What a Bargain!

Clearance sale of second-hand PC from our workshop. This Dell 4700 has been freshly reinstalled with Windows XP SP3 and all updates. It comes with OpenOffice , Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash, Google Chrome and Avast Anti Virus. The unit has 512MB RAM, 2.8GHz Pentium IV CPU, 8 USB ports, Ethernet socket, 80GB Hard Disc, Integrated Video and CD/DVD RW. Comes with 6 months hardware warranty. A lovely quiet machine ideal for all home duties (not suitable for playing games - apart from games included with Windows XP). Price without monitor is €205. Price with 17" monitor is €295. Free delivery to Dublin's Southside. Call 086-8178678 and mention blog deal. Mouse mat not included in the price but available from here!

SlingBox Solo

The SlingBox is a gizmo that allows you to access TV media from your own TV hardware across the internet. And why might you want to do that I hear you ask. Well, consider someone who has a second house in Spain and wants to watch Fair City live and not miss an episode of the Late Late Show while they are away. Or, indeed, if you are going on holidays to Italy for two weeks but can't bear not cheering your team on in the Sunday Game live then a SlingBox might be for you.

I was aware of the SlingBox from reading reviews of it in the past but had never been up close and personal to one until a customer recently asked if we could set one up with his Sky system. Yesterday I dropped over to the customer and picked up his SlingBox and brought it home to familiarize myself with it's setup.

We have a UPC HD cable box at home that has a SCART socket with composite video-out. I connected the supplied SCART to RCA adapter to the UPC box and connected this to the SlingBox with the supplied Composite A/V cable. Next step was to connect the supplied remote control IR cable to the SlingBox and position the LED to shine on the UPC box IR receiver. Before powering up the box all that remained was to connect the SlingBox to my Netgear router via the supplied ethernet cable. So, everything we needed to make the physical connections is supplied in the box.

Once the hardware is installed it is a case of logging onto Slingmedia's dowload site to download the most up to date version of their SlingPlayer software - this is the application that allows you to watch your TV remotely - I downloaded it onto a Dell netbook running XP on an Atom processor.

When the software is installed it's time to create a SlingBox account and configure your SlingBox to talk to your cable box and your router. This is handled through a step-by-step wizard and I had no problem finding my cable box and router in the configuration options. The only slightly technical step is setting port forwarding on the appropriate port on the router, but the step-by-step wizard holds your hand for this.

Once completed I was able to receive all my TV channels on the laptop and had access to a virtual remote control that mimicked the real one, even down to volume, on/off and programme guide. I tested the picture quality when streaming within my local network and via the internet and there was a significant difference in picture quality between the two, with internet streaming being significantly poorer. This may in part be due to the fact that my upload bit rate is max 256 kbit/s - a higher upload bit rate may provide a better picture. If the picture was viewed in a small window, as opposed to full screen a sharper smoother picture resulted.

During setup I had a couple of issues that held me up. Firstly, positioning the remote control LED was problematic and I finished up using both supplied control LEDs instead of a single one in order to get the virtual remote working properly. Secondly, the UPC cable box we use is connected to our tv with a HDMI cable and, for reasons I don't fully understand, you cannot have HDMI and SCART output simultaneously. This necessitated disconnecting the TV from the cable box while I was using the SlingBox - not SlingBox's fault but less than ideal nonetheless.

The SlingBox is currently available from Amazon.co.uk for £105 and does what it says on the box. However, I feel that this is version 1.0 of this type of media extender and that in a few years we will probably have the type of features offered by the Slingbox built into our TVs and or routers. Until then, Coronation Street on the Costas anyone?

End of a Classic?

Word on the forums is that the Logitech Squeezebox Classic is being discontinued to be replaced by the Squeezebox Touch. As a Classic user I will be very sorry to see this very stable incarnation of the Squeezebox discontinued and might just pick up another while they are still available on Amazon.co.uk

Do You Really Need Office?

A lot of our customers who purchase a new PC want to get Microsoft Office at the same time and normally pay in the region of €90 for MS Office 2007 Home and Student Edition. In many case MS Works 9.0 is already bundled with the PC but customers feel that they must have Word for their word processing and Excel for their spreadsheets (most home users don't use Powerpoint).

