I haven’t completed the second installment in my story about my dying PC, but as you might imagine from this post’s title, it’s been resurrected… or at least is operational. Now, thanks to a Belkin Flip and a USB wireless antenna, I can toggle back and forth between the 2 PCs & both are connected to the internet. Of course the new box is much faster, has more features and a much larger hard disk, but the old unit - as long as it keeps running OK - should be handy for storing music and video files.
One thing I came across in this odyssey is a free anti-virus software program from AVG. I’ll spare you the boring details and will simply say it works great; wish I’d found it a long time ago. There were 3 Trojans and a couple of viruses on the old box.
That said, on to some interesting links, items and one video I found this past week:
The Cranky Flier provides a full rundown on the Department of Homeland Security’s impending “Secure Flight” program. In short, it’ll require all passengers flying in the U.S. to provide date of birth and gender when booking flights. The intent is to cut down on false matches with the terrorist watch list. Read the full details here.
Claire Walter of Travel Babel relates here recent experience with having her checked bag pilfered…. read it here.. (More reason to travel with one bag!)
I first stumbled across Marc and Angel’s blog Marc and Angel Hack Life about four months ago, and have been a fan since. Given the marvelous state of the U.S. & global economy, spending less than you earn has never made more sense. Check out their recent post, “18 means for living below your means” by clicking here.
Here’s one on the gadget front. Perhaps you’ve seen these before, but they certainly are new to me: USB-rechargeable AA batteries. Available at Office Max and other retailers; click on the image below for full details:
Falling squarely into the “I wish I’d been there!” category is Nancy D. Brown’s recent post about the “North American Wine Blogging” Conference; click here to read it at Nancy’s What a Trip blog. (In honor of the conference I often combine wine and blogging, but that’s another story……..) 
Finally, I came across this video of spray can artist Brandon McConnell and had to share it with my readers; I think you’ll enjoy it!
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October 27th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
In the serendipity department, my $399 laptop from Dell arrived on Friday. It came with 2 gb of ram, 160 gb hard drive, r/w double layer DVD, and Vista Basic. Life on the trailing edge isn’t so hard anymore. I was prompted to buy it based on a recent NY Times article on tuning Vista to be more efficient and less of a resource hog:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10.....amp;st=cse
(I assume you, too, are “stuck” with Vista since Microsoft refuses to issue any more licenses for XP for new computers, despite MIS people railing against the resource hoggery of Vista, even in it’s stripped form.)
That article referred me to this interesting blog, “Ask the Admin”:
http://www.asktheadmin.com
The owner of that blog was kind enough to answer my question “what free antivirus do you recommend?” and he guide me to AVG, same as you just found, because it is good and has a low operating overhead (doesn’t slow your computer down as much, I guess). Curiously enough, the free version of this commercial product is hard or impossible to find on the main AVG website, but if you Google for “free AVG” you get directed to the proper website:
http://free.avg.com/download-a.....ee-edition
Unlike some other free antivirus programs, it doesn’t pop up ads or otherwise annoy you BUT it does offer, twice, during installation to install a Yahoo search bar, so perhaps they get some revenue from Yahoo.
I also searched at CNET.com and read good reviews on Avast:
http://www.download.com/Avast-.....d=10888427
and Avira:
http://www.download.com/Avira-.....d=10877501
Once upon a time (within the last year?), the NY Times reviewed anti-virus software and came to the conclusion that you could build your own “free” suite of products that matched the performance of the “big names” and their real suites, and listed those products, but I don’t have enough patience to deal with the NY Times clunky search engine to find that article for you (I tried and gave up).
Accordingly, I don’t know if AVG has any “gaps” - their download website makes you feel like you will be exposed if you don’t buy the commercial product, while the review website makes the free product sound pretty complete.
In terms of ultimate protection, I’ve heard the new McAfee 8.5 suite is superb, but it came with a trial version on my new Dell, and it annoyed the heck out of me (kept interrupting programs that were legitimate) that I decided to kick it out right away and try AVG, and have been pleased - so pleased that I turned off the Panda antivirus that I paid for, for my home computer, and installed AVG instead. As a result, the home computer seems to run faster.
I think the real problem with antivirus programs isn’t which program catches the most viruses, it’s which programs don’t slow our machines down as much, or don’t annoy us as much.
Anyway, if your upgrade to a new Vista machine, coupled with cleaning up your old XP machine, causes you to learn more about the “essentials” of antivirus protection + which programs are leaner, please share with us, I think more of us are in the same boat these days - trying to run “leaner, cheaper” machines with less “antivirus program” bloat.
October 27th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
Michael,
I upgraded to XP for a mere (ha!) $120. I’ve heard too many stories about Vista and am not ready to take the plunge.
As for AVG, I am favorably impressed thus far. I have a love/hate relationship with McAfee, having not been overly impressed by their customer service. Having said that, I did try to download the installer to the old box, but for some unfathomable reason I couldn’t get it to install. So… AVG. Today I got a warning message from the AVG taskbar icon, and the warning was I hadn’t upgraded, but that’s been the extent of it thus far. Generally, I’m pleased and impressed.
The new computer is great - much faster and hasn’t hiccuped yet. Congrats on the laptop - hope it works out well for you.
Kevin
October 28th, 2008 at 10:54 am
You hadn’t upgraded, or hadn’t updated? AVG told me it was using old definition files and I ending up having to manually update, even though the automatic update functions are supposed to do that for me. AVG is insistent about running full disk scans. I scheduled them daily when my kid is on the computer. Ha ha. Better her suffering the scan overhead, than me, in the evening. I did notice I could watch my TV shows again on abc.com, nbc.com, fox.com last night, so maybe Panda Antivirus was slowing things down, or just plain not doing it’s job.
Geek joke: why do you need 2 gigaherz and dual cores? Because you need 1.5 gigherz and a full core to run your background antivirus protection program. The rest is for your apps!
It’s also funny buying a new, supposedly updated computer. The first thing you have to do out of the box is plug it in, connect to the internet, and let it update itself. Also of course on MS boxes you never get Flash or Quicktime pre-installed, and now Qicktime nags you into taking the entire iTunes program.
Thank heavens Dell is now selling units (the Vostro line) without “bloatware,” preinstalled junk programs. I heard Best Buy’s Geek Squad offers to delete bloatware off their computers, to free up hard disk space and improve performance. Buying a computer with bloatware is like buying a dog that comes with fleas and worms. Disgusting.
Wait until they start walking around. It’s not going to be “Terminator,” it’s going to be “Taming of the Shrew.”
October 28th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
They were encouraging me to upgrade….. that’s all. It seems the virus definitions are updated daily with the free version, so I’m not sure what else you’d get with the upgraded version. For now, I’m happy. k