Free Antivirus... from Microsoft?

Microsoft quietly introduced a free antivirus program this summer - Microsoft Security Essentials. I heard about it at a Microsoft event recently and decided to try it out. It seems to work pretty good. It does the job anyway, and is something you can use if you don't want to pay for an antivirus package.

Why did they quietly release this? I suspect it is just so they don't piss off the 3rd party vendors who make lots of money off antivirus software. Symantec, McAfee and a bunch of others make a killing off antivirus products. But when you think about it, Microsoft really has to provide some level of protection with their OS. They have basic backup software, so why in the world wouldn't they provide antivirus?

By thw way, the backup software in Windows 7 is very nice. I am almost ready to stop using Acronis True Image because the Windows 7 package is so nice.

The Headset Buddy

I have a nice Plantronics headset that I have used on my cell phone for a couple years. It has a 2.5mm plug. My new cell phone has a 3.5mm plug. How do I plug my old headset into my new cell phone? The Headset Buddy has the answer! You would think that finding one of these adapters would be easy. Well think again. The only adapters I could find (and I found hundreds of these things) only support the audio output of the phone; it does not support the mic. These are targeted at MP3 players (iPods, etc). But The Headset Buddy has them, and for a decent price too.

Problem #2 - I have a headset that is use on my PC. It has two plugs on it; one for the mic and one for the head phones. How can I use this on my cell phone? Again, The Headset Buddy has the answer! They offer a Y-adapter to merge the two plugs on the PC headset into a single 2.5mm (or 3.5mm) jack that plugs into the cell phone.

If you're searching for these two products then head on over to The Headset Buddy.

Windows 7

My PC was about 4 years old and was a pretty basic PC from the beginning. I had bumped up its memory so I could run some Virtual Machines but that's about it. I was happy with Windows XP. I actually loaded Vista some time ago, but then went back to XP because of a lot of little problems I had trying to do things, particularly in the area of software development and database work. I have Vista on the family's laptop and it has worked great for that purpose.

This summer I decided that when Windows 7 came out I was going to upgrade the hardware and go to Windows 7. I built a PC, buying all my parts from NewEgg.

• Asus P7P55D motherboard
• Intel Core i7-860 Lynnfield 2.8GHz 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Processor
• 6gb of memory
• Western Digital 7200RPM "green" hard drive
• I'm not a gamer so I went with a relatively low end video card - GIGABYTE GV-R467ZL-1GI Radeon HD 4670 1GB 128-bit DDR3
• Nice 750w power supply
• Nice aluminum tower case
• Windows 7 64-bit

I'm really happy with this configuration. Setup and install was easy, and Windows 7 has run nice and not caused me any (major) problems. There are some small things about Windows 7 that annoy me, but over all I'm really happy with Windows 7, its stability and speed. I had to upgrade a few apps to work with Windows 7, but most of my 32-bit apps work fine.

Explorer Context Menu - some 32-bit apps don't display their context menu items in the Explorer right-click menu. This drove me nuts when trying to use WinZip 9. I paid for WinZip and thought I would have all future versions, but apparently they stopped offering upgrades to those of us that paid for the product somewhere around v10. Although WinZip 9 installed and ran fine, it didn't display anything in the right-click menu in Explorer (WinZip KB article on this issue). I don't know about you, but that is the only way I ever use WinZip; I almost never open the app. I've used 7-zip before so I looked at their site and they have a 64-bit version for Windows 7. So I loaded it up and I have all the functionality I need, right-click context menu and all. Good-bye WinZip!

Sharing a Printer - I have only one problem right now with Windows 7 that I cannot seem to figure out. Although I have a work around, the problem doesn't make any sense to me. I can't use the Home Group stuff because I don't have any other Windows 7 PCs in the house. So I shared my printers as normal, but my users on Vista could not use them. They could see them, but would get an error when trying to install the printer. I found that I needed to add their account to my Windows 7 PC, with the same password, then it works fine. They can install and use the printer without any problems. This work around is OK, but I don't know why I have to do that. I did all the stuff I could find on the internet; such as turning off the need to have a password to share things on the Windows 7 PC, but nothing worked. It just bugs me that this doesn't work like it's supposed to work and I have to create accounts for every person in the house that uses the Vista laptop and wants to print.

I'm a little worried about the extra (electrical) power that this system requires, since I leave it running 24x7. The Intel i7 uses 95w max, which is much less than many other processors in its class, but that's still a lot of power. So I'm using some of the sleep and hibernate settings to shut down the system in the middle of the night after my nightly backup is done.

I'm happy with my early Christmas present to myself. Now I got the Windows 7 bug, so I guess I'll be buying it for the other PCs in the how too.

Where is that Phone Number?

If you're a geek and mess with phone and VOIP stuff then you may find this site interesting. WhereCall.com will show you what company owns your actual PSTN number. I guess I figured all the numbers in my area were owned by Verizon, since that's who owns all the copper (POTS) phone lines around here. But I found out that's not the case. There are lots of different companies that own various blocks of phone numbers.

