The PC Informant » Computer management

Reviews of security suites

Vic Laurie — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 10:44:12 +0000

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 direct for 3 licenses). Don’t forget that on top of the initial price, most pay security software requires a subscription for updates after a year.

Easy way to disable the keyboard

Vic Laurie — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 10:09:30 +0000

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. It’ll let you leave your PC unattended for a few minutes without having to fear that strange things may be entered into your keyboard while you’re gone. Of course, assuming you use a USB connection, you can also just unplug the keyboard.

How to keep your battery going

Vic Laurie — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:53:49 +0000

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

Vic Laurie — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 07:00:32 +0000

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 be found here:

A rebuttal to a complaint about ad blockers

Vic Laurie — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:17:29 +0000

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 passing the blame. If you run a company, it’s your responsibility to put together a business model that works. And if people are somehow figuring out ways to do what they want where you don’t get paid, then it means you’re doing something that needs to change. A good business model is one where everyone is happy with the transaction, not one where one party feels forced or coerced into accepting something they don’t want.

Added later: Plagiarism Today has some more about ad blocking:

There are no easy answer to the ad blocking puzzle. The ethics and legality of ad blocking are going to be debated for a long time to come. Where traditional piracy fits more neatly into existing copyright law and social norms are becoming somewhat more settled, ad blocking is still relatively new and untested both in courts and in society at large.

However, as the Ars Technica ordeal illustrates, it is starting to get to a level that impacts Web sites enough to take action. It will be interesting to see if, in five years or so, if we look back on Ars Technica’s play as something of a “Napster moment” in the war against ad blocking.

What is clear is that this issue is growing in importance and it is only going to get more divisive and more heated in the future. What we saw this weekend was, almost certainly, just a mere taste of what’s to come

This issue is about to blow up and in a very big way.

Too many patches

Vic Laurie — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 09:01:08 +0000

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 false. The contrary evidence is overwhelming but the tech industry keeps hiding its head in the sand. However, at least one security company, Secunia, is pointing at one broken part of the security system- the way software patches are distributed. At Computerworld, Gregg Keizer reports:

The typical home user running Windows faces the “unreasonable” task of patching software an average of every five days, a security and vulnerability research company said today.

“It’s completely unreasonable to expect users to master so many different patch mechanisms and spend so much time patching,” said Thomas Kristensen, the chief security officer of Secunia. The result is that few consumers devote the time and attention necessary to stay atop the patching job, which leaves them open to attack.

A saga of Symantec support failure

Vic Laurie — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:19:36 +0000

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 to help them in any other available ways. Symantec responded that one particular support office had gone “rogue” and that their actions were counter to company policy.

This week, in the course of evaluating Norton AntiVirus 2010, I ran into exactly the same problem.

Rubenking then relates the saga of his experience with the online support at Symantec, where he was subjected to continual efforts to inveigle him into expensive paid support for a problem that had a free solution. Rubenking concludes:

If you’ve purchased a security suite or anti-malware tool to clean up problems on your computer, you can reasonably expect the product to do that job. If self-defending malware interferes with installation or prevents the product from running its anti-malware scan you can reasonably expect the vendor to help you with the problem. And if they just can’t get the product installed, you can reasonably expect your money back. What isn’t remotely reasonable is the idea that you should pay big bucks for the privilege of installing the program you’ve already bought.

Another list of the best free downloads and services

Vic Laurie — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:04:12 +0000

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

Vic Laurie — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 10:02:00 +0000

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 direction. Other OEMs caught on to the customer-configured Web sales model. Worse, however, was that Dell’s reputation for quality service went down the tubes. In recent years Dell has been near the bottom in customer satisfaction surveys. Dell has slipped from number one to number three in PC sales. Actually, the sales situation is worse if only consumer figures are considered. Personally, I no longer consider Dell when thinking about buying a new PC.

The stock market has not failed to notice Dell’s decline. The chart below is a five-year plot of Dell’s stock price.

Check out your CPU capabilities

Vic Laurie — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 10:13:40 +0000

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 that will tell you about the features supported by your CPU.

In addition to checking if your CPU is 64-bit and if it supports DEP, the program will tell you if hardware virtualization is supported. This might be of interest to prospective Windows 7 buyers who want to know if the virtual support for running Windows XP in Windows 7 is present.