Terry's Computer Tips - Newsletter
February 10, 2008

Terry's Computer Tips Newsletter
http://www.terryscomputertips.com
A computer tips newsletter for users of PC's.

Volume 3, Number 35 — Sunday, February 10, 2008

Sponsored Advertisement

Scan and Repair Your Windows Registry with XP Repair Pro

With XP Repair Pro you can safely clean, repair and optimize your
Windows Registry with a few simple mouse clicks! Automated System
Restore Point Creation allows these changes to be restored to
their original condition. Automated Repair Capabilities, too.
Click here to try XP Repair Pro

 

IN THIS WEEK'S ON-LINE ISSUE:
   1.   Converting Vinyl LP Records to Digital
   2.   Updates Last Week
   3.   My Computer Security Software Recommendations
   4.   Recommend my Terry's Computer Tips Newsletter to Your Friends

Welcome to the on-line edition of my Terry's Computer Tips newsletter.

My emailed newsletter is sent weekly to individuals who have subscribed to the newsletter. Click here to subscribe. It's free!

1.  Converting Vinyl LP Records to Digital

This week, subscriber Cary wrote with questions about project common to many people:

I'm starting a little project to record about 100 vinyl LPs to mp3s on my hard drive. I\'m looking for free software that will let me record a line-in source. I\'ve heard that Audacity is very good, but one critical feature I want is for the software to recognize a few seconds of silence as the end/beginning of a song and stop/re-start recording a new song. Otherwise, I\'ll end up with one very long mp3 that is basically the contents of the entire album. Do you have any recommendations? Cary

Cary

Having dreamed the same dream, let me say that you just wish you could do it in one step. Remember that your digitizing process is the most fixed in real time — a 45 minute album will take 45 minutes plus startup and shutdown of the record process.

I discovered very quickly that the idea of digitizing and immediately breaking into cuts made me do the recording over and over.

I never found a software package that would ACCURATELY split cuts — it would either make 20 cuts out of 8 or 3 cuts out of 14 — far to sensitive or not sensitive enough.

So, my recommendation is to record the whole album in wav format. Then, break it into individual files — you can easily spot the right places. Finally, convert the individual wav files to mp3.

Audacity will take some effort to learn, but it's quite powerful.

I used Goldwave for my recording projects. It is a full-function downloadable trial — not with a time-limitation, but with a limitation to the number of steps you can do before you register it.

I quickly bought Goldwave based on my short experience and the recommendation of a friend. The price is $45 CAD (= $44.59 USD at current exchange rates on Yahoo), plus whatever your credit card charges for the currency exchange.

Goldwave lets you mark the places to separate the cuts and then save automatically from the one full album side into however many individual cuts you marked. I don't have much experience with Audacity, but I think that, with Audacity, you'll have to save each cut individually.

By the way, my LP to digital conversion is still in the "I'm going to do that one of these days..." status. I spent a lot of time trying to do that about eight years ago, mostly unsuccessfully, because my turntable was failing. I've got my eye on one of those new USB turntables that are designed for this kind of effort.

Related articles:

• Software Review Audacity Sound Editor
• Recording and Editing Music with Goldwave

 

2.  Updates Last Week

Microsoft (operating systems, email, web browser, office suites):
Microsoft releases almost all updates once per month, on the second Tuesday. This week did not include Patch Tuesday — but next week does. Microsoft has a bunch of patches coming up for us on Tuesday, February 12th.

Firefox (web browser, http://www.mozilla.com, free):
New version. Version 2.0.0.12 was released on Thursday, February 7th. This release fixes a number of security and stability issues discovered in Firefox 2.0.0.11.

Opera (web browser, http://www.opera.com, free):
No new version this week. Version 9.25 was released on December 19th. This release is a recommended security upgrade.

Opera 9.50 beta 1 became available on October 25th. Based on the changelog, there are a lot of changes coming to Opera. But, beware, if you're using OperaMail, this is a one-way upgrade as it will change your mail storage system.

SeaMonkey (web browser, email, HTML editor, newsreader; http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey; free): No new version this week. Version 1.1.7 was released during the week ending December 1, 2007. This update includes security and stability fixes.

Eudora (email, http://www.eudora.com):
No update last week. Version 7.1.0.9 was released October 11, 2006. Eudora is now free, with no ads and no "paid mode" option.

The second public beta version of v8 (v8.0.0.b2) was released and is now available from http://wiki.mozilla.org/Eudora_Releases .

Mozilla Thunderbird (email, http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird, free):
No new version this week. Thunderbird version 2.0.0.9 was released on November 14, 2007. This is primarily a security update.

OpenOffice (office suite — spreadsheet, word processor, presentations, graphics, web design; http://www.openoffice.org; free): New Version! Version 2.3.1 was released during the week ending December 8th. According to the Release Notes, this version does not include any new features. It is a security bug fix.

Sponsored Advertisement

CounterSpy Anti-Spyware/Anti-Adware

Constant-running protection AND periodic scans, too.
Download your free 15-day full-function trial..
Discounts for multiple computers & multiple years!
Try CounterSpy for Free

3.  My Computer Security Software Recommendations

Anti-Virus

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.

Related articles:

• Anti-Virus Programs and Online Scanners
• Free Online Antivirus Scan
• NOD32 Anti-Virus Review - A Look at NOD32

Firewall Software

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:

• The Internet Versus You
• Do I Need a Firewall Program?
• Sunbelt Personal Firewall Review

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.

Related articles:

• Fighting Against Spyware & Malware
• CounterSpy Review

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..

See these related articles:

• Wireless Security
• Wi-Fi Hotspots and Computer Security
• Wireless Networking Problems & Wireless Networking Security

 

4.  Recommend my Terry's Computer Tips Newsletter to Your Friends

If you like my  Terry's Computer Tips email newsletter or the online edition, you can help me increase the number of subscribers to my free emailed newsletter.

Tell a Friend about Terry's Computer Tips!

With my email newsletter, not only do you get notices that the newsletters are available and content that is not in the online newsletter, but subscribing is the only way to get my Special Edition Newsletters which go only to subscribers.

If you get my free Terry's Computer Tips email newsletter, please feel free to forward your copy of the newsletter to a friend or friends that you think would be interested. Be sure to forward the entire newsletter, including my copyright notices and any advertising.

Of course, if you do not get my free email newsletter, I invite you to subscribe, too!

Volume 3, Number 35 — Sunday, February 10, 2008

Copyright © 2008 Terry A. Stockdale.  All rights reserved.