try to be interesting.

7. Customer Service

Rarely does a new technology capture attention and imagination the way Twitter has.  Corporations are hiring recent grads to head up “social media” initiatives and departments.  People who don’t understand Twitter realize that it’s becoming an important part of how their businesses are perceived by the public.  In fact, try complaining about a national brand like AT&T or Southwest Airlines, and you will likely get a personal response from a corporate representative whose job is to make you happy so you will stop publicly damaging their brand.  Sometimes this produces better results than calling customer service.  To really get their attention, tag them in the post by putting an @ symbol in front of their twitter handle, like @jetblue.  In fact, look at their profile.  It’s littered with personal responses to people who mentioned them in posts.

8. Social Utility

You run into someone you haven’t seen in 18 months, and you have 10 things to talk about, all derived from twitter posts.  You know a little bit about what they’ve been up to, so you can jump right in to a substantive conversation without having to fish around for what an interesting topic might be.  Your friends feel known by you, and you feel like you know them better.  Other social networks go farther, encouraging you to remember friends’ birthdays.  Frankly, Facebook is more personal than Twitter, but it’s also more time consuming.

9. 140 Characters

People speculate about when Twitter will “upgrade” to more characters.  On the contrary, the limit is probably the best feature about the service – it allows readers to gather a lot of data from a lot of places quickly, and it forces writers to be brief.  There is a quality of information that comes with brevity.  Granted, some people just tweet over and over again, but remember that you don’t have to follow someone just because they follow you.  It’s a challenge to be interesting and not annoying, because everyone knows there is an “unfollow” button next to your post.  If you want to say something longer than 140 characters, you can tweet a link to your blog, and people can read it if they want to.

10. Integration With Other Social Media

Do you like social networks?  Great, you can participate more meaningfully by linking Twitter to your other accounts.  Do you hate them, but need to participate for work or social reasons?  Great, you can update almost all of them from your twitter account.  Other networks like LinkedIn and Facebook have API’s that allow post importing from Twitter.  You can tweet from a cell phone whenever you want to, and read the responses once a week.  Twitter saves time.

So now you at least know what all the fuss is about, and how Twitter is already influencing society.  The service is still young, is still experiencing growing pains, and is still embraced most fully by people who like to stay ahead of the curve.  If you consider yourself an influencer, or want to connect with people who are, it’s probably worth the time to understand Twitter.

“At that price, they’re all pretty much junk.  Just buy the junk you like the best.”

In all seriousness, there are some computers being sold today that are downright disposable.  I was recently tempted to buy a 17″ laptop for $350, just to have a spare.

Then there are netbooks.  Sure they are slow and tiny, but they are also light and cheap, and some wireless carriers are now offering them for almost nothing if you sign up for their data service.  Some people have even hacked their netbooks to run Mac OS X, resulting in a computer smaller than the Macbook Air at a fifth of the cost.

So why are some laptops $2,500, and some are less than $500?

Consider chairs.  Herman Miller makes a chair called the Aeron.  It’s arguably one of the finest chairs in the world.  The design probably cost millions, it provides near perfect support, it’s ventilated so you don’t sweat when you sit in it, and it’s designed to be comfortable for long periods of sitting.  It’s also absurdly expensive, and you’ll find them in virtually every recording and television studio, as well as many boardrooms and C level executive offices.

It’s easy to justify this expense if you spend most of your time sitting in that chair.  If you have better posture, you will lower your medical bills and reduce repetitive stress injuries.  You or your team won’t get up to stretch as often, and you’ll probably get more done.  If you make a lot of money and/or spend a lot of time sitting at your desk, a $900 chair might make some kind of sense.

There are always dealseekers though, which has created a market for cheaper chairs.  I suppose you could purchase a used stool at a yard sale for $5 that would accomplish the same purpose as the Aeron.  Most people buy chairs that are somewhere in between those extremes.  With laptops, it’s harder to see the differences, and the manufacturers have made it difficult for consumers to understand their products.

First, understand that there are laptops for business and laptops for consumers.  There is a big price and quality gap between the two.  Business laptops have less bloatware, better design and support, and employ fewer “dirty tricks” (covered later.)  Sometimes a consumer laptop can be a good value, especially if you intend to install your own operating system, however many consumer laptops aren’t very durable.

