Byte Back

A $200 tablet to rival the Ipad

2011-03-10T13:38:00.000-05:00

The $200 Barnes and Noble Nook can easily be converted to an Android Honeycomb tablet.

Spirng Cleaning Your PC

2010-04-10T13:49:00.001-04:00

Spring cleaning your PC from CrunchGear on Vimeo.

magicJack Internet Phone

2009-02-19T13:52:00.006-05:00

(This review is taken from Steve Bass's Techbite letter.)

I just saved $320 by cancelling an extra phone line and signing up with magicJack. It works as advertised; I like it; and it's a keeper. I also have tips to make magicJack better, and if you're intrigued, hack into it. (Fair warning: My magicJack review is long, way more than I usually allocate for one newsletter.)

Making the Switch to magicJack

I used to have three phone lines, and for years I needed all of them. But with almost all of my communication through e-mail, I decided to dump one and replace it with a magicJack. And save myself about $320 a year.

You plug the magicJack into a free USB port, then plug your phone line into the gizmo. Now you can make free calls with VoIP -- they're routed through the Internet. (The magicJack comes with a 6-inch USB extension cable in case it interferes with other devices plugged into your USB ports.)
Plug one end into a USB port and connect the other end to your standard phone.

Hey, I'm Connected

To see how easy it was to get started, I connected the magicJack to a USB port on my PC. (If you use a hub it has to be powered; if it's not, or underpowered, the magicJack might not work.) Then I plugged a phone into the magicJack using a standard phone cable. Cordless phones also work; just plug in the base unit.

The computer recognized the magicJack like any Flash drive, then it took about 5 minutes to download software updates. I picked up the phone, heard a dial tone, dialed as I normally would, and made my first magicJack call. Cousin Judy in New York said I sounded unusually good, a backhanded compliment if I ever heard one. It took another few minutes to create a 911 location and set up voicemail.

You can call by dialing your phone or do it from your PC.

Once I saw that the magicJack worked, I connected it to my ancient Nortel Venture three-line phone, the one that I rigged up to use a Plantronics wireless headset. If you prefer, you can use your PC's speakers and a microphone, or a headset, just as you would with Skype.

What's the magicJack Catch?

There really isn't any. There are a few inconveniences, and one not-so-minor hassle, and I'll get to them. But first I want to cover the basics.

One thing to consider is that you need broadband: magicJack requires speeds of at least 100KB. And if you have DSL service, magicJack will work just fine, but don't call the phone company to shut off your regular phone line as it's needed for the DSL connection

The magicJack service costs $40 for the first year, which includes the USB dongle. The cost for subsequent service is $20 per year, but chances are good the fee will increase. So the company pushes a 5-year service plan for $60. You get unlimited calling to anywhere in the United States, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and Canada. International calls are 2 cents a minute.

If you make a magicJack call to a friend's magicJack number -- anywhere in the world -- the call's free. Calling the United States or Canada from another country with your magicJack is also free. Yep, that's right: You can carry the magicJack while you're traveling, connect it to your notebook, and all your calls are free.

You can call as much as you'd like, but magicJack's Terms of Service obliquely says, "If magicJack sees excessive use, including but not limited to, a customer whose usage is twenty (20) times more than the average magicJack's customers usage" they'll cut off service and won't give you a refund. Swell.

All your 411 calls are free, but you need to listen to a 20-second commercial first. I prefer Google's free Goog-411 (800-466-4411).

Other features? You have access to 3-way calling and call forwarding. What's missing is caller ID blocking.

Of course you're worried about voice quality, and so was I. Most of the time it ranges from very good to great. I talked with my TechBite partner, Mike, in Denver, for about 2 hours and it was a perfect connection. Yet when I tried magicJack's 411, and then checked voicemail, the connection cut in and out; I also experienced a disconnect when I called my mother (really, Mom, I didn't hang up!). I got better quality if I stuck the magicJack in a port on my PC instead of using the USB hub.

Is magicJack For You?

Maybe.

Some forums say that magicJack is good only to use as a second phone line, maybe for a teenager, or just for saving money on long-distance calls. I agree; I wouldn't advise you to drop your only landline or cell phone for magicJack for a couple of reasons.

First, I wouldn't depend on the magicJack for emergency 911 calls. Say there's an emergency and you lose power. Access to the Internet is gone, and magicJack is useless.

Second, you have to keep the PC on. When your PC isn't running, incoming calls to the magicJack phone number are routed to voicemail. (Here's a neat option: If someone leaves a voicemail, magicJack sends you an e-mail with a sound file of the message.)

I thought I'd get smart and try a work-around. I attached the magicJack to the USB port of my server, an always-on Seagate Network Attached Storage device. The magicJack had a hearty laugh and refused to be recognized. The designer of the magicJack said it couldn't be done.

BTW, magicJack includes a local number as part of the service; most metropolitan areas are covered, but you might not be in one of those spots. Here's a lengthy list of supported area codes. For you nerds, here's a longer list that includes local prefixes.

Try magicJack for 30 days. If you don't like it, all you pay for is shipping. The trial starts when you order the device, and you have to get it back to them within the 30 days. (I know you have more concerns, you always do. So read the FAQ for all your picayune questions.)

Two Not-So-Magic Quibbles

One thing I didn't like: I had to click the Minimize icon to get the magicJack program into the system tray. I'd prefer it automatically minimize when magicJack loads. I haven't been able to find a way to do it, and no, I don't want to use an extra software tool to do it. The designer said, "... anything is possible, but this is not on the drawing board; the magicJack is built for the people who need to see it loading." Whatever.

The company includes an Outlook add-in that lets you dial directly from Outlook's contacts. That's handy, but I'd also like a way to import directly into magicJack's contacts from an Excel or CVS file.

You'll also have to remember to add an area code no matter where you're calling, even if it's a local call.

magicJack Tricks and Hacks

There are lots of ways you can play with the magicJack. Here are a few:

I don't need to see magicJack's splash screen, so I disabled it.

If you want run the magicJack from your hard drive rather than the USB dongle, here's the trick. It doesn't seem like it's worth the bother, though, because you still need the dongle in order to connect to a phone line.

When I connect an external USB drive, I expect it to be drive letter "G." Without asking, magicJack grabs the first two available drive letters -- "G" and "H" -- for its USB dongle. It's easy to fix that. Read a little ditty I wrote for an obscure magazine: Disable Unused Drive Letters. *

You can run magicJack as a Service, spoof its caller ID, reveal more magicJack features by changing the skin, and maybe get your Chevy to get more miles per gallon. It's all in the magicJack hack site. The Unofficial magicJack forum has more ordinary fixes, hacks, and advice. *

If you have a PBX system, and a nimble mind, you might be able to hack the magicJack to act like a trunk in any Asterisk based IP PBX. If that's not Greek, get the details at VoIP Insider and INTJ Geek.

Chrome Arrives

2008-09-06T16:03:00.002-04:00

Google just released Chrome, their take on the browser. Chrome was greeted as Google's attempt to challenge Microsoft in the browser wars. But that's a distinct misunderstanding of Google's expectations.

Chrome has been designed by Google as an application that supports the new tools and functionality that companies will be building into the internet in the coming years. The current browsers by and large are not equipped for the speed and bandwidth that will be required.

Chrome has been built from the ground up to handle the new web.Google has endowed Chrome with a new java script program that allows for much faster data transfers.

Since cloud computing will offer users the opportunity to trust sensitive materials to remote servers, Chrome has greatly increased browser security by putting each browser tab in it's own sandbox. Rogue code is confined and cannot spread to to other applications.
In the cloud environment one might have several browser windows open at the same time. Chrome is designed so that a crash in one tab will not affect the other tabs. Goodbye to the blue screen of death.

But Chrome's spare and utilitarian interface will probably not appeal to mainstream users. And it's not intended to. Google is not trying to compete with IE or Firefox for users. In fact Chrome is open source. Google will be happy if Microsoft or Mozilla "stole" all of it's code. Google is trying to make sure that the plumbing of the Internet is sufficiently robust for the kind of products that they will be producing in the future.

Products like Google Docs will compete with Microsoft Office. That's where the battlle will be.

Windows Calculator Replacement

2008-05-27T19:17:00.000-04:00

This calculator has a tape.
Moffsoft Free Calculator

How To Re Install GOTD offers

2008-05-06T03:06:00.001-04:00

Give Away Of The Day (GOTD)offers usually cannot be reinstalled. So if you reformat your drive or buy anew PC you can't reinstall the software. Below is a method for doing so:
BTW, for those worried about not being able to install it after the Giveaway is done, just run Process Explorer http://technet.microsoft.com/e.....96653.aspx and look for the tmp file that is created under the setup.exe program and make a copy of this file for later use renaming it as an exe file since this is the actual installer file minus the checking that is usually done when you run the file downloaded from GOTD. In this way you should in most instances be able to reinstall the software if anything goes wrong with your computer. This has worked for me on many applications they offer.

Connecting to TV From a Laptop

2007-07-20T21:07:00.000-04:00

July 19, 2007

Connecting to TV From a Laptop
By J. D. BIERSDORFER

Q. Is it possible to turn my regular TV into a computer monitor so I can watch movies that I downloaded into my laptop?

A. With the proper type of cable to connect the two, it’s certainly possible to pipe the video files you download from the Internet from your laptop computer to your television set.

These days, RCA (also known as composite or phono plugs), S-Video, D.V.I. (digital video interface) and, the latest, H.D.M.I. (high-definition multimedia interface) are among the many types of connectors used between computers and televisions. With so many standards in use, start by inspecting both your laptop and your TV for what connection is offered. To identify what’s back there, Microsoft has an illustrated field guide of common cable connectors at tinyurl.com/87jqd. An easy-to-follow guide can also be found at www.techlore.com/article/10061.

You will find H.D.M.I. ports on new HDTVs, sometimes two or more of them. S-Video is commonly found on many laptops and slightly older TV sets. If you have the S-Video option on both sides, connecting them with an S-Video cable (less than $20 at most electronics stores) is easy. You will probably need to adjust your laptop’s display control panel to send the video image to the TV screen. Video cards, video-card drivers and other settings may complicate matters; check your manual or manufacturer’s Web site for your laptop’s video-out settings and options.

Older laptops and TV sets without S-Video usually have a standard yellow video jack instead, which accepts a video cable with an RCA plug on the end. Most video cables don’t carry the audio signal, though, so unless you have a great sound system on your laptop, you’ll probably want to get audio cables to connect the computer to the TV as well.

Computer and electronics stores offer three-line RCA cables with the yellow video plug and the red and white audio plugs on either end for these situations, as well as S-Video to RCA cables for when you have RCA jacks on one device and S-Video on the other. Gadgets like AVerMedia’s $80 QuickPlay PC-to-TV Converter (aver.com/ppd/quickplay.html) can also simplify matters because they support a variety of video connection types.

Rent Your Cable Box

2007-06-07T16:39:00.001-04:00

Rent or Own? The New Cable-TV Dilemma
Soon, Subscribers Will Have
Option to Buy Set-Top Boxes;
Pros and Cons of Cablecards
By COREY BOLES

A generation ago, federal regulators opened the way for consumers to buy telephones rather than rent them from the phone company. Now, the government has its sights on the television set-top boxes that consumers rent from cable or satellite companies.

Beginning July 1, the Federal Communications Commission has ordered cable companies to supply only set-top boxes that can accept a so-called cablecard that slides into the set-top box and determines a customer's level of access to cable service. The change is meant to give consumers nationwide the option of buying their own set-top boxes -- or TVs that can use the cablecard -- rather than renting one.

That new freedom may soon trigger an old question: Is it better to own or rent? On average, cable companies charge $5 a month for a regular set-top box and $7 for one with a built-in digital video recorder, or DVR. The National Cable & Telecommunications Association estimates those costs will increase to $8 and $10, respectively, for a set-top box with a slot for a cablecard.

A standard box with no recording capability, meanwhile, would likely retail for around $130 -- the cost of renting for a little more than a year, according to Ian Olgeirson, a Denver-based cable analyst with SNL Kagan, a market-research company. The price of a DVR that can use a cablecard is expected to be much higher. TiVo Inc. sells a version for $700 but plans a less-expensive model.
RENT OR OWN?

[Rent or Own?]
Factors to consider when weighing whether to rent or buy a set-top TV box:
• It generally costs $5 a month to rent a set-top box and $7 for a DVR.

• A standard set-top box is likely to sell for about $130.

• A DVR to use with any provider is $700 or more, but prices are dropping.

But this buy-or-rent equation has many variables.

Though the FCC imposed a July 1 deadline on the cable industry, few analysts actually expect sudden demand from consumers to buy their own set-top box when that day arrives. Even if they did want to rush out and buy their own box, they may have a hard time finding an electronics store selling one.

Consumer-electronics makers such as LG Electronics Inc. and Panasonic Electronics, a unit of Japan's Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., said they don't expect a retail market anytime soon and that they have no plans to start making boxes for the retail market. Panasonic plans to compete with the dominant box makers Motorola Inc. and Scientific Atlantic, a unit of Cisco Systems Inc., to supply boxes to cable companies so they can lease them out to subscribers, but won't be rolling them out directly to consumers. Best Buy Co., the nation's largest dedicated consumer-electronics retailer, says it will stock the devices -- but only if there is evidence of consumer demand.

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, meanwhile, says that the agency's goal is to "end up making sure that there is a competitive market for set-top boxes." He says he's counting on consumer demand to light a fire under manufacturers, retailers and cable companies, with the result being a proliferation of affordable devices.

Some new television sets and DVRs already come equipped with cablecard technology built in. Electronics makers and consumer groups, however, complain that cable companies have been reluctant to hand out the cards. Consumers already have bought eight million digital TV sets and high-end DVRs ready to accept cablecards, but only 250,000 households have been able to obtain the cards from their cable companies, according to Jenny Pareti of the Consumer Electronics Association, an industry lobbying group.

The National Cable & Telecommunications Association, the cable industry's lobbying group, says few customers have requested the cards because they still require a set-top box from the cable company. But the association says it expects demand for cablecards to jump come July.

In addition, set-top box makers have been on the fence. Motorola and Scientific Atlantic control 80% of the market for set-top boxes, and while both say they plan to make set-top boxes available for sale in stores, their biggest priority is maintaining their sales to cable companies -- at least for now.

The real beneficiaries of the FCC's rule change could be TiVo and other DVR makers. Matthew Zinn, general counsel at TiVo, the largest maker of stand-alone DVRs, called the mass-market introduction of cable cards a watershed moment. "The delay has been frustrating, not just to TiVo, but to a lot of other consumer-electronics manufacturers," Mr. Zinn says.

"The stand-alone DVR market has not exactly taken the public by storm," says Mr. Olgeirson of SNL Kagan. He cites the numbers: At the end of 2006, 17 million households had DVRs, nearly 15 million of them rented from a cable or satellite-television provider. "TiVo has struggled with its stand-alone subscribers," he says. "Even after they really reduced their selling price, consumers still chose the integrated boxes from their pay-television provider."

Cable companies for years have fiercely opposed cablecards, arguing that they add complexity and costs but no benefits, while a better technology is just on the horizon. FCC's requirement didn't put an to the grumbling, but it left the cable industry with no choice but to comply with the rule.

The cable industry's "time, money and resources would have been better spent on something like downloadable security that would allow a real competitive marketplace to develop," says Kyle McSlarrow, chief executive of the cable-industry association, referring to next-generation technology to let cable companies set up a subscriber's channels remotely. Mr. McSlarrow complains that cablecards, unlike downloadable technology, aren't interactive so consumers won't be able to use interactive program guides or order movies and other programming using the remote control.

The FCC's Mr. Martin says that after cable operators wouldn't commit to a deadline for introducing the interactive technology, the FCC ran out of patience and set July 1 as a firm date for using cablecards -- as Congress had required more than a decade ago.

Chris Murray, an analyst at Consumers Union, says he is optimistic that the market for stand-alone DVRs will quickly accelerate. "In the early adopter phase, it will be the higher end, more discerning customer, but markets move from early adopter to mass market pretty quickly these days," he says.

DVR manufacturers are betting on that. Digeo Inc. of Kirkland, Wash., announced in January that it is planning in the third quarter to roll out its boxes to the retail market for the first time. Chief Executive Mike Fidler says around 400,000 cable subscribers already rent Digeo boxes through their cable companies, and he is looking forward to selling directly to consumers. "There is a need to stimulate innovation and to open the market up to competition," Mr. Fidler says.

Recording From Your TV To A PC

2007-06-06T21:40:00.000-04:00

Recording TV on the Computer

Q. Is it possible to plug in a TV cable to my computer and use it like a VCR to record programs?

A. In most cases, you just need a TV tuner card for the computer and a program to do the recording. Some TV tuner cards are designed for installation inside the computer and some are external boxes that connect through a Mac or a PC’s U.S.B. port. Both provide the jacks to connect a coaxial cable or antenna to the computer so you can pipe in the programming.

Several companies sell TV cards, including Hauppauge (hauppauge.com) and AverMedia (www.aver.com/multimedia.html), and you can find many more around the Web. Some cards include their own recording software, but programs like SnapStream’s Beyond TV (www.snapstream.com) give TiVo-like powers to your Windows PC. You can also buy the Beyond TV software bundled with a compatible TV tuner card if you haven’t made the hardware purchase yet.

Some TV recording software includes onscreen program guides that let you easily select the shows you want to record, and a few can also handle high-definition content, so shop around. Extra features, like the ability to easily burn shows to DVD or export them to versions that play on a portable video player, are also becoming common.

ADS Technologies (www.adstech.com) has a number of internal and external TV recorders and Elgato Systems (www.elgato.com) offers the EyeTV 250, an external tuner box and recording software, for Macs running OS X.

If you plan to record a lot, you might want to consider adding an external hard drive to the mix to hold all of your programs, as high-quality video files can be rather large. For example, a guide on SnapStream’s site (www.snapstream.com/products/beyondtv/faq.asp) estimates that five hours of recorded video at the “good quality” MPEG-2 setting needs 10 gigabytes of space — and just one hour of HDTV can eat the same amount of hard drive real estate.

A Short History of (Bit)Torrent

2007-03-18T15:56:00.000-04:00

These articles kind of tell the torrent story.

The birth of Bittorent (2004) ... Bram lives off the hundreds of dollars that grateful Bittorrent users send him each day.

Bram starts to make peace with Hollywood (2006) ...he's threatened with lawsuits so he makes nice with the movie makers..

Bram is hired by Hollywood (2007) ... he takes Hollywood's money. Actually he's positioning himself nicely for the future.

The suits in Hollywood don't understand the difference between Bittorrent the brand owned by Bram Cohen, and Bittorent the torrent protocol that many other software developers use to create file sharing clients. They think that by threatening and eventually co-opting Bram and Bittorrent they would put an end to torrents.

Vista Upgrade Review

2007-01-18T13:10:00.000-05:00

Personal Technology

January 18, 2007

Vista: Worthy, Largely Unexciting

By Walter S. Mossberg

A new version of Microsoft Windows, the world's most popular and important computer operating system, will finally arrive for consumers on Jan. 30. It has taken the giant software maker more than five years to replace Windows XP with this new version, called Windows Vista -- an eternity by computer-industry reckoning. Many of the boldest plans for Vista were discarded in that lengthy process, and what's left is a worthy, but largely unexciting, product.

Vista is much prettier than previous versions of Windows. Its icons look better, windows have translucent borders, and items in the taskbar and in folders can display little previews of what they contain. Security is supposedly vastly better; there are some new free, included programs; and fast, universal search is now built in. There are hundreds of other, smaller, improvements and additions throughout the system, including parental controls and even a slicker version of Solitaire.

Vista's Flip 3D feature lets you scroll through images of currently running programs. The sidebar (right) contains miniapplications. The Windows Photo Gallery (left) is for organizing and editing photos.

After months of testing Vista on multiple computers, new and old, I believe it is the best version of Windows that Microsoft has produced. However, while navigation has been improved, Vista isn't a breakthrough in ease of use. Overall, it works pretty much the same way as Windows XP. Windows hasn't been given nearly as radical an overhaul as Microsoft just applied to its other big product, Office.

Nearly all of the major, visible new features in Vista are already available in Apple's operating system, called Mac OS X, which came out in 2001 and received its last major upgrade in 2005. And Apple is about to leap ahead again with a new version of OS X, called Leopard, due this spring.

There are some big downsides to this new version of Windows. To get the full benefits of Vista, especially the new look and user interface, which is called Aero, you will need a hefty new computer, or a hefty one that you purchased fairly recently. The vast majority of existing Windows PCs won't be able to use all of Vista's features without major hardware upgrades. They will be able to run only a stripped-down version, and even then may run very slowly.

In fact, in my tests, some elements of Vista could be maddeningly slow even on new, well-configured computers.

Also, despite Vista's claimed security improvements, you will still have to run, and keep updating, security programs, which can be annoying and burdensome. Microsoft has thrown in one such program free, but you will have to buy at least one more. That means that, while Vista has eased some of the burden on users imposed by the Windows security crisis, it will still force you to spend more time managing the computer than I believe people should have to devote.

Here's a quick guide to the highlights of the new operating system.

Versions and Upgrading

Vista comes in six versions, two of which are primarily aimed at consumers. One, called Home Premium, is the one most consumers will want. It contains the full Aero interface, and it includes the functionality of Windows Media Center and Windows Tablet edition, which have been discontinued as separate products. Home Premium costs $239, or $159 if you are upgrading from an earlier version of Windows. It will come preloaded on most midrange and some high-end consumer PCs.

The other main consumer edition of Vista is the stripped-down version, called Home Basic. It includes the improved security and search but leaves out the new Aero interface and the Media Center and Tablet functions. It will be preloaded on low-price PCs. Home Basic will cost $199, or $100 for upgraders.

A third version, called Ultimate, will wrap up everything in Home Premium with some additional features from the business versions of Vista. This is for power users, and it is likely to be preloaded on high-end PCs. But some regular users may need Vista Ultimate if their companies have particular network configurations that make it impossible to connect to the company network from home with Home Basic or Home Premium. Vista Ultimate will cost $399, or $259 as an upgrade.

Even if you buy the Home Premium or Ultimate editions, Vista will revert to the Basic features if it detects that your machine is too wimpy to run the new user interface.

For most users who want Vista, I strongly recommend buying a new PC with the new operating system preloaded. I wouldn't even consider trying to upgrade a computer older than 18 months, and even some of them may be unsuitable candidates. Microsoft offers a free, downloadable Upgrade Advisor program that can tell you how ready your XP machine is. It's available at: microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/upgradeadvisor.

If you bought a PC in the past few months, and it had a "Vista Capable" sticker on it, it should be able to run at least Home Basic. If it was labeled "Premium Ready," it should be able to handle Premium and probably Ultimate.

Microsoft says that Home Basic can run on a PC with half a gigabyte of memory and that Premium and Ultimate will work on a PC with one gigabyte of memory. I strongly advise doubling those numbers. To get all the features of Vista, you should have two gigabytes of memory, far more than most people own.

Even more important is your graphics card, a component most people know little about. Home Basic can run on almost any graphics system. But Premium and Ultimate will need a powerful, modern graphics system to run well.

Performance

I tested Vista on three computers. On a new, top-of-the-line Hewlett-Packard laptop, with Vista preinstalled, it worked smoothly and quickly. It was a pleasure.

On a three-year-old H-P desktop, a Vista upgrade installed itself fine. But even though this computer had a full gigabyte of memory and what was once a high-end graphics card, Vista Ultimate reverted to the Basic user interface. And even then, it ran so slowly and unsteadily as to make the PC essentially unusable.

The third machine was a new, small Dell XPS M1210 laptop. In general, Vista ran smoothly and well on this Dell, but some operations were annoyingly slow, including creating a new message in the built-in Windows Mail program. This surprised me, because the Dell had two gigabytes of memory and a fast processor.

Security

Microsoft says Vista is much more secure than any other operating system. But this is hard to prove, especially at the beginning of its life, when few hackers and malefactors have access to it. One visible security feature asks for your permission before you do potentially dangerous tasks, like installing new software. This is a good thing, and it's been on the Macintosh for years. But unlike the Mac version, the Vista version of this permission feature doesn't necessarily require you to type in a password, so a stranger or a child using your PC could grant permission for something you yourself might not allow.

Vista also has built-in parental controls so you can restrict what a child can do on the computer. This is also already on the Macintosh, though the Vista controls are more elaborate.

Microsoft includes a free antispyware program in Vista, called Windows Defender. But PC Magazine regards it as inferior to paid programs like Spy Sweeper and Spy Doctor. So you may want to buy one of these. You should also buy an antivirus program, which isn't included.

User Interface

The new Aero interface is lovely, and it makes using a PC more pleasant and efficient. It apes some elements on the Macintosh but retains a distinct look and feel. Icons of folders look three dimensional, and they pop. Most file icons are thumbnails that show a tiny preview of the underlying document.

Like the rest of Vista, the Start Menu has a prettier, more refined look.

The old hourglass icon that appeared during delays has been replaced by a gleaming, spinning blue circle. The cutesy names for standard folders, like "My Pictures," have been changed to simpler ones, like "Pictures."

As on the Mac, you can now drag favorite folders into a list at the left of open windows, so it's easy to get to them.

A new feature called Flip 3D shows a 3D view of all the programs you're running and lets you scroll through them. It's like the Mac's excellent Exposé feature, though not quite as handy.

Another new feature, called the Sidebar, is a vertical strip at the side of the screen that can contain tiny programs, called Gadgets, displaying things like favorite photos, news headlines, stock prices and the weather. Once again, this is awfully similar to a Macintosh feature called Dashboard, which displays tiny programs called Widgets.

Some familiar Windows features have new names. The old Display control panel, where you chose screen savers and desktop pictures, is now called Personalization. The Add or Remove Programs control panel is now called Programs and Features.

Like the Mac, Windows now has rapid, universal, built-in search, a very welcome thing. The main search box is contained at the bottom of the Start menu, and it works well. Other search boxes appear in every open window.

You can also save searches as virtual folders, which will keep collecting files that meet your search criteria. This is another feature introduced earlier by Apple.

Built-In Programs

The Outlook Express email program has been given a face-lift and renamed Windows Mail. But it's pretty much the same, except for a new junk-mail filter. The Windows Address Book has been renamed Windows Contacts and, oddly, turned into a sort of file folder.

The latest version of the Internet Explorer Web browser, with tabbed browsing, is included, though it's also available for Windows XP.

As on the Mac, Windows now has a nice, centralized Calendar program. And there's a new photo-organizing program, Windows Photo Gallery, but it's inferior to Apple's iPhoto because it doesn't allow you to create photo books, or add music to slide shows. There's also a pretty rudimentary DVD-burning program.

The familiar WordPad program can no longer open Microsoft Word files (ironically, Apple's free built-in word processor does).

Gradually, all Windows computers will be Vista computers, and that's a good thing, if only for security reasons. But you may want to keep your older Windows XP box around awhile longer, until you can afford new hardware that can handle Vista.

Generate Passwords

2006-12-14T14:48:00.000-05:00

A free but high-powered password generator

You're reading Windows Secrets, so it's a good bet that you already know the importance of having good passwords. Or, to put it the other way around: You know that using a simple, easy-to-guess password is like leaving your spare house key under the doormat. It won't fool anyone who wants in.

I've recently run across a couple of new (and free) online password services that you may find useful.

1. PassNerd. I can only give a limited thumbs up to PassNerd. Every time you load the PassNerd home page, the site generates a new password for you. You can select simple or complex passwords (complex is better) in lengths up to 64 characters (longer is better).

The site is easy to use and the passwords appear to be quite random, but other parts of the site give me pause. The Tips section, for example, recommends "alphabet math" and "keyboard transposition" as good ways to generate your own passwords.

Both these techniques are relatively low-security, because the common substitutions of numerals for letters are now built into modern cracking tools. They are emphatically not strong ways to produce passwords! (For more info, see "Looks Strong, But Don't Be Fooled!" from the 2005-06-23 issue of the LangaList.)

2. Perfect Passwords. By contrast, I can give an unequivocal recommendation to Steve Gibson's Perfect Passwords. You can see why as soon as you read the background information on that page.

In particular, Steve's use of SSL encryption to deliver the generated passwords to you helps ensure that you and you alone will see the results, and that the results will be cache-resistant. (In fact, in most systems, the pages won't be cached at all.)

Perfect Passwords

By default, Steve's page produces passwords of 63 and 64 characters. If you need a longer password, you can splice several of the 63-character passwords together. If you want a shorter password, you can copy only the number of characters you need. (While you're on the site, check out Steve's list of other free tools, too.)

If you don't need extremely long passwords that would survive weeks of brute-force attack by a supercomputer, you might prefer to use a "passphrase" technique. This allows you to create easy-to-remember passwords that are strong and as short or as long as you wish. For details, see my InformationWeek article entitled "How To Build Better Passwords."

How To Fix A Missing DLL

2006-12-14T14:45:00.000-05:00

How to fix an AWOL Shell.dll

Reader Rick Granlund has a problem that's bad enough in itself, but which also could be a symptom of a deeper issue. Either way, it's fixable:

* "I have a problem that may be common and yet the cure eludes me. When I attempt to install software in my XP Pro SP2 machine, I get the dialog box 'Missing SHELL.DLL.' How do I find and reinstall the SHELL.DLL with minimum disruption to my system?"

The fix is easy, Rick, but first — it'd be best if you could find out why Shell.dll disappeared.

