(Note: If you are running Windows XP or Vista legally, this article does not apply to you.)

I’m not going to pretend for a moment that there’s more than a few of you out there running Windows XP illegally. You’ve seen the very nice $50 price tag of Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade and said, "Okay, I can afford that, but can I upgrade a pirated copy of XP to Win 7?"

Answer: No. When you hit the WGA, the upgrade won’t work.

However.. I can tell you how to get Windows 7 for significantly less than the full-version $200 price tag.

Here’s how it’s done:

1. Buy a copy of Windows Vista Home Basic "System Builders" Edition from NewEgg. Cost is $84.99 with free shipping. This is a qualifying product for the Windows 7 Upgrade.
2. Pre-order your Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade for $49.99. Remember, this price only lasts until July 11, 2009. After that it’s $119 for the upgrade and $200 for the full version.

Your total cost will be $134.98. Shipping will be free on both products. This is significantly cheaper than the full $200 price tag for the full-version Win 7 price. Granted, you’ll never use the license of Windows Vista you purchased, but it does take $65 off what you would have spent for the full-version Win 7 otherwise. This is an easy, and moreover legal, way to save cash on the purchase of the OS.

Why go legal with Windows?

There’s really only one reason. It’s for Windows Update.

Windows Update started with Windows 98 which was over 10 years ago, however the Windows Genuine Advantage validation check didn’t occur until 2006.

If you are running Windows illegally, you basically can’t use WU at all and that’s a problem. Whenever critical updates are sent thru the WU system, you won’t be able to install it. Not easily, anyway.

The common comeback to that is, "Well, I don’t have to use WU. I could install the patches manually." Yes, you could. But you know full well that’s decidedly inconvenient and a pain to get done.

If you don’t feel like paying for Windows, just use Linux. But if you do use Windows, the one-time license cost is worth the price for the updates.

Most people take WU for granted, but it is vital to make sure critical updates are applied without any hassle.

I bought a refurbished Dell Dimension 4400 back when Windows XP was brand new in 2001. It was $625 shipped.

The only thing I ever did to it was upgrade the processor from 1.6GHz to a 2.4GHz and bumped the RAM from 256MB to 512MB. Other than that, everything in it is original. I used it for a few years then gave it to my father who has been using it ever since.

Last week it finally developed a problem. The system detected that the processor coolant fan was failing. This is indicative that a major failure is imminent, because even if I replace the fan, something else will probably bust shortly thereafter. And even if nothing happened after the fan replacement, the box is just plain old and would be too much of a risk.

After nine years of faithful service it was decided to finally retire the 4400.

Contrary to my computer needs, my father only needs the basics. He is the definition of the type of user that uses a computer "for internet and email only." And the box needed to be cheap besides that. After some research I instructed Pop to call Dell and purchase an Inspiron 531 desktop (pictured) with Windows XP, no monitor and no options. The cost with taxes and shipping was a tick under $300 and it will arrive next week.

Why didn’t I tell Pop to go for a refurb? Because at present the new Dell boxes are actually cheaper. Were he to use the Dell Outlet Store it would have cost an extra $50 even with the lowest-cost offering.

I asked Pop how his experience was with Dell sales. He said there were no issues at all. There weren’t any high-pressure sales tricks or any of that stuff, so that was good to hear.

Why did I tell him to go with XP? Because as configured the box will run XP much better than Vista.

The box comes outfitted with an AMD Athlon 2560e 1.6GHz CPU (512K) with 1GB of DDR2 RAM at 800MHz, a 16x DVD burner, nVidia GeForce 6150 SE integrated graphics and a 160GB hard drive. It also comes provided with keyboard and mouse. For just under $300 that’s not bad, especially considering it has a full 1-year warranty with in-home service.

If you were to buy a pre-built from NewEgg, the cost is about the same with shipping included.

If you were to build a box from scratch, the price is also the same. Remember, you have to add in the cost of Windows XP with all the hardware – and I’m not about to put my dad on Linux. It took long enough to get him used to Windows.

Like it or not, the cheapest computer desktop box right now hovers at or very close to $300 as the final price when all is said and done (purchase price, taxes, shipping, software license, all of it).

It kind of sucks that the 4400 box had to start developing problems now, because if it had lasted until October I would have purchased this same new box with Windows 7. Vista needs a big beefy PC to run optimally. Win 7 on the other hand will run on (much) older computer hardware. This has been proven to be true.

But oh well. XP is mature, stable and will get the job done.

The low-end Dell for the money is a decent box. It’s on par with the price of from-scratch builds and other pre-built boxes with similar specs.

I can’t give it a thumbs up or down at present because it hasn’t arrived at my dad’s place yet. Once it does I’ll be stopping over to configure/update it. When I sit down to configure this thing, I’ll post what happens here. Watch for it.

Now that we have used a table to create a basic layout for our website, we can expand the site to more than one web page. Watch below as I show you how to do this. After all, almost all sites have more than one page involved.

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this article. Gold/Silver Membership required.

When making your own website, it is important that you have an understanding of the different types of files you will be working with and what they are. In this lesson, I will introduce the common file types to you.

First off, realize that your website is going to be made up of files. These files are no different than the files you have sitting on your hard drive. Whether you have Word documents saved, Excel spreadsheets, photos or any other type of file, they are all just files. The only difference is that the files for your website will be sitting on your web server rather than your own computer. Files come in different types, designated by the filename extension (the 3 or 4 letter extension after the period in a filename).

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this article. Gold/Silver Membership required.

A router is any device that acts as a gateway between 2 or more separate networks. In our case, that means that the local network is connected to the Internet, and vice versa. The router ignores traffic local traffic or traffic it is not configured to handle, but when Internet access is attempted from within the local network, it springs into action. With NAT (Network Address Translation), the router shares the Internet connection to all the computers connected to the local network. The router keeps track of the originating local computer and manages the connection with the outside Internet server. If a computer on the Internet attempts a connection with the router or to a local computer past the router, the router denies the connection unless the router was specially configured to allow that connection.

Many routers can treat the wireless LAN (WLAN) as a separate network from the wired LAN. This is often done because wireless networks are easy to break into. The idea is that people can keep their wired computers away from the untrusted wireless network. The router will still share the Internet connection (WAN) to both the wireless and wired LANs, regardless of this configuration.

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this article. Gold/Silver Membership required.