Entrepreneurship

Save Hundreds by Adding RAM to Your Old Laptop

Entrepreneurship

laptop and Asian kids

My three-year-old laptop has gotten sluggish. No biggie. That’s to be expected for its age. And business laptops have gotten so inexpensive, I could replace it for peanuts.

But why not breathe new life into it instead by expanding the RAM?

At 1/10th the cost of even a cheap, business laptop, it’s worth a shot.  Then again, it’s only a slam dunk if I can install the RAM myself. Some laptop chassis make it impossible to access the RAM. If mine is that way, then having a professional do it ($80 in parts, $60 labor, PLUS a trip to the PC repair shop) would push this project into the $150+ range. For that money, I’d have to consider a new machine. Yes, big-box stores will do the install for forty bucks. But you have to leave the laptop overnight. So that’s two trips to the store.

To do it myself, the machine needs to have either (a) an access door over the memory compartment or (b) a back cover that comes off easily.

NOTE: if your laptop has neither one, STOP RIGHT NOW. Trying to open a machine without easy access is just asking for trouble.

Luckily for me, this laptop does have an access door. Most business machines do.

Next (and maybe I should’ve done this first), I determine how much RAM can be added. To do so, I answer some basic questions:

•  Is the laptop 32-bit or 64-bit?
•  How many memory slots are open?
•  What type of RAM do we need, exactly?

A 32-bit machine can only use 4 GB memory. Maximum. You only waste money with more. This laptop is a business model, so I assume it to be 64-bit. Just to be sure, I check “system properties”:

Start menu > Settings > System > About

It tells me:

HP Envy 15 Notebook PC
Installed RAM:  8GB
Processor:  Intel Core i7-4720HQ  @ 2.60GHz
OS:  Windows 10 Pro, 64-bit

If the model name doesn’t appear there, check the sticker on the bottom of your machine.

How to Find Model Name of Laptop

I then plug that info into an online tool (at Crucial.com) that tells me how many RAM slots the laptop has and exactly what type of RAM stick is compatible.

I order an 8 GB stick from Crucial for $34, including shipping.

For the actual mechanics of installing the RAM stick, I consult this excellent Laptop Magazine tutorial. (With pictures!)

Note: the Laptop Magazine writer could’ve done better with Step 4, “Remove Any Memory in the Upper Slot.” She says,

Chances are that any installed  memory will be taking the upper slot, so you’ll need to remove it and put it in the other bank so you have space for your added memory.

She meant to say the existing RAM stick is in the way; it’s covering the open slot. But we would’ve understood that part once we opened the access door and had a look around.

And, voila! We enjoy significantly improved performance. More importantly, we save hundreds of dollars on the new laptop we don’t buy.

My Super Niche Business: An Equipment Rental House and Studio for Commercial Photography

Entrepreneurship

Window Logo & Client Area - Gaeme

A niche business? How about renting studio space to commercial photographers?

That was my first entrepreneurial venture, called Silver Street Studio, LLC. (I’ve previously blogged about it here.) For eight years I supplied a fully-equipped shooting space to photographers by the day.

Little known outside the photo industry, commercial photographers utilize day-rentals for equipment and studios. It makes perfect sense. They work in hundreds of cities around the world, rarely shooting in the same town more than a day or two at a time. They don’t travel with their own gear; the equipment doesn’t travel well; it’s heavy, yet fragile. Plus, the risk of damage, or of the airline losing the equipment, is too great when a $50,000-a-day budget depends on a strict production schedule.

The solution: renting the gear and studio in the city of the day’s shoot. For gear, they rent lighting equipment, computers, even cameras.

More importantly, by industry custom, the photographer expenses the client for every rental. Most will even charge the client a 15%-20% markup on equipment rentals. For photographers, this is the ultimate in low overhead.

My business stocked over 200 different studio lights and accessories. It made me nervous to keep over a quarter-million dollars worth of gear in our equipment room.  We carried the Profoto and Matthews brands–the global industry standards for lighting and grip.  High-end commercial photographers will work with nothing less.

profoto poster

Our studio sported a very nice, two-station hair and makeup counter, a client lounge, a wardrobe styling area, and a modest-sized cyclorama.

silver street hair and makeup - new - taylor

studio page 10

studio page 2

We hosted countless shoots, some for celebrity portraiture.  When Blender Magazine needed a cover shoot of comedian Dave Chapelle, they caught up with him in Houston and booked our studio. In the days leading to the shoot, Chapelle’s producer urged me to keep a low profile for the day’s events.  Then they arrived in the not-so-low-profile tour bus!