For example, there's a fairly common browser hijacker that can cause this problem. You didn't mention any other symptoms, but the hijacker usually adds "Home Search Assistant," "Shopping Wizard," and "Search Extender" to your system, and may also reset your browser's home page so that a popup appears at every start.

If malware such as this is working on your system, then it will do no good to repair Shell.dll because the malware will simply corrupt the new copy.

I suggest you begin by using your favorite antimalware tools to make sure your system is squeaky clean and free of all malware. Major test labs currently rate Webroot's Spy Sweeper and PC Tools' Spyware Doctor as the best antispyware products. For more information, see the Security Baseline page at WindowsSecrets.com.

If "Home Search Assistance" and its related friends are, in fact, causing your problem, the free AboutBuster utility can remove them.

Once you're sure your system is clean, you can download a fresh copy of Shell.dll from any number of online sources. DLL-files.com, for example, has a good Shell.dll page. Copy the DLL file into your DLLcache folder (usually found at C:\Windows\System32\DLLcache). Then re-register the DLL this way:

Step 1. Click Start, Run.

Step 2. In the Run dialog box, enter (change C:\Windows to the correct location on your system):

regsvr32 C:\Windows\System32\DLLcache\Shell.dll

Step 3. Click OK.

Step 4. Reboot, and your Shell.dll problems should be fixed!

By the way, the above steps can resolve a huge number of problems with other missing/corrupted DLLs. Just use the example above as a template, downloading whatever DLL you need and substituting its name in the regsvr32 command.

Make Your Own Ringtones

2006-12-07T00:52:00.000-05:00

Personal Zing in Your Ring

Q. Is there an easy way to make a ring tone for my phone from a CD track or MP3 file?

A. Making your own ring tones isn’t too difficult if you have a mobile phone that supports MP3 ring tones and a way to transfer files onto the phone from your computer. If you’re not sure about either, check your phone’s manual or wireless carrier’s Web site for the technical specifications for your phone model.

One of the simpler ways to make and install your own ring tones is to use software dedicated to the task. Programs like ToneThis (free at www.tonethis.com) for Windows or Xingtone Ringtone Maker for Windows and Mac OS X (xingtone.com; $20 to buy, free trial available) are options.

These types of programs let you edit the sound clip of your choice to the appropriate length and send it to your phone as a file download that you can assign as a ring tone. Most ring tone software makers list phone models and carriers on their Web sites so you can make sure your handset is compatible.

You may also be able to convert and edit a CD track or MP3 file with free or inexpensive audio programs available around the Web if your computer doesn’t have any sound-editing software already installed. Audio Shareware sites like HitSquad (www.hitsquad.com) and Audio Utilities (www.audioutilities.com) are two such sites. The open-source program Audacity (audacity.sourceforge.net) is a free audio editor for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux systems, but you need to download the program’s optional LAME MP3 encoder to export edited MP3 files.

Once you have edited your new ring tone with your audio program, you can transfer it to your phone as you do other files — U.S.B. cable, Bluetooth connection and e-mail download are some methods available. Check your phone’s manual for instructions on transferring audio files to the proper place for use as ring tones.

Are You Vista Ready?

2006-12-07T00:47:00.000-05:00

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

December 7, 2006
Basics
Vista Is Ready. Are You?
By LARRY MAGID
WINDOWS VISTA, the latest iteration of Microsoft’s operating system, is finally here. It was officially released to corporate users last week and will be available to consumers on Jan. 30. But now that Vista is ready, will your computer be? And what will be involved in an upgrade?

Microsoft says Vista offers increased security, along with an improved search function, an excellent calendar program, improved networking and a sidebar with quick access to mini-programs called gadgets. With the right display adapter, some editions of Vista will also offer a new interface called Aero that lets you preview what is inside a running program by placing your cursor over its thumbnail in the task bar.

It will be possible for many PC users to spend $99 to $259 to purchase a Vista DVD to upgrade their existing Windows XP machines. But before you do that, you need to take a good look at your PC as well as your peripherals and software. If your system isn’t quite compatible, it might be possible to make it ready for Vista with some additional memory or perhaps a new video card.

Even if your PC is Vista-ready, that doesn’t mean you should buy the upgrade kit. For most users, especially those whose hardware isn’t quite up to speed, it might make sense to wait until it’s time for a new PC.

The easiest way to get Vista is to buy a new PC after Jan. 30. If you want a new PC sooner, make sure the hardware is Vista-ready and see if the vendor is offering a coupon for a free or low-cost upgrade when Vista comes out. It is essential to compare the cost of buying a new system against purchasing Vista and upgrading your current PC. By the time you add up the cost of Vista plus any required hardware, it might be make more sense to get a new machine.

One variable for those thinking of upgrading is Vista’s system requirements, which vary by edition. Microsoft will offer a $99 Home Basic Edition that provides limited functionality but runs on more basic equipment. Unlike the higher-end versions, Home Basic won’t support the new Aero interface.

The minimum configuration to run the Home Basic Edition of Vista is a PC with 512 megabytes of memory, at least an 800-megahertz processor and a graphics card that is DirectX9-compatible; this includes most graphics adapters sold in the last few years. In other words, a vast majority of PCs that have been purchased in recent years are able to run this stripped-down version of Vista — but just because they’re able doesn’t necessarily mean it’s worth the cost, effort and potential compatibility problems with existing software and peripherals.

Most consumers will find the $159 Home Premium edition more suitable. It includes the Aero interface along with Windows Media Center (to manage audio and video resources) and other features. The minimum hardware for the Premium edition is a gigabyte of memory and a one-gigahertz processor. You’ll also need DirectX 9 graphics with a Windows Vista Display Driver Model (WDDM) driver and at least 128 megabytes of graphics memory and pixel shader 2.0. Pixel shader refers to the ability of your graphics processor to render the surface properties of an image including lighting, shadows and other visual qualities.

Your machine must also have at least a 40-gigabyte hard drive with 15 gigabytes of free space as well as a DVD-ROM drive and audio output. While you can never have too much memory, Microsoft’s Vista group product manager, Greg Sullivan, said that one gigabyte was plenty. I’ve been running Vista on a 1.5-gigabyte machine and haven’t had any memory-related problems.

If your machine has Windows XP, an easy way to find out if it’s Vista-ready is to download the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor from Microsoft’s Vista Web site (www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready). The program, which is available now, will scan your PC to determine which edition of Vista, if any, can run on your machine.

Be sure to plug in all your external peripherals, like printers, scanners and external hard drives, as they, too, need to be evaluated by the upgrade tool. When the upgrade adviser scan is finished it will tell which edition it recommends. You don’t necessarily have to buy the recommended edition. To the left of the screen is a list of other editions. Click on the ones you’re considering and scroll down to see what changes you might have to make to run that edition.

Don’t panic if the upgrade adviser finds that some of your device drivers aren’t Vista-compatible. Chances are there are new drivers available to fix the problem. Microsoft has included many drivers within the operating system so, if all goes well, it will take care of making sure that your display adapter, sound card, printer, Ethernet card and other devices have the software they need to operate correctly.

But the list of included drivers is not exhaustive. Very old, very new and relatively obscure hardware might not be included, so to be safe, before you install Vista, visit the Web site for each of your hardware vendors to download the latest Vista drivers. The upgrade adviser looks for minimal, not optimal requirements.

For the Aero interface, the video card or Graphics Processing Unit (G.P.U.) is the most important component. The chips on that card (or on your PC’s system board) do the heavy lifting when it comes to displaying images on your monitor. Vista’s Aero interface, according to Rob Csongor, vice president of Nvidia, a leading maker of chips for computer graphics, is especially taxing on video processors because of the way it renders windows.

The use of Vista’s Flip 3-D window changer, for example, requires the video card to render a 3-D image of all of your open windows every time you press Alt Tab. The Windows desktop, according to a Microsoft Web site, “will be dynamically composed many times a second from the contents of each window.”

Even if your graphics card is Aero-compatible, you may still want to upgrade for faster performance. In my tests, a three-year-old Aero-compatible card from ATI (now part of Advanced Micro Devices) was noticeably slower than newer, moderately priced (about $130) cards from both ATI and Nvidia. I noticed it and so did the Windows Experience performance scanning program that comes with Vista.

If you have a desktop PC with a graphics card that’s not up to the task, you can replace the card with one that is Vista Aero-ready, and if your PC system board has an embedded graphics system, it may still be possible to add an external card. If you have a notebook PC whose graphics processor isn’t Vista-ready, you’re pretty much out of luck because, other than adding additional memory, it’s generally not possible to upgrade internal components of a laptop.

Another way to improve performance is to use a U.S.B. thumb drive or SD card to take advantage of Vista’s ReadyBoost feature. Vista uses that memory to store some of your program code so that programs load much faster than if it had to load from the hard drive.

Whether or not your machine is compatible, upgrading an operating system can be challenging despite Microsoft’s efforts to make it as smooth as possible. You should definitely back up your data files before starting. You have the choice of doing an “in place” upgrade, which retains your applications and data files, or a “full install,” which requires you to reinstall your programs.

A full install by default will not delete your data, though it may make the data more difficult to find. It often results in a faster and more reliable system because it cleans up the Windows registry and deletes any spyware and possibly problematic software on your machine.

And if you’re reluctant to upgrade, don’t fret. If Windows XP works for you now, it will continue to work long after Jan. 30. Besides, Vista isn’t going away anytime soon. Whether you want to or not, you’ll probably be using it on your next PC.

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Add Encrpyt Command To Context Menu

2006-12-06T18:22:00.000-05:00

How to add the Encrypt/Decrypt command to the right context menu
Want to be able to right click a file or folder and select to encrypt or decrypt it, without having to click through the Properties | Advanced dialog boxes? You can do it by editing the registry. Here's how:

1. Open your favorite registry editor.
2. Navigate to this entry: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ Advanced
3. In the right details pane, right click an empty spot and select New, then DWORD Value.
4. Name the new value EncryptionContextMenu.
5. Double click the new value, and in the data value box, enter 1.
6. Click OK and close the registry editor.
7. Restart the computer for the new setting to take effect.

LCD or Plasma

2006-12-03T12:57:00.000-05:00

LCD or Plasma? Consider Size, Weight, Glare

Rob Pegoraro
Sunday, November 26, 2006; F04

Over this year, one of the biggest obstacles to buying a high-definition TV crumbled into dust. Even if you're looking for a big, flat-panel plasma or a liquid-crystal display screen, you no longer have to spend more than the cost of a good laptop computer.

But as flat-panel TV prices have deflated by anywhere from a third to half, choosing the proper set hasn't gotten much easier. Depending on whom you talk to, either plasma is the sole sensible choice, or only a fool would pick that over LCD.

True, there are real differences behind the techno-zealotry. That became clear during lengthy trials of four televisions selling for no more than $2,000 and change.

Two were 40-inch LCDs: Sony's KDL-V40XBR1 and Samsung's LN-S4041D. The other two were 42-inch plasmas: Panasonic's TH-42PX600U and Philips's 42PF9631D.

None of these issues emerged as a tragic flaw in the test runs. They're just things to weigh against your priorities and needs.

Start with where that new HDTV will go. If the area won't accommodate a set above a certain size, that alone could drive the decision. LCD is the only flat-screen option that comes in sizes smaller than 37 inches across, but it gets prohibitively expensive for anything bigger than 46 inches.

(Flat-panel alternatives have their own size limits. Conventional tube TVs max out at 34 inches, while "microdisplay" sets -- the projection sets that measure a foot or more thick and go by names like "DLP," "rear-projection LCD" and "LCOS" -- usually can't be had under 46 inches.)

With a TV size in mind, see how much light comes into the room. If a houseplant thrives on the windowsill, an LCD is probably best. LCDs are generally brighter and less prone to glare than plasma.

Then, consider the spots from which people might watch TV. Plasma sets offer the widest viewing angles, followed by LCDs; once you move past 45 degrees or so from straight on, an LCD can start to look a little pale. (Most microdisplays, meanwhile, have more limited viewing angles than either plasma or LCD.)

Next question: Will a computer or video game console be plugged into the HDTV? If so, avoid plasma TVs unless you can accept "temporary image retention." On both plasmas, keeping a static image on the screen -- for instance, the Windows desktop or a TV programming guide -- for an hour left a faint after-image that lingered for maybe another hour before fading away.

Finally, will the TV hang on a wall or from a ceiling -- or will it just get lugged up the stairs? LCDs are a lot lighter than plasmas: The Samsung LCD, at 46.5 pounds, was less than half as hefty as the Philips plasma.

If all those factors still allow you to pick either plasma or LCD, plasma should offer slightly better picture quality. It allows for greater contrast, a deeper range of blacks and faster "refresh rates" (for instance, a fast-moving ticker on ESPN was clear on the Philips plasma but smeared slightly on the Samsung LCD).

To minimize those disadvantages on an LCD, look for a set with the highest possible "dynamic contrast ratio" (4,000:1 or higher) and the quickest refresh rate (8 ms or fewer).

Plasma has a reputation for being less efficient, but tests with a power meter didn't bear that out: The Panasonic used about the same amount of electricity over an hour as either LCD -- though the Philips plasma drew about 25 percent more juice.

With any HDTV, keep a few features on your shopping list. Make sure the TV has a digital tuner and is not just a monitor. With an antenna, that tuner will offer crisp, clear, high-definition broadcasts for free -- if nothing else, a fantastic backup for cable or satellite. (This is the biggest secret of HDTV: It makes over-the-air broadcasts relevant again.)

Unfortunately, not all digital tuners are as capable. The Sony, Samsung and Panasonic sets delivered good to excellent reception, but the Philips would lose the signal if I looked at it the wrong way.

Equally important: a full set of video inputs. High-definition video comes in via two connectors: digital HDMI (high definition multimedia interface) and analog component video. Get a TV with two of each kind, plus a VGA (analog) or DVI (digital) port if a computer will be plugged in.

Some HDTVs include a convenient extra -- a memory-card reader or USB port to show off digital photos.

Lastly, don't pay a cent extra for "1080p" resolution. Ads calling it "true" or "full" high-definition overlook two inconvenient facts: No broadcast, cable or satellite service offers that resolution, and you probably won't see the difference from your couch on a screen smaller than 50 inches.

30 Free Windows Apps

2006-12-03T11:09:00.000-05:00

Recently, I received a fresh new laptop from Dell. Upon receiving it, I did the traditional “installation of Windows from scratch” on it to remove a lot of the garbage that is preinstalled on Dells. Then I got really busy installing tons of great software that takes care of pretty much every software need I have. Not only was all of the software free, every piece of it was open source, which means that the code is peer-reviewed; no spyware here!

What follows is a list of thirty pieces of software that are the cream of the crop of open source software for Windows. Not only is every piece of it free, almost all of them directly replace expensive software packages.

Now, if only there were an open version of The Sims 2, I might go the whole way and switch to Linux…

Firefox logo1. Firefox
http://www.getfirefox.com/
Replaces Internet Explorer
If you haven’t switched to Firefox for your web browsing needs, do it now. It stops annoying popups and it has tons of amazing plugins that can make surfing the web even better. I could evangelize all day about Firefox, but one thing’s for sure: the first thing I do on any new Windows machine is run Internet Explorer just long enough to download Firefox.

2. Thunderbird
http://www.mozilla.org/thunderbird/
Replaces Microsoft Outlook or Eudora
Thunderbird is an email client that has five big things going for it: it’s free, it’s full featured, it’s lightweight and runs quick, it has an unparalleled spam filter, and it protects you from those ridiculous phishing attacks by clearly indicating which emails send you to a bogus website. If you’re not already using a web-based email solution, Thunderbird should be your client.

3. Sunbird
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird/
Replaces Microsoft Outlook’s calendaring functions
Might as well get the Mozilla trifecta out of the way by mentioning Sunbird, which is the Mozilla Foundation’s calendaring program. It’s extremely easy to use (I figured out everything I needed in a minute or two) and easy to share your calendar with others. I consider a calendaring tool to be essential if you’re using a laptop, and this is no different.

4. Abiword
http://www.abisource.com/
Replaces Microsoft Word
Want a good word processor but find Microsoft Word too expensive? AbiWord is my favorite replacement for Word. It’s lightweight (meaning it runs quickly) and includes pretty much every feature that I use regularly in a word processor, plus it can save files in formats that you can exchange with Word and WordPerfect users, plus open any of their files, too.

OpenOffice logo5. OpenOffice
http://www.openoffice.org/
Replaces Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint
If you want to replace the rest of the Office suite, your best bet is OpenOffice. It includes very nice replacements for Excel and PowerPoint (and workable replacements for Access and other Office elements). In fact, I actually prefer their Excel and PowerPoint replacements to the real thing.

6. ClamWin
http://www.clamwin.com/
Replaces Norton AntiVirus or McAfee
ClamWin is a slick anti-virus software that’s quite easy to manage and is unobtrusive while keep your system free of viruses. That’s pretty much all I want from a package, so why pay money for McAfee to keep bugging me all the time?

Gaim logo7. Gaim
http://gaim.sourceforge.net/
Replaces AIM, Windows Messenger, etc.
This is a very clean instant messaging program that allows you to be on AOL Instant Messenger, Windows (MSN) Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger simultaneously with one program. There are other free packages that do this, but Gaim is stable and clean and simple.

8. BitTorrent
http://www.bittorrent.com/
Original but essential
From their website, “BitTorrent is a peer-assisted, digital content delivery platform that provides the fastest, most efficient means of distributing, discovering, and consuming large, high-quality files on the Web. Our mission is simple: to deliver the content that entertains and informs the digital world.” In other words, BitTorrent allows you to download large media files and also use your bandwidth to help others download these files. Search for media files you want and download ‘em.

9. GIMPShop
http://www.gimpshop.net/
Replaces Adobe Photoshop
This is a version of the GNU Image Manipulation Program that does a pretty solid job of imitating Adobe Photoshop - a regular user of Photoshop (like me) can adapt to it quite quickly. It’s very richly featured and runs quite well - in fact, I see no reason to ever go back, even if Photoshop were free.

10. Gnucleus
http://www.gnucleus.com/Gnucleus/
Replaces LimeWire, BearShare, etc.
Sure, LimeWire and BearShare are free, but why not just get the same basic software without all of the spyware? Gnucleus is pretty much identical to those software packages - but without all that extra junk that slows down your computer.

11. VLC Media Player
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
Replaces Windows Media Player, Quicktime, RealPlayer, etc.
If you get tired of having tons of media players on your computer, get this package that runs pretty much every media type you’ll run across without breaking a sweat.

Juice logo12. Juice
http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/
Unique but essential
Juice lets you effortlessly subscribe to podcasts, organize them, and listen to them at your convenience. In conjunction with PodNova, I find it easier to use Juice to organize podcasts than using iTunes itself.

13. Audacity
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Unique but essential (for some)
If you’re interested in recording your own podcast (or just want to make your own voice recordings for whatever reason), Audacity and a microphone are pretty much all you need to get the job done. I’m not much for podcasting (let’s just say I don’t have a radio voice), but I use Audacity for other voice recording purposes.

RSSOwl logo14. RSSOwl
http://www.rssowl.org/
Unique but essential
RSSOwl is one of many open source RSS readers. In other words, it enables you to use one program to keep track of the content of a lot of different blogs; if you read a lot of blogs, it’s the only way to keep tabs on all of them without devoting hours jumping from site to site. If you have a laptop, it’s preferable to using sites like Bloglines, but if you’re on a desktop, a web-based feed manager might be better.

15. Filezilla
http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/
Replaces WinFTP
Many people occasionally have a need to FTP files to other computers; if you ever have the need to transfer files in such a fashion, FileZilla will do the job slickly and quickly.

16. Keynote
http://www.tranglos.com/free/keynote.html
Unique but essential
Keynote is basically designed specifically for the task of taking notes on a laptop. If you ever find yourself in a meeting or a presentation with your laptop open and want to jot down notes and organize them just a bit, Keynote is unquestionably the program for you. It’s not good at quality word processing, but that’s not the point. In my professional work, I find myself using Keynote almost as often as any other utility.

17. MusikCube
http://www.musikcube.com/
Replaces iTunes
If you’re not already committed to downloaded music from the iTunes Music Store, then MusikCube is the best choice available for a music organizer and player. It organizes your mp3s, makes it really easy and really fast to find them, and allows you to make some incredibly clever smart playlists.

18. Handbrake
http://handbrake.m0k.org/
Unique but essential
Handbrake enables you to stick a DVD in your DVD drive and have the contents of that film stored to your hard drive in a form that can be read by pretty much any media player. I often use it to put a few movies on my laptop for travel purposes, so I don’t have to worry about keeping track of DVDs while on the road.

19. X-Chat 2
http://www.silverex.org/
Replaces mIRC
X-Chat is a free IRC client. For those unfamiliar with IRC, it’s a place for technical people (and, as my wife loves to point out, nerds) to meet and discuss topics in an open environment. I often find it very useful when piecing through difficult technical issues.

KeePass logo20. KeePass
http://keepass.sourceforge.net/
Unique but essential
KeePass is a program that securely stores and manages the abundance of passwords we all use on a daily basis. I have literally hundreds of usernames and passwords spread out all over the place; KeePass keeps them all for me and keeps them safe.

21. TrueCrypt
http://www.truecrypt.org/
Unique but essential
TrueCrypt enables you to convert a memory stick into a strongly encrypted data storage device, meaning that you can store personal data on it without worrying about losing it and having personal information get out and about. I use it to keep some of my most personal data off of my laptop and strongly secured, just in case.

22. PDFCreator
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
Replaces Adobe Acrobat
PDFCreator creates a virtual printer on your computer that, if you print a document to it from any program, creates a PDF of that document that can be read on any computer with Acrobat Reader on it. After installing PDFCreator, all you have to do is print like normal and out comes a PDF!

23. Freemind
http://freemind.sourceforge.net/
Unique but Essential
Freemind is a “mind mapping” software program. In essence, it enables you to brainstorm and link together ideas quickly, creating “maps” of concepts similar to what you might do on a whiteboard. I find it incredibly useful when putting together ideas for new posts or planning small projects or assembling the backbone of a writing project.

24. NASA Worldwind
http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/
Replaces Google Earth
WorldWind is very similar to Google Earth in that it allows you to browse the globe. While it isn’t strong for creating maps (but why not just use Google Maps for that?), it is utterly incredible for viewing three-dimensional landscapes of any place on earth.

25. Notepad2
http://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html
Replaces Notepad
Notepad2 is a replacement for the traditional Windows Notepad that just adds a few sweet little features: multiple documents; line, word, and character counts; and some highlighting of tags. In fact, I’m using Notepad2 as I draft this post (after using Freemind to organize it).

26. HealthMonitor
http://healthmonitor.zucchetti.com/
Unique but useful
HealthMonitor enables you to keep an eye on the health of your computer. It identifies slowdowns and other system issues quickly and lets you know (for example, it gives a popup if your system memory gets to a certain percentage of fullness, or if your hard drive has only 10 GB free). This can keep you out of trouble and also give you clues to problems your machine might be having.

27. Workrave
http://www.workrave.org/
Unique but useful
Sometimes late into a writing session, my wrists get sore from too much repetitive movement. Workrave basically jumps in before this happens and locks down the computer for a while, preventing me from working too much and causing repetitive stress injury. Since I’ve started using it, it hasn’t significantly hurt my productivity at all and my wrists are thanking me!

28. GanttPV
http://www.pureviolet.net/ganttpv/
Replaces Microsoft Project
If you do any project management (or have a need to dip your toes in the water), GanttPV does a brilliant job of managing the task quickly, easily, and freely. If you need to move to MS Project later, you can export from GanttPV to Project, but once you start digging into GanttPV, you’ll likely have no reason to use Project.

29. GnuCash
http://www.gnucash.org/
Replaces Microsoft Money or Quicken
GnuCash is a slimmed-down version of the bloated Microsoft Money and Quicken packages, but it contains all of the features I want for managing my money. The interfaces are incredibly simple - it functions much like a checkbook ledger on your computer - but there’s a lot of meat hidden throughout the software.

30. True Combat: Elite
http://www.truecombatelite.net/
Replaces Quake IV, Halo, etc.
After all this downloading, you’re going to need to blow off a little steam, and I’ve yet to find a more enjoyable free game than this one. It’s basically a third person combat game, but the graphics are spectacular and the game is quite engrossing.

If you’ve downloaded and installed all of these, you’ve got access to all the productivity software you’ll likely need, clean and open and best of all free.

Broadband Speeds

2006-11-18T02:17:00.000-05:00

November 18, 2006
Not Always Full Speed Ahead
By MATT RICHTEL and KEN BELSON

What is a megabit worth? And what the heck is a megabit anyway? These questions are hard to avoid for consumers trying to make sense of the fast-growing menu of options for high-speed Internet access.

More than ever, the nation’s phone and cable companies are trumpeting the speed of their Internet connections with ads that pitch “blazing broadband” at “up to 100 times faster than dial-up.” But as with so many consumer services, the devil is in the fine print.

In more densely populated areas, many Americans now have not only a choice of broadband providers but also a range of different speeds to pick from. As the options proliferate, consumer advocates say it is getting tougher for people to tell what service is best for them — and which packages promise more than they deliver.

Confusing matters, broadband lines are increasingly being bundled with television and phone services, making it difficult to determine how much the high-speed connection actually costs.

The offers, consumer advocates say, are not always straightforward. With few exceptions, they include language that says consumers will get “up to” a certain speed, typically expressed in megabits per second. (An MP3 song file that takes 12 minutes to download over a dial-up line would take 27 seconds on a 1.5-megabits-per-second broadband line, and 8 seconds on a 5-megabit connection.)

In many cases, consumer advocates and industry analysts said, customers do not get the maximum promised speed, or anywhere near it, from their cable and digital subscriber line connections. Instead, the phrase “up to” refers to speeds attainable under ideal conditions, like when a D.S.L. user is near the phone company’s central switching office.

“They don’t deliver what’s advertised, and it’s inherently deceptive,” said Dave Burstein, editor of DSL Prime, a newsletter that tracks the broadband industry. “ ‘Up to’ is a weasel term that should be taken out of the companies’ vocabulary.”

The companies argue that their marketing is not misleading because the speeds they promise can actually be reached.

Steve Howe, vice president for voice products at EarthLink, said his company’s use of the term “up to” was accurate even though the speeds actually provided depended on other factors. The maximum is “a number that you very much can get to,” Mr. Howe said.

Eric Rabe, a spokesman for Verizon, acknowledged that the maximum speed promised was what was available “under optimal conditions.” He argued that advertising those numbers was not disingenuous because the optimal speed at least provided a benchmark for comparison. Verizon cannot control, among other things, how quickly Web sites can deliver information that is requested by users.

“Once you get on the public Internet, all bets are off,” he said.

While Mr. Rabe defended his company’s advertising policies, he said he could not do the same for competitors, particularly in the cable industry.

“We deliver the full speed or close to it more often than our competitors,” he said. But Mr. Rabe said he did not have statistics that would back up that contention.

Determining the speeds consumers are actually getting is tough to measure. Cable speeds can vary if many people in one neighborhood are online at the same time, like after dinner. Access over phone lines can be slower if the customer is far from the switching office, where the Internet signal originates.

Consumers may end up with slower browsing speeds if they use computers with older processors or visit crowded Web sites, things that are beyond the control of the cable or phone company.

In a survey last summer in which 12,000 readers of PC Magazine downloaded software to test their connections, the magazine found that the average speed provided by major broadband companies during surfing of popular Web sites was typically less than half of the advertised speed.

DSL Reports, a news and discussion Web site for broadband customers, keeps track of the results of speed tests that its users perform on their connections. In one recent week, the average speeds of major providers included 5.97 megabits a second for Comcast and 2.84 megabits for BellSouth. But those numbers can include results from customers who are paying for different speeds of service.

Given all the variables, “it’s getting more tricky to know what speed you’re really getting,” said Justin Beech, the founder and operator of DSL Reports. But Mr. Beech said he felt providers were getting more reliable with their speeds, in part because all the speed-test sites were enabling people to verify if they were getting what was advertised.

“In general, an I.S.P. that advertises a speed and doesn’t provide it will get crucified online until they fix it,” he said, referring to an Internet service provider. “The vocal minority will check the line — sometimes daily.”

Upload speeds, the rate at which information is sent from the subscriber’s computer, are often far slower than download speeds. This is typically only a concern for customers who often need to upload photos and other large files, or those doing tasks where split seconds count, like online gamers and day traders.

Complicating the debate, analysts and consumer advocates say consumers often do not need the high speeds that companies are pitching to them. The companies, they say, are spreading the false premise that more speed always leads to a better online experience, when in fact most online tasks like surfing the Web or sending e-mail messages can be done with more modest connections.

That is what Greg and Robin Bernstein discovered when they wanted to get rid of their dial-up connection this past spring. They chose 1.5-megabit-per-second D.S.L. service from Qwest, the phone carrier in their Minneapolis neighborhood, mostly because they already had a local line from the company.

“The priority was to get faster service,” Mrs. Bernstein said. At the same time, she said, “I wasn’t interested in a bill that would creep up. It doesn’t really matter to me as long as it works.”

Even so, telecommunications providers say many consumers respond to ads for faster connections.

Verizon, for instance, is building a state-of-the-art fiber optic network that lets it offer the fastest speeds of any major company. The service, called FiOS, now passes close to six million homes and includes broadband speeds of (up to) 5, 15 and 30 megabits per second that sell for $34.95, $44.95 and $179.95 a month.

