Free Computer Consultant ………. Daily Insights

Adobe makes some great products but I haven’t always been fond of certain programming nuances. Like the fact that most Adobe products seem bloated and run slow.

I loaded Adobe CS3 Web Premium on my computer and found Adobe Contribute toolbars on Outlook, Word and Excel.

Going through the normal paces of View | Toolbars and unchecking Adobe Contribute did nothing, still there. Likewise when I chose “customize” toolbars and deleted the toolbar; still there.

I found the answer via Google..

Exit all Microsoft Office applications (even ActiveSync, which, conveniently has no option to exit! See How to Turn Off Microsoft ActiveSync).

Navigate to “C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Contribute CS3″ (the default location unless you changed it) and rename these to files to something else of your choosing - I usually add the extension “bad” to the end.

OfficePlugin.dll

OfficePluginRes.dll

And Voila!, Contribute toolbar is now gone.

I have long been involved with Microsoft’s Small Business Server, installing and maintaining many such networks for my clients.

Initially I bit on the ISA Server bandwagon,  bought and read the 800 page “bible” and tried to make it work. Yes, it works, but as I have said before, security and Microsoft in the same sentence is a bit of an oxymoron. I decided to dump ISA Server years ago when, for no good reason, HTTP or HTTPS would stop passing through the server and users called to complain that the internet was down.

Turns out, stopping and restarting 4 or 5 services fixed it every time. But why? ISA Server was way too tough and provided nothing we needed that wasn’t being provided by a good hardware firewall. I started doing away with ISA Server and installing Fortinet Fortigate 60’s (or above) on all of my networks.

I never looked back. That was one of the best decisions I ever made for securing my clients’ networks and I picked up secure IPSec VPNs and Anti-Virus/Intrusion detection at the hardware perimeter level besides.

Some of my peers who have Microsoft’s PR line running through their veins would fight me on this every time. But guess what? Microsoft SBS 2008 is shipping without ISA Server. And now I see Harry Brelsford is hurriedly hawking Untangle as the replacement.

Guess what, Harry, I’m way ahead of you. Half a decade at least.

But here’s another point. Why so anxious to upgrade to Small Business Server 2008 if SBS 2003 is doing everything you need?

Only two reasons I can think of are 1) keep putting money in Microsoft’s pocket and 2) keep putting money in consultant’s pockets. I’ve have enough work thankfully, I don’t like milking clients.

And you know what? Clients don’t like being milked either (or being guinea pigs for the latest software, I might add).

I have long stated that you do NOT want to run your wireless internet connection “open” or unsecured. Even WEP encryption is better than nothing. Do use WPA or WPA2 if you can.

Even if you think you have bandwidth to spare and don’t mind your neighbor mooching off of your internet for his/her surfing, that’s not the point.

Some people will use ALL of your WiFi bandwidth.

Some people will use YOUR bandwidth for illegal activities that they wouldn’t use their own for.

I have covered this before so I won’t go through it all again.

What puzzled me in the past was security expert Bruce Schneier claiming that he was running his WiFi open and unprotected. And he had reasons.

Now he’s changed his mind. (Probably NOT because he read my blog, though.)

Bruce has decided that he didn’t want the guys covered in black with machine guns to bash down his door at 3am when it was really someone else who was trafficking in kiddie porn or looking up b*mb making on his open WiFi connection.

So if you were using Bruce Schneier as an excuse not to lock down your WiFi, excuse no more. He’s locked his.

I have a number of clients who are making great strides toward being paperless. At least, that is, when it comes to storing documents. A great many more, I might add, are always talking about it.

The problem is absent when dealing with data that is created by your own employees or provided to you electronically. But what to do about the volume of paper dropped in your lap by customers, vendors or whomever?

The answer is to scan it in, obviously.

But to what format? PDF makes sense, but if you just create a document with a high school student doing the scanning you had better hope they name it with something meaningful and store it in the correct location. Why not make the PDF’s searchable? That way, you don’t have to use a 256 character filename to fully describe the document.

And wouldn’t it be nice to turn that PDF into a Word or Excel document on occasion?

Some of my clients fork over big bucks for OmniPage (Save 10% on OmniPage 16! Use coupon code 16OP10) but you don’t have to.

The same company that makes OmniPage 16 also makes a more affordable program called PDF Converter Pro ( Save 10% off PDF Converter Pro! Use code 5PDFP10)

PDF Converter Pro has a lot of the same functionality of it’s more expensive brother at a price that’s just plain affordable.

For business users, PDF Converter Pro delivers the features you need without the complication you tend to find in more expensive alternatives. And what do want most, ease of use, right?

With this software you can create PDF files from any application, convert PDF’s into fully formatted Word and Excel files and even edit PDF files. The program takes the scanned document and turns it into text so that you can use it without re-typing.

How many times haven’t I seen someone print out a PDF form, stick it in the typewriter to fill it out, then SCAN it BACK into their computer? No need for that with PDF Converter Pro.

This software is priced at just under $100 and you can save 10% with this link. (I’m always trying to save my clients and readers money!)

You don’t have to have the latest and greatest PC to run the software, either. The system requirements are ridiculously low.