Chappelle bus

For location shoots (i.e., not in our studio), I would deliver equipment throughout the Houston metro area, as well as to Austin, San Antonio, and New Orleans, where high-end photo equipment rentals did not exist at the time. I hauled the gear with my trusty little Thule trailer.

trailer

Corporate Data Breaches: What They Mean for Us

Entrepreneurship, Media

Part III in a series on personal online security. Parts I and II can be found here and here.

sony-hacked-again-1

 

What’s it gonna take?

That’s the question we’re all asking after the countless cyber attacks on the world’s most powerful corporations. The Sony Pictures hack got a lot of attention for the 47,000 embarrassing executive emails and celebrity Social Security numbers dumped onto the Internet. But check out this list of high-profile hacks and how many records were breached:

  • Michaels Stores, Inc. — 2 million
  • JP Morgan — 83 million
  • Home Depot — 109 million
  • Target — 110 million
  • eBay — 145 million
  • Adobe — 152 million
  • Court Ventures (Experian) — 200 million

We’re talking credit card data, home addresses, checking account numbers–everything an identity thief dreams of at night.

For this post I had planned on listing all the household-name companies hacked in recent years. But it would be way easier to list the handful that weren’t hacked. One prominent cyber security analyst claims 97% of all companies have had their servers broken into.

What’s it gonna take for them to do better?

Actually, that’s the wrong question. We now know the biggest, most powerful companies don’t have our backs regarding Internet security. We also know, by the sheer scale of these attacks, that we have all been touched by these crimes, if not directly, then via someone close to us.

So, the real question is, What’s it gonna take for us to take better care on our own initiative?

(Image:  yuhootech.com)

Password Managers, or Doing Passwords Right

Entrepreneurship, Media

Part II in a three-part series on personal online security. Parts I and III can be found here and here.

please don't steal this

Still Using Scraps of Paper?

Back when I was “storing” passwords via pen and paper, I had, what, twelve pages worth? Fifteen? Of course it’s impossible to memorize more than just a few passwords, which is why people duplicate, or reuse, passwords on multiple sites. Reusing passwords is the primary no-no of personal Internet security. Yet we all do it, we who keep passwords on paper.

The trouble is, when a reused password gets stolen, the thief has access to any site associated with it. This is the principal danger for most when caught up when a big company gets hacked.

Then there’s the problem of using easily remembered passwords for our most frequented sites. Your dog’s name, your child’s birthday. Now that’s secure! Use it for online banking or your most-used email account!

Our third most common failing is not changing passwords regularly. Really? All fifteen pages worth?

If your password-tracking system is stack of dog-eared, greasy pages in disintegrating manila folder, you’re essentially dangling your business checking account in front of cyber criminals and taunting them to take its contents.

The Best of the Best:  LastPass vs. 1Password

Enter: the password manager.

Here are the two password managers I have direct experience with: 1Password and LastPass. These two, along with KeePass, represent the best of the best.

Ten years ago I started out with 1Password. 1Password is one of the few top password managers that does not store your data in the cloud. 1Password is essentially an encryption program, but one dedicated to password management. It generates and organizes strong, unique passwords, all encrypted and stored locally on your hard drive.

What soured me on 1Password is its lack of cloud-sync. It’s greatest strength was also it’s biggest weakness.

Like a lot of entrepreneurs, I have a raft of devices float through my life every few years. Without cloud syncing, 1Password  limited my password “vault” to my main laptop, only. After a few months I bit the bullet and manually re-created a second password vault on my second laptop. That chore took hours.

1Password did offer syncing via Dropbox. Convenient, yes. But then you have to rely on Dropbox’s security, as well.

At that point I switched to LastPass. Yes, this switch was guided, admittedly, by convenience. How great it was to have all my passwords on all my devices! But LastPass also offers topflight security.

I was queasy at first about LastPass storing my data in the cloud. It took some time to get comfortable with their basic concept: LastPass servers don’t actually store passwords. They only store encryptions of passwords. That’s how they thwart any potential inside job (a.k.a., a LastPass employee stealing customer data).

How Long Is a Billion Billion Years?

The encryption also discourages cyber attacks from outsiders. With AES 256 bit technology, a hacker who cracks the LastPass servers would need at least a billion billion years to decrypt even a single password. That’s not a typo. A billion billion. (Here’s a discussion of these numbers.) Hear that? That’s the sound of hackers crossing LastPass off their hit list. (1Password also uses AES 256.)

