New Firefox makes browser war a fair fight

If you regularly read this space, you'll notice how the Google Chrome Web browser kind of grew on me, and after my initial reservations I've come to love it. Something about its speed.

But now Firefox, with its new 3.6 version, has seen enough improvements to almost make it a fair fight.

Some of the benchmark tests comparing the two intrigued me. When you figure in that impossible stability+speed combination, reviewers are calling them almost neck and neck.

Now, we don't do that benchmark stuff around here. I don't have time to mess with all that, and I'd rather put a piece of software through its paces. I'd rather max it out, try to break it, and take note of my findings. I'm not smart enough or geeky enough to plug the whole thing to an oscilloscope or whatever it is those propellerheads do.

So, take any speed or stability tests I run with a grain of salt -- or maybe even the whole shaker. Whatever test results I get depend on what mood I'm in at the time, and what I'm trying to do with the software. But I will try to max it out.

I'm one of those computer users who runs underpowered equipment (scary to think my netbook is the most muscular computer I have) and overclocks it like crazy. And to do the things I want to do, I go for lightweight, faster programs when I can. Even my usual graphical interface -- Fluxbox -- is really little more than a plain background, taskbar, and menus that I write myself from text files. That's why I was so eager to get my Chrome on, because of its simple and fast interface.

Being the experimenter that I am, after reading some of the reports I had to download Firefox 3.6. I've always liked the 'fox, used it even in its beta days when it was called Firebird (or was it Phoenix?), and kept going back to it after trying other browsers. But I knew 3.6 would really have to show me something to dislodge Chrome from the front line.

But I'm pleasantly surprised. I'm not sure what the developer did, but it's a whole lot quicker than Firefox used to be. It's not quite in the Chrome league, but this new version might be as fast as Opera.

From what I've noticed, Web pages don't seem to get lost in that nether world that's probably populated by everyone's stray socks.

Lifehacker recently ran some tests of some of the favorite browsers available, with several versions of Chrome, Firefox, and Opera, and Safari. Sorry, Internet Explorer wasn't in these tests, which takes away a lot of comic relief. That would have been like bringing a duck to a cockfight.

Here's the stuff according to Lifehacker, with my comments:

• Boot-up and warm loading; Winner: Opera - No surprises; Opera always was a fast loader.

• Tab Loading; Winner: Chrome Stable - I use version 4.0.249.30 for Linux, which is in beta but built from the stable version. And there's no dispute there; it's the fastest "name" browser I've seen in a while.

• JavaScript; Winner: Opera 10.5 Pre-Alpha.

• DOM/CSS; Winner: Chrome Developmental version.

• Memory use, no extensions; Winner: Firefox 3.6 - This is a surprise, and certainly worth my attention.

• Memory use with extensions; Winner: Firefox 3.6 - An even bigger surprise here. Firefox has always been fairly quick until I start loading in my extensions. Then my browsing experience was like watching paint dry. If this test holds up in real life, then Firefox just made up for a lot of lost ground in the browser battle.

• Overall winners, in order: Google Chrome Developmental, Google Chrome Stable, Firefox 3.6, Firefox 3.5.4: Opera 10.5 Pre-Alpha, Opera 10.01, Safari 4.0.4.

Will this new Firefox become my prime browser?

It's hard to say. I've always liked how you could add extensions to Firefox, but Chrome is starting to head in that modular direction too. And I like the independent tabs in Chrome; if one Web page gets stuck you only need to close that tab rather than shut down the whole browser. In Chrome I haven't run into the memory problems I used to encounter with Firefox. There's a lot to be said for both browsers.

Besides, it's still too early in my test flight for me to render a decision. I haven't broken Firefox yet. Or Chrome. Ask me then.

But if speed and memory use are your needs, it looks like this may finally be a fair fight.

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Running bombproof Vector Linux on netbook

When it comes to computers, I'm always up to something. It's probably one of my failings.

Although my netbook works very well with the mini-Linux system I recently installed, I wanted to standardize things a bit. I've been working toward a "final solution" that mirrors the system I have on the desktop unit.

