Category: Compgeeky

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A Heads Up for Windows Users

careful with computer use and practice safe computing, but you may want to pass this on to other Windows users, since the scam referenced in the linked article is aimed at that demographic.

Security alert: Bogus tech-support phone calls (https://windowssecrets.com/top-story/security-alert-bogus-tech-support-phone-calls/)

The article details the scam. I’ve actually received a call like this recently. It boggles my mind that whole call centers (I heard the typical cheap, mass call center sounds in the background) can be run funded by suckers who fall for this scam, but there you are: one born every minute, I suppose.

Microsoft offers a simple security audit (referenced in the article linked above) that can get casual computer users started.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2534555/en-us

Be aware: if you prefer managing your Windows Updates manually, the Fixit applet will tag that as a security problem. It’s not IF you are faithful in performing your manual updates.

If you want to perform a more detailed security scan, consider Secunia PSI (“Personal Software Inspector”– http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/personal/). It’ll scan for any known security holes in installed software and prompt you to update the software. Good stuff, Maynard.

Feel free to pass this along to folks you feel might need the information.

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Fun lil mini-project

Mini-project: Cleaning up and configuring a used, but otherwise nice, older Vaio desktop for use by a (very nearly*) first time computer user who’s nearly 90. Purpose of the computer? “I want to be able to do email with my children and grandchildren.”

A worthwhile use for a computer, but it doesn’t require all that much. So. notebook or desktop was the first question. (Tablet or “smart” phone? Nope. Nixed by user.)

There were several barriers to a notebook: cost, screen size, cramped keyboard and any kind of touchpad were some of the stated barriers. But size mattered, in some senses, as well because of limited living space.

Nice discovery: a nice-sized, high-resolution (1080p) TV with an analog video computer input that sits within pretty close viewing range from the user’s most comfy chair. Desktop that’ll fit into the user’s entertainment center? The right fit.

Internet access. Limited, fixed income. Relatively high medical expenses (relative to fixed income). But. The assisted living facility does sport a wireless network with Internet access, and the wireless password is in my password book. . . Now, if only the user can access it from her apartment, Internet access is solved. Hmmm, a small parabolic dish to improve reception and transmission from a 5db base antenna on a wireless adapter? Could be.

Other minor concerns:

Would have preferred a Linux OS with desktop links to Internet/Email, but (sort of computer literate) adult children would not be all that comfortable helping the user with that OS as an environment, so some sort of Windows environment. Oh, dear. It is a slightly older computer. Only 512 MB RAM, and only room for expansion to a max of 2GB (one pair of expansion slots effectively X-ed out, because one of them is has a small issue: broken clip). That’s not all that bad, since the computer’s limited to a 32-bit OS, anyway. Maybe Win7 wouldn’t be best, though. So, WinXP Pro, 32-bit it is. (Hmmm, seems to run very nicely with the 512MB it has. With installation of software blocked, it might just do as is! But. . . another 1GB would only be about $25. Decisions. . . ) Fully updated, WinXP Pro SP3 will certainly serve the user well enough and be familiar to family who may want to mess the computer up. *heh*

After those trifling concerns were met, the rest has been easy-peasy.

Necessary software:

A decent browser (Opera) configured with useful extensions (WOT, LastPass, Adblock Plus) and Speed Dial selections (the user’s webmail address, several sites fitting user’s stated interests, etc.). Links on desktop to Internet/Email.

Basic security software–Microsoft Security Essentials.

OpenDNS set as DNS resolver, and free account set up for customized filtering.

Irfanview–better for viewing family photos than the XP built in viewer.

TeamViewer8 for the most computer-savvy relative to use for remote management.

. . .and a few other little details, like the mini-manual with outlined user tips.

With a little luck on the Internet connection (via the assisted living facility’s existing wireless network), I think this will serve the stated needs pretty well.

Fun lil mini-project.

(Kudos to JDS and MES for the donation of the computer.)

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“The Beauty of the Windows 8 Start Screen”?

