Terry's Computer Tips - Newsletter
August 29, 2005

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

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Volume 1, Number 11 -- Monday, August 29, 2005 -- "Katrina Edition"

IN THIS ISSUE:
*  Katrina Edition
*  Updates Last Week
*  Counterspy?  I thought you used Microsoft Antispyware?
*  A new use for Google
*  Accessing the Internet While Traveling
*  Accessing Your Email While Traveling
*  Shareware/Freeware Pick of the Week - Eudora
*  Just For Fun

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Katrina Edition - Status Woke up this morning (Monday, 8/29) at 6:30 to find the power was off.  No telling what caused that -- Hurricane Katrina was just starting to hit the coastline about 80 miles east-south-east of us.  We spent all morning watching the winds in Baton Rouge.  Occasionally, we listened to the radio for updates, since we don't know when the power will come back on.  Hopefully power will be back on some time this evening, but our power company (the smaller one in Baton Rouge) says that about 60,000 of their 86,000 customers are without power.  Fortunately my main computer is a notebook so I have power (4hrs36min remaining on the battery now).  I checked emails and gave updates to family by email, using my backup dialup account (more later on that).

[post-newsletter update Wed., August 31]

As of Wednesday morning (today), some 50,000 Baton Rouge homes still were without power. This morning, Entergy announced that they would have power restored to all of the Baton Rouge customers by Saturday.

New Orleans, Biloxi and the many small communities between them and southeast and southwest of New Orleans are extremely hard ht. New Orleans and Biloxi are getting all the news, though.

You can help by donating to the American Red Cross.

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1.  Updates Last Week On Tuesday (August 23), Microsoft released a Junk E-mail filter update for Outlook 2003.  This supplies more current definition of which e-mail messages should be considered to be junk e-mail.  I checked a copy of Office XP also, but there was not a similar update for Outlook 2002.  Similarly, there was no update for Outlook Express.

The current version numbers of my favorite Internet-related programs are:  Firefox v1.0.6;  Eudora v6.2.3;  Opera v8.0.2 (yikes!  I'm still running v7.5.4 -- time to update, although I'll keep 7.5.4 on another machine for web design testing); ZoneAlarm v6..0.631.003; and CounterSpy 1.0.29 (I'm running the v1.5 Beta, v1.5.66).

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2.  Counterspy?  I thought you used Microsoft Antispyware? Microsoft's new Microsoft Antispyware, even while it is still in "beta" form, is quite impressive.  Microsoft purchased the rights to market their own version of Giant Antispyware, a well-respected anti-spyware product.  After a couple months, they announced that it would be free for individual users, but that they would also have a network-administrator version designed for businesses, which would be a product for sale.  The beta has been available for months and received prompt accolades from the press and users.  I tried it, liked it, and recommended it.

However, a couple months ago, the rumors began that Microsoft was in negotiations to acquire Claria, or at least its software.  Claria is "the company formerly known as Gator," who renamed itself because of all its bad publicity over adware loaded with Kazaa.

Well, that news was bad enough.  A few days later, the news broke that Microsoft was now recommending "Ignore" as its action to Claria's "Gain" product and and a number of others which had previously received "Quarantine" recommendations.  Needless to say, this created quite an uproar in the anti-spyware / anti-adware community.  One example is Larry Seltzer's July 12th article at eWeek.com, titled "Why Microsoft Antispyware is Untrustworthy".

I decided to look at the other licensee of Giant Antispyware's technology -- Sunbelt Software.  Sunbelt's product is called " CounterSpy" and is very aggressive in its identification and recommendations for quarantine or removal. In my initial scan after installing the trial version, Counterspy complained about "Google Earth," which was the "Just for Fun" item in my August 1st newsletter.

If you think about it, Google Earth monitors your keystrokes and mouse movements (presumably only while it is the active program) and transmits them to Google -- this causes additional information to download to you in real-time.  (By the way, this interactive web technology is the hot-and-coming thing.  One term for the technology is AJAX - Asynchronous JavaScript and XML.)  Of course, this keystroke and mouse monitoring resulted in Counterspy identifying Google Earth as having "keylogger" spyware.  Counterspy recommended removing it.

After trying the 15-day trial version of Counterspy, I purchased two licenses for CounterSpy.  These were for my wife's and son's machines.  My desktop continues to use Microsoft's Antispyware for comparison purposes.  I'm using Counterspy v1.5 beta, which is a much-enhanced version, on my notebook.  The extremely reasonable price for CounterSpy, which offers both scheduled scanning and always-running, real-time protection, makes the decision to purchase Counterspy very easy.

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Continued in Part 2

Volume 1, Number 11 -- Monday, August 29, 2005
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Copyright © 2005 Terry A. Stockdale.  All rights reserved.