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3-9-06
1 Yet more web sites
2 Origami revisited, camera phone on steroids, GDrive, hacking OS X, MS Live Search
4 Six weeks with a Mac
5 Protecting Word documents
Last week’s listing of useful websites turned out to be quite popular so this week I give you Part 2, Revenge of the Useful Websites, with yet more sites to advance your knowledge of all things tech.
www.google.com is an obvious destination to search the Web, but those links across the top of the main page offer even more functionality. The Groups link allows you to search through what amounts to the new version of the old Usenet, which is basically the world’s largest message board. This is a fantastic resource for looking up obscure error codes and getting tips for specific instructions for instructions for some specific use of a program.
If you’ve ever had a really large file you need to transfer to work or possibly share with friends that live far from you, http://www.yousendit.com is a lifesaver. It allows you to send files as large as 1 GB by uploading them to their site, then emailing the recipient a link to download them. I used this service last year to share a 32 MB .zip file of pictures from my 25th High School reunion and it worked like a charm.
Speaking of sites that accept uploads, have you ever gotten a file attachment in an email that looked really suspicious but your antivirus software said was safe? I’ve often mentioned getting a second opinion on virus scans, but how about 23 opinions, all at once, in just a few minutes? http://www.virustotal.com/flash/index_en.html will accept uploads as large as 10 MB and scan them with 23 different AV programs including Avast, ClamAV, F-Prot, AVG, McAfee, Norman, Panda, Norton and Sophos. The site will analyze the file and present the results as a web page.
HijackThis (available from http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/) is a good tool for tracking down rogue programs but it’s dangerous without proper analysis. The Gurus receive Hijack log files asking for help deciphering them frequently but you don’t have to wait for a response. You can copy and paste or upload your scan logs to http://www.hijackthis.de/. I’ve mentioned this site in the past and it isn’t perfect by any means, but it’s an excellent place to start.
Another favorite site from the past was the massive list of startup items from Pacs Portal, but that service has changed hands and is now located at http://www.sysinfo.org/startuplist.php. It’s a huge searchable database of items found from the Startup tab of Msconfig. If your computer is running slow or you see a ton of icons in the System Tray (in the lower right corner of the screen next to the time) the sysinfo.org site can help you determine what programs need to run, which ones are just a convenience and if you have any total waste of resources running.
With the threat of severe spring and summer weather just around the corner the updated radar images at http://radar.weather.gov/radar.php?rid=lvx&product=N0R&overlay=11101111&loop=yes can be vital. Your local television and radio stations are your best sources of information, of course, but if you’re at work or otherwise isolated from broadcast media and have access to the Internet a site like this could literally save your life.
Next week I’ll go back to a more standard format, but these two weeks of links have been fun. I might even dig my MythTV project out of the closet and do some work on it, you just never know J
Kevin Mefford, Editor
If you troll
the tech websites like we do, then you've heard the
Origami rumors.
Turns out the rumors are true: Samsung has rolled
out the Q1 Origami,
the smallest and most expensive non-laptop laptop
thingy you'll ever
own:
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,125018,00.asp
Speaking
of Samsung and things we've never seen before, how about a 10
megapixel
camera phone? You only THINK you don't need one:
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=181502228
Rumors
abound that Google is about roll out "GDrive", a service that
would allow
users to store everything online. Somehow, I don't see
the privacy
advocates getting the warm fuzzies over this:
http://news.com.com/2061-11199_3-6046686.html
It
seems that hacking a Mac running OSX has become the holy grail for
cool
kiddies with mad skills (please excuse my burning need to spell
things
correctly---you'll never see "skillz" in this space). Now,
someone is
making claims that it can be done in 30 minutes utilizing
unpublished
exploits IF the hacker already has client access. As one
Slashdot user
proclaimed, "It's sort of like locking a burglar in your
basement and asking
him to break into your home". Accurate? You be
the
judge:
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1726233,00.html
Windows
Live Search Beta rolled out the door this week, but you
probably need to be
running Windows XP and Internet Explorer to see
all the cool AJAX-like
effects:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060308-6346.html
Copy
us on the good stuff (as long as it runs on Firefox and Safari)
;-)
Matthew Dattilo
thepcgurus@gmail.com
www.mattdattilo.com
If you have a son or daughter 7 years old and up you can tickle their interests in science with a trip to Space Camp. Enter at https://register.spacecamp.com/al for an all expense paid trip to the Huntsville, Alabama based summer camp for budding scientists and astronauts. Entries will be accepted through April 6th, one entry per day per household.
Also this week, Art and Troy have pooled their resources to offer 10 Ubuntu Linux CD sets to our readers. Each set includes one installation CD and one “Live” CD, which is a bootable version of the OS on CD. The Live disk allows you to play around with this version of Linux without making any changes to your PC.
Enter through our webform at www.thepcgurus.com (the E-mail Us button in the title bar) using Linux as the subject. Include name, shipping address and daytime phone number in the message body. We’ll draw names from the entries next Wednesday at 8:00 PM and will announce the winners in next week’s issue.
Good luck!
Like most of
the guys and gals on the PC Gurus team, I was computer
enthusiast long before
I worked professionally in the IT field. We've
all seen a lot of
changes in the industry; a few of the guys even
learned to program on punch
cards. No matter what our level of
experience and regardless of what
sort of setup we have in our homes,
we all have become Windows users either
because of work or because our
friends' and families' computers dictated that
we become so.
With two notable exceptions, every PC I have ever bought or
built has
run some version of Windows dating back to version 3.1. In
the era
when viruses had to be installed from floppies, Windows was a
pretty
good OS that ran on the tried and true DOS command line OS. It
was
comfortable and friendly.
