Fighting Viruses and Malware on Mac computers

In April of this year I realized that my hiatus in the fight against computer viruses and malware had come to an end.  For four lovely years I didn't pore over websites describing the effects of the latest worms or trojans.  I didn't run any lengthy scans or poke around editing the registry of a PC.  It was nice while it lasted, but that time has passed.  Mac owners now need to pay attention to the evils of viruses and malware.

My "wake-up call" came in the form of MacKeeper popup windows like the screen prints below.  (Rest assured that these images are NOT linked to a MacKeeper site and therefore pose no danger.)
 

If you see popups like these, close them immediately.

If you see MacKeeper advertisements on a website, close your browser window and avoid that site in the future.

Do not install Mackeeper, advised the Apple Support Forum on March 23, 2012.

Symptoms

MacKeeper popup screens appeared on my husband's MacBook several times a day.  My husband also reported that he spent way too much time watching the colorful spinning wheel (the Apple equivalent of the hourglass on PCs).

Theory #1, or going down the garden path

The computer is just too old.  Thinking there wasn't much point in spending a lot of money to fix a four-year old computer with an expired warranty, I bought my husband a new MacBook Pro.  However, the new MacBook Pro did not bring the expected improvements.  Even with its newer architecture and four times the RAM of the old machine, this new one was only marginally faster. Worse yet, the popups persisted and watching the spinning wheel was still a major part of everyday use.  That's when I realized that something funky was going on.

I also realized I had spent a huge pile of money in the Apple store for no good reason!  Despite the fact that I had unpacked and used the new computer (see More Adventures with Migration Assistant), I marched it back to the store and returned it.  Did you know that Apple will give you a full refund -- no restocking fees! -- if you return a computer within 14 days of purchase? 

Theory #2, or waking up to reality

The computer has a virus.  By now I was convinced that I had transferred some sort of virus or malware from the old computer to the new one.  That would explain spinning wheel syndrome and the tendency for the old MacBook to get slower and slower until it was rebooted - sometimes more than once a day.

As I read more and more technology sites, I learned that the reason Macs didn't get viruses in the past had nothing to do with their physical construction or the Mac operating system.  Hackers just were not motivated to write nasty, disruptive programs for such a small portion of the computer market.  Now that more than 10% of computer users have Macs, the appeal to hackers is growing.

Nothing proves that fact more than the rampant Flashback, a trojan reported in April 2012 to have infected over 600,000 Macs globally, half of those in the US alone! 

Mac Flashback Malware: What It Is and How to Get Rid of It (FAQ) -  CNet, April 5, 2012
Widespread Virus Proves Macs Are No Longer Safe From Hackers -  New York Times, April 6, 2012

Apple has been recommending anti-virus software for quite a while.  In 2008 Apple published a technical note on their support forum recommending "widespread use of multiple anti-virus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult."  This statement was picked up by all the major technology media as well as mainstream news publishers like the Washington Post.

Apple Suggests Mac Users Install Antivirus Software - CNet, December 1, 2008
Apple:  Mac Users Should Get Antivirus Software - Washington Post, December 1, 2008

By the way, if you still need to obtain and install an antivirus program for your Mac, the article below is an excellent resource.

Antivirus Utilities and Recommendations for OS X - CNet, January 13, 2011.

The antivirus program that caught my eye was Sophos Antivirus, "an enterprise-level virus scanner that was just released as a free home version."  It runs in the background without hogging system resources.  It scans files prior to download and notifies you if it finds any danger. 

Solution: antivirus and adblocker software 

Getting back to my own computer issues, I downloaded and ran Sophos Antivirus. It found and quarantined three malware files that I promptly deleted.

Interestingly, MacKeeper was not one of the quarantined files.  That fact sent me off to do additional internet reading.  I learned that MacKeeper is indeed considered malware because it chews up system resources, doesn't do what it advertises, and is nearly impossible to get rid of.  In the article below, the Apple Support Forum says "MacKeeper can be regarded as highly invasive malware that can de-stablize your operating system." 

