The above would have solved his "Farting Goblin" problem right there, although also having a way to disable gestures on the trackpad would work too.
Frankly, allowing the screen gestures to be preformed on a trackpad is just plain stupid. Not having a way to turn them off without editing the registry is even worse. That being said, if he was just using a keyboard and mouse he would have probably had an easier time.
I guarantee that if faced with 2 identical laptops and you had to make a choice between Windows Vista, and Windows 8, you'll beeline for the Windows 8 laptop hands down.
Hell, I should tout the $49 Upgrade to windows 8 to every Vista User. It can't be any worse.
1) Buy this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822168002 2) Get a Laptop that has A TPM. Preferably a Panasonic Toughbook or Dell Latitude. Put Drive from #1 in it. (or better yet. Buy the system with a Encrypting hard drive built in.) 3) Encrypt the hard drive. I don't care how, either with bitlocker or Truecrypt. 4) Set your laptop to boot from ONLY the Hard drive in the BIOS 5) Password protect the hard drive at the BIOS level. also password the bios. 6) Backup your system (Preferably, Using A Drive form #1). put backup in a safe deposit box. set a Password on that drive or backup file if you can. Do this monthly like clockwork or a hard drive crash will screw you. 7) If uber paranoid, look into a BIOS Level remote protection system such as computrace or Lojack to remote wipe the PC, but considering who you're dealing with, most likely it will never see the internet again, but its good to thwart casual theves.
The IPad Interface has been around for 5 years in various forms of iPhones, iPods and iPad's, It wouldn't surprise me one bit that most people in an apple store would know how to use an Ipad Mini, since it's basically the same as the previous systems.
Compare that to WIndows 8, which it's interface is about 1 year old, and only on Windows 7 phones that didn't sell well, so there is a bit of a learning curve to it. Iphones were the same way for the first year.
As for windows 8 Being Windows Vista. That's Utter BS. Vista was Absolute Crap! There was nothing redeeming about that OS. The Interface was slow, Disk I/O was horrendous, and most of the built in functions were inferior to what was in XP, or worse, didn't work at all and caused issues. 7 Fixed a lot of that so that's why it was adopted so fast.
Windows 8 is pretty much a refined version of 7 with a full screen Start menu. It's faster than 7, It's tools are more refined and work better with newer hardware than 7 (although I don't like File history as much as Previous Versions) and its much more efficient with hardware than 7 and utterly flies on systems that would chug on 7.
If Metro is such a problem. Buy Windows 8, Install Start8 and never worry about metro again, but even so. Once you shrink all of the Metro icons to squares and just use the start screen for starting programs, it not much different fro using the frequent program list to run programs in 7.
Unfortunately, unless he's in a rural area, he's pretty much screwed. He can try to follow the model Family Video uses, since they all seem to be successful around here for some reason, but other than that either get out or get screwed.
As a security company, keeping customers safe is Sophos's primary responsibility. As a result, Sophos experts investigate all vulnerability reports and implement the best course of action in the tightest time period possible.
Recently, researcher Tavis Ormandy contacted Sophos about an examination he had done of Sophos's anti-virus product, identifying a number of issues:
A remote code execution vulnerability was discovered in how the Sophos anti-virus engine scans malformed Visual Basic 6 compiled files. Sophos has seen no evidence of this vulnerability being exploited in the wild. First reported to Sophos: 10 September 2012 Roll-out of a fix for Sophos customers completed: 22 October 2012 (42 days later)
The Sophos web protection and web control Layered Service Provider (LSP) block page was found to include a XSS flaw. Sophos has seen no evidence of this vulnerability being exploited in the wild. First reported to Sophos: 10 September 2012 Roll-out of a fix for Sophos customers completed: 22 October 2012 (42 days later)
An issue was identified with the BOPS technology in Sophos Anti-Virus for Windows and how it interacted with ASLR on Windows Vista and later. Sophos has seen no evidence of this vulnerability being exploited in the wild. First reported to Sophos: 10 September 2012 Roll-out of a fix for Sophos customers completed: 22 October 2012 (42 days later)
An issue was identified in how Sophos protection interacts with Internet Explorer's Protected Mode. Sophos has seen no evidence of this vulnerability being exploited in the wild. First reported to Sophos: 10 September 2012 Roll-out of a fix for Sophos customers cbegan: 5 November 2012 (56 days later)
Vulnerabilities were found in how Sophos's anti-virus engine handles malformed CAB files. These vulnerabilities could cause the Sophos engine to corrupt memory. Sophos has seen no evidence of this vulnerability being exploited in the wild. First reported to Sophos: 10 September 2012 Roll-out of a fix for Sophos customers completed: 22 October 2012 (42 days later)
Vulnerabilities were found in how Sophos's anti-virus engine handles malformed RAR files. These vulnerabilities could cause the Sophos engine to corrupt memory. Sophos has seen no evidence of this vulnerability being exploited in the wild. First reported to Sophos: 10 September 2012 Roll-out of a fix for Sophos customers began: 5 November 2012 (56 days later)
A remote code execution vulnerability was discovered in how the Sophos anti-virus engine scans malformed PDF files. Sophos has seen no evidence of this vulnerability being exploited in the wild. First reported to Sophos: 5 October 2012 Roll-out of a fix for Sophos customers began: 5 November 2012 (31 days later)
Tavis Ormandy has provided examples of other malformed files which can cause the Sophos anti-virus engine to halt - these are being examined by Sophos experts. Sophos has seen no evidence of this occurring in the wild. First reported to Sophos: 4 October 2012 Roll-out of a fix for Sophos customers will begin: 28 November 2012 (55 days later)
Best practice Sophos customers are reminded of the following best practices:
1. Keep systems patched and up to date
2. Upgrade to the latest version of Sophos software to get the best protection
Responsible disclosure Sophos believes in responsible disclosure.