So, I was up until around 3 a.m. one Saturday morning, installing a new operating system on the netbook. I am now using Vector Linux, a Slackware-based, rock-solid OS.

It wasn't difficult, but then I've installed many a system on my computers. Really, the only part that was different was that the netbook doesn't have a CD-ROM drive. I was using a thumb drive for the dirty work.

But it's up, running, and all that good stuff.

Part of it is, as I mentioned, I just can't leave stuff alone. In fact, that's partly why I needed to make changes to the netbook anyway -- in full experimental flight I toasted the Windows XP installation, corrupted some system files, and was left with a rather expensive paperweight until I broke out the tools and thumb drives.

In the interim I ran Puppy Linux, a fast little system that weighs in at less than 100 megabytes for the download. It's one of those simple-as-it-gets systems, blistering fast and a joy to use. Really, it's almost too much fun to be on a computer.

But Puppy Linux is a little squirrelly when it comes to downloading and installing new software. That's something the developer is working on and while he's making some real strides, it's not there yet. Plus, I wanted my laptop to have the same system I have on my desktop. Some consistency is always a good thing. That's why I opted for Vector.

OK. Linux is Linux. It's all built around the same kernel, the same X windowing system, the same basic command-line programs you never see. Over the years the gap between the graphics-happy Windows and stodgy command-line Linux has closed, but the solid UNIX base remains. Plus, Linux is free, and tailor-made for those of us who keep experimenting and breaking things.

Vector Linux is based on Slackware, which is probably the most stable, most Unix-like of the Linux versions. I've followed its development for several years, and it was the version I've stayed with the longest. I'm using version 6.0 on the netbook, the same as on my desktop. In fact, it all came from the same download.

See, that's one of the things about Linux. The licensing is different. You can take a download and set up as many computers as you want with it, and there's no Bill Gates around to tell you you're a pirate. In fact, this share-the-love practice is encouraged. I can burn as many CDs of the system as I want, give them away, sell them for a few bucks, as long as the GPL license (which they call a "copyleft") is intact.

Again, installing is a little problematic on the netbook because there's no CD-ROM drive. The best workaround is by using Unetbootin with a thumb drive. I put Unetbootin and the Vector Linux .iso file (which is what you get when you download) onto the drive, then used a Windows computer (had to go to the library for that) to install Vector on the drive so it will boot up. Then clear up some room on the netbook hard drive, use gparted to create a partition for Vector, and reboot with the thumb drive. Follow the prompts on the screen (on my Acer, I hit F12 for boot options), and install Vector on the new partition, a process which sounds dangerous but it's a simple matter of following the prompts. Then put Vector on the GRUB boot loader (a simple cut-paste in a text file), reboot, and I'm running my new system.

OK. That's the simplistic version, and I know I lost many of y'all here. Let's just say I've done this a few times. Don't be surprised if I eventually put together something more detailed, something you can download.

The big zillion-dollar question: Did I lose my work files from the old Windows system? No. They're all there, and I can open and edit every one of them. What's even better, I have an emulation program called WINE that will run most of the Windows programs. In fact, the Windows installation is untouched. Should I rebuild my broken system files and get XP to work, then I have a choice of which system to start when I turn the computer on.

A couple of things still need work. At first Vector didn't recognize my onboard condenser microphone, ruling out recording. Strangely enough, though, I downloaded my favorite sound-editing software (Audacity) through Vector's repositories, and the mic works well with that. I kind of wish I knew why it would suddenly work, but I'm not going to complain. It took a bit of experimenting to get the webcam going, though it's not something I expect to use. So at least these issues are resolved.

I'm still looking for software that would put the laptop in hibernate mode when I close the lid. So far I'm not having much luck. The computer continues to run and the screen saver kicks on, so there's still some battery drain. Unless I find a handy program I can plug in, I may have to recompile the kernel. Now that's getting into territory that's way advanced for me.

But everything else works just fine. My wireless connection works as it did before. I added some of the pretties, installed Open Office, included my favorite news feed reader, and the netbook is battle-ready. With a system that's practically bombproof.

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You tell me: Does the thought of installing a whole new operating system scare you? Do you break a lot of things while experimenting, or do you leave well enough alone? Any suggestions for my hibernation problem? Use the comments section for feedback.