What you should be aware of is that MS Works 9.0 now allows you to open Word and Excel .doc and .xls files and also allows you to save documents and spreadsheets in those formats. So why do you need to spend an extra €90 when you have all the software you need bundled with your PC? The answer, in most cases, is you don't unless you need advanced features like macros and pivot tables.

So before you rush out to buy Office give Works a run around the block. It may be all that you need. And if you do need more horsepower in your office productivity software, there is always OpenOffice.

Music on the Move

Here's a shot of the X-mini speaker attached to an ipod mini. Music systems don't come more portable than this!

ReadyNAS Duo

We recently deployed a Netgear ReadyNAS Duo (NAS = Network Atttached Storage) in our workshop for general data backup duties. The unit is equipped with 2 x 500GB SATA drives set up in a redundant X-RAID configuration (more information on X-RAID here). The reason we have configured the unit in X-RAID rather than RAID 5 is that we also use the unit for media streaming, which X-RAID is particularly efficient at doing.

Data backup is handled by the open source Cobian Backup 9 program running on the various network computers. We like Cobian because it is free, flexible and allows backups in native file formats with or without compression.

The ReadyNAS Duo is particularly adept at media streaming as it incorporates Logitech's (formerly Slimdevices's) Squeezecenter music streaming software, as well as iTunes Server software. Note that this NAS is really a stripped down computer with 256MB of RAM running Sparc Linux. Access to Squeezcenter is via a web browser on any attached network computer. The only downside is that the web browser is relatively unresponsive, but this does not impact on streaming performance. The NAS is serving music to two Squeezeboxes and a Squeezebox radio and response time via the Squeezebox interfaces is only marginally slower than a PC-based Squeezeserver. The ReadyNAS Duo can happily serve different music to each Squeezebox or synchronize the music on any two or all three units.

We're big Squeezebox fans so more on that anon.

For Sound on the Move

Santa was good enough to bring me a very cool device to allow me to hear my music on the move and good goods do come in small packages. The item in question is the X-mini mark II. This is a speaker smaller than a pool ball that screws apart to reveal, believe it or not, a bass unit. Suffice to say that it is the best mobile speaker unit that I have found to date, and at a great price. Details here. If you are in Ireland you can get it from pressieport.ie.

Back on the Blog Trail

For various reasons it has been difficult to keep up this blog over the past months and you can see that there has been a significant gap since my last blog. I hope to rectify that and, as they say in the TV industry, "normal service has been resumed". I look forward to sharing with you some of the cool things that we have come across over the past while as well as our usual commentary on what's happening in the world of home computing. Keep in touch.

Beware the €449 Notebook

A lot of our customers are excited by advertisements that they see for Inspiron notebooks priced at €449 from Dell and similar priced offers from PC World and Harvey Norman. The good news is that, yes, you can buy a new notebook PC for less than €500. The bad news is that you'll probably regret it almost straight away as the performance of such a notebook will be very disappointing.

Question: How do you get a notebook down to €449? Answer: By cutting back on the hardware. The following are things you should note when assessing a potential purchase.

The Processor:
Most bargain basement notebooks use an Intel Celeron or AMD Semperon processor which come from their manufacturer's "value range" of processors. This means that they are cheaper but significantly slower than full-priced processors such as the Pentium and Athlon/Turion processors. Also, you will find that these are generally single-core processors rather than the now standard dual-core processors offered in higher priced models. Dual core processors beat single core processors every time when it comes to speed.

Memory:
We see bargain basement notebooks fitted with 1 GB RAM trying to run Vista Home Premium Edition. Yes, it will run, but like a snail. You cannot get a meaningful experience running Vista Premium on machines with less than 2GB of RAM and for Vista Basic you need 1 GB RAM. Saving money on memory is just mean in our book as memory was never as cheap as it is currently.

Hard Disc:
Budget machines will have budget hard discs, typically 80GB discs running at 5400rpm. In this day and age 80 GB will fill up fast if you have a digital camera or are interested in music and you won't get the performance form a 5400 rpm disc that you would from a 7200 rpm one.

Software:
Many customers who purchased a PC 5 or 6 years ago are horrified to discover that Microsoft Office is no longer bundled "for free" with current models and baulk at the fact that they have to pay extra for it (about €120 for the Home and Student edition which cannot be used in a commercial environment). But pay you must if you want Office.

