Friday, May 13, 2011

The Future of Skype

It was less than 2 months ago that I sang the praises of Skype, admitting I was late to the game. Now I see that Microsoft has purchased Skype. Hmmm. I wonder how this will change things.


David Pogue of the New York Times has some opinions about that. His article can be found here:

The Future of Skype

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

MSRT May 2011

Microsoft's Malicious Software Removal Tool was included in yesterday's Automatic Updates. I recommend running a FULL scan. Just start it up and let it run. A little research confirmed for me what I thought: if you do nothing, a QUICK scan will run in the background automatically. You should get a screen like the one below when it finishes running your full scan. Nothing will appear if you simply let it run its quick scan.


Click on START/RUN/MRT/OK. Be sure you have the May 2011 version installed (see top of display below). If not it's because you have not yet installed your Tuesday update(s). It's cheap insurance.


Monday, May 9, 2011

MVPS HOSTS File for May available now

For those of you who are regular followers of this blog and who are in the habit of installing the newest version every month, today is the day to do that, but remember to update and run a Spybot scan before you do the install.

For those of you who may be new to this HOSTS file thing, I once wrote up instructions on how to download and install the MVPS HOSTS file. There were 5 blog posts that cover the subject, the and first is at:

If you go to the first post you'll find the other 4. I think I wrote them up on 5 consecutive days.

Also, for those of you who are not familiar with the HOSTS file, please note that I consider it a very essential part of a good baseline security package I hope most of my readers have implemented by now. To review my recommended baseline security package, consisting of all FREE programs, check this out: