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“Pull the plug” or have a wall switch to turn the plug off might impress a user that you are not too impressed with! But then the next person wanting to use that system has to reboot in order to get on, and we all have a good idea of how long MicroSlob takes for that.

You could use Sleep when there is no activity for a few seconds followed by a Wake when another user wants to use the system, but then the system continues to use electricity.

I use Hibernate where Hibernate might take several seconds and can be invoked by closing the cover on a laptop and brought back to life quickly if you must type in a password. Hibernate can also be invoked after some seconds of inactivity. Either way, the screen goes blank on entry to Hibernate and displays the last screen on exit from Hibernate.

Another option is to do a LogOff or Switch User.

You might consider asking the user(s) what they would like to have happen and how they would like to initiate that action. If all they want is to make the screen go blank, a full screen command prompt with a CLS as the only command. Since that would drop out of DOS so quickly that the blank screen would not be visible long enough to be able to say they saw it, DOS does have several instructions which would keep the blank screen around for a while.

Or you could just turn off the monitor!

For home use, free.avg.com is always ranked very high and it’s free. They make their money by selling to commercial users.

I use Portable Thunderbird and store the install files, all program files and all mailboxes in a folder on a thumb drive along with all my personal files. When I leave my computer, the thumb drive is in my pocket. When I travel, I have the thumb drive with me and can use any system in the world the same way I use my laptop, desktop, or tablet. And yes, I backup my thumb drive once a week or more often.

As with others that have posted here, I started using WordPerfect when it was a DOS program and it was a company called WordPerfect. Now of course there are many word processor programs that are good but not able to spend advertising dollars to combat Word from MicroSlob. Basically we have WordPerfect from Corel and WordImperfect from MS.

As was mentioned earlier, at install time in WordPerfect, we choose which parts are to be installed. The various modules can be installed and will not effect speed or clutter or size till used.

MS’s posture is to load up Word with a bunch of “features” that few want, but will cause WordPerfect to have to meet the competition. It muddies the water when trying to evaluate word processors to see which best meets the needs of an organization. Organizations which will evaluate the needs of the organization will find that most word processors will meet the needs. Comparing word processors against Word does not evaluate which will be best for an organization.

When I retired 15 years ago, I was working for a very large organization that has 20,000 or more computers spread all over the world. That company had used WordPerfect since the days of DOS on every computer world wide starting before Word was invented. The only reason Word was invented was to put WordPerfect and one or two others out of business. At that company where I worked, MS proposed that they should cease using WordPerfect and MS would give them a great deal on Windows licenses. The deal was so good that the company went along with that vicious marketing tool. Shame on them, shame on MS! Instead of purchasing software based on the needs of the organization, software purchases are now based on the needs of MS!

I have had the terrible slowdown problem for well over a year. That is only in TBird and I’ve been unable to find any clue. I noticed this especially in deleting messages and moving to a different local folder. I’m using the “portable” version and all message folders and the program reside on a thumb drive. Windows has been recovered and I’ve re-installed TBird.

My computer is a Dell Inspiron N7010 64bit with 6GB memory, i3 processor running at 2.40GHz and more disk than I’ll ever need, Windows7-64, Thunderbird, Firefox, ZoneAlarm free, and AVG free.

Going back in my memory to those giant mainframe computers that couldn’t keep up with early PC’s, the rule was that if the system would not be used for 3 hours, turn it off. As I grew older and retired, I tell people with PC’s, last one out of the room turns off all electricity. If you aren’t the last one out of the room and you will be gone for 2 or 3 hours, turn your computer off. At my last employer before retiring, there was a master switch which controlled most circuits in the building, and it was turned off every evening, leaving some lights on. Then we had to call security to turn the lights back on for the floor(s) where we would be working. And any time you will not be using your computer for 3 hours or more, turn it off.

In those days we heard the terrible stories about electricity being the enemy of circuits. And electricity creates heat. And turning electricity on and off damages electronic components. And electricity is too costly to waste. (Of course it was just as costly in someone’s home!)

The bottom line, if a computer in any environment feels hot on the case over the processor chip and/or the case over the power supply is quite hot, turn the computer off and improve the air flow thru and around the computer. If you will not return to use the computer for about 3 hours or more, turn the computer off or make it go into Hibernate. When in Sleep mode, the computer is still using electricity.