How could you make use of this information? I'm not sure how valuable this info is, but it can be helpful when researching why a particular company doesn't want to allow porting your number into their service. Whoever is actually in charge of the block of number you're in is not a partner of the phone company you're trying to move to. I ported from Verizon to Comcast without problems. But many VOIP providers will not port my number. This isn't always the only reason why a provider won't port your number, but it may be a piece of the puzzle.

Also, you might want to find out who a particular company is partnering with. For example, my Google Voice number is owned by Bandwidth.com. This tells me that Google has a partnership with Bandwidth.com.

Good-bye Verizon. Hello Comcast.

Verizon pissed me off so much that I've switched to Comcast for voice and internet. I had Verizon DSL and voice phone, over a copper pair of course. The service was rock solid. But since earlier this year, when I switched to 7mb DSL service, they've been cramming my bill with stuff I didn't order. First it was a bunch of internet related products that I didn't ask for (about $20 a month!). I had to call to get that removed, and they didn't want to credit my account. Then a month or two later I noticed $2.49 on my bill for a DSL Gateway Service Plan. Turns out this is an extended warranty on my DSL modem. Had to call to get that removed.

They also pissed me off when I switched from 3mb DSL to 7mb DSL. I called just to find out what it would cost. This was early April. They told me it would be the same price. I pressed them on this and they assured me there would be no price increase. I was skeptical! When the bill came there was a $10 increase. When I called they said it was a promotion that started 17 days after I called. I called too soon, so I wasn't eligible. Then why did they offer it to me? They said I can't have it. I had told the guy I was thinking of switching to Comcast for their high speed internet but figured 7mb was fast enough for me and was wondering what it would cost. In the end it wasn't necessarily the $10 that pissed me off as much as being lied to.

So Comcast was installed yesterday. Only 24 hours, but so far its been good. The internet is lightning fast, at about 20mb download (with power boost) and 2mb upload speeds. The voice is crystal clear and comes with some nice features.

I have to admit that I'm a bit worried about the reliability of Comcast. Verizon was rock solid. Only time will tell if Comcast is as reliable. I'm committed now, so we'll see how it goes.

It is interesting that Verizon recently told investors that the company just isn't interested in phones connected with wires anymore. This explains why they're selling landline operations in 14 states. In my case it wasn't the service that was the problem; it was the shady practice of billing millions of people for extra stuff they didn't ask for. This is how VZ raises extra revenue.

Internet Explorer 8

I'm not having a lot of luck with IE8. I tried the Beta way back and had some problems. I tried the Release Candidate and had similar problems. When it was finally released I tried it and continued to have problems. Last week I loaded it again and tried to use it for a week but there are just too many problems. The only regularly reproducible problem was when loading my Google Apps Mail, which is a variation of Gmail. It would freeze with a big white screen that says "Loading". If I hit refresh it would load just fine. It happened every time. Other problems with IE8 included a lot of locking up - IE would just freeze. I had to kill the process. Very annoying.

The Gmail problem would not happen if I ran without any add-ons enabled ("Start Without Add-Ons). So I removed all the add-ins that I knew I didn't need, and upgraded all the others. I upgraded my antivirus (ESET NOD 32) and the Google Toolbar. Nothing seemed to help that Gmail problem.

Then there were the compatibility problems. I had to set a lot of web sites to run in compatibility mode. Whats up with that? Why can't it just be compatible? If IE had always followed the standards correctly we wouldn't have these compatibility problems.

I think Microsoft is pushing people away from IE and into FireFox and other browsers by putting out such a problem-ridden browser. A quick peek at this thread over on Yahoo Answers is a good example of what I'm talking about. I'm telling you, this thing may drive me into using FireFox in the end. If IE7 is ever taken away from me, or it gets too old for proper support, then I'm probably jumping ship to FireFox.

MagicJack Phone Service

I could have used a cute little title for this entry, like MagicJack, is it really magic? But I see those posts all over the place and it gets old. MagicJack sure seems to bring out the emotions in people. Either they love it or they think its pure evil. My review of MJ can be summed up in a few words: "its $20 a year phone service!"

I bought MJ at WalMart a week ago. I plugged it into my computer, installed the software and it worked. I've used VOIP services in the past so I was familiar with what to expect. It does the job over my DSL internet line and does it pretty darn good for only $20 a year!

People complain because it doesn't run on Linux, or it displays advertisements, or they can't make it work, or whatever. It is what it is... a really cheap phone service.

The software must be running on the PC to make or receive calls. It pops up a window every time you pick up the phone. That gets old. There are plenty of hack sites with ideas on how to run it as a service so you don't get the popups and other geek stuff like that. There is no uninstall. But I don't think I'll have a lot of trouble uninstalling it manually.

Calls are clear and it seems to work very well considering the price. The advertisements are not intrusive at all in my opinion. There are a few quirky things about it, but the price is right so I'm not complaining.

My advice is not to take it so seriously. It works pretty darn good for the price. If you need rock solid reliable phone service then steer away from all VOIP providers and get a copper pair POTS line installed.