Do not install Mackeeper, Apple Support Forum, March 23, 2012.

Thankfully, I concluded that my husband's MacBook wasn't infected with MacKeeper.  Sophos Antivirus hadn't identified it, and it didn't appear on the hard drive as an installed application.  So far, so good, but I still needed to get rid of the MacKeeper popup nuisance.  That challenge inspired still more internet reading, this time about the elimination of popups. 

On the Apple Support Forum I discovered adblockers  -- programs will prevent popup advertisements and will also suppress some sidebar ads.  Glimmerblocker is an adblocker specifically for Mac OS X.  Apple also has an Adblock extension for Safari.  I downloaded and installed those as well.

I am happy to report that my husband's MacBook ran somewhat better after I added Sophos Antivirus, Glimmerblocker and the Adblock extension for Safari.  It took quite a bit of research, but in the end my solution did indeed prevent the MacKeeper popups and alleviated the spinning wheel syndrome. 

The computer's improved functioning would allow me a little more time to figure out what to do next.  After all, it was still a four year old computer.  Could I persuade my husband to use it for another year?  Should I add some RAM or do a hardware analysis in the meantime?  What would Apple's new line of MacBooks would be like? Actually, Apple would be making those announcements in a few more months.

Yes, dear readers, the saga will continue...

Related posts:

Migration Assistant Misery, September 5, 2009
More Adventures with Migration Assistant, April 9, 2012 



© 2012, Linda Mason Hood
Truffles, Turtles & Tunes Copyright Statement

More Adventures with Migration Assistant

Since my 2009 experience with Apple's Migration Assistant utility, I have had two more occasions to use this seductive tool. It promises so much, but I've come to believe that using Migration Assistant is rarely as easy as Apple makes you think it will be.  Here's a brief recap of my last two adventures with Migration Assistant, along with some advice and lessons learned.

Migration Assistant Misery

Misery is surely a fitting description for my experience with Apple's Migration Assistant utility. Hoping to save someone else from a similar ordeal, I'm going to share my experience.

I recently replaced my son's 4-year-old Powerbook G4 1.5 with the new MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo 2.26. In many respects this new MacBook was an exciting improvement over the poor Powerbook, with its missing tab key and dented case.

Powerbook on the left; MacBook Pro on the right.

The Migration Assistant utility seemed to be the best way to move my son's 54 gigabytes of data. This utility would transfer not only the user account but also all the data and settings associated with it. In the end, Migration Assistant did finally deliver as promised, but not without inflicting significant pain.

The FIRST attempt at migration failed because I selected Wireless Network as the migration method. It seemed the easiest, but after 30 minutes of "preparing to migrate..." Migration Assistant finally estimated that the migration would take about 15 hours. Who has that much patience, right? So I canceled that migration attempt.

The SECOND attempt started badly because it seemed to think data for the user had already been transferred from the previous aborted attempt. Therefore, I set up another user account, very similar to the first one. Having now located my ethernet cable, I selected Ethernet as the migration method. That reduced the estimated time to 3 hours. Much better!

Near the end of the process the screen display said "less than one minute remaining" -- for 20 minutes or so. With mounting concern, I turned to the internet for help and read that one should not assume Migration Assistant was in trouble unless it ran for more that 12 hours. By this time it was midnight, so I just went to bed and left it to run its course.

By 7 AM the screen displayed a message "...finished successfully." However, clicking on the Finish button produced a message that there were errors -- errors which would remain a mystery because there was no explanation or error log. Left completely to my own devices, I started poking around in the Finder to see what Migration Assistant had done, or not done, and I found indications that all was not well.

Clearly in need of help, I called Apple Support. After 15 minutes of troubleshooting I was transferred to a technical specialist named Sean. Patiently, he explained that establishing multiple user accounts with similar names had caused unnecessary copying of data. His bigger concern was that system security programs might encounter future hard-to-diagnose issues stemming from those user accounts with extremely similar names. (User accounts form the very basis for all system security.) He advised me to erase the hard drive -- Gulp! -- and restore the system to the way it was when I took it out of the box.

