Tip of the Month

I get so many requests about avoiding net nasties that I thought I would try to come up with an occasional Tip of the Month that would help save you from potential infection. So, here's my first thought:

Avoid the Habitations of Lions.

You cannot go to sites such as Bearshare, Limewire or other questionable sites and seriously expect to stay malware free. Music download sites in particular carry great inherent risk. Music files are large provide huge opportunities for programmers to hide malware of all sorts in amongst the code. But they are not the only sources of potential infection. Many sites use what has come to be called 'Drive by Attacks'. With the web page is executable code that launches an action that can harm your PC without your knowledge. If you employ anti-pop up software this can save you much of the time, but hackers can get past those forms of security by cloaking their code and/or using a delayed execution method. Ultimately your only protection is your own self discipline and net savvy. Make it your business to learn the kind of sites to avoid and then avoid them like the plague. You have been warned! Don't act all hurt, innocent and surprised when you find you've been infected by a virus, worm, Trojan or other net nasty when you were directly responsible for your own foolish actions on the net. After all, if you go walking in the jungle at night where the big cats are known to prowl, who is really to blame when the inevitable eventually happens –the wild animal or you?

This should be obvious too, but downloading illegal music or visiting questionable sites will cause you grief sooner or later. Blokes, you need to know that if you download pictures and movies of alluring ladies you are high on the risk scale. Finally, NEVER click a popup that says "Your Infected…Click here to remove this threat", because that will guarantee that you become infected, as surely as night follows day.

Here it is: Cloud Backup for SMBs

The name is Zmanda, and trust me on this, it is the solution you have been waiting for.  The Cloud, what all savvy PC users in the 21st Century know is the new buzzword for cyberspace is where it happens.   Out there where we all roam free as the birds there's a new land to occupy.   For SMBs (that's another dreaded acronym for Small to Medium Sized Business), and individuals, this equates to generous slabs of cheap storage space available external to your business premises.   The mantra for all wise business managers is, and always will be, backup, backup, backup…and again, backup.    The best backup is done off-site and away from your business premises.  A fire or other disaster can destroy onsite storage never to be seen again.  You should backup locally, but off-site is vital.  No backup is suicidal.  Of course, off-site has the same risk, but  a reputable third party will also backup their servers and anyway, life's a lottery, the secret to work the odds in your favour.   Enter Zmanda Enterprise 3.0.  To quote their own blurb, this Windows based little beauty offers a fully-supported solution for backing up Windows files, applications, databases and networked devices to the cloud.   Of course it is fully automated for regular backup and easy to use.  Further, it costs the massive amount of US$50 one-time fee for the software and storage fees with the all new Amazon S3 is the unbelievable US$0.20 per Gigabyte per month.  For SMBs and private individuals with manageable amounts of data that is very low cost.  You can read more about Zamanda at the Zmanda Home site.  You can download Zmanda here: Download Zmanda.  

Safe Social Networking

Scams, traps, cons and swindles abound on the Internet. Here’s some tips to keep you socially safe online.

Social networking has come of age. If you’re not socially networking life may be passing you by –maybe! The fact is, millions are and sites like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and Windows Live Spaces are services people can use to connect with others to share information like photos, videos, and personal messages.

With the rising incidence in popularity of these social sites, so do the risks of using them. Identity thieves, crims, hackers, spammers, virus writers along with other weird practitioners of arcane cyber wizardry follow the traffic on these sites with the intention of catching the unwary.

Avoid being fleeced, ripped-off and otherwise taken advantage of –read these tips.