Finally, decryption of the LastPass ciphers happens locally, on your device. In other words, your naked passwords never travel outside of your device. Plus, you are the only one who holds the key to the decryption. That key is what LastPass calls your Master Password. Hence, the name–your Master Password is the last password you ever have to memorize.

So, I remember one, and LastPass handles the other 179.

No matter which program you choose, you should make your Master Password long and strong. And change it three to five times each year. Rather than a pass-word, I use a pass-phrase.

Two Factor Authentication

We should also all be using 2 Factor Authentication (2FA) with our password manager. Even if my Master Password were stolen, say, by keylogger malware, the thief still couldn’t access my LastPass vault without my 2FA security key. I love having my USB security key on my keychain, which I can use to access LastPass on any laptop or desktop. For my Android needs, I use the Google Authenticator app (always on a separate device).

It’s heartening to learn that LastPass is popular at MIT.

Next Post: Data Breaches in the News

Time: “Why You Should Change Your Amazon Password Now”

Entrepreneurship, Media

Part I in a series on personal online security. Parts II and III can be found here and here.

keep-calm-and-change-your-password- 400x467

“Why You Should Change Your Amazon Password Now”

So says the headline of a recent Time magazine article. The word “now” sure makes for provocative news. The article begins, “Hackers said Friday that they leaked data associated with 13,000 accounts on Amazon, XBox Live and other sites.” The writer concludes, “[This] news should underscore how important it is to change your passwords frequently.”

But is this just alarmist rhetoric? Should we really worry about such a small number of victims?

Online retailers say we have nothing to fear. Not only was the number of victims small, the 13,000 were spread out amongst 14 different retailers, not just Amazon. Some might point to the much larger 2014 Home Depot hack as cause for concern (56 million credit card numbers stolen). But the online retailers say the Home Depot crime wasn’t actually a “hack,” per se. In that attack, credit card info was stolen from Home Depot’s self-checkout machines in physical stores, not from the company’s computer database.

In other words, according to the spin doctors, cyber security is sound. They might admit the 2013 hack of Target was large (40 million credit card numbers stolen), or that the Sony hack of 2011 came with high costs for the company. But Sony, Target, Home Depot, and any big company watching the fallout of their hacks, have cried, Never again! They’ve elevated their cyber security. They declare online retailing to be safe–or even safer than–shopping in a physical store.

That’s plain wrong.

In a recent segment of CBS 60 Minutes, cyber security expert Dave DeWalt says “97 percent–literally 97 percent of all companies–are getting breached.”

What a mind-blowing figure. And DeWalt should know. Target has hired his security firm, FireEye, to prevent future breaches. “Even the strongest banks in the world . . . can’t spend enough money or hire enough people to solve this problem,” he says.

Perhaps the real takeaway from the 60 Minutes piece was that “80 percent of security breaches involve weak passwords. One of the most common is: 123456.” In other words, 80 percent of the passwords now in the hands of criminals were absurdly weak to begin with. Or, rather, 80 percent of us are still using passwords the way we did in the 1990s: simplistic, easily remembered (aka, easily guessed by strangers).

DeWalt says, “The days when we our username and password is our son or daughter’s name, or our cat or our dog, is not enough security to thwart today’s hackers.”

So, don’t just “change your passwords now.” Make them stronger.

My next post: Password managers, or Doing Passwords Right

Surviving Wisconsin Winters, Part 1: High Performance Business Casual?

Entrepreneurship, Health

Image

High performance work clothing? Does such a thing exist? And I don’t mean flame retardant electrician’s pants or stretchy business-bombshell blazers.

Answer:  Levi’s 511 Corduroys.

Although wool is my new favorite fabric for activewear, there are two applications for which synthetics still rule:  rain gear and winter work/weekend attire. I’ve already written a post on rain gear. As far as business casual goes, Levi’s 511 Cords are a surprising fabric that can double for winter cycling.

Especially good for winter bicycle commuting, their 66%/33% blend of cotton/elastane creates surprisingly efficient wicking of perspiration. Then, when the moisture is drawn up into the corduroy, the corded channels evaporate it to the outside air. Think radiator fins on an air-conditioning unit — the greater surface area vents moisture fast. That makes these pants high-performance street clothes. (Just FYI, the tag says “polyester.” But I verified it to be elastane.)

