Good question. There doesn’t seem to be a real standout program lately – so I want to try them out for myself. The programs I’ve been installing and recommending – Spyware Doctor, AVG Anti-Virus, Webroot Spysweeper, NOD32 – plus a few more that I’m not too sure about – Norton 360, Trend Micro Internet Security, McAfee. I want to install these on a test machine and report back about how they work. If I don’t get to it right away, be patient. We’ve been pretty busy lately! Leave a comment if there is a program you want to know more about, or if you have a favorite or least favorite.
Archive for the ‘Useful Software’ Category
Is anti-virus software any good anymore?
Thursday, December 27th, 2007The Device that may Replace ME!
Friday, November 2nd, 2007It’s great to have a computer guy you can trust. In today’s world you have no option but to understand technology yourself, or pay someone who does. But what if you could be more self-reliant, without actually knowing any more about technology than you do now?
Enter Zonbu, the data-safe, environmentally-safe, compact PC that runs on open-source (non-Microsoft) software. What’s so unique about it? Well it’s not really the product itself that is remarkable, but the concept. It’s one of the first commercially available computers that is sold with a contract, similar to a Cellular phone. $99 gets you the device, then you choose a plan and sign a 2-year contract — sound familiar?
  
Now, why would anyone want yet another monthly bill to worry about? That’s a good question, and therein lies the reason to why this type of product could replace me, the traditional ‘computer tech’. Consumers are paying for data security or recovery, privacy protection, online safety, etc. Significantly fewer people are really paying to have the physical hardware repaired as it is becoming more disposable each year. The parallel between cell phones and subscription based products like the Zonbu is that it’s not about the device — it’s about the service. Why waste time and money dealing with computer techs, when you could have prevented the problem in the first place?
In the future, I predict that this is the biggest change we will see in computing. Sure, technology will improve, but moreover, people will start improving how technology works with people.
Read more about this topic in this article by Matt Hartley.
Bookmarks that follow you!
Sunday, October 21st, 2007One of my friends recently told me about a customer of a big box store. Apparently, he bought a new computer or his old computer died, so he wanted to transfer his favorites from Internet Explorer to another PC. Of course, the tech were more than happy to charge him more than a hundred dollars to perform this exceedingly difficult task ; ) Although they did have trouble figuring out how to get the files to a floppy disk! The moral of the story is don’t use Internet Explorer (that’s always the first rule) and secondly, download Firefox and install Foxmarks.
The Foxmarks add-in for Mozilla Firefox Web Browser is a very nifty little program. It really accomplishes two things at the same time. First off, it makes a back-up of your favorites or bookmarks every time you close your browser. As soon as you create your free account name and password, it uploads your data to a remote server and creates a sync file that it uses to compare your local file to the remote file. Secondly, it will keep your bookmarks consistent across multiple computers, even on a Mac. When you install it on a new computer, it will ask if you want to keep, discard or merge your bookmarks, and that’s it! No more paying someone else to retrieve your bookmarks.