You won’t find business grade laptops in department stores, they usually are ordered through a distributor or consultant.  Even “office supply” stores typically carry the consumer models.  They are flashier, they sell better, typically at a better margin, and they’re what most people who shop in those stores are looking for.

A dead giveaway that you bought a consumer laptop is that it came loaded with an operating system that has “home” in the title.  Essentially, Microsoft removes the capability to join a managed domain and sells the license for about $80 less.  In Windows 7, the home version also omits XP Compatibility Mode.

Just like in chairs, there are a lot of ways to cut costs when you make a computer.  Factory of origin is a big one.  Manufacturers know where their best workers are, and they make sure they are taking care of the enterprise customers.  Often the best facilities cost more to operate, and that cost is passed on to people who can afford to pay.  This logic goes down the line into all the components too.

Sometimes spending as little as $5 extra on a component can seem to double the speed of a computer.  However, since there are so many components in a computer, and the market has become so cutthroat, consumer laptops typically take every shortcut imaginable.  Some big ones: why use expensive video memory when you can just siphon a little from the much slower and cheaper system memory?  Sure, every video instruction will have to make extra trips through your already clogged cpu and system bus, and it will be a lot slower, but also slightly cheaper.

Since consumers don’t understand things like frontside bus speed and L2 cache, design teams are instructed not to worry about them.  People do seem to care about processor frequency, which is only one factor in a very complex equation.

There are different grades of memory, different drive interfaces, lots of different ways to move data around a box.  All of them are subject to “value engineering”.

Sometimes a hard drive manufacturer will develop a reptuation for a really high failure rate.  Their drives are usually sold $10-15 cheaper to system builders than their reliable competitors until they can improve.  Counterpoint: every hard drive will fail someday, which is why you should really treat all your computers as disposable, and back up your data in a redundant way.

While they’re not the right choice for most professionals, consumer laptops are good for the world.  It makes computing more accessible to people of limited means.  We love what One Laptop Per Child is doing in the far reaches of the world.  If you’re just looking for a web browser, there is no reason to buy a laptop designed for gaming or video editing.  As more and more computing goes into the cloud (web based) it matters less and less what your laptop can do, because most of the processing work is being done at a server farm somewhere else.

So if you’re going to depend on this laptop, there are some good reasons to invest in a professional quality model, but if your kid wants something to run Facebook, just buy the junk you like the best.

The good news is that anyone can build a Windows computer, in fact you can make one at home with relative ease.  This means that there are a lot of companies trying to sell you a cheap laptop.

The bad news is that anyone can build a Windows computer.  There is a lot of hardware saturating the market that is rather substandard, and no one has any control over it.

On one hand, you can buy a new pc laptop for less than $400, the problem is that quality and performance play second fiddle to compatibility sometimes, and the open architecture that is required to run on all that hardware makes it far less resilient to malware, spyware, viruses, worms, and other things that inhibit productivity.  With tools like system imaging, virtualization, and a rack full of security appliances, pc’s can be managed into submission, and large companies tend to do just that, often at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars per year.

Apple makes a great computer.  They made good decisions on their hardware, and they don’t license their operating system to other system builders anymore which means there are fewer opportunities for problems and conflicts to exist – they only make about 7 different computers, and most of them share some components.  Earlier today, a friend with a mac called me and asked me why some facebook application kept asking him over and over again to install “flash player”.  If he had a pc, it would probably be infected right now.  Security through obscurity may not be sustainable as Apple grows into a larger slice of the market, but it seems to be working ok so far.

Enter the stereotypes.

Apple has worked hard to perpetuate the idea that macs are for creative people, people who like art and movies and design.  This used to be the truth, however most software, other than Apple’s own products, (Logic, Aperture, Final Cut Studio) works equally well on either platform.  John Hodgman doesn’t need to feel so insecure – Windows computers can handle almost anything a Mac can, at least in 2009.

Honestly, I’m underwhelmed by Microsoft’s implementation of Office for the Mac.  There is no Outlook, and the other programs seem dumbed down and less stable than their windows counterparts.  It sounds dubious, as if they are trying to sabotage their competitor, but I suspect that MS simply puts fewer development dollars into Office for the Mac because they have fewer sales on that platform.  Office works well enough, though power users will prefer Office 2007 to Office 2008.  We are told that Office 2010/2011 will be more evenly matched, but haven’t had the opportunity to verify that yet.