*feh* I’d like some of what this guy’s smoking, because the Start Screen is ugly, in a “Aw, isn’t that cute” kindergartenish way. (Get out the primary-colored wooden blocks for the mentally challenged kindergärtners still operating in toddler mode.)

I did put Win8 Pro on an older HTPC, along with WMC. The Start screen is completely useless in that application, since WMC is still a “Desktop” application. That computer boots directly into the Desktop, and I’ve added a Start button/menu, since none of the Tiled apps have any use whatsoever on that machine.

On the desktop, minor improvements in memory handling make Win8 a nice change for the older computer operating as a HTPC; minor tweaks to Explorer and Task Manager are welcome, though better apps have been available from Sysinternals for years. But that’s about it. While I don’t really miss the eye candy earlier Windows versions offered, I do miss the option to have it if I want. Reverting to a pre-Win2K dullness without an option to spice it up a bit built in seems more Mac “do it our way or else” straitjacketing, but maybe M$ thinks it’s time to get with the Mac lockdown attitude toward users.

Seems M$ has determined that its future lies with users who are using tablets only, or desktop users who are still in “special ed” kindergarten, hence the Tiled interface of the Start screen. *shrugs* Time will tell if M$ is right or not. Frankly, I cannot see much use at all for Win8 for most desktop users, and there are a lot of those still left in the pool, many more than there are tablet users. Maybe Surface Pro can make Win8 make sense to more people who need to do more than just consume content.

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“Microsoft Time”

A couple of weeks ago, I jumped through Microsoft’s hoops to get a license key to add Windows Media Center to Win8 Pro. M$ said, “WTG, Bubba! You’ll have that key via email in 72 hours or so,” or words to that effect. The “72 hours” was there, though. 72 hours, three days. Yeh, well, let’s knock off the weekends, because, you know, automated responses–heck! the Internet!–don’t work on weekends. So, naturally, “72 hours”. . . it wasn’t. Just got it a couple of minutes ago.

Luckily (not! PLANNING *heh*) I had requested a key under different identifiers two months ago, so I’ve already installed WMC for Win8, otherwise, Win8 would’ve been sitting pretty much unused on the HTPC.

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Drawbacks of a Long Infancy

Infant product class, that is. eBooks. I read a lot of ’em. So far, very few eBooks seem to take advantage of the medium to expand beyond print format, and many are weaker products than hardcopy books. Here’s a brief blurb of my consumer-of-print viewpoint.

Many books can benefit from maps, tables and other reference materials. With hardcopy books, these are often included, and if not I often have the material to hand (or nearby) to fill the gaps. eBooks that can benefit from such addenda need them even more than print works, because they’re often read in locales where such things are unavailable even to someone like me who has a wide-ranging reference library at hand. Such things should be included in eBooks that would benefit from them, and they should be, at the very least, context sensitive. For example, when maps are called for, scalable, zoomable satellite or aerial maps (with helpful labeling, perhaps) could be included with little more trouble than simple line-drawing maps. Use your imagination to supply supplementary materials lists eBook authors should include. You’ll have to, though, because so far very few authors have used theirs in that manner.

As to those eBooks that are weaker products than corresponding print works. *sigh* One of the worst examples I can think of offhand was a novel written by a very good writer before eBooks had really taken off. I read it expecting not great but good fun. The story was OK, as were the characters, descriptive narrative and dialog, but… he’d apparently just scanned it–or had it scanned–and converted to electronic format and apparently had not even had it proof read. Too many obvious scanning errors ruined enjoyment of the book. But that’s just one of the worst. Self-published, author edited or proofread (or author edited AND proofread) eBooks seem to be about 85% POORLY edited and proofread. Good lord, folks! Execrable grammar, spelling and punctuation just barely scratches the surface of many crap-laden plots, dialog, descriptive narrative and characters crudely drawn in crayon from B-movie central casting descriptions!

Yes, there are a lot of well-written, well-edited/proofread “Indie” published books available, but the numbers of well-written “Indie” books is only because so very much chaff is out there to winnow the well-written books out of. It’s a real pain in the neck (although the pain’s really quite a bit further south of there) to be reading along thinking, “Interesting story–OH CRAP! GETCHER SYNTAX OUTA YOUR ASS!” or “SPELLCHECK, DUMBASS, SPELLCHECK!!” or “WTF! YOU DIDN’T JUST ‘THERE’S’ ME AGAIN! over and over again.

