Computer management
American Internet usage statistics
The Pew Research Center has published the latest statistics on American Internet usage. Three-quarters of adults are online with those over 65 lagging at 38%. Those without a high-school diploma also lag at 39% online. The graphic below from the Pew research project summarizes various statistics about Internet usage:
Reviews of security suites
Personally, I don’t think it’s necessary to fork out for the costs of a commercial security suite. There are some very good free alternatives, However, if you are more comfortable with the pay versions of software, Neil Rubenking has reviews of the latest at PCMag. His top choice is still Norton Internet Security 2010 ($69.99 [...]
Easy way to disable the keyboard
Do you have a cat that likes to jump on your computer keyboard? Or maybe there’s a three-year old in your house that loves to pound the keys when you’re not looking. Here is a little free application to turn the keyboard on and off. It’s called Keyboard Locker and it’s from the How-to Geek. [...]
How to keep your battery going
Batteries and more batteries. We all have an assortment of gadgets that need batteries. At the New York Times, Eric A. Taub explains some ways to help keep your batteries going.
Backups, System Restore, and System Protection in Windows 7
System Restore in Windows 7 is considerably more useful than in Windows XP. The overall service is actually called System Protection and has been extended to include backups of personal and data files. Also, the backup feature now provides for doing a disk image. I have written several articles on the details and they can [...]
A rebuttal to a complaint about ad blockers
On Monday I posted on Ars Technica’s plaint about ad blockers. At TechDirt, Mike Masnick takes a very different view and concludes:
Claiming that ad blocking is harming sites is like the recording industry claiming that piracy (or home taping) is killing music. Or it’s like the newspaper industry claiming that aggregators are killing them. It’s [...]
Too many patches
The present way of dealing with security on the Internet just doesn’t work. A major flaw is that the system is predicated on an assumption that the average PC user is savvy about how Windows and the Internet work and is conscientious about keeping his or her computer up to date. This is patently [...]
A saga of Symantec support failure
Neil Rubenking, PCMag’s security software expert, likes Symantec’s Norton anti-malware but he doesn’t think much of its tech support. He writes:
Last year I reported on a significant problem with Symantec’s tech support for their Norton products. A number of their support technicians strongly steered all customers toward Symantec’s extra-cost virus removal service rather than offering [...]
Another list of the best free downloads and services
Periodically, PC World publishes lists of the best free software and and services and there is a new one out called 112 Best Free Downloads, Sites, and Services. I pass along this link for your information but, personally, I find many of the choices to be quirky. I prefer the selections at Gizmo’s Freeware.
The decline of Dell
Dell was once the premier seller of PCs. I bought quite a few for family members. Dell’s pioneering sales model that allowed buyers to configure a system and buy it on the Web was very successful. Dell also had a good reputation for reliability and customer service. But somewhere along the way, Dell lost its [...]
Check out your CPU capabilities
Steve Gibson often comes up with free little utilities that do some useful task. With the trend to 64-bit computing, you might want to see if your CPU can handle 64-bits. Another CPU feature worth checking is to see if the security feature called hardware DEP is supported. Gibson provides a free program called SecurAble [...]
