Node-1 Computers Inc.
200 John St. W., Unit B6 L1J 2B4 Oshawa, ON, Canada

#computergaming is on the rise. People want flexible experiences and quality games. For fullest enjoyment of these games you must have a quality custom built computer. We have been building computers for gamers and more for over 20 years! In the heart of Oshawa, the heart of the Durham region family owned and operated we will help you get the #gaming experience you want and need!!

Why is my internet so slow? There are many factors that affect your #internetspeed. Although some are the fault of the provider and most often this is where the problem lies, there are other things to consider. Many internal factors can also affect you. If you have found that your internet has always seemed to be slow, you can look at the following before you call the ISP. Are your problems with wired or wireless devices, most people are not aware that wireless is much slower... than wired. Modern #wireless standards are 802.11 G, N, AC; which run at 54 Mbps, 150 - 450 Mbps, AC 400 - 1300. Modern wireless by comparison is 1000 Mbps. Wireless is affected by waveform, antennae, distance, motion and obstacles wired is not bothered by any except distance which is limited to 100m. So wired performs best and wireless less and less. Operating systems do affect as well, for best internet performance Windows 7 or higher is suggested. Browser versions, newer browsers support newer standards and therefore the latest the web has to offer, including better graphic rendering etc., make sure your browsers are totally up to date. System specs are very important as the system needs the power to receive and process the data from the internet. #Rogers for example suggest the following specs to work with any of their services: a 2GHz processor, 4GB RAM, 1Gbps ethernet with CAT 5e or CAT 6 cable. A fast hard drive would also be good to consider even SSD. Lastly #viruses and malware, these little unwanted lovelies live to talk on the internet. As such they will make your internet slow on the local computer and eventually will affect performance on the entire network. Happy surfing, Node-1 Computers See more

We have long purported that although Cloud services may have some usefulness; these services are not for everyone. We have listed many reasons to consider carefully your options, one major concern has always been price. As we have mentioned before as companies begin to have comfort with the saturation of their #cloud you will see higher prices. This email recently went out to #Microsoft #OneDrive users (anyone with Hotmail / Outlook.com account) Changes to OneDrive ... We want to let you know about some upcoming changes to OneDrive. On 7/13/2016, the amount of storage that comes with OneDrive will change from 15 GB to 5 GB. We are also discontinuing the 15 GB camera roll bonus. You can learn more at our FAQ. There is no action you need to take, because your OneDrive account is currently below the new storage limits. Even though you aren't currently affected, we want to keep you updated on all important changes to OneDrive. If you'd like to check your account, you can visit the Storage page. We realize these are big changes to a service you rely on. We want to apologize for any inconvenience they may cause you. We made a difficult decision, but it's one that will let us sustainably operate OneDrive into the future. Thank you for using OneDrive. The OneDrive Team As you can see Microsoft will be reducing free OneDrive space by up to 25GB for users. This will result in many users having to subscribe to more space or move contents from OneDrive. This is a price increase in the form of a service decrease. Keep in mind when Microsoft released Office 365 for Home (their Cloud (service) version of Office) they charged $129 per year. On the slow adoption they decreased the price to $99, and then further to $69. This all tells us that Microsoft and other Cloud proprietors can afford to pad the bank waiting for us to adopt; but at the end of the day Microsoft wanted $129 for use on one computer, do you believe they really want any less today. This OneDrive announcement shows Microsoft is feeling pretty good about adoption rates of their Cloud services; so the question is how long before they and other provicers start increasing cost on their other Cloud services?

There are many Google projects out there all the time. Some of the projects are pretty wild and are done more to show that they can be done. One project that is very neat is the #GoogleCardboard project. #VirtualReality and 3D are very popular today; but devices are very expensive and require high end computers. The Google Cardboard project brings these technologies home at affordable prices. Using common components like cardboard and rubber bands Google has set out a solutio...n to make inexpensive #VR and 3D a reality. Google Cardboard viewers teamed up with your smart phone allow one to enjoy Virtual Reality tours, games etc at affordable prices. With 1000s of apps available, you can even do things like take your own VR, 3D photos with sound using #CardboardCamera. Cardboard compatible viewers are available at Node-1 Computers for the low price of $35, for $10 more add a convenient headstrap. See more