When you include a faster dual core processor and add extra RAM and a bigger, faster hard disk, Microsoft Office, plus include some of the other options that aren't standard on the budget-priced model, such as built-in webcam, or coloured lid cover then you are looking at closer to €800 to €1000. However, spending this amount gets you a notebook that you will be happy with for some years, rather than a lemon that will leave a sour taste in your mouth.

Windows 7

While Vista may appear to be a new product to many people upgrading their 2+ year-old PC or notebook, it could already be in the golden years of its product life cycle. Word has it that Microsoft may bring the shipment of Windows 7, codenamed Vienna, forward from 2010 to next year. While Vista hasn't exactly bombed, there is a broad consensus that it has failed to deliver the goods when compared to XP. Bloatware is a term frequently used when discussing Vista and the fact that it requires a more powerful PC to run more slowly than XP bears out its lumbering code. Less than 10% of businesses have converted to Vista and its sales success is down to new PC sales to the home and SoHo market. Rumor has it that one key objective for the Windows 7 development team is to slim down the kernel to make it a leaner, faster operating system. Whether this will be achieved remains to be seen, but it would certaily be a welcomed accomplishment.

Vista gets Media Center right

We are not big fans of Vista here at PC Medic, at least not in its current incarnation, and do not recommend it to our customers at this point in time. That may change when Service Pack 1 is released, but for now we have seen problems with networking, hibernation/sleep mode, and miscellaneous program crashing issues.

However, having recently had a Dell Inspiron PC in the workshop fitted with a TV Tuner card and Vista Premium, we can report that one of the things that works superbly in Vista is the Media Center in general and TV in particular. Media Center first entered the world of Windows in 2005 with Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005. Having had first hand experience of this version I can report that it was flaky and poorly supported.

The current version of Media Center, by contrast is stable, easy to configure and feature rich. Within 10 minutes we had tuned in all our cable TV stations, downloaded the electronic program guide (EPG) and were able to watch, pause and rewind live TV as well as recording programs. The system is as easy to use as a Sky+ box and has the same functionality e.g. from within the EPG you can record single episodes or complete series of your favourite programs with a click of the supplied remote controller.

Of course the Media Center not only handles TV superbly, but also allows you to manage music and photos with equal ease. The Vista Media Center is possibly the best piece of software Microsoft has ever written.

Now if we could just get our hands on Service Pack 1!

Eircom Wireless Security

If you are an Eircom customer you are no doubt now aware of a security flaw in relation to their Netopia wireless routers. The security risk arises as a result of a combination of factors.

When a customer receives a Netopia wireless router, WEP encryption is enabled. WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) is a system of encryption that requires a user to enter a code (a 26-digit code in the case of Eircom of the form 879411b4f741e806a275565e16, which is a hexadecimal (base 16) number) before their computer can connect wirelessly to the router. When an Eircom customer receives a Netopia router, the specific 26-digit code will be provided to them, and known only to them, which allows them to connect to the wireless router. All good stuff to keep the bad guys out and your network private. So far so good.

In addition to a pre-assigned WEP encryption key, the customer's Netopia wireless router also has another pre-assigned parameter programmed into it called an SSID (Service Set IDentifier). The SSID is, in effect, the broadcast name of the wireless network which appears in the View Available Networks window. This can be anything you want but Eircom Netopia routers have an SSID of the format eircomxxxx xxxx e.g. eircom1242 9777. The problem arises due to the fact that the default WEP key and the part of the SSID after the eircom part are derived using the same algorithm. This has allowed some clever people to analyze the relationship between the WEP key and the SSID and come up with a small program called a key generator. Since the SSID is broadcast by default on the Netopia wireless router anyone can see the SSID of a router within range. All one needs to do to connect to that router is enter the 8-digits after the eircom part of the SSID into the key generator program and, voilà, the 26-digit WEP code is presented. Enter this code when required and you are connected to the network. PC Medic has seen this program in action and can confirm that it takes less than 1 minute to connect to a "secure" network.

