Terry's Computer Tips - Newsletter
October 5, 2008

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

Volume 4, Number 17 — Sunday, October 5, 2008

IN THIS ON-LINE ISSUE:

   1.   My New Laptop Table
   2.   Software Review: WinMD5Sum
   3.   My Computer Security Software Recommendations
   4.   Safely Remove Hardware the Easy Way
   5.   Recommend my Terry's Computer Tips Newsletter to Your Friends

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

 

  

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1.  My New Laptop Table

After years of using a rolling laptop cart, I managed to break it about a year ago and ended up shopping for a new one. Unfortunately, Office Depot had stopped carrying this type of product. Their only desks for laptops were ugly, bulky things.

First, I ordered a similar item via a merchant on the Internet. Let's just say that someone had seen a real laptop cart and designed one from memory. The most important flaw was that, despite having independent table surfaces to the right- and left-hand sides of the support, they were welded into a constant height between the two, even though they tilted independently.

A properly designed laptop cart has the two table shelves working independently — independently adjustable height and tilt. This enables the user to raise the main (laptop) working surface and the side shelf. Then, the user can adjust the side shelf to the desired height. Whether you want the side shelf for storage (I usually keep a magazine or two on it) or to hold papers that you're typing into a word processor or spreadsheet, the ability to adjust the side shelf is necessary.

After fighting the fixed height side shelf for a few months, I started shopping again. Fortunately, I was able to find almost exactly what I was looking for at Amazon. This cart image looks very similar to the bad one I purchased, although that one was dark in color and manufactured by another company.

The basic idea is that the base is a T-shape, the upper section consists of a support that slides up and down the center support pole (notice the knob on the right side to tighten the vertical setting). The small side shelf on the left is supported by a vertical shaft that slides within the vertical bracket for the right side.

The knob on the left side tightens its vertical shaft, so that it can be independent of the right shelf height. The two knobs on the underside of the two shelves are used to control the tilt of their respective shelves.

How about the assembly? This Ameriwood laptop cart was extremely easy to put together. When it arrived in a small box, I groaned at the thought of putting it together. The task took about five minutes! It was well-designed for easy assembly.

So, why do I use a laptop cart instead of a desk. It's very simple. If I used my laptop on a desk, I'd spend my evenings in another room away from the family. By using the laptop on a laptop cart, I can use it in the den, with my family, and watch television while I surf the net, write emails or write my blog and newsletter articles.

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Program:   WinMD5Sum
Publisher:  Nullriver Software, www.nullriver.com
Category:  Utility to verify integrity of download
License:  Short, custom user-friendly license
Price:  Freeware

First, I need to explain what MD5 is. MD5 is a hashing algorithm (a number-crunching method) that is designed to read every byte of a file and generate a long, unique code based on its contents. md5Sum is a program in the Linux world that is used to generate verification codes for software files.

The most important features of an MD5 sum are that: (1) it is easy to use and (2) if a single character/byte changes in the file, the MD5 sum is dramatically different.

md5sum is often used when Linux programs are made available for downloading. Since most of the programs are open-source and free, and anyone can distribute them, the publisher often uses md5Sum to create the unique identifying sequence of characters for the file. That way, you can download from anywhere, but still use md5sum on your own computer to calculate the MD5 sum verification code, and compare it to the MD5 sum published by the originating site.

So, what is WinMD5Sum? You guessed it — a Windows program to calculate an MD5 sum.

Sometimes, Windows programs are distributed with MD5Sums, or Linux programs may be downloaded to a Windows computer. By using WinMD5Sum, we can calculate the MD5 sum to make sure that we downloaded an unmodified file and also confirm that there was not a bad download.

What do I use it for? I often will download a Linux distribution in the ISO image format, so I can burn a CD of it. WinMD5Sum allows me to make sure that the file is the same as the original and that the download process did not corrupt the file (which sometimes happens).

What else does WinMD5Sum do? Nothing.

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..."

For the last five years, until very recently, my personal choice has been ESET's small, fast NOD32 anti-virus program, which offers a FREE 30-day evaluation license. I consider NOD32 one of the best in anti-virus protection. Unlike some of its competitors, ESET offers multiple-year licenses also, and includes program updates in the multiple-year license.

Now, I've changed from my long-time programs NOD32 (antivirus) and CounterSpy (antispyware) to Sunbelt's new VIPRE Antivirus + Antispyware.

