Free Computer Consultant ………. Daily Insights

The real Federal Trade Commission is warning email users NOT to open emails that appear to be from frauddep (at) ftc.gov. These emails contain a virus that is designed to steal passwords and account numbers.

It isn’t hard to spoof, or fake, the return address of an email. This has been done before with the FBI, CIA and other .gov addresses.

As usual, don’t open suspicious emails of any kind. If the government wants to talk to you, they’ll be happy to break down your door in the middle of the night, not send you an email.

Further info is available at this government computer fraud website.

Yahoo’s Reuters article on Top 7 Office Pet Peeves (Yahoo story deleted/moved) quoted a guy commenting on this survey of top office pet peeves.

Two had to do with emailing, and as the author of an Email Etiquette eBook, I thought I would comment.

The first pet peeve was selecting “reply all” when that wasn’t needed. To me, if the email originally did need to get sent out to a group with public display of all addressees, then it would be common courtesy to reply to all IF on the same topic. The problem would arise when someone hits reply all to ask the original sender “oh, BTW, how’s your Aunt’s arthritis doing?

That’s just dumb and not thinking. Yes, and that translates into rude. But then again, that type of response shouldn’t be on the office email anyway, right?

The second office pet peeve had to do with BCC’ing. BCC is Blind Carbon Copy, where the recipient doesn’t know what other recipients there may or may not be. BCC is VERY APPROPRIATE and COURTEOUS in a wide variety of circumstances, although, usually, not inter-office.

This person was quoted, or perhaps misquoted, as saying that to use BCC was like standing up and shouting “Fire” in the middle of the building. What? Perhaps it’s a misquote.

The comment followed a statement that “no email is private”. I agree. And those who think email is private, especially corporate email, are terribly naive. I cover this also in my Email Etiquette eBook.

The eBook is still available for $9.95, but probably not for long.

I have also written articles about the appropriate use of BCC, check out Associated Content.

Maybe it’s the release of Leopard, Apple Computers new operating system. I have seen a ground swell of questions from people wondering if their new computer should be a Windows PC or a Mac.

The standard response has always been:

What software do you need to run? Is it available on Windows or Mac?

Have you priced a Mac and the associated software (usually higher)?

Do you do graphics? Mac kind of rules here, but the Adobe software is outrageous in price.

Which platform can you get support for?

But now, that may have changed.

New iMAC’s are available with Intel Duo Core technology processors. This means that a new iMac can run either Windows or Leopard.

Bootcamp software, free from Apple, allows you to choose at boot up which OS you want to run. Or, for about US$80, a software named Parallels lets you switch seamlessly between Windows and MAC.

That’s pretty cool.

Blurs the lines of distinction, doesn’t it? And with a new iMAC 24 running about $1800, it is tempting to think about switching to the Mac.

Are you tired of endless security updates, system crashes, poor performance and frustration of Windows? There are other options, just don’t burn any bridges.

Looks like Apple has done it again. The newest version of OS X (originating in 2001) is called Leopard. It replaces Tiger. And boy is it cool.

Revolutionary, no. But evolutionary, yes. One of the coolest features I can see is the Time Machine automatic backup. This really makes backup usable to the ordinary, non-geek user. Perferct, no; but one of the best answers for the common user I have ever seen.

For a great play by play of the new features, check out Walt Mossberg’s All Things Digital column.

Apple’s Guided tour of Leopard is here. If you don’t have QuickTime and don’t want to load QuickTime, use what I use - QuickTime Alternative.

With some hacks, you can maybe even run Leopard on your PC (see DailyApps).

This is one to watch. Windows Vista is pretty cool, but there are a lot of reasons to stick to XP. Linux flavors like Ubuntu are fantastic and essentially free, but more work is involved. Leopard is just one more reason to take a look at a Mac, at least in the non-corporate environment.

In the above referenced column by Walt Mossberg, one key element to note is his boot time comparisons. This has been a real pet peeve of mine for years.

Back in the late 80’s and early 90’s, before Windows, a user’s workstation could boot up from a cold, dead start and be at a menu, ready to go, in under 20 seconds. Once Windows came on the scene, however, that number quickly jumped - for many users to almost 5 minutes (some, more!).

And this was despite quantum leaps in computing power and even hard drive speed! What Microsoft and many others in the industry have forgotten is that for-profit businesses buy computers for their employees to get work done, not enhance their work experience.

For a large percentage of the workforce, this means simply typing and printing letters or entering debits and credits in an electronic ledger. And the few reboots necessary, the better.

I can’t count the number of times I have been on the phone with a company like DELL, trying to place an order, and I have to wait because the sales persons computer locked up!

I could go on and on, but I better get back to work too.

Anyway, I bet my wife would love a Leopard under the Christmas tree in the form of a new Apple iBook.

Windows Live OneCare is a $49.95/year security suite from Microsoft. And Performance Tune-ups. And Backup and Restore. And I think I’m gonna be sick.

I was reading an e-newsletter this morning detailing that Live OneCare was turning on Windows Update to download, install and, if necessary (isn’t it always?) reboot the PC at the default time of 3am. Live OneCare was doing this without telling the user. Some users had wisely turned off auto download and auto install.

