Tips For Choosing Your Take Off Software

If you have a construction business one of the best purchases you will ever make for your company is that of take off software. Take off software is something that many companies think about buying, but then never actually take that step to go out and buy what will help them run their business much more efficiently and effectively. Take off software is a great buy because it was made to help contractors be more productive while making much more rapid estimates as well as more accurate estimates.

If you have decided that it is finally time to bite the bullet and buy some software for your business, you will find that it is not as simple as going out and buying the one software program on the market for construction businesses. Instead, you will find that there are many different options to choose from ranging from very simple to very sophisticated. You may feel a little bit overwhelmed when you look at all of the options, but you needn’t be. You can simply take it one step at a time and then you will find that buying your software is quick and easy.

The first thing that you want to consider when buying your construction takeoff software is your experience with software programs as related to the construction industry. If you are new to computers for your business you may want to focus on choosing a construction take off software program that is easy to use and made for beginners. There are a lot of very simple programs out there, but simple doesn’t have to mean limited in ability.

When you start looking at the programs you will find that you might have the ability to not only make estimates but also export them, import new ones, and even track your progress in the way of labor and resources. This will allow you to really take your business planning to a whole new level. If you want to get really high tech and be able to make changes right on the screen you may want to look at something called on screen takeoff. This is the newest option in this type of software and it will really allow you to take your quick planning and estimating to a whole new level.

Another thing that you need to take into account when you are choosing your take off software is price. There is a lot of different options out there and the more tools that you get with software the more expensive it will be. Of course, you need to choose the right software all around for your business and then see how much you can get for the price point that fits your budget.

By: Caitlina Fuller

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3 Simple Steps to Getting Microsoft Office Specialist (MOS) Certification For Microsoft Office 2003

How to Obtain Microsoft Office Certification and Which Office Certification is Right for You

Microsoft now offers two current versions of the prestigious Microsoft Office Certification. The version and name of the certification depends on the version of Microsoft Office you wish to certify on. This article will focus on the Microsoft Office Specialist certification. To learn about the Microsoft Certified Application Specialist (MCAS) please read the corresponding MCAS article.

The Microsoft Office Specialist (MOS) certification is for individuals who use and wish to certify on Microsoft Office 2003 products. There are seven possible MOS exams available. From the seven possible exams there are two possible titles, or designations, a person taking MOS exams can earn. The designations are Microsoft Office Specialist and / or Master Microsoft Office Specialist. The credential you earn depends on which of the seven exams you take and how many of the exams you take. The seven available exams are:

1. Microsoft Word 2003 Core
2. Microsoft Word 2003 Expert
3. Microsoft Excel 2003 Core
4. Microsoft Excel 2003 Expert
5. Microsoft PowerPoint 2003 Core
6. Microsoft Outlook 2003 Core
7. Microsoft Access 2003 Core

If you take any one of the above exams you become a Microsoft Office Specialist in that product. So, if you pass the Microsoft Word Expert exam you will be mailed a certificate, from Microsoft, which says you are a Microsoft Office Specialist in Word Expert. If you take the Outlook Core exam you will be mailed a certificate that says you are a Microsoft Office Specialist in Outlook Core. After passing any of the above exams you are certified as a Microsoft Office Specialist and you can at that time use the MOS designation after your name, as well as the MOS logo on business cards, resumes, etc.

When you pass four specific MOS exams you will earn the Master Microsoft Office Specialist certification / designation. The required exams for Master MOS status are:

1. Microsoft Word 2003 Expert
2. Microsoft Excel 2003 Expert
3. Microsoft PowerPoint 2003 Core
4. Microsoft Outlook 2003 Core or Microsoft Access 2003 Core (you only need to pass 1 of the 2)

When you pass the above four required exams, Microsoft will mail you a certificate that says Master Microsoft Office Specialist. This certificate will also say which of the four required exams you passed. If you have decided Microsoft Office Specialist is the certification for you because you use Microsoft Office 2003 and want to validate your Office 2003 skills you should do the following steps.

Step One: Microsoft Office Training - Through training you will learn the Microsoft Office applications you will be tested on. When looking for training look for program that starts with the application basics and covers the advanced topics also. The tests are difficult, so you want to make sure the training you choose is comprehensive. You should also look for training that covers the exam objectives. You can find a list of the exam objectives on the www.ComputerCoach.com. You should look for training that includes hands-on activities also. All Microsoft Office Specialist exams are hands-on exams. There are questions that appear on the bottom of the page. The application you are testing on will open on the top of the screen and you will have to "do" the necessary tasks to answer the questions. The exams are also timed. Each test is 50 minutes, so you want to be sure you are quick at doing each exam objective. Training that includes hands-on practice will help you learn and retain the information.