Verizon said that about 15 percent of those who can get the service are signing up within 12 months of it becoming available, a number that analysts say is promising. The company expects to have 725,000 subscribers by the end of the year. In parts of the New York metropolitan area, Verizon this summer raised the maximum speed of the service at no additional cost, to 10, 20 and 50 megabits.

“The network is future-proof,” said Virginia Ruesterholz, the president of Verizon’s telecommunications group, noting that the faster speeds are popular with gamers and people who watch video online.

As Verizon’s network grows it is forcing competitors to respond. Cablevision, which competes head-to-head with Verizon in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, this year raised the speeds of its broadband connections after Verizon began selling FiOS in its territory.

The company now offers connections at 15 megabits per second for $44.95 a month, up from 10 megabits last year. Customers can also buy a 30-megabit line — faster than is needed by most small businesses — for an additional $14.95 per month.

Time Warner Cable, which competes with Verizon in and around New York, has also raised its download speeds. Its $39.95 plan is now 8 megabits per second, up from 7 megabits, and its $49.95 plan is now 10 megabits, up from 8 megabits.

All three companies said they were simply ensuring that their customers would have sufficiently fast connections given the growth in music and video downloading and other bandwidth-hogging practices.

“We think we’ve found that sweet spot” between speed and price, said Sam Howe, the chief marketing officer at Time Warner Cable. “If there’s a speed arms race, it will become meaningless as consumers find out they’re buying more than they need.”

Despite the rush of new offers, the United States still lags behind many countries when it comes to broadband speeds and prices. In 2005, it ranked sixth globally on a price-per-kilobit basis, according to the International Telecommunications Union. Prices were cheaper in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Iceland and Sweden, countries where the government took an active role in promoting broadband use.

If experiences overseas are any guide, Americans can expect advertised broadband speeds to continue rising and, in places where there are competing companies, promotional prices to nudge lower or stabilize, particularly for customers who sign up for bundles of services that include phone and television.

The variety of broadband speeds, price plans, discounts and technical hurdles that slow connections, have made it hard for shoppers to decide what is a good value, said Gene Kimmelman, vice president for federal policy at Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports. “Go into a TV store and look at different TVs; the picture you see is pretty much what you’re buying,” he said. “But with D.S.L., do people really know what they’re buying?”

Promotional offers for service often come with strings attached in the form of yearlong commitments and penalties for breaking them.

With all the noise in the marketplace, some people shopping for broadband rely on the old word-of-mouth approach. “I’m not real familiar with the technical part of the speeds,” said Lyle Rhodes, who lives near Chattanooga, Tenn., and recently signed up for a D.S.L. line from BellSouth. “But from talking to friends who had BellSouth and Comcast, I figured it out. The numbers matter less as long as it’s fast.”

Mr. Rhodes, who previously had a dial-up line from AOL, said price was another factor. His D.S.L. line will cost only a few dollars more than his dial-up, and he received a coupon good toward a new Dell computer. Comcast offered a good promotional price for six months, but after that, he worried that the price would exceed his budget.

While added speed will not make a difference to most people, that is what the broadband providers are emphasizing, said Jim Louderback, editor in chief of PC Magazine.

“They’re definitely pushing speed more — cable providers in particular, because they need to differentiate themselves from D.S.L.,” he said.

Mr. Louderback had some simple buying advice: “Unless you’re watching YouTube, or downloading a lot of video, go with what’s cheapest.”

Digital Camera Review

2006-11-07T12:49:00.000-05:00

November 1, 2006
In Focus
At Last, Digital S.L.R.’s That Won’t Break Your Budget
By IAN AUSTEN (New York Times)

ABOUT six years ago, Anthony J. Kinney bought the first of a series of compact digital cameras. Some were bigger, some were smaller, and their features were as varied as the cameras’ brand names. But one thing was constant: none of them were satisfying.

Mr. Kinney, a research scientist in Wilmington, Del., was particularly frustrated by the lag that occurred with all the compact cameras, when the shutter was pressed and the exposure was made.

“Kids move around a lot,” he said of his favorite subject, his two sons. “By the time any of the cameras took a picture, the kid would have moved out of the frame.”

Mr. Kinney’s disappointment lifted — and his digital camera buying spree eased — about a year and half ago when he bought a Canon EOS Digital Rebel, the first digital single-lens-reflex camera offered at a price (about $1,000 with a lens) that a middle-class father of two could consider.

Not only did the Digital Rebel prove to be infinitely superior to the last film S.L.R. Mr. Kinney owned — a robustly crude, Soviet-made Zenit — he said it also transformed how he took digital photos.

“The whole thing about point-and-shoots is convenience,” Mr. Kinney said. “With the S.L.R., you’re not just taking a snapshot, you’re thinking more. Ultimately that’s what makes a good picture: your brain.”

Mr. Kinney is not alone in his fondness for digital single-lens-reflex cameras, which do not yet dominate digital cameras in the way that they ruled film cameras during the late 1970s. But the success of the Digital Rebel has led to a rush by every camera maker, as well as newcomers like Sony and Samsung, to introduce digital S.L.R.’s priced and designed with consumers in mind. Nikon alone now offers four such models.

Despite their comparatively low prices (the Olympus Evolt E-500, in a package with two zoom lenses, sells for $800; and the Pentax K110D, with one zoom, sells for about $600), digital single-lens-reflex cameras help manufacturers make up for profits lost to the even steeper price drops for compact digital models over the last two years.

For camera buyers, however, determining if digital S.L.R.’s are worth the extra money (as well as the added bulk, weight and, in some cases, complexity) is less straightforward. It requires balancing those drawbacks against the cameras’ generally higher image quality, more capable autofocus, viewing and exposure systems and their ability to change lenses.

As their name suggests, digital S.L.R.’s most obviously distinguish themselves from compact cameras by their reflex-viewfinding system.

With compact models, users compose their photos either through a tiny separate viewfinder or by previewing the shot on the camera’s liquid-crystal-display monitor. (Extra-small compact cameras usually offer only the monitor.)

All S.L.R.’s, whether film or digital, let users compose by looking through the lens through a system of mirrors, lenses and prisms. That mechanism — which must quickly flip the mirror out of the shutter’s way for picture taking and then immediately drop it down again — is what accounts for most of the larger size and weight.

But it is also the feature that allows the use of different lenses. Many photographers, including Mr. Kinney, also find that it provides the most accurate preview of the resulting photo.

“The viewfinder is much bigger and brighter than any point-and-shoot,” Mr. Kinney said. “It was just such a joy to look through it.”

But arguably the most significant differences between compact point-and-shoot cameras and digital S.L.R.’s lie hidden well inside their plastic and metal shells.

The shutter lag that irritated Mr. Kinney, for example, occurs mostly from the fact that the compact camera’s imaging sensors are doing a wide variety of jobs besides capturing a photo. Chuck Westfall, the director of technical information for Canon in the United States, said that a big cause of shutter lag is the image sensor’s doing extra duty as an autofocus sensor. (The need for the sensor to switch from a preview to exposure duty when the shutter is pressed is another factor.)

In digital S.L.R.’s, however, the image sensor’s only job is to take pictures. Specialized sensors handle autofocus readings, exposure measurement and white balance (adjusting the camera’s color settings to eliminate unnatural color shifts caused by light sources other than the sun). On top of that, the larger size and higher prices of these cameras mean that they generally have more powerful computing chips to make sense of that data.

The other major difference internally is the image sensor chips themselves.

From the beginning, digital camera marketing has emphasized the pixel count of imaging sensors. What it does not say is that not all pixels are equal.

Compact cameras use much smaller sensor chips than digital S.L.R.’s. Mark Weir, the senior product manager for digital S.L.R. cameras at Sony, said that a typical compact camera sensor is “about half the size of your smallest fingernail.”

“A digital S.L.R. sensor is pretty big,” he added, “about the same as a good-size postage stamp.”

As a result, every pixel on a compact camera’s sensor chip is much smaller than its counterpart on a digital S.L.R.’s sensor. Mr. Weir, whose company also produces sensors for a number of other camera makers, estimates that pixels on a 10-megapixel compact camera sensor are about 2 microns across, compared with 6 microns for a digital S.L.R. sensor of the same resolution. A micron is one-thousandth of a millimeter.

That creates several problems. Makers of compact sensors are hitting physical limits on the ability to align the tiny individual lenses that sit on top of every pixel to concentrate the incoming light. Those tiny sensors, at the same time, place a heavier burden on lenses because the images they create eventually undergo high levels of magnification, even when viewed at snapshot size.

The only compact model with a sensor as large as those in digital S.L.R.’s is the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-R1, Mr. Weir and many others argue that the sensor size difference and the division of labor with other sensors give digital S.L.R. cameras a big edge in image quality over compact cameras.

“Digital S.L.R.’s have advantages in these areas that point-and-shoot cameras are very, very challenged to enjoy,” Mr. Weir said. “People are willing to trade off the simplicity, compactness and affordability of point-and-shoots because they’ve been in situations where their point-and-shoot camera could not get the shot they wanted.”

Bob Sanferrare, a retiree in Merrimac, Mass., owned several Nikon and Canon film S.L.R.’s over a 40-year period. But in the fall of 2001, he bought a 2-megapixel Sony compact digital camera. Its photo quality did not match that of his Nikon FA, a conventional film S.L.R. But he liked the idea of not having to take film on long overseas trips.

Six months ago, Mr. Sanferrare upgraded to a digital S.L.R., the Nikon D200. While its price, $1,700 without a lens, puts it firmly at the high end of cameras for consumers, Mr. Sanferrare chose it over less expensive models available at the time because it offered the greatest compatibility with his collection of old Nikon lenses. (Nikon later introduced another model, the D80, with similar backward lens compatibility that sells for $1,000 without a lens.)

Like Mr. Kinney, he has found that there is no comparison between the D200 and his admittedly aging compact camera.

“I don’t see any downside to the D200 except for its weight,” Mr. Sanferrare said. He added, however, that like most digital S.L.R.’s, the D200 appears to have been designed with the assumption that it will be used with autofocus lenses. As a result, it has a focusing screen that while very bright, makes it difficult to distinguish fine changes in focus when using manual focus lenses.

Although different models of digital S.L.R.’s accept older lenses from the same manufacturer to different degrees, there is still one major change when the older lenses are used on any consumer-priced digital single-lens-reflex camera, even those in which every lens feature is fully compatible.

While the imaging chips in consumer S.L.R.’s are much bigger than those in compact cameras, they are still smaller than a standard 35-millimeter film frame. (Canon makes two digital S.L.R.’s with film-size chips, but both are expensive and mostly used by professionals. Kodak offered similar cameras but has discontinued them.)

That size difference between film and chips means that lenses effectively take on different properties when used with a digital S.L.R. On his film camera the Nikon FA, Mr. Sanferrare’s Nikon 50-millimeter lens had a standard focal length, neither telephoto nor wide angle. On the D200, it is the functional equivalent of a 75-millimeter lens, making it ideal for portraits.

The smaller imaging chips allow manufacturers to design lenses for the consumer digital S.L.R.’s that are more compact than models for film cameras. Along with his D200, Mr. Sanferrare bought a Nikon 18-200-millimeter zoom lens, one that effectively goes from a wide-angle setting to one with enough telephoto power for most sporting events.

Not only is the lens (which has a suggested price of $900) unusually compact, it also contains an electronic system for eliminating blurred photos caused by camera shake.

Mr. Kinney’s Digital Rebel (which has been replaced with a new model, the EOS Digital Rebel XTi, selling for about $900) came with a zoom lens that goes from wide angle to slightly telephoto. He has since augmented that with a zoom that offers more telephoto settings and a 50-millimeter lens with a wide f1.4 maximum aperture for use in low light. Among other things, that allows him to photograph his two boys indoors without using a flash.

The greater number of digital S.L.R.’s aimed at consumers, of course, also makes choosing the ideal model more difficult.

In general, more expensive models like the D200, which overlap with the professional market, are larger and, their makers say, more robust. (Officials at Canon, Sony, Olympus and Pentax all say, however, that digital S.L.R.’s are more durable than their compact counterparts.)

Compactness is nice on holidays but not always an advantage. Mr. Kinney found the Digital Rebel too small for his hands and eventually bulked it up with an accessory battery grip.

The more expensive models also remove some features that less sophisticated photographers may find useful. Most semiprofessional models, for example, do away with settings marked by little pictographs that set up the camera for specific kinds of shots like portraits, sports or landscapes.

Mr. Sanferrare said that most amateur photographers who do not have older Nikon lenses would probably find another Nikon S.L.R. camera, the D50, much easier to use than his D200, and with little or no tradeoff in picture quality. They would also walk out of the store with $1,000 still in their pocket, as the D50 sells for just $700.

While they are more capable, digital S.L.R.’s will not solve every photographic problem.

“I definitely think that I’ve taken some of the best pictures of my life with the Digital Rebel,” Mr. Kinney said. “And some of the worst.”

Speed Up Your Connection

2006-11-07T12:41:00.000-05:00

November 1, 2006, 2:26 pm
A Faster Web–for Free

Is it just me, or are the freebies starting to blossom once again on the Web? Feels like it’s 1999 all over again.

I’ve got yet another great free one for you today, and it’s a doozie. I read about it in PC World, and couldn’t believe it: a service that purports to speed up your broadband Internet connection. It’s called Open DNS.

Works great, at least for me. Once I plugged the Open DNS addresses into my router, the wait time for a complex Web page went from 3-4 seconds down to 1-2, on both my Macs and PC’s.

In short, Open DNS works by caching a key phase of Web-page requests (namely, DNS requests) from its thousands of users, so that the site you want is blasted to you in a fraction of a second.

There’s no fee, no software to install, you don’t give them any information about yourself, and you don’t have to do anything different once you change your router’s DNS server addresses. (Sounds technical, but the site walks you through the instructions.) As a bonus, Open DNS intercepts phishing scams and corrects Web-address typos, sparing you those headaches. (The typo-correcting feature is where Open DNS plans to make its money; read the site to learn the whole plan.)

My wife and I are totally loving the new speed. Don’t tell Open DNS, but we even would have paid for it.

David Pogue
New York Times

Link: Open DNS

How To Reinstall System Restore

2006-11-04T15:56:00.000-05:00

The System Restore feature in Windows XP is a great one - but sometimes it quits working properly (or at all). In this case, you may need to reinstall it. Here's how:

1. Click Start | Run.
2. In the Run box, type %Windir%\INF. This should open your WINDOWS directory to the INF folder.
3. Find a file named SR.INF (if you have Explorer configured to hide common file extensions, it may display as SR).
4. Right click the SR.INF file and select Install. Windows may prompt you for your Windows installation source path. If you have service packs installed, point it to the %Windir%\ServicePackFiles folder.

After the System Restore files are reinstalled, restart Windows.

Office Live

2006-11-04T14:56:00.000-05:00

November 2, 2006
State of the Art
A Web Site to Call Your Own
By DAVID POGUE

If you operate a small business, you might already use technology to conceal just how small you are — by setting up multiple e-mail addresses and phone extensions, for example (“for Asian operations, press 7”).

Unfortunately, the illusion that you’re a big, competent corporation evaporates the minute you reveal your Web address — and it’s http://hometown.aol.com/CaseyCorp/myhomepage/index.html.

So how do you get an actual domain name like CaseyCorp.com? You have to pay a registrar company around $10 a year for it. You might then pay another company a few bucks a month to “host” your Web site, and somebody else to design the Web pages themselves. For nontechnical people, it’s all an expensive headache. No wonder half of all small businesses don’t even have Web sites.

But starting Nov. 15, somebody will offer to pick up the entire bill. You’ll be able to pick any dot-com (or .net, or .org) Web address that hasn’t already been taken — no charge. You’ll get to design a Web site, complete with links, graphics, search boxes, tables, forms and navigation bars, and hang it on the Web for all to see — no charge. You’ll even get crystal-clear traffic reports whenever you want them, showing how many people are beating a path to your door — and still no charge.

So who’s your mysterious benefactor? A little outfit called Microsoft.

The service is called Office Live. Ignore the confusing name, which falsely implies some connection with Microsoft Office. Instead, Office Live is a suite of services, mostly free, to help the little guy get into the game of online sales and marketing. It’s intended for small businesses, but individuals can use it, too.

It’s a sweet suite (Internet Explorer for Windows required) that every small-business owner should investigate — quick, before somebody else snaps up the dot-com name you want.

The free Web site is the crown jewel, but there’s more to it than that. The free plan, known as Office Live Basics, also offers you 25 matching e-mail accounts (sales@caseycorp, litigation@caseycorp, and so on). You get a password-protected online calendar, too, and even free tech support by e-mail.

The Basics plan shakes up the status quo in another way, too, thanks to a free service called AdManager, now in beta testing. It lets even novices get into search-engine advertising — you know, so that your ads pop up when people use Google or Yahoo to search for something.

AdManager lets you specify a budget, say $100 a month, and walks you through deciding which search terms (keywords) will bring up your ad. At the moment, you can place ads only on Microsoft’s own search sites, MSN Search and Live.com. Microsoft says, however, that it is working with Google, Yahoo and other search sites, which it will add to the options soon after the introduction.

Later, AdManager’s analysis tools show how many clicks each of your keywords attracted and from which search sites, so that you can decide which were the most effective.

If you’re still printing brochures and coupons (and not tracking the response rates), this is an incredible tool. The world has gone electronic, and AdManager represents a free, self-service means of playing the search-engine advertising game. (Your alternative is paying monthly fees to search-engine management services.)

The free account also includes a brand-new program called Office Accounting Express, a basic, very simple accounting program. It’s designed for what Microsoft calls the 80 percent of small businesses that keep their books in shoeboxes, or on Excel spreadsheets or Quicken.

Accounting Express is no QuickBooks. But it does have useful links to PayPal, eBay, credit card companies and payroll servicing companies — all features, once again, made to let small-time operators play in the big leagues without hiring consultants or system administrators.

Considering the price (free), these are shockingly useful services. On the face of it, they look like an insane giveaway by a company not especially known for generosity. What, exactly, is Microsoft up to?

Microsoft makes no pretense: Office Live is intended to make money. But it will do so very cleverly, sometimes almost invisibly.

For example, if you do sign up for a payroll service through Accounting Express, Microsoft gets a cut. When you place search-engine ads with MSN Search, Microsoft gets a few cents per customer response for that, too.

In the free Basics plan, big, blinky banner ads appear above the e-mail center and address book module. (To its credit, Microsoft places nothing on your free Web site except a very small “Powered by Office Live” logo beneath your home page. No ads or logos appear on any other pages you create.)

Finally, Microsoft hopes that if it helps your business along enough, you’ll eventually upgrade your free account to one of the more elaborate paid plans.

For example, Office Live Essentials ($20 a month) adds the ability for you to design your Web site offline, using specialized programs like Dreamweaver, rather than using the flexible but essentially prefab design templates available to the free Basics service.

The Essentials program also doubles the amount of Web space (to one gigabyte) and the number of e-mail addresses (to 50), adds free 24-hour phone help, removes banner ads from the Mail page, and offers 10 simple online programs for tracking projects, sales and company information. The Premium plan ($40 a month) offers more of everything. Both paid plans let you set up “workspaces”— private mini-sites for communication and collaboration with, for example, your suppliers.

To many analysts, the significance of Office Live isn’t the small-business tools; it’s Microsoft’s big step into the new world of Web-based software. Surely, the gurus say, this is the future of software. Imagine: No viruses! Instant upgrades! Access from any PC in the world!

Well, O.K. But you could just as easily argue: Can’t get to it when your connection’s down! Can’t work on the plane! Working on a Web site is slow and blinky!

Actually, Microsoft has thought this part through. The paid plans include two-way synchronization of your e-mail, calendar and address book with a copy of Outlook on your own PC. Whenever you can get online, your computer and Office Live bring each other up to date.

Even the data generated by the business programs online (sales tracking, inventory and so on) are brought home to your PC in the form of self-updating Excel spreadsheets.

The finished Office Live is light-years better than the clunky beta version that Microsoft says 175,000 small businesses have been testing. Before, you were painfully aware that you were using a Web site; designing your Web pages, for example, wasn’t so much drag-and-drop as wait-and-blink. Now it feels like a proper desktop layout program.

Still, there are kinks. Lots of software bits have to be downloaded and installed. There are design oddities, too. In particular, the mail and online calendar screens are bizarrely unrelated to the design and navigation of the rest of Office Live; you feel like you’ve been shunted off to a different Web site entirely.

Some of the tools are embarrassingly bare-bones. In the calendar, for example, you can’t reschedule an appointment by dragging it to a different date, or lengthen one by dragging its edge, as you can on Google’s free online calendar.

There are bigger concerns, too. What happens if Microsoft someday decides to pull the plug?

Not a problem. You actually own the domain name you choose, and can transfer it to any other Web-hosting company whenever you like. As for your online data: remember that with the paid plans, it’s always safely mirrored on your local computers.

Finally, there’s the fear factor: some business owners have a nagging worry about entrusting the critical and confidential workings of their businesses to anyone else, let alone Microsoft.

Microsoft makes vigorous privacy promises, but there’s no countering this emotional argument. If the creepiness of letting someone else host your data outweighs Office Live’s enormous value, then that’s the end of the conversation.

But if you have a small business — if you run a dance studio, sell hand-made bracelets on eBay, deal in old comic books, whatever — at least have the conversation. In Office Live, Microsoft has vaporized a number of obstacles that once stood between tiny start-ups and the big time: the cost and hassle of establishing a proper Web site, the complexity and expense of playing the search-engine ad game, and the headache of maintaining proper books.

Best of all, Microsoft makes money from all this in only one situation: if it helps turn your small business into a bigger one.

Office Live

Google Tries To Replace Microsoft Office

2006-10-29T14:12:00.000-05:00

Google rivals Microsoft with free Web applications
James Coates

October 29, 2006

If Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and the other members of the Microsoft billionaires club don't feel something mighty hot breathing down their necks, it's probably because they don't have accounts for Google's free online productivity packages.

For a great many people now using some version of Microsoft Office, it's finally possible to do it all for free using Google's newly expanded set of tools that, at last, include Writely, a word processor that looks and feels like Microsoft Word and even handles existing Word files.

Writely comes up in a browser window with a Microsoft Word-type toolbar on top that includes all of the features I'll ever need to write columns, if not entire books. This includes fancy text, a tab to insert images, undo/redo options to back out of errors and a lightning fast word counter.

Also big is a set of collaboration tools that let users do things like work on the same document at the same time no matter where each individual collaborator may be on the planet.

All you need is a Web browser and a Gmail account for Web-based e-mail and other Google services. That is available for free at http://gmail.google.com.

Gmail exploded in less than a year from just another Web e-mail player to an advertising-financed scheme that incorporates the same tools that cost several hundreds of dollars per computer in ad-free Microsoft Office.

Gmail comes with an associated Calendar module that mimics much of the scheduling and meeting invitation features of Microsoft's Outlook for Office. Gmail's own address book service has most of the features of Microsoft Outlook's Contacts module.

Gmail also permits live chats and even voice mail for those with microphones plugged in.

Months ago, Google added an Excel compatible spreadsheet program that works in a browser and lets users handle the great bulk of computational and data tracking done in Microsoft Office.

Writely versus Word

As the icing on the virtual cake, Google has added Writely, a move that has been long anticipated by everybody from us propellerheads to Wall Street shakers, who now clearly see how Google is confronting Microsoft with the first real challenge that its enormously successful Office franchise has ever faced.

For two decades, Microsoft has squeezed trainloads of cash out of corporations and households alike, selling its productivity software that long enjoyed a giant advantage because the maker of the Windows operating system built it.

This gave Microsoft's software writers far better knowledge than others of the underlying operating system, and the result was that Word, Excel and Outlook really were better than its few challengers.

However, the gatekeepers of Google saw that the Internet itself was actually a great global operating system in its own right because one can create software that uses Web browsers instead of a computer user's own machine to do the work.

At first, all Web programmers could do was use a primitive set of instructions called HTML to tell a browser to put a headline of specified type and format above a block of text to display a picture or two along with hot links to other pages.

Soon after, non-Microsoft programmers expanded HTML to include bits of code that acted like programs running on a computer's operating system. The first to gain major attention was the Java system of instructions, called scripts, that forced a browser to do things like display animations, do arithmetic and take orders for whatever the Web site owner was selling.

Most recently, a system called Ajax came along to permit the most sophisticated of enhancements, like something I just did with the text I'm writing for this column. I am working in Microsoft Office on a PC and I used Windows to display the Word screen alongside a blank Writely document in my Web browser connected to Google's service. I am able to paint text in Word and then use the mouse to drag and drop that text directly into the Writely document.

This means that not only does Google offer a free set of tools that can replace Microsoft Office, but the Google tools are able to work within Office as well as totally outside.

Microsoft versus open source

Microsoft didn't get to where it is by being a fiefdom of fools, and the company lashed out on many fronts trying to slow down this kind of competition by offering its own stuff. Most notable were a scripting language called ActiveX and alterations of Microsoft products, such as the Visual Basic programming language to create code to operate in Web browsers.

But all of these Microsoft efforts have been eclipsed in recent years by so-called open source competition capable of wonders like the aforementioned Ajax.

The result is that Microsoft has made a huge about-face and rebuilt Office into a splendid Web-centered showpiece of programming now in advanced Beta status that does much to handle its own documents and services through connections to the Internet instead of just on a single computer or one company's network.

But with the release of Writely, Google rounds out a free package of Office killers--albeit advertising-laced tools--that mimic and challenge Microsoft's costly productivity product as it never has been confronted before.

Google Docs and Spreadsheets

Microsoft Virtual PC 2004

2006-09-07T17:57:00.000-04:00

Virtual PC 2004 lets you create separate virtual machines on your Windows desktop, each of which virtualizes the hardware of a complete physical computer. Use virtual machines to run multiple operating systems such as MS-DOS®, Windows, and OS/2 on a single computer. Virtualization technology requires two components, the virtualization stack—Virtual PC and the OS—Windows. Virtual PC creates a virtual machine that virtualizes the desktop's physical hardware in a virtual machine and the OS is installed in that virtual machine. With Virtual PC, customers can install any number of operating systems in virtual machines.

Virtual PC 2004

Transfer Large Files With Folder Share

2006-08-29T11:50:00.000-04:00

How to Use FolderShare to Transfer Big Files
Sometimes you need to send or receive files that are very large in size, even after they're zipped. Your ISP or the sender's/recipient's on the other end may not support file sizes that are over a certain limit (usually a couple of MB), and you might not want to set up an FTP server for security reasons. One solution is to use FolderShare, a file synchronization service that was recently acquired by Microsoft and is now in beta as part of the Windows Live family. You can download the software for both Windows and Mac OS X. Here's how to use it once it's installed:

1. If you haven't used FolderShare before, on the Welcome screen, click "I don't have a FolderShare account."
2. On the New Account Information page, choose a nickname and password and type in your email address. You also have to check a box certifying that you're over 13 years of age.
3. The software will connect to the FolderShare server and create your account.
4. On the "choose a computer name" page, the default is your computer's name on the network. Accept the default and click Finish.
5. Now you'll see a flashing icon in the system tray. You can click a FolderShare library if you've been invited to share one, or click My FolderShare to go to the web site and set up a folder to share, sync your folders, share your folders with friends on the Internet, or access your files. FolderShare operates like a private P2P program. Those you invite can share items in the folder(s) you designate to share, but can't access anything else on your computer.

You can find FolderShare here.

Google Online Spreadsheets

2006-08-25T01:41:00.000-04:00

No need to install Excell on your PC's. Google Spreadsheets is a web based spreadsheet application. Spreadsheets created on Google Spreadsheets can be accessed on any PC.

Writely Online Word Processor

2006-08-25T01:32:00.000-04:00

Google just released the Writely online word processor. This will function as a web based replacement for Microsoft Word. It is robust enough to perform most of Word's most common functions. It also enables collaboration and document sharing.

Wireless Routers

2006-07-29T18:15:00.000-04:00

You want to make sure that any router you buy supports both 802.11b and 802.11g standards. Some of the cheaper routers only support 802.11b. 802.11b is an old wireless standard. It is slow. 802.11g is the new standard. It is five times faster than 802.11b. All 802.11g routers also support 802.11b

Here's a selection of 802.11g wireless routers.

Linksys WRT54G

Netgear GR614

DLink D1624

Process Explorer

2006-07-28T20:06:00.000-04:00

Find out what files, registry keys and other objects processes have open, which DLLs they have loaded, and more. This uniquely powerful utility will even show you who owns each process.
Process Explorer

Eusing Registry Cleaner / Window Washer / CD to MP3

2006-07-26T21:10:00.000-04:00

Eusing Software has some nice free utilities....

