So I’m surfing the Internet when I run across an article that catches my eye, in which the author is asking why we continue to use Microsoft Office when Open Office is free.  Hmm…………….interesting. So I think about myself and what I use. You guessed it. I’m a Microsoft Office slave. But the question is why?

First I have tried Open Office and found it, for a lack of a better description, lacking. Not because Open Office is not a good software product. Overall it is. But Microsoft Office is an extremely polished software product. It is like comparing a Lexus to a Toyota. Both cars will get you where you want to go, it is just that the Lexus will get you there in a more comfortable environment. If that makes any sense at all.

According to the article, is states:

Most folks see data formats as an inside-baseball issue, because they work in all-Microsoft organizations where incompatibilities are rare. The only hangup, in that case, comes when Microsoft releases new software (Office 2007 being the latest example). Invariably, the data format’s been upgraded as well.

The new software reads your old files, but your old software can’t read the new files. There are workarounds, but the only sensible thing is for an organization to upgrade all at once. And an organization can’t wait too long to upgrade if it has to share files with other entities that have upgraded.

As for competitive software, it fares even worse, because Microsoft doesn’t release the details of its proprietary data formats to the developers of programs like OpenOffice. If the developers want their wares to read Microsoft files, they have to reverse-engineer the format.

This works to varying degrees. Simple word processing documents translate pretty well. Complex spreadsheets, with macros and formulas, may not translate at all or contain errors that aren’t obvious. About the time the competition has figured out all the ins and outs of translation, surprise, it’s time for another format upgrade.

So here is a question for you. Have you switched to Open Office? If so, how is it working for you.

Comments welcome.

Source.

It has happened to all of us. We try to get on a web site and receive an error message. So we keep trying until we get frustrated. But in the back of our minds remains this question. Is it the web site that is down or is it just me and my computer?

There is a web site you can go to to test a web site to confirm what you may already suspect. Called ‘Down for everyone or just me?’, you can check the site you are trying to connect to and confirm the good or bad news.  This also gives you the chance to check and see if your firewall may be blocking a trusted site you wish to view.

You can use this hand tool from the below Source:

Source.

The author of the site, Alex Payne, was recently interviewed by the NY Times and what he has to say about Internet down time is a very interesting read. He states that:

 “I had seen that question posed so often,” said Mr. Payne, who perhaps not coincidentally works at Twitter, a Web messaging and social networking site that is itself known for frequent downtime. “Technology companies have branded the Internet as a place that is always on and where information is always available. People are disappointed and looking for answers when it turns out not to be true.”

Isn’t that the truth. We always expect the Internet to be perfect and often forget that there are forces that are always at work trying to mess up the works. Couple this with your ISP and the problems they have, your hardware and your computer, it is sometimes difficult to isolate what the heck is causing the problem.

Comments welcome.

Times article here.

Make sure your system is up to date and has the latest protections in place.

1. AVG anti-virus: 07/06/08
2. Avast: 07/04/08
3. Norton anti-virus: 07/02/08
4. McAfee anti-virus: 07/02/08
5. Lavasoft Ad-Aware: 07/03/08
6. Spybot Search and Destroy: 07/02/08
7. Microsoft Windows Defender: 07/02/08
8. Nod32: 07/03/08

Updates as of July 06, 2008 6:00am CDT.

Please Note: AVG has a new update for version 8 available for download.  Get it here.

Is some of the magic at Google starting to fade? Is the company who’s motto is ‘Do No Evil’ starting to falter? You decide after reading this story. It seems that one of the perks of working at Google is the fact that day care is provided on Google’s property by trained staff. Cost for the pro care is a whopping $1,425 a month. But the price hit a not so ‘do no evil’ price of $2,500 a month.

I am sure we all agree that Google pays their people well. But $2,500 a month sounds just a little high to me.  The Google employees staged a min revolt over the increase and win a semi win in which the price will be tiered over a period of time but will still hit the high number down the road. In the story it states:

 Under the new plan, parents with two kids in Google day care would most likely see their annual day care bill grow to more than $57,000 from around $33,000.

