GuruNews, Volume 9 Number 38, 10-16-09

Fri Oct 16 18:23:22 PDT 2009

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Vol. 9, No. 38                           

10-16-09

1 Potpourri  

2 They’re everywhere!

3 Portable Wikipedia, NASA maps, turn your iPhone into a keyless remote, Google OS

4 Flowcharting for everyone

5 Underpowered PCs

Kind of a hodge-podge this week, as news is breaking out all over.

First up, my current email address.  I’ve been using pcguru at microdome.net for many years and signing all of my articles with it, but unfortunately a recent upgrade to the domain made that address a bit balky to work with from home.  If you have that address saved in your address book go ahead and delete it.  I’ll set up a new one somewhere ASAP but for now use microdome at seidata.com.

Speaking of email, you may have noticed a sudden drop in emails at work this week.  And by drop I mean it stopped completely.  

>From 8:30 Monday night until 9:30 Tuesday night, customers on two continents saw their incoming mail drop to zero due to a glitch in Google’s Postini spam filtering service.

Google blames the outage on a combination of a software update gone wrong, a power fluctuation that damaged some hardware and a new type of malformed message that slowed the scanning system down to a crawl.  A “perfect storm” of excuses you might say.

IT managers who bypassed the filters were able to receive mail but of course were flooded with spam.

While on the subject of glitches, Apple’s new Snow Leopard has a lulu.  People who have the Guest account enable on Leopard before upgrading to Snow Leopard better stay away from it, since logging in a Guest will delete all the files in the other profiles.

Can you say “Oops”?

Lastly, breaking news and pay close attention for updates this weekend.  This could get ugly.

A new bit of malware showed up in the wild late this week that could cost you, big time.  Total Security 2009 sound like yet another in a long line of “scareware” viruses that infest your machine and warn that you’re heavily infested with bogus malware.  The virus tried to convince you to purchase their “cleaning” solution for $39.99 or $49.99 but of course they do nothing.  They just take the money, along with your credit card details, and leave you with a handful of headaches.

Total Security is that, but it adds a truly frightening twist.  It also contains a “ransomware” component that locks all the files on your PC and demands $120 to “unlock” them.

You can’t run any programs other than IE (you have to be able to pay the ransom, after all) and your documents and pictures etc. are off limits.

Early efforts show that removing the virus before unlocking your files will lock them permanently, so don’t just jump in and start doing scans if you see this thing.  Sit tight and leave that computer off.  

If I get further information this weekend I’ll issue a bulletin to readers.

With all that good news I just know you’ll have a good weekend J

Kevin Mefford, Editor

microdome at seidata.com

Terry Wise

www.ratland.com

Tech News of the Week

Wikipedia comes in handy for looking up trivia or verifying
information, but now instead of being plugged in at a computer all the
time, you can lug most of Wikipedia around in your pocket.  Meet the
WikiReader:

http://thewikireader.com/index.html

National Geographic has released a very cool map of all the NASA
flights over the past 50 years of space travel.  Gizmodo gives all the
links to go with it, as well as a really nifty high resolution
picture:

http://tinyurl.com/yzx8a8r 

Car accessory manufacturer Viper has released an iPhone app and car
hardware kit that lets your iPhone turn into a remote keyless entry
and remote starter for your vehicle.  Yes, there's an app for that as
well:

http://www.viper.com/SmartStart/

For my last link, I don't have a particular focus in mind, but I
wanted to let you readers in on a site that I read a lot when looking
up news related to Google.  It's called Google Operating System, and
it's the unofficial repository of all the features and services Google
has added.  I keep this one bookmarked when I want to see what
Google's up to:

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/

Daniel A. Williams

daniel at thepcgurus.com

Download of the Week

You're doing a PowerPoint presentation and you need to show a flowchart or other simple vector graphics-based design. Or, you want to show a line graph using a math formula quickly and easily. Enter Diagram Designer, which, through a simple drag-and-drop interface, allows you to create simple charts to your heart's content.

Diagram Designer's obvious use is in flowcharting, creating a simple diagram-based chart that lets the presentation's audience know how a process works in a visual way. Without Diagram Designer, flowcharts would need to be created by hand or with technically difficult software like Adobe's Illustrator. With Diagram Designer, it just takes a few drag-and-drops. Diagram Designer is very user-friendly.  Get it here:

http://download.cnet.com/Diagram-Designer/3000-2191_4-10429024.html 

Carlita Lupino

Cards57 at gmail.com

Email Question of the Week

Q:  Hi.  I know someone who thinks a lot of your computer advice that I got your email address from.  I am looking to buy a new computer and found what looks like a good deal for a bundle Compaq desktop that has XP on it.  How long will XP service pack 3 be supported for?  I know Windows 7 is coming out, but I like XP and don't need the latest and greatest for what I do.  Am somewhat leary of 7 after the Vista flop.  I have pasted the link for what I am thinking about buying.  I am really green when it comes to this stuff, so any advice is appreciated.  Thank you so much for your time and help!

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=11049966

A:  This is probably fine for Internet use and maybe some light word processing or other office type work.

The specs read like a Netbook, which are those small laptops that run under $300.

The Atom processor is pretty underpowered for any heavy work at 1.6GHz with a single core and 1GB of RAM is kinda light to offset that.  If you go this route I would plan on adding another GB of RAM if you can.

I wouldn't plan on doing anything beyond copying audio CDs or making mix CDs from MP3 files with the burner.  The processor probably wouldn't handle any sort of video rendering or DVD authoring without crashing the machine.

Also it will be hard to get replacement parts after the warranty runs out and the parts will be triple the cost of standard parts, or more.

Basically if you want something to surf the Web and do email it's a good machine and the monitor can be used with any PC.  If you want to do any gaming or photo/video editing or anything involving heavy calculations look elsewhere, and if this fits the bill just pull the hard drive and throw the PC away if something fails in the future.

Not a good endorsement and I didn't even mention the unintelligible tech support.  Sorry to be such a downer but that's my honest opinion.

Kevin Mefford

microdome at seidata.com

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