Screenshot:

Vector Linux running on the netbook. The graphics interface is xfce4. Programs visible are Open Office, and xmms music player. Oh, if you insist, that's a command shell in the foreground, 'cause it IS Linux. I actually use mine. To the right is the gkrellm system monitor. I shot the background photo in Hawaii. Enough eye candy for you?

Chrome OS promising, but it's more for the future

It won't be ready for the general public for another year, but the sneak preview of the Google Chrome OS is generating quite a buzz.

It may be a Windows-killer, some claim. It'll put Linux on the map, say others. It'll be a fiasco, say still more pundits. So far, nobody's neutral.

Google Chrome, built from the Debian GNU/Linux operating system (which I've always liked), is designed for the ultralight, ultracheap netbooks that are not really built for much more than Web browsing and lightweight office work. And the Chrome system is really little more than a front end for "cloud computing" -- the use of online applications and storage.

According to the Google blog:

... it's all about the web. All apps are web apps. The entire experience takes place within the browser and there are no conventional desktop applications. This means users do not have to deal with installing, managing and updating programs ...

That in itself is enough to really stir the pudding in the computer world.

I guess that's the future of computing, and it stands to reason that one may not even need a hard drive in the future. That's the trend I'm seeing carried out to its logical conclusion, though it doesn't mean I have to like it.

I've fooled around some with online applications, such as Google Docs. While they're OK, I have trepidations about using these for everything. I've also played with bubbl.us, an online mind mapping program. While these concepts are great for portability -- you can access your stuff from any computer without even a thumb drive. I'd rather keep my documents on hard drive. I'm even chary about backing them up online, and I like a lot more choice about what applications I do use. But from what I've read, the Google Chrome system throws you right into the future.

Although InfoWorld’s Randall Kennedy says Google’s Chrome OS will be a big failure, Robert Scoble thinks it's just ahead of its time:

... what about my son who is in high school? By the time Chrome OS comes along in big numbers he’ll be in college. Why take a $1,000 computer to class? Couldn’t he do everything he needs to do on a low-cost computer that’s lightweight, replaceable, uses low power, and just uses the web? Absolutely. InfoWorld is making assumptions that the world is going to stay the same. That simply is NOT true ... what will run on these new devices? A heavyweight OS like Windows 7 that takes me 40 seconds to boot up and does a ton of stuff I really don’t need, or a new OS that just has Google Chrome as its centerpiece?"

Even with nothing but a Web browser? Scoble says this:

... hey, I just wrote this post on Google Chrome while sitting listening to Marc Benioff at the TechCrunch Real Time Crunchup. I have not seen a single thing demonstrated on stage yet that won’t run on Google Chrome OS ... this is a winner, but on a new field ...

I may download the Chrome OS and give it a shot, though I'm not all that enthused about it. Since it's a front end with little more than a graphic user interface, a few core programs, and the Chrome browser, why does the download weigh in at around three gigabytes?

Out of the box, the download on my current Linux operating system is a tick over 700 megabytes. And that includes all the programs that make the computer a self-contained one. You can get surprisingly complete Linux distributions on a 100-megabyte download.

Still, I'm intrigued by this system, and hope it is adopted early and often. There's no secret that I'm a big fan of Linux, and the Chrome OS may finally dissolve the perception that Linux is too busy being geeky to be useful.

Now, understand that none of this is carved in granite, or even in bologna. This sneak preview is available in source code format, and it'll be a while before the final, battle-ready version is ready. In the interim, those who grabbed the download are essentially beta testers. Run it, crash it, make note of what you did, and report back to the developers.

The new operating system still begs the question: What will it do with Microsoft's death grip on the PC market?

Taking the pundits' comments and working the middle ground, the answer is not a lot. TechCrunch writer M. G. Siegler suggests Chrome will nibble into the bottom end of the Microsoft market -- the netbooks, the cheap computers. But until Windows 7 was released, Microsoft had conceded that end of the market. Most netbooks came with some form of Linux preloaded, while a few had Windows XP. Part of the game plan behind Windows 7 (which I'm not going to review; I'm more interested in open-source software) was to recapture some of the netbook users, and by most accounts the new Windows is one of the best systems Microsoft has ever produced.