The work of Tavis Ormandy, and others like him in the research community, who choose to work alongside security companies, can significantly strengthen software products. On behalf of its partners and customers, Sophos appreciates Tavis Ormandy's efforts and responsible approach.
Probably need to add a #5 and #6 to that list with "NO CRAPWARE" as the selling point, although I guess that would go to whoever handles the installer.
I'll at least say that Adobe is getting it. All of their newest versions of reader and Flash have the option to automatically update without prompting.
Oracle has no clue. If anyone reading this works for Oracle, I want you to do the following. Also, If you know someone who works for Oracle. Please forward this to them and ask them kindly to follow the instructions below.
1) Walk into the office of the person who writes the update system for Java. 2) Scream at the top of your lungs "AUTOMATICALLY INSTALL UPDATES WITHOUT PROMPTING!!" 3) Kick person as hard as you can in the Nether Reigons. 4) Repeat step 2 and 3, but Scream "AUTOMATIC 64Bit JAVA UPDATER" Instead. 5) Repeat entire process daily until projects mentioned in #2 and #4 are completed.
Either the fear of getting kicked in the beanbag will motivate the person to make an update process that actually works, or the replacement coder hired to fill in for said worker due to work related groin injuries will.
The standard is stupid; in fact, it's so stupid that it makes less sense when used in a fable. So...
Once upon a time, there was a group of 4 sheepherders that tended to their sheep in the far far away land of internetia. Farmer Bill, Steve, Larry and Gary tended their flocks and would try to draw more sheep with either better grass, or shelter from the weather, or protection from predators. it got so competitive that sheep from other farms would jump the fences because some farms offered better comforts than others.
One day, a large pack of wolves (Genus: advertis infectus) started eating the sheep. The farmers responded accordingly. Farmer Bill first bought a "Tracking Protection" Caliber Shotgun. Which sometimes killed some wolves but would take about 10-30 shots before it killed them. Farmer Gary built a doghouse in which the sheep hired a German adblockplus and a Dutch noscript to protect them, which worked very well. Farmer Larry also built a doghouse, but was not as nice as Farmer Gary's doghouse. Eventually a German Adblockplus moved in, but it would get sick due to the cold getting into the doghouse and some wolves would get to the sheep. Eventually, Farmer Bill saw how well the sheepdogs worked and finally built a kennel by his own design to attract sheepdogs directly, but it was so badly designed that very few sheepdogs took the opportunity to live in it, and the few that did couldn't do their job well because they were sick all of the time. Farmer Steve didn't seem to do anything worthwhile and the sheep we so enamored by Steve's aura and immaculate looking farm that they didn't seem to care.
The wolves, losing many a comrade to the Sheepdogs, decided they needed to take action. First they asked the grass to stop growing if the sheepdogs protected the sheep that hired the sheepdogs, but the grass didn't stop growing. Finally the Wolves went to the World Carnivore Collection Consortium (W3C) and proposed the following treaty.
The farmers would have a can of Red Paint handy that the Sheep could use to put a Red X on their back. Any Sheep with the red X on their back would not be touched by the wolves. However, according to the rules, the Farmer could not paint the sheep themselves.
Farmer Gary and Steve adopted the practice quickly. Some Astute sheep noticed that the sheep with the Red X never got attacked by wolves and put the Red X on themselves, while other sheep didn't trust the wolves and still hired the sheepdogs. Farmer Larry wasn't too fond of the paint, since he secretly had a wolf as a pet, but eventually he made the red paint available as well as built a better doghouse for the Sheepdogs.
Farmer Bill, on the other hand, saw an opportunity to turn this into a feature that could protect his sheep and draw some sheep from other farms, since so many sheep jumped his fence to go to the nicer pastures of Firefox Ranch and Chrome Acres. But he had to find a way to follow the rules but get as many Sheep to put on the Red X as possible. Then he had the solution. His solution was to ask the sheep if they wanted the default pasture experience. If they wanted the Experience, all they had to do was put a Red X on their back. Eventually all of the sheep in the 10th pasture had a red X on their back.
The wolves noticed all of the Red Xs at the IE Corral and started crying foul. When Farmer Bill said he was following the rules and wouldn't change the policy, they first changed the treaty to forbid what Farmer Bill did, but the damage was already done, So the wolves decided to take a different approach to combat the problem. First they went to the Apache Fertilizer Co. and convinced them to add something to their fertilizer that when ingested by any Sheep in the IE corral, that it would dissolve the red X on their back. Other Wolves, such as the one named 'Yahoo' decided to ignore the Red X on the IE sheep altogether and started attacking the sheep Regardless if they had paint on their back or not.
Some Sheep as well as the other three farmers, start to hate what
1) install 64 bit java 2) Uninstall IE, or don't use IE 64 bit. 3) remember to update, because 64 bit java doesn't have an updater. Not that it works anyway.
The 32 bit browsers (chrome, firefox, even 32 bit IE) won't use the 64 bit java to run applets and since IE is the only 64 bit browser and cannot be set as the default browser, it will limit your attack surface.
1) install Windows 7 and set a password for your account. 2) Install all MS Service packs, patches and MSE. 3) Make a Limited user account, and log into it. This is your Kids account 4) Install Chrome for that user, give him a Gmail account to backup settings (in case something does happen to the system) and install Adblock plus with the Easylist filter on it. Set it as the default browser. Hide or disable IE afterwards. This also sandboxes the browser even further and gives him flash player and PDF functionality without having to worrying about updating those. 5) DO NOT INSTALL JAVA!! He doesn't need it, it's full of exploits, and every exploit kit on earth uses it to infect your box! If he needs Java for Minecraft (and seriously this is the only reason to install Java. Anything else say no.) then Install the 64 Bit version and run it from the minecraft executable on Mojang's site. The 64 bit version of Java doesn't work for browsers other than IE 64 (which you uninstalled) so just install that one and update it manually since the clueless idiots at Oracle hasn't figured out how to auto update 64 bit java for some reason..
