As with all RAIDs, a certain amount of knowledge is assumed. Bring your card and computer to the Clinic and you can do all the work yourself if desired, accessing support help when desired.

 

CrossLoop <http://tinyurl.com/lu7fyf> provides a way to access a remote computer’s desktop anywhere in the world. One use for this capability is the ability to work on a remote computer problem without leaving home. It’s best done when there’s a high-speed connections at each end. A dialup connection will work; the process is excruciatingly slow—but if you are desperate….

 

I suggest that the Crossloop monitor should always be installed by a knowledgeable person—not because it’s difficult (it isn’t), but because sometimes the enabling popup box is hidden behind other installation boxes and needs a bit of sleuthing. One technique, when Crossloop installation is not going right, is to reboot the computer, which will tend to make the firewall pay attention to the demands of Crossloop. My recent installs of the latest version have gone quite well.

 

It’s interesting to note the stranglehold that Microsoft has on the computer industry. Given the popularity of Netbooks <http://tinyurl.com/l4xr6v> that were coming out with Linux on them—and the subsequent consumer rejection of the Linux operating system because of user unfamiliarity with Linux—Microsoft was able to stem a consumer march to Linux by allowing vendors with a screen size of 10 inches or less to have a special version of XP Home to put onto their Netbooks <http://tinyurl.com/nspmpu>. Microsoft set their price to the vendors low enough that the $10 premium vs Linux became unimportant. Having thus thwarted a golden opportunity for Linux to make an inroad into Microsoft’s empire, that empire has expanded. This was the gist of part of Hank Skawinski’s July presentation .

 

With the failure of Vista in the marketplace, Microsoft has trotted out Windows 7. Windows 7 is in the same position that Vista was a year ago–but worse. Windows  7 still has not had its SP1 released (wait a year), so all of its induced bugs and “reverse features” are still around—and will be for another year or two. If you don’t want to be an unpaid part of Microsoft’s QA department, stay with XP—it works.

 

To give you a perspective on Microsoft’s penetration of various platforms, it is estimated that 40% of business computers are still operating with Windows 2000, where the emphasis is on solidity and absence of problems. This is greatly down from the 70% a few years ago. About 50% of business Windows is XP. This segment is growing slowly. About 8 % is Linux in some form. Then there is the 2% of businesses that are using Vista—a truly dismal showing. 

 

For home computing, about 80% of new computers are delivered with Vista, because many users don’t realize that they can join the 70% of Vistausers who choose the “down­grade” option at the time of sale or soon after. MicroCentersupports that option by providing many computers with XP already installed. Review any of their newsletters <http://tinyurl.com/ckw5no> on this subject.

 

Secunia Software Inspector <http://tinyurl.com/lglwcj> is designed to ensure that your computer is running the latest versions of the software installed on it. This helps assure that your computer is protected from malware to the greatest extent possible. Indirectly, it also means that your computer is not a hassle to operate, because its software is current and the bugs and problems that the vendors have already fixed are corrected by the latest software available from the vendor. Keeping software current fixes vexing problems a lot of the time.

 

My favorite Secunia game is to update about six programs simultaneously and see if I can keep up with the resulting blizzard of window clicks needed to authorize the updates and then rebooting. The first time I ran Secunia, about a year ago, I was astounded at how many programs were not current. I had been paying attention to the update process. You should run Secunia at least once a month. Caution: Secunia likes to leave itself active and so uncheck its box in MSCONFIG after each run, to get rid of some overhead.

 

Malwarebytes <http://tinyurl.com/klyk77> is a virus scanner that does not need rebooting after downloading and installation, which means that a computer can be scanned in about six minutes. Six minutes is about what it takes to scan the WINDOWS folder on my computer, since almost all potential viruses will be found in some part of that folder. Since there are still occasional exceptions, it is wise to do a full scan at a later time .

 

·        Bill Young, for agreeing to share with us his experiences with a Linux-Windows hybrid computer setup in August on Linux support of Quickbooks <http://tinyurl.com/n8c6zm>.

·        John Sleeman and Howard Hushbeck, for handling the sales support function for our August speaker <http://www.ugr.com/> on Acronis Backup.