Book Reviews and Money Saving Tips

I’m an ex-computer geek, I can’t help myself but mygrandson’s computer crapped out recently and he was devastated. As much as I preach backup he had nobackup. Then I got an email from a fellow blogger who said she hadlost over 30 unpublished posts when her hard drive died. So in spite of obvious redundancies I am going to repeatmyself. I I hate losing stuff. I use a bunch of different ways to back up but here are a couple ofideas besides having multiple computers and hard drives. 2nd copy at http://www.centered.com/ is a inexpensive backup type software thatyou can tell to just copy stuff on a schedule. Like every night. It is easy touse and inexpensive. Thumb drives are now down to about a $1.00 a gb and a 8gbthumb drive will save a lot of posts. (Amazon had a 16gb flash drive for $17.72 and free supersaver shipping.) Online or cloud storage is available for free. 50gb at http://www.adrive.com/ This is also good for archiving things youdon’t want to lose. DropBox is anoth...

I opted into ie9 the other day.  When, oh when will I learn?   I installed it.  It has a slightly different interface which I can live with but don’t much like.   What I can’t deal with it the fact that it periodically blanks the screen.   I don’t know why and frankly I don’t care why.   My screen wasn’t doing that in ie8 so why would it in ie9.   It doesn’t do it in any other program. I booted up FireFox and SURPRISE,  it runs smoothly and no screen blanking out.   Somehow I suspect that Microsoft’s pockets are a bit deeper than Mozillas.   Why, oh why can’t I ever upgrade a MS product without wondering why I ever used it in the first place?

After lamenting my installation of ie9 the other day, I was trying to do an update to one of my other blogs in FireFox. After several frustrating attempts, I opened ie9 and went into Blogger and the update went as smooth as could be.  After having been in the computer business of over 25 years and using computers  for 31 years you would think I would be resigned to the continued incompatibilities. Sadly I'm not. I guess if I was a programmer I could do something about it, but I am not. So instead all I can do is complain.  This pic has nothing to do with my post except, I love the TV show and well..let's leave it at that. Speaking of which, the abysmal Call of Duty, World at War that I was patching, crashed my system beyond recovery on the 5th of 7 patches. I'm leaving it sit for awhile so the steam can vent from the room. Luckily no one from Activision was nearby or my frustration could have ended with me incarcerated. What kind of idiots produce a computer video ...

Once again Comcast has truncated my ability to surf the net. Upon arriving at my vacation destination I discovered the cable modem that worked just swell last January no longer worked. After one hour on the phone with Comcast, I was told the modem was not working. Duhhh! Comcast told me to get a new modem or get theirs for $8/month and since that makes no sense whatsoever being here for less than two months, I went out and bought a new modem. Of course I checked Comcast’s compatibility chart and then even called and spoke to a tech to verify that I had, indeed, chosen an acceptable Comcast certified modem. I set up the new modem which did not work. The Comcast tech I spoke to this time told me that he wasn’t getting any signal and that the old modem was probably just fine, that it was a Comcast issue. He scheduled a service call. The earliest call was 5 days later and for those of you as addicted to the net as I am, seemed like an eternity. The Comcast tech arrived within the ...

My XP box was aging so I bought a new Windows 7 Acer Aspire.  The following is a brief and reasonably unemotional recitation of my less than fun experiences.   Needless to say, Win7 has been breaking my heart! Software Under Win 7 Paint Shop Pro from Corel installed and works just fine. FrontPage 2000 installed but since it was an upgrade, it asked where FrontPage97 was and FrontPage 97wouldn’t see Win7. Finally I realized if I put the FrontPage97 cd in the DVD drive and told the install software to check the D: it said great, then I had to put the FrontPage2000 back in and it worked. Yes, I know that there are newer and no doubt better software packages for web work. I own several of them but I still have two client websites I am supporting that I created under FrontPage. Neither client wants to spend the money to have their site redone under a new software package nor I am willing to redo their sites for free. So as long as I can keep FrontPage working, I can...

I recently had a Microsoft inspired computer debacle. There will be a detailed post regarding those zany pranksters at Microsoft and how they sucked 7 hours out of my life, never to be regained when there innocuous ie8 upgrade blew up my, up until then, stable XP. As usual I digress, this post is about the computers I looked at when I decided I was going to buy a new computer due to my frustration with the ones I have. If you are new to my world, I had a computer business for 25 years. When I sold the business 4 years ago I had several computers I was using there were not part of the sale. I have since used those computers with reasonable satisfaction. When the ie debacle occurred, I realized that I was fighting with a computer and OS that was well over four years old. None of my desktops were new when I sold the business so they are at best 4-5 years old. Now being an economical soul (cheap) I have a whole bunch of used parts that I have been cobbling together for repa...

The change over to digital broadcasting has been written to death. It is coming, congress has just voted not to delay it so it will happen on schedule. The myth that cable and satellite are not affected is just that, a myth. Comcast has already shifted some very important channels to all digital. (Cartoon network being a grandchild important channel) Comcast states they will be gradually changing all of their analog output to digital. What does that specifically mean to all of us cable users. It means you must have a digital tuner to get those channels that are currently digital and those they will be changing. So like all of the “over the air” folks, you will need a converter box so it is just plain old crap that if you have cable you won’t be affected by the change to digital. Comcast offers two free digital adapters to those who currently have a digital converter box. Caution, the digital adapter is not the same as the digital converter box, it is a stupid cousin. The digital adapt...

Why am I talking about a swap site on a tech (mostly) blog? Well swapping doesn’t mean FREE but it does mean inexpensive which falls under the money saving part. Admittedly posting the same blog on both my blogs seems excessive but somehow to me they fit. Swaptree is an online swapping service where you can swap CDs, DVD’s and books with folks from all over. Premise is good, site is a bit sketchy, customer support is non-existent. SWAPTREE has no tech support, none, butkus, zip, nada, zero support. I have emailed their support, their contact or anyone who might answer and there is nobody there. If they have support then apparently they really are terrible since I got no response on any emails I have sent. I wonder who did they pay off on Good Morning America to get recommended. Good Morning America, what were you thinking? There are several much better sites that actually have human beings involved with them. I have a book on my wish list, Swaptree keep offering me a copy of the book ...

AVG Anti-Virus Free Major Update Problems If you have been having problems updating your AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition, you are not alone. One has to wonder whether the current update problems with the AVG Free edition is based on their interest in getting paid customers or an inability to solve a problem. I have noticed the problem for over a week which is computer time is roughly a decade. My innate cynicism has to question why they can’t solve their update issues. As good as I think AVG is, without updates it’s functionality decreases exponentially. Avast is a very good choice if you want to change to another free Anti-Virus. I put it on my wife’s computer over a month ago and have had no issues with it. I wasn’t able to get AVG to download to her computer and finally said, “I don’t need this stinking aggravation”, and changed her to Avast . I read quite a few reviews and Avast came up as being highly regarded. So far so good, so if you are fed up with the AVG upgrade issues try Ava...