Even if you had DISABLED the appropriate services, Live OneCare was turning them back to “automatic” which means they startup when the PC boots.

People who had been finding this out (the hard way - they wondered why their PC’s were rebooting) seemed shocked.

The average user I will give a small break to; maybe they don’t read much - or watch any news. But any PC professional using Live OneCare instead of a competent security suite (no, not McAfee or Norton) like Trend Micro or ZoneAlarm needs to stand back and think for a moment.

Microsoft? Security Suite?
Microsoft? Performance?

Isn’t that an oxymoron of some type? Multi-Oxymoron?

Here is my email that I sent to the writer of the e-letter:

Why anyone would trust Microsoft for a security package is beyond me.
Microsoft cares about themselves only, and to find that they make changes to your PC that you don’t want made does not surprise me one bit. And their security reputation is so tainted, nay bludgeoned, that it just doesn’t make sense to pay them almost $50/year to screw up your PC.

Do you want me to tell you how I really feel?

Most people use Windows because it’s defacto, or because they can’t afford a Mac.

More people are moving to Linux (like Ubuntu) everyday. I don’t think that trend is going to change, and Vista is just speeding it up.

If you use Firefox (as I recommend) and use Outlook, then at some time you will probably start clicking on links in emails and get a “Locate Link Browser” dialog even though Firefox is opening the link.

Here is the solution:

1. Open Windows Explorer
2. Select Tools and then Folder Options
3. Select the File Types tab
4. Select Extension: (NONE), File Type: HyperText Transfer Protocol
5. Click Advanced toward the bottom of the window
6. In the Edit File Type window, select open and click Edit
7. Clear the DDE message box (which should contain “%1″)
8. Click OK, Click OK
9. Repeat for File Type: HyperText Transfer Protocol with Privacy
Step 10: Repeat when it happens again, because it will

You can now checkout my YouTube videos using a cool custom player that YouTube allows producers to create.

You can see it on my website here.

 

This is a screenshot of a Data Restore I did today. Big deal, right?

What if I told you the backup was done to tape 15 years ago? Ok, so I’m a pack rat. It bugged me that a number of years ago I deleted some source code because I knew I would never need it again. Only I decided I did want it after all.

And I wanted to know if I really could get it or if I had been storing tapes (and moving them several times) all for naught.

The PC is a 486DX with 8MB of RAM, 200MB hard drive (check those figures - megabyte NOT gigabyte) with a Colorado Memory Systems 250MB tape drive using DC2000 cartridges. Software used was Colorado Backup for Dos v4.05 (a particularly stable version).

The key to getting data from a tape that old begins when the backup is made:

• Make sure backup is good
  • Reboot first
  • Clean the tape drive
  • Use a decent tape
  • Verify the backup
• Label the tape
  • Date
  • Software used
  • Where the password can be found (you do password data backups, right?)
  • Tape drive used
• Store tape in climate controlled environment
• Make sure the hardware used to record the tape is available to read it
• When you go to retrieve the data, Pray (Seriously, I mean it!)

Simple, huh? Ok, not always. This PC needed a small kick to get everything working right, and no, it isn’t Y2K compliant.

But I got the data I wanted…

A lot of people are frustrated with Windows bloatware, and Vista seems to share a quality with Hillary Clinton - Love / Hate relationship. It is said with Hillary that you either love her or hate her and I’m hearing the same about Vista.

For those of us who know what we are doing, we are frustrated by all of the “security” pop ups of Vista. (And no, I can’t just turn them off on other peoples computers.) Some find all of their applications to work just fine under Vista, others find that few work without a lot of legwork finding patches and drivers.

InfoWorld has a nice write up called “Windows to desktop Linux in three easy steps”. I think it’s pretty well done.

I think Ubuntu has a lot of promise. Many people want everything on their PC; and most of them suffer for it.

Others just want to get their work done. And done quickly, please.

At least one person at Microsoft gets it and is trying to change the perception of Windows as bloatware, starting with Windows 7 due in 2010. Here is another InfoWorld article about that here. It’s apparently being referred to currently as MinWin.

Hard disk defragmentation is debated often, why I don’t know. It’s like an old Catholic joke about Ash Wednesday - “Might not do any good, won’t do any harm”.

The truth is, though, it’s the hard drive that keeps Intel from making Microsoft look good with blazing speed. Jumping around the drive to get all parts of the monstrous files created by inefficient programmers takes take. It wastes our time.

Defragmenting your hard drive with Windows defragment utility is good; using a third party is probably better, but make sure it uses the Windows API so you are protected from data loss if the process is interrupted.

Sysinternals and its key programmer Mark Russinovich are well known in my trade. Sysinternals was the developer of many valuable Windows tools, some paid, but many absolutely free.Sysinternals was bought by Microsoft but they haven’t ruined it all yet. Microsoft’s website is still a source for some of these great utilities. PageDefrag is one of them. Defragmentation programs cannot defrag a file that is locked by Windows; the page file and registry files are key examples.PageDefrag installs a driver that suspends the boot process after you run PageDefrag and then reboot. During this time before Windows locks the files, PageDefrag defragments these files that otherwise can’t be touched.

Another cool tool is Contig which lets you specify an individual file to defrag.

Find out more about PageDefrag here. Contig here.