Beginners Guides: 101 Tech Tips & Tweaks for Windows XP

It never ceases to amaze me how much stuff is available on the web. We'd all like to think that all of it is good, solid, tried and true advice, but until you try most of it you never know.

The following is meant for the more technically competent and adventurous types among you, but everyone be careful! You are on your own unless you seek advice from me.

This posting at pcstats.com is amazing in all that it contains, and I offer it to you with the warning that many of these tips are not really for beginners, but rather for the more technical and experienced among you. There is just too much contained here for me to say this is all good. Until I try some of them I won't really know. Be especially cautious with those that speak of updating your system's registry. If you see one you really want to try but are not sure about it, please e-mail me. Off to the right side of this blog page there is a contact link.

 Beginners Guides: 101 Tech Tips & Tweaks for Windows XP

Apple yanks antivirus advice from its Web site

From ComputerWorld.com:

Late Tuesday, Apple Inc. yanked from its Web site a controversial support document that had urged Mac users to run antivirus software. The recommendation was "old and inaccurate," a company spokesman said today.

The document, which had become the focus of considerable discussion among Mac users and security experts this week, is no longer available on Apple's support site. Instead, users who surf to its location are greeted with a generic message: "We're sorry. We can't find the article you're looking for."

"We have removed the KnowledgeBase article because it was old and inaccurate," Apple spokesman Bill Evans said in an e-mail Wednesday.

 Read the whole article here

Welcome to the Club

(I am sure they are not thrilled about becoming members!)

Apple suggests Mac users install antivirus software

In what appears to be a first, Apple is recommending that Mac users install antivirus software.

But don't read this as an admission that the Mac operating system is suddenly insecure. It's more a recognition that Mac users are vulnerable to Web application exploits, which have replaced operating system vulnerabilities as the bigger threat to computer users.

Apple quietly signaled its shift with an item titled "Mac OS: Antivirus utilities" posted on its Support Web site November 21: "Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult."

The item offers three software suggestions: Intego VirusBarrier X5 and Symantec Norton Anti-Virus 11 for Macintosh, both available from the Apple Online Store, and McAfee VirusScan for Mac.

Brian Krebs, who first reported on the Apple antivirus recommendation Monday in his Security Fix blog at The Washington Post, said an Apple store employee told him he didn't need antivirus software when he purchased a MacBook three months ago.

This is from CNET.COM.

Test Your Firewall

Every once in a while I like to go to the web site linked to below to test my firewall (I use Windows Firewall), just to make sure it is doing what it should be doing.

Click on the link below and once there click on  START TEST, then CONTINUE, then CONTINUE, and finally click on CONTINUE again. Then sit back and await the results. You should see a green "stealthed" for each port indicating all is well. The scan takes only a minute or two, and is worth it for the reassurance that you/I get in seeing the positive results.

PC Flank's Firewall Test