What to do? It's actually quite simple to totally eliminate this security risk by either (a) changing your SSID or (b) changing your WEP code. Unfortunately, many customers don't feel comfortable connecting to their Netopia router to do this (Eircom should have contacted you if you have an "at risk" Netopia unit, and provided you with instructions to remedy the situation). If you're concerned and don't want to undertake this procedure on your own, contact PC Medic and we'll help you out.

Blast from the Past

Earlier this week we picked up an old Dell Dimension from its owner who purchased the computer in January 2001 with Windows 98 installed. Up until the failure of his hard disc he hadn't a day's trouble with the PC (probably mainly due to the fact that it wasn't on-line). We installed a new hard disc and reinstalled Windows 98 from the Dell recovery CD (he had all his original Dell-supplied CDs after 6 1/2 years - how many people lose them after 6 1/2 months?!). What surpised me and prompted me to post this blog was just how fast Windows 98 can run. Start up time was 40 seconds from button push to full systray. Shutdown time was an incredible 3, yes 3 seconds! All applications opened in a flash and this is on a P3 box with 128MB of RAM.

When I see how long it takes for Vista to boot and shutdown on our Dual Core box with 2GB of RAM you start to wonder are we going in the wrong direction. Time is the one thing we have less of as the years go by, so do we really want to spend that time looking at an hourglass? Perhaps we should be pushing for stripped down operating systems and streamlined applications (hands up all those who actually understand pivot tables, VBA macros and VLOOKUP in Excel, let alone use them). The term "Less is More" comes to mind.

Nice PC

Dell are offering a new range of PCs called the Vostro range which we have installed quite a few of. These come in a range of configurations and offer extremely good value for non-power home users and small businesses. For example, we've just purchased a system with a 1.8GHz Dual Core processor, 1GB RAM, 160GB hard disc and 19" wide screen for €495, including VAT and delivery! One of the key issues about the Vostro range is that, as they are aimed at the business community, you can still order them with Windows XP instead of Vista (all Dell's home PCs now come with Vista). You'll find them under the small business section at www.dell.ie. Recommended.

Badder Malware

IBM has reported an increase in malware volume and sophistication as part of its security statistics report for the first half of the year.

So far this year, its X-Force research and development team has identified and analyzed more than 210,000 new malware samples, which is more than the total number of malware samples observed over the entirety of last year.

According to IBM, the "exploits as a service" industry continues to thrive, with the new practice of "exploit leasing" added to the repertoire of criminals. By leasing an exploit, attackers can now test exploitation techniques with a smaller initial investment, making this underground market an even more attractive option for malicious perpetrators.

According to the report, Trojans (seemingly legitimate files that are actually malware) are the most common form of malware this year, accounting for 28 percent of all malware. Last year, by contrast, Downloaders was the most common category -- a low-profile piece of malware that installs itself so that it can later download and install a more sophisticated malware agent.

"The X-Force security statistics report for 2006 predicted a continued rise in the sophistication of targeted, profit-motivated cyber attacks," said Kris Lamb, director of X-Force. "This directly correlates to the rise in popularity of Trojans that we are witnessing this year, as Trojans are often used by attackers to launch sustained, targeted attacks."

But running counter to historical trends, X-Force reports a slight decrease in the overall number of vulnerabilities uncovered in the first half of 2007 versus the first half of 2006. A total of 3,273 vulnerabilities were identified in the first half of this year, down 3.3 percent year-on-year. However, the percentage of high impact vulnerabilities has gone up since 2006 from 16 percent to 21 percent for the first half of 2007.

A similarly unexpected trend in the report is the decrease in spam message size. IBM said the fall corresponded with a decrease in image-based spam.

"The decrease in spam message size and image-based spam is a result of spammers adopting and experimenting with newer techniques, such as PDF- and Excel-based spam, as a means to more successfully evade detection by anti-spam technologies," said Lamb.

Getting what you pay for?

From a recent ITPro posting - it relates to UK ISPs, so we can't say whether the same applies to Irish ISPs. What do you think?

Following a study that revealed many customers weren't getting even close to the advertised speeds of their broadband service, the consumer fairness group is asking Ofcom and Trading Standards to step in.

Which? has called on communications watchdog Ofcom and Trading Standards, asking them to step in and investigate the gulf between advertised broadband speed and the connectivity speeds users get in reality.