Fortunately, it’s easy to run Windows on a Mac, and virtualization is a great way to run windows anyway.  Keep your data somewhere else, or at least backed up somewhere else, and if you break windows (pun intended), you can restore a clean virtual machine from a local copy in about 60 seconds.  With coherence supported by VMWare and Parallels, you can run Windows software alongside Mac software rather elegantly.

For a small business, or someone who travels and uses a lot of open networks, the Mac is an attractive decision.  It’s much more resilient than a Windows pc, especially if you’re less than vigilant about installing patches on a regular basis.

For a reseller, becoming authorized by Apple to sell their product is a nightmare.  This is why most small resellers don’t promote Apple’s products at all.

We believe that our customers should pick what operating system they want to use, and it’s our job to figure out how to support it.  This is why small busness owners are excited about our Grizzly Secure Gateway .  It replaces a rack full of defense and management appliances at a fraction of the cost.  When combined with backup and patch management, businesses can enjoy the hardware and software compatibility of Microsoft’s operating systems without as much risk.

For small companies or home users that spend a lot of time on the road, the Mac is a solid computing platform that requires less management and security.  Moreover, their AppleCare support is actually not that bad, compared to what pc users have come to expect from their vendors.

If you have enough users in your organization, the cost savings of Windows becomes difficult to ignore.  Even with all the infrastructure they require to be secure and stable, there is a point where it makes fiscal sense to run Windows, probably somewhere between 20 and 50 seats.

There is another option, which is open source computing.  Ubuntu, by far the most popular implementation of linux is getting media attention, and with good reason.  There is no licensing cost.  As more people make the switch to web based “cloud” applications, the operating system in use becomes less relevant, because we find ourselves as a culture spending more time in a web browser than any other app, and Firefox is Firefox, regardless of what is running underneath it.  In 10 years, people probably won’t care about their operating system any more than people care what bios their system is running.  It becomes a transparent part of application delivery.  Microsoft understands this.  So does Google.

So Mac or pc?  We think Macs make a lot of sense for home use and many small companies, but small companies sometimes get bigger.  PC’s are more scalable, and easier to manage and monitor in an enterprise environment.  Apple’s platform and OS are downright beautiful, but if you want to stick with the mainstream, a pc network can be made to perform just as well for the sort of computing most people do.  We do recommend quality hardware and software designed for business use, so skip the black friday specials. (See this article on laptops for more information on that.)  Also, if you want to be scalable, make sure you get the professional version of Windows 7.  More on that in a future article.



The word “cryptography” may evoke images of Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind, trying to find Russian spies lurking in the classified ads, or perhaps you think of little Ralphie Parker in A Christmas Story who diligently decrypted Little Orphan Annie’s impassioned plea to “drink more Ovaltine”.

In today’s information systems, cryptography plays a role in keeping your data secure and private, and you probably use it every day without thinking much about it.

Most encryption used today employs a ‘public key architecture’ which is a fancy pants way of saying that there is a public key and a private key in use.

The public key is only able to encrypt or encode information, and the private key is required in order to decrypt or decode information.

So if Jane wants to send Spot a message, and she doesn’t want Dick to read it, she can encrypt the message with Spot’s public key and then only Spot’s private key will be able to make sense of it.  In fact, Jane could ask Dick to deliver the message to Spot, and Dick would not be able to read it because only Spot’s private key will be able to decode messages encrypted with his public key.

The internet is a public network.  Data travels across bandwidth, routers, gateways, and servers that are not secure, so if you want to maintain privacy, you will want to use encryption so that your data can’t be read in transit.

If you connect wirelessly to your network, you will want to encrypt that connection.  If you are shopping online, you will want to encrypt your credit card information.  Even if you are sending a password, you usually want to encrypt that too – anything sent without encryption can be intercepted.  In fact, anything sent with encryption can be intercepted, it just can’t be read without the private key.  Encrypted data looks like gibberish.

Encryption was in the news last week when Google implied that agents of the Chinese government were spying on the gmail accounts of human rights workers.  As part of their response, they made encryption enabled by default for users of Google Apps and Gmail.