At the first of the three focus groups, parents wept openly. As word leaked out about the company’s plan, the Google parents began to fight back. They came up with ideas to save money, used the company’s T.G.I.F. sessions — a weekly meeting for anyone who wanted to ask questions of Google’s top executives — to plead their case, and conducted surveys showing that most parents with children in Google day care would have to leave Google’s facilities and find less expensive child care.

Do you think you know how this story ends? You’re probably guessing that because it involves “do no evil” Google, Fortune magazine’s “Best Company to Work For” the past two years, this is a heart-warming tale of a good company reversing a dumb decision.

Also this:

“There are many things about Google that are not great, and merit improvement,” blogged Sergey Solyanik, who recently returned to Microsoft after a stint at Google. “There are plenty of silly politics, under performance, inefficiencies and ineffectiveness, and things that are plain stupid.” Starting, it would appear, with day care.

Excuse me. $57k for two kids? I know it’s the SF Bay Area but that sounds just a little high. The kids are not going to Stanford. It is day care. I think Google should really take a hard look at the pricing and come up with a pricing that is fair for the company and parents.

What do you think?

Comments welcome.

Source.

Basically what Google is doing is posting their principles when it comes to your privacy. On their blog site they state:

So, today we’re making a homepage change by adding a link to our privacy overview and policies. Google values our users’ privacy first and foremost. Trust is the basis of everything we do, so we want you to be familiar and comfortable with the integrity and care we give your personal data. We added this link both to our homepage and to our results page to make it easier for you to find information about our privacy principles. The new “Privacy” link goes to our Privacy Center, which was revamped earlier this year to be more straightforward and approachable, with videos and a non-legalese overview to make sure you understand in basic terms what Google does, does not, will, and won’t, do in regard to your personal information.

What do you think? Are you feeling the Google love? Is your privacy well protected?

Comments welcome.

Source

If you previously downloaded AVG and experienced problems, you may wish to download AVG 8 with SP1 and give it a try.  DougCuk has been monitoring the release of SP1 and had notified me it was available. I checked the AVG site and the new release is available for download.

The file name you wish to use is:

avg_free_stf_en_8_135a1330

You can obtain the download directly from the AVG servers to make sure you get the latest release here.

If you do try the new release, let us know your thought. I haven’t tried it yet and will be giving it a go when I get home from vacation on my test box.

Comments welcome.

I received this from Lloyd Borrett of AVG. A newer version was released on July 4, 2008:

The file name you want to use is:
avg_free_stf_en_8_138a1332.exe

It’s now available at http://free.avg.com/ww.download?prd=afe#tba2

A judge has ordered Google to turn over data they have collected on their YouTube site to Viacom. Viacom has sued Google for a Billion big ones claiming copyright infringements. Privacy groups content that companies such as Google are collecting vast amounts of consumer data and are concerned that our privacy rights are being violated. In the article it states:

The order raised concerns among YouTube users and privacy advocates that the video viewing habits of tens of millions of people could be exposed. But Google and Viacom said they were hoping to come up with a way to protect the anonymity of the site’s visitors.

Viacom also said that the information would be safeguarded by a protective order restricting access to the data to outside lawyers, who will use it solely to press Viacom’s $1 billion copyright suit against Google.

Still, the judge’s order, which was made public late Wednesday, renewed concerns among privacy advocates that Internet companies like Google are collecting unprecedented amounts of private information that could be misused or fall unexpectedly into the hands of third parties.

Which makes one wonder. Why did Viacom wait to file suit after Google purchased YouTube? It seems that Viacom is looking for some ‘deep pockets’ and not concerned about their alleged copyright infringements as they contend.

But what do you think?

Comments welcome.