I’m sure both the crap writing and the features blocks will work themselves out in time, though. eBooks are still in a development phase, and some writers, at least, seem to be thinking seriously about some of these things. Thank heavens. *sigh*

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Compy Dreams

With the advent of Wintel tablets approaching, the tablet for factor may actually start to appeal to me for doing things other than just media/info-consuming. Sure, I’ve seen–and tried out–some of the office-type productivity app attempts on various tablets, and I’ve shuddered at Garage Band being touted on the iPhad (Garage Band and its ilk are represented as music content creation applications; they are “music content creation” apps as garbage collection–not even disposal–is to yard waste: a way to get the junk collected in one location). *meh* At best such things are kludgy. Of course, no tablet that come w/o included physical keyboards would be worth much to me for anything but media/info-consumption, either.

Yeh: might as well just look for a convertible touch screen notebook for me.

Unless… (and until) voice (and music) recognition advances would allow reasonable data input w/o a keyboard/mouse (or touchpad/screen) combo. Ideally, a wearable computer with a system that allowed projection of a virtual screen (while I continued to wear my prescription lenses) and could reliably translate subvocalized commands/data input into actions/content. Oh, yeh, music recognition capability that’d allow vocal or instrumental input and transcribe music played/sung with reasonable accuracy (as is now only reasonably done via direct midi input, although folks are working on decent transcription from live input). And an OS that allowed me to continue to use a music transcription software that can perfectly read my archives of scores already written. Combined w/decent ear buds and perhaps some motion-sensor gloves or wrist bands, such a system would be pretty much ideal for a portable computer for someone like me.

*sigh* Maybe such a system will be available before I’m too feeble-minded to be able to use it. (Some may say it’s too late for that already. *heh*)

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Evidence That Many “Computer Users” Are Patzers?

OK, maybe that’s overstating things a wee tad. Perhaps this:

1 in 4 tablet owners say it is now their primary computer

…is merely evidence that a whole lotta much “computer users” are just media consumers, not really “computer users”. Doing anything productive on a tablet is just silly, if a desktop or notebook is available. Tablets are good (for different values of “good” depending on the activity) for limited email, web browsing (*meh* if you like the limited tablet web browsing experience, I suppose) and viewing videos or listening to music. Yes, despite all the apps available for the iPhad, it, too, is an extremely limited platform. Almost everything else that falls under the rubric of actually doing anything is better done on a so-called “legacy” platform (so-called by tablet fanbois-n-gurlz).

So, yeh, if the article has its facts straight, 1/4 of “computer users” are just consumers of stuff (I’m counting their limited web browsing, “social media” faux socializing, etc. as “stuff” here), using their tablets to get their consumer fix.

Color me impressed that so many are being removed from the pool of those who REALLY need to be inhabitants of Assisted Computing Facilities.

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This is just wrong, wrong, wrong…

…in so very many ways, but (I tell myself), I just can’t help myself. *heh*

So, I have an HP wireless adapter for an HP Wireless Printing whatchamacallit thingy to use making some ordinary USB-connected printer into a printer that’s connected to one’s wireless network. *meh* Worked OK, but has been superseded. Just gathering dust so… will it work as an ordinary wireless adapter to connect a Windoze computer to the Wireless network? Urm, no.

*pouts*

OK, so fire up Linux Mint in a VM. Hey! Mint sees the thing as a Realtek wireless adapter and will use it to connect to my wireless network! Cool.

So now I’m duplexing the VM while connecting with only this lil toy’s internal wireless adapter in the Windows 7 host. I need to “Minty-fy” a more capable RW machine and use this there. Fun.

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Tablets Are to Computers as…

mp3 players are to real musical instruments.

No, the analogy isn’t perfect–show me one that is–but it captures the essence of the primary difference. Computers can easily and effectively be used to make stuff; tablets are best used to consume stuff (as entertainment devices). Yes, computers can be used to entertain the user, just as tablets can be used to create content, but tablets aren’t generally well-suited to creating content, whereas desktop and notebook computers are very well-suited to creating content.