Siegler writes:

... Google’s positioning for Chrome OS reads like a page out of Apple’s playbook, only from the opposite direction ... Apple, of course, takes the opposite approach, targeting the high end of the market with their high-quality and high-margin machines. If Google is successful with its Chrome OS netbooks (let’s call them ChromeBooks), what we could see is the squeezing of Microsoft, an idea I first laid out a month ago. With attacks from the top and bottom, Windows will be relegated to the middle. And ultimately, if Google has its way, marginalized ...

Stay tuned.

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Internet reaches middle age

Although few had even heard of this Internet thing (then known as the "information superhighway" until the early or mid-1990s, it got its real start 40 years ago this week.

It was Oct. 29, 1969 when the first two nodes of ARPANET were interconnected between UCLA’s School of Engineering and Applied Science and SRI International (SRI) in Menlo Park, California. And unless you were one of the guys on the inside, you really didn't know or care.

I was a bit of a late adopter. It was 1996 when I used a noisy modem to link into an Internet provider in a nearby city. My computer was an old Leading Edge XP, with an 8088 processor, Hercules graphics card, DOS 5, and 2400-bytes-per-second modem. I used Procomm to link up, and the text-only Lynx browser to surf.

This wasn't the first time I'd used a modem. By then I was an old hand at sending text files point to point over the phone lines. I worked for a newspaper in Kingman, Arizona at the time, and generated a lot of stories from my home office in Bullhead City, 40 miles away. I'd call the publisher, Matt, and tell him to set up the computer for incoming copy, give him five minutes, then send the stuff. Soon Matt would see my text streaming across his screen, a character at a time. One of my other reporters would send me his copy from his home office, I'd edit it from home, then send it to the home office the same way. I was even able to execute commands on my home computer (the Dos-driven PC) from the MacIntosh at work, using an old-school program called Telnet.

Once I got the knack of surfing the Internet, it became a bigger part of my life. And I remember telling my parents about my experiments. Dad was already good with computers -- we'd traded software for several years -- but he wasn't sure about this online thing. A curious toy, he concluded.

At the time, Netscape was the go-to browser before Internet Explorer nuked it in market share. There were rumors that you might be able to surf on the same infrastructure that your cable TV used, and much faster than dialup. Companies began building their own primitive Web sites, and ordinary people were cobbling together their own Web sites on GeoCities (which shut down a few days ago). It was a whole new world out there, the Wild Blue Yonder.

It's been 13 years since I fired up my first Web browser (Lynx, by the way, is still available and still text-only). But a lot has changed since then. Rather than write for print, my work shows up in the ether of the Internet and many of my readers are on the other side of the world.

I've developed friendships with people I'd never met, and who live in places I've never visited. I've discovered musicians I've never heard before and downloaded their music. I've downloaded entire a lot of software and quite a few operating systems -- and asked questions about the software online. I've communicated with a Linux developer in Australia and let him know how I was able to get his system to run on computers that even he wasn't sure could be done. I've debated many a subject online. I've set up the computer to download news from several hundred sources at a time.

I'm an experimenter, and can't leave stuff alone. Besides Netscape, I've used Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Seamonkey (which is what Mozilla has become), Opera, and Google Chrome. Firefox is my most-used browser now, but I notice Seamonkey is now in 2.0 and it deserves a look.

Instead of listening to a whining modem, I go straight wireless. I have about a half-dozen places where I go to do my work -- some indoors, some outside, and I'll unpack my netbook, hit a few buttons, and talk to the world. In fact, once I left dialup I had no earthly reason to even keep a landline -- a cell phone on my hip, wireless Internet close by, a second, Internet-based phone line through Google Voice, all my communications needs are met.

Even then, I'm a bit of a primitive. My cell phone merely makes calls and sends off text messages. It doesn't browse the Web. I can send short text messages to Twitter or this blog, even an email, but my single-function LG doesn't stack up to those iPhones or Crackberries that do everything.