Now, nearly 15 years later, my work
centers around handling PC and
networking problems. Well over half my
time is spent battling
problems on PCs running Windows XP. After
forty-plus hours a week in
front of a Microsoft desktop, it is not my idea of
a good time to come
home and battle spyware and viruses, even though my wife
and I do a
good job of keeping those things away from our home network just
by
using some common sense. Couple that with Microsoft's
recent
announcement that it is going to begin selling an
anti-virus/spyware
product and my mind was made up: I bought a new
Intel-based 20" iMac.
I have now had six weeks to put this machine
through its paces. I
have broken my observations into three
categories: operating
system/software, hardware and, finally, things I
would fix if I were
Steve Jobs.
OSX, the operating system that runs
every Macintosh, is the reason
most home users make the switch from a Windows
machine. As I
expected, OS 10.4.5 is a thing of beauty. System
Preferences are easy
to find, easy to change and very easy to understand,
even for someone
who has never touched a Mac before. The desktop is
uncluttered, so
your eye will immediately find the Dock, which is the Apple
equivalent
of Microsoft's Quick Launch bar. The Dock is highly
customizable---I
like to make mine very small, turn off the animations and
keep it on
the right side of the screen. You can also make it hide when
not in
use, just like on a Windows machine. By default, the Mac will go
out
and look for updates once a week, but you can have it do so every
day.
Unless an update involves the kernel of the operating system,
the
machine does not need to be rebooted. In fact, my iMac has only
been
shut down about five times in the past six weeks.
This brings me
to my favorite feature of the Mac OS: the sleep mode.
You can set a
Mac to sleep at various times depending on your use
habits. While many
of you will say that a Windows machine allows this
as well, I have never seen
a Windows machine recover so quickly and
smoothly as my iMac does.
After I click the mouse, it only takes
about five seconds for the machine to
be back in business exactly
where I left off.
Included with every Mac
is iLife, Apple's multimedia applications for
the average user. iLife
includes iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, Garage Band
and iWeb. Since I do a
podcast, I have used Garage Band more than the
other applications.
While there are many, many features in this audio
creation/editing software,
the interface is friendly and will have
even novices recording in a few
minutes. One of the new features,
ducking, is meant to save time by
lowering background audio when
someone is speaking. Frankly, it needs
work. I tend to pause between
paragraphs during my podcast, which means
that ducking needlessly
cranks up the background audio for a few
seconds. The end result is a
roller coaster of audio that sounds
terrible. I'll do my own fades,
thank you very much.
The
beautiful thing about iLife is the integration among the
applications.
Want to import a picture from iPhoto to the web page
you're creating in
iWeb? No problem. How about embedding some audio
into the DVD
you're authoring? Done. It doesn't get any easier.
As always, the
fit and finish of the iMac is perfect. The 20" screen
is bright and
clear, although some long-time Mac users claim that this
is a different
screen than was used in the older G5 Macs. During a
trip to my local
CompUSA, I was unable to tell the difference. Where
I was able to tell
the difference was in the area of speed. While the
new Intel iMacs are
not twice as fast as the G5 version (as has been
advertised), they are
noticeably more responsive, especially in
applications such as iPhoto and
iTunes. The new iMacs come with 512MB
RAM standard and can be upgraded
to 2GB. I bought a 1GB stick for my
machine soon after it was delivered
and while I did notice a slight
difference, I believe most users will be
happy with 512MB, at least
until they start doing heavy-duty video or photo
editing.
The iMac comes with a 128MB x1600 ATI video chipset that can
be
updated to 256MB from the factory (but not in the aftermarket).
I
opted for the 128MB version and have not been disappointed. If
you
are a gamer, however, stay with your Windows machine: gaming on a
Mac
can be an exercise in frustration. Very few titles are ported for
the
Mac OS and those that are often suffer slow frame rates, long
load
times, etc. But in their defense, Apple has never sold the Mac as
a
hard-core gaming platform, but rather as a multimedia machine,
something
at which it excels.
Steve Jobs, please note: the iMac is not
perfect. There are some
annoying glitches with a few applications, such
as iTunes occasionally
failing to load. I suspect this is a problem
with the new Intel CPU
and chipset, but it should've been fixed before the
first unit rolled
out the door. Times being what they are, software and
hardware are
often shipped while still essentially in beta, but I expect more
from
Apple for the price.
Which
brings me to my final Gripe To Steve: this thing is too darn
expensive.
With shipping and taxes, my baseline iMac was $1800. I
know that users
are paying for a workable piece of art and years of
research and development,
but the same machine could be put together
in a bland beige box for half the
price. The high price leaves many
people out of the market, which is
why Apple offers the Mac mini.
Even so, I believe Apple would gain legions
of followers if it lowered
prices across the board. But as I've heard
people say, Apple does not
want to compete with Dell.
Should you dump
your new Windows machine for a Mac? No. But if you
are ready for
an upgrade and you are tired of viruses and spyware, the
iMac may be the
answer to your prayers. I'm certainly happy.
Matt
Dattilo
Q: I'm going to create a Word file, with
all my accounts and numbers,
etc. to keep records, as so not lose them!
Since, I'm the only one in
the home to get on my pc, I'm safe from
here!
However, I'm not certain about when I'm online. How would I encrypt
a file?
I have a one year old PC running Windows XP
Pro.
A: In Word you can click on Tools and
Protect Document to set a
password. If you want to both encrypt and
password protect it you can
follow the instructions at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307877.
Hope that helps and keep us posted...
Kevin Mefford
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