Book Reviews and Money Saving Tips

Now that I am retired, I’m doing a little more traveling. As much as I love the portability of my smart phone, the screen leaves a bit to desire when surfing the Net. So I lug my laptop with me when I travel. It isn’t too difficult to find a wifi connection, most of the time a free connection. Back in the day when I was selling laptops, I always advised my clients to purchase a good laptop carrying case. I have a laptop messenger bag that serves me well. I found a good selection of bags at CSN stores. I particularly enjoyed the ones in the cool messenger bag section . The Ducti bags that feature different caution tapes and the Ed Hardy bags were my favorites. Regardless of what the bag looks like or where you purchase it, I strongly advise a good laptop bag to protect your computer when traveling. This post was not a paid post but I have gotten things from the CSN stores at no charge to review in the past and hopefully will in the future. I always note if they provided me wit...

Periodically I get a request to write a review on a product and in return get some financial consideration. Being retired, if I can in good conscience write something without impugning by personal ethics, I am happy to accept. I did receive a fee for writing the following blog and that did not impact whatsoever my writing. For those of you that know me, that is easily accepted, for those of you who don’t, in some circles I am considered opinionated. I can’t imagine why? Sunbelt’s CounterSpy has some very nice characteristics. First, you should MOST DEFINATELY be using some product to protect you from spyware and malware. Since most of us resent anything that hogs our computer resources, you want to use a program that demands the least resources and yet provided maximum protection. Take a look at the charts at Sunbelt’s site and look at resource allocation; I think you may find some eye opening information. At $20.00, this program is a very good value. I know I spent ...

Old hard drives should not be just pitched in the trash. Now for those of you who consider the hard drive the entire case (don’t deny it, many of you do); the hard drive is the area where your data is stored. It looks like the picture labeled hard drive with cover on. This is mounted in your computer case and is where the data is stored. The problem is when you get rid of your old computer, many people just give it away or trash it without removing their personal data. Deleting your personal data does not get rid of it. Any knowledgeable person (practically anyone under 25) can probably retrieve your data that you thought you deleted. If you are going to give away or throw away your computer you should make sure your data is gone. You can do that by purchasing disk cleaning software such as Evidence Eliminator or CyberCide. You can down load software for free such as SureDeleteDriveWiper or KillDiskSuite. These software products normally will overwrite your data to the point that retri...

Being a bit paranoid, I was always nervous about putting my credit card information on line for purchases. I got a specific credit card with a low limit to protect myself. I only used that card for online purchases. Then the credit card company bumped up my low limit by a factor of 10 due to my paying my bills on time and defeated the whole purpose of lower liability. I know they claim you won’t be held responsible for more than $50, yadda, yadda. The folks who claim that are the same ones who hose over the poor schmuck that misses a payment and has his interest rate bumped so high that loan sharks would be ashamed. There is a surprisingly simple solution. Discover will provide you with a little popup program that assigns a unique credit card number each time you make an online purchase. That number is then specific for that online vendor. The number on the plastic card in your wallet is never used and thusly never exposed to online tampering. Plus the unique numbe...

Online Purchase Protection I’m a geek, I can’t hide it, in fact I revel in it. I love technology, learning new technology and yes, buying new technology. Much of my buying of technology occurs online. I am skeptical of online security. Daily you read of someone else’s database or web site being compromised. Up until recently I dedicated a single credit card as my online card and used only it for online purchases. Then the credit card company bumped up my credit limit significantly due to my paying the bills on time and not carrying a balance. Now the low limit credit card that I purposely kept low is now much higher than I am comfortable with for online purchases. I have ignored the opportunity to get the one time use credit card numbers as offered by many of the credit card companies. It seemed like it would be more trouble than it was worth. I finally took the time to read through the procedure and discovered I could download a software package to my computer th...

Porn Protection Funny how the right title on an article at least gets some attention. The internet has put a wealth of material at our finger tips. Obviously some of that material is unsuitable for families and in businesses can lead to liability issues. There is software that can protect your family and your business from internet horrors. There is no question that there is content on the Internet that is not suitable for anyone sane let alone children. Business owners must recognize that they can face liability issues if they provide unfettered internet access. A published company policy can alleviate most of that concern but be aware of the potential problem. Parents need to have more concern. Mature adults have the ability to self filter their Internet browsing. Children often don’t. It is the parent’s responsibility to monitor the home computer. Talk to your children about what they are doing on the computer. Provide an age appropriate dialogue on what is good and bad computer use...