The consumer fairness group called for the action following research that tested more than 300 customers and discovered that, while they were promised up to 8Mbps or more, they were actually getting 2.7Mbps on average. The lowest speed unveiled during the testing was just 0.09Mbps.
"It's shocking that internet service providers can advertise ever-increasing speeds that seem to bear little resemblance to what most people can achieve in reality. If it's unlikely you'll reach the advertised speed it should be made clear up front, so that you know with some certainty what you're buying," said Which? online editor Malcolm Coles.

"Do your research to check what speed you're likely to get before upgrading, and if you think what you're getting differs vastly from what you've paid for, speak to your provider - or if they won't help, report them to Ofcom."

Broadband comparison service Broadband Choices echoed Which?'s calls for greater transparency in actual, achievable speeds so that users can make informed decisions. "We carried out over 100,000 of our own speed tests last month, and found that the average customer only got 39 per cent of their promised speed," said Michael Phillips, product director at Broadband Choices. "Factors like distance from the exchange and poor quality wiring degrade the broadband connection and reduce the customer's speed but many people are unaware of this and go for the top packages thinking they will get broadband at 8Mb. However, broadband providers can check this information to see the realistic speed each individual customer should receive. We need transparency from providers on the kind of speeds customers can actually expect to get, rather than flashy advertising and ever increasing 'top speeds'."

CD Recovery

We had a customer last week who was recently back from a gap year travelling the world and had received a CD from a travelling companion which contained photos of their travels in Australia and New Zealand. Unfortunately she couldn't access the files. We tried the disc in a number of CD drives and we had the same problem. Even our recovery software couldn't access the files. Examination of the CD showed the surface to be covered in a myriad of tiny scratches - obviously this CD had had a rough life. Time for a radical approach.

We had read on a tech forum some time previously that a remedy for scratched CDs was - wait for it - toothpaste! With nothing to loose we squeezed a small amount of toothpaste (with whitener and added fluoride!) on to a cotton bud, added a little water and proceeded to rub the paste onto the CD in a radial fashion. After about 5 minutes the whole surface of the disc had been treated and the CD was rinsed under cold running water to remove all traces of the toothpaste. Examining the surface of the disc after the treatment showed all the scratches still to be present, so it was with little expectation that we popped the CD into a CD drive. But, suprise, suprise, the CD was immediately recognized and all files were present and correct. Now we only recommend this treatment when all else has failed, but when you have nothing to lose...

Vista Upgrade Part 2

We've been very busy over the past few months so I've had to put the blogging on hold for a while. But now that we're back from vacation I decided to deploy the Dell Vista Upgrade Kit that arrived the second week in June - 7 months after we ordered the Dell machine.

The "Kit" comprise four items: a Vista Upgrade Assistant DVD, a Vista Operating System DVD, a Vista Certificate of Authenticity and an Instruction Pamphlet. First off you insert the Vista Upgrade Assistant DVD whose function is to check the comaptibility of the existing hardware and software on your PC and remove or upgrade what isn't compatible with Vista. When we inserted this disc and clicked Next to perform the check we were told that "The item listed below is not compatible with Vista" and that the upgrade could not proceed. The item in question was the operating system which was showing as NA. So at the very first hurdle we fell down.

Contact was made with Dell support who initially told us that the Upgrade Assistant DVD was not needed for upgrading the OS and to just proceed with the Vista Operating System CD. When I pointed out that this was exactly the opposite of what the Instruction Pamphlet recommended and that the Upgrade Assistant DVD updated the Bios as well as software with known compatibility issues the Dell support person changed tack and offered that the DVD was probably defective and he would send out another one. Now we just happened to have a second upgrade kit in the workshop which was ordered for a customer and we had tried with the Upgrade Assistant DVD from that kit, to no avail. When I put his to the support person he said that he would have to talk to his supervisor and get back to me.


