So last weeks news from 10/27/11 we find that HP is going to keep making PC’s…until management decides otherwise.

So, what does that mean for the consumer? It’s hard to say and there is the knee jerk reaction not to sell or buy their products in case of warranty and other issues down the road. After much reflection, I wouldn’t worry about it for consumer devices, but would be cautious about business class devices.

This is not the first time PC businesses were sold off. Compaq was bought by HP. eMachines was purchased by Gateway, and Gateway and eMachines were purchased by Acer. Most consumers didn’t know the difference as the brand names stayed the same. When IBM sold their PC division, they only sold/licensed the hardware/software and brands to Lenovo. So instead of an IBM ThinkPad, you bought an Lenovo ThinkPad.

Tech NO Babble is a reseller of Acer, Dell, Gateway and Lenovo products. TNB also builds custom PCs to fit your business or consumer needs. For mid to high end computers, TNB recommends Intel Core i5 & i7 processors and Intel motherboards.

For the last few days I started seeing more phishing attempts in my inbox. The latest was supposedly from DHL Express letting me know about a package delivery. I don’t use DHL and if someone was sending me a package, I am pretty sure that they wouldn’t be telling me about it. So off to the ether it went by hitting the delete button.

Most phishing attacks come from people automatically clicking on links in emails because they are tricked into following them. Don’t fall for these attacks. You will probably see more of these emails along with those from Banks, Credit card companies, and even utility companies.

To be on the safe side, delete all suspicious emails immediately. Also if you are concerned that it might be important, don’t click the links provided (might be phishing) and call or visit the website (search Google, Bing or Yahoo if needed) to contact them and find out what is up with your account. Most likely the email will be bogus.

avast! Internet Security offers a lot of tools and extra security features in this updated program. The avast! sandbox is a great help as it allows you to run questionable programs on your PC and if you run it in the sandbox, you are protecting your PC from badly behaving programs. You know, you want those cool smiley icons and you download them and then you have malware. Well the sandbox is there to help prevent that from happening.

Also avast! has given you the ability to scan your hard drives before windows loads to catch more trojans and viruses. Because Windows is not loaded at the time, the files can’t rename themselves or make backup copies to hid from the avast! scanner. I found this very helpful when I knew I had something on my PC and no tool could find it. A boot scan found the multiple trojans that had come from a customers website backup from their old host!. My 6 month long fight was finally over, avast! wins and my weird issues on my laptop are now gone.

Another issue I have with anti-virus solutions that I don’t have with avast! is how they seem to drag down system performance. I tend to forget that my PC is running an anti-virus solution until avast! reminds me that it did an update!

Lastly, my clients love WebRep. This a web browser add-on that shows the rating of sites by other avast! users. This is to help people from clicking on bad websites, not to be mistaken with badly designed websites!

You can see avast!’s offerings at their website and then support your local IT company, Tech NO Babble by purchasing your license from us.