Entering a new realm of Mac maintenance, then, I erased the hard drive with one click, and reinstalled the operating system with those disks that come with every new computer. You know, the ones you hope you never have to use... But wow! What an improvement over Microsoft! There were no confusing questions to answer, and the whole operation took only 30 minutes.

Off and running now, I began my THIRD attempt at Migration Assistant. Again I selected Ethernet as the migration method. After an hour of "Searching for documents to migrate to the new computer..." I called Apple Support again. Sean was not available, but Jay explained why this third attempt would never complete (I'll spare you that convoluted story) and advised the FireWire migration method.

Since I needed to go out and buy a FireWire cable, Jay called back in an hour -- yes, a support person actually called me back!!! -- and thus began my FOURTH attempt at Migration Assistant. I was a little nervous about going into FireWire target disk mode, a process used by the FireWire method. However, working with FireWire target disk mode proved to be far less scary than booting up a Windows PC in SAFE mode. You just hold down the T key while you boot up, and release it when the FireWire symbol appears on the screen. At that point the whole computer is just an external hard drive. But returning to the saga, the estimated migration time using the FireWire method dropped to 1 hour 30 minutes! Jay said he'd call back a second time to make sure it finished successfully. At this point I actually began to believe I might complete this process in my lifetime!

Migration Assistant completed about 15 minutes early so I had a chance to verify the results. All the data was transferred and the user account was properly named. The machine name that was transferred included the word Powerbook, and so I replaced that with the words MacBook Pro. The dock contained some question marks representing applications I had chosen not to transfer, so I got rid of those empty dock items. I installed the iLife applications which were erased when I did the operating system re-install. I also installed the 2008 version of Microsoft Office for Mac. My son would need to download fresh copies of a few internet applications, but other than that, everything looked good. When Jay called, he concurred that this fourth attempt had succeeded.
Finally -- 21 hours after beginning the first migration attempt -- I able to hand over the MacBook Pro to my son.

Lessons Learned: If you're using Migration Assistant to transfer data from an older Mac to a new one,

1) GIVE A FICTITIOUS NAME WHEN YOU BOOT UP THE COMPUTER FOR THE FIRST TIME. (Actually, this tip comes word-for-word from Jay in the Apple Tech Support group.) Doing this will establish a user account on your new system that is completely different from your old system. Migration Assistant will then have no conflicts whatsoever and can copy your old user account and everything associated with it. When Migration Assistant has completed, just delete the fictitious user account.

2) USE A FIREWIRE CABLE. (This tip comes from my own experience.) Forget about doing it any other way. Anyone who can afford an Apple computer can afford a $20 FireWire cable. Caution: You will need to know the speed of the FireWire port on each machine. You can look that up online, or just call Apple Support. Based on the model number I gave him, Jay informed me that the Powerbook had a 400 Mbps (megabytes per second) FireWire port, whereas the MacBook Pro had an 800 Mbps port. He instructed me to by a "400 to 800" FireWire cable.

Alternatives: (if you have no"geeky" inclinations whatsoever)

a) Make an appointment at the Genius Bar in an Apple Store, and an Apple Genius (in-store tech support person) will do the whole migration for you. You will have to take your old Mac and your new Mac into the store and maybe leave them both there for a day or so. But hey, if your at-home migration goes as badly as mine, you wouldn't have had the use of your computer anyway! This service is free, so if you live near an Apple Store, why not leave data migration to the experts?

b) Call Apple Support before you turn on the new machine for the first time. If I were you, I'd ask the agent who picks up the call to transfer you to Technical Support for help transferring data from one computer to another. Go right to second level support, as these guys know a little more and explain things a little better. Even if you didn't buy the Apple Care extended warranty, this call is covered under your purchase warranty.