As for games. 1) install the game as the admin. Try it on his user account. If it works, Great. 2) If that fails or if you just want to simplify setup, use UACTrust to make a shortcut that is pre-trusted. Since it's unlikely WOW or LOL will hack the machine directly, you can use this so he can play the game while the other stuff is user snadboxed.
Other notes: You said you're letting him use a Lenovo T400. Ban him from using USB devices on the left USB ports unless you want to replace a Board for $300. If he must use USB, Only use the right USB port by the CD-Rom and use a Hub. That port never breaks.
WM8 still looks like a good option if Microsoft's Windows 8 plans actually plays out and apps port seamlessly from PC/Tablet to Phone, but it's still a long shot.
Meego is a dead horse since it's market share makes even WebOS look good, which keeps devs away focusing on the more popular Android and IOS Ecosystems. Hell, if Microsoft is struggling to get App Developers over to Windows Phone, Meego had no chance in hell outside of Nokia Fanboys.
Their biggest problems is that they still are big on feature phones when feature phones are doorknob dead, and they didn't diversify their smartphone strategy like the other smartphone manufactures did. They bet the farm on WM and Meego/Symbian when everyone else was betting on Android and doing WM on the side. There was no excuse for them to not do an android phone (hell even a WebOS phone at this point) alongside their WM counterparts outside of MS funneling a never ending stream of money to Nokia's (or even Elop's) pockets.
As for their android diversification argument. If all they did was make a slim stock android phone, it would have sold like gangbusters simply because it wouldn't have had all of the Crap UI Bloatware that HTC, Motorola and Samsung force on their customers. Hell, Google might have chosen them to make a Nexus device with their hardware pedigree and all...
I worked for a company that was a warranty self maintainer for IBM, and then Lenovo Products. The difference was night and day. IBM spent stupid amounts of money to make sure that their laptops could take abuse after abuse after abuse. I've seen anything from candle wax spills to systems run over by cars that would still boot. Lenovo's QA went downhill somewhere around the T400/R400 Series. We were averaging at least 2 R400 boards a week on just USB tabs Breaking. Then they killed the R series and replaced them with the Thinkpad Edge, which was basically a glorified consumer laptop that we could work on (Yes. The consumer line and the business line have completely separate warranty systems. You can't order consumer parts as a WSM) Edge 14's could be crashed simply by flexing the case. I almost had an Edge E520 Catch on fire because they had cheap power plugs that would crack and break off in the power plug. Both edges could be classified as Crash test dummies when it came to hard drive failures. Then the bloatware started creeping in severely with the Edge E535 to the point that you would swear it's a consumer unit.
Desktop wise, they were still pretty good but nowhere near the IBM Build Quality. Cheapened the hell out of the case, but they didn't have too many problems outside of power supplies failing. A bit overpriced on Intel but we tended to buy AMD's for labs which had a very good price point in bulk purchases.
Servers were mostly IBM's rebadged to Lenovo, with a few workstation rebadges for fun. IBM is still in this segment and we stayed with them because Lenovo couldn't offer us the same level of support. IBM still knows how to keep enterprise happy, although it's not cheap.
Frankly, If Microsoft can Extinguish the JavaScipt Name I'm all for it.
I'm sick of explaining to everyone on earth that Javascript is NOT Java when I tell them they should get rid of the Virus targeted Java Runtime they do not need or updated in three years, but have on their machine just waiting for the next drive by virus to say hello.
I've been using Win8 RTM at work. (I'm the guiena pig for it) and have used the previous releases of it for test cases. So far Its been an overall positive experience, although it has some really nagging caveats.
The Good: 1) Fast Desktop Graphics. Desktop apps just seem to be more responsive. I'm not sure if it's because they disabled Aero or not, but it seems to be more snappy. Even with a low ram system (my work machine currently is a core 2 duo with 2gb ram). 2) Near instant boot. My guess is there doing some sort of hibernate trickery to get the system to boot so fast but it's near instantaneous, and doesnt seem to have boot lag that plagued previous windows. 3) Native ISO mounting. Still could use more work for example, you can't create an iso either from scratch or from a disk, but it's interface is simple and clean and works well. I haven't tried mounting a vhd yet. more on why not later. 4) Taskbar stretches across multiple screens. I know you can get this for win7 third party, but it's really nice to have it native now, and it works well.
Mixed Bag: 1) Backup. Win8 does this time machine like backup. It works well for user files and is stored off the main disk for protection, but it's not windows 7 backup which can do complete backups using a disk image. Win7 style backup is still there but it's in a totally different backup menu called WIndows 7 backup settings. It's not even referenced in the windows 8 backup menu at all, so its annoying to find. 2) Hyper-V. It's got Hyper-V built in, but I cant use it. Only the latest processors (core i series, Phenom II and above) can use it, which will limit where you can use it. 3) IE10. The Best IE ever but nowhere near Firefox or Chrome. Lots of sites that would struggle under 9 render great on it, and it still works good with legacy sites (such as our sharepoint) 4) No Gadgets. I miss my clock and weather gadget on my desktop. I could hit the start menu to see these at a glance, but...
The Bad: 1) Metro and the start menu. I've posted before about this and the difference without and with a touchscreen. If I had a touchscreen, I would probably like it more. It's got nice displays (news and weather for example) and is clean, but it is defiantly NOT mouse friendly. That being said, I rarely use the start menu using the mouse. I click it, type what I want and press enter, which works almost every time. I can say that I can use the desktop all day and almost never run into metro outside of when the system first starts, although expect a lot of program icons on your desktop and start menu. 2) No "Previous Versions" in file properties. Working on that ini file? Screwed up? well there's no turning back now! In windows 7, just about any individual file could be rolled back without rolling back the whole system. In Windows 8, The users folder is the only thing you can incrementally roll back now, and only if you turned windows 8 backup on. Not sure if this was removed in server 2012 but it's annoying as hell. It would have been nice to at least be a feature I can turn back on. 3) No Windows XP mode. I don't know if this will change once Win8 is officially released, but in some corporate environments, this is a deal breaker. Especially since Hyper-V Only works with cutting edge processors and even then, doesn't have the integration that Windows 7 Virtual PC had.
