Connective Visions

Update: My dialogue with my ISP is ongoing. I have a connection, but it drops radically from time to time. I can’t fault Verizon’s tech support for attention; they faithfully call every day to see how I’m doing and make suggestions. Still, it hasn’t rained since Tuesday – so to my mind, the real verdict’s still out.

This episode prompted me to do a lot of computer cleaning (in the virtual sense – the desk’s still a mess), and in the process I came up with loads of information I wanted to share – especially if there’s hope of broadening U.S. access to the Internet through a national broadband plan. So here it is.

One of my favorite experiences with computers occurred when helping a friend make a photo-and-music CD as a year-end present for his customers and friends. A software program he was running asked him, “Are you sure you want to do X?” and presented the options to perform the action or cancel it. He looked helplessly at me and said, “I’m not sure. What do I do?”

Despite increasing access to and use of technology, a lot of us are this way. We’re terrified that we’ll lose something essential on these strange machines. And once we get past that point and feel relatively safe, things can happen that scare us to death: suddenly, the computer starts blinking with warnings and ads, or it slows down, or we can’t open documents we want to see.

To prevent and fix these problems, and to get their machines to do what they want, many users lay out enough money to sustain a pet for a year. Each year.

Here, I  suggest ten free programs that can help the average computer user stay safe and aware; beat a good many costs; and help with work, study, and friendly communication. They also allow you to experiment a little with that machine you’ve been told will do so much. I’ve tried them all at one time or another, and I still use them more or less frequently. There may be better ones out there – feel free to recommend!

Before you try any program, remember:

• Don’t be terrified. It’s your machine. And it is a lot harder to break a computer than you imagine (unless you are in the habit of chucking it out the window).
• One step at a time. Trying everything at once will only discourage you. Set reasonable goals for testing new tools.
• Read the directions. “Computerese” is possibly the worst obstacle to users. It seems incomprehensible. But the tools listed here have clear instructions, and you are not stupid. In the end, it’s much like following a recipe – and most of us get there eventually (and often successfully).

And I’ll try to explain these in plain English.

Safe Surfing

1. My standard anti-spyware program is now, and has been for some time, Spybot-Search & Destroy. There are two principal things to remember about this program after you’ve downloaded it:

• Keep it updated. Spyware and adware programmers work harder than any government and many corporations on the planet. Always check for and download the updates.
• Immunize. Once you have updated Spybot, you should immunize your browsers. There is a little trick to this. When you click “Immunize” in the left-hand menu, it will show you how much you are already “immune” to and how much still needs to be done. Once that has been established, you must click “Immunize” again – this time, on the green “+” above the readings – to get the new protection. Then you are good to go.

The video tutorial I’ve embedded below takes you through this.

Recently, a friend’s laptop was flashing all sorts of warnings at her that she wasn’t protected. An updated scan of her files with Spybot removed the warnings, which were actually adware, trying to lure her to a site to get her credit card number and other data. That’s how spyware and adware operates. You don’t want it. This will help keep it away.

2. If you run genuine Windows and are disheartened by the cost or usefulness of Norton, McAfee, and other anti-virus software, you might want to try the free Microsoft Security Essentials. This is especially good, I think, for computer users who largely want to email, do some online shopping and Facebook, and surf on basic topics. It’s a solid anti-virus program that is easy to install and automatically updates.

I have known both heavy and light computer users who were very satisfied with the level of protection this provides. For instance, the same friend who had the spyware problem didn’t want to cough up for anti-virus software, but she was endangering her computer by ignoring the problem. This proved a good fix for her.

It’s also a nice “transition” software if you’re switching out from one brand to another and don’t want to be unprotected in the meantime.

CNET gives the program a good rating, though it notes that it lacks many features. The main thing I would suggest with it is to be sure your Windows firewall is activated, as program lacks that feature.

3. For my browser – that program which lets me access the Internet, as I recently explained to a client – I pretty exclusively use Mozilla Firefox. I never have the “script errors” I constantly get with Internet Explorer, and it’s highly compatible with most Web sites. I say “most,” because the City of Philadelphia Department of Revenue is among those that can’t handle an Explorer-free life; and my Verizon technician yesterday fled from Firefox, completely unsure of whether it would work with their software!

Until recently, Firefox has been provably safer than IE. One of the problems with the latter’s dominance of the market is that it is has been the principal target for spyware, adware, and virus programmers. Although still less popular than IE (as it isn’t bundled with Windows software), Firefox has grown in popularity because of its speed, ease, and safety, so now it’s a bit more of a target. But the 3.6.3  version runs very smoothly and fixes the security hole found at the CanSecWest Conference in March (where it was the last to be hacked in competition with Safari, IE 8, and Firefox 3).

4. I can’t say it affects me much, but for additional security I have the McAfee SiteAdvisor browser plug-in. It rates sites according to safety, indicating from its tests whether a site has turned up no problems, might turn up problems, definitely turns up problems, or is unknown.

It’s the “unknown” bit that makes this tool marginally less useful than others. SiteAdvisor is fairly accurate for frequently visited sites, but many are out there that McAfee hasn’t tested yet. And there are reports that it delivers inconsistent results and takes a very long time to register clean-ups to sites.

I think it does no harm to have it … but feel free to be more daring than it is, if you have solid anti-spyware and anti-virus support.

