Defensive Computing

A word of warning about 'free' public Wi-Fi

Michael Horowitz — Mon, 12 May 2008 00:14:00 GMT

I recently found myself in an airport terminal with a laptop and time to kill. Not knowing what the Wi-Fi options were, I let Windows XP search for available wireless networks. As you can see below, one of the networks was called "Free Public WiFi". If this happens to you, ...

Organizing the Start button

Michael Horowitz — Sat, 10 May 2008 16:22:00 GMT

If the list of installed programs on your Windows XP computer is annoying long, a little organization goes a long way. Try moving items that you never expect to use to a folder called "NeverUsed" and move items you very rarely use to a folder called "Infrequent". I've done ...

A Linux ThinkPad

Michael Horowitz — Fri, 09 May 2008 23:09:00 GMT

I was gladdened yesterday when techbargains.com reported a sale on a new Lenovo ThinkPad R61 running SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop ($552, see below). It's not everyday that you run into a major PC vendor selling machines pre-loaded with Linux (excluding servers).

Perhaps pre-installing Linux will become more popular, ...

Beware the innocent web site

Michael Horowitz — Thu, 08 May 2008 16:41:00 GMT

PC World reported yesterday about the latest malicious attack on innocent websites (see Web Attack Worm Infecting Hapless Sites by Erik Larken). While this particular story is news, the concept is old - there is no safe neighborhood on the Internet.

The websites that have been infected with this particular ...

The Foxit PDF Reader - fast, free, portable and new

Michael Horowitz — Tue, 06 May 2008 19:19:00 GMT

The big claim to fame for the Foxit PDF Reader has always been speed - it opens PDF files much faster than Adobe's own Acrobat Reader. Then too, it's free and much smaller than the Adobe Reader. Plus, people just like it. At download.com, the CNET review ...

Can you trust the Wall Street Journal's domains?

Michael Horowitz — Sat, 03 May 2008 22:47:00 GMT

Last week I wrote that skepticism may be the most important thing you bring with you when dealing with the Internet. A few days later in the Wall Street Journal, Walter Mossberg said basically the same thing - "...the most insidious Internet security problems today rely on human gullibility, not ...

Beware of a bug in Excel when doing addition

Michael Horowitz — Sat, 03 May 2008 19:36:00 GMT

If there is anything a computer should be able to do, it's compute. Apparently however, Excel 2002 and Excel 2007 have trouble with this, most basic, task.

Office-watch.com details a bug involving the addition of numbers with two decimal places. Simply put, Excel generates the wrong total. It ...

Defragging and sizing the Windows page file

Michael Horowitz — Fri, 02 May 2008 04:13:00 GMT

An article from earlier today at Download.com about defragging the Windows paging file (Quick Fix: Put your paging file to work) needs some tweaking.

The article suggests that setting the page file Initial Size and Maximum Size to the same number will "avoid serious defragmentation". While this does avoid ...

When it comes to software, the latest is not the greatest

Michael Horowitz — Fri, 02 May 2008 00:36:00 GMT

Last year, I wrote that, as a computer nerd, I hold this truth to be self-evident: All new software contains bugs and design flaws. As a programmer, I can understand the inevitability of bugs. Design flaws are another matter.

The May 1st issue of Sunbelt Software's Vista News newsletter ...

Is Windows XP good enough?

Michael Horowitz — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 01:25:00 GMT

Paul Thurrott, who clearly thinks Windows Vista is better than XP, has taken the release of Service Pack 3 as an opportunity to review Windows XP, taking a step back from the bits and bytes to ask if XP is good enough. The article, written last month, is called A Look at Windows XP Service Pack 3 Part 1: Good Enough? ...