I've found that VIPRE puts even less load on my computer than the speedy combination of NOD32 and CounterSpy. I've also been impressed with the way its "deep scan" has found and eliminated risks that were stored in zip files, which is one of the latest malware email tricks.

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
• VIPRE Antivirus + Antispyware Review

Click here for more information about VIPRE.

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!. Microsoft woke up and supplied a two-way firewall with Windows Vista.

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. Whether they are calling home or spewing spam, you want to be able to control your computer.

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 Personal Firewall flags that to me, and I can stop it or allow it to happen. Many other programs try to call home when you run them, too.

I recommend my choice for a firewall program, which 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 regularly $19.95 (with discounts for multiple computers and/or multiple years!) 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 has been my personal choice for my PC's and my family's PC's.

Sunbelt's CounterSpy v2.5, both improved CounterSpy's performance against malware and reduced its impact on system resources and responsiveness when its scanning.

Sunbelt continues to release updated program versions — the current version is v3.1. Nicely, they do NOT install the updated programs automatically. You have to use the Update process in the program, which means that you'll know that something significant has changed.

Now, I've changed from my long-time programs NOD32 (antivirus) and CounterSpy (antispyware) to Sunbelt's new VIPRE Antivirus + Antispyware.

I've found that VIPRE puts even less load on my computer than the speedy combination of NOD32 and CounterSpy. My computer seems to have much more pep and power than it had previously. I've also been impressed with the way its "deep scan" has found and eliminated risks that were stored in zip files, which is one of the latest malware email tricks.

Related articles:

• Fighting Against Spyware & Malware
• CounterSpy Review
• VIPRE Antivirus + Antispyware 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 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 would be 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. Note: I found that PopFile generally meets my needs and stopped using Mailwasher Pro, even though PopFile works AFTER the emails have been downloaded. If I used a dialup connection, I would be more interested in Mailwasher Pro.

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.

Related articles:

• Spam Filtering
• Keeping spam out of your Inbox
• Getting Control of Your Inbox
• How Can I Prevent spam?

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, which I also use. 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

When we use removable storage devices, such as flash drives, external hard drives, and notebook cd/dvd drives, there's a very important step to take before disconnnecting a device.

Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista have a built-in feature to cache disk writes. That is, they pretend that a portion of the computer's RAM is a drive. When a program wants to write to a drive, it actually writes to memory (which lets the program finish the step faster, and return to the user's control). Then, Windows manages the process of writing to the storage device.

The problem is that this delay may be several seconds or more. In order to make sure that the write process actually takes place, when we shut down Windows, we use the shutdown process. Similarly, before removing a storage device from the computer, we need to "Savely Remove Hardware."

The icon in the Windows Status Bar is the icon to which the red arrow points in the image below.

If we move the mouse pointer over the icon, Windows shows us the Safely Remove Hardware "tool tip," as shown below.

If we right-click on the icon, we get a selectable button that says, unsurprisingly, Safely Remove Hardware — which opens the Safely Remove Hardware dialog box.

Unfortunately, as you can see in the image of the dialog box, below, the device does not get identified with a particularly user-friendly label. It's labelled "USB Mass Storage Device." Sure, that's what a flash drive (in this case) really is, but it's not a very helpful description.

We select the device we want to stop, and then click the Stop button.

(click on the image for a larger version)

If we had double-clicked on the icon, we would have ended at the same dialog box.

However,there's a much easier and more user-friendly approach to safely removing hardware.

Starting at the same point, we see the icon showing that there is removable hardware.

All we have to do is to single-click with the left mouse button.

Now, we get a selectable line for each device, with a user-friendly label. Since this particular flash drive is a U3 device (and one for which I have not chosen to the disable U3 menu system), we see that Windows views the flash drive as two "drives." The U3 system uses a fake CDROM on the flash drive, which is assigned the first alphabetic letter (F:), and then a user-writeable section, which is assigned the second alphabetic letter (G:).

All we have to do is to click on the item (in that popup box) that we want to safely remove. So, before I would unplug the flash drive, I would left-click on the Safely Remove Hardware icon in the Windows Status Bar, and then left-click on the entry "Safely Remove USB Mass Storage Device - drives (G:, F:)."

The desired result is a message saying

 

  

Sponsored Advertisement

Sunbelt Personal Firewall for Windows 2000, XP and Vista
Two-way firewall to control inbound and outbound communications.
30-day full-function Free Trial.

$19.95 for One Computer
Discounts for multiple computers & multiple years!

Unlimited Home Site License — only $39.95 for all your home PC's

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