When you consider the all-purpose cell phones, netbooks, laptops -- and I recently read about a pen that's really a computer -- you just may see desktop computers as another dying breed. Even hard drives may become a thing of the past, what with USB thumb drives and online file storage. Some of your netbooks work with just internal flash storage and USB drives, without a hard disk in sight.

The folks at UCLA and Menlo Park had no idea at the time what they'd started.

(Screenshot: The old text-based Lynx web browser, where I made my first forays on the Internet, is still around. It's shown here with Firefox 3.5.3.)

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You tell me: Remember your first time on line? Care to share? Use the comments section for your input.

Computer issues being resolved

I can say it now: The laptop is back among the living.

Most of my software is back up. I've knocked off most of my to-do list. I'm writing this column on it, and soon I will upload it and download email and news. I'm extremely pleased.

One of the things I noticed is that, with the new configuration, it's handling power better. I haven't checked to see if I'm getting any better battery life, as I tend to forget about things like time when I'm online. Gee, I could fly a passenger jet ...

But I have noticed that it's running much cooler when it's plugged in to the A/C adaptor. Seriously. It's not like I took its temperature (I'm not sure where to stick the thermometer), but I can tell the difference. I take that to mean the CPU isn't working as hard, a good thing.

From my master list, I still need to locate a program that will put the computer into sleep mode when I close the lid. My temporary operating system had that, so this shouldn't be difficult to find or install. From there, most of the work is either convenience or cosmetic -- like rebuilding my menus so they'd be a little more intuituve.

I still want to find an uncorrupted version of the Windows system file I blew out (hal.dll), but there's no rush there.

For the geekus extremis among us, here's a printout of some of the basics. If your eyes glaze over when someone mentions "CPU," feel free to skip over this part:

-Computer- Processor : Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU N270 @ 1.60GHz Memory : 1022MB (267MB used) Operating System : Unknown distribution Date/Time : Tue 27 Oct 2009 01:31:22 PM GMT+5 -Display- Resolution : 1024x600 pixels OpenGL Renderer : Unknown X11 Vendor : The X.Org Foundation -Version- Kernel : Linux 2.6.29.3 (i686) Compiled : #1 Tue May 19 23:43:56 GMT-8 2009 C Library : GNU C Library version 2.9 (stable) -Current Session- Computer Name : epulsifer Desktop Environment : Unknown (Window Manager: Fluxbox) -Misc- Uptime : 17 hours, 5 minutes Load Average : 0.23, 0.15, 0.15

This "uptime" is interesting. Keep in mind, this is a laptop and I don't have that sleep-mode switch fixed, so it's been running, powered and plugged in, with the lid closed.

Just for yuks, I checked to see how long my desktop (which also runs on Linux) unit has been booted up without a restart:

7d 17:46

OK. I rebooted that computer a week ago. I usually only shut the desktop down when I'm experimenting with another computer (not enough power cords to go around), replacing a part, or moving the unit.

Just try doing that with Windows.

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(Pictured is a screenshot from the laptop. OK, you may not recognize a lot of this stuff if you're a Windows user. The interface -- Fluxbox -- is pretty minimal, but it stays out of my way.)

Resurrecting laptop took plain & fancy fixes

OK. I think I'm back up and running.

Was out of the loop for a few days; my main access to the Internet went south until I was able to fix it.

This laptop is my mobile workhorse. Although I do much of my writing on the home computer, it's strictly a standalone unit that doesn't conect to the web. To upload and download, I use my Acer netbook for all the dirty work.

The Acer was victimized by my tendency to experiment. I'm not even sure what I did. I jiggled when I should have joggled, and corrupted a couple of system files. Now, that computer is driven by Windows XP, which doesn't lend itself well to evil experiments. Anyway, when I boot up into Windows, an error message pops up letting me know just what I'd b0rked, and won't let me go any farther than that. A dead computer.

Thanks to some other experiments I'd run, the netbook wasn't dead in the water for very long. I have a few quick-and-dirty solutions that brought it back to the land of the living, but I'm not done yet. Working on a "final solution," but the duct tape and spit will work for now.