Eusing Free Registry Cleaner enables you to scan your registry for invalid entries. It provides a list of all errors that were found, and you can choose to remove all items, or only selected errors. Before the program deletes any keys, it automatically creates a backup of the registry and allows you to easily undo any changes if needed. You can choose to scan the entire registry or only selected sections.
Download Eusing Free Registry Cleaner

Free Internet Window Washer is a privacy cleaner, that allows you to erase common Internet and computing tracks, including browser cache, cookies, visited websites, typed URLs, recent documents, index.dat files and more. It supports MS Office tracks as well as Firefox and Netscape, Instant Messengers and dozens of 3rd party applications. It also includes an option to overwrite deleted data multiple times, so it cannot be easily recovered.
Download Free Internet Window Washer

CD to MP3 Freeware is an easy to use CD ripper that allows you to extract audio files from a CD and convert them to MP3 format. It can automatically retrieve title information from the CDDB database, normalize the output files and supports additional LAME options. You can also use the software to record to MP3 with your microphone, or to convert WAV files to MP3 format.
Download CD to MP3 Freeware

How to hide user accounts from other users

2006-07-26T19:34:00.000-04:00

How to hide user accounts from other users

If you have several users sharing an XP computer and you want to hide the User Accounts applet in Control from those who don't need to have access to it, here's how:

1. Click Start | Run.
2. Enter gpedit.msc in the Run box to open the Group Policy Editor.
3. In the left console tree, expand User Configuration | Administrative Templates | Control Panel.
4. In the right details pane, doubleclick "Hide specified Control Panel applets."
5. Click the Enabled option.
6. Click the Show button.
7. Click the Add button.
8. In the Add field, enter nusrmgt.cpl

Sysinternals' Autoruns

2006-07-26T03:36:00.000-04:00

See what programs are configured to startup automatically when your system boots and you login. Vastly superior to MSCONFIG.
Autoruns

User Profile Hive Cleanup Service

2006-07-23T14:46:00.000-04:00

Microsoft's User Profile Hive Cleanup Service (UPHC) helps your PC to shut down more quickly. The User Profile Hive Cleanup service helps to ensure user sessions are completely terminated when a user logs off. System processes and applications occasionally maintain connections to registry keys in the user profile after a user logs off.
It's small download. It makes a difference. Link.

Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer

2006-07-12T21:57:00.000-04:00

Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA) is an easy-to-use tool helps you determine your PC's security state in accordance with Microsoft security recommendations and offers specific remediation guidance. Improve your security management process by using MBSA to detect common security misconfigurations and missing security updates on your computer systems.

Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer

Microsoft Private Folders

2006-07-11T00:37:00.000-04:00

UPDATE: (7/20/06) Because of an outcry from corporate system administrators (who feared that the tool would be used by employees to conceal company materials) Microsoft has withdrawn the Private Folders application. That's a shame because Private Folders afforded a nice measure of privacy to home users.

Microsoft hands out 'private' folders

By Dawn Kawamoto

Microsoft has introduced Private Folder 1.0, free software that lets people store sensitive data on their home or work computers in a password-protected folder.
Private Folder 1.0, which is saved to a person's desktop, aims to shield private data from others when they have access to someone's computer or account. The potential fallout from IT administrators remains to be seen, should their colleagues opt to hide sensitive data in a private, password-protected folder. Microsoft does not offer support for the software.

"Private Folder 1.0 is a useful tool...to protect your private data when friends, colleagues, kids or other people share your PC or account," the software giant said in its announcement.

People who want to download the software are first required to run their computers through the Windows Genuine Advantage program. The controversial antipiracy tool is designed to verify that people have a legitimate copy of Microsoft Windows.

Those using the software also must have Windows XP Home Edition, Professional Edition or Media Center Edition, with Service Pack 2. The software also needs a high-resolution Super VGA video adapter and monitor to work properly.

Some observers are raising concerns about the potential headaches Private Folder may create for IT administrators.

"Oh great, have they even thought about the impact this could have on enterprises. I'm already trying to frantically find information on this product so that A) I can block to all our desktops and B) figure out how we then support it when users inevitably lose files. I can see the benefit in this product for home users, but it's a bit of a sloppy release by Microsoft," said an individual named Stuart Graham in a posting on MSBlog, a site related to Windows Server 2003.

Another individual, Daniel Goldleaf, said on MSBlog that companies should have terms of usage for corporate PCs that instruct employees not to download software onto their systems.

"If they install (Private Folder), uninstall it from Add/Remove Programs," Goldleaf added

Online Office Replacements

2006-06-17T11:15:00.000-04:00

June 17, 2006
Your Money
Now, Free Ways to Do Desktop Work on the Web
By DAMON DARLIN
The biggest expense in buying a new computer is not always the computer. After all, you can buy a new Dell desktop, and a good one at that, for $300 and get a monitor in the bargain.

The software to make a PC do anything useful can cost you as much as the computer. To accomplish even the most basic functions on the computer, like writing, you could pay $400 for the standard edition of Microsoft's Office suite that includes Word for word processing, Excel for spreadsheets, Outlook for e-mail and PowerPoint for boring everyone with slideshow presentations.

You can find software that is cheaper. Yet a stripped-down student and teacher edition of Word still costs $150 and even Microsoft Works 8.0, a really basic version of Word and Excel, is $50.

There is another way to do almost everything these programs can do — some would say you can actually do more — and you can do it free. A number of smart programmers have developed word processing, spreadsheet, calendar and other software that you operate while in a Web browser.

No one is saying they are a direct substitute for Word or Excel, but they do have a distinct advantage. The programs can be used by several people at different computers to collaborate on a document.

"It's solving an actual real problem," said Sam Schillace, a founder of Upstartle, which makes the Writely software for word processing. Google bought the company for that software this year.

Google is the biggest and best-financed company putting such software online. It is gradually opening to the public the Spreadsheets program it announced last week, and it plans to release a version of a word processing program soon. A number of smaller software companies are doing similar things.

Where is Microsoft, the software giant, in all this? Interesting question. It is expected that Microsoft will offer a similar product via its Net-centric Office Live and Windows Live initiatives, which convert the desktop to the Web top. It may be a tough choice for the company, because it faces the dilemma of cannibalizing its own products or letting someone else take a bite out of them.

Microsoft, which carved a near monopoly in word processing and spreadsheet software, has up to now been able to protect its high prices. But a monopoly, a few laissez-faire economists argue, will eventually succumb to competition. This could become a textbook example: innovators are attracted by the profit pool and undermine the monopoly with something different.

You have always had the ability to edit a document in a browser, including Microsoft's Internet Explorer, by opening the file in HTML format. You can still do that in a pinch, but no one recommends it because that method is pretty bare-bones. You can not automatically check the spelling or easily change to unusual fonts, for example.

The new programs take word processing a step further. If you have already been using a free e-mail program like Yahoo Mail or Google Gmail, you have some experience with substituting tools on the Web for programs residing on the hard drive of your computer. Of course, to take advantage of them, you have to get over two hurdles. One, you can use them only if you are connected to the Internet. And you must be comfortable with the idea that your addresses, your correspondence and your documents don't reside on your hard drive in your computer in your home. They are stored at sites controlled by a giant company.

The new online applications add functions to that basic browser ability by using a set of software tools known among developers as Ajax. These tools enable a host of so-called Web 2.0, or Web services, applications like Google maps posted in Web sites or photos displayed on Flickr.com.

Google Spreadsheets is a good example. (You can find the program at Google Labs, labs.google.com, but to use it you have to sign up for a Google account first. No one said free meant easy.) An alternative is Jotspot (www.jot.com), though its products are aimed more at business users.

Google Spreadsheets has many of the features you use in Excel, like the ability to sort, change typefaces or color and insert a variety of set formulas. The developers plan to add other features like auto fill.

You can save the document to your hard drive or to the Google servers. Once it is there, you can access the spreadsheet from any computer, which means you no longer have to load it onto a disk or flash drive to carry it home or to another office, or send it there by e-mail.

Because the document is stored on the Google servers, you can give permission for other people with Google accounts to open and work on it. A team can work on it together to make changes. The file can also be opened in Excel.

Jonathan Rochelle, product manager for Spreadsheets, said people were using it to create lists and share them with groups, like a soccer team or fellow students. Wedding planning becomes a little easier as couples use the multiple pages of the spreadsheet to track guests, accommodations and menu selection. He used it himself to help his father with a budget while the two were in different cities.

Google's word processing software will work the same way. It has not been released yet, but an early version of the browser tool had every necessary function of Word except auto correct, where misspellings are changed on the fly. That feature is coming, Mr. Schillace said. "We haven't been able to do it smoothly."

He said one early tester of Writely was the daughter of a divorced couple who have joint custody. The father told Mr. Schillace that she had been able to do her homework at either house and never had to worry about forgetting an assignment at one house or the other.

If you don't want to wait for Google, a similar browser application is already available called Zoho Writer at www.zohowriter.com. (I wrote most of this article on Zoho with as much ease as writing with Microsoft Word.) Writeboard (www.writeboard.com) is a competitor. Another program, called Ajax Write (www.ajaxwrite.com), lacks the spell checking and word count functions that Word has taught us to rely upon.

But you need not stop there. Applications for coordinating calendars among friends and family is another popular application that replaces some of the functions of Microsoft's Outlook program. Yahoo and Google have some, but there are others, including one from a start-up named 30Boxes (www.30boxes.com) that is very easy to use. Microsoft is also beginning to offer collaborative Web tools.

If you like the idea of making your Web browser do more work, you might also download the Firefox browser, made by another competitor nipping at Microsoft's heels (at www.mozilla.com/firefox). Then you can start using any of the hundreds of add-ons, called extensions, that independent programmers have created to add functions to the browser, for example, the ability to synchronize bookmarks between computers, block ads or download video faster.

Google Labs offers some of them. One of the most useful is Notebook. It puts a little button on the frame of your browser that organizes snippets of information you find on the Web into folders that are then accessible from any computer. When you are on a Web site and you see something you want to save, you highlight it, right-click your mouse, click on "Note this" in the dropdown menu, and your search is saved.

Clipmarks (www.clipmarks.com) adds an element of the social networking that you find on Facebook or MySpace.

A more fully featured alternative to Google Notebook is coming soon from Plum Ventures, a small start-up company based in San Francisco. You can join the waiting list at www.plum.com. With the application you can collect information, whether Web sites, photos, music or text files, and then annotate it and share it with others.

You can also make your lists public, to share with strangers. A founder, Hans Peter Brondmo, said, "People like to watch what others are doing." He calls this "info-voyeurism."

That you can do it free only makes it better.

How To Get A Bargain On A New PC

2006-05-27T02:30:00.000-04:00

May 27, 2006
Your Money:
Timing the Electronics Market for the Best Deal on a New PC
By DAMON DARLIN

Lower prices are part of the natural order in the world of electronics. Sometimes, though, the slow but relentless drop in price turns into a torrent. That's happening now in personal computers.

Prices are falling fast on notebook computers, as much as 18.5 percent so far this year, according to statistics compiled by Current Analysis, a market research firm. The bulk of notebooks now sell for less than $1,000.

The lower-priced notebooks are pushing desktop prices down, too. "I would expect even more intense price competition," said Charles Smulders, an analyst with Gartner, another market research firm.

The pace of price cuts has accelerated because a price war has broken out that offers great benefits to anyone in the market for a PC. And that could be a pretty large market. Forrester Research estimates that 70 percent of PC's in use are more than two years old and 90 percent of second, third and fourth computers are even older. The wars started quietly a year ago this week when Acer, a PC maker in Taiwan, re-entered the American market. The strategy was to get into the top tier of PC vendors as quickly as possible, which meant it would grab market share by keeping prices low.

Acer and other makers took business from Dell, which began to look less like the growth company that its investors were accustomed to. Dell's response came earlier this year as it cut prices.

Intel, meanwhile, was losing a significant portion of the microprocessor market to Advanced Micro Devices. Intel's share dropped to 77.9 percent from 81.5 percent in the first quarter of this year, according to Gartner, while A.M.D.'s market share grew to 20.4 percent from 16.6 percent two years ago. Intel is fighting to win back share, which means PC makers use the rivalry to get a price break.

Apple switched its processor to an Intel chip. Apple also makes running Windows applications on a Mac very easy. Owners of iPods are beginning to notice that Apple does more than sell music.

At the same time, Microsoft has pushed back the release of Vista, its new operating system, from before Christmas to early next year. Normally that would slow PC sales. But Microsoft is considering whether to offer incentives for consumers to buy PC's before Vista's release.

Some analysts had expected coming into the year that prices would actually go up slightly. Instead, the average price of a notebook computer dropped to $963 in April, an 18.5 percent decrease from a year ago, according to Current Analysis, which is based in Sterling, Va.

When an electronic device breaks through the $1,000 psychological barrier, sales take off. Samir Bhavnani, director for research at Current Analysis, said 37 percent more notebooks have been sold so far this year. About 60 percent of all notebook computers sold last month were priced below $1,000. He credits Dell, saying, "They love getting down in the mud."

Dell is running a promotion, which it bills as a celebration of its 22nd anniversary, with a $400 discount on PC's, plus a free monitor and free shipping.

Another statistic will tell you just how good consumers have it. While the number of notebooks sold is up 37 percent, revenue growth in the period is up only 15.5 percent, Mr. Bhavnani said. Companies are making less money on each notebook. Desktop computers are literally being given away. Retailers sold 14.8 percent more of them in the first five months of the year, but revenue declined 4 percent, Mr. Bhavnani said. Half of the computers sold for less than $500.

Consider the Hewlett-Packard Compaq Presario desktop offered this week at Office Depot. For $300 you get a PC with 512 megabytes of RAM and a 100-gigabyte hard drive. Office Depot tossed in a 17-inch CRT monitor and a printer.

"The material cost, before the printer, was around $400," estimated Mark Hill, Acer's vice president for sales in the United States. "It's crazy." Not that he's complaining. Acer has gained one point of market share this year by artful pricing.

So how does a consumer play this? As always with electronics, it is worth waiting. Expect even better deals around the Christmas season. But if you need to get one now, you certainly won't suffer. Deals will abound during the back-to-school season, which starts in June just as the school year ends.

Many consumers will end up waiting for Vista, Microsoft's new operating system. Some analysts expect that to keep computer sales from flagging during the year-end holidays, manufacturers will pressure Microsoft to offer a free upgrade to Vista to anyone buying a new PC.

Decide on the particular features you want on the computer. A notebook with one gigabyte of random access memory and an 80-gigabyte hard drive is recommended. Don't worry about the processor. Unless you are using the computer for designing nuclear power plants or playing video games professionally, any one of them on the market will serve you well.

Why a notebook, rather than a desktop? Convenience, mostly. Desktop models are becoming a relic of a bygone era as the artificial price difference between notebooks and desktops collapse. Notebooks now outsell desktops in stores. IDC estimates that by the middle of next year, more than half of all PC's sold will be notebooks.

Decide on a size. The computers that weigh less than four pounds are considered ultra portables, the kind you take on business trips. Anything heavier is a desktop replacement, perfect for moving from room to room or on a jaunt to the coffee shop. Go to a store to test the heft.

Reflect on how much style you want. As this category matures, manufacturers differentiate their products by making some notebooks look prettier than others. They charge more for anything on the color wheel besides gray and anything that glows.

Then watch the prices at retailers and at the manufacturers' Web sites. The last time you bought a PC, the best deals were probably online. That's not necessarily true anymore. The best deals can be inside the stores because those retailers are using PC's and notebooks in particular as loss leaders to drive traffic.

Here is another business trend that is helping consumers. As the prices of PC's drop, even if retailers sell more units their year-on-year revenue comparisons may drop. Investors closely watch that figure. So stores need to bolster revenue by selling even more of them. They do that by offering even better deals on notebooks because notebook buyers tend to buy other gear like bags and home networking equipment.

The brand you pick will depend on which one gives you the most computer for the price. Current Analysis compiles a "competitive value index" that measures the price of PC's against the features offered. When it looks at computers sold in all channels, the top berths go to Acer, Gateway, Dell and Hewlett-Packard.

Columns providing advice on buying a computer usually have a paragraph or two where the writer pauses and briefly genuflects at Apple. Great computer, they'll say, but — there is always that but — they carry a premium of 20 percent to 30 percent over a similarly configured computer running Windows.

Here comes those paragraphs. However, that required "but" may soon be retired. Gene Munster, a senior research analyst with Piper Jaffray in Minneapolis, compared Mac notebooks with similarly equipped notebook computers running Windows and discovered that the premium for a Mac is now only about 10 percent. "I don't think consumers go through this exercise," he said. The premium shrank, not because Apple cut its prices, Mr. Munster said, but because Apple, in switching to an Intel processor, increased the performance of its Macs, and then didn't raise prices.

A few more consumers may notice. Apple's market share, which climbed as high as 2.5 percent last year before the switch to Intel, has grown from 1.8 percent. Macs compete at the high end of the PC market, where the machines costing more than $1,500 are loaded with multimedia features like TV tuners and bigger hard drives to store photos, videos and music. Some have special chips designed to enhance the performance of video games. Price cuts have not been as deep up there, which is one reason Mr. Munster thinks the premium won't go back to 30 percent.

He said that the media viewing and editing software that comes with the Mac compensates for much of the remaining premium. "Apples are always going to be at a premium," he said.

Windows Live Mail Beta

2006-05-15T11:40:00.000-04:00

Betas used to be considered dangerous. Now some applications (e.g. GMail) never give up there beta status but just continue adding features.
Microsoft's Windows Live Mail Beta is an upgrade to it's Hotmail email product. It's an excellent product that takes advantage of programs like AJAX to offer an Outlook-like experience with a web based product.
The clincher for me is Live Mail's auto spellcheck. Like recent versions of Microsoft Word it flags your spelling errors a they occur. Adios typos.

What to Upgrade and How to Do It

2006-03-07T12:45:00.000-05:00

Joel Durham Jr. - ExtremeTech

Three years ago, when you bought it, your new super-system seemed to be the ultimate computer, the PC with which you could rise to power and rule the world! It chewed through the most demanding games like a shredder eating envelopes; it let you run a half-dozen office applications at a time with no pauses, even with anti-virus and scheduling apps running in the background. It was supreme.

As the months flew by, software became more demanding. Minimum system requirements crawled up the CPU scale; what in one version required 500MHz in its latest revision wants 2GHz. Doom 3 came out, and your system would only spit out 14 frames per second with average detail levels. When you jump from one application on the taskbar to another, there's a noticeable pause while the hard drive churns and you wait. And wait.

In fact, you find yourself waiting more and more for everything you do. From loading apps to encoding home movies or changing a TIFF to a JPEG, you simply hate the fact that you can actually go and get a cup of coffee while the computer sits there and thinks.

It very well could be time to upgrade your system. That's not to say you have to toss the whole thing out and start with a brand-new computer; most PCs can at least accept minor upgrades, and desktop systems built with standard parts are almost completely interchangeable.

But how do you tell exactly which component needs to be upgraded? And how do you know if your particular system will accept an upgrade? Where do you buy the parts? What steps do you take to perform the upgrade itself? Read on.

What's Dogging Your System?

When your system seems sluggish, you first need to narrow down the symptoms to find the culprit. Could it be a lack of sufficient main memory? A pokey graphics card? An aging CPU? What about a stuffed-full hard drive? Deciding what needs to be upgraded requires a bit of detective work.

Let's look at some symptoms, and the part that most likely causes them:

SYMPTOM: You've installed a new, super-powerful GeForce 7800-based graphics card. Ever since then, when you play 3-D games, the computer sometimes crashes or reboots. You've checked the connection and it's fine, the card is powered, and its GPU fan is running.

SOLUTION: Check your power supply. Those new cards pull well over 75 watts alone. If your system's PSU was just getting by with its current components, the new load could be causing it to brown out other components when the graphics card demands its utmost power draw. Get a 500+ watt PSU with dual 12V rails.

SYMPTOM: Everything works great--except new games. You used to be able to run Quake 3 Arena at 125 frames per second. Quake 4 barely makes it over 15 fps. You meet the minimum requirements, so what gives?

SOLUTION: You should swap out your computer's graphics card. Newer cards not only have more raw processing power, but also more memory. Look for a modern GeForce series 6 or 7 series, or a Radeon X800 or higher, with at least 256MB of local memory.

SYMPTOM: Everything is slow. Loading programs takes forever, when it used to be speedy. Changing from one open program to another through the taskbar or Alt-Tab brings the system to a crawl. No matter what you do, it takes forever.

SOLUTION: Check your hard drive space. It sounds like it's so full that the paging file is fragmented, and therefore everything that swaps data to the hard drive in lieu of main memory is going to drag down system performance. You could either install a bunch more memory to stave off the computer's need to swap, uninstall anything you don't use on your current hard drive and run Disk Cleanup to clear up as much space as possible, or upgrade the hard drive itself to a much larger size.

SYMPTOM: You've discovered your artistic bent and begun editing movies and pictures and rendering 3-D objects and scenes. The problem is, when you do something like encode a video, render the 3-D stuff or save big picture files that you've altered, it takes eons to complete the process.

SOLUTION: Those are CPU-intensive activities. The processor crunches all of the operations necessary to transform and render the images. A faster CPU would make a world of difference.

SYMPTOM: The system boots up quickly and works great when you use one or two programs at once, but as you open more applications, it starts to slow down. This is especially noticeable when you have a program that loads lots of huge files, like PhotoShop Elements, with a bunch of massive TIFF images open.

SOLUTION: You need more memory to handle all that up-front computing. The data and program files of open programs are stored in main memory, but when that bank runs out of room, they're swapped to the much slower paging file. More memory will allow more programs and data to reside in the much faster main memory area.

Can You Upgrade?

Now that you have an idea of what needs to be upgraded, you have to determine whether your computer will handle the upgrade. This requires research on your part. You must first find out what your computer's motherboard is capable of, the form factor of your computer case, PSU and motherboard, and more. This may require you to research the motherboard manual, or even do research at the motherboard manufacturer's Web site. You also will have to open the case.

Before opening the computer case, power down the PC and unplug it. Be static safe; use an antistatic bracelet properly or plant your feet and ground yourself before you reach into the PC. Handle circuit boards by the edges and, whether removing or installing something, don't force it. You might break something.

? For a CPU upgrade, learn the fastest CPU your computer's motherboard will support (check the manual). If it won't support a CPU significantly faster than the one it's already rocking, you need to upgrade the motherboard.

? For memory, remember that Windows XP only makes use of a maximum of 4GB of RAM. Find out your computer's current memory configuration, how many memory slots it has, what type of modules are installed and so on. Then, research the motherboard manual for acceptable configurations. Can you add memory, or must you replace the modules already installed? Note: don't mix memory types. If your computer has, for instance, PC3200 memory already installed, and you plan to add to it, add PC3200 memory.

? For the graphics card, make sure you get a replacement that fits the proper slot. Graphics cards come in both AGP and PCI Express X16 varieties, and they're not interchangeable.

? For the hard drive, make sure you get a drive with the same interface. Don't get a SATA (Serial ATA) drive if your motherboard doesn't support it unless you also purchase a SATA adapter. For a drop-in replacement, find out what interface your old hard drive supports (IDE or SATA) and get a drive of the same type with a larger capacity.

? For a motherboard replacement, you need to learn the form factor of the board and get a replacement that will fit your case. Anything not compatible with the new board (possibly the CPU, memory, power supply and graphics card) will have to be replaced.

? For the power supply, be sure to get the same type with all of the necessary connectors connectors.

The Basic Steps to Performing an Upgrade

? Get the right parts! Research, research, research. Check manuals, manufacturer Web sites, and every other resource to ensure compatibility with your system.

? For components with drivers: Uninstall the current drivers.

? Power down the machine. Unplug it.

? Remove the component to be upgraded if necessary. Be on the lookout for clips and brackets that secure the components in place. Expansion cards have a screw that secures them; memory modules have clips on either side of them.

o You can remove graphics cards, sound cards, CPUs and memory modules that are no longer needed.

o Don't remove memory modules that you're supplementing with more modules. If you're replacing an onboard graphics or audio solution, don't try to physically remove it from the board. Disable it in the BIOS.

o If you're removing the entire motherboard, first remove all the expansion cards, then unplug all of the cabling. Remove all of the screws holding it in place. Gently remove it from the case.

o If you're removing a hard drive, note that many hard drives reside in removable brackets. Remove the bracket itself, then remove the hard drive.

o If you're removing an optical drive, pay attention to whether the case uses drive rails to seat the 5-inch external drives. If it does, look at how the drive rails are attached to the drive, and replicate their configuration when you prepare to install the new drive.

? Install the new component.

o If you're installing a motherboard, it helps to first install its CPU, memory and any cables that will reach, before placing it in the case and screwing it down. Before seating it, install the riser bezel (the metal shield that fits in the rectangular area where the ports, like the USB and Ethernet ports, reside.)

o If you're installing memory, seat it gently into place and then press along its length evenly until it snaps into its sockets.

o Secure drives with all four screws to reduce vibration and extend the life of the drive. This is especially true for hard drives.

o Make sure you cool a new CPU with a compatible cooler, and use a thermal compound between the cooler and the top of the CPU.

o Make sure expansion cards are fully seated before you screw them down.

o For a hard drive replacement, install the new drive as a slave. You can then use Norton Ghost to replicate the old drive onto the new drive, remove the old drive and discard the old drive.

? Check all of the cables and connections before powering up the computer. You may wish to power it up before you close the case, on the chance that you have to troubleshoot a loose connection.

? Fire up Windows. Install the drivers for your new equipment if necessary (and it will be necessary for graphics cards, sound cards, motherboards, other expansion cards and some CPUs). You might have to cancel the Windows hardware detection wizard and install the drivers through their own installation routine; read the instructions that came with the new part to find out for sure.

? If you've replaced a motherboard, Windows XP might not be happy without reinstalling it over the top of your current installation. It doesn't take kindly to low-level hardware replacements.

Those, in a nutshell, are some techniques to upgrading your computer. More thorough write-ups of each component could easily fill articles this size on their own, so consult the instructions that came with your components for more details. Also, hit upgrade guides on Web sites like PCMag.com and ExtremeTech.com.

Joel Durham Jr. is a freelance technology writer and author of "PC Modding for Dummies"(Wiley, 2005).

Windows Defender

2006-03-06T22:40:00.000-05:00

Microsoft Tests a Windows Defense

By Rob Pegoraro
Sunday, March 5, 2006; F07

When computing experts say you should never try out beta-test versions of any system-utility software, they're almost always right. A bug in a program that lives in the core of a PC's software could lead to a complete meltdown, not just the usual crashes.

So what's something called Windows Defender (Beta 2) doing on Microsoft's home page, atop the "Popular Downloads" list?

Microsoft first released this free anti-spyware tool as "Windows AntiSpyware" in January 2005, a month after it bought the program's developer, Giant Software Co. After 13 months of development, a few revisions and one name change, this program still isn't finished-- but in that time, Windows Defender has persuaded many users to disregard the rule about beta system utilities.

I can see why. By policing how new programs try to modify Windows, Defender has swatted away much of the spyware I've thrown at it while staying out of the way otherwise. (The unwanted programs it couldn't evict defied the efforts of competing spyware removers, too.)

And it provides something horribly overdue in Windows: a simple way to inspect all the software active on a computer, including those normally hidden from view.

Plus, Windows Defender is a free security tool from Microsoft, the company whose design decisions made it so easy for spyware to invade Windows in the first place. It only seems right for Microsoft to make amends in this way.

Defender is no panacea -- the name alone oversells an application lacking anti-virus or firewall defenses. But it's a sensible way to help keep a Windows 2000 or XP PC free of hidden programs tossing up ads (adware) or tracking your online habits (spyware).

Downloading Defender ( http://www.microsoft.com/windowsdefender ) involves one brief annoyance; you must verify that you're not using a stolen copy of Windows by running a small program, either in your browser or from your hard drive. From then on, it's a quick, restart-free process to install this program, update its spyware database and scan your computer.

As it has revised Defender over the past year, Microsoft has steadily pared away its interface. Its main screen now features a total of nine buttons -- worlds simpler than most competitors.

Unfortunately, you'll have to dig a little deeper to get Defender in its most secure state. It comes preset to grant you veto power only over the actions of known offenders, a take-candy-from-strangers approach that invites trouble. (Older versions of Defender were more aggressive about this.) Click the Tools icon, then select General Settings to fix that oversight.

On a clean PC, Defender stays invisible except when it updates itself and scans the system overnight. Unlike most spyware removers, it correctly distinguishes between browser cookies set by advertising sites-- tiny, easily blocked, inert text files that can't do anything on their own-- and live software code.

If you download from the Web's sketchier sources, Defender will act, depending on when it identifies a new program as spyware. It can flag some as they download, but others go unnoticed until their installers try to force-feed code into the guts of Windows.

For example, Defender blocked downloads of the Kazaa and BearShare file-sharing programs and the Zango "search assistant." But an instant-messaging program bundling the same Zango software went unnoticed until its setup started. The same happened with a screensaver harboring the "Best Offers Direct" spyware (unlike an earlier Defender release a few months ago). But after a few system scans and reboots, Defender reported the system clean; other anti-spyware tools agreed.

Then, to simulate the stupidest behavior possible, I visited a site advertising pirated copies of computer games and invited it to install a strange ActiveX program in Internet Explorer. This time, Defender first did nothing, then threw up a flurry of dialog boxes as it tried to remove the junk spawned by this download.

Restart followed restart as Defender kept finding new instances of this "Look2Me" spyware. Once or twice, it gave a "no unwanted or harmful software detected" verdict even as new ads popped up.

But one of the most popular spyware removers, the usually effective Spybot Search & Destroy, also gave this computer a thumbs-up. Neither that nor any other program I tried could expel this nuisance; after several hours I wiped the hard drive and reinstalled Windows.

You'd be foolish to rely on Windows Defender alone to rid Windows of spyware. But you'd be about as foolish to rely on any other single anti-spyware utility.

Keep a few on hand, but also use your own common sense and switch to safer software-- like the Firefox and Opera Web browsers, which lack the ActiveX feature exploited by the pirated-games site.

Or you could just get a Mac.