Do I wish I had moved the data manually from a backup? No. When it works properly, Migration Assistant is amazing. My son felt instantly "at home" on the new MacBook Pro. There were no preferences to adjust; everything looked and felt the same. I just don't think all the aggravation I went through was necessary. Apple usually does a pretty decent job of making applications user friendly, so I never expected to encounter such poor instructions. If Apple feels compelled to offer Wireless and Ethernet as migration options, they owe it to the user to explain the implications of each choice. That alone would have spared me 21 hours of anxiety and uncertainty. So yea, it was a real pain and I regret that. In the end, though, I learned a few things to share here with anyone -- even the folks at Apple -- who might stumble upon this post. Please feel free to leave a comment if you found this helpful.



© 2009, Linda Mason Hood
Truffles, Turtles & Tunes Copyright Statement

Gearing up for Willie Week

Well, it's finally time to depart for a week at the Willie Clancy Summer School in Ireland. If you're like me, you use a big milestone event like this to make yourself polish off some tasks that you've been procrastinating. I suppose I could speculate on why I feel I must complicate things in this way, but very few people would find that interesting. Suffice it to say that my preparations included bizarre things like:

• ordering a turtle supplies
• buying a spare power adaptor for my husband's MacBook
• buying theater tickets for my family to use while I'm away

One project that actually DID have something to do with my trip was the research and purchase of a new mp3 recorder. For at least a year now, I've been meaning to upgrade from the iRiver mp3 player/recorder to something more sophisticated. At the recommendation of one of my ethnomusicologist friends, I called Sweetwater in Fort Wayne, Indiana. They specialize in equipment for musicians and offer personalized sales assistance over the phone. After 45 minutes of discussing my use of the recorder, my level of expertise in such matters, and the sort of sound I hope to achieve when recording, a patient Australian fellow named Stuart helped me select the M-Audio Microtrack II.

Another project was the purchase of a new piece of luggage, a 24" "spinner." With four wheels on the bottom, it rolls in all directions while in an upright position.

Last but not least, I resolved the issue of an Irish cell phone. My Verizon phone is not capable of international service, so I had looked into renting a phone, either here or in Ireland. Discussing that with Lauren, another ethnomusicologist friend, who is living in Ireland right now, she suggested perhaps a mutual friend of ours (another ethnomusicologist) who travels frequently to Ireland would loan me her Irish cell phone. That plan worked, so I now have a way to coordinate with Lauren, who is also attending Willie Week. Lauren and I will are sharing a few big-ticket items like a room and a car. However, she is the main (perhaps the only) driver, and of course we will not always want to do the same things. Being able to text about logistics means we both get to do the things we want to do without imposing on each other.

I leave tonight at 6:30 pm on an Aer Lingus flight from JFK. I will arrive on the West Coast of Ireland at the Shannon Airport at 6 AM on Sunday, July 5. From there I will make my way to Ennis and then on to Milltown Malbay in County Clare, Ireland. Here's a Google map you can play with while I'm flying over the ocean!



View Larger Map

Next begins the adventure of finding internet connectivity in rural Ireland, and perhaps the bigger challenge - finding time!

© 2009, Linda Mason Hood
Truffles, Turtles & Tunes Copyright Statement

Technology Catchup

I noticed recently that my last Technology post was seven months ago. That post, entitled Took the Plunge, represented the final episode in the get-my-husband-a-new-computer saga that began in December 2007 and ended in July 2008 with the purchase of a MacBook (laptop). Well, one thing led to another, and now we have an iMac (desktop) as well - for me! We have also changed internet service providers and all the associated equipment. Nothing short of a technological revolution underway, so here's a chronology of all the changes.

September 2008 - Purchased my new iMac (20 inch screen, 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2 GB RAM, and 250 GB hard drive). Driven by the desire to change internet service providers, I thought I needed to replace the 10-year-old desktop that hosted the DSL modem and wireless access point associated with my Verizon service. As it turned out, I'm not so sure I really needed a desktop computer for that purpose, but that's what I got and it's gorgeous.