Final thoughts. It's not Vista bad but it's not 7 good either. That said, if windows 8 came preinstalled with my PC and I could go back to 7 I would probably stay with 8. Performance is excellent, it has some much needed features and generally speaking as long as you stay on the desktop you wont have a problem, but the metro interface is just a disaster to work in with a mouse and coupled with some key feature removals, generally drags the whole experience down. if you can live without hitting the start button every 5 minutes and can do without individual system file rollback or emulation then you will like what you get.
The Real Fraud is how much health care costs in the first place.
The main reason for that is simple. Insurance and Litigation
1) You Need Insurance to get healthcare, because healthcare costs too much. 2) Your Doctor Needs Insurance because you might sue him for malpractice, the state he's in requires it, or both, Raising the cost of healthcare. 3) The pharmaceuticals your Doctor prescribes you needs Insurance because you might sue them for complications. Raising the cost of healthcare. 4) Your Hospital needs insurance because you might sue them for hiring the doctor that you sued for malpractice, or because he prescribed you something that didn't work, or the state they are located in requires it or a combination of all of the above. raising the cost of healthcare. 5) The ambulance chasing lawyer on TV needs more money to buy TV commercials to help you, so he sues the insurance companies of your doctor, the pharmaceutical company, and your hospital for malpractice, so you get the 5-25% of the total compensation that you deserve and he pockets the 75%-95% to pay for his paper costs and time, which of course, Raises the cost of Insurance, which in turn raises the cost of healthcare. 1) Repeat step 1
Until we get a president and congress that will pass healthcare reform that will truly end this cycle for good, expect your health costs to skyrocket.
True, but when there's other Distros out there offering a similar or better experience without ads, why stay? I don't want to see Linux Distro's go down the same path as most of the Microsoft PC vendors have gone down
I don't use Linux, I use Windows, but it irritates me that I can't buy a Windows Laptop today without first uninstalling half of the useless AdWare/TrialWare/CrapWare/ETC that vendors stick on it. It's gotten so bad on the windows side that Microsoft had to make a clean PC A Certified Brand! as a selling point just to try to get it under control.
They don't turn it on by default, and it's not as good as Adblock Plus or Adblock for Chrome (it cannot block ads embedded in flash, like Youtube video ads for example), but it can be set to block most static ads.
Awhile back at my old job we started playing with windows 8 previews on various laptops. as expected using the keyboard and mouse, it sucked, but then we started playing around with it on an old touchscreen monitor, and it was actually good.
So we started experimenting with it using some students around campus. some students got the keyboard/mouse and some got the screen only. in those cases, the screen won hands down. In fact they seemed to pick it up almost instantly, where the mouse users tended to dart around the screen looking for apps.
The other interesting thing is that it seemed to be better the bigger the screen is. we put the same machine on one of our 6 foot smart boards on campus and did the same test that we used on the touchscreen. Students pretty much loved it across the board. a few even asked for win8 on all of the smartboards on campus. (which wasn't planned at the time)
Now of course none of this is scientific, and it was a small sample, (roughly 5-10 students per test) but the results are definitely trending towards touchscreen good mouse bad when it comes to Win8. Another thing that I wish we tested more was desktop interface on touchscreen. most of the people were told "this is windows 8 let us know what you think" and they could do whatever they wanted to it. They primarily stayed in the Metro interface almost exclusively. The other thing that might have skewed this result is that all of the students were about 20-25 ish years old, and almost all of them used some sort of smartphone, which might have helped win8 on the touchscreen side.
Regardless, its a hell of a gamble on MS's part. their biggest customers are enterprise hands down. Enterprise users will stay away like the plague. (unless they have a large POS or interactive rollout, it's pretty much a no brainer to put win8 there) Home users will most likely adopt it more with touchscreen hardware but the hardware is just not there desktop wise. with prices dropping on touchscreen systems daily, it might be coming soon, but I would say windows 9 will be out before it's mainstream enough to see enterprise adoption.
the Hosts file is targeted my malware to redirect to malicious sites and to keep under the radar to infect systems after they have been clean. (or even to a locally hosted proxy to infect sites like Facebook) Personally, I've seen facebook and myspace targeted in it. Never seen doubleclick but my guess is doubleclick is a target so that they can redirect to their own profit generating ads, or more malware to attempt to extort money out of people.
My guess is that the sites defender removes from hosts are sites that have been targeted by malware in the past. Frankly, I'd like to see the list of domains it looks for, but I'm sure that I woudn't want any of them redirected to some scumware site trying to pawn off fake antivirus.
If you want to beat Surface. Make a better tablet. Make it as thin or thinner, or make it cheaper, or target a different market (7in tablet for Windows 8)
Frankly, Surface is what WIndows 8 Tablet needs. It's a well designed thin and light desktop replacement tablet, and If it's under $1000 it'll fly off shelves.
As for Windows RT Surface. I'm pretty sure MS is making that cause not one OEM wants to touch RT with a 10 foot pole. A Crippled Windows 8 lookalike of Windows Phone 8 is just going to piss off consumers.
Slashdot Mirror
How To close Metro Apps:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/how-close-app
The above would have solved his "Farting Goblin" problem right there, although also having a way to disable gestures on the trackpad would work too.
Frankly, allowing the screen gestures to be preformed on a trackpad is just plain stupid. Not having a way to turn them off without editing the registry is even worse. That being said, if he was just using a keyboard and mouse he would have probably had an easier time.
Win8 sounds like the new Vista.
I guarantee that if faced with 2 identical laptops and you had to make a choice between Windows Vista, and Windows 8, you'll beeline for the Windows 8 laptop hands down.
