Replies

I’ve used RoboType for some years. Regrettably, it’s no longer a free utility.

We’ve used the free version of Avira for the past half-dozen years or more on systems ranging from Win2K through Vista due to its excellent detection rates (the main knock reviewers give it is for its nag screen, which can easily be suppressed). Its use of resources is minimal both during start-up (where it adds only a second or so) and during normal operation (where Task Manager confirms that while its peaks can be high its typical memory usage is in the 15 MB range, and its scanning rates are speedy).

When we got our first Win7 system (a Netbook) I therefore ripped out MSE, Norton, and other bloatware friends and substituted Online Armor and AntiVir – and start-up times went to pot.

Odd. I’ve also used Avira for several years. I’ve recently installed it on several Windows 7 machines and have not noticed any impact on start-up times.

“…those that forgot your stated objective…”

Or perhaps never read it in the first place. I’ve never seen a review of AV software which didn’t bring out people who act like the reviewer vilified their firstborn.

I had the same problem with the multi-card reader built into my elderly XP machine. Mentioned it to the computer shop when I took it in to get a new hard drive installed. All they did was plug it into a different connection on the motherboard. Been working fine ever since.

Helpful article. I wasn’t aware that smart surge protectors had gotten THAT smart.

However, some peripherals might object to this type of shut-down. My HP inkjet printer wants to be shut down only by the printer’s power button. Cutting the power via surge protector generates a warning message the next time I power it up.

Windows Home Server is great for a small business such as yours. It is easy to setup, can backup up to 10 PCs, can easily share files, and much more.

Joe

Thanks, Joe. So far, a simple workgroup to allow file & printer sharing, plus backing up one computer to another, has served our needs, but I’ll take a look at Windows Home Server. My wife, an E.A., does all the taxes & accounting. I do everything else, including IT, heaven help us all. Pretty good furniture assembler, too.

What word-processing program? I just filled part of a page in Word 2003 with breaking and non-breaking hyphenated words. Spellcheck doesn’t flag anything.

As a former technical writer and editor, I fail to see why words like long-term and double-blind need to be designated non-breaking by your medical writer. Some special situation?

Using Word 2007? See this link. http://www.techtalkz.com/ms-office-help/22399-word-2007-spell-checker-non-breaking-hyphens.html

Thanks for the recommendation. I remember just enough from a prob & stat course decades ago to make it entertaining to play around with methods for disguising passwords, but things would of course get pretty clunky if you had more than a few passwords to manage. I’ll check out Last Pass.

Appreciate the info, Zig & Ted. My wife & I run a small tax & accounting practice. All data is thoroughly backed up, but I would of course like to create a level of protection which would allow us to get back up & running VERY promptly, should we experience a catastrophic loss during our busy season. I’ll check out the Win 7 upgrade scenario.

Thanks again for the good info.

Somewhere or another recently, I read an article on this subject. Someone quoted in the article said that he wrote down all of his passwords–but in a disguised form. He offered no specifics. Anybody else do this?

I’m still thinking about this, but I find it a bit intriguing. Let’s say that you use a top-notch password generator to produce a strong letters-and-numbers password. You can safely write it down and leave it next to your keyboard because only you know that (for example) each letter is offset by -1 (that is, the “d” on paper = “c” in the “real” password) and each number is offset by +1 (5 on paper really means 6).

You could of course make the “disguise” much more complicated than my example above. Perhaps you let the offset be determined by whether the first number in the written-down password is odd or even, for instance.

Like I say, I find this a bit intriguing. Your thoughts?

Let me slightly edit my statement above. I failed to make myself clear.
[INDENT]Like the OP, I’m looking for a good imaging program. Most of the ones I’ve looked at claim to permit a bare metal restore to dissimilar hardware, which is a capability I want–specifically, to image a couple of XP machines, and then, in case of a catastrophic loss like fire or flood, restore THE IMAGES FROM THE DESTROYED XP MACHINES to Windows 7 machines NEWLY-PURCHASED TO REPLACE THE XP MACHINES. If anyone here has had that experience, I’d appreciate any information you could provide. Is the process as simple and problem-free as the software vendors claim it is?
[/INDENT]

Like the OP, I’m looking for a good imaging program. Most of the ones I’ve looked at claim to permit a bare metal restore to dissimilar hardware, which is a capability I want–specifically, to image a couple of XP machines, and then, in case of a catastrophic loss like fire or flood, restore to new Windows 7 machines. If anyone here has had that experience, I’d appreciate any information you could provide. Is the process as simple and problem-free as the software vendors claim it is?

I only shut down my modem and router during an electrical storm. I’ve found it convenient to have them plugged into separate switched surge protectors, so I can turn on the modem, wait a minute or two, then turn on the router, and then finally start the computer. Rarely have any problem re-connecting. That wasn’t always the case when they were plugged into the same surge protector and started up at the same time.

Appreciate the info on VSO’s Image resizer. You might also take a look at Qimage from ddisoftware, which makes use of some sophisticated interpolation algorithms both for upsizing and downsizing photos, in addition to optimizing them for printing, which is its primary function. Has many other features, too. Basic version is $35, 30-day free trial.