Woes of Windows

Anonymous Web Browsing with Tor and Firefox

2007-03-03T07:35:00.000-08:00

Are you worried about online privacy? If so, you should check out Tor. It's basically a virtual network you can use to connect to online services without anyone knowing your identity. Cool, right?

Installation is really quite simple. For Windows users, just follow these instructions.

If you're using Firefox, you can install the Torbutton extension that allows you to switch from Tor to regular surfing with the click of a button. It's really that convenient.

The downside is that Tor is kind-of slow. Logically, it would be. You're sending your traffic across other people's network connections. However, if you're looking for anonymity, Tor might be a good choice.

Get Away from Windows - Use Ubuntu

2007-02-25T17:46:00.000-08:00

I'm now waiting for my Windows Vista upgrade. It's supposedly on its way from Dell. Who knows when it will get here.

But the point of this post is Linux, specifically Ubuntu.

Maybe I've been out of the loop, but this OS seems to be all the rage these days. Maybe because it's "Linux for human beings."

There's an awesome blog I found that has some great tips and ideas for Ubuntu. If you haven't seen it, check it out and see what this OS can do for you. There's even a great post on switching to Ubuntu.

After you install it, you can tweak your installation easily. Flexibility might be one of the draws to this OS. Perhaps you can tell me.

Nightmare Upgrade to Office 2007

2007-02-17T20:19:00.000-08:00

Back in January I bought my spiffy new Dell Inspiron. I love the laptop, but I'm having software issues.

The laptop came with Office 2003 Small Business Edition. Along with that, it qualified for an upgrade to Office 2007, but that has to be redeemed through a special website.

I've been trying to redeem that upgrade since January 12th, with no luck.

I've tried the online form, the phone number, and the email address. I've called Dell several times, I've called Microsoft, and I've called the 3rd party company who is handling the upgrade redemption process. No luck.

For some reason, nobody can find my Certificate of Authenticity in the upgrade system. It appears that my copy of Office 2003 doesn't exist in the appropriate database. What a load!

We'll see how it goes. Maybe I can get somebody to fix this mess.

Tweak Your Windows Settings

2007-02-04T18:34:00.000-08:00

Have you noticed that Windows XP lacks a lot in the way of customization? Are there things you always wished you could do?

You should try out Microsoft's PowerToys. In a nutshell, these are awesome little programs that you can install to give added features to XP. Honestly, I think they're things that should've been in the OS from the start.

My favorite PowerToy is TweakUI. It provides settings to tweak lots of things in the user interface itself. You can set your machine to auto-login a certain user, you can change some of the default Start menu behaviors, the "places bar," and much more.

If you're looking to do something in Windows XP, you might check out the PowerToys first. They're pretty cool.

Upgrading to Windows Vista - When?

2007-01-28T06:18:00.000-08:00

Windows Vista is shipping soon. Personally, I'm waiting for my upgrade to arrive. What about you?

A lot of people are worried about bugs in Vista. I guess that doesn't really bother me. I don't think the bugs will be that big of a problem. Sure, they'll require automatic updates regularly, but XP already requires that too.

The bigger problem might be if some crucial program doesn't support Vista yet. I could see this might hurt some people, since some users have very specific and important software that they need every day. But for me, I don't really use many other programs, beside Office and Firefox. I guess there are several free or open source programs that I use frequently. Maybe I should check if those will work on Vista.

Other than these two concerns, I don't think I will wait to upgrade from XP to Vista. There is some neat functionality that I want to utilize, and I'm anxious to see how it performs (and looks) on my new Inspiron E1405.

What are your thoughts on this? Are you waiting to upgrade until later, or are you jumping on it now?

Great Firefox Tip for Secure Browsing

2007-01-27T11:38:00.000-08:00

I just ran across a great post at Lifehacker. It provides a quick tutorial on how to create and use multiple Firefox profiles, even simultaneously.

So why would you want to do this? Two important reasons: security and privacy.

Say you do online banking and bill paying. But you also do lots of other internet activities. You could keep better control over your passwords and bank web addresses by keeping them all in a separate Firefox profile. If you only use that profile for banking, it would theoretically expose your critical financial information to less of a security risk.

Another example where multiple profiles could be handy is for keeping your identities separate. Perhaps you use Gmail for your personal email, but you have a separate Gmail account that is linked to a Blogger blog. With multiple profiles, you can keep each account logged into Gmail in its own Firefox profile. Handy, right?

What's Up With Standby?

2007-01-25T13:15:00.000-08:00

My laptop was doing terrific with the "standby" feature, until today. For some reason, when I press the power button (which is supposed to put it on standby), it actually goes into hibernation. It looks like something might be wrong with my power settings. Poop.

If you're a laptop owner, you should definitely check out the different power features of your machine. These can be vital to getting more battery life out of the machine. For instance, I have a setting configured for maximum battery life. It dims the screen, turns the display off when not in use, etc. Very useful.

Also, you should learn about standby and hibernation. From my understanding, they do almost the same thing. However, standby actually uses more power, but it is quicker to resume from. Basically, they save where you are working "power down" your machine, and let you pick up where you left off. I rarely shut my laptop down. It's almost always just on standby. It saves loads of time.

Dell and Win XP - A Bad Match?

2007-01-22T07:57:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure if this falls under a Windows problem or one for Dell, but here goes.

I had my Inspiron E1405 on hibernate. I took it out of the bag, opened the screen, and pressed the power button. Instead of coming back into Windows with my programs where I left them, the machine opened up Dell's MediaDirect program. What?! I then had to exit from MediaDirect, at which point I was finally taken to Windows.

I'm really not sure what happened. Perhaps I accidentally pressed the MediaDirect button on the front of the machine. I really don't think I did, but it's possible.

More than likely, Dell and Windows are having an internal fight somewhere. I'm not sure how MediaDirect works, but it seems to bypass the standard standby and hibernate features. Windows might not appreciate that.

I guess I'll just be more careful next time.

Why No Comprehensive Dictionary?

2007-01-19T15:48:00.000-08:00

Windows programs definitely have spell checking features these days. They're handy. I'm personally a fan of Firefox 2.0's inline spell checking. It's cool.

The problem is that Windows doesn't have an integrated, comprehensive, universal dictionary. So when I'm in Firefox and add a word to the dictionary, it doesn't get added to Word. And vice versa.

What's a guy to do about this? Shouldn't we be able to have a a simple dictionary that all our words go into? Perhaps someone can program something to resolve this dilemma. Maybe Vista solves the problem, but I doubt it. In all likelihood, we'll be stuck adding the same word to multiple dictionaries forever. Wasted time.

Error on Startup of New Laptop

2007-01-12T07:15:00.000-08:00

You read that right. I got my brand spankin' new Dell Inspiron E1405 two days ago. I started it up, and I got a Windows error. I can't even remember what it was, but it annoyed the heck out of me.

Luckily, I figured out that it was some problem between Internet Explorer and Google Toolbar. Shame on you, Google!

I guess that's just another reason to use Firefox.

Disclosure Policy

2006-12-28T20:55:00.000-08:00

Yep, I'll be blogging for money around here. Nope, I'm not ashamed of it. And no, I won't do it all the time.

But I guarantee that you'll know when I get paid for writing a post. That's what disclosure is all about. Thus, any time I'm getting paid to write a post, I'll put "Sponsored Post" at the top. You'll quickly know that it's a paid post.

Also, I guarantee that I will NEVER write a post that is required to be positive. I will only provide my honest opinion on products/services. If I can't tell it to you straight, I won't accept the sponsorship. That's what I'm guaranteeing.