Ubuntu – Day 8

Week two with Ubuntu starts today, and still no shakes, dry heaves, or headaches after leaving Windows last weekend. I’m enjoying the Ubuntu and even have the spam a little more under control with Thunderbird email. Normally, I don’t play games on my computer, but I do like puzzle games that challenge my mind and help me wind down after a long day troubleshooting Windows’ problems. Ubuntu comes with a...

Ubuntu – Day 7

Today marks the one week mark that I quit using my Windows Vista machine and started using Ubuntu exclusively. I pledged to use Ubuntu only for two straight weeks to really put the operating system through the paces of daily use. After a rough start with email and fighting spam, I am almost in a groove of using this free and robust operating system. I think that Microsoft has the work cut out for themselves over the next few...

Ubuntu – Day 4

I’m going to do a short written update to my Ubuntu trek, but record my first official “Shotgun Podcast” here shortly. After only three days, I gave up on Evolution email as my email program. I like the program a lot, but unfortunately, I get way too much spam not to have a better anti-spam solution. So, I downloaded and installed Thunderbird today which while not perfect and far from my Cloudmark Desktop...

Ubuntu – Day 1

I haven’t touched my Windows’ machine all day and won’t for the next 14. However, one program I already miss from my Windows’ computer is my wonderful anti-spam software called Cloudmark Desktop. Adam and I talk almost weekly about Cloudmark Desktop. We have both used it since we discovered it at the old Comdex computer show five or six years ago. Currently, they don’t have a Linux version of the...

Rick’s 3 Rules of Email

Never Forward Email Never Forward Email IF you must forward email, ALWAYS use Blind Carbon Copy (BCC) and ALWAYS clean up the header information from previous email. Some computer users who encounter my rules of email sometimes pass off my thoughts as being too strict. Unfortunately, I know it isn’t true. Today, for the upteenth time, I worked with a customer who has had her email address for less than a year and...

Back to work

I just got back in town a few hours ago. I have been returning calls and sifting through emails. One of the drawbacks to technology is that it makes it easier for work to stack up while you are gone. I must, again, say how grateful I am for Cloudmark Desktop, an email spam filter that actually works. I had over 300 emails while I was gone, but only about 20 were actually worth reading. Cloudmark sifted all of the spam and...

Our advice changes as technology evolves

Rick and I don't sell anything either on the show or in our businesses. We specialize in the service of helping people through their problems not solving problems by throwing more products on their computer. When we recommend a product like AVG Antivirus or Cloudmark spam filter we do so because we love the product, no company pays us anything for our recommendation. Since we are so brand neutral, our advice has changed...

Dial-up users: Are you tired of waiting for email ...

I have been utilizing this tip much more lately as dial-up users get pummeled with email containing pictures that haven't been resized and an endless parade of forward spam with large attachments from friends and family with high speed connections. For every one megabyte of space an attachment contains, it takes 5-8 minutes for a dial-up user to download it. Many joke emails, slide shows or movies being passed around...

If you give an 8-year-old girl a camera

The top item on my daughter's Christmas list this year was a Palm. We thought we could satisfy her with a cheap PDA that had a stylus and a touch screen. She didn't buy it. So, she gathered all of the money that she had earned all year and we combined it with the money we got from returning the non-Palm and we went shopping for a real Palm device. In our shopping we found a last item Kodak digital camera on clearance...

Captcha?

Technology has spawned many strange new words from blog to podcast to spyware. Captcha is a new term that you will be seeing more of in the coming months. In fact, chances are good that you have already dealt with captchas. A captcha is a scrambled mess of characters (like the ones pictured in this article) that we have to reproduce in a box before submitting a web form. The purpose of captchas is to thwart bad guys from...

Splogs?

Spam. It's not just for email anymore. I often get the question of why people send spam. Money is the simple answer. As spam fighting software slowly matures and gets better and email users slowly (how dense or desperate can some people be) stop buying stuff from spam, the purveyors of spam look elsewhere. One profitable place they have utilized lately is blog's comments. Many web sites (including ours) encourage...

New ways to get more junk email

My comments today are directed toward those who are looking for more ways to get on junk email lists. Some common ways that we talk about on the show include the following: Register any new project you buy. Ask your friends to add you to their forwarded joke list (spammers love to harvest from forwarded email). Reply to junk email asking that the sender take you off their list (spammers interpret this as "Thank you for...

Why you shouldn’t use the same username and ...

I have had several clients tell me that they use the same username and password for everything so they don't forget. While this is a personal decision, I just thought I would provide one good reason why it's not a good idea to only use one username and password. Let's say that somehow a bad guy gets a job working for your ISP (Internet Service Provider) or perhaps he gets a job working for your newsletter about...

The no porn approach to computer maintenance

There are many things that can slow a computer down, but nothing does more to negatively impact the performance of a computer more than spyware. Even many viruses run undetected, but almost all spyware prevents a system from running at top speed. Spyware comes from a variety of places, but there are three types of web browsing that will guarantee that you accumulate some of the worst forms of spyware. Online gambling sites:...

The firewall debate heats up

After my post yesterday, then my article in the newletter, a few people feel that I am way off base in recommending that most people don't need a firewall. First, Windows XP has a firewall built-in, if you use DSL or you have your cable Internet running through a Router, then you have a hardware firewall. My comments are pertaining to the extra software firewalls like ZoneAlarm and Sygate. My cool brother-in-law, Nishan,...