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Welcome to the July 2009 issue of the CyberArtisans newsletter! Each month we try to present information that will be useful to you as a website owner and as a user of the web. If these newsletters are useful, please forward this to a friend. To unsubscribe, follow the directions at the bottom of this email.
Windows 7 (Release Candidate) is now available [note that the latest check of this site says that the Release Candidate of Windows 7 is no longer available] free until the release of the final version in October. If you listen to the hype, this is the best operating system Microsoft has ever built. Of course, if you read the techie newsletters you realize that Windows 7 is just a refinement of Vista, which is widely thought to have been Microsoft's worst operating system. So is Windows 7 the best thing since sliced bread or just a wolf in sheep's clothing (wow, mixed metaphor alert! Sorry about that)? The short answer, of course, is neither. But let's start with Vista to gain a little perspective. In many ways, Vista's history is typical of an operating system — it had serious problems until the release of the first Service Pack (SP1). XP is now considered the darling of the Windows community, but many of its current boosters forget that it too had serious initial problems that weren't fixed until its first Service Pack. Vista, however, has another problem — it's a resource hog. Customers who bought a high-powered Vista system with lots of memory on board had very few problems (after SP1) and many felt that Vista was an excellent OS. But MS's system requirements were way too optimistic, and many computer manufacturers put Vista on systems that had no business trying to run the OS. There is some evidence that Microsoft has tamed the resource hog nature of Vista in Windows 7. This article compares the performance of Windows XP and Windows 7 on an ASUS Eee PC 1005HA Netbook and finds the two operating systems remarkably even in performance. For those not familiar with netbooks, these are very small computers with limited resources designed for web surfing, email, and little more, so this is an impressive demonstration. And there are good reasons to upgrade from XP, other than staying up with the latest technology. Remember that XP was designed before many of the latest Internet threats existed. Vista has a number of very useful improvements in online security and these have been passed on and improved in Windows 7. So if MS has tamed the resource hog nature of Vista in Windows 7, there's a chance that Windows 7 could be the next XP. OK, but what are your options now? As usual, it depends, but here's our advice:
You'll notice this is the July issue of our newsletter. As usual, we got a little behind in our To-Do list and didn't start work on our newsletter until late last week. By that time, we realized, we were on the backside of the delivery curve. Most email experts agree that if you want your email to be noticed, the best days of the week to mail it out are Tuesday or Wednesday, preferably early morning (if this works as planned you should be seeing this newsletter in your Wednesday morning email). The worst days are Friday and Monday — Friday everyone is trying to wrap things up and get home for the weekend, and Monday everyone is deluged with all the email that arrived over the weekend. So it's late but (we hope) better timed.
DEFCON is the yearly conference for hackers and (more recently) IT professionals anxious to learn what hackers are up to. But occasionally the hackers get hacked. DEFCON is held every year in Las Vegas in the Riviera Hotel and Casino. And at this year's conference (just ended) someone noticed an ATM machine in the Riviera casino that "didn't look right." Yes, it was a fake, with a PC inside that was collecting ATM card numbers and PINs. Obviously it was not giving out any cash, but most people probably decided it was simply broken, at least until they found their bank account emptied. The person who detected it (who asked not to be named because he does not want to be associated with hackers!), said he was able to identify the machine because its LED light was the wrong color and the Plexiglas was a little too dark. Makes sense — hackers have to pay attention to details. Someone else pointed out that this is not a new scam and is very common at ATM machines in gas stations. So the next time you need some fast cash, do it the safer way — go to a grocery store, buy a stick of gum with your debit card, and get cash back.
We've noticed a trend we don't like: One of the many utilities or services on your computer says it needs to be updated. Fair enough. You authorize the update. Halfway through, however, it pops up a screen asking for permission to install. Your first instinct is to say "Yeah, yeah, just do it and stop bothering me," but when you examine the screen more carefully you realize that it also wants to install something you didn't ask for. In some cases it's a toolbar. In the most recent case we've seen it's a backup utility. Regardless of what it is, you didn't ask for it and it's trying to take advantage of your impatience to get the rogue utility installed. We realize that this is a source of revenue for the utility being installed, but that's a poor excuse for using subterfuge to install something unwanted on your computer. The latest perpetrator is a Java update, which tried to install the Carbonite backup utility. Since we already use Mozy, we have no desire to install a second backup system. Moral — you can't relax your vigil even when you are installing a simple update.
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