GuruNews, Volume 9 Number 16, 4-23-09

Thu Apr 23 18:01:13 PDT 2009

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Vol. 9, No. 16                           

4-23-09

1 Netbooks  

2 Derby Time

3 HD-DVD swap, Mac malware, laptop loss, Adobe smackdown

4 Manage your digital business cards

5 An old enemy makes another appearance             

6 Printing web pages

I picked up a netbook a couple of weeks ago and I absolutely love the little thing!

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, a netbook is like a smaller notebook computer, geared more for Internet access and easy portability.  They are about the size of a trade paperback, very thin and usually weigh in between two and three pounds.

Most feature screens between 8-10" and come with built in wireless as well as the average ports you'd find on a full size laptop.  The one thing they lack is an optical drive.  Many also lack a physical hard drive, opting to use a lighter and smaller flash-type drive called SSD (Solid State Drive).

You can see a size comparison here: 

http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/jj33/microdome/Comparison.jpg

This is my 8.9" Acer netbook compared to my 15.4" Toshiba notebook.

SSD drives aren't anywhere near as large as standard hard drives, usually running from 8-20GB, but the benefit of light weight and speed is enormous, not to mention power consumption.  Battery life is generally twice that of a laptop.

I saw several uses for this device, especially at work, which is why I picked it up.  Since I work on PCs all day I often run across errors and oddball drivers that I need to research on the web.  Rather than going back to my desk to do the searching, then possibly printing out a procedure, why not have a light little machine that I could use right next to the recalcitrant computer?

I can poke around for utilities and drivers, download and scan them for viruses and dump them on a flash drive, then move them to my current patient and load or run them from there.  Sometimes I deal with lists of files that need to be renamed, removed or reregistered and this allows me to save reams of paper.

It fits nicely in a briefcase, purse or backpack and does away with the need to carry a separate laptop case.  This makes casual visits to coffee shops or open areas with hot spots a lot easier.  Sit and sip or enjoy the outdoors while you catch up on email or office work.

There's even a wifi hotspot at Churchill Downs so the ladies can drop one in their purse on the way to the Oaks or Derby.  Who needs a racing form when you can get up to the minute information online?

These things aren't for everyone.  The keyboard is small and the multi-function touchpad takes a little getting used to but I got the hang of them fairly quickly.  Many also come with a flavor of Linux, which is different but easy to figure out.  Mine came with Windows XP Home, which I'm more than well versed in, but I would probably have preferred Linux for the smaller resource footprint.

Also, just like my advice on laptops, this should never be considered as a main computer.  Convenience aside, after 45 minutes or so of use I get a little stiff and need a break.  You can arrange your keyboard and monitor to comfortable positions with a full size PC but any portable machine requires you to crane your neck or get your arms in weird positions.

All in all, these are handy little gadgets if you travel around town and like to keep in touch.  They aren't for heavy use for playing music or editing photos but they're much easier to use for web browsing than a mobile phone.

Your mileage may vary.

Kevin Mefford, Editor

pcguru at microdome.net

Terry Wise

www.ratland.com

Tech News of the Week

If you always pick the wrong horse to bet on you may be stuck with the Betamax version of digital videodisks in HD-DVD.  Warner Home Video feels your pain and will replace those disks with the Blu-Ray versions for $4.95:

http://www.red2blu.com/

If you're a Mac user and have a tendency to pirate software, guess what?  You may be the "gateway user" that introduces the Mac world to malicious viruses:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/04/22/first.mac.botnet/index.html

Think a lost laptop just costs about $1,000 to replace?  Think again:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/23/ponemon_intel_lost_laptop_study/

Major security firm suggests ditching Adobe Acrobat Reader for free utilities:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10224449-83.html

Matthew Dattilo
thepcgurus at gmail.com 
www.mattstodayinhistory.com

Download of the Week

Looking for a simple-to-use piece of software to manage your contacts--on a budget of zero dollars? RGS-Avancesoft's CardMaster offers all the basic tools you need for contact management, including easy searching and sorting, the ability to attach photos and notes to contacts, and simple printing.

It's free here:

http://tinyurl.com/dxymmp 

Carlita Lupino

Cards57 at gmail.com 

Threat of the Week

That hoary old favorite the Address Book hoax is circulating again, making people aware of how easy it is to protect your friends in case you get a virus.  Simply add _aaaaa at aaaaa.aaa or something similar to your contact list and viruses will choke on it and stop sending email.

Viruses don't work like that and you'll just waste space.  A lot of modern viruses don't even spread via email; they spread by scanning IP ranges looking for vulnerable computers that they can just crawl into.

This reminds me of antivirus programs that sign the bottom of all your emails verifying them virus free.  If a virus gets by the program coming in, how exactly could it detect it going out?

Your best bet is to keep your system clean in the first place, and you already know how to do that.  So if you get an email like them please don't forward this to everyone you know, instead just Reply All and tell the sender, as well as all his other "victims", that the information is wrong and should be ignored.

Kevin Mefford

pcguru at microdome.net

Email Question of the Week

Q:  I have a HP895Cxi DeskJet printer connected to my Windows XP computer.  In recent weeks the output pages from this printer have about 0.5" shaved off the left margin.  I connected another HP895Cxi printer to the same computer, and the different printer also shaved 0.5" off the left margin.  Apparently something is amiss with my computer, not the printer.  How do I go about correcting this problem?  Should I reload the printer drivers to my computer?

A:  For IE you click on File/Page Setup to get to the margin settings, I assume AOL has a similar setup.  Mine are .75 all around and prints normally so I assume they should all match, although I guess you could set the top/bottom margins different than the right/left.

Try .8, .75 and .5 and see if that helps.  I'm guessing tweaking those settings will fix the problem.

Kevin Mefford

pcguru at microdome.net

Contact info and legal stuff

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