Terry's Computer Tips - Newsletter
September 2, 2007
Volume 3, Number 12 — Sunday, September 2, 2007
Part 1 | Part 2
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4. My Computer Security Software Recommendations
I review my security software recommendations and update them, for each weekly newsletter issue, if I think they need to change.
My Philosophy: Many people want to pick their most economical solution and prefer an all-in-one anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewall solution. In concept, that's a great idea. In actual practice, this type of package is not likely to be the best in all the protection categories you need.
Other people want to pick the best of each type program. I'm one of the these folks. Read about my security software choices.
So, I've got two types of recommendations below: one all-in-one solution and my individual picks for each type of protection.
Anti-Virus
For your anti-virus needs (and, yes, you do have anti-virus needs!) I recommend anti-virus software from Trend Micro (PC-cillin Internet Security, if you want a combination package) or ESET (NOD32, my choice).
I'm glad to see that Trend Micro has taken a major, user-friendly step with their PC-cillin Internet Security 2007 by licensing it for up to 3 home users. (You can also get a 3-year license.) TrendMicro provides an easy-to-use product that is from one of the big names in the anti-virus world.
I'm often asked about several other popular anti-virus or anti-virus combination packages. Yes, I realize that they are not in my recommendation list. "Enough said..."
My personal choice is the ESET's small, fast NOD32 anti-virus program, which offers a FREE 30-day evaluation license. I consider NOD32 to be the cream of the crop in anti-virus protection. Unlike some of the others, ESET offers multiple-year licenses also, including updates to the program in the multiple-year license.
Many antivirus programs will offer you an anti-virus signature subscription renewal when your subscription renews. I strongly recommend against this option. Vendors routinely improve the capabilities and speed fo the programs also.
If you update only the signatures, you miss any program improvements. Fortunately, NOD32's subscriptions include both program updates and signature updates.
Read more about anti-virus programs on my web site.
Firewall Software
If you get the PC-cillin Internet Security package above, you are covered from a firewall point of view.
While the Windows XP firewall is much better than no firewall at all, don't count on the Windows XP firewall to meet your needs. You need a two-way firewall, which the Windows XP firewall is not!.
The Windows XP firewall does not control outbound communications originating from your computer — and you should want to have control if adware/trojans/spyware or even commercial products want to talk to the Internet.
Do you want Windows Media Player to call home every time you play something? It does! Do you use the Search function in Windows Explorer to find things on your hard drive? Did you know that every time you search, Windows Explorer talks to Microsoft — I didn't know that when I ran ZoneAlarm, but the Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall flags that for me, and I can stop or allow it to happen.
Many other programs call home when you run them, too.
If you don't get either of the above multi-function packages, I recommend my choice for a firewall program is Sunbelt Personal Firewall.
You can try the full-featured "paid version" of Sunbelt Personal Firewall free for 30 days — after that, you can register it or, if you're using it on a home non-business computer, you can let it revert to the free, lesser-function license. Sunbelt Personal Firewall is $19.95 (with discounts for multiple computers!) for a non-expiring license for the program and includes one year of their updates subscription.
Related articles:
Anti-Spyware / Anti-Adware Software
CounterSpy, from Sunbelt Software, has received many kudos from the computer press for its always-running and periodic full system scans. It is also my personal choice for my PC's and my family's PC's.
Sunbelt released their CounterSpy v2 in early February and I promptly updated my computers to it. Version 2 greatly improved CounterSpy's performance and reduced its load on the computer when it was scanning.
Recently (late July, 2007), Sunbelt released v2.5 of CounterSpy, which again both improved CounterSpy's performance against malware and reduced its impact on system resources and responsiveness when its scanning.
Anti-spam Software
In today's Internet world, the question is not "if" you will get spam, but "how much will you get?"
I use and now I recommend POPFile as my first choice for handling spam. POPFile sits on your computer, between your email program and your ISP mailbox, and handles emial as it downloads.
POPFile uses a different approach to handle spam than some other programs do — it does nothing to reduce spam. It is designed as an email classification tool — you train it to recognize spam and any other type of email that you want to classify. These classifications can help you sort your emails into appropriate folders in your email program.