October 2008 - Dumped Verizon DSL in favor of Time Warner's Roadrunner high-speed cable internet service. Created a secure wireless network using the Time Capsule (Wi-Fi base station and 500 gigabyte hard drive) purchased in July with the MacBook. Here's a close-up of the Time Capsule, adorned with a turtle from my collection.


December 2008 - Began doing MacBook backups using Time Machine, the new Leopard (Operating System 10.5) backup function that automatically backs up all new or modified files and has no perceptible impact on performance. I love it!

January 2009 - Started One to One classes, learning about all things Mac. For $99 you can go once a week for a whole year to an Apple Store for individual instruction on some aspect of Mac computing. It's way more fun than reading manuals and help files all by myself at home! Inspired and informed by the One-to-One classes, I've moved my digital life to the Mac. I am now using the Mac Mail program for email. I have loaded all my music into iTunes. I have my iCal (calendar) up to date and sync both music and calendar with my iPod. I use MobileMe for mobile calendar access as well as copying files back and forth to my work computer. I have started working on organizing my pictures in iPhoto. I have learned a little about Garage Band and have plans for cleaning up and organizing the mountain of music files one accumulates learning traditional Irish music. Yesterday I explored iWeb, the Mac's graphical interface for website publishing.

February 2009 - Trouble in paradise: the MacBook refused to go onto the internet and backups stopped working. Apparently the network card died, so Apple replaced it and restored the operating system software. It ran like a top when we got it back 8 days later. No charge, of course, since it's still under warranty. However, the hard drive had been renamed during the software reload and so the nifty automatic backups were all "confused" and didn't work.

April 2009 - More trouble: my son's 4-year-old PowerBook would not boot up. A technician in the Apple Store ran a utility which repaired some permissions and like magic, it came back to life. This scare was my wake-up call on the subject of backups. After a One-to-One session on Time Capsule and backups, I was able to resolve the issues with automatic backups on the MacBook. While I was at it, started backing up the iMac as well.

May 2009 - Connected the Powerbook to the Time Capsule and attempted a drop-and-drag backup. I managed to move all the documents and about half of the music files before the copy function started getting hung up. After a bit of troubleshooting, I concluded that the problems stemmed from the fact that the Time Capsule is built to work with Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard) and the PowerBook runs on OS 10.4 (Tiger). A few days later I bought a Western Digital 1 TB MyBook, an external hard drive, for backing up the PowerBook. This drive is compatible with both Mac OS 10.4 and 10.5 so it will work now and later when my son gets the new computer he's been lobbying for. I hope to do the Powerbook backup this weekend.

Reflecting on my computer escapades recorded here, the words of Gilda Radner's Roseanne Roseannadanna character spring to mind: "it's always something..." Listen for that phrase in the clip below, which has absolutely nothing to do with computers!




© 2009, Linda Mason Hood 
Truffles, Turtles & Tunes Copyright Statement

Took the Plunge

Yes, we finally took the plunge into the brave new world of Apple computers. I bought my husband a MacBook (2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2 GB RAM, and 250 GB hard drive). He finally received the new computer I had wanted to give him last Christmas! You may recall the Vista woes of my January 14 and January 19 posts. I was more or less convinced that Mac was the solution in my February 8 post. So what took so long?

My struggle with Lenovo over the returned T61 Vista laptop intensified over time. Aggravated, I sent back its XP replacement without ever opening the box. With two laptop purchases on my credit card, I thought it best to wait for the Lenovo refunds before purchasing a third computer. Lenovo proved difficult, but on April 29 I received the final credit on my Feb 5 returns. By that time, however, my professor husband had second semester work in progress on his old laptop. Not a good time to make a switch!

Finally, on July 9 we made our way to Apple's new West 14th Street store. We came away with a MacBook, a Time Capsule, a copy of Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Leopard Edition by David Pogue, and a MobileMe subscription for the free iPod Touch obtained through Apple's Back-to-School promotion. (The iPod was for me, of course!)