Even Windows users who can stay out of trouble on their own can benefit from Defender, however. With the change in its settings outlined above, this program makes it easy to restrain many installers' pushy habits -- for instance, the 11 system-setting changes Yahoo Music Engine's setup makes, most unrelated to playing digital music.

Meanwhile, Defender's Software Explorer (in its Tools screen) offers a helpful view of what's active on your computer. It lists all the programs running now, those that launch at start-up and those that connect to the Internet -- providing not just the usual cryptic file names ("S24EvMon.exe"), but also their full names, their developers' names, whether they belong to Windows, when they were installed and so on. You can shut down or disable most of these programs with one click -- though removing them may take a trip to the Add or Remove Programs control panel.

Microsoft says Windows Defender will be built into Windows Vista, the replacement for XP due this fall; I'd expect to see a finished version of Defender for XP and 2000 by then. But the spyware problem in Windows is a mess now, and Defender can help remedy that. It would be a mistake to ignore it just because of the "Beta" in its name.

Common Sense PC Maintenance

2006-01-03T11:00:00.000-05:00

Basic Rules Plus Common Sense Add Up to Security
By Rob Pegoraro
Washington Post
Sunday, December 25, 2005;

For some people, the worst gift ever would be a new computer with an Internet connection. One embittered user wrote in October to say that he was "so frustrated with hackers, virus, Trojans, worms, constant upgrades, security patches, etc, etc." that he was going to suspend his Internet account.

I'm guessing that a new laptop wasn't on his wish list this year.

But many other people have been booting up new computers and wondering how to keep them secure. They are likely to get some confusing messages about that. The worst one is "you can't" -- that you must accept these intrusions because it's too hard to stop them all.

Nonsense. If you can learn to cook with fire, drive a car and pay your taxes -- all activities in which, unlike computing, failure is punishable by fines, imprisonment or death -- you can figure out how to operate a computer safely.

Two other messages merely cause people to waste a lot of time and effort.

One is that you can only keep a computer safe by using the right tools. Your PC will not be secure, the thinking goes, unless you add the correct firewall, anti-virus software and anti-spyware utilities -- with any others, you might as well leave the front door unlocked.

The other is that failure to practice the right rituals will invite the wrath of the computing gods. This leads people to do things like unplug their Internet connection every night (even though that's the easiest time for a computer to get security updates) then plug it back in each morning. They will turn off harmless Web-browsing options, just in case, and delete browser cookies that don't threaten their PC's integrity. Some will even reinstall Windows every year, just in case.

A smarter approach combines a little of both beliefs: Let your computer guard itself with a firewall and automatic updates, pick safe programs and keep them up to date, then use your common sense to spot the bait set out by the perpetrators of viruses, spyware, phishing attacks and other "malware."

This applies whether you run Windows, Mac OS X or any other system-- although the risks are far lower outside Windows.

The first step is the simplest: Turn on your computer's firewall. By screening unsolicited connections, it stops the most dangerous attacks, the network worms that can board a computer without your consent or notice. (Viruses must trick people into running them, which is why a PC guarded solely by a firewall can be kept clean if used cautiously enough.)

In any new Windows PC, the firewall is already on; don't worry about adding some other company's firewall software. In Mac OS X, open the System Preferences window and select the Sharing category to activate the built-in firewall.

The second step is to get any security fixes for your operating system. Windows XP now does this automatically, downloading and installing patches as they arrive. Mac OS X will fetch updates automatically, but you must remember to install them yourself.

Step three applies to Windows users: Run whatever anti-virus program came on the PC and make sure it will update itself past the initial trial period. That will usually require buying a yearly subscription. Pay up, or switch to the free Avast ( http://www.avast.com/eng/free_virus_protectio.html ) or AVG ( http://free.grisoft.com/ ) anti-virus utilities.

Step four also goes for Windows users: Switch from Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser to such safer replacements as Mozilla Firefox (my pick) or Opera, both available through free downloads ( http://www.mozilla.com/ and http://www.opera.com/ ). Even after dozens of security fixes, IE's basic design leaves it on a weaker footing than other browsers.

Because Microsoft's Outlook Express e-mail software shares code with Internet Explorer, it can be a risk too -- although it does effectively block access to programs attached to e-mails, the most common way for viruses to spread. This aging program also doesn't screen against spam or phishing e-mails (those messages that demand you verify a financial account but lead you to a fake site). Instead, try the free Mozilla Thunderbird, a cousin of Firefox, or Qualcomm's Eudora ( http://www.eudora.com/ ).

Step five goes for everybody: Update any programs that regularly access the Internet, such as Sun Microsystems' Java software ( http://www.java.com/ ), media programs such as iTunes and RealPlayer, the Macromedia Flash browser plug-in ( http://www.macromedia.com/flashplayer/ ) and instant-messaging applications. Most of these programs will look for new versions automatically; if not, go to each application's Web site and download a fresh copy.

Step six is the one that never ends: Use common sense when you run into the unexpected. Don't attribute omniscience to Internet sites or think that things must always work differently online than off.

That random Web page you just visited? No, it doesn't know about your computer's software, so you can ignore the ad telling you to scan your PC for trouble now .

The e-mail from the FBI, ordering you open the attached file to read about the illegal Web sites you visit? Ignore that too. If the Feds really think you're an outlaw, they would send men and women with guns to express their concern.

That e-mail alert purportedly from your bank? Think about that: If your account was really in that much trouble, wouldn't the bank call you instead of sending an e-mail you might not read until days later? If you're really worried, phone the bank yourself to check. Or type the bank's address into your browser -- ignore the link in the e-mail -- and see if any messages are waiting for you.

Don't rush to install strange new software. Let the collective expertise of the Internet help you first: Run a Google search ("Is StrangeFreeProgram spyware?") to see if other users had problems.

If you're not the only person using the computer, make sure that everybody else follows these practices as well. If they can't or won't, lock your account on the computer with a password, then set up a limited account for them that will stop them from causing more than minor damage. In Windows XP, go to the User Accounts control panel; in Mac OS X, select the Accounts icon in the System Preferences' window.

What about all the anti-spyware and Internet-cleanup programs the security gurus recommend? They are worth having around (although it's still in testing, I recommend Microsoft's free Anti-Spyware), but if you do your job right you'll never have to run them.

Seven Steps For Safe Computing

2005-11-14T10:12:00.000-05:00

This is a good summary of the steps we should be taking to fight the onslaught of viruses, trojans , spyware etc. that threaten our computing experience.

Cyber-Security: Tips For Safe Computing

We originally wrote this computer security "how-to" nearly three years ago, but experts are still doling out the same advice. We've added a few new tips, focusing mainly on spyware and the importance of backing up your data. Follow these simple instructions and dramatically decrease the likelihood that you will run into serious security problems online.

1. Install and use a firewall. Considered the first and last line of defense, a firewall is a software program or piece of hardware that prevents unauthorized Internet traffic from entering or leaving your computer, particularly computers that are always left connected to the Internet (typically, Internet users who connect over DSL or cable modem fit this category). Properly configured, a firewall can give you greater control over your computer and prevent attackers from successfully scanning your system to learn details about potential weaknesses on your network or PC.

For a sobering look at the insecurity in the average operating system, consider the research conducted by The Honeynet Project. The project takes servers and computers "out-of-the-box" -- without any changes to improve or reduce their security -- and connects them to the Internet for the sole purpose of seeing how often they are probed and hacked, and what techniques attackers are using.

Based on the project's tests, the average unprotected Windows computer with the most common security holes will be hacked within 20 minutes. Even secured computers will be probed or scanned for known vulnerabilities dozens times each day. It's nothing personal, said Honeynet Project founder Lance Spitzner. "The vast majority of attacks on the Net today are launched by people out to break into as many computers as possible," he said.

Using automated software tools available online, a malicious hacker can set in motion a scan of more than a million computers before he goes to bed at night and have hundreds of systems under his thumb by morning, Spitzner said.

"It's not so much people not realizing they're vulnerable than it is they don't believe they're a target," he said. "The fact is, anybody can be a target."

The reasons attackers would want to break into your machine are as varied as the methods for doing so. Computer criminals often use other peoples' PCs for storing files that would be incriminating if found on their own machines, such as child pornography or lists of stolen credit card numbers. More frequently, criminals hijack computers for financial gain or as a means of attacking others with impunity.

2. Use anti-virus software and update virus definitions regularly.

Most new computers come equipped with anti-virus software already installed, but that software requires regular updates that tell the program how to identify the latest threats. In most cases, antivirus program installed on new PCs only provides the user updates for less than 90 days, so it's important to renew your subscription at that point or install a different anti-virus program.

Once executed on a vulnerable computer, most viruses transmit copies of themselves to all of names in the victim's e-mail address book. As a result, people who don't use antivirus software or allow their virus definitions to expire are putting their friends, co-workers and loved ones in the line of fire.

If you have put off using anti-virus because you don't want to pay for it, there are several free and very good anti-virus programs available -- see the links to the right.

3. Create secure, original passwords. Creating unique passwords is one of the easiest ways for consumers to ensure their privacy and security online. See our password primer for tips.

4. Update your computer(s) with the latest vendor security patches. Fully 95 percent of all network intrusions can be avoided by keeping computer systems updated with the latest vendor patches, according to the CERT Coordination Center's Software Engineering Group, a government-funded computer security watchdog group at Carnegie Mellon University.

Visit www.uscert.gov for a comprehensive list of security alerts and vendor patches. Windows users can go to windowsupdate.microsoft.com to install the latest updates. Using Microsoft's automatic update notification service, users can get updates when they are released. Windows XP users can configure updates to install automatically.

If you don't know how to enable automatic updates from Microsoft, visit the company's tutorial.

5. Practice basic e-mail and downloading "street smarts." Most viruses are transmitted as e-mail attachments. Some may come from people you know; others will enter your inbox bearing enticing subject lines. Either way, users should be wary of opening all attachments, and scan each one with antivirus software before opening them.

Avoid opening e-mail attachments that contain ".vbs," ".scr," ".exe," or ".pif" file extensions. Files that end in these extensions are most likely to contain some sort of virus.

Also, it's a good idea to avoid clicking on Web links in e-mails if you are unsure of their origin. Plenty of bad things transmit themselves just by convincing users to visit malicious Web sites.

People who use "peer-to-peer" file-sharing networks such as Kazaa, eDonkey, and Bittorrent place themselves at a particularly high risk, especially when downloading "executable" programs, experts say.

Such nasties include "Trojan horse" programs that allow attackers to control your computer from afar, and keystroke loggers, which can record everything you type on your keyboard, including passwords and bank account numbers.

P2P users also should take care to limit the directories they share. It is not uncommon for users who rush through the process for installing programs that run those services to end up sharing the contents of their entire hard drive.

6. Download and use anti-spyware software.

Browse the Internet long enough and your PC will inevitably be infested with some form of spyware or adware, programs that sneak their way onto your machine by exploiting programming tricks, software flaws, or by piggybacking on "free" software packages. Regardless of how it gets on your machine, spyware and adware can slow your computer to a crawl, sap your Internet connection and snoop on your Web browsing activities.

Two very handy programs for ridding your PC of these pests are free: Lavasoft's AdAware, and SpyBot Search & Destroy. It's a good idea to run them both periodically -- just not at the same time -- and it's generally safe to delete whatever they find.

7. Periodically back up your data. You never know what you've got until it's gone. Don't wait until disaster strikes to think about backing up all those photos, documents, e-mails and other valuable personal data. Check out our primer on backing up your data.

Other Resources:

The following is a list of resources to help educate consumers, teachers, parents and their children about ways to ensure their privacy and security online.

* Staysafeonline : A comprehensive cyber-security education site sponsored by the National Cyber Security Alliance, a group run by some of the nation's largest information technology and Internet companies.

* Cybercitizenship: a nonprofit group that's developing a national curriculum on "cyberethics" for educators. See also www.netsmartz.org.

* Safe at Any Speed: The Federal Trade Commission sponsors the broadband safety initiative.

* Shields Up!: To find out how just how vulnerable your system is, check out this site created by home user security guru Steve Gibson. With your approval, the system will probe your computer for common holes and vulnerabilities.

-- Compiled by Brian Krebs.

Google's Goodies

2005-08-25T15:58:00.000-04:00

Google is offering some nice new free products.

August 25, 2005
Google Gets Better. What's Up With That?
EVER heard the old joke about the two psychiatrists who pass in a hallway? One says, "Hello there." The other thinks, "I wonder what he meant by that?"

In high-tech circles, that's pretty much what people are saying about Google these days. If you hadn't noticed, Google is no longer just an Internet search tool; it's now a full-blown software company. It develops elegant, efficient software programs - and then gives them away. In today's culture of cynicism, such generosity and software excellence seems highly suspicious; surely it's all a smokescreen for a darker, larger plot to suck us all in. What, exactly, is Google up to?

The mystery only intensified this week, as Google announced two more free software tools for Windows: a new version of Google Desktop Search and a free instant-messaging program called Google Talk.

The original version of Desktop Search, which Google unleashed last fall, brought the speed and effortlessness of Google's Internet search to your own PC. You'd type a few letters, and in a fraction of a second, you'd be looking at a complete list of files that included your search term - even if that term appeared inside the body of a document. It could even search e-mail, chat-session transcripts and the contents of Web pages you'd seen.

Google Desktop 1.0 certainly blew away Windows' own built-in search tool, which operates with all the speed of an anesthetized slug. But it was limited in three ways.

First, you had to operate it from within your Web browser, limiting its convenience. Second, because it could call up Web pages, e-mail messages and chat transcripts, Google Desktop alarmed people who, ahem, had something to hide from bosses or spouses. And finally, it could see inside only a limited number of document types. For example, it couldn't search PDF files, Web sites visited with any browser except Internet Explorer, or e-mail messages except those in Outlook or Outlook Express.

VERSION 2 , now available at google.com in what's technically in a public beta test version, attacks all of these drawbacks with a vengeance. In Version 2, you can begin a search with a keystroke or by clicking in the search box that's always on the screen. A pop-up menu of search results appears as you begin to type and narrows itself with each additional keystroke. When you see the item you want, you can open it by clicking or by walking up the list with the arrow keys and pressing Enter.

In other words, you can now find and open a certain program, document or control panel entirely from the keyboard, with blazing speed and simplicity. This is old news to Mac fans, of course; the Spotlight feature in Mac OS X 10.4 works the same way. But for Windows XP and 2000 veterans, getting such an omniscient, speedy search feature free is truly liberating. ( Microsoft plans something similar for the next version of Windows, due at the end of 2006.)

Google has also beefed up your privacy options. You can omit search categories like secure Web sites (banking sites, for example), password-protected Microsoft Office files, and so on, and you can even flag individual files so that they'll never appear in the search results again.

Finally, the program now recognizes many more document types: e-mail from Gmail, Outlook, Outlook Express, Netscape Mail, Thunderbird and Mozilla Mail; chat transcripts from AOL or MSN Messenger; Web pages you've visited using Internet Explorer, Firefox, Netscape or Mozilla; PDF files; and your Outlook calendar and address book. (And speaking of Outlook, Google Desktop now installs its own search bar right into Outlook, meaning that you can search your e-mail collection in the blink of a cursor.) The company expects to add more kinds of files to this list, thanks to a public plug-in protocol it has published online.

Yet believe it or not, the little search box is the last thing you'll notice when you install Google Desktop. The first thing you'll see is the Sidebar, a column of rectangular panels hugging the right edge of your screen. Each is a window onto a different kind of real-time information from the Internet.

Some are ho-hum, like your latest incoming Gmail and Outlook e-mail, news, stock and weather tickers. Others are refreshingly quirky: the Photos panel shows a continuous, two-inch-tall slideshow of pictures from your own collection, and the surprisingly useful Scratch Pad is a blank box where you can type casual notes throughout your workday (they're saved automatically). Each panel expands horizontally, drawer-like, to reveal more details when clicked.

The Sidebar is about as clean-looking as anyone could make it, but it's still a lot of clutter in a very small space, especially if you add new panels as they become available. On the other hand, you can tidy things up quite a bit: drag your Sidebar panels into a different order, hide the ones you don't use, or collapse them into one-line summaries.

Once again, Google isn't the first company to dream up a modular, Internet-connected suite of miniprograms; the Sidebar is a lot like Mac OS X's Dashboard or the shareware programs Desktop X and Konfabulator. But never mind that; you can't keep a good idea down, and this is a good one indeed.

Google's second revelation this week, Google Talk, lets you communicate with your buddies either by typing or, if your PC has a microphone and speaker, by speaking. As long as you and your conversation partner are at Windows computers, you can converse with spectacular sound quality.

Now, Google Talk 1.0 is probably the most stripped-down chat program on earth. No conference calling, video chats or direct person-to-person file transfers. (Features like these are common in rivals like Skype, iChat and the messenger programs from AOL, MSN and Yahoo.) So what, exactly, is Google trying to prove here?

Its mission, in fact, is far grander. Google Talk aims to end the ridiculous era of proprietary chat networks. At the moment, AOL, MSN and Yahoo each maintain separate, incompatible networks. The big boys each want to be alone in the sandbox, and the losers are their customers.

Google Talk, however, is based on an open, published standard that the company is making available to all. Already, Google Talk communicates with popular chat programs like iChat, Trillian, Adium, Psi and GAIM, but that's just the beginning. Google is making overtures to Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft about making their chat programs compatible; EarthLink has already agreed to join the federation; and Google is also inviting the makers of games, collaboration tools and even cellphones to join in what it hopes will one day be a grand, unified chat network.

In the meantime, Google Talk is significant for another reason: it requires a Gmail account. (Gmail is Google's free, Web-based e-mail service, whose two most famous aspects are its vast capacity - over two gigabytes of storage for each account - and the ads that appear, in small type, off to the right side of each message you read. The ads are computer-matched to keywords in the body of the message, which disturbs some privacy advocates.)

Until now, Gmail accounts were available by invitation only. Google let the service spread gradually and virally, giving each existing member a few additional invitations to extend. At one point, people were actually selling these invitations on eBay.

As of yesterday, however, all that has changed. Now anyone can get a Gmail account - and can therefore use Google Talk. But to prevent spammers and other abusers from snapping up Gmail accounts by the thousands, Google has designed a clever safeguard: when you apply for a Gmail account, you must provide a cellphone number.

Google sends a code to your phone, which you use to complete the registration. (Actually, you don't have to own a cellphone; you just have to know somebody with a cellphone. They can get the code for you, because each cellphone number is good for a number of registrations - just not hundreds of them.)

In a single week, then, Google, the software company, addressed deficiencies in Windows, tried to create a grand unified chat and voice network, and opened its clean, capable, capacious e-mail system to all comers. All of this software is beautifully done, quick to download and fun to use - not to mention free and (apart from the Gmail service) entirely free of ads and come-ons.

Wish they'd cut it out. Trying to figure out what this company's really up to is enough to drive you crazy.

Fed Up With Your PC's Problems? Throw It Away

2005-07-17T07:09:00.000-04:00

I had previously posted an article that noted how users, fed up with spy ware, viruses etc. were giving up on their PC's. Now, according to the New York Times, the disgusted users are buying new cheap PC's rather than trying to fix infected machines.

July 17, 2005
Corrupted PC's Find New Home in the Dumpster
By MATT RICHTEL and JOHN MARKOFF
SAN FRANCISCO, July 15 - Add personal computers to the list of throwaways in the disposable society.

On a recent Sunday morning when Lew Tucker's Dell desktop computer was overrun by spyware and adware - stealth software that delivers intrusive advertising messages and even gathers data from the user's machine - he did not simply get rid of the offending programs. He threw out the whole computer.

Mr. Tucker, an Internet industry executive who holds a Ph.D. in computer science, decided that rather than take the time to remove the offending software, he would spend $400 on a new machine.

He is not alone in his surrender in the face of growing legions of digital pests, not only adware and spyware but computer viruses and other Internet-borne infections as well. Many PC owners are simply replacing embattled machines rather than fixing them.

"I was spending time every week trying to keep the machine free of viruses and worms," said Mr. Tucker, a vice president of Salesforce.com, a Web services firm based here. "I was losing the battle. It was cheaper and faster to go to the store and buy a low-end PC."

In the face of a constant stream of pop-up ads, malfunctioning programs and performance slowed to a crawl or a crash - the hallmarks of spyware and adware - throwing out a computer "is a rational response," said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a Washington-based research group that studies the Internet's social impact.

While no figures are available on the ranks of those jettisoning their PC's, the scourge of unwanted software is widely felt. This month the Pew group published a study in which 43 percent of the 2,001 adult Internet users polled said they had been confronted with spyware or adware, collectively known as malware. Forty-eight percent said they had stopped visiting Web sites that might deposit unwanted programs on their PC's.

Moreover, 68 percent said they had had computer trouble in the last year consistent with the problems caused by spyware or adware, though 60 percent of those were unsure of the problems' origins. Twenty percent of those who tried to fix the problem said it had not been solved; among those who spent money seeking a remedy, the average outlay was $129.

By comparison, it is possible to buy a new computer, including a monitor, for less than $500, though more powerful systems can cost considerably more.

Meantime, the threats from infection continue to rise, and "the arms race seems to have tilted toward the bad guys," Mr. Rainie said.

The number of viruses has more than doubled in just the last six months, while the number of adware and spyware programs has roughly quadrupled during the same period, said Vincent Weafer, a senior director at Symantec, which makes the Norton computer security programs. One reason for the explosion, Symantec executives say, is the growth of high-speed Internet access, which allows people to stay connected to the Internet constantly but creates more opportunity for malicious programs to find their way onto machines.

Mr. Weafer said an area of particular concern was infections adept at burying themselves in a computer system so that the cleansing programs had trouble finding them. The removal of these programs must often be done manually, requiring greater technical expertise.

There are methods of protecting computers from infection through antivirus and spyware-removal software and digital barriers called firewalls, but those tools are far from being completely effective.

"Things are spinning out of control," said David Gelernter, a professor of computer science at Yale.

Mr. Gelernter said his own family's computer became so badly infected that he bought a new one this week. He said his two teenage sons were balking at spending the hours needed to scrub the old one clean of viruses, worms and adware.

Mr. Gelernter blames the software industry for the morass, noting that people are increasingly unwilling to take out their "software tweezers" to clean their machines.

Microsoft executives say they decided to enter the anti-spyware business earlier this year after realizing the extent of the problem.

"We saw that a significant percentage of crashes and other problems were being caused by this," said Paul Bryan, an executive in the company's security business unit. Windows XP Service Pack 2, an upgrade to the latest Windows operating system that has been distributed to more than 200 million computers, includes an automated malware removal program that has been used 800 million times this year, he said.

At least another 10 million copies of a test version of the company's spyware removal program have been downloaded. Yet Microsoft executives acknowledged that they were not providing protection for people who have earlier versions of the company's operating system. And that provides little comfort for those who must navigate the perils of cyberspace.

Terrelea Wong's old computer now sits beside her sofa in the living room, unused, except as a makeshift table that holds a box of tissues.

Ms. Wong, a physician at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in South San Francisco, started getting a relentless stream of pop-up ads a year ago on her four-year-old Hewlett-Packard desktop computer. Often her entire screen would turn blue and urge her to "hit any key to continue." Sometimes the computer would freeze altogether.

After putting up with the problem for months, Ms. Wong said she decided last November that rather than fix her PC, she would buy a new one. Succumbing to the seduction of all the new bells and whistles, she spent $3,000 on a new Apple laptop.

She is instituting new rules to keep her home computer virus-free.

"I've modified my behavior. I'm not letting my friends borrow my computer," she said, after speculating that the indiscriminate use of the Internet by her and her friends had led to the infection problems.

Peter Randol, 45, a stockbroker for Charles Schwab in Denver, is at his wits' end, too. His family's four-year-old Dell computer has not been the same since last year when they got a digital subscriber line for high-speed Internet access. Mr. Randol said the PC's performance has slowed, a result he attributes to dozens of malicious programs he has discovered on the computer.

He has eliminated some of the programs, but error messages continue to pop up on his screen, and the computer can be agonizingly slow.

"I may have no choice but to buy a new one," he said, noting that he hopes that by starting over, he can get a computer that will be more impervious to infection.

Buying a new computer is not always an antidote. Bora Ozturk, 33, who manages bank branches in San Francisco, bought a $900 Hewlett-Packard computer last year only to have it nearly paralyzed three months ago with infections that he believes he got from visiting Turkish news sites.

He debated throwing the PC out, but it had pictures of his newborn son and all of his music files. He decided to fix it himself, spending 15 hours learning what to do, then saving all his pictures and music to a disk and then wiping the hard drive clean - the equivalent of starting over.

For his part, Mr. Tucker, the Salesforce.com executive, said the first piece of software he installed on the new machine two weeks ago was antivirus software. He does not want a replay of his frustrations the last month, when the attacks on his old machine became relentless.

"It came down to the simple human fact that maintaining the old computer didn't pay," he said.

Dealing with Cookies

2005-07-15T06:50:00.000-04:00

Walter Mossberg's article is an "Everything You Want To Know About Cookies" type of piece and I highly recommend that you read it.

Despite Others' Claims,
Tracking Cookies Fit
My Spyware Definition
July 14, 2005; (Wall Street Journal Online)

Suppose you bought a TV set that included a component to track what you watched, and then reported that data back to a company that used or sold it for advertising purposes. Only nobody told you the tracking technology was there or asked your permission to use it.

You would likely be outraged at this violation of privacy. Yet that kind of Big Brother intrusion goes on every day on the Internet, affecting millions of people. Many Web sites, even from respectable companies, place a secret computer file called a "tracking cookie" on your hard disk. This file records where you go on the Web on behalf of Internet advertising companies that later use the information for their own business purposes. In almost all cases, the user isn't notified of the download of the tracking cookie, let alone asked for permission to install it.

Luckily, the leading Windows antispyware programs can detect and remove these tracking cookies. It is the best defense a user has against this tactic.

Now, though, some of the companies that place these files on your hard disk are complaining about that defense. Some are urging the antispyware software companies to stop detecting and removing tracking cookies. They assert that the secret placement of these tracking mechanisms is a legitimate business practice, and that tracking cookies aren't really spyware or aren't harmful.

Unfortunately for consumers, this twisted reasoning is having some impact. In the most notable case, Microsoft disabled the detection and removal of tracking cookies when it purchased an antispyware program from a small company called Giant and turned it into Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware. That is a big reason why I can't recommend the Microsoft product, which still is in the test phase but is available for anyone to download.

Microsoft says it still is evaluating how to treat tracking cookies in the program's final release. I believe it is important for consumers to know who is on their side right from the start and who may be being swayed by companies that do things to your computer without telling you.

The antispyware program I currently use and recommend, Spy Sweeper from Webroot Software, still detects and removes tracking cookies. So does another antispyware program derived from some of the same computer code as the Microsoft product -- CounterSpy, by Sunbelt Software. I haven't tested the latter program, but it has received good reviews elsewhere. There are other antispyware programs as well that still treat tracking cookies as spyware.

To understand the tracking-cookie issue, you have to know something about cookies overall, and you have to know what spyware actually is.

Cookies are small text files that Web-site operators -- and third-party companies that insert ads into Web sites -- place on a user's computer. Many types of cookies are harmless or even helpful. For instance, a cookie might help a Web site remember your preferences for what news topics you chose to see. With your permission, it might store your login information, so you don't have to type it in each time you visit a particular site. Antispyware programs aren't designed to detect or remove these helpful cookies.

Tracking cookies shouldn't be confused with these other cookies. They have no user benefit except the vague promise that the ads you get as a result may be better tailored to your interests.

What is spyware? There are many definitions, but here is mine, in two sentences. Spyware -- and a related category called adware -- is computer code placed on a user's computer without his or her permission and without notification, or with notification so obscure it hardly merits the term. Once installed, spyware and adware alter the PC's behavior to suit the interests of outside parties rather than those of the owner or user.

Examples of spyware and adware include programs called "browser hijackers," which reset the home page or search engine used by your browser so the user is diverted to the sites of the spyware and adware companies or their clients. Others record your activities and report them to outside parties. Still others push ads in your face, even when you aren't using the Web.

Some tracking-cookie purveyors say their cookies aren't really spyware because they aren't full-fledged programs and they aren't as outrageous as spyware programs like "key loggers," which record and report every keystroke you enter. Others argue that the companies don't collect personally identifiable data, only aggregate data from many users. To me, tracking cookies clearly meet the obvious definition of spyware.

Rather than trying to legitimize tracking cookies with pressure and marketing campaigns, I suggest that, if they really believe tracking cookies are legitimate, the companies that use them simply go straight. They should ask a user's permission to install the cookies, pointing out whatever user benefits they believe the cookies provide. They might even offer users compensation for allowing tracking cookies on their machines.

Until that happens, here is my advice: If you don't like the idea of tracking cookies, run an antispyware program that detects and removes them, along with all the other indefensible computer code some companies think they have the right to install. After all, it is your computer.

VLC....An Alternative Media Player

2005-05-07T21:59:00.000-04:00

Give this little application a run..it's a great free replacement for the Windows Media Player. It plays music AND videos. But it really excels at videos, playing all formats (WindowsMedia, Real, Apple QuickTime, Divx etc.) without crashing your system.
VLC Media Player

A Possible Alternative To Cable / DSL Internet Access

2005-01-21T06:48:00.000-05:00

Wireless broadband might break the monopoly stranglehold that the cable and telephone companies have on Internet access. The new competition could lead to lower prices.