[UPDATE 10/23/2016:  See bottom for the bad news about more recent specimens of these cords.]

Jeans used to be my mainstay winter-biking pants. It’s only denim, so I didn’t stress out when the cuffs got crusted with salt or blackened with road slush. But getting sweaty in jeans meant the denim staying damp for hours, afterward, a.k.a., cold and clammy. By contrast, Levis cords dry out in minutes.

My ideal setup is to wear a wool base layer beneath the Levis cords. The wool breathes really well, too, moving perspiration to the corduroy, which then evaporates the moisture quickly. The wool also acts as a barrier to odor causing bacteria, allowing me to wear the same pair of cords for three-plus days between washings. How’s that for high performance?

[Image credit: Wikimedia]

[UPDATE 10/23/2016:  Sadly, I’ve just bought a new pair of these cords. Levi’s has changed the fabric, reducing the elastane content to a mere 2%. That’s 98% cotton and 2% elastane. I don’t know how long ago they changed up. Too bad. I predict this new pair won’t vent anywhere near as well as my three old, now threadbare pairs bought back in 2012. Curse you, Levi’s!]

The Heartbleed Bug: How to Keep Your Passwords Safe

Entrepreneurship

lastpass logo

As an entrepreneur, one of your most important tasks is securing your financial information.  In the wake of the Heartbleed Bug, I’ve been fine-tuning my digital security. I’ve especially been fortifying my passwords.  I already use a password manager called LastPass, which I highly recommend.

Though I’ve used LastPass for several years, until Heartbleed, I wasn’t utilizing LastPass to its full potential. The latent Luddite in me was on the fence about fully entrusting my most sensitive accounts to any password manager. But this past couple of weeks has shown me how important it is (and that it truly is safe) to use LastPass for even my bank accounts, PayPal, and other highly sensitive sites.

I’d been using LastPass for dozens of less sensitive sites, while continuing to use easy to remember, “secret” passwords for my bank accounts and Paypal. Not smart. By “easy to remember,” I mean actual words whose significance I believed to be too personal to be deduced by strangers.

How foolish.  Today’s password-cracking software can test out tens or even hundreds of millions of possible passwords per second. Against such brute-force juggernauts, my poor, easy to remember passwords would last mere minutes, if that.

Enter LastPass. LastPass is widely considered the best password manager out there.  You have one master password to log in to the LastPass browser plug-in. Whenever you visit a web service, the plug-in logs you in securely.  As long as your master password is chosen well (i.e., long and complex), LastPass offers excellent security. There’s even a multi-factor authentication feature to make remote hacking virtually impossible.  (Multi-factor authentication is like Google Two-step Authentication, which, if you aren’t using yet, I also highly recommend.)

LastPass generates a different, completely random, character-string password for each of your online logins. Randomness is the key. Randomness actually resists brute-force attacks, unlike actual words. This is how to leverage a single master password while never using the same password for more than one site.

LastPass stores only 256-bit encrypted versions of passwords on its servers. That way, if their servers are ever hacked, the thief would have a monumental task of decrypting just one password, not to mention any others after that one.

Also, LastPass doesn’t store your master password.  Only you know your master password.  That’s how they thwart the potential “inside job” by an unscrupulous Lastpass employee. (Inside jobs are actually the most common form of security breach involving passwords.)

Plus, the LastPass plug-in only decrypts your passwords on your local machine; it never sends an unencrypted password across the Internet. All individual passwords remain encrypted until the moment you use them.

And even then when LastPass decrypts a password to log you in to a site, the password fill-in remains masked (just asterisks), in case a hacker is mirroring your screen. (By the way, your master password is masked when you use it to log into the LastPass plug-in.)

 

My First-ever Beer-industry Publication

Entrepreneurship, Food and Drink, Media, Wisconsin, Writing

screenshot - chocolate chili stouts

Big announcement. Da, da, DAAAAHHH!

I’ve recently published my first-ever piece of actual beer-industry writing. Please go have look!

Totally excited about Mobcraft, a real up-and-coming, two-year Madison brewery, ready to break ground on their $2 million facility.

I’ll be freelance blogging for them. This first post of mine is an article on chocolate chili pepper stouts, in advance of their newly-bottled beer No Stout About It.

My next piece for them will come out in the coming days. Stay tuned . . .

Metro-style Wunderlist: a Productivity Tool that Hurts Productivity

Entrepreneurship
wunderlist_beta_windows

No taskbar!