From quick-and-dirty land:

I have a Linux system installed on a 1-gigabyte thumb drive, and I set up the laptop's BIOS to look there first before booting anything else up (instructions are on the screen). I'm using a variant of Puppy Linux, which is great because it runs in memory. Once I'm booted up, I can pull the thumb drive and work without that thing hanging out of the computer. It's probably an OCD thing.

If you're a Linux user, you can set up any version to run with a program called Unetbootin. It's very cool. You grab the .iso image file of whatever Linux version from the Internet, install it to the thumb drive via Unetbootin, fire up the computer with the thumb drive installed, and you're running Linux. You'll be able to access the files on your hard drive as before. The only caveat is that, unless your version of Linux is designed to run completely in memory (such as Puppy Linux), you won't be able to remove the thumb drive without screwing things up.

On that USB drive, I have all the goodies I need -- wireless fixins, a Web browser, text editor and word processor, and a program to play mp3s while I work. I'm all set there, at least for now. And I have the same system installed on a smaller, 256-megabyte USB drive that stays in my cell phone case, so I have a backup.

That was my temporary fix, and it served me well. But it wasn't the final solution. The good news is that over the weekend I got much closer to something more permanent. A newer, more expandable version of Puppy Linux is now installed on my hard drive, and I can boot directly into it without using the thumb drive. Much cleaner, much more permanent.

One of the limitations of Puppy Linux is that its ability to install newer software is a little squirrelly. The developer, a nice Australian guy named Barry Kauler, built the system for speed and a small footprint, and many of the add-in programs had to be adapted for that system. But, through the "woof" project, one is able to import software from Ubuntu repositories or the Slackware-based .tgz format.

I know this means nothing to non-geeky types, but here's the upshot: Newer, better software. With the old Puppy Linux, I'm limited to version 2 of Firefox; now I'm able to grab the newer -- and in this case better -- version 3.5.

OK. Almost there. But something's still missing:

I'm a news junkie, and a big part of my blogging is my ability to capture all the news I need. Plus, I want something that would give me some flexibility. I want to be able to move all this news from my laptop to the desktop at home.

In short, I want a portable RSS reader that I can use online or offline.

For those who don't know about such things, an RSS reader is the world's greatest invention for news junkies such as myself. You subscribe to your feeds, download the news you want, and read it at your leisure. Most news websites and blogs -- including this one and The Column, Reloaded (which I highly recommend) -- allow you to subscribe; but some will just give the partial feed, a paragraph or two, while others give the full text and graphics.

My own feeds include a handful of news outlets -- Yahoo! News, CNN, Newsweek, the BBC, ESPN. Plus many blogs. I have tons of political blogs in my feeds -- Daily Kos and the Huffington Post on the left, The Heritage Foundation on the right, and the libertarian Cato Institute. Although my politics are pretty well defined, I like to see what all sides have to say.

I never bothered counting the number of news feeds I have, but I have more than 1,00 news items to sort through every day. Some, obviously, are good for little more than a glance at the headline. Others I'll read, mark, prioritize, quote from, and link to in my blogs. And still others I'll forward to friends.

If you're a Gmail user, you have access to Google Reader, which fits most of the bill. But I wanted my news to be more portable than that. Google Reader does have offline capabilities, but that's still experimental.

I considered using a second, 8-gigabyte thumb drive that I use as my mobile storage disk. That's where I keep my work files, plus my Portable Apps suite.

I love Portable Apps. That's where I have a handful of to-go programs. There's Firefox, Abiword, Thunderbird, a few games, and Open Office, all on a flash drive that I can plug into anyone's computer, do my work, and leave no trace. I wrote about Portable Apps in my other blog, and it's one handy tool. The developers have some great programs available, but no RSS reader. And I'm ticked. In a pinch Thunderbird will work, but it's a poor option at best. And, these Portable Apps programs are Windows-based, meaning I need to use an emulator -- such as WINE -- to run them. Useful as WINE is, that's one layer of software I don't want to mess with for something as crucial as gathering the news.

While running my temporary system from the thumb drive, I experimented with several Linux-based RSS readers, and none were satisfactory. But with the freshly-installed Puppy Linux I tried the multi-platform, Java-based RSS Owl, and so far the interface works. While uploading this blog, I will test my installation to see if it actually downloads the news. I hope so. RSS Owl was my go-to news reader on Windows, so there won't be any real learning curve.

