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You can make it as easy as you possibly can, but....

You are still going to be maintaining the site for her! Mark my words...

Jim

Well I know that in my first (and last!) experience with Kaspersky it automatically deleted a number of programs it determined to be "high risk" based on its heuristics. I kept Kaspersky around for about three months of the one year subscription I had purchased. It was way to strict and not configurable enough for me. It most definitely did not quarantine the program files.

Jim

some false positives are far better than an overlooked virus...

Tell that to a couple of my customers after AVG decided that the lower filter for the Xen disk subsystem was a virus.  No problem there until their boxes were rebooted, which resulted in a nice 7B bsod.  (Fortunately for the second customer I remembered tracking down the issue for the first...)

When an antivirus reports a virus, any user should always verify if that is true or not (false positive) before deleting any files.
This should be taught to new users.

That's a presumptive statement. Most AV's default to automatically "cleaning" high risk files... which means deleting them. "New users" wouldn’t yet know to configure it any differently.

Jim

I think you have to take a more measured approach.  What I usually do is disable *automatic* updates.  Then, a week (or more) after update Tuesday and all of the furor has died down, I download and install the updates manually.  I just don't want to trust anyone to automatically do anything to my computer.  Because if it borks up, are they going to take responsibility for it?

I'll evaluate and decide whether to take the risks, and take the responsibility for my choices.  I've been bitten once about 15 years ago... and to a large extent, that was my fault, as I was hosting my own web site when code red came out and wasn't keeping up to date.  It hurt, but at least it was my fault.

In this case, it hurts... but it's nothing that I did.  And that's a hard pill to swallow, especially since it seems I'm now looking at several hours to restore his computer.  Thankfully, nothing is lost, but it's still a pain, and a drain.

Just about what I do. I have the updates set to notify me but don’t download or install automatically. I always take a good look at them when notified, but then I wait a week or more until I can get some decent feedback on any problems encountered. I usually search on the updates but I also look at Woody Leonard's DefCon column, Infoworld's Tech Watch pages, and ComputerWorld's update pages. They usually give a good read on the updates each month plus for the unscheduled updates. There are some I'll probably never install, though most eventually make it onto my machine.

Jim

because you have taken away my ability to send notes over my network. Now you want me to use a paid subscription service just to be able to send a note to a computer in my own home network.

Well, the subscription comes with lot of other things. If it is your own computer, you don't have to send sticky notes back and forth. Subscription comes with syncing of sticky notes between your computers so that you have the same copy of sticky notes everywhere. Plus, when you have the subscription, you create/access sticky notes from any smart-phone such as iOS (iPhone/iPad), Android etc.

I am certain that will be a welcome addition for some users; doesn’t do anything for me though.

In order to take several bigger steps in future, we have had to take couple of steps backwards. If you look at the whole picture, you will learn several benefits of the new model.

But I don’t have to do so right now, correct? I can keep running NZ7?

Subscription is free for the first year. So one has nothing to lose. It is win-win.

And the subscription cost thereafter?

Doggone... I lost Piky Suite when you decided to kill that off a year or so ago, and RecentX just became stale - I don’t think there has been an update of much significance for a few years now. Just making it work in OS and browser updates. RecentX had become a bit of a CPU hog when indexing so I had to abandon that. After Notezilla 7 becomes extinct I will not be using any of your programs.   

Thank you.

Jim

BTW, I will be sticking with Notezilla 7, mainly because you have taken away my ability to send notes over my network. Now you want me to use a paid subscription service just to be able to send a note to a computer in my own home network.

That'll never happen here!

Jim

But it is his fault and not the fault of Microsoft or XP. He is the one making the FlashWindowEx API call that is overriding my OS defaults.

Sorry, I didn't know there was a way to override the defaults. Please do explain how to overrid the defaults so that we can follow the standards. This is better than providing an app specific option. Please do email directly to support [at] conceptworld [dot] com, so that we don't fill this thread with conversations not beneficial to others.

Regards,
Gautam Jain

Gautam,

Perhaps I misunderstand, but I don’t believe that April is asking you to override a default. She is saying that your FlashWindowEx API call is already overriding the OS default by causing the taskbar to lock open. She wants you to stop overriding the default!

Jim

My ASUS RT-N16 router comes with the username "admin" and while I was able to change the password it does not allow changing the username.   

(Damn thing continually drops wireless connections for the past week, too!     )

Jim

I just installed Softmaker Office 2012 Pro yesterday and it has their new email program included. I'll give it a try and see if it is truly a viable Outlook replacement. I am using Outlook 2010 but I'm not using any of Outlook's extended features; just the basic email. Not crazy about it.

Jim

I purchased a "lifetime license" for Postbox when it was initially released, after running the pre-release beta. Not too bad, but in reality it is simply a stylized version of Thunderbird with many less extensions available. Their vaunted search engine - which was a big marketing point for them - was not quite as robust as the search engine that T-Bird introduced about a month after Postbox's release.

