Friday, April 11, 2008

Running Spybot Search & Destroy

Spybot is one of those free tools that I use regularly (once a week) on my PC. I covered this tool in my Best Offense is a Good Defense white paper. For those of you who already have Spybot S&D Version 1.5 or later installed on your machines, I have documented the steps to take to run it in today's link. If you have an older version (like 1.4), these steps are different than what you may be used to.

I run Spybot and then always delete everything it finds. I have never been hurt doing this. I hope you will find this documentation helpful.

How to run Spybot Version 1.5 and later

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Google Alerts

"Google Alerts" is a fun feature of Google, and it's free. It's like an online clipping service. All you have to do is provide a search item, your e-mail address, and select a couple of options to get it going. What happens next is that you will get an e-mail from Google Alerts containing capsule summaries and links to articles that relate to your search item.

I have 3 such Google Alerts. They are my last name, Jericho, and East Boothbay. I selected the daily frequency and the comprehensive search criteria. Each day I get 3 e-mails, each returning information of interest to me.

If you get too much information (I don't), you can modify your search criteria. It is also very easy to cancel an alert. You can do this right at the bottom of every incoming e-mail.

Sign up here

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Comcast Update

In my posts of March 21, 2008 and March 28, 2008, I presented my own experiences with Comcast's High Speed Internet.

Since then, I have had phone conversations with them on the phone, and the last request I made of them was for them to replace my cable modem, currently rented from Comcast. The Executive Office people I dealt with on the phone arranged for a service call to my house, and yesterday they came as promised.

I got a brand new Motorola cable modem to replace my older Terayon cable modem (originally provided by Adelphia). In the process of installing the new modem, the Comcast technician discovered that their PowerBoost feature was not enabled on my account for some reason. He installed the modem and communicated with his home office to have PowerBoost enabled.

From their web site, this is what Comcast says about PowerBoost: "PowerBoost technology utilizes available capacity already built into Comcast's advanced fiber network to provide customers with extra bursts of download speed – up to 12Mbps and16Mbps, respectively, on Comcast's 6 and 8Meg services."

As noted earlier, I am a 6Mbps customer. The result of the combined new modem and PowerBoost is incredible! I cannot believe the high speeds I now get.

Using the aforementioned speedtest.net web site to check my speeds yesterday and today, I consistently measure over 11000 kbps download and 1600 kbps upload! This is what I reported on March 28 in my post: 5366 kbps download and 365 kbps upload. Amazing!


The net of this is, at least for Comcast customers, especially if you were once an Adelphia high speed internet customer:

1) Call Comcast and make sure you are on their 6000 kbps download plan, which is their standard offering. Originally I found that I was still on the old Adelphia standard speed of 4000 kbps. Comcast simply changed something in my account profile and almost instantaneously I got download speeds increased from around 4000 kbps download to near 6000 kbps download.

2) If you rent your cable modem from Comcast and still have your old Adelphia-issued modem, I suggest you ask for a newer modem.

3) Check speedtest.net frequently, but especially today to see if you are getting the same results, more or less, which I now enjoy.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

OS Smackdown: Linux vs. Mac OS X vs. Windows Vista vs. Windows XP

This excellent article appears on today's Computerworld web site. Although the contributors are biased towards their own products, just as in TV's Smackdowns, the article contains some good nuggets, and should serve as a good reference for anyone who has any questions about today's popular desktop personal computer operating systems.

Operating System Smackdown

Monday, April 7, 2008

Backing up your data

I am often called upon to try to salvage user data, like Word Documents, Excel Spreadsheets, photos, music files, and so on. Of all of these items, photos must be the most valuable. This is a plea to all PC users to commit to making a backup plan that works for you. First of all make an effort to learn how Windows XP or Vista stores your data. What folders are your files kept in? Once you know exactly where your data is, backing it up is easy. You don't need any special software. A click and drag of a folder from one device to another is something simple enough that all users should be able to master the process.

What sort of devices can be used for backup? The most common and popular these days are flash drives, aka thumb drives or jump drives. I recently bought a 4 GB thumb drive at Costco for $28! That is an amazing buy, and even as I write this I know that prices are coming down every week, and someone somewhere is selling that same capacity thumb drive for less. Rule of thumb (pun intended) is to buy the thumb drive with the largest affordable capacity you can find. Your big box stores have specials on these every week. I am not sure how large these will become, but I see 8 GB flash drives advertised online. That is a lot of data!

The second most popular way to backup data is by using an external hard drive. These are sold by nearly every big box store and usually attach as a USB device. They are a hard drive in a case with a USB cable. Plug it in and it will be recognized immediately by your system as just another hard drive. These come in much larger sizes. I am waiting for the 1 TB (terabyte) model to become affordable. In the meantime, I use a 250 GB external drive. In my case, I separately purchased a hard drive and an enclosure (a simple aluminum case which holds the hard drive). This was less expensive. My 250 GB external drive is large enough to carry multiple copies of all of My Documents, so I back up My Documents every quarter and keep 3 backups. The beauty of the external drive is you can simply unplug it from one PC and plug it into another, so if you have multiple PCs in your house, this is a simple way to backup the user data of all of your computers.

Bottom line, have a plan please! I hate to have to tell a customer that their precious photographs or expensive music files are irretrievable.