Step Two: Practice Exams - Several vendors sell Microsoft Office Specialist practice exams. These practice exams simulate the test environment. It allows you to become familiar with the types of questions they will ask you, the way the questions are worded, the expected responses, and it is a great way to refine your skills before taking the actual test.

Step Three: Schedule and Take the Test - The Microsoft Office Specialist exams are administered through official Certiport Testing centers. You must go to a physical location to take the test. You can find a list of Official Certiport Testing Center at certiport.com. Beware, Microsoft does not offer there Office exams online. You must go to the physical testing center and pass the Microsoft Office Specialist exam to become "certified." Good luck!

Suzanne Alexander, M. Ed. is a Microsoft Certified Trainer.

Computer Coach provides flexible,self-paced computer courses at affordable prices. Computer Coach exceeds its client's expectation by offering online computer training classes that help individuals get the skills they need to be successful in today's rigorous and changing workplaces. Visit www.ComputerCoach.com for hands-on comprehensive Microsoft Office Training.

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Click on the Mouse

Equipped with the jazzy management degrees, when a couple of us twenty-something joined service in the late 1970s, the seniors would be awed into silence by our wunderkind management jargons, unheard of by them. They would feel subdued and make a fizzing sound. But then they would soon console themselves by arguing that, by the time these management whizkids were of their age, they too would be filled with awe when some newest of the new generation wizards showed extra ordinary proficiency in the use of the very latest techno-speaks and gadgets. For the Gen-x kids are weaned on MTV, and the high-tech video games tend to make them freedom minded, individualistic, and self absorbed, it is they who keep on calling the shots. Without any formal training in the computers, these fellows click on the mouse and move the cursor with such an extraordinary proficiency that I am forced to throw in the towel for assistance. Surfing through the internet, the young netizens do every damn thing that people of our generation hardly think of.

With Bill Gates' microprocessors having become an in-thing in the offices/homes of high profile bureaucrats, business executives, schools and colleges, it happened to catch my fancy nearly a decade back as well to have one such gadget on my table top. I had the visions, perhaps of, it giving me a sense of one-upmanship over many of our relatives and friends who were not in possession of one, and then the guests admiring the gizmo for adorning the small library at my home. Despite my wife voting nay and opposing tooth and nail, the purchase was made. The kids, particularly my teenaged son was on top of world, on cloud nine. The geek, who came to install the computer, taught the titbits, which my kids alone could understand and remember. In their frenzy to play with the keys, a click on the 'Delete' key or the like would erase everything in the system. As nobody would own the responsibility in effect, I would be forced to make obligatory rounds of the much-sought-after technician to reset the system, and pay him as per his diktats. My wife, who has never reconciled with the idea of the computer-spend, would complain that the children wasted time and failed to pay attention to their studies and household chores. The net effect of all this was that the curfew' would quite often get imposed (sine die). No body would dare touch the system, let alone talk about it. Keys of the room were seized and hidden without leaving a trail behind.

The desk top that I would carry on with for the 10 long years has since been chucked out as junk. Two years back when my teenager son insisted on replacing it with the laptop, I bought one on easy installments. From that day onwards he(a computer engineer by profession) would always be seen glued to his laptop without respite. As his lap top is his-kind-of-a-thing, he has no time to thumb through the books or daily newspapers, let alone the urge to view television programs. Once in a blue moon, when he goes out with his friends, he is generous enough to lend me his gizmo. Ostensibly to work on my recently rekindled passion (of scribbling-on-papers) when I try to play with the keys of the gadget, I soon come to realize that my computer illiterate wife is with her hackles up. She is not happy with me for treading into a domain that is not at all my metier.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tajamul_Hussain

Difference Between Virus-Worms-Trojan Horses and SpyWare

The most of peoples make blunder when the topic of a computer virus arises is to refer to a worm or Trojan horse as a virus. While the words Trojan, worm and virus are often used interchangeably, they are not the same. Viruses, worms and Trojan Horses are all malicious programs that can cause damage to your computer, but there are differences among the three, and knowing those differences can help you to better protect your computer from their often damaging effects.

Computer virus

(1) Attaches itself to a program or file so it can spread from one computer to another, leaving infections as it travels. Much like human viruses

(2) Computer viruses can range in severity: Some viruses cause only mildly annoying effects while others can damage your hardware, software or files.

(3) Almost all viruses are attached to an executable file, which means the virus may exist on your computer but it cannot infect your computer unless you run or open the malicious program. It is important to note that a virus cannot be spread without a human action, (such as running an infected program) to keep it going.