Hell, I should tout the $49 Upgrade to windows 8 to every Vista User. It can't be any worse.
1) Buy this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822168002
2) Get a Laptop that has A TPM. Preferably a Panasonic Toughbook or Dell Latitude. Put Drive from #1 in it. (or better yet. Buy the system with a Encrypting hard drive built in.)
3) Encrypt the hard drive. I don't care how, either with bitlocker or Truecrypt.
4) Set your laptop to boot from ONLY the Hard drive in the BIOS
5) Password protect the hard drive at the BIOS level. also password the bios.
6) Backup your system (Preferably, Using A Drive form #1). put backup in a safe deposit box. set a Password on that drive or backup file if you can. Do this monthly like clockwork or a hard drive crash will screw you.
7) If uber paranoid, look into a BIOS Level remote protection system such as computrace or Lojack to remote wipe the PC, but considering who you're dealing with, most likely it will never see the internet again, but its good to thwart casual theves.
The IPad Interface has been around for 5 years in various forms of iPhones, iPods and iPad's, It wouldn't surprise me one bit that most people in an apple store would know how to use an Ipad Mini, since it's basically the same as the previous systems.
Compare that to WIndows 8, which it's interface is about 1 year old, and only on Windows 7 phones that didn't sell well, so there is a bit of a learning curve to it. Iphones were the same way for the first year.
As for windows 8 Being Windows Vista. That's Utter BS. Vista was Absolute Crap! There was nothing redeeming about that OS. The Interface was slow, Disk I/O was horrendous, and most of the built in functions were inferior to what was in XP, or worse, didn't work at all and caused issues. 7 Fixed a lot of that so that's why it was adopted so fast.
Windows 8 is pretty much a refined version of 7 with a full screen Start menu. It's faster than 7, It's tools are more refined and work better with newer hardware than 7 (although I don't like File history as much as Previous Versions) and its much more efficient with hardware than 7 and utterly flies on systems that would chug on 7.
If Metro is such a problem. Buy Windows 8, Install Start8 and never worry about metro again, but even so. Once you shrink all of the Metro icons to squares and just use the start screen for starting programs, it not much different fro using the frequent program list to run programs in 7.
A Nightmare on Facetime
Unfortunately, you can't (legally) watch it yet.
Unfortunately, unless he's in a rural area, he's pretty much screwed. He can try to follow the model Family Video uses, since they all seem to be successful around here for some reason, but other than that either get out or get screwed.
From http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/11/05/tavis-ormandy-sophos/ and reprinted here in case of slashdotting...
As a security company, keeping customers safe is Sophos's primary responsibility. As a result, Sophos experts investigate all vulnerability reports and implement the best course of action in the tightest time period possible.
Recently, researcher Tavis Ormandy contacted Sophos about an examination he had done of Sophos's anti-virus product, identifying a number of issues:
A remote code execution vulnerability was discovered in how the Sophos anti-virus engine scans malformed Visual Basic 6 compiled files. Sophos has seen no evidence of this vulnerability being exploited in the wild.
First reported to Sophos: 10 September 2012
Roll-out of a fix for Sophos customers completed: 22 October 2012 (42 days later)
The Sophos web protection and web control Layered Service Provider (LSP) block page was found to include a XSS flaw. Sophos has seen no evidence of this vulnerability being exploited in the wild.
First reported to Sophos: 10 September 2012
Roll-out of a fix for Sophos customers completed: 22 October 2012 (42 days later)
An issue was identified with the BOPS technology in Sophos Anti-Virus for Windows and how it interacted with ASLR on Windows Vista and later. Sophos has seen no evidence of this vulnerability being exploited in the wild.
First reported to Sophos: 10 September 2012
Roll-out of a fix for Sophos customers completed: 22 October 2012 (42 days later)
An issue was identified in how Sophos protection interacts with Internet Explorer's Protected Mode. Sophos has seen no evidence of this vulnerability being exploited in the wild.
First reported to Sophos: 10 September 2012
Roll-out of a fix for Sophos customers cbegan: 5 November 2012 (56 days later)
Vulnerabilities were found in how Sophos's anti-virus engine handles malformed CAB files. These vulnerabilities could cause the Sophos engine to corrupt memory. Sophos has seen no evidence of this vulnerability being exploited in the wild.
First reported to Sophos: 10 September 2012
Roll-out of a fix for Sophos customers completed: 22 October 2012 (42 days later)
Vulnerabilities were found in how Sophos's anti-virus engine handles malformed RAR files. These vulnerabilities could cause the Sophos engine to corrupt memory. Sophos has seen no evidence of this vulnerability being exploited in the wild.
First reported to Sophos: 10 September 2012
Roll-out of a fix for Sophos customers began: 5 November 2012 (56 days later)
A remote code execution vulnerability was discovered in how the Sophos anti-virus engine scans malformed PDF files. Sophos has seen no evidence of this vulnerability being exploited in the wild.
First reported to Sophos: 5 October 2012
Roll-out of a fix for Sophos customers began: 5 November 2012 (31 days later)
Tavis Ormandy has provided examples of other malformed files which can cause the Sophos anti-virus engine to halt - these are being examined by Sophos experts. Sophos has seen no evidence of this occurring in the wild.
First reported to Sophos: 4 October 2012
Roll-out of a fix for Sophos customers will begin: 28 November 2012 (55 days later)
Best practice
Sophos customers are reminded of the following best practices:
1. Keep systems patched and up to date
2. Upgrade to the latest version of Sophos software to get the best protection
Responsible disclosure
Sophos believes in responsible disclosure.
The work of Tavis Ormandy, and others like him in the research community, who choose to work alongside security companies, can significantly strengthen software products. On behalf of its partners and customers, Sophos appreciates Tavis Ormandy's efforts and responsible approach.
hmm. forgot about the crapware.
Probably need to add a #5 and #6 to that list with "NO CRAPWARE" as the selling point, although I guess that would go to whoever handles the installer.