1. Unsafe Clicking: Count ten before you click links that you receive in messages from your friends on your social Web site. Treat links in messages on these sites exactly the same as you would links in e-mail messages.
2. Practice Healthy Suspicion: Never trust that a message is really from who it says it's from. Hackers can and do break into accounts and send messages that look like they're from your friends, but aren't. A suspicious message is best treated as fraudulent and the use of an alternate method employed to contact your friend and check they did in fact, contact you. This most definitely includes invitations to join new social networks.  (I.e. SN sites new to the web. 
3. Protect your friends: Never allow social networking services to scan your e-mail address book. When you join a new social network, you typically receive offers to enter your e-mail address and password to find out whom else is on the network. They will likely offer to use this information to send e-mail messages to everyone in your contact list or even everyone you've ever sent an e-mail message to with that e-mail address. Many responsible social networking sites explain that they're going to do this, but some do not.
4. Lazy Clicking: Here’s a tip you should be already aware of. Type the address of your social networking site directly into the ‘Open’ command of I.E. or the address bar if you use Firefox, or use your personal bookmarks that you know you can trust. If you click a link to your site through e-mail or another Web site, you might be entering your account name and password into a fake site where your personal information could be stolen. Further, links in emails and on web pages can hide the real link and be masquerading as the legitimate link.  This is similar to what we call ‘phishing’ and I’m sure you’ve read the stories bout the ever growing incidence of phishing emails arriving in mail boxes.
5. Choose Your Friends Carefully: Be selective about who you accept as a friend on a social network. Identity thieves do create fake profiles in order to get information from you. This is known as social engineering and is more prevalent than many realise.
6. Haunt the House: Choose your social network carefully. Evaluate the site that you plan to use and make sure you understand the privacy policy. Find out if the site monitors content that people post. Read the information that is immediately available and do a Google search of the site. You never know what you might discover about it. Don’t immediately believe negative reports, but, the old adage, ‘no smoke without fire’ is worth remembering. After all, you will be providing personal information to this site, so, here’s a thought: use the same criteria that you would to select a site where you enter your credit card details!
7. Your Footprint On the Web Is Long Lasting: Did you know that what you write on a social networking site is long lasting and almost permanent? Even if you can delete your account, anyone on the Internet can easily print the information or save it to a computer.
8. Think Before You Act/Download: Installing extras on your site is chancy. Frequently social networking sites invite or make available software and third party apps for you to download that allow you to do more with your personal page. Cyber criminals may use some of these applications to steal your personal information –and more. Again, Google the app you’re interested in first and find out what others are saying about it. An excellent site for information on software in general is www.cnet.com. Check out their reviews and read the views of others besides the publishers themselves and/or the editors. Get a balanced picture and then make up your mind whether you want to add that app to your list of installed programmes on your computer.
9. Mixing Work & Socialising on the Net: Some employs accept/allow responsible extra curricula activity while you’re on their clock. Others don’t –for obvious reasons. If you value your weekly pay-check think about whether this is what you should do or not.
10. Parents: Kids Social Network a lot. Your children probably know far more about it than you! Talk to them about social networking. Be wise, maybe you can find out what they know and whether they are being safe online by asking for help and advice yourself! They may be keen to demonstrate their sites and show off their knowledge. Then you can adroitly (there’s a good word) suggest safety tips. Don’t, whatever you do, show shock or anger. All you will do is wreck any chance you have of monitoring their activities and fostering safe socialising on the net. That would not be smart.

There you have it.  Have fun, make friends, enjoy the web –and be safe while your at it.  John

Summer Freeze

Here in Kiwiland we are enjoying warm beautiful, even hot, weather.  Summer is here and great to be alive –until your PC freezes, that is. 

Yep, that’s right.  The dreaded freeze.  You know what I mean.  That machine in front of you just stops working and refuses to respond.  No matter what you do –or say(!) – nothing will make it do what it’s supposed to do.  Not for you anyway. 

Well, good news and bad news.  It happens to all of us.  Even PhDs in computer science face the dreaded catharsis of PC Freeze from time to time.  So, don’t feel so bad.  You’ve come to the right place  The bad news: well, sometimes it can be quite serious, but, more good news, most of the time it’s easily fixed. 

Here we go…

Just a wee commercial right here though –If you live in Hamilton, New Zealand, if this doesn’t solve your troubles right away, give me, Hamilton Office & Home PC Care, a bell on +64274412623 and you can drop it off and we are sure to be able to get it going for you. :-) 

Please note that these words of wisdom (I hope) are primarily for XP users.  Vista will be able to do similar things but you will have different paths and terms for the same tasks.  Sorry about that. 

Back up now! The golden, and I do mean golden, rule of PC Care is BACK UP, BACK UP, BACK,  BEFORE the freeze and before any sort of trouble strikes.   Scroll through these blog articles for more on PC Maintenance to help you with this.

