Miscellaneous

I have been installing Windows XP SP3 on customers' machines in greater numbers now, and am not experiencing any problems. So far I am only doing this on Intel microprocessor machines, and avoiding it on AMD machines. Check your System Properties (see March 7 post) to see which microprocessor you have.

AVG Free Version 8 continues to run smoothly on my machines. I have a full scan scheduled every night at 10:30 PM.

If you leave your machine on most of the time, as I do, remember that it's very important to do a restart at least twice a week.

Spybot (now version 1.60) continues to be the most valuable player among the tools in my kit for ridding systems of the malware (malicious software) that so many of you seem to acquire along the way. It has regular updates so manages to keep up with the bad guys. I recommend running it once a week. Be sure to update and immunize before running the Search & Destroy program. Because there are so many bad guys out there intent on infecting our systems, Spybot S&D will run a little longer than it used to. It is now checking for the presence of nearly 300,000 items.

Spybot is so effective, I find I am running AdAware much less frequently these days, and again because Spybot is so good, AdAware rarely finds anything of any significance. As a result, I have stopped installing AdAware on my customers' machines. Also, have you installed AdAware recently? It ain't pretty!

Not very far behind Spybot in effectivenss for what it does is CCleaner. This small, fast-running tool will rid your system of all of the junk that accumulates on our systems just from daily normal use. This results in faster-running machines. I recommend running it weekly. If you do, it will only take a minute or two to do its job. As a warning, if you have not yet run CCleaner and have a system that is in need of a cleaning, the first run of CCleaner may take a while (15 minutes, possibly more). I always delete everything CCleaner identifies.

I continue to install Microsoft's Windows Defender, a free realtime spyware monitor, on all Windows XP customer machines. Windows Defender is an integral part of Vista. It gets updated through the regular Microsoft Automatic Updates process.

Questions or comments? Please write. I will respond.

Google Chrome

Google has done it again, coming up with something completely different. Google Mail is a completely different way of processing e-mail, and the new Google Chrome is a new way to do web browsing. This morning I downloaded the Beta (still in test) version and installed it. This was a snap and really required little decision-making on my part, and typical of Google, the process was very fast. Chrome has a completely new look and feel, and I am far from figuring it all out, but it's going to be fun doing just that. I have to say that I like what I have seen so far. If you'd like to install it yourself, you can download it here:

http://www.google.com/chrome 

 Since it is still in Beta testing, the more cautious of you may want to wait until it is available as a production program. I'll keep you posted on when that is and I will also report back on my experience using it.

Chrome will surely be making a dent in the number of users of Firefox and Internet Explorer, and most likely a rather large dent! 

Telecommuting

This is an interesting Computerworld article on telecommuting.

Telecommuting: 6 questions to ask before you say yes