Sunbelt Software, who makes the anti-spyware program CounterSpy (which I use and recommend) and the firewall that I use and recommend (Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall) also has a well-regarded, award-winning anti-spam program called iHateSpam for Outlook and Outlook Express. Since I don't use Outlook or Outlook Express for email, I haven't tried iHateSpam.
Mailwasher Pro is my first choice to handle spam before it ever gets into your computer's Inbox. Mailwasher Pro uses on-line Realtime Black Lists mail servers sending spam recently, "training" by you of what you think is spam, and your own "friends" and "blacklist" lists.
Mailwasher Pro can even bounce spam messages, as if your email address was not valid, although the usefulness and appropriateness of this is questionable. There is a free version called "Mailwasher," but it omits the functions that I consider critical for this purpose -- such as safely previewing the emails safely before they ever get to your email inbox.
Cable/DSL Router
If you have a cable modem or a DSL modem, you need to have another layer of inexpensive protection between you and the Internet. A cable/DSL router isolates your computer from direct connection to the Internet. Your computer can easily request your email, web pages, etc. through the router. The responses come back to the router and are smoothly routed to your computer. But, someone on the Internet side of the router can not initiate a connection to your computer — they can only respond to your request.
Even if you only have one computer to connect to your cable or DSL modem, I recommend that you purchase and use a cable/DSL router because of the protection it can give you against attempts to attack through some flaws in Windows itself.
A router isolates your local network, whether it is only one computer or several, from the Internet by actually making it a separate network. The router gets the "public" IP address and handles all your outbound communications and the responses to them. But, it blocks computers on the Internet side from being able to initiate communications with your computer! This will prevent you from falling prey to many worms that try to attack security holes in Windows itself.
For a wireless router, I recommend the Linksys WRT54G wireless router. I'm using the relatively new version 6 of this router.
If you don't want wireless, I recommend the Linksys BEFSR41 wired router. Either way, based on my experience, I recommend Linksys routers for price, reliability and Linksys' habit of releasing updated firmware for their products..
Tech Tip
By the way, if you get tempted by the new "802.11n" routers, please pay close attention. So far, the 802.11n specification has not been approved and finalized.
If you buy one, you may be locked into a specific vendor's implementation of a draft of a standard that never got approved. I recommend choosing 802.11g for now.
See these related articles:
- Wireless Security
- Wi-Fi Hotspots and Computer Security
- Wireless Networking Problems & Wireless Networking Security
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5. My Dell Notebook Repair Experience
My call on Monday evening to Dell Support was met with the ubiquitous automatic answering system, with the standard message that said something like "We are experiencing heavy call volume right now. The best time to call is Monday through Friday, 9am to 5pm." Of course, since this was the tech support group for Dell's Home & Home Office group, I don't imagine that very many of those customers call during that time.
That message was the only downside to the whole tech support and repair process!
As I expected and was warned, I waited on hold for a little bit, perhaps 10-15 minutes. It didn't bother me. I've waited longer on hold in earlier years.
My call was answered by a very helpful young man named Alok. Alok listened to what I had done, asked some questions, and then asked me to stay on hold a couple minutes while he consulted someone else.
When he came back, he asked me to turn on the computer and go into the BIOS setup (Accessing The Computer's BIOS Setup). The computer showed the BIOS Setup screen as expected — for about 10 seconds, and then went black. This confirmed yet again that the problem was hardware and not a software configuration problem.
The other test he asked me to do was to hook the notebook to an external monitor to see if I had a display on that. I hooked up a standard LCD monitor to my notebook and then turned on the notebook. As I expected, the notebook booted part way and then its LCD went black — but the external monitor continued to work perfectily. This confirmed that the problem was not the video "card" in the notebook.
Commentary
I had read that Dell was using tech support in India to provide service for its Home & Home Office group. Alok seemed to have a slight Indian accent. His diction and grammar were excellent and I had no trouble understanding him, nor did he appear to have trouble understanding me. I had no more trouble understanding him than I've had with the accents of Georgia, New York and Arkansas.
Why am I writing all of this? Apparently Dell has been getting a lot of flack over the tech support in India. At the end of the call, I was asked to speak with a supervisor, who wanted to make sure I had not had difficulties understanding Alok.
Anyway, Alok advised me that he was setting up for a repair service call. They would be shipping the part to the repair man. He gave me a phone number for me to call to set up the appointment, if I hadn't heard from the repair service within two days. This was Monday evening, so I should hear from them on Tuesday or Wednesday, but had a number to call if I hadn't been called.