You have read posts about #Cryptovirus and other #ransomeware. These are exploits which usually come in your email in the form of an attached zip file on #Windows PCs. They usually appear to be from friends for home users, in business they often come as resumes or appear to be from your email domain. These software encrypt all of your files so they are unusable unless you have a good backup. The big news is, as of this weekend, the exploit is now infecting #Apple computers as... well. This first wave of ransomeware was delivered through a download of the popular bit torrent software called Transmission. Moves were made to thwart this distribution that were highly successful, with an estimate of about 6500 infections. Apple users need to be wary of the implications of this though, now that this product has been released, delivery methods will be changed, improved and multiplied. Good backups are the only true thwart to this threat on any OS, ensure you are backing up and not syncing. See more

Happy Family Day to everyone

Where do #viruses come from? Many people will say things like I don't visit nasty websites and I only accept email from people I know. Today those risks still exist; but they are minor in the grand scheme of risks. Viruses themselves are small potatoes in the security side of things. A good up to date anti-virus software will block most everyday viruses and clean up well. Hoaxes are one greater risk today, emails, phone calls etc that solicit your private information. These l...ead to #identitytheft. Email is still dangerous both for viruses and the sending of rogue programs. #cryptovirus is most often distributed through emails. Many of these infected emails come from people we know, as most of these items propagate through contact lists and cloud based email is as well targeted as client. Also today the miscreants are much smarter delivering much more comprehensive emails that appear very genuine. These emails have valid looking attachments which then launch or install #malicious programs to your computer. Today even the very sites you visit, any sites, can be infected and a suprising number are. These infections often in the form of #redirectors do their work in many cases before you even see the website. Redirectors are a piece of code that was inserted into the website at the server level. They actually connect to sites outside the one you visit to pull some malicious program or virus that is inserted into your computer. Many of these new types of attacks can target any web connected device regardless of operating system. They do this as they reside on the internet in web code which all web enabled devices are able to understand. Todays highes risks (grouped as viruses) are not even truly viruses in the common sense; but are more programs that are doing so much more than the viruses and so much more damage. Some of these are actual real programs that you or others may want; but the way they function, or the means of distribution make them fall in the potentially problematic category.or See more

Do you ever want to have all of your files stored in one central place easy to reach by all devices in your network? Do you ever think it would be nice to access your files from anywhere? Did you ever wish you could have a #cloud service that you could control? Well the answer to all of those questions is there is! What you need is a #NAS or network attached storage. These devices are like putting a hard drive right on your network. You can use them to store items like videos... and pictures or other important files. They are also ideal for #backup especially considering many of todays threats. Most of these devices also come with the ability to use them as a #personalcloud device. Yes you can access them from any device like #iPhone or #Android phone or tablet as long as they on the internet. Many of these devices also have some built in protection against hard drive failure, by using multiple drives in a RAID configuration. #RAID allows the use of one or more of the hard drives to 'duplicate' the information. This means that when a hard drive dies you do not loose all of that important information. Also for the very careful many of these devices support addition of external hard drives. These hard drives can be used to expand storage or to back up the contents of the unit. Many also support cloud backup if you are prone to using that. Some even have the ability to add more apps to expand it's ability from what you get out of the box. See more

#Viruses gone viral. Today we have so many means of communication and data consumption that attacks are virtually everywhere! Last #incometax season saw a new phishing attack in which emails were sent to people. These emails claimed that you were either eligible for further refunds or had owed balances remaining. For the most part these looked fairly professional and as friendly reminders. Many people fell victim, giving SIN's and other personal information out, despite the f...act that some emails purported ridiculous amounts of money. This year that has been ramped up not only are the emails still going around; but the phone has come into the fray. That is right, I wrote the good old #telephone, whether your land line or cell. Recorded or electronic messages are being sent via phones, claiming to be the CRA. These phone calls purport that someone, they may even give a name, in your household is wanted by the #CRA and your household is under surveillance. They leave a phone number in the Ottawa area code that you must call in order to save the person in question from being arrested. So this must all be totally legit right? WRONG! So here are the tell tale signs. The CRA operates with toll free numbers only they do not post or give out local area numbers. The CRA will never leave a message with any individual identified (it is against the privacy act). The CRA will not ask for personal information over the phone. No one will inform you they are waiting to arrest you. This is what we commonly call a #phishing hoax, they are trying to get identity information from unsuspecting persons. See more