I'll at least say that Adobe is getting it. All of their newest versions of reader and Flash have the option to automatically update without prompting.
Oracle has no clue. If anyone reading this works for Oracle, I want you to do the following. Also, If you know someone who works for Oracle. Please forward this to them and ask them kindly to follow the instructions below.
1) Walk into the office of the person who writes the update system for Java.
2) Scream at the top of your lungs "AUTOMATICALLY INSTALL UPDATES WITHOUT PROMPTING!!"
3) Kick person as hard as you can in the Nether Reigons.
4) Repeat step 2 and 3, but Scream "AUTOMATIC 64Bit JAVA UPDATER" Instead.
5) Repeat entire process daily until projects mentioned in #2 and #4 are completed.
Either the fear of getting kicked in the beanbag will motivate the person to make an update process that actually works, or the replacement coder hired to fill in for said worker due to work related groin injuries will.
The standard is stupid; in fact, it's so stupid that it makes less sense when used in a fable. So...
Once upon a time, there was a group of 4 sheepherders that tended to their sheep in the far far away land of internetia. Farmer Bill, Steve, Larry and Gary tended their flocks and would try to draw more sheep with either better grass, or shelter from the weather, or protection from predators. it got so competitive that sheep from other farms would jump the fences because some farms offered better comforts than others.
One day, a large pack of wolves (Genus: advertis infectus) started eating the sheep. The farmers responded accordingly. Farmer Bill first bought a "Tracking Protection" Caliber Shotgun. Which sometimes killed some wolves but would take about 10-30 shots before it killed them. Farmer Gary built a doghouse in which the sheep hired a German adblockplus and a Dutch noscript to protect them, which worked very well. Farmer Larry also built a doghouse, but was not as nice as Farmer Gary's doghouse. Eventually a German Adblockplus moved in, but it would get sick due to the cold getting into the doghouse and some wolves would get to the sheep. Eventually, Farmer Bill saw how well the sheepdogs worked and finally built a kennel by his own design to attract sheepdogs directly, but it was so badly designed that very few sheepdogs took the opportunity to live in it, and the few that did couldn't do their job well because they were sick all of the time. Farmer Steve didn't seem to do anything worthwhile and the sheep we so enamored by Steve's aura and immaculate looking farm that they didn't seem to care.
The wolves, losing many a comrade to the Sheepdogs, decided they needed to take action. First they asked the grass to stop growing if the sheepdogs protected the sheep that hired the sheepdogs, but the grass didn't stop growing. Finally the Wolves went to the World Carnivore Collection Consortium (W3C) and proposed the following treaty.
The farmers would have a can of Red Paint handy that the Sheep could use to put a Red X on their back. Any Sheep with the red X on their back would not be touched by the wolves. However, according to the rules, the Farmer could not paint the sheep themselves.
Farmer Gary and Steve adopted the practice quickly. Some Astute sheep noticed that the sheep with the Red X never got attacked by wolves and put the Red X on themselves, while other sheep didn't trust the wolves and still hired the sheepdogs. Farmer Larry wasn't too fond of the paint, since he secretly had a wolf as a pet, but eventually he made the red paint available as well as built a better doghouse for the Sheepdogs.
Farmer Bill, on the other hand, saw an opportunity to turn this into a feature that could protect his sheep and draw some sheep from other farms, since so many sheep jumped his fence to go to the nicer pastures of Firefox Ranch and Chrome Acres. But he had to find a way to follow the rules but get as many Sheep to put on the Red X as possible. Then he had the solution. His solution was to ask the sheep if they wanted the default pasture experience. If they wanted the Experience, all they had to do was put a Red X on their back. Eventually all of the sheep in the 10th pasture had a red X on their back.
The wolves noticed all of the Red Xs at the IE Corral and started crying foul. When Farmer Bill said he was following the rules and wouldn't change the policy, they first changed the treaty to forbid what Farmer Bill did, but the damage was already done, So the wolves decided to take a different approach to combat the problem. First they went to the Apache Fertilizer Co. and convinced them to add something to their fertilizer that when ingested by any Sheep in the IE corral, that it would dissolve the red X on their back. Other Wolves, such as the one named 'Yahoo' decided to ignore the Red X on the IE sheep altogether and started attacking the sheep Regardless if they had paint on their back or not.
Some Sheep as well as the other three farmers, start to hate what
1) install 64 bit java
2) Uninstall IE, or don't use IE 64 bit.
3) remember to update, because 64 bit java doesn't have an updater. Not that it works anyway.
The 32 bit browsers (chrome, firefox, even 32 bit IE) won't use the 64 bit java to run applets and since IE is the only 64 bit browser and cannot be set as the default browser, it will limit your attack surface.
Windows
Linux
Mac OS X
1) install Windows 7 and set a password for your account.
2) Install all MS Service packs, patches and MSE.
3) Make a Limited user account, and log into it. This is your Kids account
4) Install Chrome for that user, give him a Gmail account to backup settings (in case something does happen to the system) and install Adblock plus with the Easylist filter on it. Set it as the default browser. Hide or disable IE afterwards. This also sandboxes the browser even further and gives him flash player and PDF functionality without having to worrying about updating those.
5) DO NOT INSTALL JAVA!! He doesn't need it, it's full of exploits, and every exploit kit on earth uses it to infect your box! If he needs Java for Minecraft (and seriously this is the only reason to install Java. Anything else say no.) then Install the 64 Bit version and run it from the minecraft executable on Mojang's site. The 64 bit version of Java doesn't work for browsers other than IE 64 (which you uninstalled) so just install that one and update it manually since the clueless idiots at Oracle hasn't figured out how to auto update 64 bit java for some reason..
As for games.
1) install the game as the admin. Try it on his user account. If it works, Great.