Type on a tablet–any tablet. So far, I’ve seen no one who can type an email, a word processing document, etc., as well on a tablet as on a physical computer keyboard. There may be one or two such freaks of nature, but, for the most part, folks who claim typing on a tablet’s as easy as on a physical keyboard are simply lying (perhaps to themselves as much as to others).

I’ve seen apps for music creation on tablets. None of them come anywhere near eve transcription programs like Finale or Encore for creating real music content. Ditto for video creation on tablets as compared to more traditional computing hardware.

Now, casual “computer” users may find that they can get along OK with 2-finger typing of emails, browsing the web (on a very cramped screen) and watching videos on tablets, but those are about the only “computing” activities that tablets can manage apart from… consumer apps, apps that are directed toward doing the kinds of things grownups already know how to do, like navigating from one place to another* and suchlike. *heh* ‘S’all right, kiddos. Tablets are perfectly OK for such things.

Note that I use my very blatantly consumer-oriented tablet (Kindle Fire–a marketing tool for other Amazon products, just as the iPhad is a thinly-disguised tool for marketing the Apple “cloudosphere” *heh*) almost exclusively for consuming media: books, movies and musical recordings. Sure, I went through a phase early on of exploring all the lil thing could do and discovered… that apart from books, movies and accessing my mp3 collection, my more traditional computers beat the heck out of it in almost everything else. OK, it makes a Good Enough emergency flashlight, and the lil app that turns it into a bubble level is marginally useful (except, of course, I have 5 or so perfectly good analog levels, one older than I am, that do as good a job *shrugs* don’t really need a battery-powered one :-)).

So, when I read, Forrester Report: Tablets Will Rule The Future Personal Computing Landscape, my response was, “Yep, as long as we define “computing” down to mean “using an appliance to facilitate consumer behavior” that’s certainly true.

Whatever. I can see a role for tablets, but without serious computing power (some do have–or will have), the ability to access serious programs, not just lil bitty limited “apps”, better data input capabilities (like, oh, the proposed Microsoft Surface Pro tablet) and suchlike, the limited uses tablets now serve well (instead of “serve poorly” or “just barely”) will rule tablet “computing” for some time to come.

One can hope for really useful voice command inputs coupled with powerful applications, but so far that’s just not materialized. Some nice “gee-whiz” proof of concept things have been prototyped, but aren’t seriously in the works for some time to come.

*Navigation: using tablets, phones, etc., to get from one place to another spurs me to ponder just what that means…

1. Unfamiliarity with one’s environment?
2. Going places one has never been before, with no referents for guideance? Probably new activity or new place to buy something/spend money, etc. Too much ADD-ish behavior there for me.
3. Visit friends/relatives: what? You’re so disconnected from them you don’t know where they live already? *heh* Can’t read a map? Don’t even know N-S-E-W? IMO, People who need their phones and GPS tracking to get to the corner store should be in Assisted Living Facilities.

Confession: I do need help finding things sometimes. That’s why I have a copy of my county’s 911 map, as well as a few other maps, in my car, as well as a compass for seriously overcast days, since the “piney woods” dirt roads can sometimes twist and turn a lot. I do get calls to go places I’ve never been before, places that just aren’t noted anywhere else than on that handy lil 911 map… and even it doesn’t match what’s on the ground from time to time. Besides, GPS systems get lost in America’s Third World County ALL the time. Seriously. But because I can read maps and do know N-S-E-W, I can count on the finger of one hand the times I’ve gotten lost since the first day I started walking to school… and even before. GPS? Don’t need no steenkeeng GPS.)