Bright and early on Wednesday morning, I received a call from Robert of QualxServ, Dell's warranty repair service. Robert had received the part and wanted to schedule the repair call. We set the time for 4pm that afternoon.
At about 4pm, I received a call from Robert saying he as on the way to my house, but was running a few minuttes late. He arrived at about 4:20.
Let's just say that Robert had repaired notebook computers before. He had the old LCD removed, the new one installed, demonstrated that it worked, demonstrated that the Internet access worked, written a summary of what he did, and was gone — by 5:10.
I was quite impressed by my Dell tech support and repair experience.
From the professionalism shown by Alok and the speed of confirmation of my diagnosis to the professionalism of Robert and the speed of parts delivery and speed and completeness of the repair, I was very pleasantly surprised.
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6. Windows Genuine Advantage SNAFU
I think the term SNAFU was created during World War II. The acronym stands for "Situation Normal, All Fouled Up."
On August 25th, Microsoft showed that SNAFU is still as appropriate was it was when originally coined.
On August 25th, Microsoft managed to mess up their Windows Genuine Advantage activation servers. For hours, any copy of Windows Vista or Windows XP that tried to check to make sure it was a legitimate copy failed the test.
That's not just freshly installed copies that are trying to do their first activation. Both Windows Vista and Windows XP routinely check back with the Windows Genuine Advantage servers to revalidate themselves. Also, many downloads from Microsoft.com require that you validate your Windows installation again.
All these validation checks were failing — and informing the copy owners that their copy of Vista or XP was pirated.
Tech Tip
Really, we are "licensees," since we are sold the DVD that contains the OS, but we're not sold a copy of the OS. We are licensed to use the copy that is on the DVD, under the terms of the End User License Agreement).
There's a major problem with this anti-piracy approach that Microsoft has chosen to implement. It offends legitimate users.
Microsoft has had enough bad press about the false positives, the validation errors that mistakenly claimed that a legitimate copy was pirated. This time, they displayed that their validation servers can greatly inconvenience their users.
Windows XP users, if their copy is marked by testing as non-legitimate, get a warning message that urges them to buy a license. They also get a notification in the Windows Status Bar to remind them until they buy the license.
Windows Vista users, though, are treated much more cavalierly — Windows Vista disables some features, such as the cute Aero interface, if the installation fails the validation test.
Let's look at it from another angle...
Quoting Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org), "Celebrities tend to be fans of the dictum "any publicity is good publicity". If a celebrity says or does something embarrassing, he or she will often turn it into a strength and make it part of his or her "image." This tactic is used just as much with favorable situations as much as with unfavorable ones."
What is Microsoft, if not a celebrity? Here, they got free advertising at the expense of a few of their home customers (most business customers have volume licenses that don't validate routinely).
Microsoft got everyone thinking about their name and the concept of product validation. Sure, it was a bad experience for a few, but most people didn't have problems (most people didn't try to validate during that time!).
By an amazing coincidence, Microsoft's Software Licensing and Protection team is getting ready to release their new activation product to the manufacturing process (Release to Manufacturing = RTM). Hats off to Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet for spotting and reporting on this coincidence.
What can you do?
If you run Windows XP or Windows Vista, you have the Windows Genuine Advantage testing program. You have to validate to download many Microsoft Updates. You have to validate if you want to download many other programs from microsoft.com. You're not going to be able to avoid validating your copy of Windows XP or Windows Vista. But, you can make sure that the validation only occurs when you know it is happening.
If you run Windows XP, you MIGHT not have the Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications. WGAN is optional, but it's presented as part of the high-priority Windows Updates /Microsoft Updates (Microsoft Update versus Windows Update), so you probably have it, too.
I have both of them under control on my XP machines (I don't run Vista). When they want to check in with Microsoft, they run into my copy of Sunbelt Personal Firewall.
Sunbelt Personal Firewall has shown me that Microsoft's products often want to connect to Microsoft.com, whether it makes sense or not. (For example, just start a search on your computer using Windows Explorer — just starting the search program will trigger a contact to Microsoft!).
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Part 1 | Part 2
Volume 3, Number 12 — Sunday, September 2, 2007
Copyright © 2007 Terry A. Stockdale. All rights reserved.
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