Ray Shaw's Question & Answers  -  Page 24 26-7-08: Question: I just bought a Mac and the salesman said that Macs did not get infected with malware or virus. Do I need protection? Answer: Macs (OSX 10.5 Leopard or later) can catch colds and flu although not as many as in the PC world. Apple have released a 240 page guide to securing your Mac and its heavy reading. http://images.apple.com/server/macosx/docs/Leopard_Security_Config_20080530.pdf.  Now that Macs run on Intel processors it is easier for a virus or malware writer to develop one nasty and compile it for both Mac and PC - something we will see more of in the future. Whilst Mac attacks may not have been large scale to date they do the same damage as they do to PCs i.e. can take over machines and turn them into Zombie Bots, spam servers etc. According to PC Tools there is a tendency towards socially engineered threats with the core purpose of tricking the user into an action that will cause a malware infection.  Research conducted in the first quarter of 2008 found that 95% of all Mac malware threats identified were OSX related, of which 38% were key loggers, 30% were hacking tools, 11% were backdoors and 2% were viruses. Antivirus and malware solutions are available from PC Tools, Symantec, McAfee and Avast and you should be running one of them. Socially engineered threats refer mainly to where you click on a link in an email to install a "viewer" or some other "required" program that then can take over your Mac (or PC). Question: I use Spybot 1.52 free from www.spybot.info and have been very happy except for one thing - the complete scanning time takes about 20 minutes. Is there a faster program to protect me from malware? Answer: Spybot scans for more than 600,000 malware signatures and it does take time. The speed is more related to your CPU speed however and most Antivirus and Antimalware programs would take similar times. However a complete scan monthly it a good idea. Version 1.6 (soon to be released) has addressed this and apparently can do the same scan in about 5 minutes depending on how much memory you have. Question: I am planning to purchase an ex-Government Laptop. Can Laptop's do everything a Desktop can do? What things should I be looking for when buying a second hand Laptop? What security program should I use? Answer: Most ex-government laptops are three or more years old and will not have the benefit of the newer dual core CPU's (which makes computing so much faster and pleasant). They will have XP Pro and probably between 256 and 512Mb of ram. This vintage is not nearly as powerful or fast as a similar specified desktop. Also remember that most laptops have a life of about 5 years and the original battery had a life of about 2 to 3 years - these can cost a few hundred dollars to replace. Old laptops generally cannot be repaired either. For my money I would look at the new breed of sub $1,000 laptops (called notebooks now). Most of the under $1000 notebooks will have Intel Celeron or AMD processors and its worth it to pay a little more for a Dual Core Intel processors. All will have Vista (usually Home Basic) and some have 2 year warranties. If price is an issue then the Asus EEPC 900 model with XP and a 9" screen may be a good option. As for security - use a comprehensive internet suite like AVG from www.avg.com.au. Suites cover 99% of the threats whereas stand alone products cover about 90%. Question: I have Win XP Home SP3 and every time I start up it says "Security alert: Your firewall is not on" I click on it and in a few minutes it goes away. Answer: It could just be a slow or underpowered PC and the firewall takes time to load (competing with all the other programs that load on start up) or it could be a deeper problem such as a faulty firewall. If the firewall is definitely running (you will see this in Control Panel, Administrative services, Services and look for Windows Firewall/Internet Connection Sharing - it should be started and Automatic) then you need to look at the start up program issue. That is best left to the experts as they can generally disable a lot of unnecessary programs that are competing for memory and CPU. More at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/920074 Question: My HP laptop running Windows XP is running very slowly. Sometimes after I reboot it will run normally for a few days but then the next time I start up it is running slow again. I have checked performance with the Task Manager and it shows the CPU is at 100% with nothing open. The unit has 256MB ram and I wondered if I increased this to 1GB if that would help. Answer: The slowness could be caused by a virus, malware or by too many programs running on start up (in this case it turned out to be partially removed HP printer software). The cure is thoroughly scan for virus and malware (try Spybot free from www.spybot.info) and disable those running programs that are unnecessary. The latter involves opening Task Manager (control, alt, del) and then working through the items under Processes checking what they do at http://www.answersthatwork.com/ then disabling them in the System Configuration Utility (Startup tab). Extra ram won't fix the problem either although it should improve the speed once the start up process is completed (which can take several minutes). --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 11-8-08: Question: On Today Tonight I saw a story about watching satellite TV free on your PC - all you needed was some special software from dontpaytv.com at a cost from $40 to $100 with no monthly fees. Is this right? Answer: This software simply combines lists of free to air (FTA) satellite TV that have been streamed onto the Internet. Dontpaytv is just an affiliate reseller of the programs; a business shared with countless thousands of others who are promoting this as a replacement for Foxtel and other pay TV services. It is, and it deserves to be exposed for what it is - a way for them to make a quick buck. Any Broadband connected PC can view FTA TV using free programs such as Windows Media Player, Apple QuickTime, Adobe Flash or RealPlayer. There is no magic apart from knowing where to find the FTA internet feed, just like going to www.abc.net.au and watching programs from there. You can access hundreds of FTA channels at sites like www.freetube.us.tc, www.streamick.com or http://wwitv.com/portal.htm. But there is also a downside. Using the internet to watch TV counts as a download. Every minute you watch will consume at least 2MB, about 120MB per hour or a 1GB per 8 hours. The higher definition the higher the bandwidth - a DVD quality movie could consume up to 5GB in 2 hours. It is very hungry and most Australian download limits are too