Worried about #viruses on your handheld device? If you answered yes read on for, if you answered no you need to rethink that! Be it your cell or a tablet, android, iOS or windows, regardless to size, software or any other thing you have heard, today all internet connected devices are at risk. Some have different risk than others; but all are equally at risk. Earlier this year we saw an exploit with #iPhones in which a specific text message locked them up. There has also been ...a lot of talk about viruses on #Android devices. These also are easy to avoid. A common way of moving viruses on PC's as late has been to take popular apps and repackage them with viruses. This is the technique being used for the Android, here is where avoiding this gets easy. These apps can not be offered in the Play Store as they have been altered. So you can only get the viruses from third party web sites. The best thing to do is ensure Unknown Sources is disabled in Security. Only enable this when you want to install from another source that you know is safe. Get all items from the #PlayStore when possible, when looking elsewhere go to dependable sources like #Amazon or the actual publishers site. You can enable the Unknown Sources to install and then disable it again. This will pretty much nullify this type of viral attack. It still leaves other types of risk like the iPhone risk above. There are just those out there who have a lot of time and imagine ways of disrupting the rest of us. See more

#Dell admits to installing a package that creates a security hole in your computer. Yesterday Dell admitted to installing a private key for a digital certificate on some laptops. Normally a private key should not exist on a users computer. A private key has the purpose of signing and validating an encrypted internet connection. With access to a key one could create their own certificates that would be validated as genuine sites by that key. This would allow the theft of perso...nal information, distribution of malware, tracking or monitoring of browsing activity. This is part of a non essential package (it is not required to use your computer). According to Dell it is supposed to improve customer service experience. Back in February this year #Lenovo had an similar surprise when it was found they were preloading a malware called #Superfish. This malware which was supposed to be added to improve customers online shopping experiences. Lenovo discontinued the preloading of the software, which encouraged a warning from Homeland Security due to the severity of the risk; but machines with it preloaded had to be manually fixed by their new owners, like in the Dell situation. One may ask if the Dell software was to improve customer support, why does one have to remove it manually oneself? One may also ask how can there be so many issues with all of these attempts to make my experience better. Truth be known there are a combination of factors at play here and your user experience is the excuse; but not the primary concern. Improved customer support is a marketing paradigm to encourage people to buy, based on their concern for support. In cases of third party installs like Superfish, or even valid products like google tools, carbonite, and many other pre-installed apps the manufacturers receive remuneration (cash) for installing these or for people using or purchasing them. At Node-1 Computers Inc. we do not preload any kind of app that generically or in some unquantifiable way are alleged to make your user experience better. We preload Windows operating system, we then add java and adobe reader for web browsing so you will not have to. Lastly we offer to include openoffice so that you will be able to do some documents and work with #Microsoft Word and Excel documents if you do not want to purchase Microsoft Office. That's it that's all, every preinstalled item has a real purpose. See more

There is a general consensus amongst most #gamers out there. That is that the #oldgames, that is games from the late 80s through to near the end of the 90s, are still the best games ever made. The graphics are not that good, the sound can be even worse; but these are still ranked as some of the best ever made. Do you still have some #diskettes or CDs with these games on them, that you just did not want to give up? Did you know that many of those old games (especially the #DOS... ones) can be played again, it's referred to as #retrogaming. Using products like #SCUMMVM and #DosBox, you can bring those old games back to life and enjoy them one more time. Some Windows 95 and 98 games can be played again using products like #VirtualBox although this requires a lot more than some software and original game disks. SCUMMVM is very easy to use all you need is the original data files the SCUMMVM replaces the original executables. DosBox does take a little learning; but if you remember DOS it should not take to long to get up and running. You can find SCUMMVM at http://scummvm.org You can find Dosbox at http://dosbox.com See more

What is a #customcomputer? At Node-1 Computers we still specialize in Custom Built Computers. Just what is a custom built computer? It means we build a computer to your needs, specifications, usage needs, price model whatever your guideline is. We build from the ground up and only include the parts and features that you want and need. This means you choose the amount and type of RAM, storage (hard drive), CPU, and more. From basic #PC for grandma to stay in touch with the fam...ily to the high end #gameenthusiast we can do it your way. With a variety of CPUs, DDR3 and 4 PCs, SSD and/or traditional hard drives and even more to choose from, you only pay for what you want or need nothing more and nothing less. How does this differ from big box cookie cutter PCs? Well they only give you a few choices and with every upgrade they pre-decide a bundle of additions that are included with it. That is to say if you want #Windows10Pro, you will also have to pay for more memory, or hard drive space, or faster processor etc. and you may not want anything but the different version of Windows! Also we do not load up your computer with so called bloatware, that is trial software and limited time software, that you later have to purchase. So buy what you want not what someone else has decided you want! We also offer these same services to corporate customers in the form of Servers and workstations. See more