Fast update: It's working! I'm excited!

OK. What's still unresolved is my ability to share my RSS news with my desktop computer. The only real solution I see -- and this is theoretical -- is to score a router and network the two computers. But that's another project I'll study on later. My plate is already piled so high it's ready to tip over.

Here's my to-do list:

- Laptop lid switch - fix. (One problem with my system right now is that it doesn't go into sleep mode when I shut the lid. This means I either leave it powered up, or shut the whole thing down.
- Firefox 3.5 (Will download this in a few days.)
- Thunderbird, with calendar (My favorite mail reader, and there's a calendar add-on that, well, keeps me organized. Shoot, keeping myself organized is a losing battle most of the time, but let's not go there.)
- A couple of games (I'm not real big on that, but it's not all work and no play, and I do like a lightweight game or two every once in a while.)
- Gantt (This is a program that I use for planning, when time is important and there are definite steps to be taken. The one I use on my desktop is a Java-based program, and it's a simple download and install.)
- RSS reader!! (As I mentioned, this is being addressed.)
- qt3 (This is a series of library files that are needed to run Scribus, an open-source page layout program.)

That's the more important stuff. The rest of the list is something I can attack later:

- GIMP (This is an open-source graphics and photo-manipulation program, on a par with PhotoShop.)
- Audacity (This is a simple sound-editing program. I've used the laptop to record band rehearsals. Also need to come up with something better than the lousy condenser microphone that came with the laptop, but that's not an immediate need.)
- Open Office (I do have that, via Portable Apps, on my thumb drive. In truth, I don't use it all that much.)
- TweetDeck (This helps me organize my Twitter account, and it's quite useful. Twitter, by the way, is great for keeping up with the absolute latest news, but it's also the biggest time-waster since the Internet was invented.)

Enough already!

Scareware a big business, but fake virus 'protection' can be removed

Viruses and spyware are a real concern when you spend any time on the Internet, and some people are feeding on your fears for big bucks.

But while there are quite a few legitimate anti-virus programs out there, there are more that not only do not get rid of your viruses and malware, but install more of the same on your hard drive.

Symantec, which owns Norton, says more than 40 million people have fallen victim to the "scareware" scam in the past 12 months. According to the BBC, "online criminals make millions of pounds by convincing computer users to download fake anti-virus software." Which translates into an awful lot of dollars, not to mentioned the number of computers that are trashed by this cottage industry.

Over my years of surfing on the Internet, I've seen plenty of this. An ad shows up on a Web page I'm browsing, offering to scan my hard drive for free. Or flashing a message that would make even the most savvy Web surfer sweat -- that viruses have been detected.

The idea is that you click on the ad and it will scan your disk, or install a virus-protection device. That's what you think, anyway.

In reality, the scan or program is useless at best. At best.

At worst, the program or scan will install its own spyware, or its own virus, and really make hash of your hard drive -- and maybe even bill your credit card in the bargain.

Welcome to the rogue security software. They either are disguised viruses, trojans or are nothing but a sales pitch, trying to push another product to the user.

Call it scareware, because it's designed to frighten you into buying its product or download its own viruses, Trojan horses, or spyware.

Most of my Internet work is with this netbook, using Windows. But even while using Linux I've even seen these ads come up. I'm talking about the ads saying that viruses have been detected on my computer.

Which told me right away the claim was a bunch of horsesqueeze. For several reasons, Linux is not prone to viruses or spyware. Nor is MacIntosh, really.

OK. Time to check your computer. See what kind of virus protection you have. If it's from this list, you're in a bunch of trouble:

Cyber Security
Alpha Antivirus
Braviax
Windows Police Pro
Antivirus Pro 2010
PC Antispyware 2010
FraudTool.MalwareProtector.d
Winshield2009.com
Green AV
Windows Protection Suite
Total Security 2009
Windows System Suite
Antivirus BEST
System Security
Personal Antivirus
System Security 2009
Malware Doctor
Antivirus System Pro
WinPC Defender
Anti-Virus-1
Spyware Guard 2008
System Guard 2009
Antivirus 2009
Antivirus 2010
Antivirus Pro 2009
Antivirus 360
MS Antispyware 2009

These are rogue programs, according to ghacks. And if you have one of these, you'd better get rid of it awful fast. You probably clicked on something, downloaded what you thought was virus protection, and you may have noticed your computer running like crap.