Internet and Phone Companies
Plot Wireless-Broadband Push

By JESSE DRUCKER and ALMAR LATOUR
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
January 20, 2005

Several big Internet and phone companies are moving to provide wireless high-speed access to the Internet -- without phone lines or cable -- challenging the dominance of those traditional connections to millions of U.S. homes and offices.

EarthLink Inc. hopes to be selling this kind of Internet access, known as wireless broadband, in multiple markets across the country by the second half of this year, according to a company executive. Sprint Corp. and MCI Inc. are actively testing the technology, while AT&T Corp. plans to begin deploying it in 2006.

The city of Philadelphia is moving ahead with the nation's largest citywide deployment of the technology know as Wi-Fi and next month will announce details for its plan to blanket the city with cheap wireless Internet access. The reason, city officials have said, is that parts of some neighborhoods haven't been wired for high-speed Internet access via phone or cable lines, and others can't afford it.

These various wireless moves have the potential to yet again shift the balance of power in the rapidly changing U.S. telecommunications industry, giving consumers a potentially cheaper and more flexible alternative to phone and cable lines for Internet access and many other services.

One of the technologies drawing the most attention is WiMAX, which is similar to the popular Wi-Fi standard that millions of people have used to set up wireless networks in their homes but is slated to have a range of several miles. Since WiMAX has yet to be certified, companies are using precursors to the technology.

If the technology takes off, millions of phone and cable customers could cut the wires that tether them to the regulated telecom world. That means being able to surf the Internet and send e-mail at high speeds -- maybe eventually make calls over the Internet -- with a wireless-enabled computer in any room in a house or any outside space covered by the technology. The advantages of portability should be obvious to anyone who remembers when there were no cellphones.

Besides lopping off some wires, wireless broadband could open the door to more competitors. It is expected to become relatively cheap to deploy over time, which could mean lower prices and more options for consumers and businesses.

One disadvantage: The spectrum that Wi-Fi uses is unlicensed and more prone to interference. These plans are different from the so-called 3G cellular networks that wireless companies like Verizon Wireless are rolling out to zap e-mail and video via cellphones.

Before anyone can cut their old cords, however, the technology must clear a number of hurdles. And no one expects to see the telephone companies and cable operators, with their dominance of the Internet-access market, to cede much of that turf easily or soon.

In fact, the Bell companies also are actively testing various wireless services as they rush to dominate an array of emerging technologies like Internet calling. Qwest Communications International Inc. has tested wireless broadband in several markets and plans to roll it out to consumers and businesses in 18 months. Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp. have also run advanced trials.

Sprint, for example, has been doing trials of wireless broadband using equipment from Motorola Inc. called "Canopy," in rural markets in North Carolina and Kansas. There, customers receive high-speed Web access wirelessly. Once the wireless broadband services are standardized, "that would allow us to truly compete with a broadband type of application that would compete with cable and DSL providers," says Oliver Valente, Sprint's vice president of technology development. DSL is the most common high-speed technology for Internet access via telephone lines.

Sprint is also looking at offering national WiMAX services, combining its valuable radio-wave spectrum with that of Nextel Communications Inc. The two companies last month announced plans to merge.

Adaware / Spybot Tip

2005-01-20T01:35:00.000-05:00

To save time, you can actually run Adaware and Spybot together.

AOL Can Save The Internet

2005-01-15T01:20:00.000-05:00

It's fashionable to bash AOL. Anyone who has progressed beyond the newbie stage is expected to move on to other providers. But lately so many people have had their internet experience crippled by spyware, viruses, popups, browser hijacks, and spam, that the "nanny" approach of AOL may be seen as useful again.
AOL offers it's subscribers anti-virus protection, it blocks a lot of spam, employs an effective popup blocker, and restricts spyware. All of this is basically transparent to the AOL user who just wants to use the web wih as little effort as possible. Without the user's knowledge or permission, AOL installs protective software and even disables potentially problematic tools such as the MSN Messenger. The result is a better expereince for the average user who would not be able to manage his PC for himself.
Other ISP's such as Earthlink and MSN are also following this approach.
Of course it's not for everybody. Advanced users are perfectly able to defensively configure their PC's for themselves. But for the average user, having an ISP as a nanny, is not a bad idea.

Many Users Are Giving Up On Computers

2005-01-14T13:35:00.000-05:00

No More Internet for Them

Fed up over problems stemming from viruses and spyware, some computer users are giving up or curbing their use of the Web.

By Joseph Menn
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

January 14, 2005

Stephen Seemayer had the first Pong video game system on his block. A decade later, the Echo Park artist was the first in his neighborhood to get a personal computer. And in 1996, he was so inspired by the World Wide Web that he created a series of small paintings for viewing over the Internet.

Now the 50-year-old Seemayer is once again on the cutting edge: Sick of spam clogging his in-box and spyware and viruses crashing his system, Seemayer yanked out his high-speed connection.

"I'm not going to pay for something that I can't use," he said.

A small but growing number of frustrated computer owners are coming to the same conclusion. They're giving up or cutting back their use of the Internet, especially at home, where no corporate tech support team will ride to their rescue.

Instead of making life easier — the essential promise of technologies since the steam engine — the home PC of late has made some users feel stupid, endangered or just hassled beyond reason.

Seemayer's machine, for instance, got so jammed with spam that he stopped checking e-mail. When he surfed the Web, pop-up ads from a piece of spyware he couldn't wipe out spewed sexually explicit images and used so much computing power that the PC would just stop.

"I could be sitting here in the living room reading a book," Seemayer said, "and I'd hear my son scream: 'It froze up on me again!' "

So when his son left for college in September, Seemayer finally unplugged.

Now when he uses his computer, it's to compose letters or organize photos — anything that doesn't require interaction with any other system.

Seemayer is still in the minority. Overall Internet use continues to grow.

But 2004 "was a real turning point in a bad direction," said technology analyst Ted Schadler of Forrester Research. "People are getting really angry. They're angry at Dell and Microsoft and their cable providers, and that's appropriate. They should be."

In a recent survey, 31% of online shoppers said they were buying less than before because of security issues. And though more people are signing up for high-speed, commerce-friendly connections, the proportion of U.S. Internet users paying for things online barely budged in 2004 from a year earlier. It rose to 27% from 26% in 2003 after jumping from 20% the previous year, according to Harris Interactive.

For many, spyware was the last straw. During the last 18 months, the sneaky programs have soared to the top of the list of tech woes, triggering the most tech support calls to Dell Inc., the nation's top PC maker. Spyware lurks on as many as 80% of computers nationwide, according to the National Cyber Security Alliance, a trade group.

Spyware generally transmits information to third parties and sometimes takes control of a PC, usually to display ads. The most pernicious varieties have instructed millions of computers to make expensive toll calls or logged every keystroke on affected machines and sent account numbers and passwords to identity thieves.

No one is immune. Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates discovered spyware on his personal machine not long ago.

The aggravation level has reached the point that some in the computer industry believe it threatens to undermine advances of the last decade, during which the Internet has grown from a virtually empty domain to a global community of 800 million souls. They say they need to act before the same early adopters who led mainstream Americans online lead them off.

"If, as an industry, we're not able to provide a safe, reliable computing environment, we do think consumers will get increasingly frustrated," said Michael George, general manager of Dell's U.S. consumer business. "We're concerned, and we want to get to a position where we play an instrumental role in fixing the problem."

It may well be up to private enterprise. Congress and the Federal Trade Commission are exploring a crackdown on spyware, but government efforts to stop another online scourge, spam, have had limited results, as many with an e-mail account will attest.

The root cause of the problems is the open architecture of the Internet, initially inhabited and managed by a collaborative community from government and universities.

"The Internet … grew out of a shielded, nice-guy environment in academia," Web usability expert Jakob Nielsen said. Back then, "the worst abuse might have been sending a prank message. Nowadays, the Net reaches everyone in the industrialized world, including large amounts of people with no shame and large numbers of criminals."

Microsoft's dominant Windows operating system also makes it possible for malicious code to spread, in part because it was designed to allow so many functions. Once a weakness in Windows is discovered by hackers, a virus can wreak havoc on millions of computers before Microsoft can offer a patch — which typical users may not take the initiative to download.

And consumer advocates claim that state and federal laws against spam don't help. Courts have protected software vendors from most consumer lawsuits, and some have held that the companies are all but immunized by warnings buried in lengthy user agreements, those boxes with massive amounts of text with the "I agree" button at the bottom.

Whatever the reasons, the threats have evolved from minor annoyances to serious computer risks.

Gerald Stark, 52, trained on computers in school and in the Navy before starting a small cleaning business in Lisbon Falls, Maine. He figured he could use the Internet to find equipment at a good price, track his sales and organize his volunteer activities with the Boy Scouts.

"I thought that the computer was the way to go because it was so much faster," he said. "It turned out to be a nightmare."

A virus killed one machine. Then spyware infested the next one, wiping out a year's worth of receipt records.

Stark read five years' worth of computer magazines just to keep up with how to defend himself.

Even with two firewalls and antivirus and anti-spyware programs running, Stark stopped looking for new business deals online. He said he would buy only from places he had dealt with before, preferably in the physical world rather than the virtual one.

"I'm not letting my guard down again," Stark said. "Never."

Henry Stiegel didn't think he needed his guard up in the first place. Pressed by his stockbroker and friends, Stiegel got his first home computer in 2003.

"I thought it was going to be like a television set — I'm going to sit right in front of it all day and have some control and learn things, scan for airfare and travel," the former Grumman Aerospace Corp. engineer said from Homosassa, Fla.

Even after studying in computing classes, the 77-year-old Stiegel was swamped by hundreds of viruses, other malicious programs and pop-ups.

"I still have windows I can't delete when I want to get rid of them. When I send an e-mail, I get interrupted and have to start all over," Stiegel said. "I have actually pulled the plug out of the wall so I could reboot."

Stiegel now turns the computer on only two or three times a week, mostly to read his e-mail.

In Grand Rapids, Mich., homemaker Peggy Kasul sits halfway between the anxious newcomers like Stiegel and the jaded old pros like Seemayer.

A computer owner for seven years, Kasul did a little shopping online. Her husband used the machine to help manage some rental property, and her 16-year-old daughter wrote term papers for school.

Then her daughter went on the Internet to research a paper on the issue of breast-feeding in public. As if she had typed in a magic word, spyware ads for porn sites popped up and wouldn't go away.

Soon the computer was unusable. It took more than three weeks and $300 to get the thing working again, by which time all the family's data had been wiped out.

Now Kasul sends her daughter to use the computers at school or the library.

"I don't do much shopping online anymore because that scares me," Kasul said. "I go to the store."

The biggest factor behind the rapid increase in spyware is the amount of money at stake. Ads for such blue-chip companies as Motorola Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and JP Morgan Chase & Co. appear in spyware programs.

The businesses most often accused of distributing spyware, including privately held Claria Corp., WhenU Inc. and 180Solutions Inc., say they are providing legitimate "adware" services to customers who approved the installation. But their disclosures are often misleading or buried: A recent Claria license ran for more than 60 electronic pages, first mentioning the phrase "pop-up" on page 18.

Much spyware arrives bundled with programs such as screensavers and file-sharing software.

"The part that worries me most is the tremendous amount of money that can be made by tricking people into installing junk on their computers," said Ben Edelman, a Harvard graduate student who has testified against spyware companies. "It's a great business."

The defenses remain scattered. Windows PCs often don't come with antivirus software installed. Firewalls and spam blockers are usually separate too, and there are dozens of small companies offering what they describe as anti-spyware products — some of which are actually fronts that install spyware.

"Staying safe online has gotten too complicated for the average user to do by buying individual products and making them work together," America Online spokesman Andrew Weinstein said.

Realizing that such fragmentation is making matters worse, some companies are rounding up the pieces of a more complete resistance.

Microsoft recently bought both an antivirus company and an anti-spyware software maker. Time Warner's latest version of AOL checks for spyware and offers to delete it. And where Dell's online guide for configuring a PC used to suggest a combined antivirus and firewall program without saying why, it now explicitly warns buyers to protect themselves or face potentially costly problems in the future.

Legislation that would have required more direct warnings by spyware companies to consumers and ensured that users could delete the programs made headway in the last session of Congress, despite objections from top computer-security company Symantec Corp. and other software providers. Ari Schwartz, an anti-spyware lobbyist with the Washington-based Center for Democracy and Technology, put the odds of some legislation passing in 2005 at better than 80%.

The FTC last fall filed its first case against spyware companies accused of using a security flaw in Internet Explorer to cram system-glutting programs into the machines of website visitors. The companies named were Seismic Entertainment Productions Inc. and SmartBot.net Inc. But current fraud laws allow regulators only to recover ill-gotten gains — no matter how much damage the bad guys have inflicted.

Enacting new federal bills "would be helpful," said Lydia Parnes, acting director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection. Spyware "needs to be understandable to consumers, and it needs to be presented in a way that's kind of visible to them."

Even if a strong law passes, Parnes said she didn't know whether the average computer user would be any better off in three years.

If it's worse, Seemayer probably won't be the only one on his block with a PC cut off from the Internet.

"It's great for anything you can do on your own," he said. "It seems to me an incredible typewriter — and that's it."

Buying A New PC

2005-01-13T21:52:00.000-05:00

Most people buy "too much PC". In other words, they load up on features and functionality that they will never use. Before buying a PC one should carefully think about what you are going to use the PC for. Most people are only going to surf the web, do email, and maybe burn the occasional CD. For most buyers there is no need to get the "latest and greatest". There is only one exception to this rule: buy as much memory as you can afford. Memory drives the PC's performance and it's relatively cheap now. I recommend a minimum of 512 MB of memory. In the following article the author gives some excellent suggetions for PC buying.

Be not dismayed; good buys are out there for PC shoppers

Mike Himowitz

There are plenty of good, inexpensive computers on the market, and buying one doesn't have to be an exercise in frustration. For as little as $600, you can get a perfectly good system to handle the basics - word processing, Web browsing, e-mail and financial record-keeping. For a few hundred dollars more, you'll get a system that's fine for digital photography, music and other forms of entertainment.

Just remember that PCs are a lot like cars - they start off with basic equipment and add options. And just like a car, a PC has a sticker - on the shelf or the side of the box - that tells you exactly what's under the hood. If you order online, you can often build your own sticker.

So let's get down to details and discuss what you'll see on that sticker - so you can decide exactly how much PC to buy.

MICROPROCESSOR: Also known as the Central Processing Unit or CPU, the microprocessor is the heart of a computer - the chip that does the computing. The faster and more sophisticated the processor, the better a PC will run - within limits.

If your PC usage is limited to the basics, the fastest processor on the market won't do it much better than the slowest. On the other hand, if you're shopping for a serious gamer or budding video producer, a fast CPU is definitely worth the expense.

Processors are labeled by manufacturer, model and speed - measured in gigahertz, or billions of cycles per second.

Intel has the lion's share of the Windows CPU market. Its flagship processor is the Pentium 4, but many entry-level PCs use the lower-end Celeron.

To confuse things in time for Christmas, Intel has relabeled its Pentium line with three-digit model numbers that take into account factors other than pure clock speed. These include the chip's architecture, the size of the on-board memory cache, and the speed of the front-side "bus," which carries data between the CPU and other key components.

This has made life harder for shoppers, especially when Intel's Web site says that "processor numbers are ... not a measurement of performance." Luckily, most manufacturers still mention processor speed in advertising and on stickers.

Intel's main competitors are AMD Athlon 64 and Athlon XP chips, which are roughly equivalent to higher and lower levels of the P4. Athlons are compatible with Intel chips, so it doesn't matter which manufacturer's CPU you buy if they're within the same performance range.

P4 chips run faster than Athlons, but Athlons get more work done with each clock cycle, so you can't compare that directly. Athlon uses chip numbers, which are roughly multiples of the equivalent Intel clock speed. So an Intel P4 running at 3.2 GHz and an Athlon XP 3200 will provide similar performance.

For basic PC use, even a Celeron in the 2-GHz range will do fine. If you're interested in multimedia, games, or digital video, go with a P4 in the 2.8- to 3.2-GHz range or equivalent Athlon. You'll pay a stiff premium for faster chips, so unless you're a crazed gamer or you're willing to pay for bragging rights, stay away from the fastest CPUs.

MEMORY: Often referred to collectively as RAM (random access memory), these chips store programs and data when the PC is running. Their capacity is measured in megabytes (MB), or millions of bytes. With more memory, your PC can run multiple programs with less effort and a smaller chance of crashing. Get a minimum of 256 megabytes and 512 MB if you can afford it. Serious digital photographers and video buffs may want more.

Most computers use a type of RAM known as DDR (double data rate). More advanced machines use something called dual channel memory, known as DDR2. You might notice the difference if you're a power freak.

HARD DISK STORAGE: Often confused with RAM, your computer's hard drive stores programs and data permanently - and constantly feeds and retrieves data from the CPU when the machine is turned on. Hard drive capacity is measured in gigabytes, or billions of bytes. You want a drive that's big enough to hold all your stuff and fast enough to move around without slowing down the machine's operation.

Luckily, hard disk storage is dirt cheap. For general-purpose computing, 40 gigabytes is fine, while an 80-gig drive will store plenty of music and photos. But if you're into video, look for at least 160 gigabytes. For the best multimedia performance, look for a drive labeled Ultra-ATA 133, or even better, one that uses the new Serial ATA standard (you'll pay for it).

VIDEO: Your computer's video circuitry produces the image on the monitor. For basic computing, whatever comes with the PC is likely to be fine. Lower-end machines generally use Intel video circuitry built into the main circuit board. This setup usually "shares" part of the computer's main memory, which might degrade performance. Avoid it if you're interested in serious digital photography, video or gaming.

For better performance, look for video circuitry from nVidia, ATI or another major manufacturer, with at least 128 megabytes of dedicated video RAM. If it's inside, the sticker will say so. A good video card with decoding software built in can also give you smoother playback with DVD movies.

CD/DVD: All computers have some variety of a compact disk-based drive, or two. They're used universally to install new software, and increasingly to back up data and create music or video disks.

At the very least, make sure your computer has a CD/RW drive, which can read data disks, play audio CDs, and create both types of media. A DVD-ROM can play CDs and commercial movie DVDs, which use much higher capacity disks. If you or your favorite student wants to watch movies on a PC (very big in college dorm rooms), look for a PC with both types of drives, or a combination drive known as a DVD-CD/RW, which can play DVD movies as well as read and write standard CDs.

To create movies on DVD, you'll need a DVD writer, which will add $100 to $150 to the cost of a system. They're easier to use and more reliable than last year's, but DVD writers are still troubled by competing industry standards and buggy software. But they'll handle reading and writing to CDs and DVDs. For maximum compatibility with external DVD players, look for a drive that can handle DVD+RW and DVD-RW formats.

SOUND: Since PCs have become entertainment centers, most arrive with decent audio circuitry for playing audio CDs or digital music files stored on the PC. But if you're an audiophile, a music producer or a gamer who wants the latest Dolby 5.1, surround-sound home theater reproduction, look for a computer with Creative Sound Blaster or Turtle Beach sound technology.

Low-end machines, and even those with higher price tags, often come with tiny, two-speaker systems. If you're serious about audio, consider buying a three-speaker setup with a subwoofer for music or a five-speaker system for games and home theater sound.

Oh, yes. If you buy a teenager a speaker system, don't forget headphones with an extension cord. Then you can tell him to turn the speakers off when the house starts trembling.

PORTS: The back of a computer can be a confusing place, because that's where most manufacturers put the "ports," or receptacles for gadgets that plug into the PC, including the keyboard, mouse, printers, scanners, cable modem and so forth.

Most peripherals, including digital cameras and music players, hook up to the PC through Universal Serial Bus (USB) ports. More USB ports are better - some PCs come with as many as eight. But look for one that has USB, headphone and other multimedia ports on the front panel - it's much more convenient than crawling behind the PC to plug stuff in.

One item that's not standard equipment on all PCs is the IEEE 1394 port, also known as FireWire. This is the port that digital camcorders require - so if you're going to edit digital videos, make sure the PC has at least one.

CARD READERS: The hot built-in this year is a multicard reader that accepts the flash memory cards used by digital cameras and music players, making it easy to copy photos and other material to your computer without special software. While it's convenient, a card reader, or lack of one, shouldn't be a deal breaker. You can buy a card reader that plugs into a USB port for as little as $20.

MONITOR: Flat panel, liquid crystal displays (LCDs) have taken over the monitor market everywhere but the low end. Using the same technology as laptop screens, they're only a couple of inches thick, so they occupy a fraction of the front-to-back room of a monitor based on a cathode ray tube (CRT). Flat panels also use a lot less electricity than CRTs and look much cooler.

An LCD screen will add from $100 to $500 to the price of a system, depending on the size - larger LCDs are far more expensive than smaller models. Bargain systems with LCDs usually offer 15-inch screens, which might be a bit small for older eyes. So it might be worth upgrading to a 17-inch screen, or a 19-inch monitor if you're feeling flush.

Flat panels vary greatly in quality. Look for one that has good brightness and contrast controls that work - and make sure the brightness doesn't drop off a cliff when you view the screen from an angle.

Borrow Your Neighbor's WiFi

2005-01-05T13:15:00.000-05:00

If you don't abuse it, your neighbor won't even notice that you dipped into his stream of WiFi data.

How To Steal Wi-Fi
And how to keep the neighbors from stealing yours.
By Paul Boutin

When I moved into a new neighborhood last week, I expected the usual hassles. Then I found out I'd have to wait more than a month for a DSL line. I started convulsing. If I don't have Net access for even one day, I can't do my job. So, what was I supposed to do? There's an Internet café on the next block, but they close early. I had no choice—it was time to start sneaking on to my neighbors' home networks.

Every techie I know says that you shouldn't use other people's networks without permission. Every techie I know does it anyway. If you're going to steal—no, let's say borrow—your neighbor's Wi-Fi access, you might as well do it right. Step one: Lose the guilt. The FCC told me that they don't know of any federal or state laws that make it illegal to log on to an open network. Using someone's connection to check your e-mail isn't like hacking into their bank account. It's more like you're borrowing a cup of sugar. (Unless you hog their bandwidth by watching lots of streaming video—that's like hijacking a sugar truck.)

In the end, it's your neighbor's Internet service provider—not your neighbor—who will pay for the added traffic, and the ISP has already factored a small amount of line-sharing into their price plan. It is true that your surfing could cause the folks next door to break their service contract—many broadband providers do specifically forbid home customers from sharing a connection. But let's deal with those abstract ethical issues later—you have important mail to answer!

If you want to find a Wi-Fi network, don't start by looking on the sidewalk for chalk marks. "Warchalking," a technique for writing symbols in public places to alert neighbors to nearby wireless access points, is a cool concept that's been undermined by the fact that no one has ever used it. The best method to find some free wireless is to treat your laptop like a cell phone. Since Wi-Fi and cell phone signals travel on a similar radio frequency, the same tricks you use for getting a better phone connection might work on your computer. Sit near a window, since Wi-Fi signals travel better through glass than through solid walls. Stay away from metal objects. Pay close attention to your laptop's orientation—rotating your machine just a few degrees could help you pick up a network that you couldn't see before. Raise your laptop over your head, put it flat on the floor, tilt it sideways while leaning halfway out the window—get out the divining rod if you have to. You might get a reputation for being some sick laptop yoga freak, but isn't free Internet worth it?

If you live downtown or in a suburb where the houses are close together, a few minutes of laptop gymnastics will probably reveal several Wi-Fi networks. Certain names are a giveaway that a network probably won't be password-protected. Look for "linksys," "default," "Wireless," "NETGEAR," "belkin54g," and "Apple Network 0273df." These are the default network names for the most popular wireless routers. If a network owner hasn't taken the time to change the default name, that's a good clue that they probably won't have a password either. You should also look for signs of hacker culture. Since hackers love giving away Net access, an all-lowercase name like "hackdojo" is most likely an invitation to log on. On the other hand, a name in all caps is typically a network under corporate lockdown.

If you do get prompted for a password, try "public"—that's the default on many of Apple's AirPort units. You can also try common passwords like "admin," "password," and "1234"—or just check out this exhaustive list of default passwords. You should also try using the name of the network in the password space. A generic password could mean that the network's owner didn't have the sense to pick something less obvious or that they've decided to welcome outsiders. But who cares? You're in. And again, there's no specific law barring you from guessing the password, as long as you don't crack an encrypted network and read other people's transmissions.

You can tell that you've successfully joined a wireless network when your laptop's IP address changes as it's assigned a local number by the network's router. To watch it happen on a PC, keep the Network control panel in Windows open; if you have an Apple notebook, look at the Network section of the System Preferences program. (And if you're running Linux, I don't need to tell you where to look.) Once your laptop has an IP address, your next hurdle is getting DNS to work. DNS stands for Domain Name Service—it's what translates Internet domains like "slate.com" into IP addresses like 207.46.141.216. On most networks, DNS works automatically. But if you get a browser error like "Cannot find server," go back to your network menus and configure your laptop to use a public name server—144.162.120.230 in Dallas, for instance.

Once DNS is working, you should be good to go. While you should be able to surf the Web with no problems, you may have trouble sending mail from Outlook or other desktop programs because of restrictions on e-mail routing that have been set up to stop spammers. If you have problems, just use a Web-based mail service like Hotmail or Gmail instead.

Keep in mind that the neighbors may not be thrilled that you're sharing the line. One guy next door to my new building shut off his network the day after I moved in, probably because he got spooked by all those blinking LEDs on his router. Even neighbors who are happy to share may see you in a different light if they check their router's URL logs and find a few hundred hits on porn sites. While your browsing will show up under an anonymous address, the short range of Wi-Fi means that they'll at least be able to figure out that one of the laptop owners within 100 feet of their living room is a stuffed animal fetishist. (As a San Franciscan, I need to point out that a stuffed animal fetish is perfectly normal. It's your neighbors who have the problem.)

Since everyone isn't as eager to share their network as I am, it's only fair to explain that there's an incredibly easy way to keep neighbors and drive-by geeks off your network. All you have to do is set a password that isn't as obvious as "1234." There's an eye-glazing list of Wi-Fi security measures you can implement to block overachieving Russian teens from monitoring your keystrokes, but in real life the only people sniffing your wireless signal are jerks like me who need a place to log on until the phone company wires the apartment. An unguessable password sends as clear a message as a shot of Mace: Go find a Starbucks, creep.

Clarification, Nov. 22, 2004: There are some laws that could be used to charge you with unauthorized computer use, but my legal sources say that because there are so many networks left open to the public on purpose, it would be tough for an individual to make the legal case that their intent was to keep everyone off their network if it's not password-protected. If you stick to surfing the Web and not other people's PCs, you'll probably be safe from prosecution.

Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2109941/

A Review Of Desktop Search Programs

2005-01-05T13:08:00.000-05:00

Now it's possible to find those lost files, tunes, emails etc. The reviewer gave the highest marks to Copernic.

Keeper Finders
Five new programs that let you search your hard drive without having a seizure.
By Paul Boutin

I can find anything online in under a minute, but it takes me days to find an e-mail address on my PC. Lucky for me, the leading Web search companies are falling all over themselves to create free programs that dig through your hard drive. Google, Ask Jeeves, HotBot, and MSN have all released desktop search programs in the past few months. (Slate and MSN are both owned by Microsoft.) AOL's application, which is based on software from a company called Copernic, is now in customer trials, and Yahoo will join the fray early in 2005.

Desktop search applications work a lot like the search function that's already built into the Windows Start Menu, but they're much quicker. They're also smarter about sifting through your e-mail, music files, browser history, and other special data formats. You probably won't find all the Steely Dan songs in your iTunes library or every PDF with the phrase "owner's manual" using the Windows search. If you use the right desktop search application, it's a snap.

How's it possible to make searching through files on your desktop as painless as finding results on the Web? Memorize the contents of the hard drive in advance. In simplest terms, a desktop search program works by pre-scanning files on your computer—e-mail messages, Web pages in your browser's cache, spreadsheets, etc.—and compiling a list of the words and phrases it finds. (Depending on the program, the initial indexing process can sideline your computer for anywhere from 10 minutes to a couple of hours.) This index of your hard disk's contents gets stored as a compact file or folder that's optimized for fast access. When you punch in a term like "invoice," you'll get results in a fraction of a second because the program already knows every file to look in.

Since running more than one of these programs at once will slow your computer to a crawl, I installed each of the five applications separately and then went hunting for representative data: e-mail messages and attachments, phone numbers, instant messages, PowerPoint presentations, MP3s, photos, PDF and PostScript files, Web pages, and Word and Quark files. Speed and accuracy weren't an issue for any of these programs even on a minimally equipped PC, so I evaluated each program based on the following criteria:

Interface: Is it a stand-alone application, a browser-based tool, or does it just add search bars to your screen? Since different users prefer different approaches, what matters most is how well the chosen interface works.

What can it search? Every program I tested does full-text searches of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files and e-mail. Most of them search music, image, and video files, as well as Web bookmarks. But if you want to look through e-mail attachments, instant messages, your browser history, and non-Microsoft-Office files—or if you use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer—the field narrows quickly.

Best feature(s): What distinguishes the program from the rest of the pack?

Worst feature(s): What's the most frustrating thing about the program?

The results, from worst to best:

Ask Jeeves

Interface: A stand-alone application with a simple layout that doesn't flicker or reshuffle. Compared to its competitors, Jeeves is easy to understand and relaxing to use.