(4) People continue the spread of a computer virus, mostly unknowingly, by sharing infecting files or sending e-mails with viruses as attachments in the e-mail.

Worm

(1) A worm is similar to a virus by its design, and is considered to be a sub-class of a virus. Worms spread from computer to computer, but unlike a virus, it has the capability to travel without any help from a person. A worm takes advantage of file or information transport features on your system, which allows it to travel unaided.

(2) The biggest danger with a worm is its capability to replicate itself on your system, so rather than your computer sending out a single worm, it could send out hundreds or thousands of copies of itself, creating a huge devastating effect. One example would be for a worm to send a copy of itself to everyone listed in your e-mail address book. Then, the worm replicates and sends itself out to everyone listed in each of the receiver's address book, and the manifest continues on down the line.

(3) Due to the copying nature of a worm and its capability to travel across networks the end result in most cases is that the worm consumes too much system memory (or network bandwidth), causing Web servers, network servers and individual computers to stop responding. In more recent worm attacks such as the much-talked-about Blaster Worm the worm has been designed to tunnel into your system and allow malicious users to control your computer remotely.

Trojan Horse

(1) Trojan Horse is full of as much trickery as the mythological Trojan Horse it was named after. The Trojan Horse, at first glance will appear to be useful software but will actually do damage once installed or run on your computer.

(2) Those on the receiving end of a Trojan Horse are usually tricked into opening them because they appear to be receiving legitimate software or files from a legitimate source. When a Trojan is activated on your computer, the results can vary. Some Trojans are designed to be more annoying than malicious (like changing your desktop, adding silly active desktop icons) or they can cause serious damage by deleting files and destroying information on your system.

(3) Trojans are also known to create a backdoor on your computer that gives malicious users access to your system, possibly allowing confidential or personal information to be compromised. Unlike viruses and worms, Trojans do not reproduce by infecting other files nor do they self-replicate.

Spyware-Adware

(1) Spyware and Adware collect information about you without appropriate notice and consent.

(2) Spyware can get installed on your computer in a number of ways. One way is via a virus. Another way is for it to be secretly downloaded and installed with other software you've chosen to install. You and I both know how easy it is to skip reading all the documentation on a free program and just click "OK." That's often how they get you.

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5 Simple PC Tweaks

If you have been using computer for a long period of time, you must have noticed that its speed and performance has slowed down. There are host of factors effecting speed of your computer. There are 5 simple tweaks to increase computer speed.

1. Removing and uninstalling: The first simple tweak to increase computer speed is to remove and uninstall unnecessary files and programs. Even if your computer has enough space say, 1GB of disk space, it is wiser to remove unnecessary program and files as it helps in increasing speed of your computer. It is very easy to remove and uninstall programs without any expert help.

2. Defragmentation: Defragmentation is a process of rewriting non-contiguous or fragmented parts of a folder or file to contiguous sectors on the hard drive with the aim of increasing computer speed. Disk fragmentation results in slowing down performance of your computer. A computer needs to search the hard drive if the files are fragmented in order to patch up the fragmented portions consuming significant amount of time. With the use of disk defragmenter, your computer’s hard drive can be consolidated and freed up resulting in increase in speed of your computer.

3. Detect and repair errors of disk: As a result of heavy usage of hard disk, it can develop bad sectors that can slow down the performance and speed of your computer. This can also lead to delay and stopping of some applications like saving a file. The simple tweak to increase computer speed is to detect and repair disk errors. This can help in preventing bad sectors from developing and speeding up your computer. This task can be performed with the help of Error Checking utility which scans the hard drive and locates bad sectors.

4. Delete temporary files: Next simple tweak to increase computer speed in to delete temporary internet files and cache along with cookies. Temporarily internet files consume the most space than any other application as the internet browser caches every page that is visited for fast access later on. Though these files are necessary, removing them before shutting down your computer can go a long way in increasing speed of your computer. You need to remove cookies as they also reduce speed along with causing damage to your computer as the source of their origin is not know. Internet explorer and firefox both have useful options to clear your cookies after each web session. Take advantage of this and speed up your internet experience.

5. Clean Window registry: Fifth simple tweak to increase computer speed is to clean window registry. Windows registry is a location on your system which stores information that is required to be retrieved later. It is also the reason for many problems that result in crashing, errors, freezing and slow speed. This is result of leftover files that cause interference with existing and new software and hardware. So, cleaning your windows registry is very important step to increase the speed of your computer.

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Need to Speed Up a Laptop?