Unfortunately the developer of Postbox refunded my money and told me that he preferred I find another email app after he deleted a couple of my forum posts where I asked some pointed questions about promised features. That was a very surprising first for me! He said I could continue using Postbox but asked me to refrain from posting "difficult" questions in their forum. Actually he didn't want me to post in their forum at all anymore. Needless to say I uninstalled Postbox and haven't used it since.

Jim

OK then I downloaded the correct file, the top link. It comes down as an MSI file but only 79.9 MB. Can't seem to get the entire file to download. Weird!

Thank you.

Jim

I cant download Libreoffice. It apparently is a torrent download from their site. Claims it is a 185 MB file but only 7.79 MB is downloaded. Do I need a torrent program to get this?

Jim

orlandodal,

Are you by any chance associated with Photodali?

Thank you,

Jim

crabby,

I know that but you hadn't mentioned what OS you are running up till now. Actually you haven't really described the problem very well so far. I understand that you say you are not very well-versed technologically, but you need to at least give us the basics that you can. OS and edition (Windows 7, Vista, XP, etc.), Firefox version, what Comcast/Xfinity software have you installed? Or did Comcast install software on your computer when they set up your service? E.g., was the Comcast software that they try to get you to install when starting their service installed by you or a Comcast tech? Is the Comcast/Xfinity "Constant Guard" so-called security software installed by you or Comcast? The Comcast toolbar?

What AntiVirus and/or AntiMalware software is installed? Firewall? If you can try to gather up as much as that information as possible it would help a lot!

Thanks!

Jim

Sounds like you installed the Comcast/Xfinity Self-Install Kit. Bad mojo! Try this link and see if anything there helps: http://blog.ryanparman.com/2011/07/07/remove-comcastxfinity-start-page-from-firefox-mac/

Jim

Thank you! Great service, as always.   

Jim

Yeah, I know. But since I still have the last version of Feeddemon Pro I can use that. It will still update all feeds, it just won't be able to sync with any online service (like Google Reader) anymore.

Thanks!

Jim

Now it changed again.... but not for the better. It appears that they found my import file, but.... I now have 38,901 ahead of me. So somehow about 34,000 jumped the line! I tried to cancel but it won't let me while awaiting the import.

Jim

Iain, I did that last night - wasn’t too sure if it would work or not. I guessed on the .xml file, since it is the closest thing I could find to an OPML file. However I had over 4,000 ahead of me!

Thank you.

Jim

Oh crap - TheOldReader totally sucks! Now it tells me I have no subscriptions imported. Just this afternoon I had a little over 4,000 still ahead of me in their "queue". Note on my Home page says "Bad news, some queue positions got messed up again. We fixed the issue, and we hope this was the last time it happened."

So it appears they lost my import. I am done there. They don’t seem to have any clue as to what to do. I would question the reliability of such a program.

Jim

How do you get your GR feeds into TheOldReader? GR doesn’t have an export facility anymore; instead it sends you to Google Takeout where you can only download your feeds as separate .json files. No OPML export available anymore. Apparently they killed that off back in November 2012.

Jim

Eventually, yes. I now finally have Linkman installed on Windows rather than as a portable app!

Thanks for remembering, T.   

Jim

I can handle that!

Thanks for the instructions. Very much appreciated!

Jim

Looks good so far!

My one request: More control over Linkman menu and toolbar icons. In Firefox I have too many Linkman icons on my status bar (or I guess it is now called the "Add-ons Bar"). When Linkman first started adding these icons there was an extension allowing customization of the status bar icons. So I rearranged them plus did away with the "Add all tabs" button as I have never used that except by accident. Then the extension was removed so now I have the Linkman icons I rearranged plus the new ones added with every Linkman update installation. I'd like to see a checkbox for adding those icons or not. Same with the context menu icons - Linkman wants to add too many! Much better would be a submenu where hovering shows all the icons you want, but not make the overall context menu even longer.

I put in a support request for this back in April 2011 and was told that the icons would be customizable in the next Linkman version released, but I haven't seen it. If an option for this is there somewhere and I have missed it I apologize... and please tell me where it is!

Thanks!

Jim

I know all of this. Still, can't I miss it? Or must I take your attitude?

Jim

What's really a shame is that some of those "projects" were really excellent web apps that Google purchased and then killed off. So now we don’t have a Google version nor the original version.

Actually, in many cases we do.  For example, Writely is now basis for google docs editor.  Some cases they just killed them off, but in many cases they used that technology as the basis for another service (in many cases, just rebranded).

That's true, however from what I can tell they have abandoned a lot of what was really good about a lot of them and only picked what they needed. I still would prefer Writely very much over the Docs editor. But, that's what happens with free software I guess.   

Thanks!

Jim