Right out of the box, the MacBook was fun. We laughed as the setup wizard instructed my husband to take his own profile picture using the camera in the laptop lid. I squeeled with joy when the spiffy little machine, in less than a minute, automatically established a wireless network among our three computers. (You have no idea how much time I've spent over the years setting up home networks, both wired and wireless.) Kazowee!!

File transfer was easy as well. I simply plugged the removable backup drive into the MacBook's USB port and copied over all the files.

Moving Microsoft Outlook's mail, contacts, and calendar was a bit more challenging. Following the advice in Pogue's book, I downloaded a $10 program from Little Machines called O2M (Outlook to Mac). The transfer to Mac Mail was easy - all the subfolders were retained and I was able to transfer a previously archived mail folder. The contacts transfer was equally simple. After the contacts were loaded, features of the Mac Address Book helped me merge multiple email addresses into a single contact and eliminate duplicates. The calendar transfer was the most tedious. My husband has birthdays and anniversaries as well as appointments, but they all transferred into iCal as events. Therefore I had to make some manual adjustments, but in the end the calendar looked and behaved properly.

I loaded some components of Microsoft Office for Mac -- Word, Excel, and Powerpoint -- plus Google Earth, RealPlayer and Mozilla's FoxFire browser. I imported bookmarks and reset the home page. Lastly, I went through all the relevant system preferences making adjustments which would enable the MacBook look and feel like his old computer as much as possible.

Pogue's Switching to the Mac book was very helpful. Despite being a bit chatty, it contained clear explanations and instructions. Knowing nothing about navigating the Mac operating system, I managed to do the work of a Mac Genius! (That's Apple-speak for "technical support person.") Apple would have done a free data transfer, but they wouldn't have been able to do all the customizations that I could do because I'm on such intimate terms with my husband's old laptop. Besides, the weekend I devoted to the data transfer and setup effort really kick-started my Mac education.

I just hope my husband's road to becoming a Mac user won't be too bumpy. This Christmas-in-July gift was intended to relieve his frustration with sluggish response time, continual virus infections, and frequent downloads of program and virus pattern updates. While the Mac will eliminate those issues, it will require PC habits be replaced with Mac skills. Nobody is particularly fond of change, but my husband trusts my judgment that this switch will be worthwhile in the long run.

And really, how can he not love this sleek black MacBook? It's a dream machine, with its fast response and its totally gorgeous screen graphics... yea, I know. I sound like a real Mac person now, don't I? OK, I'll admit it - I've been converted. And so has the cat!

© 2008, Linda Mason Hood
Truffles, Turtles & Tunes Copyright Statement

Blogging Statistics

 

Despite what it says on the logo there, I'm not going.  I was merely reading about the 2008 Blogworld and New Media Expo and the one-day Executive and Entrepreneur Conference that precedes it. Curious, I glanced through the presentation topics and scanned a good many of the bios. Sounds like great fun. Just reading the website was fun! Wish I could go. It might inspire an attempted career move.

But I digress...  What I wanted to point out here is their page entitled Important Blogging Statistics.  Click that link and have a look.  There are sure lots of people writing, but even more are reading.

Like you are, right now!

© 2008, Linda Mason Hood
Truffles, Turtles & Tunes Copyright Statement

Teetering on the Brink

Well, the sad Lenovo/Windows saga continues (see January 14 and January 19 posts). It started with my decision to give my husband a new laptop PC for Christmas. The Lenovo T61 widescreen Vista ThinkPad was delivered on December 27. Unhappy with Vista, I initiated the return process and ordered a T61 standard screen XP Thinkpad as a replacement. The replacement arrived before the return authorization. With two computers in my possession – and on my credit card -- I steadfastly refused to open the second one, knowing that a factory sealed box would be easily accepted for return if the situation deteriorated further.