What can it search? Not enough. Jeeves does full-text searches of Microsoft Office files, Outlook messages, and multimedia files but doesn't search browser cache, instant messages, Outlook Express e-mail, or Outlook mail attachments. Even worse, it doesn't let you work around its limitations by adding new file types or folders manually. Jeeves also thumbs its nose at customization, limiting users to two indexing options: You can scan either the My Documents and Desktop folders or the entire disk, nothing in between.

Best features: Listing search results in tabbed categories like "Pictures," "Office Documents," and "Internet Bookmarks" makes it easy to eyeball what kind of files you've found. A preview pane also shows you the first few lines from Word files and a few other types, so you needn't waste time opening them.

Worst feature: Can't add new file types.

Grade: D. Although it's easy to use, Ask Jeeves won't let you search as many files as the competition. The best thing I can say about Jeeves is that adding file types is easier than what they've already accomplished—building a great user interface. Jeeves will become a front-runner if it adds more data types in the near future, but for now it misses too much stuff you'll want to search.

HotBot

Interface: An Internet Explorer add-in along the lines of the Google toolbar. When you type in a search term, the results are displayed in a sidebar that slides in from the left edge of the browser.

What does it search? HotBot won't index image, music, and movie files or e-mail attachments. On the plus side, it does full-text searches of PDF files, RSS feeds, and the Internet Explorer history and joins MSN as the only program to index Outlook calendar entries, events, and notes. HotBot also lets you add oddball and custom file types—pretty much anything other than .JPG, .GIF, .MP3, or .MOV. You can also specify which folders on your disk to index or to ignore.

Best feature: You can choose separate indexing schedules for e-mail, RSS feeds, Web history, and anything else to minimize the amount of time HotBot spends crawling over your hard disk.

Worst feature: Too many important files—e-mail attachments, pictures, movies, music—aren't searchable, even by file name.

Grade: C. The HotBot Desktop is the only entry other than Copernic that doesn't call itself an unfinished "beta" release, but it still feels like a work in progress. It gets a low grade because it doesn't index attachments or music files and is full of little annoyances like a restriction on scheduling the e-mail index to update more than once an hour. HotBot developers say these restrictions were necessary to minimize the program's processor and disk space usage. I would have preferred to make those decisions myself.

Google

Interface: Browser-based search and results pages that look like the Google Web site you know and love.

What can it search? Google can index your AOL Instant Messenger sessions as you type, so you can search them later without having to save each one to a file manually. It also reads your browser cache (if you use Internet Explorer), Outlook attachments, and Outlook Express e-mail. It won't search Outlook Express attachments or contacts, PDF file contents, or, surprisingly, your Gmail account.

Best features: Desktop search results can be included at the top of Google Web searches just like headlines from Google News. Browser history results include Web page thumbnails. Privacy lovers can exclude specific folders and remove individual results from the index. And unlike the competition, store and search Web history pages from the secure servers used for online banking and e-commerce transactions.

Worst features: There's no way to manually add folders to be indexed. It appears that Google restricts searches to your personal folders.

Grade: C+. Google's desktop program has been plagued by questions about security problems that could let remote hackers search your PC. But the real problem here is that you can't search your entire PC. The program not only restricts searches to a preset list of folders, but it also won't match partial filenames. Google's desktop search is perhaps the least geek-friendly of the bunch, save Ask Jeeves. It doesn't have any of the special search syntax ("paul NOT boutin") or smart results sorting that Google's Web search is known for. If your photos have names like paul001.jpg, paul023.jpg, searching for "paul" or "paul*" won't turn up anything. If you don't know a wayward file's exact name, or if it's hiding in some backwater of your disk, you're simply out of luck.

MSN

Interface: Adds search boxes to the Windows taskbar, Internet Explorer, and Outlook. Searches from the taskbar pop up a special window; searches from IE and Outlook show up inside the application window.

What can it search? Outlook calendar, events, and notes, Microsoft OneNote files, MSN chats, and Hotmail accounts (via Outlook Express). Oddly, it won't search your Internet Explorer history.

Best features: The taskbar search box shows results while you're still typing, with impressive speed. Command-line fans can use advanced query syntax such as "author:Josh OR author:Mark" to refine searches.

Worst feature: MSN doesn't let you add new file types like PostScript or Quark files.

Grade: B. If Outlook is your life, this is your search tool. While the number and variety of windows almost sent me crying for Ask Jeeves, MSN's search finds much more data than most everyone else. The multiple search bars and results screens it adds to your desktop and applications can be annoying, but it's not that hard to turn off the ones you don't like. MSN would probably get an A if it searched more stuff.

Copernic

Interface: A standalone application that also adds a search box to the Windows taskbar. It looks similar to Ask Jeeves but doesn't have the handy tabbed results summary at the top of the screen, nor will it let you search every data type at once. The preview pane displays a wide range of file types and will automatically scroll to and highlight the location of your search terms within a file or message.

What can it search? Any file type you add using its Advanced Options settings, in any folder you want. It's also the only program that will search Firefox browser histories and bookmarks, not just Internet Explorer.

Best features: You can add extra file types and folders to the index without any of the other programs' restrictions. The search box supports Boolean phrases ("Slate NOT Webhead"), and its graphical interface has options to refine results, such as e-mail headers ("From: Josh, Subject: deadline") or date ranges ("from July 29 to November 2, 2004"). Much of the index can be updated in real time as files are changed and new messages arrive, rather than at scheduled intervals.

Worst feature: You have to click through each category of results ("Emails," "Bookmarks," "History") separately, rather than being able to see all of them at once. If it only listed the number of results for each category, like Ask Jeeves and Google, you'd instantly know which categories to bother clicking on.

Grade: A. Copernic has almost as many configuration options as the rest put together but lacks some of the best features of the lesser tools: Jeeves' all-categories-at-once search and tabbed results, Google's live AIM indexing and Web page thumbnails, MSN's advanced search syntax and index of Outlook info, and HotBot's RSS search. Still, Copernic finds more than any other desktop search and gives you control over how it indexes your computer. Search Engine Watch has confirmed that AOL's still-under-wraps desktop search is "powered by Copernic," but you can download Copernic for free right now without joining AOL. At the price, it's one heck of a deal.

Paul Boutin is a Silicon Valley writer who spent 15 years as a software engineer and manager.

Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2111643/

Links

Copernic
Google Desktop Search
MSN Desktop Search
HotBot Desktop Search
Ask Jeeves Desktop Search

Tools To Make Your Hard Drive Forget It's past

2005-01-01T21:02:00.000-05:00

Text of New York Times Article

December 30, 2004

Tools to Make Your Hard Drive Forget Its Past

By RACHEL DODES

ou, too, can erase your hard drive. Here's what you will need:

PAPER AND PEN Make a list of all hardware components, software registration codes, and tech support phone numbers for your Internet service provider and computer maker, just in case you encounter problems when you rebuild your system.

SOFTWARE DISCS If you do not have the original discs for all of your software, make sure you burn copies for reinstallation later. If you do not have the Windows installation discs that came with your computer, you will have to buy them ($300 for the full Windows XP program; $80 for an update) or contact the computer maker to get new ones; sometimes there is a fee.

STORAGE DISCS Writeable DVD's, CD's or any other form of storage media can be used to create a second backup of your files. If you are using DVD's, make sure that the format (DVD+R or DVD-R) is compatible with your own burner or the system on which you will be doing the burning.

CD OR DVD BURNER Use this to back up everything onto a disc. Zip drives will also work, but because of Zip discs' smaller storage capacity (250 megabytes), it will take much longer to save an extensive music collection.

EXTERNAL STORAGE UNIT If you will be using a second PC to burn backup discs of your files, an external storage unit can be an intermediary. Either a keychain drive or an MP3 player will do. (If you are on a network this is unnecessary - just save your files to a networked folder.) BACKUP PROGRAM After you rebuild your system, use a backup program. Norton Ghost ($70) features scheduled incremental hard-drive backups so you can restore to an earlier point if it gets re-infected. I.B.M. users have the luxury of Rapid Restore, which does the same thing. (If you have an older I.B.M. model, you can download this free at www.pc.ibm.com/us/think/thinkvantagetech.html).

SECURITY SOFTWARE Lead a virtuous virtual life: make sure that when you get back online, you are operating with a firewall and updated anti-virus software, or this whole effort will be in vain. Personal security packages, which include anti-virus and a firewall, generally cost $70 to $100. Brands include Zone Alarm (www.zonelabs.com), Norton (www.symantec.com) and McAfee (www.mcafee.com). An external router is also recommended, especially if you are conducting any business transactions on your PC; good ones cost less than $100.

A SHOULDER TO CRY ON A tech-savvy friend is an invaluable resource should anything go dreadfully awry. Rachel Dodes

Another Firefox Rave

2004-12-31T01:20:00.000-05:00

Walter Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal tends to limit his recommendations to mainstream products. But Walt breaks out and highly endorses the upstart Firefox web browser over Microsft's Internet Explorer.

PERSONAL TECHNOLOGY
By WALTER S. MOSSBERG
December 30, 2004

Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser is one of the most important, and most often used, programs on the world's personal computers, relied upon by more than 90% of Windows users. But Microsoft hasn't made any important functional improvements in Internet Explorer for years.

The software giant has folded IE into the Windows operating system, and the browser only receives updates as part of the "Windows update" process. In recent years, most upgrades to IE have been under-the-hood patches to plug the many security holes that have made IE a major conduit for hackers, virus writers and spyware purveyors. The only visible feature added to IE recently: a pop-up ad blocker, which arrived long after other browsers had one.

Meanwhile, other people have been building much better browsers, just as Microsoft itself did in the 1990s, when it challenged and eventually bested the then-dominant browser, Netscape Navigator. The most significant of these challengers is Firefox, a free product of an open-source organization called Mozilla, available for download at www.mozilla.org1. Firefox is both more secure and more modern than IE, and it comes packed with user-friendly features the Microsoft browser can't touch.

Firefox still has a tiny market share. But millions of people have downloaded it recently. I've been using it for months, and I recommended back in September that users switch to it from IE as a security measure. It's available in nearly identical versions for Windows, the Apple Macintosh, and the Linux operating system.

There are some other browsers that put IE to shame. Apple's elegant Safari browser, included free on every Mac, is one. But it isn't available for Windows. The Opera browser is loaded with bells and whistles, but I find it pretty complicated. And NetCaptor, my former favorite, is very nice. But since it's based on the IE Web-browsing engine, it's vulnerable to most of IE's security problems.

Firefox, which uses a different underlying browsing engine called "Gecko," also has a couple of close cousins based on the same engine. One is Netscape, now owned by America Online. The other is a browser called Mozilla, from the same group that created Firefox. But Firefox is smaller, sleeker and newer than either of its relatives, although a new Netscape version is in the works.

Firefox isn't totally secure -- no browser can be, especially if it runs on Windows, which has major security problems and is the world's top digital target. But Firefox has better security and privacy than IE. One big reason is that it won't run programs called "ActiveX controls," a Microsoft technology used in IE. These programs are used for many good things, but they have become such powerful tools for criminals and hackers that their potential for harm outweighs their benefits.

Firefox also has easier, quicker and clearer methods than IE does for covering your online tracks, if you so choose. And it has a better built-in pop-up ad blocker than IE.

But my favorite aspect of Firefox is tabbed browsing, a Web-surfing revolution that is shared by all the major new browsers but is absent from IE. With tabbed browsing, you can open many Web pages at once in the same browser window. Each is accessed by a tab.

The benefits of tabbed browsing hit home when you create folders of related bookmarks. For instance, on my computer I have a folder of a dozen technology-news bookmarks and another 20 or so bookmarks pointing to political Web sites. A third folder contains 15 or so bookmarks for sites devoted to the World Champion Boston Red Sox. With one click, I can open the entire contents of these folders in tabs, in the same single window, allowing me to survey entire fields of interest.

And Firefox can recognize and use Web sites that employ a new technology called "RSS" to create and update summaries of their contents. When Firefox encounters an RSS site, it displays a special icon that allows you to create a "live" bookmark to the site. These bookmarks then display updated headlines of stories on the sites.

Firefox also includes a permanent, handy search box that can be used to type in searches on Google, Yahoo, Amazon or other search sites without installing a special toolbar.

And it has a cool feature called "Extensions." These are small add-on modules, easy to download and install, that give the browser new features. Among the extensions I use are one that automatically fills out forms and another that tests the speed of my Web connection. You can also download "themes," which change the browser's looks.

There is only one significant downside to Firefox. Some Web sites, especially financial ones, have chosen to tailor themselves specifically for Internet Explorer. They rely on features only present in IE, and either won't work or work poorly in Firefox and other browsers.

Luckily, even if you switch to Firefox, you can still keep IE around to view just these incompatible sites. (In fact, Microsoft makes it impossible to fully uninstall IE.) There's even an extension for Firefox that adds an option called "View This Page in IE."

So Firefox is my current choice of a Windows Web browser. It is to IE in 2004 what IE was to Netscape in 1996 -- the upstart that does a better job.

How Fast Is Your Internet Connection?

2004-12-30T19:25:00.000-05:00

See if you are getting the connection speed that your Internet Service Provider promised. I really like the University of Michigan Speedtest. More tests casn also be found at Broadband Reports.

An Account of Spyware Removal

2004-12-30T01:36:00.000-05:00

This is how one woman solved her spyware problem...she did a clean reinstall of Windows XP. A lighthearted account of this (sometimes necessary) process.

December 30, 2004

Terminating Spyware With Extreme Prejudice

By RACHEL DODES

HE end of the year is a time when people sit down, rethink their priorities and sometimes change their ways. Some quit smoking. Others join a gym. I chose to erase my hard drive and reinstall my operating system.

Sure, it was a drastic move, but my two-year-old I.B.M. ThinkPad - equipped with a 1,000-megahertz Pentium III processor, a high-speed Internet connection and 256 megabytes of memory - was running about as fast as the Apple IIE I used in the mid-80's.

After six months engaged in mortal combat with spyware - parasitic software that tracks your browsing habits, sends out pop-up ads and can even send your private information to an organized crime ring in Guam - I had two options: shell out $1,200 for a new ThinkPad, or wipe my hard drive and start from scratch - a huge production with potentially cataclysmic results.

Since I enjoy new challenges (and more important, since I lack the funds to buy a new laptop), I decided to shoot for the moon and delete, delete, delete.

It did not have to be this way. I can trace the decline of my computer's performance to an ill-advised download over the summer. In a pop-music-induced frenzy, I am embarrassed to admit, I went to www.kazaa.com, downloaded and installed the free file-sharing service, then proceeded to download (a k a steal) Britney Spears's and Madonna's collaborative effort, "Me Against the Music."

I was about to get my karmic retribution.

In downloading Kazaa, I had inadvertently opened the floodgates to all manner of spyware. By the end of the summer, even after I had deleted Kazaa and installed Norton AntiVirus 2004 - which took care of the virus-related part of the problem - I was unable to open Internet Explorer without being deluged with pop-ups enticing me to buy everything from herbal weight-loss pills to obscure business publications.

My home page would mysteriously try to redirect itself to a site called badgurl.grandstreetinteractive.com. Little gray dialog boxes would pop up in the center of my screen to inform me, shockingly, that my computer might be infected with spyware. Then it would crash.

Spyware is "definitely the most annoying problem," said Tim Lordan, staff director of the nonprofit Internet Education Foundation, which joined with Dell Computer this year to mount a spyware awareness campaign (www.getnetwise.com). Spyware is also ubiquitous: in October, a study by America Online and the nonprofit National Cyber Security Alliance found that 80 percent of computers were infected with it.

As my frustration mounted, I sought the advice of fellow spyware sufferers. My friend Jesse, a lawyer at a large New York firm, told me he was forced to wipe his hard drive when his Dell Latitude laptop transmogrified into a purveyor of pornography advertisements. He sheepishly confessed that against his better judgment, he had downloaded a virus- and spyware-addled copy of the Paris Hilton sex video.

"I contracted a sexually transmitted computer virus from Paris Hilton," said Jesse, who requested that his last name not be printed. (He feared his law firm - and his wife - would not be too happy about the download.) "It was chronic."

Downloading dubious files is a surefire way to get spyware, but it can also be transmitted through seemingly innocuous e-mail, by clicking on a banner ad, or from wholesome Web surfing. The programs install themselves in several places on your computer, making it difficult to find and delete them.

What's worse, even if you do delete them, many are programmed to reinstall themselves automatically when the computer is rebooted.

What really distinguishes spyware from other computer security threats (viruses, worms and Trojans) is that it often seems to defy the products meant to exorcise it. McAfee introduced an anti-spyware program - aptly called McAfee AntiSpyware - in February, but it has met with mixed reviews.

Symantec, the maker of Norton security software, will release its first anti-spyware product early in the new year. (Norton AntiVirus can detect some forms of spyware, but cannot get rid of it.) Microsoft also announced that it would release new anti-spyware software by the end of January.

For now, though, computing experts recommend what they call a "multilayered approach" - translation: ad hoc, complicated and largely ineffective.

I tried everything the experts suggested. I switched my default browser from Internet Explorer - the target of most spyware programmers - to Mozilla Firefox (available free at www.mozilla.org) and downloaded and ran free expert-sanctioned software with all sorts of renegade names (CWShredder, Spyware Search & Destroy, AdAware and HijackThis).

I submitted my "HijackThis log" - a three-page list of potentially dubious files - to a reputable online help forum and, following the experts' advice, manually performed a perilous bit of surgery on my computer's vital organs, deleting several keys from its Windows registry.

The pop-ups continued unabated. A Norton AntiVirus scan informed me that despite my efforts, 77 spyware programs were still lurking on my hard drive. (Before this daylong production, I had more than 100 pieces of spyware on my computer, so indeed, it was an improvement.)

Erasing my hard drive, long considered a last-ditch measure, was becoming more and more appealing with each passing virus scan. My friend the bankruptcy lawyer finally convinced me: "The catharsis cannot be understated."

He recommended I talk to his friend Larry Wagner, an independent technology consultant who has become a self-styled sherpa in hard-drive erasure. At last count, he had helped six other people (including his in-laws, his parents, a colleague from work and my friend) deal with spyware problems. Mr. Wagner is particularly enthusiastic about deleting - and upon hearing my sordid tale, requested that I wipe my hard drive under his auspices.

"It's like a baptism for your computer," Mr. Wagner said. "You cannot truly live a good life until you've taken that first step."

I arrived at Mr. Wagner's Upper West Side apartment on a December evening with my laptop, a list of my computer's components, my original Windows XP Pro installation discs, a 20-gigabyte iPod and a bottle of Cabernet.

It is important to note that some computers, including my own, contain a hidden, manufacturer-installed hard drive "partition," which houses operating system software that can be deployed in an emergency. But since not all computers have this feature, I chose to use the XP installation disks instead. (Some people will want to upgrade their operating system in the process - from Windows 2000 to Windows XP, for example - which requires installation disks anyway.)

The first thing Mr. Wagner and I did, since my computer lacked a CD or DVD burner, was to save everything to an external hard drive. (You can buy a plug-and-play keychain drive for $20 to $250, depending on how much storage you want, but an MP3 player also doubles as a nice portable hard drive.) I decided to use my iPod, which was only half full.

I simply plugged it into my laptop (it shows up as an "E" drive under My Computer), and copied onto it all of the files contained in My Documents, My Pictures and My Music. I then transferred the contents of my iPod to Mr. Wagner's desktop, on which we created a folder called Backup. The process took about 90 minutes.

Then, using Mr. Wagner's DVD burner, I saved the entire Backup folder onto a five-gigabyte DVD. (If you are not so lucky as to know someone with a DVD burner, you can do the same thing using a regular CD burner and several CD's, which typically hold about 700 megabytes each, or many, many Zip disks, which hold 250 megabytes each.) I could have simply kept my files on the iPod or another external hard drive and transferred them back to my pristine hard drive after the procedure was over, but it would have been riskier, and I would have ended up with no backup discs.

Now I had a backup of everything. Make that two: Mr. Wagner believes in what he refers to as "Noah's archiving," saving two copies of everything, just in case.

Then I took a deep breath, toasted the New Year, and inserted the XP Pro CD-ROM installation disks into my own computer. My computer asked me if I wanted to reformat my hard drive (yes), and warned me that if I continued all files would be deleted (good). It took about an hour for XP to reformat my hard drive and install itself, and I just sat back and watched while the screens became progressively more colorful.

When my computer rebooted, it had total amnesia. It was like the Kate Winslet character in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," who has brain surgery to erase the memories of a painful relationship. My computer asked me to enter my time zone, country and type of Internet connection I would be using (LAN, dialup, etc.). It thanked me for buying an I.B.M. and asked if I wanted to register my product. (I said I would do it later.)

Now that I had a clean slate, I went online and downloaded all of the XP patches and updates from Microsoft's Web site (windowsupdate.microsoft.com). I made sure I connected to the Internet using an external router with a built-in firewall - after all this, I did not want spyware to sully my pristine hard drive.

I plugged my computer into Mr. Wagner's network, and downloaded all of the necessary Microsoft updates, including Service Pack 2, and restarted my computer. This step took about 40 minutes. Now it was 12:30 a.m., so I thanked Mr. Wagner for his help and went home.

The following morning, I was ready to reinstall all of my software. In keeping with the hypervigilant theme, I started with Norton AntiVirus. After installing it, restarting, and scanning my computer, I was elated to discover I had a clean bill of health. Not a rogue program in sight!

Emboldened by this development, I reinstalled all of my programs - Microsoft Office, iTunes, FinalDraft - and all of my external components, like my printer, camera, CD burner and iPod. Fortunately, I had all of my software discs and their necessary registration codes in a file cabinet next to my desk. The drivers for the external components were not even needed because XP can recognize just about anything and procure the necessary driver online.

The software installations took about eight hours over the course of two days, and involved downloading certain things, like Adobe Reader and Mozilla Firefox, from the Web. Between each installation, I restarted my computer, which made this process annoying and time-consuming. (For those who have tons of software, the prospect of reinstalling everything might be worse than the idea of peacefully coexisting with spyware.)

Finally, it was time to upload all of my saved files. I plugged in my iPod, and just for good measure, deleted "Me Against the Music" from my music library before putting my songs back on iTunes. After all, it's almost 2005, and I did not want any ill-gotten gains to taint my perfect computer.

Two weeks later, still no spyware. Yes, it was a huge production, but after struggling with spyware for the last six months, I have to say it was well worth it.

Amazon Customer Support Telephone Number

2004-12-29T19:47:00.000-05:00

Amazon.com refuses to put it's customer support telephone number on it's website. This link contains the number.

Tom's Hardware 2004 Guide to DVD Burners

2004-12-28T13:25:00.000-05:00

Tom's Hardware Guide ...2004 Holiday

Clean Software

2004-12-27T11:09:00.000-05:00

This site hosts links to many categories of no cost software that are supposedly free of adware, spyware etc. Cleansoftware.org

DVD Player / Recorder Buying Gude

2004-12-20T14:59:00.000-05:00

Tech Buying Guide: DVD Players and Recorders
Washington Post
Tuesday, December 7, 2004; 3:31 PM

DVD players: Buying a DVD player shouldn't be a problem these days, but understanding all the features crammed into it may be.

Almost all the under-$100 models you'll see in stores pack in former top-of-the-line extras such as progressive-scan output -- plug the player into a high-definition television with the right cables and you'll get a notably sharper picture -- and MP3 compatibility, meaning they can play MP3 files that you've burned to CD with a computer (many DVD players also support Microsoft's Windows Media Audio format). Photo support is almost as widespread; look for a "JPEG" label on the front, short for the Joint Photographic Experts Group standard that defines digital pictures, and you'll know that the player will display photo files on data CDs—handy for the next time you want to show off vacation pictures to friends.

If you're an audiophile or suspect you might become one, look for three different higher-fi standards. HDCD (High Definition Compact Disc) support brings out some extra details in compatible CDs. SACD (Super Audio Compact Disc) is a would-be-successor to the CD format; if you've bought a remastered Rolling Stones album lately, you already own an SACD (those discs include an SACD layer and a regular CD layer for existing players). Last, and least relevant, there's DVD-Audio, which allegedly offers the same ultra-high-fidelity sound as SACD, but which has had a slower start. (Both SACD and DVD-Audio have gone approximately nowhere in the non-audiophile market, which is why these details aren't worth losing sleep over.)

DVD recorders: Some DVD players can also record. This year, prices of DVD recorders plummeted through the $300 barrier, but this particular market remains in the grip of one of the most senseless format wars ever. There are still three largely incompatible rewriteable formats around: DVD-RW, DVD-RAM and DVD+RW.

I'm puzzled as to why. Two of the three formats suffer major defects: DVD-RAM offers the most flexible recording options (almost like a disc-based version of TiVo), but can't be played on almost all existing DVD players, while DVD-RW doesn't allow easy editing or erasing of discs (unless you select a special recording mode that makes them about as unplayable on older DVD hardware as DVD-RAM). DVD+RW isn't perfect, but it does let you erase one recording among others on a disc without wiping the entire disc, and it should work in almost all DVD players made since 2000 or so. (If you don't need to re-record on a disc, there are only two standards to choose from; both DVD-R and DVD+R should work quite well.)

Bonus features to look for on a DVD recorder: A hard disk drive for short-term time-shifting, and an "IR blaster" that mimics the remote control units for your cable and satellite boxes, allowing you to program recordings.

Another Guide To Safer Computing

2004-12-19T01:23:00.000-05:00

New Computer? Six Steps to Safer Surfing

By Rob Pegoraro
Washington Post
Sunday, December 19, 2004;

To see the e-mail I get every day from readers about security issues is to develop a deep discomfort with the state of computing today. Keeping a Windows PC safe can demand a high degree of vigilance -- if cars needed the same constant care and feeding, the Beltway would revert to a country byway.

And yet all these attacks by viruses, worms, spyware and browser hijackers could have been prevented with some initial effort. It's completely feasible to put a computer on the Internet -- even one running Windows, the most attacked, least secure operating system around -- and never suffer a single successful attack.

Here's what to do to make that possible, starting -- as many people will this week -- when you take it out of the box and plug it in. Most of these steps apply only to Windows, but some pertain to Mac OS X as well.

Step one is to barricade your Internet connection with a firewall. Without this, network worms such as Blaster can try to sneak onto your computer the instant it goes online, even if you don't run a single Internet program.

On any Windows XP machine running Microsoft's Service Pack 2 update, a firewall should be on already. (If a new Windows computer doesn't have SP2, as evidenced by a Security Center control panel, take it back to the store -- there's no excuse for that not to be preinstalled.) On an older Windows machine, open the Network Connections control panel, right-click the icon for your connection, click the Advanced tab and click the checkbox under Internet Connection Firewall.

On a Mac, the built-in firewall must be switched on: Open the System Preferences window, select the Sharing category and then click the Firewall tab.

Step two is to download and install every security patch available. Don't do anything else online until the process concludes. In Windows, select Windows Update from the Start Menu's All Programs listing; in Mac OS X, select Software Update from the Apple-icon menu. Then set your computer to download future fixes automatically (you should need to do this only in pre-SP2 versions of Windows XP, where you'd open the System control panel and click the Automatic Updates tab).

The next three steps apply only to Windows; Mac users can skip ahead.

Step three is to activate and update the antivirus software on your computer. Most new PCs include only 90 days of updates, after which your protection will evaporate -- without a rap sheet on the latest viruses, your antivirus software can't identify them. Find out when your free coverage will end, then make a note in your calendar to renew your subscription before then. (If paying $20 or so for a year of virus protection bugs you, try repairing an infection.)

Step four is to update three core Internet programs, since older versions can suffer from security flaws. Get the latest versions of Microsoft's Windows Media Player (www.microsoft.com/windowsmedia/), RealNetworks' RealPlayer (www.real.com) and Sun Microsystems' Java software (www.java.com).

Step five is a big one: Download the free Mozilla Firefox Web browser (www.mozilla.org) and use that instead of Microsoft's Internet Explorer whenever possible. Firefox is not only simpler and more convenient than Internet Explorer, it's also much more secure -- since it's not hooked so tightly into Windows, it can't act as a transmission belt for viruses. And by not running Microsoft's ActiveX software, Firefox blocks a common route for spyware.

One thing you don't need to worry about on the Web -- contrary to what some security programs suggest -- is browser cookies. These small, inert text files are placed on your computer by most Web sites to customize your use of them; for example, The Post's site uses cookies to store registration info. These site-specific cookies are harmless.

Other, "third-party" cookies are set by ad networks to track ad viewership across multiple sites. They also pose no security threat. They do raise some privacy issues, but they can be easily blocked by any new browser without impeding your Web use. In either case, fretting over the nonexistent threat of cookies is a pointless distraction.

The sixth and last step is to use the most effective security mechanism ever invented, the human brain. In two words, be skeptical. Don't open unexpected e-mail attachments -- even if they come from a friend's e-mail address, since viruses scour infected PCs for e-mail addresses to impersonate. If you get an e-mail allegedly from your bank, ignore any links in it; log in by typing the bank's address into your browser yourself.

Most important, think twice about adding new, unknown software. What makes a program trustworthy? If a computer-savvy friend or a trusted publication says it's safe, that helps. If the program is available as "open source," meaning its programming code is free for anyone to inspect, that's another selling point.

If, after all these precautions, a malicious program does find its way onto your computer, Windows users can try using the System Restore utility to reset the computer to an older configuration (go to the Start Menu, select All Programs, then scroll up to the Accessories folder, then select its System Tools sub-folder). You can also limit the ability of other people to install software by giving them separate user accounts with limited access rights (select the Users system-preferences pane on a Mac, the User Accounts control panel on Windows).

