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Defending yourself against Microsoft

Yesterday I wrote that Windows is malware. I said this because:

Microsoft can and will update your copy of Windows whenever they feel like it, regardless of your wishes. And, they feel no obligation to tell you what they've done. Your computer is just a zombie to them.

Defending yourself against Microsoft involves turning off automatic updates and that's what this posting is about.

At first glance, turning off Automatic Updates seems simple enough. In Windows XP, you go to the Control Panel, then System, then the Automatic Updates tab and click on the radio button to turn … Read more

A new e-mail scam

I get more than my share of unwanted e-mail messages of all types, but a new (to me at least) scam appeared in my in-box today. The subject was "New User Letter" and the message appears below with the ID numbers changed as a precaution.

By the time I looked into it, the IP address seemed to have been taken out of service--it was unreachable both with a browser and the ping command.

One reason to lookout for this sort of thing is that the Web page it sends you to might try to install malicious software on … Read more

Task Manager - useful enough to run all the time

In Windows XP, Task Manager is like the dashboard of a car. It's your interface into what's going on under the hood. It can tell you things such as: what programs are running in the background that you can't see, how busy the processor (CPU) is, which programs are making the greatest demands on the processor, how much ram is free, the number of hard disk reads/writes by each program, etc. etc. When your computer is running slow, or seemingly frozen, Task Manager should be the first thing you turn to.

For whatever reason, Microsoft has … Read more

Got computer questions? Ask Leo

Most of us have personal computer questions and it's not too hard to get answers. What is hard though, is getting an answer from someone qualified, thoughtful and reasoned. And a constant stream of good answers, for free, is too much to hope for.

Unless you know about Leo.

At his ask-leo.com web site, Leo Notenboom answers computer questions from anyone. Each week he answers a handful of questions, and, if you subscribe to his free newsletter, you get a weekly email with the current weeks questions. He can't answer every one, but he tries his best. … Read more

Four tips to using System Restore on Windows XP

System Restore is a feature of Windows XP that periodically backs up the Windows system folders. It does this in case some piece of software is not doing something today that it was doing yesterday. In that event, you can restore the latest System Restore backup and hopefully fix things.

Microsoft refers to System Restore backups as "restore points". They reside on the C disk in a folder Windows tries to keep hidden.

System Restore runs silently in the background, thus, you can use a Windows XP machine for years and not be aware of its existence - … Read more

The pros and cons of LEDs for backlighting LCD screens

In the July 12th edition of the Wall Street Journal, Walter Mossberg reviewed two new laptop computers, the Dell M1330 and the Toshiba Portege R500. In describing the R500 he said:

"The screen is lit by LEDs instead of by traditional lamps. That makes for more brightness and saves power."

Raise your hand if you are familiar with the use of LEDs as a light source in laptop computers.

I don't see many hands. Mine isn't raised either.

They seem to be getting popular, just last month Apple started selling their first laptop computer with LED backlighting. … Read more

Mistakes in Wall Street Journal editorial

Today, July 10th, the web site of The Wall Street Journal is free, sponsored by Dell. Normally the vast majority of the site is available only to paying customers - of either the web site or the hard copy paper.

I mention this to draw attention to an editorial that appeared in the paper on July 3, 2007 entitled Google v. Microsoft.

Background

Windows Vista includes desktop search functionality out of the box and Google offers a free desktop search application that anyone can download from their web site and install. Google complained to Microsoft's antitrust regulators at the … Read more

Don't get burned by RAID Zero

To a computer nerd like myself, RAID refers not to a bug spray but to various ways of hooking together multiple hard disks. The various approaches are referred to as levels. Raid levels one through five are designed to decrease the chances that a hard disk failure will result in lost data. Typically RAID configurations are used in server machines as opposed to personal computers.

Raid level zero, however, is the black sheep of the RAID family. It's goal is performance rather than reliability. I'm writing this posting because two of my clients have been burned by their … Read more