My husband and I each have a laptop and we also have a desktop in our room which is hooked up to the printer.  We have wireless internet, and I was wondering is there any way to hook everything together so that I can print things off of my laptop even though the printer is actually wired to the desktop and not my laptop?  (Katie - Modesto)

What you want to do is basically networking your printer so all your computers can print from it.  It is possible to do but your desktop (or the computer that the printer is wired to) has to be powered on whenever you want to print from one of the other computers.

The easiest way to do this is to use the "Network Setup Wizard" that is found in your control panel if you are using Windows XP.  If you are using Windows Vista it's called "Network and Sharing Center." 

The wizard basically asks you a few questions and you just need to answer each question the same on each computer that you want to network. 

Once you are finished with the wizard, you have to then "Share" the printer on the host machine.  You can do this by going into your control panel and choosing "Printers and Faxes" (assuming you are using Windows XP).  Find the printer that you want to share and right click on it.  Then left click on "Sharing".  Then select "Share this printer" and hit "ok."  Then to finish the entire process, go to the other computers and inside of the control panel, choose "printers and faxes."  Then choose "Add a Printer."  Then select "Network Printer" and let it find your newly networked printer.

I recently bought a new computer but I dont want to get rid of my old computer because it has lots of pictures of my grandchildren on it- is there anyway to move the pictures to the new computer so I can get rid of the old one? (Gert - Ripon)

Thanks for the question.  I would say the easiest way to transfer those pictures is to purchase a little USB "Flash" drive and copying all of the pictures to it.  You simply "plug" the drive into your old computer and it becomes a new drive.  Just copy all the old pictures (wherever they are located) to it.  Once you have it saved to the USB drive you can then "plug" it into the new system and copy it over. 

USB drives are extremely inexpensive as the price of memory has dropped drastically recently.  If you purchase one, give us a call and we can walk you through the process on the phone.  If this sounds a little too complicated, just bring the old system down here and we can pull that stuff off for you without a problem.

My computer is running a lot slower than when I purchased it about 3 years ago. Is there anything that I can do to speed it up? (Cory - Ripon)

A few things may be happening to cause the slowdown.  All can be fixed.

1. Your startup programs may be slowing the system down.  When you install programs onto your computer, some tend to want to start up when your computer starts.  This will eventually cause a slower startup and "steal" memory from other programs as you try to run them....causing the other programs to run slower as well.
2. You have an infection.  A lot of infections will "steal" memory from your system as well causing a major slowdown in your system.
3. Your anti-virus suite may be causing a slowdown.  We see both Norton and McAfee (as well as other internet security suites, tend to slow your system down by 20-25% just by being installed to your system.

There are a few other things that can be happening but here are the basic solutions:  Eliminate all non-essential programs from starting as your system starts up.  This should be done through each program itself.  You can see most of what's starting up by looking at the icons in the lower right hand corner of your screen on the toolbar.

Also getting rid of Norton or McAfee and installing something else can speed things up.  We recommend a combination of AVG Anti-Virus free and Super Antispyware for your protection.

And the last thing you can do is upgrade your memory.  When you purchased your system, your memory may have been sufficient for the programs that were out at the time.  Now-a-days, programs tend to use more and more memory.

The bottom line is you could use a tune-up.  We recommend computers getting a tune-up at least once a year for moderate usage.  A business computer should get a tune-up every 6-8 months.

Are sites like MySpace and Facebook safe? (Sandi - Ceres)

We recommend staying away from MySpace completely.  There is too much freedom in creating your profile page.  So not only is each individual free to add viruses or other malicious code to their profile pages (that load as soon as you visit their site) but companies that offer "free profile generators" embed malicious code into their program which in turn embeds that code in each site of whoever uses their generator.

Facebook is extremely safe.  Each profile is the same.  There is no outside code to embed and infect web surfers. 

I highly recommend facebook and Heida Computers even has a "fan" page.  Check it out.