Book Reviews and Money Saving Tips

In celebration of my geekiness I downloaded ispy camera software prior to a recent hotel stay.  A person very close to me (name withheld due to my desire to continue life as I know it.) suggested I was paranoid.   Well... Imagine our surprise the first time I left my laptop running with the software active, we saw disturbing photos of someone in our room.   The person seemed to be looking at our stuff, peered into the camera and then left without taking anything. This was not a room cleaning person.  I sent one video set to my phone and took the video to the hotel management for their reaction.  I asked if this person was employed by the hotel and if he was supposed to be in our room.  The manager said the intruder was a maintenance man and he would check into it.   After waiting several days I approached another manager who got back to me within 15 minutes and explained there had been a maintenance issue  in our hal...

Free is a byword on this blog. I’m always looking for good free stuff. My Win7 system is sluggish so I went to ZD.net Downloads to see what was available as a Free download for system optimization. System Optimize Expert came up when I filtered for Windows and Free. Its description sounded good so I downloaded and installed it. I ran Scan and soon as I ran it a pop-up for their Pro version popped up. Seconds after I started the scan System Optimize Expert reported that I had hundreds of problems and did I want to fix them? I replied affirmatively and it said, the free version only fixes 5 problems, did I want to upgrade to the Pro version. I clicked cancel, went to Control Panel and uninstalled the program. Frankly I don’t care if it is accurate or not, the practice of claiming to be free and then finding some outrageous number of issues that can only be fixed by upgrading seems highly suspicious. I might add that ZD.net should more accurately evaluate if a download truly...

There is an interesting thing about some of the free software being offered at Cnet and Zdnet. It’s not so free anymore. You don’t have to pay a fee but even at these “reputable” sites you may not be getting a fee but you are getting the shaft. ZDNet’s Download Digest and cnet both recommend Glary Registry Repair 3.1.0.800. I read the description and thought it was worth testing. I downloaded it smoothly from ZDNet, I tried downloading it from cnet and it dragged and dragged and I finally stopped the download. Don’t know what was wrong with cnet. I went to install it and it brings up the ubiquitous license screen. If you aren’t careful and if you don’t read the screen carefully, you not only get Glary installed, you get the Ask toolbar, Ask is set as your default search screen and other crap is loaded as well. I canceled installation and deleted the software from my system. Free or Freeware is not an appropriate term if they are going to be reaping financial benefits b...

Ok, we all love FREE, if you are reading my blog, you know how often I like to put FREE in my blogs, ‘cause WE ALL LOVE FREE. Well, this time it is the jackpot, FREE & USEFUL! Comodo may be one of those companies you have never heard of and now you will wish you had. They offer a wealth of free software that focuses on security. Their catch phrase is the Trusted Internet . Basically what they want is to increase trust in use of the Internet and the businesses that operate on the Internet. They do have products they sell (hey they are a business) but they want to facilitate the Trusted Internet concept by providing software tools to protect computers. If people feel their computers are protected they are more likely to use the Internet and Internet businesses, thusly the Trusted Internet . If more people trust the Internet and use Internet businesses, Comodo will sell more of their products and make more money and therefore will be able to support all of their FREE software. Get th...