Oh, how I loathe thee, Metro-style Wunderlist (the new version of Wunderlist made for Windows 8).

First I should praise Wunderlist to high heaven. I adopted it early on and continue to trust it with my entrepreneurial life.

But the Metro version? Not so much. Notice the absent Windows taskbar in the image above? Not only does Metro-style Wunderlist hide the taskbar by default, the settings contain no way to change that. If you want to see the taskbar, the only way to do that is to mash your cursor against the bottom of the screen, then . . . you . . . wait . . . Bounce the cursor around down there, and sometimes the taskbar emerges. Sometimes it doesn’t. Same goes for calling up “recent apps” in the upper-left corner. It often takes three or four tries to show the taskbar or recent apps.

My list of grievances goes on and on. But let’s just leave it at that. It feels funny to grouse about something I otherwise love and respect a great deal. Plus, I try to keep positive on this blog. Instead, I’ll just cut to the happy ending.

For anyone still struggling with this sorry app, it turns out you can ditch the offending Metro-style Wunderlist and retrieve the old-school, Windows 7, desktop version. The trick is to download it directly from Wunderlist, not from the Windows App Store. The Windows 7 desktop version works perfectly well in the Windows 8 environment.

https://www.wunderlist.com/download/

As a related side note, Wunderlist’s Android app performs really well. Because of its small footprint, it performs with nimble ease, even on my under-powered LG Volt. Despite its light weight, the app gives you virtually every functionality of its big, desktop brother, including sub-tasks and notes.

(Notice how I slipped in that “big brother” reference? Microsoft has acquired Wunderlist this year.)

A major bonus: the Android widget. I’ve got the widget on my phone’s lock screen. The widget displays any of my to do lists, in their entirety, without the need to unlock my phone.

IMG_20151012_102919

The Wunderlist Android widget on my lock screen

Easton Bell Sports: Now That’s Customer Service

Entrepreneurship, Health

Easton Bell $0.00 highlighted

Just wanted to send out some well-deserved praise for a company with excellent customer service.

Last December I damaged my Giro snowboard helmet.  I bent the metal snap of the goggle strap on the rear of the helmet.  (I mean the strap at the rear that clamps down over the strap of ski goggles).  After unsnapping the strap to remove my goggles, I found I could no longer close the snap.

I use this snowboard helmet for winter cycling.  As I don’t have a car, I need it on a daily basis.  This was an especially cold winter here in Madison.  I generally switch from wraparound glasses to ski goggles below 15°F.  While I don’t use goggles everyday, this is Wisconsin!

So, I emailed Giro, asking where I could buy the replacement parts.  I wasn’t optimistic.  In this age of disposable products and terrible customer service (I’m looking at you, AT&T, major airlines, Chase Bank, etc.), I half-expected to be told there are no replacement parts, if I were to be answered, at all.

They actually got back to me the very next day.  It was Customer Service Rep Amber Thomas, from Easton-Bell Sports, the parent company of Giro.  She said she would put the replacement strap in the mail, and I should receive it by the end of the week.  Sure enough, the strap arrived two days later.  I was thrilled to be able to use my goggles the rest of the season, without having to buy a brand new helmet.

(For those of you who say you don’t need the helmet strap to use goggles:  while running errands around town on my bike, I’m constantly removing my goggles and putting them back on.  This is much, much simpler to do with your helmet’s goggle strap latched to your goggles, as if the goggles were an integrated part of your helmet.)

When I wrote Amber back expressing my gratitude, she replied, “We just want you to have a fully functioning helmet.”

What you’re looking at in the image above is the packing list that arrived with the replacement parts.  Notice the figures listed in the “price” columns.  That’s right, “$0.00”

But, wait.  There’s more.

Several years back, I had a great little micro-light for the top of my skating helmet.  This was back in Houston, where the heat and humidity made Rollerblading at night the natural choice.  You need a light to skate at night, obviously.  Some of you may know this micro-light I’m referring to, called The Flea, by Blackburn.  They still make the Flea, but back then the Flea charged off of any battery via a little charging device.  My charger had a wire break loose.  I emailed Blackburn about it.  Same as with my helmet, Easton-Bell Sports, the parent company of Blackburn, sent me a replacement charger at no cost.

We’re talking a company with nearly $1 billion in annual revenue.  So how do they succeed while giving away equipment at no charge?  By making lifelong customers like me.  That’s how.

Just FYI, after selling one of its several manufacturing divisions, the company has recently rebranded itself as BRG Sports.