Source 

As most of us know, Symantec has been labeled as a resource hog, and many of us have chosen not to use any longer. I wrote an article back in May in which less than flattering remarks were made about Symantec. [See article here.] But one of the comments came from a Symantec representative by the name of Rowan Trollope who stated the following:

I would like to respond to all the folks reading this blog, and to those of you who commented about your poor experiences with our software. Security software which slows down your computer is just plain unacceptable. I have been at Symantec since the days of Peter Norton, and I am intent on restoring our brand and reputation. I know that the way to do this is to deliver *great* software, and this is what we are working on. For Norton Internet Security and NAV 2009, I have set my goals on one single mission: to deliver the fastest security product in the world. This is a major shift for our engineering team and candidly is not easy to achieve. Rather than delivering promises and a marketing pitch, I intend to let the product speak for itself. Our beta will be out in July, and I will let the public be the judge as to whether we have achieved our goals.

OK Rowan. I’ll take you up on your challenge. When the beta hits the street I’ll take it for a spin and see what it is like. Plus I promise to give your product an even break and put my prejudices aside. Just let us know when the beta arrives.

TIA, Ron

Comments welcome.

This week my wife and I are visiting family in Texas and last night my son-in-law asked a simple question. If you buy a Vista computer today will it run Windows 7 ? Hmm….. Interesting question and my answer was that it should. But than I gave it some thought this morning and my answer should of been I am not sure. Here’s why.

Anytime Microsoft releases a new operating system, they come out with the minimum specifications that the new OS needs to run properly. In my experience these specifications are, shall we say, a tad bit on the wishful thinking side. Most of us are aware that these specifications are so minimum that you are lucky if the computer even starts. We have learned that we usually need a lot more horsepower to have our systems run satisfactorily.

When Vista was first released Microsoft and the OEM’s played another wishful thinking game using stickers proclaiming a system was ‘Vista Capable’ or ‘Vista Ready’. Take a look at this site from Microsoft here. They list a Vista Capable PC with these specifications:

A Windows Vista Capable PC includes at least:

• A modern processor (at least 800MHz¹).
• 512 MB of system memory.
• A graphics processor that is DirectX 9 capable.

A Vista Ready PC as:

A Windows Vista Premium Ready PC includes at least:

• 1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor¹).
• 1 GB of system memory.
• Support for DirectX 9 graphics with a WDDM driver, 128 MB of graphics memory (minimum)², Pixel Shader 2.0 and 32 bits per pixel.
• 40 GB of hard drive capacity with 15 GB free space.
• DVD-ROM Drive³.
• Audio output capability.
• Internet access capability.

I believe the thinking goes that the Capable specifications are meant for Windows Vista Basic only. Also a 1GHz processor with 1G of RAM may work for Vista Home Premium but would anyone want to use such a slow system?

Since we now know that Windows 7 will have touch screen abilities and the assumption could be made that it will need more horsepower than Vista, I don’t think anyone can answer the question if Windows 7 will run on a Vista computer. We really won’t know the answer until the first beta’s are released.

What do you think?

Comments welcome.

What some are describing as a secret back door deal, it seems that Linspire may have sold out to Xandros, according to a memo sent to shareholders. It also seems that some people are not to happy in the way the deal was made, which appears to have been behind closed doors. According to an article by Kevin Carmony, he states:

Today, as a Linspire shareholder, I received the below “memorandum” from Linspire. I have confirmed with several other Linspire shareholders that they too received this same notice.

In classic Michael Robertson form, he has once again completely disregarded the 100 some-odd shareholders of Linspire by pulling off this deal without a shareholder meeting. Most states require shareholder approval of any merger or reorganization of a corporation, or the sale or transfer of all or substantially all of the corporation’s assets. Regardless of state laws, common decency would dictate that even if a company only has 1 minority shareholder, there should be a shareholder meeting and the acquisition explained to all shareholders. What do Linspire shareholders get in place of a shareholder meeting? This completely worthless notice in the mail.

It is going to be interesting to see what action, if any, the sharholders decide to take. If they file a law suit the deal could be placed on hold for some time. Or they may just decide to let the deal go through, lick their wounds, and move on with life. Only time will tell what action takes place.

What do you think of the Linspire deal?

Comments welcome.

Source.