Four hours later he called back with the recommendation that I expected from him - reinstall your original OS and then try the upgrade process. In other words, they didn't know exactly what the problem was but hoped that a clean install of XP would make it go away. And it did. Now remember, our PC was only 7 months old and had a minimum of additional software installed on it. In fact, most of the installed software was either Dell-supplied or Windows updates. So it wasn't that big a deal for us to do a clean reinstall. However, the upgrade was originally sold on the basis that you could happily use your PC until the upgrade was available, install it and, presto, you now had all your old software working on a Vista platform. Imagine if you had installed a serious amount of software such as Microsoft Office, payroll and accounting packages, utilities, photo management, music management, video editing etc. etc. I would be seriously bummed if Dell support could only offer the "reinstall the original OS" solution, leaving me with the task of rebuilding the PC post-Vista.

Moving along, we did the clean reinstall after which the Upgrade Assistant DVD seemed to be working fine. It proposed updating the Bios and a number of Dell-installed pieces of software. It also removed Roxio and other software which was incompatible with the upgrade process, promising to reinstall them when Vista was in place. After about 30 minutes and a number of reboots it was ready for the Vista OS upgrade disc. Vista took about 70 minutes to install and after rebooting we were back to the Vista Upgrade Assistant, which was good to its promise and began reinstalling the software it had previously removed.

After about two hours we had a Vista Business Edition OS in place and we were ready to install a wireless network card to get Windows updates. Apart from the inital problem with the Upgrade Assistant DVD the upgrade process was reasonably smooth, if somewhat tedious. If at any point in the future we need to reinstall Vista we are faced with reinstalling XP and repeating the upgrade process all over again. If we knew this at the time of ordering the PC we would have waited until the PCs were shipping with Vista. We would have had Vista 4 months sooner and no upgrade hassles. Not one of Dell's better ideas.

More Non-Genuine Operating Systems

Seems like we've come across a number of non-genuine versions of Microsoft XP in the last couple of weeks. What all of the PCs had in common is that they went into small repair shops for repair with Windows XP Home Edition on them and came out with XP Professional installed. Most of the customers didn't notice the difference between the two while one customer who did, was told by the repair shop that they "upgraded" Windows while it was in for repair.

The reason that most non-genuine versions of XP encountered are the Professional version is because of the existence of Volume License versions of XP Pro for use by businesses. A Volume License is a special version of a Windows OS, most commonly XP Pro, that is sold to big businesses, governments and educational bodies for installation on hundreds or thousands of PCs. Because it is not practical for such large numbers of PCs to go through the Windows activation procedure post-installation for each PC, a Volume License installation does not require activation. All Windows XP installations do require a product key, the 25-digit alpha-numeric code that must be entered from the certificate of authenticity during the installation process. However, if a product key corresponding to a volume license (a so-called Volume License Key or VLK) is entered then the installation does not require product activation.

What has happened in the past, and no doubt continues to happen, is that Volume License Keys are passed on from IT staff to individuals and they get into general circulation for use by less than scrupulous individuals. When Microsoft becomes aware of these they are blocked and marked as non-genuine in their database. Beginning April 25, 2007, Microsoft began distributing Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications as "critical update" KB905474 to Windows users. If you downloaded this update and have a blocked VLK installed on your PC you will get the nag screen that you have a non-genuine copy of Windows installed ever more. We expect to see more of these in the weeks to come.

Less than perfect OOTBE

Most computer manufacturers work hard to give you a good Out-Of-The-Box-Experience (or OOTBE), which is what happens when you turn on your brand new computer for the first time. A good OOTBE should see you having to take very few actions to get you to your operating system's desktop - perhaps accept a license agreement and input your name for your user account. Once at the desktop a good OOTBE continues with your computer behaving in a predictable fashion and it is in this regard that we were disappointed with a new Dell Inspiron Laptop that we set up for a customer during the week.

All went well until we got to the desktop and Vista's messaging announced that a problem had occurred with the sidebar which would now shut down. Hmmm, not what you expect when you turn on your PC for the first time and not a great OOTBE. Vista's messaging went on to inform us that the problem was caused by Google Desktop and that the vendor may have a more up-to-date version available on their website that might address this issue. And maybe they did, but we didn't wait to find out. Instead we uninstalled Google's application and the sidebar problem was resolved.

What we can't figure is why Dell bundles Google's Desktop application with their PCs when the version they bundle causes a feature of Vista to crash. You begin to wonder what level of testing Dell performs on the configurations they sell. Or, do they know about these issues before they ship them but leave it to their customers to resolve them. Take your pick.