But there is no replacement, on any computer, for common-sense caution, the same thing that keeps people safe in the face of far worse dangers in the real world

A Guide To Safe Computing

2004-12-15T08:50:00.000-05:00

In this CNET article Bruce Schneir provides some excellent suggestions for keeping your computer safe.

Who says safe computing must remain a pipe dream?

By Bruce Schneier

I am regularly asked what average Internet users can do to ensure their security. My first answer is usually, "Nothing--you're screwed."

But that's not true, and the reality is more complicated. You're screwed if you do nothing to protect yourself, but there are many things you can do to increase your security on the Internet.

Two years ago, I published a list of PC security recommendations. The idea was to give home users concrete actions they could take to improve security. This is an update of that list: a dozen things you can do to improve your security.

General
Turn off the computer when you're not using it, especially if you have an "always on" Internet connection.

Laptop security
Keep your laptop with you at all times when not at home; treat it as you would a wallet or purse. Regularly purge unneeded data files from your laptop. The same goes for PDAs. People tend to store more personal data--including passwords and PINs--on PDAs than they do on laptops.

Backups
Back up regularly. Back up to disk, tape or CD-ROM. There's a lot you can't defend against; a recent backup will at least let you recover from an attack. Store at least one set of backups off-site (a safe-deposit box is a good place) and at least one set on-site. Remember to destroy old backups. The best way to destroy CD-Rs is to microwave them on high for five seconds. You can also break them in half or run them through better shredders.

Operating systems
If possible, don't use Microsoft Windows. Buy a Macintosh or use Linux. If you must use Windows, set up Automatic Update so that you automatically receive security patches. And delete the files "command.com" and "cmd.exe."

Applications
Limit the number of applications on your machine. If you don't need it, don't install it. If you no longer need it, uninstall it. Look into one of the free office suites as an alternative to Microsoft Office. Regularly check for updates to the applications you use and install them. Keeping your applications patched is important, but don't lose sleep over it.

Browsing
Don't use Microsoft Internet Explorer, period. Limit use of cookies and applets to those few sites that provide services you need. Set your browser to regularly delete cookies. Don't assume a Web site is what it claims to be, unless you've typed in the URL yourself. Make sure the address bar shows the exact address, not a near-miss.

Web sites
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption does not provide any assurance that the vendor is trustworthy or that its database of customer information is secure.

Think before you do business with a Web site. Limit the financial and personal data you send to Web sites--don't give out information unless you see a value to you. If you don't want to give out personal information, lie. Opt out of marketing notices. If the Web site gives you the option of not storing your information for later use, take it. Use a credit card for online purchases, not a debit card.

Passwords
You can't memorize good enough passwords any more, so don't bother. For high-security Web sites such as banks, create long random passwords and write them down. Guard them as you would your cash: i.e., store them in your wallet, etc.

I'm suspicious to the point of near-paranoia about e-mail attachments and Web sites.

Never reuse a password for something you care about. (It's fine to have a single password for low-security sites, such as for newspaper archive access.) Assume that all PINs can be easily broken and plan accordingly.

Never type a password you care about, such as for a bank account, into a non-SSL encrypted page. If your bank makes it possible to do that, complain to them. When they tell you that it is OK, don't believe them; they're wrong.

E-mail
Turn off HTML e-mail. Don't automatically assume that any e-mail is from the "From" address.

Delete spam without reading it. Don't open messages with file attachments, unless you know what they contain; immediately delete them. Don't open cartoons, videos and similar "good for a laugh" files forwarded by your well-meaning friends; again, immediately delete them.

Never click links in e-mail unless you're sure about the e-mail; copy and paste the link into your browser instead. Don't use Outlook or Outlook Express. If you must use Microsoft Office, enable macro virus protection; in Office 2000, turn the security level to "high" and don't trust any received files unless you have to. If you're using Windows, turn off the "hide file extensions for known file types" option; it lets Trojan horses masquerade as other types of files. Uninstall the Windows Scripting Host if you can get along without it. If you can't, at least change your file associations, so that script files aren't automatically sent to the Scripting Host if you double-click them.

Antivirus and anti-spyware software
Use it--either a combined program or two separate programs. Download and install the updates, at least weekly and whenever you read about a new virus in the news. Some antivirus products automatically check for updates. Enable that feature and set it to "daily."

Firewall
Spend $50 for a Network Address Translator firewall device; it's likely to be good enough in default mode. On your laptop, use personal firewall software. If you can, hide your IP address. There's no reason to allow any incoming connections from anybody.

Encryption
Install an e-mail and file encryptor (like PGP). Encrypting all your e-mail or your entire hard drive is unrealistic, but some mail is too sensitive to send in the clear. Similarly, some files on your hard drive are too sensitive to leave unencrypted.

If the secret police wants to target your data or your communications, no countermeasure on this list will stop them.

None of the measures I've described are foolproof. If the secret police wants to target your data or your communications, no countermeasure on this list will stop them. But these precautions are all good network-hygiene measures, and they'll make you a more difficult target than the computer next door. And even if you only follow a few basic measures, you're unlikely to have any problems.

I'm stuck using Microsoft Windows and Office, but I use Opera for Web browsing and Eudora for e-mail. I use Windows Update to automatically get patches and install other patches when I hear about them. My antivirus software updates itself regularly. I keep my computer relatively clean and delete applications that I don't need. I'm diligent about backing up my data and about storing data files that are no longer needed offline.

I'm suspicious to the point of near-paranoia about e-mail attachments and Web sites. I delete cookies and spyware. I watch URLs to make sure I know where I am, and I don't trust unsolicited e-mails. I don't care about low-security passwords, but try to have good passwords for accounts that involve money. I still don't do Internet banking. I have my firewall set to deny all incoming connections. And I turn my computer off when I'm not using it.

That's basically it. Really, it's not that hard. The hardest part is developing an intuition about e-mail and Web sites. But that just takes experience.

Google Versus Microsoft

2004-11-22T02:50:00.000-05:00

Google is changing the computing paradigm. Their release of applications such as Gmail and the Google Desktop Search Tool, coupled with their purchase of companies such as Blogger and Picassa, show their intent to render the operating sytem irrelevant. The message: you can get all of your work done on any kind of PC. A Google alliance with Mozilla Firefox further erodes the erstwhile Microsoft dominance.

Associated Press
Google Muscles Into Microsoft's Turf
Monday November 22, 1:54 am ET
By Allison Linn, AP Business Writer

Google Muscles Into Microsoft's Turf, Rolling Out New Products, Including Computer Desktop

SEATTLE (AP) -- Not too long ago, Google Inc. seemed little more than a pesky insect to Microsoft Corp.'s 800-pound gorilla. No more. As Google rapidly rolls out new products, the company best known for its wildly popular search engine is muscling into the software giant's turf, including its stronghold: the computer desktop.

Analysts say Google's aggressive ambitions could pose a formidable threat to Microsoft because it gets to the heart of what drives Microsoft's dominance: its control of the user experience through the Windows operating system.

If successful, Google could help refashion computing, making people less reliant on storing information on the Microsoft-powered PC on their desk and more dependent on free Web-based e-mail and search functions that can be accessed anywhere from any device regardless of the operating system.

Under such circumstances, the risk for Microsoft is that the computer desktop as we know it could cease to exist, said David Garrity, an analyst with Caris & Co. The question, Garrity said, is whether computer buyers may one day decide that they no longer even need a Microsoft operating system.

The two companies are already battling it out on fronts including Web search, free e-mail and better ways for searching individual computers. Analysts say that's evidence Microsoft should -- and likely is -- taking Google much more seriously.

"They'd be mad not to," said Niki Scevak with Jupiter Research.

Marissa Mayer, Google's director of consumer Web products, said the company's goal is to organize information and make it universally accessible, and that goes far beyond search.

But she downplays the suggestion that Google's tools could eventually overtake Microsoft's ubiquitous software, saying the company doesn't currently have such plans but "it's hard to speculate" what the future might bring. Chief executive Eric Schmidt has, however, ruled out developing a Google browser to compete with Microsoft's dominant Internet Explorer.

The Google-Microsoft competition is good news for consumers because it means more choices and better products.

For instance, Google's expansion into e-mail already has forced Microsoft and others to dramatically increase free storage. Analysts say it's also prodding Microsoft to improve products customers have long complained about.

As it became clear that Google and other search engines were increasingly gaining control over people's time online, Microsoft's MSN online division rapidly began developing its own search technology. Microsoft had previously outsourced that job.

Web search isn't the only place where Microsoft is playing catch-up. In June, Microsoft launched an Internet browser toolbar that blocks pop-up ads and enables search, years after Google had created its own.

And after Google announced plans for Gmail, a free e-mail service touting massive amounts of memory, Microsoft said it would boost free memory on its Hotmail accounts. Adam Sohn, a director with MSN, said to expect more Hotmail improvements soon, but he wouldn't provide details.

Microsoft also has promised its own system for searching desktop computers, responding to frustrations over how difficult it is to find things like e-mails and family photos on increasingly cluttered computers. Google launched its desktop search product last month and said users should expect more improvements to that product.

Then there is ad delivery, where Microsoft recently extended through June 2006 a contract for Yahoo Inc. to place relevant ads alongside its regular search results. Ad placement alongside search results is Google's main cash cow.

David Smith, a vice president with Gartner Inc., says the chain of events illustrates that Google is proving to be customer-driven while Microsoft tends to be more driven by competitive threats.

Microsoft denies that Google has been the impetus for improvements in its products. Sohn says the company is simply responding to customer feedback. He also downplays the Google competition, saying Microsoft has always faced plenty of foes.

"There's lots of innovation and competition, and it's way bigger than just Google, who I think everybody's excited about and focused on because they're a little bit newer," Sohn said.

Google, meantime, has signaled that it will fight Microsoft's moves into its turf. The day before Microsoft launched a test version of its Web search engine, Google said it had nearly doubled the size of its search engine index. And this week, Mountain View, Calif.-based Google opened an office in Kirkland, not far from Microsoft's Redmond campus.

Mayer said the goal is to attract employees who don't want to leave their hometown.

Asked if that meant the company was recruiting Microsoft workers, she said: "Not in a specific or targeted way, but we are looking at technical workers in the Seattle area who are interested in working for Google."

Still, Scevak said it's still too early to say if Google will ultimately be able to pull off a massive shift in allegiance. While many people turn to Google for search, he says plenty of others could see no reason to leave Microsoft products, such as Hotmail -- especially if Microsoft is willing to match Google's improvements for free.

And while Google has been the first to desktop search, he says many users may still prefer to wait for Microsoft's more familiar product.

"It's a very, very early stage," Scevak said.

Browser Hijacking

2004-11-18T20:40:00.000-05:00

Surrendering your browser to a hostile program can be a drag. It is irritating, dangerous and often difficult to remedy. This article outlines some steps you can implement to prevent browser hijacking in the first place.

washingtonpost.com

For Windows Users, 'Browser Hijacking' Is Only the Latest Threat
By Rob Pegoraro

Sunday, February 29, 2004

The ongoing Internet-security freakout for anybody using Windows keeps getting worse. Every other week yet another part of the online world gets a warning label slapped on it -- downloads, e-mail attachments, instant-messaging file transfers and now Web pages themselves.
"Browser hijacking" is as bad as it gets: Like the Blaster worm, this form of trickery can take over your software silently and invisibly.
Typically, users discover what has happened only after the actual hijacking: Their Internet Explorer home page and Web searches have been switched to strange sites, a flock of pop-up windows follows them around, their lists of favorite sites have become a catalogue of porn purveyors -- and none of these changes can be undone without tedious debugging.
These attacks differ from "spyware" invasions, which can have similar effects, in that victims never took the conscious step of downloading a program and then running its installer.
In some cases, the only mistake a user made was to click an "OK" button to allow what they thought was a change in home-page settings or an addition of a Web toolbar -- not knowing that the site would do much more than that.
This can be an understandable error when you look at the ways sites attempt to fool users; the sleaziest sites won't include a "no thanks" button in their pop-up alerts and will prevent users from closing these windows. (If that happens to you, hit Ctrl-Alt-Del, select Internet Explorer from the list of active programs, and click the "End Task" button to bail out.)
Often, though, the problem can be attributed to going online with an out-of-date copy of Windows, allowing a hijacker's site to exploit old vulnerabilities to worm its way into the PC.
(I've yet to see any reports of Mac or Linux browser hijacks.)
None of this has to happen. Beyond the usual precautions of running an up-to-date antivirus utility and firewall program and regularly downloading Microsoft's critical updates (windowsupdate.microsoft.com), two of the biggest security flaws behind browser hijacking can be fixed with a pair of quick downloads.
A third can be remedied by installing a newer, better browser, and your risk drops to nearly nothing.
Step one is to stop sites from throwing pop-ups at you in the first place. Not only will this make the Web vastly more pleasant, it will eliminate the ability of a would-be hijacker to badger you until you accept a software download or home-page switch.
The easiest pop-up blocker to adopt is the free Google Toolbar (toolbar.google.com); you do, however, need to run Internet Explorer 5.5 or newer to get this feature. Or install any other browser -- IE is the only one around these days that still lets in pop-ups. (I'll get back to this in a moment.)
Step two is to update the Java software on your machine. Java lets you run entire programs in a browser window and, when done right, it's not risky. Its developer, Sun Microsystems, designed it with tight limits on what a Web-based application can and can't do. But these limits must be enforced by a "virtual machine" program that runs on your own computer, and the one Microsoft developed contained a couple of bugs that hijackers abuse.
If you've been keeping your computer's software current with Windows Update, you should have a fixed version of this Microsoft virtual machine. But the better option is to download and install Sun's own, free Java virtual machine (www.java.com), which is both safer and more up-to-date than Microsoft's aging software.
Step three is to get away from something called ActiveX. Developed by Microsoft to compete with Java, it allows a similar sort of Web interactivity, but without any of Java's fail-safe limits: An ActiveX program in a Web page can do anything that a regular Windows program could do on your hard drive.
This can have legitimate uses. For instance, Windows Update uses ActiveX to scan for out-of-date components in your copy of Windows, and an ActiveX installer makes it easier to add Sun's Java software to Internet Explorer.
But ActiveX is exceedingly dangerous overall, since it relies on users to make the right call when they are presented with a "do you trust this publisher?" alert from Internet Explorer. Once they click "yes," the ActiveX program can do whatever it wants.
Updates to IE have limited ActiveX's reach, and an upcoming "Service Pack 2" revision for Windows XP will add still more restrictions. But it's wiser to use an ActiveX-free browser for everyday Web activity, reserving Internet Explorer for Windows Update and the occasional site that, because of its authors' inattention, works only in IE.
For most people, the best IE replacement is a free copy of Mozilla (www.mozilla.org), the descendant of Netscape. If you don't mind using a preview release, however, the faster, simpler and also free Mozilla Firefox will be a better fit (www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/).
If your computer has already been infected, your antivirus program should clean it out. But you may need to resort to such specialized hijack-removal software as Hijack This! or CWShredder (both at http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/downloads.html).
Whatever software you take with you on your Internet travels, you also need to bring some common-sense skepticism. Pushy salesmanship by a strange site deserves the same reception that an aggressive telemarketer would get in the real world: "No."

New Version Of AVG Available

2004-11-16T16:17:00.000-05:00

A new and "improved" version of AVG is now available. The old version will function for two more months. Get the new free AVG here.

Firefox: Washington Post Article (11/14/04)

2004-11-16T07:09:00.000-05:00

washingtonpost.com
Firefox Leaves No Reason to Endure Internet Explorer

By Rob Pegoraro

Sunday, November 14, 2004; Page F07

Internet Explorer, you're fired.

That should have been said a long time ago. After Microsoft cemented a monopoly of the Web-browser market, it let Internet Explorer go stale, parceling out ho-hum updates that neglected vulnerabilities routinely exploited by hostile Web sites. Not until August's Windows XP Service Pack 2 update did (some) users get any real relief.

And yet people found reasons to stick with IE -- alternative browsers cost money, were too slow, too complicated, or didn't work with enough Web sites.

No more. Tuesday, the answer to IE arrived: a safe, free, fast, simple and compatible browser called Mozilla Firefox.

Firefox (available for Win 98 or newer, Mac OS X and Linux at www.mozilla.org) is an unlikely rival, developed by a small nonprofit group with extensive volunteer help. Its code dates to Netscape and its open-source successor, Mozilla, but in the two years since Firefox debuted as a minimal, browser-only offshoot of those sprawling suites, it has grown into a remarkable product.

Firefox displays an elegant simplicity within and without. Its toolbar presents only the basic browsing commands: back, forward, reload, stop, home. Its Options screen consists of five simple categories of settings -- most of which don't need adjusting, since the defaults actually make sense.

One in particular should delight many long-suffering Web users: Firefox blocks pop-up ads automatically.

But Firefox's security goes deeper than that. It doesn't support Microsoft's dangerous ActiveX software, which gives a Web site the run of your computer. It omits IE's extensive hooks into the rest of Windows, which can turn a mishap into a systemwide meltdown.

Firefox resists "phishing" scams, in which con artists lure users into entering personal info on fake Web pages, by making it easier to tell good sites from bad. When you land on an encrypted page -- almost no phishing sites provide this protection -- Firefox advertises that status by highlighting the address bar in yellow. It also lists that page's domain name on the status bar; if that doesn't match what you see in the address bar, you're probably on a phishing site.

To keep Firefox current with any security fixes, the browser is designed to check for updates automatically.

A "Find" bar at the bottom of Firefox's window lets you search for words on a page without blocking your view of the page itself; as you type a query, the first matching item is highlighted in green. "Find Next" and "Find Previous" buttons jump to other matches, and a "Highlight" button paints all of them in yellow.

For searches across the entire Web, a box at the top right provides a shortcut to Google queries, and a menu lists five other sites, including Yahoo, Amazon and eBay. Downloadable plug-ins offer access to such resources as the Internet Movie Database.

What if that Google search yields four interesting sites? Hold down the Control key as you click each link, and they will open behind separate tabs in your existing window. This tabbed browsing -- a feature shared with almost all non-IE browsers -- is far more efficient and far less cluttered than the old one-page-per-window approach.

Busy readers can also use Firefox's built-in RSS (Really Simple Syndication) newsreader to fetch updates from Web sites that publish their content using this standard. This "Live Bookmarks" feature lacks the flexibility of a stand-alone newsreader, but it's also simpler.

Web addicts can customize Firefox to no end with browser extensions that add functions and themes that alter its looks. Find the Options window's settings too limiting? Type "about: config" into the address bar and you'll see about 600 preferences to tweak.

I've used Firefox as my default browser since February, and in that time I've found few Web sites that don't look right in it. Most of the time, it's the Web site's fault: Microsoft's MSN Video blocks all non-IE browsers, while SideStep's airfare-search tool employs ActiveX (an ActiveX-free version is in the works). In these rare cases, I will fire up IE -- it's not like I can uninstall it -- or, more often, vote with my mouse and move on to another site.

Switching from IE to Firefox is nearly painless. Download a 4.7-megabyte installer, run it, and let it import your existing IE data. Your plug-ins, bookmarks, browsing history and even cookies should transfer over (IE's home page and any saved passwords should be imported, but were not in my tests); you can then pick up in Firefox exactly where you left off in IE.

I think anybody using Internet Explorer should switch to Firefox today. Seriously. Even if you've loaded every IE security update, Firefox will give you a faster, more useful view of the Web. If you haven't -- or if you use a pre-XP version of Windows ineligible for Service Pack 2's security fixes -- it would be lunacy to stick with IE.

(If you're using Mac OS X or Linux, there's no such urgency; Apple's Safari, for example, is a fine browser in its own right and offers a few conveniences that Firefox leaves out.)

Firefox's story doesn't end with this 1.0 version. Some upgrades, such as a rewrite of its awkward bookmarks-management interface, are waiting for later releases. But the beauty of an open-source product like this is that you can participate in its evolution. Firefox's code is open for anybody to inspect and improve; you can browse a database of bugs (bugzilla.mozilla.org) and vote on what you want to see changed next.

All of these advantages may still not suffice to knock off IE anytime soon. But Firefox's development won't grind to a halt if it doesn't suit some company's marketing plans. Can you say that about IE?

Living with technology, or trying to? E-mail Rob Pegoraro at rob@twp.com.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

Firefox: NY Times Article (11/15/04)

2004-11-16T07:01:00.000-05:00

The New York Times
November 15, 2004
In the Battle of the Browsers '04, Firefox Aims at Microsoft
By STEVE LOHR and JOHN MARKOFF

Does anyone remember the browser wars?

In the rapid-fire pace of the technology business, Microsoft's successful, though illegal, campaign to thwart competition in the market for Web browsing software during the 1990's seems to be ancient history.

The corporate target, Netscape Communications, is all but a memory today, a tiny unit of Time Warner. And the last thread of the epic federal antitrust suit - a case focused on the browser market - fell away last week when a longtime Microsoft foe made peace with its old adversary.

The Computer and Communications Industry Association said it would not request a Supreme Court review of the remedies against Microsoft, which it had believed to be too lenient, and instead would welcome Microsoft as a member of the trade group.

Yet a few refugees from the original Netscape and a new generation of software developers believe that browser software - the gateway to information and commerce on the Internet - still matters.

They are the ones behind the freely available, open-source Firefox browser, which was officially released last Tuesday, and they are committed to providing competition in the browser market.

"This is really about taking back the Web and not having to rely on the technology and technology standards of one company," said Brendan Eich, a former Netscape engineer who is the chief software architect of the Mozilla Foundation, the nonprofit group that has coordinated the development of Firefox.

Firefox has won praise from some Internet experts for being more innovative than Microsoft's Internet Explorer and less susceptible to malicious programs that routinely attack the Microsoft browser.

Firefox, they say, is a compact, free-standing browser designed to display Web pages rapidly while blocking pop-up ads and other unsolicited windows. Downloads of the new browser were running at the rate of a million a day last week.

Before its official release, an estimated eight million people downloaded a preview version of Firefox over the past five months.

There are other non-Microsoft browsers, like Safari from Apple Computer and Opera, created by a Norwegian company, Opera Software. But the early enthusiasm for the preview version of Firefox is a big reason that Internet Explorer's market share has slipped more than 2.5 percentage points in the last five months, to 92.9 percent at the end of October, its first decline since 1999, according to WebSideStory, a firm that tracks Web traffic.

The release of Firefox 1.0 last week could put more pressure on Microsoft. "Firefox is a real competitor," said David M. Smith, an analyst at Gartner, a research firm. "Anything that is growing is a competitor, and it is growing at Microsoft's expense."

The incipient rise of Firefox, some analysts say, points to an inherent weakness in a fundamental Microsoft business strategy: tying more and more products and features to its monopoly product, the Windows operating system. Internet Explorer is tightly bound to Windows, a move that Microsoft says improves the browser's performance.

This strategy, the analysts say, means that innovation in much of the company's software tends to move in lockstep with Windows development, and that pace has slowed as the operating system has become larger and increasingly complex.

"Microsoft has not done any fundamental innovation in the browser for years," said Michael Cusumano, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management. "It doesn't surprise me that there are openings for smaller, lighter products that are separate from the operating system like Mozilla's Firefox."

Firefox also has been given a lift by the security vulnerabilities of Internet Explorer. The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team, a group overseen by the Department of Homeland Security, took the unusual step last summer of suggesting a switch to browsers other than Internet Explorer as one way to reduce vulnerability to computer viruses.

Microsoft's strategy of tightly linking its browser to Windows, computer security experts say, does not necessarily make Internet Explorer more vulnerable. But Bruce Schneier, chief technology officer of Counterpane Internet Security, a security company, said the added complexity of that design increases the risk of security flaws.

Microsoft says it is moving ahead with browser development and has a team of more than 100 programmers working on advances to Internet Explorer. Security, company executives say, has improved considerably with the release in August with an update to Windows.

Despite its huge market share, Microsoft has ample motivation to keep enhancing Internet Explorer, they say. "Browsing the Web is a core experience," said Gary Share, a director of product management for Windows. "And if we want people to continue to use Windows, we have to make sure the browsing experience is as rich and as secure as we possibly can."

The Firefox development is being led, said Mr. Eich, 43, by a "new generation of hackers," like Ben Goodger, a 24-year-old native of New Zealand. Mr. Goodger, the lead engineer on Firefox, is one of the Mozilla Foundation's full-time staff of 12 people, working from informal offices in Mountain View, Calif.

Mr. Goodger headed a team of more than 80 mostly volunteer programmers. His motivation, he said, was mainly the engineer's satisfaction of crafting tight, coherent code that others can build on and that is easy for ordinary people to use.

"People really like using software that is polished," he said.

For Mitchell Baker, a former Netscape lawyer and president of the foundation, the warm reception for Firefox carries a measure of vindication. "The Mozilla project has been characterized by a level of relentless, dogged passion," Ms. Baker said.

"We got through the dark days when people thought we were a failure," she added, "Now I have a lot of optimism."

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Windows Service Pack 2 for XP

2004-10-20T01:02:00.000-04:00

Only computer geeks seem to know about Microsoft Service Pack2 (SP2). But this major update to the Windows XP operating system is now being distributed to PC owners via the Windows Update feature.
SP2 is a security oriented 80MB upgrade. It will prevent the automatic installation of ActiveX components (which are the leading conduits for viruses ), switch on and manage the Windows XP firewall, notify you if your antvirus software is not working, and automate the delivery of future Windows Updates. SP2 also adds a popup blocker to Internet Explorer.
Unfortunately SP2 has caused major problems on about 10% of the PC's on which it has been installed. These problems range from slowing Internet connections, hardware failures, and the disabling of some software applications.
To counter these problems, Microsoft has published a document which details the steps you should take before installing SP2. These include backing up important documents, removing spyware, and updating any existing antivirus and firewall software. Microsoft has also published a list of applications that might be impacted by SP2.
Starting in October, SP2 is being rolled out to consumers via the Windows Update. Since an 80MB upgrade would be quite onerous for dialup users, Microsoft has also made SP2 available on a free CD.
I successfully installed SP2 on a fairly new XP machine with few applications. The installation took about 75 minutes.

Your PC Just Got A New Lease On Life

2004-10-17T13:47:00.000-04:00

Processor speed used to double every 18 months. This meant that in three years your PC was effectively obsolete. However Intel has just announced that it will no longer be increasing the speed of it's CPU's. Therefore older PC's are going to be functional for a much longer time. From my own experience, any PC with a 1Ghz or faster CPU will adequately perform almost all of today's computing tasks. So enjoy your old PC... just buy as much memory as you can afford.

Dump Internet Explorer.....Switch to Firefox

2004-10-07T14:54:00.000-04:00

I switched to Firefox from Internet Explorer and I highly recommend that you switch also. Here are some reasons why I ditched IE:

Firefox offers tabbed browsing which allows me to open several different webpages with one click. It's like an Excel workbook with several tabbed worksheets that you open at will.
Firefox's built-in pop up blocker.
Firefox is smaller and more stable than IE.
Firefox opens webpages much more quickly than IE.
Firefox provides a simple way to manage or dispose of cookies.
Firefox is immune to the plethora of cyber attacks that are aimed at IE.
Firefox 's built in RSS reader updates and delivers news and blogs in real time.

Since it obliterated Netscape, Microsoft has made no attempts to improve on the functionality of IE. Download a free copy of Firefox and enjoy friendlier and more secure websurfing now.

GMail

2004-09-28T17:13:00.000-04:00

Google has done a great job with Gmail. It has a minimalist approach coupled with exquisite functionality. A spartan interface is populated with only the tools that one needs to communicate one's message.
Speaking of communication...that is the key driver of this product. The essential idea is that with Gmail you don't just send and receive emails...you have conversations. And Gmail is configured to
display and archive those discussions in a manner totally congruent with the way you work, think, and play.
Gmail is still in beta and it is being distributed by invitation only.
Read more about Gmail.

List All The Hardware And Software On Your PC

2004-09-01T10:34:00.000-04:00

Do you know what type of processor runs your PC? What video card is installed? What software is on your machine? The Belarc Advisor is a free utility that produces a detailed inventory of all the hardware and software installed on your PC. I print and keep a copy of the summary ...it is invaluable if you are dealing with customer support.

Make Free Phone Calls From Your PC

2004-08-20T17:53:00.000-04:00

For broadband users only, Skype offers free PC to PC voice communication and low cost PC to phone calling. The sound quality of Skype is exceptional. I use and highly recommend this application. Here's a New York Times article on Skype.

What's Filling Up Your Hard Drive?

2004-08-11T18:03:00.000-04:00

JDiskReport is a free tool that will identify the size and location of the files and directories on your disk drive. It presents the information in easy to follow, printable charts and tables. I run this program several times each month.

Free AntiVirus Tools

2004-08-11T02:43:00.000-04:00

Viruses, Worms, Trojans, and other nasty critters in the cybersphere, threaten to swarm all over your PC. Antivirus protection is a must and is available for free. Here is a listing of some free tools that I use.

Anti Virus Scan.... Housecall
Trojan Remover... The Cleaner (Free to use for 30 day evaluation period).
Spyware Remover... Adaware
Anti Virus program with update service.. .AVG

Free Pop Up Stopper

2004-08-11T02:15:00.000-04:00

The Google Toolbar includes a very effective pop up stopper. You can also use the toolbar to search the web, images, and news on Google.