Basic Blog - Basic Training Educational Services LLC

Basic Blog

Basic Blog provided by

Mike McLain

Basic Training Educational Services, LLC

28 April 2008

Average Web Page Size Triples Since 2003

Websiteoptimization.com reports that the average web page today is 312K, up from 98K in 2003. On the one hand, this indicates that the experience of browsing the web is a much richer experience today than in the past. However, this means that browsing times are getting longer and longer for those who must use narrowband connections (defined as 56K or ISDN connections).

18 March 2008

Microsoft Releases Windows Vista SP1

Microsoft just released Windows Vista Service Pack 1 today, making it available as a direct download or through the Microsoft Update service. This long-awaited service pack promises to address many lingering issues that have plagued Vista, including long file copy times and the User Account Control messages that seem to pop up whenever you click an icon. Additionally, this release should address hundreds of hardware and software compatibility issues that made Vista one of the slowest adopted version of Windows ever.

However, this download is not for the faint of heart or constrained of bandwidth. The direct download version is over 700 MB, but is not recommended for single computer users. The version available through Microsoft Updates is a bit lighter, at 434 MB, but quite obviously is not going to be accessible to anyone who is still using dial-up.

Vista SP1 will be available as an optional download in Automatic Updates for the next month, but on April 18th will be designated as a critical update, meaning that Automatic Update will download it automatically if the service has been set up to download critical updates automatically, as Microsoft recommends.

17 March 2008

Watch Out for Wire Transfer Scams

I just received an email today which is an excellent example of a wire transfer fraud. These scams are typified by someone who wants to use your bank account to exchange foreign currencies, and in exchange for allowing access to your account, they will happily pay you a commission. Of course, what really happens is once they have your account information, they clean out your account.

What struck me about this particular email was the professionalism with which it was done. It is grammatically correct, with no spelling or usage errors. So what gave it away? Here are some things to watch out for.

1. First, this was addressed individually to my email (or at least other recipients weren't visible), and reputed to come from CareerBuilder.com in response to a job search I had done. The problem? CareerBuilder is a real job seeking site, but I have never used it. The fact that they are presuming on a nonexistent relationship is the first clue that this is not a legitimate query.

2. Second is the mere fact that they want to involve me in something that requires me to give up banking information. Never, ever give anyone on the Internet information on your money.

3. Finally, even though everything else is well done, is the simple fact that, if I am interested, I am to contact them through an email address which they supply. Very few legitimate international corporations are going to have a Yahoo based email address.

Remember, if someone approaches you on the Internet with a proposition involving money, chances are they are looking for a way to take you to the cleaners.

12 March 2008

Some Users Refusing to Upgrade Technology

The New York Times is running an article today about several users who are using the same technology for several years and are quite happy that way. The reasons run the gamut from sheer inertia, to the belief that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it," to folks who found products that they really like and want to keep, even though there may be other, newer products out there.

I can't say I blame them much. Given the pain and expense we often go through of upgrading technology, there is often not much incentive to change unless we find a compelling reason to do so. Of course, I noted a bit of an anti-age bias to the article, which seemed to focus pretty much on users who were 55 or older, for the most part. This tends to keep up the stereotype of older folks being afraid of technology, when in fact the elder community is one of the fast growing adopters of technology today, from computers, to cell phones, to the Wii game console. Hopefully stereotypes like this won't be around much longer.

10 March 2008

Dell Printers and Cox Security Suite

I recently went through an ordeal with one of my customers in configuring, of all things, a printer. Not too much to say about printers, right? You just plug them in, install the driver software, and off they go. Well, usually, anyway...

My client purchased a new Dell system and asked me to set it up and configure it for them. Everything went swimmingly until I tried to install their Dell All-in-One 926 Photo Printer. After installing the software, the computer detected the printer, but I found that when I tried to print a test page, the printer speed was something like one page ... an hour.

Over the next couple of weeks, I wound up spending several hours working on this issue: making sure we had the latest driver software, updating the printer firmware, trying the printer on another computer (it worked), changing out the printer cable (not the problem), and on and on. Finally, in frustration, I called Dell technical support, which I later regretted greatly. I wound up spending a total of six hours in two separate sessions in which I actually got Dell technicians to admit they could not figure out the problem, and was left with the ultimate solution of reformatting and reinstalling Windows Vista to see if that would fix it.

Before I took that drastic step, I researched further on finally found a blog from 2005 in which two fellows spent three months chasing down the same exact bug that I was dealing with. They finally discovered that a file in a ZoneAlarm personal firewall installation was interfering with the printer for unknown reasons. It was not enough to disable the firewall; they found they had to uninstall the program and delete all its files to fix the problem.

I had installed Cox Security Suite for my client, as they had Cox cable modem for their Internet connectivity. Both Dell and myself had disabled the security suite in the course of troubleshooting, but this blog mentioned they had to uninstall the software. What, I wondered, were the chances that Cox had licensed ZoneAlarm for their suite?

I uninstalled Cox Security Suite, and wouldn't you know it, the printer worked like a champ. So for now, my clients are now using the Windows Vista firewall, Avast antivirus and Spybot Search and Destroy for their computer security needs.