There’s another problem though.  Encryption makes sure your data can’t be read in transit, but how do you know that you’re actually communicating with who you intend to?  What if Dick puts on a dog costume and pretends that he’s Spot?

The way information security professionals addressed this is by requiring that the encryption is “signed” by a certifying authority.  You can self-sign, but then visitors to your site will see a message like the one on the right.

So in practice, when browsing the web, when your connection is encrypted, you will see the address preceded by https:// instead of http:// and if you click on the site icon, it will give you information about the type of encryption in use as well as the CA or Certifying Authority.  CA’s like Thawte and Verisign work in the niche market of making sure that the encryption key actually belongs to who it says it does.  It’s the CA’s job to make sure that the secured connection is with who you think it is.  Only well known CA’s will be accepted by your browser without question.

In other words, I could make a certificate and tell you it’s from Wells Fargo Bank, but I wouldn’t be able to get it verified by a reputable CA, and if you browsed to a page that was secured by my bogus certificate, your browser would warn you that you might not want to continue.

The use of certificates along with Public Key Architecture gives the end user a reasonable expectation that they are securely exchanging information with who they think they are, which is important if you intend to bank or file taxes online.

So when you go to https://gmail.com to check your mail, your browser automatically trades public keys with the server at gmail.com, and then it automatically downloads a certificate. It checks that the certificate is signed by a reputable CA, that the date is valid, and that the name on the security certificate matches the one on the site you are connecting to.  If everything looks good, the page is presented to you as “secure”.  If it doesn’t, you get a warning.

Sometimes you may wish to encrypt a file, such as a file full of passwords, or one that contains confidential information.  You might want to try EncryptOnClick for an easy solution.   You can also try Windows’ built in encryption or this clever workaround on the mac.

Encrypting e-mail is also possible.  Here’s how to do it in Outlook and Thunderbird.  Keep in mind that although it’s unlikely your message will be intercepted, it’s easy to see that it has been scrambled, so if you are a citizen of a nation where privacy rights are nonexistent, you may want to watch your back.  In the United States and most western nations, you may encrypt anything you like.  For contrast, in Iran, you need a license from the government to encrypt data, and you must provide their Supreme Council for Cultural Revolution with the public and private keys.  For information about your country’s laws, you might want to check the Crypto Law Survey.

And finally, it’s time for a shameless plug from our sponsor. The virtual private networking capability of the Grizzly Pro Secure Network Gateway employs military grade strong encryption to keep your data secure and private whether you’re transferring it between branch offices or using your laptop at the airport. For more information about the Grizzly Pro and our other managed services, please call 949.891.BEAR. Also, drink more Ovaltine.

Hello up there.  It’s me, that key you never use.  I’ve got great placement between Ctrl and Alt, but you never press me.  I may look like a crooked flag, or a foursquare court drawn by someone Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, but I’m about to change your life.  Truth is, your left hand has been hovering over me for years, but you probably use the tilde key more often than you use me.  It’s a shame.  I can be really helpful if you’ll give me a chance.

I don’t do much by myself, but when you combine me with other keys, some pretty amazing things start to happen.

Hold me down and hit the tab key.  This will only work in Windows Vista and Windows 7, but wow!  I bet you thought only Apple keys could do tricks like that.  Not so, my friend.  Next, press me + the letter “E”.  Yeah, the mouse will do the same thing if you navigate through some menus, but i’m faster.  Try me + “F”.  Now we’re talking.  Here are some other tricks I can do:

Windows key + Up arrow = Maximize a Window
Windows key + Down = Minimize a Window
Windows key + Left = Snap To Left
Windows key + Right = Snap To Right
Windows key + Number Keys 1-9 = Starts Taskbar Applications
Windows key + D = Show the Desktop
Windows key + E = New Explorer Window
Windows key + F = Find
Windows key + R = Run a Command
Windows key + Plus Key = Zoom In
Windows key + Minus Key = Zoom Out
Windows key + X = Mobility Center (power, volume, brightness, etc)
Windows key + L = Locks the Computer
Windows key + P = Toggles a Projector
Windows key + O = Bends Space and Time (not really.)

Now that we’ve been properly introduced, I hope we can hang out once in a while.  Remember, winners use the Windows key.