So what do you do?

There's an article in ghacks which mentions "Remove Fake Antivirus," a portable software program for the Windows operating system that has been designed to uninstall 27 different rogue antivirus software programs from the computer system. You can download Remove Fake Antivirus here, and it's free.

I downloaded and ran it, though for me the on-the-workbench test was inconclusive. This is probably because I know the likelihood of me actually downloading and installing some of this scareware is really slim. The dialogue box showed, though, that it was removing each of these antivirus programs. My assumption was that this is the "default" dialog box. After running the program, you will be asked to reboot.

In truth, I'm a little chary of installing a virus-protection program from a non-company website (this is from a blog, how sketchy is that?) but sites like Download Squad (which gave it really lukewarm reviews), Softpedia, TechForums, and CNet (which rated it two-and-a-half stars out of five; not that great, and none of the readers reviewed it) carry links and product descriptions. Plus, I've never found reason to fault the information I get from ghacks.

A caveat: Here's one of the Download Squad reviews:

Well, I ran it, and it killed my main windows service and forced a restart. When the PC came back up, I had no internet connection. Warnings should be posted.

With that in mind, I checked things out when I rebooted. The Windows security service flashed a warning saying I had no virus protection, but I see ClamWin had loaded itself in the system, per normal. A glitch, perhaps? The good news was that my wireless Internet ran just fine. But be careful!

Menawhile, there are several good virus-removal programs out there. Some -- Norton and McAfee -- are the kind you pay for, while others -- AVG, ClamWin, and Avast! -- are free. The for-pay ones are probably a bit better than the free ones, but any of these are good for the computer and your peace of mind. That is, if you update them every so often -- there's always some idiot thinking that if he builds a better virus, the world will beat a path to his door. These viruses seem to be coming down the pike faster and faster. A virus protection program is only as good as its updates, and it's also useless if you don't run it regularly.

For spyware removal programs, only two are worth downloading -- AdAware by Lavasoft, and Spybot Search And Destroy. And neither one is perfect. But, unlike antivirus programs, you can have both installed and running on your computer. I highly recommend you run both, one after the other, as part of your regular security regimen. What spyware program one doesn't catch, the other one probably will.

Netbook or laptop? It's harder to tell the difference

As more features are finding their way into smaller packages, the lines are blurring between netbooks (like that tiny Acer I'm using to maintain this blog) and "real" laptops.

At least that's according to CNet:

Color, screen resolution, battery, Wi-Fi, Webcam? The same. And they both lack an internal optical drive. The differences, though relatively small, can be summed up in the 11z notebook's 1.5 inches of extra screen real estate, a more powerful Celeron processor, 1GB of extra memory, and a larger hard drive ... plus, by getting the notebook with Vista, you have an automatic free upgrade to Windows 7. With any computer with XP, it costs around $100 to get Windows 7 Home Premium Edition ... the specs are so similar that the average shopper would likely be confused as to why one is better than the other.

I know that, even with my bargain-basement unit, folks are amazed there's room for a hard drive ...

Chrome OS: Odds not good, says Wired

Ambitions or not, the new Google Chrome operating system has an uphill battle if it plans to nibble into Microsoft's edge on the netbook market. But Wired isn't betting the ranch on this happening:

Google's netbook-friendly Chrome OS takes direct aim at Microsoft, whose eight-year-old Windows XP leads the netbook market. But the odds are stacked against Google.

Despite its buzz, the odds are stacked against Google's Chrome OS becoming a serious rival to Windows. In competing with Windows, Google Chrome OS will have to deal with many of the same challenges Linux has: compatibility, usability, and unfamiliarity. The record isn't good ...

Also -- what's this talk of a monopoly? I mean, MS was accused of this in an antitrust case, some years ago. This is from the L.A. Times ...