Good advice to which I'll add, boot your computer into safe mode before you run these programs. They have a much easier time removing spyware that isn't resident in memory at the time they try to remove it.
To boot into safe mode, right after the the POST and before the operating system starts booting up, hit F8. You can hit it multiple times if you want. Then in the menu that comes up, select "Safe Mode". This works in every recent version of Windows.
The two-at-a-time service isn't secret now, if it was before. It's $14.99 per month and readily available. The one restriction that it has on it that the other ones don't is that they limit you to 4 movies per month though. That comes out to $3.75 per movie plus tax which doesn't seem like the greatest deal to me.
With the three-at-a-time unlimited, I average 21 movies per month. My system is to get the movies, copy them onto blank DVD+Rs, send them back right away, watch them when I want. Of course, after I watch the movies I then destroy the copy I have just so I'm not taking money from the MPAA because that would keep me up at night that I might watch an episode of MTV's Cribs about some actor or director and they might only have 3 Bentleys in their garage.
I've had NetFlix for about a year and signed up for Blockbuster about 2 weeks ago.
The Blockbuster deal is slightly better than the NetFlix deal for these reasons:
1. It's a few dollars cheaper per month.
2. In addition to the mailing of movies back and forth, you also get two coupons per month for free rentals from the store. Good for those "spur of the moment" type rentals
As for selection, NetFlix has some things that Blockbuster doesn't have and Blockbuster has some things that NetFlix doesn't have. That was an equal for me, but I did not do an exhaustive test. (NetFlix doesn't have Happy Gilmore, for instance or Half Baked. Of course, you can see them on TNT every 3 hours, but they are provided as examples. I don't remember any of the movies I looked for on Blockbuster that weren't there, but there were some fairly well known ones).
The other criteria that I wanted to judge it on is turnaround speed. NetFlix is F-A-S-T. If I put movies in the mail on Monday morning, I'll have more movies by Wednesday or Thursday at the latest. It's uncanny how fast they are. So far on the two turnarounds I've had from Blockbuster, they appear to be just as fast. I hope it keeps up!
The other one that I've heard of is Walmart, but I have no experience using their DVD by mail service.
I can't believe that I haven't heard of Savvis' reputation until they're now trying to reform it. I'm a decision maker at a fairly large company and decided to be a customer of Savvis' for several years until we consolidated all of our communications lines with two other companies.
Had I known they were a spam haven, I never would've chosen to do business with them. There certainly are enough providers in the world to allow you to stand by your principles when choosing one.
Companies that are a haven for spammers (especially seemingly legitimate ones like Savvis) should be labeled as such in every possible avenue.
Most people that have the skillset necessary to repair a notebook computer would value their time at greater than $75 per hour. If your options are to either buy a $150 part or spend two hours looking for it on Ebay and various other sites, your best bet is probably just buying the new part.
Seems to me that SCO is practicing the ancient art of "nuisance lawsuits" where IBM, RedHat and the like will eventually pay them off to make them go away.
I'm not an attorney (standard disclaimer) but I've sued several people in small claims court and I've learned two things:
1. It costs large companies thousands of dollars just to show up for such things. 2. If they don't show up, they lose no matter how ridiculous your claim is.
Why don't we all sue SCO Group in our local area and force them to defend themselves? Imagine 100, 500 or 10,000 lawsuits for $1,000 each against them in every municipality in the country? They'd either spend millions responding to each of them or risk having literally millions of dollars in default judgements against them which they'd have to disclose on their SEC filings and to shareholders. You might even collect the money!
It will cost each of us approximately $50 to file such a lawsuit. Consider that a contribution to the open source movement that you might even get back 20-fold. I think someone should create a Step-By-Step "How to sue SCO in your local area" document. I'm busy.
Slashdot Mirror
Good advice to which I'll add, boot your computer into safe mode before you run these programs. They have a much easier time removing spyware that isn't resident in memory at the time they try to remove it.
To boot into safe mode, right after the the POST and before the operating system starts booting up, hit F8. You can hit it multiple times if you want. Then in the menu that comes up, select "Safe Mode". This works in every recent version of Windows.
The two-at-a-time service isn't secret now, if it was before. It's $14.99 per month and readily available. The one restriction that it has on it that the other ones don't is that they limit you to 4 movies per month though. That comes out to $3.75 per movie plus tax which doesn't seem like the greatest deal to me. With the three-at-a-time unlimited, I average 21 movies per month. My system is to get the movies, copy them onto blank DVD+Rs, send them back right away, watch them when I want. Of course, after I watch the movies I then destroy the copy I have just so I'm not taking money from the MPAA because that would keep me up at night that I might watch an episode of MTV's Cribs about some actor or director and they might only have 3 Bentleys in their garage.
I've had NetFlix for about a year and signed up for Blockbuster about 2 weeks ago. The Blockbuster deal is slightly better than the NetFlix deal for these reasons: 1. It's a few dollars cheaper per month. 2. In addition to the mailing of movies back and forth, you also get two coupons per month for free rentals from the store. Good for those "spur of the moment" type rentals As for selection, NetFlix has some things that Blockbuster doesn't have and Blockbuster has some things that NetFlix doesn't have. That was an equal for me, but I did not do an exhaustive test. (NetFlix doesn't have Happy Gilmore, for instance or Half Baked. Of course, you can see them on TNT every 3 hours, but they are provided as examples. I don't remember any of the movies I looked for on Blockbuster that weren't there, but there were some fairly well known ones). The other criteria that I wanted to judge it on is turnaround speed. NetFlix is F-A-S-T. If I put movies in the mail on Monday morning, I'll have more movies by Wednesday or Thursday at the latest. It's uncanny how fast they are. So far on the two turnarounds I've had from Blockbuster, they appear to be just as fast. I hope it keeps up! The other one that I've heard of is Walmart, but I have no experience using their DVD by mail service.
I can't believe that I haven't heard of Savvis' reputation until they're now trying to reform it. I'm a decision maker at a fairly large company and decided to be a customer of Savvis' for several years until we consolidated all of our communications lines with two other companies. Had I known they were a spam haven, I never would've chosen to do business with them. There certainly are enough providers in the world to allow you to stand by your principles when choosing one. Companies that are a haven for spammers (especially seemingly legitimate ones like Savvis) should be labeled as such in every possible avenue.
Most people that have the skillset necessary to repair a notebook computer would value their time at greater than $75 per hour. If your options are to either buy a $150 part or spend two hours looking for it on Ebay and various other sites, your best bet is probably just buying the new part.
Seems to me that SCO is practicing the ancient art of "nuisance lawsuits" where IBM, RedHat and the like will eventually pay them off to make them go away.
I'm not an attorney (standard disclaimer) but I've sued several people in small claims court and I've learned two things:
1. It costs large companies thousands of dollars just to show up for such things.
2. If they don't show up, they lose no matter how ridiculous your claim is.
Why don't we all sue SCO Group in our local area and force them to defend themselves? Imagine 100, 500 or 10,000 lawsuits for $1,000 each against them in every municipality in the country? They'd either spend millions responding to each of them or risk having literally millions of dollars in default judgements against them which they'd have to disclose on their SEC filings and to shareholders. You might even collect the money!
It will cost each of us approximately $50 to file such a lawsuit. Consider that a contribution to the open source movement that you might even get back 20-fold. I think someone should create a Step-By-Step "How to sue SCO in your local area" document. I'm busy.