small to allow widespread adoption. The quality is more like YouTube than normal TV - it is displayed in a small window and at that size is watchable but with all streaming video there are pauses, stutters and blocky images. If you go to full screen mode the quality is woeful. You could send the output to a TV screen (if your PC has a TV out socket) but the quality would be noticeably worse so it defeats the purpose. Note: This is purely FTA not TiVo or IPTV - these services that aggregate TV and movie content under license. FTA over the internet is perfectly legal as it does not remove advertisements. Question: What is TiVo? Answer: TiVo www.tivo.com.au uses a proprietary $699 dual TV tuner Digital Video Recorder (DVR) to give access to Channel 2, 7, 9, 10 and SBS digital TV stations. The DVR connects to a TV antenna (it must be capable of receiving a good digital signal) to receive the content and uses the internet to download an Electronic Program Guide (EPG) which does not chew up too much expensive bandwidth. The EPG allows the DVR to be programmed to record movies, TV series or genres although the current 160GB hard disk will fill pretty quickly. The TiVo service is free of charge but premium content may be offered later at extra cost. Question: What is IPTV? Answer: IPTV uses the internet to deliver digital TV and some form of Electronic Program Guide, usually to a proprietary set top box (STB) to handle high levels of MPEG compression and buffering. In many respects Foxtels IQ digital service uses IPTV technology to deliver services over cable or satellite. But as some major Australian ISP's generally charge up to 15 cents per MB ($150 per GB) it has not taken off as it could in Australia. More at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPTV --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 17-8-08: Question: I decided to buy a particular brand and model of notebook and went shopping at the major stores, Harvey Norman, JB Hi-fi, Clive Peters etc., but all had it at a similar price and none would "bargain". I also wanted an LCD TV and all stores fell over themselves to cut the price - $3,000 ended up at $2,500. Why do computer prices appear fixed? Should the ACCC investigate? Answer: The answer is part history and part how things are done. Computers have very low margins - most notebooks have less than 10% profit because that industry is completely deregulated and has players like Dell and HP selling direct and cutting out the middleman. The exception is Apple where the supply chain is pretty well regulated and the price is the price. A decade or more ago computer stores were making 30% plus margins and instead of discounting they value added (free installation, delivery, service, phone support, generous warranty conditions etc.) and made a good living - not so today. White, brown and CE (Consumer Electronic) goods is pretty well regulated and stores that sell those traditionally work on a bigger profit margin, up to 100%. As such they can afford to discount to win business. Discounting is easy and in Australia where bargaining is not common place you can count on eight out of ten customers paying the full price anyway. It is fair to say that the larger stores are having difficulty in adapting to the low margin model for computers and the only real bargains are when a manufacturer has a run out on excess or superseded stock. Even then the market power of the larger stores means that the manufacturer is often required to provide a consumer cash back or free bonus offer instead of cutting the recommended retail price as that would make it even harder for the larger stores to make a profit. In the computer world the advertised price is generally the price you will pay because there is nothing more the retailer can do and still stay in business. Question: Is the move from XP, which I am relatively comfortable with after 6 years of use to Vista as horrible as I am told? What about program compatibility, printers, scanners etc. Answer: Until recently my usual answer was that I moved over to Vista (64 bit Ultimate version as well) in July last year and have not looked back. XP, in hindsight, seems primitive by comparison. However I sometimes forget that I am a computer guru and the general public may experience difficulties. The reality is that Vista is a more complicated operating system and whilst it does everything (and very much more) than XP these features are not always evident or in the same folder or under a similar name to XP. The other problem is in transferring information to Vista. I have had some success with using Belkin's Vista XP transfer cable http://www.belkin.com/easytransfercable/ which can make it easier to transfer mail, data and settings. I spent a full day recently with a friend setting up their new Vista notebook and even though I rate him as quite XP competent there was much he could not do and lots that I needed to refresh myself on. We stumbled over the need to update almost all of his four to six year old software (at a considerable cost) and getting some drivers for older equipment. If your pain threshold is low then stick with XP because it won't be a simple changeover otherwise be prepared to spend lots of money on getting an expert to do it for you. Having said that XP is now a dead operating system and you may be forced to go to Vista if your existing hardware fails so it may be better to bight the bullet. Question: I have opened an investment spread sheet using Excel 2003 and added my own figures into the spread sheet but they won't add up. Answer: The template probably has auto calculate turned off (to protect the integrity of the figures in it). Go to Tools, Options and select the calculate tab and turn on auto calculate. Or press F9 to force a manual recalculation. Question: I have a DVD Recorder with a 250 GB HDD which has died. Are these DVD HDDs any different to normal PC HDDs? Can I use it as a 2nd HDD in my PC? Answer: It is most likely a 2.5" notebook drive. It may be IDE (the notebook pin configuration is different to a standard PC IDE cable) or it could be SATA (different connector again) or it may be proprietary. If it is IDE you would have to find an adaptor (IDE 2.5" to 3.5" are available for about $20) or place it in an external 2.5" USB caddy. The DVD/R would also probably be running a Linux OS and you would need to remove the partition and reformat it on the PC. You can't format an external hard disk over 32GB in the caddy - it has to be connected to the motherboard to do that (and then you need to select NTFS) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Back to: HOME        Back to: Computers      Back to: Ray Shaw (23)         Forward to: Ray Shaw (25)