2) If that fails or if you just want to simplify setup, use UACTrust to make a shortcut that is pre-trusted. Since it's unlikely WOW or LOL will hack the machine directly, you can use this so he can play the game while the other stuff is user snadboxed.
Other notes:
You said you're letting him use a Lenovo T400. Ban him from using USB devices on the left USB ports unless you want to replace a Board for $300. If he must use USB, Only use the right USB port by the CD-Rom and use a Hub. That port never breaks.
WM8 still looks like a good option if Microsoft's Windows 8 plans actually plays out and apps port seamlessly from PC/Tablet to Phone, but it's still a long shot.
Meego is a dead horse since it's market share makes even WebOS look good, which keeps devs away focusing on the more popular Android and IOS Ecosystems. Hell, if Microsoft is struggling to get App Developers over to Windows Phone, Meego had no chance in hell outside of Nokia Fanboys.
Their biggest problems is that they still are big on feature phones when feature phones are doorknob dead, and they didn't diversify their smartphone strategy like the other smartphone manufactures did. They bet the farm on WM and Meego/Symbian when everyone else was betting on Android and doing WM on the side. There was no excuse for them to not do an android phone (hell even a WebOS phone at this point) alongside their WM counterparts outside of MS funneling a never ending stream of money to Nokia's (or even Elop's) pockets.
As for their android diversification argument. If all they did was make a slim stock android phone, it would have sold like gangbusters simply because it wouldn't have had all of the Crap UI Bloatware that HTC, Motorola and Samsung force on their customers. Hell, Google might have chosen them to make a Nexus device with their hardware pedigree and all...
I'll second the notion that Lenovo's are NOT IBM.
I worked for a company that was a warranty self maintainer for IBM, and then Lenovo Products. The difference was night and day. IBM spent stupid amounts of money to make sure that their laptops could take abuse after abuse after abuse. I've seen anything from candle wax spills to systems run over by cars that would still boot. Lenovo's QA went downhill somewhere around the T400 /R400 Series. We were averaging at least 2 R400 boards a week on just USB tabs Breaking. Then they killed the R series and replaced them with the Thinkpad Edge, which was basically a glorified consumer laptop that we could work on (Yes. The consumer line and the business line have completely separate warranty systems. You can't order consumer parts as a WSM) Edge 14's could be crashed simply by flexing the case. I almost had an Edge E520 Catch on fire because they had cheap power plugs that would crack and break off in the power plug. Both edges could be classified as Crash test dummies when it came to hard drive failures. Then the bloatware started creeping in severely with the Edge E535 to the point that you would swear it's a consumer unit.
Desktop wise, they were still pretty good but nowhere near the IBM Build Quality. Cheapened the hell out of the case, but they didn't have too many problems outside of power supplies failing. A bit overpriced on Intel but we tended to buy AMD's for labs which had a very good price point in bulk purchases.
Servers were mostly IBM's rebadged to Lenovo, with a few workstation rebadges for fun. IBM is still in this segment and we stayed with them because Lenovo couldn't offer us the same level of support. IBM still knows how to keep enterprise happy, although it's not cheap.
Frankly, If Microsoft can Extinguish the JavaScipt Name I'm all for it.
I'm sick of explaining to everyone on earth that Javascript is NOT Java when I tell them they should get rid of the Virus targeted Java Runtime they do not need or updated in three years, but have on their machine just waiting for the next drive by virus to say hello.
I've been using Win8 RTM at work. (I'm the guiena pig for it) and have used the previous releases of it for test cases. So far Its been an overall positive experience, although it has some really nagging caveats.
The Good:
1) Fast Desktop Graphics. Desktop apps just seem to be more responsive. I'm not sure if it's because they disabled Aero or not, but it seems to be more snappy. Even with a low ram system (my work machine currently is a core 2 duo with 2gb ram).
2) Near instant boot. My guess is there doing some sort of hibernate trickery to get the system to boot so fast but it's near instantaneous, and doesnt seem to have boot lag that plagued previous windows.
3) Native ISO mounting. Still could use more work for example, you can't create an iso either from scratch or from a disk, but it's interface is simple and clean and works well. I haven't tried mounting a vhd yet. more on why not later.
4) Taskbar stretches across multiple screens. I know you can get this for win7 third party, but it's really nice to have it native now, and it works well.
Mixed Bag:
1) Backup. Win8 does this time machine like backup. It works well for user files and is stored off the main disk for protection, but it's not windows 7 backup which can do complete backups using a disk image. Win7 style backup is still there but it's in a totally different backup menu called WIndows 7 backup settings. It's not even referenced in the windows 8 backup menu at all, so its annoying to find.
2) Hyper-V. It's got Hyper-V built in, but I cant use it. Only the latest processors (core i series, Phenom II and above) can use it, which will limit where you can use it.
3) IE10. The Best IE ever but nowhere near Firefox or Chrome. Lots of sites that would struggle under 9 render great on it, and it still works good with legacy sites (such as our sharepoint)
4) No Gadgets. I miss my clock and weather gadget on my desktop. I could hit the start menu to see these at a glance, but...
The Bad:
1) Metro and the start menu. I've posted before about this and the difference without and with a touchscreen. If I had a touchscreen, I would probably like it more. It's got nice displays (news and weather for example) and is clean, but it is defiantly NOT mouse friendly. That being said, I rarely use the start menu using the mouse. I click it, type what I want and press enter, which works almost every time. I can say that I can use the desktop all day and almost never run into metro outside of when the system first starts, although expect a lot of program icons on your desktop and start menu.
2) No "Previous Versions" in file properties. Working on that ini file? Screwed up? well there's no turning back now! In windows 7, just about any individual file could be rolled back without rolling back the whole system. In Windows 8, The users folder is the only thing you can incrementally roll back now, and only if you turned windows 8 backup on. Not sure if this was removed in server 2012 but it's annoying as hell. It would have been nice to at least be a feature I can turn back on.