Outside of a company when you are talking of hundred’s of computers

Hackers and virus peddlers often use an address that is so slightly wrong that no one notices. In this one the word microsoft appears twice. Dealing with MS ever since Windows 3, I’ve never seen them use the word microsoft twice.

Just because someone else has received this doesn’t mean it’s free of little nasties.

You could ask Microsoft. Otherwise, it’s not safe.

Anytime you receive something you were not expecting, DELETE IT!

Zig;

Thanks for your reply.

I failed to include that the HP dv4 is a laptop. That would then require a USB adapter and then I could hook it to my own laptop. I’ve tried to get the drive out of her laptop but it’s requiring too much force which always ends up doing damage. I’ve sent an email to HP to get some info on extracting the drive

Does anyone know how to get an email service that Frontier can NOT scan? It would perhaps be a service where incoming mail would go to an intermediate and the whole email including pictures, addresses etc would be encrypted and then sent to my ISP and when in Thunderbird I opened the email it would be un-encrypted??!!

The reverse would happen on outgoing in that Thunderbird would encrypt the whole thing, send the mail to an intermediate, un-encrypt and send to the recipient(s).

And that would be great if everything coming in or out would cause Frontier (and other intruders) to see only an encrypted text. http://windowssecrets.com/forums/images/icons/icon8.png

I have seen the same announcement from Frontier. I think that it is a sheep in wolfs clothing!

There’s been a couple of times over the years when I’ve noticed that adverts would pop up after I discussed some item. I tested this by sending an email with just 5 words in it and I began getting ads on ALL 5! I complained to Frontier and for a while the ads stopped. But certainly Frontier was scanning email and web surfing.

I later began seeing ads again, probably years later. I switched to Thunderbird and I saw a decrease in ads.

Then I got from Frontier a new Terms of Service and it was very open about what they scan. I haven’t gone back to web based email to see what’s happening there. And the latest notice from Frontier heightens the alarm.

I’m paying for Frontier as an ISP and they shouldn’t be bugging the hand that feeds them!

My ISP is FrontierNet.net which access’s all incoming and outgoing email’s and provides any information found to advertisers, and there’s no opt out of course. They also use information from all other Internet access in any and every way possible. And this is for ISP service that I pay for.

Is there any email client that can grab emails before the ISP so that my ISP does not even see the incoming or outgoing mail?? And the same for other Internet access so that my ISP is unable to harvest information??

MS has pulled a second bad rabbit out of their bag of stinking tricks. When buying a new laptop, I discover MS will not allow vendors to sell Windows7 although Windows7 has full maintenance. You also can’t buy a laptop without an OS!

MS has pulled a second bad rabbit out of their bag of stinking tricks. When buying a new laptop, I discover MS will not allow vendors to sell Windows7 although Windows7 has full maintenance. You also can’t buy a laptop without an OS!

There is no easy way to clear spam. There are ways to reject emails that look like some template and then it manages to reject something you really wanted. Or you can accept only emails from certain URL’s and it will pass thru an occaiaional piece of %$#^*)P(^$#, brown colored spam.

There is something else you can try and it’s called MailWasher. This is programming with an attitude. You can “bounce” emails and the spammers don’t like pawing thru their emails for addresses that no longer exist. So bounce appears to the spammer as an email address that no longer exists. So when they get an email back because the address no longer exists, their program that receives their email sees that flag and automajically goes thru their address book and removes your address. Some times the spammer even will check a few additional times before their program deletes your email address. I think it’s kind of fun getting the spammers software to do the work for me!

For those who ignore what MailWasher does, you can start sending all such spam to their ISP and the ISP will get tired of that shortly and take some action. Of course spammers usually spoof the return address and then you send the spam to every domain in the email. It will hit the correct spammer’s ISP.

I used their free version for years and they don’t seem to have that anymore. I’ve since purchased a lifetime license for US$59.95. I’ve probably used them for 20 years. They are in NZ and I have no business interest with them.

The rule for being safe from this kind of thing is “Though shalt always DELETE anything you were not expecting to receive.” Some of these have you do a few things and your system will never boot up again. But at least you were smart enough to not send them any money.

Chris C.