Are you looking to speed up a laptop computer? Look no further, because I'm going to give you everything you need to get your computer running a marathon in seconds flat! Okay, maybe not running a marathon because that would be turning your computer into a robot or performing some sort of weird voodoo to give your laptop computer legs.

The most important thing you can do to speed up a laptop is remove programs you're no longer using, especially instant messengers or toolbars -both of these will cause computer lag like nothing else and are often lurking on many computers used by teenagers. Yes, that's right, I'm blaming teenagers for the majority of computer lag. Call me sexist, but I'm even going to say that it's the young female teenagers which are the worst!

Actually, I'm neither sexist or picking on young teenage girls, the internet forms of communication have basically replaced the telephone as the numero uno form of communication for young teenage girls. Sure, they still run the phone bill up like nobody's business, but they're also click, click, clicking away online and chatting to four-hundred different people online too.

And, guess what? Many of those chat programs they install, also install toolbars and secondary programs which you can opt-out of during the installation process. How many teenagers actually take the time to un-check these boxes? In my experience, none. I've got several younger female relatives and as soon as they ask can they install something on my computer I start having nightmares about the invasion of adware, spyware, and those annoying toolbars and weather programs.

If this doesn't solve your problem and speed up a laptop for you, then head over to this website herespeed up a laptop computer, there's a few more tips and even a few programs that you may have to result to if removing the toolbars doesn't help to speed up a laptop. and read up on how to

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Stephen_K._Richards

Trojan Vundo Removal

Trojan Vundo is a type of trojan that comes in the form of a .exe file. You can get this trojan on your computer via an email attachment or a download through IRC, ICQ.

The symptons of this trojan causes multiple window tabs to open. These windows tabs display advertising whenever you try to log on to the internet. Another type of Trojan vundo can open backdoor to your computer which opens up attacks to other types of trojans into your computer. At the very least, trojan vundo causes the computer to slow down and your surfing can crawl to a halt, when multiple advertisements pop up.

Trojan vundo is sometimes detected by Norton but is unable to be removed, even after multiple scans and reboots. There are many heuristic versions of this trojan, hence the difficulty to remove it.

Trojan Vundo can sometimes be manually removed. But this is often quite tedious.

If you're running AVG or Norton, be sure to update your virus definitions to the latest then do a scan. If trojan vundo is removed, then all is fine. You will know that your computer is ok when the symptons stop.

If the symptons persist, then you might want to get a dedicated trojan removal tool that is dedicated to remove trojans. Often the trojan removal process is a simple scan and remove. Your computer will also be permanently protected against all future trojan attacks.

By: Sherman Choo

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How To Choose The Right Business Backup Software

As more companies become dependent to computers for various business operations, creating backups have become more pertinent than ever. Today, there are a number backup software programs and facilities available over the Internet. Many of these require relatively more expensive than physical storage devices such as DVDs, CDs and memory sticks. Here are a few things that you would need to take into consideration before signing up for one to make sure you get your money’s worth.

Kinds of Backups Available

Select an online backup facility that would provide you a variety of backup software methods for you to choose from. This is because not all business operations in a particular company have the same requirements. Some business operations would require files to be constantly backed while others would only need to create new backups on an annual basis.

Ease in Operation

It is particularly important for small business owners who do not have an in-house IT professional to handle the updates various files. Creating back ups for your programs and files should be user-friendly for you to be able to concentrate more time on your other business operations. Ease of operations should not be limited to creating backups. Retrieving your files and programs from these facilities should just be as easy. The program should allow you to easily look for these files and programs when you need to retrieve them. Furthermore, make sure that you are able to contact their customer support conveniently. This is to make sure that should any problems arise, these are easily resolved.

Flexibility

The backup software should be able to handle all forms of files and programs from the most basic to the most complicated without having to compromise their usability.
This simply means that you can upload a wide range of files and programs to these facilities. These should also allow you to be able to retrieve these either downloading it directly to your computer hard drive or by burning them on a CD or DVD. Just make sure that you are allowed to create a password for file retrieval to make sure that only authorized personnel can access your files.

Automatic Backup Function

This is the most important feature to look for in a backup software program. This is because employees would often forget to back up updated files and programs despite this being a common business practice. Having this feature would ensure that files and folders are backed up as often as they should. Since the backup is done by a software program, any possibility of error would be minimized, if not eradicated.

One such backup software program that is available is QuickBackup.com.au which offer software packages which include the features mentioned as well as password protection to ensure that these files and folders can only be accessed by an authorized personnel, restoration of corrupted backup files and folders brought about by a virus infection, filtration of files to the correct folders for easy retrieval. Although the backup software program would require a certain fee, it is but a small price to pay to ensure that all your files are safe.

By: Desmond Jenkins

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