While waiting for the return authorization, I started reading about Apple computers. Since the new, ultra-thin MacBook Air was unveiled on January 15, the Mac buzz has been pretty good. While I don’t think I’m going to jump at the MacBook Air, I'm very impressed with latest Mac operating system, OS X Leopard, released in October 26, 2007. Reading about its features, I now can see what Microsoft is trying to do, but they're just not doing it nearly as well as Apple. If you're interested, I recommend Mac OS X Leopard: A Perfect 10 written by Tom Yager, senior analyst for InfoWorld.

I seem to be at a critical juncture. What time commitment do I want to make to technology during the upcoming years? With Vista it looks like I’d need to stay familiar with all the aspects of the operating system so I could monitor and manage it for best performance. With XP the time commitment might be less, but I’d be choosing to remain with a 5-year old operating system I doubt I’d ever want to upgrade! With Leopard, on the other hand, I'd have an initial learning curve but no monitoring or management would be necessary. Additionally, Apple has demonstrated with each operating system upgrade that it knows most users don’t want to spend their time fussing over settings and configurations. I feel like I’m teetering on the brink of conversion to Mac. Very scary indeed...

Wondering how easy or difficult it would be to switch from PC to Mac, I set about checking file compatibility. I was pleasantly surprised to see that my husband’s files are compatible. With Microsoft Office for Mac, I doubt he would need Leopard’s Boot Camp function which allows you to boot up Windows XP on your Mac.

Next I checked price. With my husband's educator discount a MacBook wouldn’t cost any more than one of these Lenovos. Granted, I'd lose a few dollars in shipping and restocking fees and the software I bought to be compatible with Vista. Nothing too outrageous. I'll chalk it up to experience and next time do my research before placing an order.

Sounds like I’m about the take the plunge, doesn’t it?

© 2008, Linda Mason Hood
Truffles, Turtles & Tunes Copyright Statement

Another Vote against Vista

I have now officially cast my vote against the new Windows Vista operating system. I decided to return the laptop I've been struggling with. (see my previous post, Vista Woes) I am exchanging the Lenovo T61 14" widescreen with Vista for a T61 with a 14" standard screen and Windows XP operating system.

Here's an interesting fact about comparative screen sizes. As you probably know, screen sizes are measured on the diagonal. That can be misleading. Fact is, when you sit a 14" standard laptop screen next to a 14" widescreen, the widescreen is nearly an inch shorter. Yes, it's wider - but shorter. That means when you open MS Word or Outlook and maximize the screen, you see quite a bit of blank space on the right, and the part of the screen displaying text is shorter. Assuming similar resolution and font size, the actual area of use is smaller on the widescreen than it is on the standard screen. I think one must watch an awful lot of widescreen movies to justify the desktop real estate lost to everyday usage.

In summary, I believe the 14" standard screen laptop loaded with Windows XP is what we want. Delivery is scheduled for sometime around February 7th. I will spend a little time configuring XP, transferring data, and loading programs. Perhaps by Valentine's Day my husband can use what was supposed to be a Christmas present!

Going back to my original Lenovo order, all is not entirely resolved. I am still waiting for the RMA number needed to actually put the widescreen in a box and mail it back. My sales rep assures me I will have it in a few days. I am also waiting for confirmation on the amount I have to pay as a restocking fee. The website says 15%. In writing my sales rep said 10%, so I'll protest if they try to stick me with 15%. I fear more haggling will be required before I finally get rid of the widescreen, but I'm comforted knowing the decision to send it back was the right one - for us anyway.

Stay tuned, then, for more of these "exciting" technology adventures. Personally, I'll be relieved when I can write about Tunes again!

© 2008, Linda Mason Hood
Truffles, Turtles & Tunes Copyright Statement

Vista Woes

Truffles, Turtles, Tunes - and now Technology. Don't worry though. I have no intentions of becoming a bona fide technology blogger. I'm hoping this new category won't have many posts. Seriously, I'm a lay person when it comes to technology. Because I worked as an implementation project manager in several software firms, I learned a bit here and there about how systems work. I have mucked about inside the computer in very minor ways - installing a network card, a CD-RW drive, memory, etc. - and I have reformatted a few hard drives. So ok, maybe I'm a rather advanced lay person. Nevertheless, I believe people should be able to use computers without becoming experts. That's why I'm so unhappy with the Windows Vista operating system.