BTW, another area where tablets just don’t make the grade compared to traditional computers comes into play when I, as I enjoy doing so often, browse through our County Assessor’s map(s) of the county. More up-to-date than the county 911 map, shows property lines, topo, geographical and aerial views; searchable with many different parameters: it’s what I use to “travel the back roads” when I get too cantankerous to pay today’s gas prices (although I still like to get out and just play “discover the county” every now and then)

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Choices

OS and device choices…

Back in 1993, when I was having a very painful experience mousing and typing, I purchased and used a serial port touchpad to use with my desktop and WFW 3.11. It worked very well, and my pain was largely alleviated. Nevertheless, I went on to a “mouse pen”–a stylus with a tiny mechanical mouse ball–in 1994, and I stayed with that device, occasionally switching out to the touchpad, for several years.

During those times, I became very used to the desktop metaphor for a GUI and lost touch with many uses for the command line interface, although it has always remained useful for a few things.

This went on through several iterations of Windows and Linux (and even a GUI-ed BSD), and the desktop metaphor has become ingrained in my computer use. Even departures like Ubuntu Unity were too jarring and disruptive for me to maintain he kind of productivity I desire, and why use something different for just farting around on my desktops/notebooks?

Then… so-called “smartphones”. Don’t need one. I do NOT want to be “always connected” and only want a mobile phone to PLACE calls. That’s me. Tablet format? Look, I really, really, REALLY like my Kindle Fire, but manage email? *feh* Trying to type on the thing is painful–not physically, but painful nonetheless. And iPhads I’ve tried typing on? Just as bad. Mousing around while web browsing is OK–no worse than any of the mush pads I’ve used over the years, better than some. But te things I really love the device for are reading books, watching movies and streaming music from my Amazon account (where I can store just about all the mp3s I have *shrugs* Makes it really convenient). I’ve deleted 90% of the Android apps I’ve tried out. Don’t need ’em.

So, all this to say that most of my computer use–aside from watching movies, reading books and listening to music–will definitely stay on desktops and notebooks until someone can come up with a hardware/software combo that can do what desktops/notebooks do BEST now, without a keyboard/mouse(ing device) combo. A wearable computer with virtual display, WORKABLE voice and gesture commands/transcription, etc.? I’d go for that. But for writing something even as simple as a blogpost, tablets are just an inferior means… unless on were using something like one of these:

*shrugs* Even the Microsoft Surface (not yet available to ordinary mortals) has some if-yness. The RT version is a definite “NOPE!” for me. Won’t run “legacy” Windows apps? Then I don’t want it. Only runs “Windows 8” (formerly “Metro”) apps? Double don’t want it. And then there’s the asinine Metro Start Page. (UPDATED… to close the “strike” tag. *sigh*) *feh* An extra hurdle to get to a crippled desktop, where the underpinnings are almost as hidden, inaccessible and untweakable as on a Mac straitjacketed computer. Now, the more expensive x86 hardware M$ Surface tablet also comes with a built in keyboard/case and WILL run x86 apps, but $1,000 for what is essentially a netbook (with a touch screen)? They’re not as thin, but either of these would seem better for my use:

Hey! it even comes with Win7 Starter (and I have plenty of licenses to upgrade that). Touch screen, about the same size as the Surface, and a (I have no doubt) better keyboard. And… under $400. Or,

Keyboard-dock available to push the price to the range of the M$ Surface RT. Still, no Windows app use, of course. Android OS.

But, on my Windows computers, what are the compelling advantages for me–an avid, relatively advanced user of x86 apps (in various OSes)–in upgrading to something that willput me into a more Mac-like straitjacket and INSIST that I MUST be faced with a stupid, unnecessary (for me) Start Page in order to use a crippled DESKTOP APPLICATION to use the x86 Windows apps I want to use? Again, what exactly are those compelling reasons?

Well, I suppose I have found one nearly compelling reason to make one computer a dual-boot Win7-Win8 computer: people will be buying new computers (assuming The Zero and his co-conspirators and fellow travelers haven’t achieved complete success in their goal of completely trashing the economy) and some of those will be running Win8. Some of those folks won’t be calling me up to roll their computers back to a more usable OS but will call on me to solve issues they’re experiencing, so having a “reference system” (like I did with the execrable Windows XP) will probably be helpful, though actually USING the thing for my own use won’t probably be a daily experience.

Win8 seems to me, for users like me, to be a Very Good Reason to use a ‘nix OS more.