Access Task Manager: Press the Control (Ctrl) + Alt + Delete keys now, commonly called the ‘three-fingered salute’.  This will open the Task Manager and then look under the ‘Applications’ tab, usually the one that opens first by default, and look to see if any running apps have stopped responding.   You will be able to see if this is so because the offending app will say, ‘Not responding’ right beside it.  If so, click on and select then click the ‘End task’  button at the bottom of the Task Manager window. Chances are, this will fix the problem immediately by closing the faulty app and you will find you’ve regained control of your PC. 

Re-launch the Application: Re-launch  the app that failed responding and start back over.  Hopefully, you won’t have lost too much data in the process.  Of course, you can avoid losing too much work by saving your work as you go along.  Every sentence or so you should develop the habit of pressing ‘Alt+F+S’ in Windows which is the speed key to save your work without lifting your hands off the keyboard.  I’m doing it all the time as I type now.  In fact, I just accidentally closed my Windows Live Writer window and, if I hadn’t been saving as I go along, I would have lost it all! 

Further Checks:

Caps Lock & Number Lock: You might have accidentally presseed the Caps Lock or NumLk keys on your keyboard.  If you have take a look and see if the indicator lights for those keys have changed.  Usually they are located at the top RHS of your key board, but they many be elsewhere.   You can check that they are working OK by pressing the ‘Function (fn) button + Caps Lk’ and see if the Number Lock button lights up.  Then do the same with the ‘CapsLk + Num Lk’ buttons and check that as well.  It may be just a matter of having accidentally switched on or off these controls.

Led Lights: Look and see if your Hard Drive activity light is flashing?  If it is, windows is working hard for you performing some necessary task and you need to pause and let it get on with it.  As soon as it has done whatever pressing job it must do, it will yield control back to you.  So, be a little merciful and allow your (sometimes) faithful machine to do it’s work.  Go and make a cup of coffee!  You wouldn’t believe the amount of work your machine has to do to serve your every wish! ;-)  It may be the hard disk is working too hard and you should be merciful and add more RAM. 

Just another wee commercial right here though –If you live in Hamilton, New Zealand, give me, Hamilton Office & Home PC Care, a bell on +64274412623 and you can drop it off and we will add more RAM for you in flash –or maybe two flashes! :-) 

Mouse Worries: Mice do need a bit of care and attention now and again.  They actually benefit from a careful cleaning once-in-a-while.  To do this examine your mouse carefully and see if you can open it up and then use some compressed air and/or a soft bristled brush and clean the parts that provide the contacts in the vicinity of the ball.  If unsure, you can check with us or simply buy a new one.  PS2 mice are very cheap to replace these days.  If it’s wireless mouse the batteries may be simply flat –they don’t last forever you know! 

Chick All Your Peripheral Devices:  You may need to unplug them all one by one systematically and check to see if one of them is malfunctioning and causing a conflict or other problem.  Sometimes your machine may be performing a security scan of your devices (USB storage devices etc) and you may need to allow it to finish.  Or, it may have stalled in the process and run into a glitch of some sort.  Remember to stop all USB devised properly using the facility provided by Windows.  If you are unsure about this consult your hardware/PC manuals.  I’ll do a Blog on USB devises shortly to help with this.  Unplug all unnecessary USB devices such as printers, scanners, iPods and USB drives.   None of these wonderful and immensely useful gadgets do not last for ever, sadly.  So, one of them may have simply stopped and you will need to replace it.

If none of  the above steps helps and/or solves the problem, you may well have a major on your hands.  This could range from overheating issues, other major hardware failure, serious software failure, driver conflicts and more.

Hardware Failure: Hardware failure can be anything from an improperly seated or bad memory module to a failed hard drive or system board. The very first thing to do is to run a hardware diagnostic test. To do this it may be best to ask a PC tech to help such as Hamilton Office & Home PC Care on +64274412623 if you live in Hamilton, New Zealand.