System Maintenance

5. Two things considerably slow down a computer: “crap” stored on the machine itself, and a poor connection to the Internet. The first of these can be greatly helped by installing and using Piriform’s CCleaner.

As you install and uninstall programs on your computer, as you update, and as you use certain applications online, all sorts of useless bits find their way into the computer’s  registry – and stay there. And when you access the Internet or create documents, temporary files are stored on your hard drive. CCleaner’s “Cleaning” tool will remove the latter, while the “Registry” tool will take care of the former.

You get to choose what you feel uneasy about deleting and what you can merrily throw away. Generally, what is in the registry can be tossed; you’ll want to keep certain things under the cleaning operation. I talk about this in the video.

6. When you buy a plan to connect to the Internet, you are promised a certain bandwidth. But how do you know you’re actually getting it? DSLReports provides a variety of online speed tests for DSL, cable, and even smartphones. Any time you find your Web pages loading slowly or your downloads creeping along, you can run a test to see if the problem lies with your ISP’s speed delivery.

Be aware, many ISP’s consider 60% – or less – of the speed they advertised as the top speed for your package to be acceptable. You’ll want to call when you’re dropping suddenly by half, however. While the problem may be out of their – and your - control, it may also signal a line, modem, or ISP server problem that needs to be addressed.

I would say that losing Internet access whenever it rains falls into that category.

With the FCC’s national broadband plan in the works, you can also run a test at their site and have your data collected for their evaluation. Their test requires Java, which you probably have already; if you don’t, they direct you on how to download it.

Remember, you paid for your DSL and cable service. You have a right to check it.

Work Tools

7. So, you do some basic writing and spreadsheet work, but you don’t want to pay $100-$150 for Microsoft Office Suite. You might want to try Open Office instead.

With Open Office, you have access to word-processing (Writer), spreadsheet (Calc), multimedia presentation (Impress), graphics (Draw), and desktop database (Base) tools that will also read Microsoft Office files and can save in Microsoft Office formats. (The 3.0 version has updated this function to accommodate reading the Office 2007 “docx” and “xlsx” extensions as well.) And it comes with ability to export your files into Portable Document Format (.pdf), without the need for extra software.

The one caution I would issue is that if you are looking for work that requires use of Microsoft Office, be sure you have used that software. The two aren’t identical, and unfortunately, Open Office is not yet widely understood or accepted by businesses. (For my professional editing I use Word, just to be on the safe side.)

8. Sometimes you want to share files – photos, illustrated documents, and the like – that are larger than the 20 or 30MB allowed by your email provider. For files up to 100MB, I recommend the file-sharing program Wikisend. I have used it especially with high-resolution photographs that were too “heavy” to be easily accommodated by email.

With Wikisend, you upload your files to their server and are issued a link, which you then email to the person to whom you’re sending the data. You get to determine a time for how long the files will be available as well. The receiver clicks on the link, and the files download into his or her computer.

Wikisend has been rated as extremely safe by SiteAnalytics360, as has another service I recently found: LargefilesASAP. The latter service allows up to 2GB to be uploaded and stored. The only problem there is, it likely would take me a few months to upload a file that large to their server.

When I get into gigabytes, I might as well buy a flash drive and mail it.

9. I discovered TechSmith’s Jing when I took a summer course on “Writing for the Web and New Media.” Most of the course was online, and the professors’ Jing “broadcasts” that showed portions of Web sites, areas we’d need to fill in, and the like were immensely helpful.

Creating a short (five-minute maximum) video such as the one I use above, or taking and illustrating screenshots, is quite easy. To add audio on the videos, you will need a microphone. As microphone headsets can cost as little as $10, they are nice things to have.

Screencast.com, where your images are stored, provides you with a link to send in instant messages or emails that is very accessible. Jing itself also has functions to post to Facebook and Twitter. The free Screencast account gives you 2GB of storage and 2GB monthly bandwidth.

Jing’s chief problem lies in the embedding function. I wasn’t able to get it to work at all, and ultimately I had to log in to my Screencast account and get the code from there. Then I had to adjust the image size to something that wouldn’t overwhelm the blog. This was a nuisance, and the “Help” page on the site didn’t address that eventuality. Another problem lies in the fact that you cannot use “Print Screen” to take a screenshot of any Jing feature on your computer … nor can you use Jing to photograph itself.

Even with these limits, you can’t beat the price for simple image illustration, tutorials, and transmission. If your chief goal is to sent visual directions or short instructions to someone, it’s a nice tool. And they do seem like fun people there.

10. Finally, for more complex computer sharing with co-workers, clients, classmates, or friends, consider trying out TeamViewer. This sort of application may well be the telecommuting future, as it allows users to set up a session in which they can see each other’s computer screens, interact with one another, and copy files directly from each other’s computers.

For instance, if I cannot get to my client for some reason, and she wants to show me pictures that she has on her desktop so that we can select one for a newsletter, she does not need to send them to me. We can log into a session together where I can look through the photos and we can discuss them through instant messaging. I can even copy the needed file directly to my computer and continue the newsletter work from home.

The review by CNET gives this application five stars, and I fully concur. I have used this once, with a contact in Norway, for assistance on my own computer, and I was excited to have it when a friend had severe computer problems. It would have been most helpful for pointing out to her what was happening.

But in that instance, TeamViewer met a barrier it couldn’t overcome. My friend was so frightened of doing anything on the computer that she demanded my physical presence to fix it … while she made coffee.

The human component is the ultimate “killer app.”