Defensive Computing

If the list of installed programs on your Windows XP computer is annoying long, a little organization goes a long way. Try moving items that you never expect to use to a folder called "NeverUsed" and move items you very rarely use to a folder called "Infrequent". I've done this for years, on many computers, and never regretted it.

To begin, right click on the Start button, "Open All Users" and double-click on the Programs folder. In the Windows Explorer window, right click over nothing and select "New" and then "… Read more

I was gladdened yesterday when techbargains.com reported a sale on a new Lenovo ThinkPad R61 running SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop ($552, see below). It's not everyday that you run into a major PC vendor selling machines pre-loaded with Linux (excluding servers).

Perhaps pre-installing Linux will become more popular, in part, due to a Vista backlash. Or, the popularity of Linux of ultra-cheap laptops (where Vista doesn't belong) such as the Asus EEE PC, will lay a foundation for its expansion. Once people see and touch and smell recent editions of Linux, they'll realize it is no … Read more

PC World reported yesterday about the latest malicious attack on innocent websites (see Web Attack Worm Infecting Hapless Sites by Erik Larken). While this particular story is news, the concept is old - there is no safe neighborhood on the Internet.

The websites that have been infected with this particular brand of malicious software are, very likely, innocent bystanders. Their crime is simply being hosted in an environment with buggy or mis-configured software.

If you have your own website, EriK Larkin has an excellent suggestion, run a Google search on the entire site to look for this malware infection. Specifically, … Read more

The big claim to fame for the Foxit PDF Reader has always been speed - it opens PDF files much faster than Adobe's own Acrobat Reader. Then too, it's free and much smaller than the Adobe Reader. Plus, people just like it. At download.com, the CNET review gave it 5 stars out of 5.

But there is another big advantage, the Foxit Reader is portable.

Portable applications are those that can be run without being installed. I'm a huge fan of portable applications and use them whenever possible, running them both off the C disk and … Read more

Last week I wrote that skepticism may be the most important thing you bring with you when dealing with the Internet. A few days later in the Wall Street Journal, Walter Mossberg said basically the same thing - "...the most insidious Internet security problems today rely on human gullibility, not tricky software."

His article, How to Avoid Cons That Can Lead to Identity Theft, included this advice "Don't click on links to offers for free software or goods that you receive in an email, especially from a sender or company you've never heard of." … Read more

If there is anything a computer should be able to do, it's compute. Apparently however, Excel 2002 and Excel 2007 have trouble with this, most basic, task.

Office-watch.com details a bug involving the addition of numbers with two decimal places. Simply put, Excel generates the wrong total. It comes close to the right answer, but at this point, it really should get the exact, completely correct answer - and it doesn't. See Excel SUM anomaly from April 29, 2008.

You may also want to verify that your copy of Excel has the necessary fix for another calculation … Read more

An article from earlier today at Download.com about defragging the Windows paging file (Quick Fix: Put your paging file to work) needs some tweaking.

The article suggests that setting the page file Initial Size and Maximum Size to the same number will "avoid serious defragmentation". While this does avoid the paging file growing in size, the file can still be fragmented when it's initially allocated. So, if you're going to do this, you should defrag the hard disk first.

But, not allowing the page file to grow, is a questionable decision. If you make the … Read more

Last year, I wrote that, as a computer nerd, I hold this truth to be self-evident: All new software contains bugs and design flaws. As a programmer, I can understand the inevitability of bugs. Design flaws are another matter.

The May 1st issue of Sunbelt Software's Vista News newsletter highlighted some mistakes in the design of Windows Vista.

An item called "Don't accidentally delete that Recycle Bin!" describes how a number of Vista users deleted their Recycle Bin by accident, most likely while trying to empty it. If you right click on the Recycle Bin icon … Read more

Paul Thurrott, who clearly thinks Windows Vista is better than XP, has taken the release of Service Pack 3 as an opportunity to review Windows XP, taking a step back from the bits and bytes to ask if XP is good enough. The article, written last month, is called A Look at Windows XP Service Pack 3 Part 1: Good Enough? I recommend reading it.

One point he makes is that because of the delays in releasing Vista, Windows XP got more mature, "in ways that were never possible with previous versions of Windows." Lots of jobs require … Read more