3) No Windows XP mode. I don't know if this will change once Win8 is officially released, but in some corporate environments, this is a deal breaker. Especially since Hyper-V Only works with cutting edge processors and even then, doesn't have the integration that Windows 7 Virtual PC had.
Final thoughts. It's not Vista bad but it's not 7 good either. That said, if windows 8 came preinstalled with my PC and I could go back to 7 I would probably stay with 8. Performance is excellent, it has some much needed features and generally speaking as long as you stay on the desktop you wont have a problem, but the metro interface is just a disaster to work in with a mouse and coupled with some key feature removals, generally drags the whole experience down. if you can live without hitting the start button every 5 minutes and can do without individual system file rollback or emulation then you will like what you get.
Windows:
1) MSE
2) Avira (has Ads)
3) Avast (also has ads)
4) AVG (not as bad ads as 2 or 3, but protection not as good)
5) ClamAV
Mac:
1) Sophos for Mac
2) Avast
3) Clam-AV
Linux:
1) Avast
2) AVG
3) Clam-AV
The Real Fraud is how much health care costs in the first place.
The main reason for that is simple. Insurance and Litigation
1) You Need Insurance to get healthcare, because healthcare costs too much.
2) Your Doctor Needs Insurance because you might sue him for malpractice, the state he's in requires it, or both, Raising the cost of healthcare.
3) The pharmaceuticals your Doctor prescribes you needs Insurance because you might sue them for complications. Raising the cost of healthcare.
4) Your Hospital needs insurance because you might sue them for hiring the doctor that you sued for malpractice, or because he prescribed you something that didn't work, or the state they are located in requires it or a combination of all of the above. raising the cost of healthcare.
5) The ambulance chasing lawyer on TV needs more money to buy TV commercials to help you, so he sues the insurance companies of your doctor, the pharmaceutical company, and your hospital for malpractice, so you get the 5-25% of the total compensation that you deserve and he pockets the 75%-95% to pay for his paper costs and time, which of course, Raises the cost of Insurance, which in turn raises the cost of healthcare.
1) Repeat step 1
Until we get a president and congress that will pass healthcare reform that will truly end this cycle for good, expect your health costs to skyrocket.
True, but when there's other Distros out there offering a similar or better experience without ads, why stay? I don't want to see Linux Distro's go down the same path as most of the Microsoft PC vendors have gone down
I don't use Linux, I use Windows, but it irritates me that I can't buy a Windows Laptop today without first uninstalling half of the useless AdWare/TrialWare/CrapWare/ETC that vendors stick on it. It's gotten so bad on the windows side that Microsoft had to make a clean PC A Certified Brand! as a selling point just to try to get it under control.
They do
They don't turn it on by default, and it's not as good as Adblock Plus or Adblock for Chrome (it cannot block ads embedded in flash, like Youtube video ads for example), but it can be set to block most static ads.
Personally, I think the feature works really well. Especially against the "Padded Fresh! Just for You!!" fakeAV malware trojan files out there today.
In fact:
Norton Does it
Panda Does it
many of the antivirus firms are doing hash based reputation scanning.
Awhile back at my old job we started playing with windows 8 previews on various laptops. as expected using the keyboard and mouse, it sucked, but then we started playing around with it on an old touchscreen monitor, and it was actually good.
So we started experimenting with it using some students around campus. some students got the keyboard/mouse and some got the screen only. in those cases, the screen won hands down. In fact they seemed to pick it up almost instantly, where the mouse users tended to dart around the screen looking for apps.
The other interesting thing is that it seemed to be better the bigger the screen is. we put the same machine on one of our 6 foot smart boards on campus and did the same test that we used on the touchscreen. Students pretty much loved it across the board. a few even asked for win8 on all of the smartboards on campus. (which wasn't planned at the time)
Now of course none of this is scientific, and it was a small sample, (roughly 5-10 students per test) but the results are definitely trending towards touchscreen good mouse bad when it comes to Win8. Another thing that I wish we tested more was desktop interface on touchscreen. most of the people were told "this is windows 8 let us know what you think" and they could do whatever they wanted to it. They primarily stayed in the Metro interface almost exclusively. The other thing that might have skewed this result is that all of the students were about 20-25 ish years old, and almost all of them used some sort of smartphone, which might have helped win8 on the touchscreen side.
Regardless, its a hell of a gamble on MS's part. their biggest customers are enterprise hands down. Enterprise users will stay away like the plague. (unless they have a large POS or interactive rollout, it's pretty much a no brainer to put win8 there) Home users will most likely adopt it more with touchscreen hardware but the hardware is just not there desktop wise. with prices dropping on touchscreen systems daily, it might be coming soon, but I would say windows 9 will be out before it's mainstream enough to see enterprise adoption.
I block ads, but I leave the option to allow non-obtrusive advertising on.
I'll reward sites that promote responsible advertising, the rest of the ads can get bent.
the Hosts file is targeted my malware to redirect to malicious sites and to keep under the radar to infect systems after they have been clean. (or even to a locally hosted proxy to infect sites like Facebook) Personally, I've seen facebook and myspace targeted in it. Never seen doubleclick but my guess is doubleclick is a target so that they can redirect to their own profit generating ads, or more malware to attempt to extort money out of people.
My guess is that the sites defender removes from hosts are sites that have been targeted by malware in the past. Frankly, I'd like to see the list of domains it looks for, but I'm sure that I woudn't want any of them redirected to some scumware site trying to pawn off fake antivirus.
If you want to beat Surface. Make a better tablet. Make it as thin or thinner, or make it cheaper, or target a different market (7in tablet for Windows 8)
Frankly, Surface is what WIndows 8 Tablet needs. It's a well designed thin and light desktop replacement tablet, and If it's under $1000 it'll fly off shelves.
As for Windows RT Surface. I'm pretty sure MS is making that cause not one OEM wants to touch RT with a 10 foot pole. A Crippled Windows 8 lookalike of Windows Phone 8 is just going to piss off consumers.