Sven LL Rafferty

The beauty of a Mac is I can investigate what phishing e-mail I’ve just been sent has in store for me, safely. In this case, I received an e-mail “from” 123Greetings.com (see the full resolution screen capture of the message) that said, “A friend has sent you an ecard from 123Greetings.com.” The card was to [...]

Baseline is stating the obvious in its latest article of warning: Unpatched old software is a security hazard to your computer. Windows or Mac or Linux or any other operating system. Security updates are released for the sole reason of patching holes that open your computer to vulnerabilities. Yet many won’t update Firefox or QuickTime [...]

Hey party people, if you’re still in the dark, dark ages and running Windows 98, Windows 98 SE, or Windows ME, then Microsoft has a warning for you. Next time you go to Windows Update, you’ll be greeted with a message that Windows 95 users have seen for years: Sorry, Charlie, we won’t support [...]

Microsoft has made it official. After months and months of work on the Redmond-based software giant, the 1394 Trade Association has secured real support for FireWire 1394b (or FireWire 800) in the forthcoming release of Windows Vista. Microsoft announced at the annual WinHEC Conference in Seattle that it would add the support for [...]

If you run Windows on your Intel PC and have been doing so for, oh, two weeks, then your registry probably has some junk in it that needs some attention. Ever since Windows 95 was introduced, Microsoft’s great way of keeping track of programs and settings has turned out to be not that great thing [...]

Spyware is good and bad. Good because it keeps food on the table from my day job. Bad because people have to pay people like me to remove it. Now things just got worse as some poor fellow was shocked to find his brand new Dell was pre-loaded with spyware.

Sources from the 1394 Trad Association has told SvenOnTech that it has just confirmed that Micrsoft will have full support for 1394b or FireWire 800. The support should be available by the end of the year. This means it will be available outside of Windows Vista, Microsoft’s next operating system update. Details [...]

It’s hard to say Microsoft has ever done its Office suite poorly. Ever since Word 1.0, I’ve been an avid user of the product and the family since Office95. While there’s been some bumps in the road of upgrades, like when Office95 users couldn’t read Office97 documents, each version has offered something new. [...]

It’s not often I get too excited about Web browsers, but man, I just found one that looks to be an amazing one. Based on Mozilla, like Firefox, Flock takes a different approach from the other browsers available.
Concentrating on the blog and image sharing space that has become so popular in the [...]

After running our first deep scan with Windows Defender, the latest beta of Microsoft’s AntiSpyware, we were greeted with a laundry list of found pests. “Odd,” we thought, since the previous night’s scan of last the Microsoft AntiSpyware Beta 1 found nothing. So we took a peek under the logs and what did we find? [...]

Microsoft is now officially in Beta 2 of its AntiSpyware application complete with a new name: Windows Defender. Having used Microsoft’s software protection since its buyout of Giant Software (the original author of the program), I’ve seen very little changes other than forced software updates due to license expiration. Now I see an entire new [...]

Hey, look what sprung from CES! Ya, it’s the Sonos ZP80 - basically the little brother to the ZP100. Sonos now brings an affordable sibling to the amazing power of music of the digital home. The ZP80 is basically the ZP100 but with two Ethernet ports, digital out, RCA in and out, [...]

When Lars Ulrich went after Napster, Metallica had officially become a sell-out. It spearheaded work for Digital Rights Management (DRM) that would forever change the way you and I listen to music on our PC and DAP.
While digital media in the form of computer files were pretty easy to attach DRM onto, such as [...]

Chalk this up as another pathetic waste of our court system. Dukes and Dolan decided it just wasn’t right for HP to save you countless hours of searching for that OS recovery CD that you filed somewhere when you first got that spanking new PC of yours months or years ago.
Nope, that partitioned hard [...]

I have so many clients with spyware issues, it’s just utterly amazing. More amazing is that the majority of it can be avoided if not even completely avoided. If you pay attention to install screens, are cautious with the sites you visit, do not install P2P, and keep your Windows OS updated, you [...]

I told you of my two amazing finds at January’s Macworld right here for you all gadget freaks to feast your eyes on and now I can tell you, firsthand, one of those finds IS even more amazing than when I held that 3.5″ diagonal color LCD controller in my boyishly excited hands for the [...]