If you work with PDF’s regularly, or would like to, check out this inexpensive, simple to use package in your work environment. The accuracy of the OCR (optical character recognition) is exceptional and it even has an Outlook plugin. You can convert an email into a searchable PDF document in one easy step.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Omnipage, but I also realize that its price tag is out of reach for a lot people.

Note: Once you convert that paper to electronic format, don’t forget to BACKUP!

With testking now offering complimentary training material for 640-802 and 70-290, more 70-291 and 70-270 students are showing interest in advanced studies.

Chances are that if you have been around computers, keyboards and mice as long as I have you may very well have some Carpal Tunnel Syndrome problems like I do.

Typing can just be painful sometimes. (Ever wonder why my posting is somewhat erratic?)

I have known about speech to text software for a long time; years ago I had a blind client who even had text reading software. But the results in the past have always been mediocre.

Better microphones (the software actually includes one), more sophisticated software and more horsepower in our computers is changing that. In fact, Dragon Naturally Speaking is now at version 10 and looking real good. (Save 10% on Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 Standard! Use coupon code DNSTD10)

The only downside I can see is that you have to either work in a private office or get over having someone else hearing what you are “typing”. Another way of looking at it is that others need to get over your “typing” being verbalized.

Even if you are not yet realizing health problems from excessive, repetitive keyboard and mouse work, don’t wait until you do.

There is another key benefit to using speech to text software like Dragon Naturally Speaking, and that is SPEED! No surprise there, you can talk faster than you type. And for the most part, the software can keep up with you.

Now that doesn’t mean you get to mumble or slur your words, shoot, using a product like this could even improve your speaking over time!

Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 turns your voice into text three times faster than most people type with up to 99% accuracy!

Often I will get a call that someone has Windows Updates set to download and install automatically, yet that yellow exclamation persists in the system tray.

If you click on that yellow icon and choose “custom” then you can see the update that fails.

If you have not rebooted recently, or even if you have, try rebooting.

Hop over to support.microsoft.com and enter that update (usually KB followed by 6 numbers) in the search box and click “search site”, then manually download and install the update.

Not always, but many times that will do the trick to get the failed Windows update to install.

I have been using Ultimate Boot CD recently to give myself convenient access to a hard drive that will not boot Windows for one reason or another. And while convenient to use, Ultimate Boot CD might not be the best all around tool to have on hand simply because the antivirus definitions are not very recent (a new beta release changes that but they will go out of date too naturally).

Many people don’t follow my advice for safe computing or to install competent auto updating internet security software and end up with problems requiring a rescue boot cd to clean their PC.

So when I saw some of the free rescue cds profiled in another letter recently, I thought I would highlight them here. There are pros and cons to each of the four, and rather than rank them as others do, I will just list them and let you look for yourself.

I really hate rankings unless one is head and shoulders above the rest. Reason being is that I know as soon as I write something in this business, someone has updated their software and what I wrote is out of date.

The first is Avira’s rescue CD. Avira’s AntiVir kind of jumped on the scene recently with some good scores in their free antivirus solution.

Bitdefender is a well known name and you can find theirs here. Beware that this is an .ISO image that you have to burn to a CD with either freeware or paid commercial software.

F-Secure’s CD is available here.

Kaspersky Rescue CD here. (This also an .ISO)

The nice thing about the rescue CDs mentioned is that they have a variety of tools on them, not just virus and malware cleaning tools.

Have these available ahead of time, before the problem rears its ugly head. That way you don’t have to borrow a friends CD and worry about whether his CD burner works or what software he has available to burn an .ISO image to CD.

Yesterday I was doing some installs and upgrades of Comodo’s free antimalware software BOClean, now version 4.27.

While I don’t expect anything to go wrong, here’s what I did anyway.

• Quick System State Backup just because these workstations haven’t had one in quite some time. That updates the C:\Windows\Repair directory with current copies of the important registry hives.
• Created a restore point, labeled it “Before BOClean 4.27″
• Shutdown any current copy of BOClean running
• Uninstalled old version of BOClean
• Installed new version

Fortunately nothing did go wrong, but it never hurts to protect yourself with a few simple, free insurance policies against a current or future problem.

I have how to videos for the system state backup and restore point if you are unsure how.

I have had a lot of views and follow up questions to some videos I have had on hard drive data recovery. On the one hand I’m thrilled that so many people find this information valuable to them; on the other hand I’m sad to see that so many people are in need of recovering data off of failed drives.

Computer backup is not difficult, expensive or even very time consuming anymore.

You can schedule Acronis True Image to automatically backup to an external USB hard drive on a regular basis. (I recommend a 7200rpm hard drive and a warranty longer than 1 year.)

Please don’t think your hard drive will last forever; even if it’s brand new it can fail at any time.

I have a lot of accounting clients and almost all of them use QuickBooks. So when I received an offer from Intuit/QuickBooks to put a link on my site to save my clients & website visitors 20% on QuickBooks purchases and get FREE SHIPPING, I readily agreed.

As an example, today one of my clients needed another user license for QuickBooks Pro 2008. Online it was shown as $199.95 reduced to $179.95.

But through the special offer QuickBooks extended to me with my website, the price was LOWER still at $159.96, and, if you want the CD instead of downloading it, FREE SHIPPING. I thought that was a pretty good deal.

You can go here to shop and get the QuickBooks Accounting Software special pricing and free shipping.