I hope the freeze is of short duration and the long happy days of summer return.  John

The Options: Vista Now or Windows 7 Later

One of the HOT topics right now is, do we upgrade to Vista or wait for the all new Windows 7.
Here is s consensus of what I've gleaned so far. The options appear to be four-fold:

1 - Buy Now! If you haven't already done so, Buy a vista PC now
2 - Wait until July: then buy a vista PC and benefit from the promised free upgrade to W7
3 - Stay with XP: If you're buying now look for an XP based machine and stay with that until MS cease support in 2014
4 - Abandon Windows: Buy an alternative -a Mac or one of the many free flavours of Linux

Whatever you choose, this check list is a good starting point:
Do I need a New PC Checklist:

1. What do you use your PC for? If all your apps still function well and you know your way around your machine do you really need to replace it?
2. Running Slow: If it has slowed down, you may just need to give it an overhaul. Check out my previous Blogs or get it in to Hamilton Office & Home PC Care, or if you can't get it to us seek out a good tech and as him/her to clean up your machine and advise you on the options -apart from replacement.
3. Gamers: If you are a gamer then you may well need a new machine with more grunt -that's another ball game and this Blog is really not for you.
4. Age of your machine: If your machine is older than, say 4 years, you may have an argument for replacement, however, unless money is not an issue (for most of us among the great unwashed it is -especially with recession-itis setting in!) Again, seek some advise, because component or peripheral upgrades may do the trick for hundreds less than even an entry level new PC.
5. The Learning Curve: Are you comfortable with a new learning curve right now? A new OS comes with the hidden cost of learning lots of new things that you are probably doing reflexively right now. You will probably need a book as well to read while you watch TV to bring you up to speed. Vista is fun to learn if that's what you like doing. If, on the other hand, you find your masochist tendencies can be gratified satisfactorily in some other way -my advice, do the other! Hence, my suggestion that, even if you decide to replace your machine, think about staying with XP until 2014, or just put if off until later...
6. The Bugs Issue:
7. Any new OS will have bugs, and it is wiser to wait at least until the first service pack (SP1) has been released. Vista has now passed that milestone, so it is an option for now. As a result, a lot of the compatibility issues are being sorted.

The Jones Syndrome: Of course, there are those who have the 'J' syndrome and just have to have the newest and shiniest model available as soon as it hits the showroom floor. If that's you, and you don't give a toss about the money, then go for it. Buy the "biggest and the best" you can afford with lots of Ram, disc storage etc and keep doing it every six months or so. This, will help the economy and my dividend check and that's fine. You can also ask me to provide it for you and I will do so with real pleasure. After all, that's why I'm in business. I'm very serious, by the way. I love customers with lot's of money. You are the very best kind. Call me now.

My Pick of the Options:

1. Buy an external hard disc & Back Up: If you haven't already, right now buy one of the many excellent USB external drives with back up or sync software included and do regular back-ups. This will protect your data, which is always consideration number one -and stay with XP (upgrade to Pro if you can do so easily), or Vista if you already have it. Check your RAM to see you are running the maximum your machine will allow as, if you are running an early version of Vista chances are you are under powered in this department.
2. Stay with Your XP Based Machine: Here's a couple of applicable cliché's: 'The devil you know is better than the devil you don't know', and 'If it ain't broke why mend it?' My argument for not abandoning Windows here and going with Mac or Linux, is simply because of the 'Learning Curve' issue I dealt with earlier.
3. Wait Until July 2010 and Buy a mid range 64 bit machine with Windows 7 and SP1 installed. However, the variable here is my 'Age of Your Machine' comment above.

Final Words: Technology is always evolving. Unless you are a techno nut, as I am, your only interest is in how it works for you and makes life better or easier. If it doesn't do that what's the point? So, if your XP based machine is working well, you can do all the things you want to do on it, stay with that for at least the next four or five years. Upgrade as cheaply and effectively as you can along the way and only buy a new machine when you absolutely must.

Message Center

More Scamming

As you know, I have written about this ongoing issue before. However, others do to and we need it. Scams morph and multiply fast and staying informed is a task. Here's a top article by a David Risley who owns and runs PC Mech. A great source of information from a full-time blogger, who, as he says, makes his entire income from the great art of blogging for a living.
Read on at: PC Mech Blog

In the meant time, Season's Greetings and all the very best for 2009.
John

IE Bleeps...again!

18 Dec 2008
A vulnerability has been discovered in Internet Explorer which is being rapidly exploited by some web site and about which you need to be aware. To read more: Microsoft's Advisory Service, and a simpler explanation can be read here: Secunia.