Vista contains many new security features. Microsoft claims that's what people wanted. But who are these people? I venture to say they're business people and IT professionals, not the average user. Most of us don't want to spend hours learning how to fine-tune our computers in order to avoid the frustrations of slow opening programs and slow responding internet pages. Seriously, does the auto industry assume we'll lift the hood and reconfigure our engines in order to make our cars run satisfactorily? I feel a rant coming on, so let me back up and explain.

I replaced my husband's five year old laptop with a new Lenovo T61, which I expected to be a pretty zippy little machine considering the processor, memory, and hard disk speed:

• 2 Duo Core T7500 (2.2 GHz, 800 Mhz, 4 MBL2)
  
• 2 GB PC2-5300 DDR SDRAM, 667 MHz SODIMM Memory (2 DIMM)
  
• 100 GB Hard Disk, 7200 rpm

I read all about the advantages of dual processors before I placed my order. Regarding Vista, most websites I read advised against upgrade your existing computer's operating system, but they said if you were ordering a new computer, there was no reason not to get Vista. I looked at the various flavors of Vista and selected the 32-bit Business version.

When the computer arrived, I ran through the installation procedure, configured the wireless settings, and took the little 14" widescreen T61 for a spin on the internet. To my utter horror, it was slower than the laptop I was replacing - and that was BEFORE I loaded and turned on any anti-virus software!!!

Since then, I purchased Windows Vista Inside Out, an 1100-page tome detailing Vista's configuration options. (It was on sale for half price. That should have been my first clue.) I've read approximately 200 pages so far and have spent countless hours backing up the old computer, running the Easy Transfer Utility, loading data and settings, downloading 200-megabyte Vista updates, tweaking and testing, and obtaining Vista-compatible versions of programs my husband uses. In the last 2 weeks, in addition to my full time job, mind you, I've spent somewhere between 40 and 60 hours fiddling around with what I had hoped would be the machine of my husband's dreams - his happy dreams, not his nightmares!

One feature which worries me is User Account Control. Whether you work with a standard login or a login with administrator privileges, UAC asks you to supply an administrator password if you start to do something that will make a systemwide change. This convention was designed to be a safeguard against viruses and spyware which install themselves without your knowledge or consent. The theory is: if you receive a request from the operating system to elevate your login to administrator status and you didn't do anything to trigger that request, you can deny the request and prevent bad stuff from happening on your computer. OK. I grant you it seems like a good idea. The practical issue is how often my husband would see these prompts in his everyday use of the computer. Would the annoyance outweigh the risk? Microsoft says yes. I'm not sure.

Another thing that concerns me is compatibility. Last night I read about someone who could print but not scan or fax. That article made me realize that loading software without incident is apparently not a true indication of compatibility. Little "surprises" could interrupt his work any time my husband used a feature or a function that hadn't been used before. The unpredictability could last years! Since the compatibility problem is largely outside my control, it makes me even more uncomfortable than the UAC issue.

After all these hours spent learning Vista, I hate to admit that I'm seriously considering going back to XP. For a fee, I can return this laptop and get another one configured with XP Service Pack 2. Or I could just wipe clean the hard drive of this laptop and load a previously purchased copy of XP. This second course of action would allow me to keep the copy of Vista I've just purchased. Perhaps sometime in the future I will want to re-load it.

My husband prefers to stick with what he knows. I'm sure he'd be grateful not to have to learn anything at all about Vista or about Microsoft Office 2007 (needed for compatibility with Vista), which has a very different look and feel from the Office 2003 version he's used to.

It does seem as if I'm leaning towards joining the many, many people all over the world who have decided NOT to accept Microsoft's latest contribution to the world of computing. I have a few more days to make up my mind, particularly if I want to exchange this laptop, What would you do?

© 2008, Linda Mason Hood
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