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How to Setup Gmail and Yahoo Account to Outlook 2010

2015-01-18T00:14:00.000+07:00

Here is a quick reference for anyone who wants to setup their Gmail and Yahoo account to Microsoft Outlook 2010. I give you 3 great links that explain how to do it, ie: both Access Yahoo Mail in Microsoft Outlook 2010 and POP server settings for Yahoo Mail from Yahoo Help, and Add Your Gmail Account to Outlook 2010 using POP from How-To Geek. Some of the main points will be copied in this page for easy use of it.

Setting up Yahoo Mail in Outlook 2010

In Outlook 2010, click the File tab.
Select Info | Add Account.
Select Manually configure server settings or additional server types.
Click Next.
Select Internet E-mail.
Click Next.
Enter the following information:
- User Information
  - Your Name - Enter your name as you’d like it to appear on sent messages.
  - E-mail Address - Enter your full Yahoo Mail address (like example@yahoo.com).
- Server Information
  - Account Type - Select POP3.
  - POP server settings - Refer to the POP settings for Yahoo Mail.
  - Logon Information:
    - User Name - Enter your Yahoo ID (your email address without the "@yahoo.com").
    - Password - Enter your Yahoo password.
  - To be prompted for your password each time you check your mail, deselect Remember password.
  - Leave Require logon using Secure Password Authentication (SPA) unselected.
Click More Settings.
In the "Mail Account" field, enter your desired account name (like My Yahoo Mail account).
Click the Outgoing Server tab:
- Select My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication.
- Select Use same settings as my incoming mail server.
Click the Advanced tab:
- POP port settings: Refer to the POP settings for Yahoo Mail.
- Leave a copy of messages on the server
  - Checked - Saves your messages from the Yahoo Mail server and on your computer
  - Unchecked - Deletes your messages from the Yahoo server once Outlook has downloaded them to your computer
    
    Important: After your messages are deleted from our servers, we're unable to recover them.
Click OK.
Click Next.
Click Finish.
Restart Outlook.
Click Send/Receive All Folders to start receiving emails from your Yahoo Mail account in Outlook 2010.

You'll now be able to receive your Yahoo Mail emails in your Outlook 2010 account.

POP server settings for Yahoo Mail

Incoming Mail (POP) Server

Requires SSL (Secure Socket Layer)

Server - pop.mail.yahoo.com
Port - 995
Requires SSL - Yes

Outgoing Mail (SMTP) Server

Requires TLS (Transport Layer Security)

Server - smtp.mail.yahoo.com
Port - 465 or 587
Requires SSL - Yes
Requires authentication - Yes

If your POP client doesn't offer TLS, you'll still be able to use SSL.

Login info (requires authentication)

Email address - Your full email address (name@domain.com.)
Password - Your account's password.

Good to know

POP only downloads info from Yahoo Mail to your client. It won't upload changes you've made in your client back to Yahoo Mail. If you'd like to sync both ways, you should consider using IMAP. Learn the differences between POP and IMAP.

Add Your Gmail Account to Outlook 2010 using POP

Are you excited about the latest version of Outlook, and want to get it setup with your Gmail accounts? Here’s how you can easily add your Gmail account using POP to Outlook 2010.
Getting Started
Log into your Gmail account an go to your settings page. Under the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab make sure POP is enabled. You can choose to enable POP access for all new mail that arrives from now on, or for all mail in your Gmail account. On the second option, we suggest you chose keep Gmail’s copy in the Inbox so you can still access your emails on the Gmail server.

Add Your Account to Outlook 2010
If you haven’t run Outlook 2010 yet, click Next to start setup and add your email account.

Select Yes to add an email account to Outlook. Now you’re ready to start entering your settings to access your email.

Or, if you’ve already been using Outlook and want to add a new POP account, click File and then select Add Account under Account Information.

Outlook 2010 can often automatically find and configure your account with just your email address and password, so enter these and click Next to let Outlook try to set it up automatically.

Outlook will now scan for the settings for your email account.

If Outlook was able to find settings and configure your account automatically, you’ll see this success screen. Depending on your setup, Gmail is automatically setup, but sometimes it fails to find the settings. If this is the case, we’ll go back and manually configure it.

Manually Configure Outlook for Gmail
Back at the account setup screen, select Manually configure server settings or additional server types and click Next.

Select Internet E-mail and then click Next.

Enter your username, email address, and log in information. Under Server information enter in the following:

Account Type: POP3
Incoming mail server: pop.gmail.com
Outgoing mail server: smtp.gmail.com

Make sure to check Remember password so you don’t have to enter it every time.

After that data is entered in, click on the More Settings button.

Select the Outgoing Server tab, and check My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication. Verify Use same settings as my incoming mail server is marked as well.

Next select the Advanced tab and enter the following information:

Incoming Server (POP3): 995
Outgoing server (SMTP): 587
Check This server requires an encrypted connection (SSL)
Set Use the following type of encrypted connection to TLS

You also might want to uncheck the box to Remove messages from the server after a number of days. This way your messages will still be accessible from Gmail online.

Click OK to close the window, and then click Next to finish setting up the account. Outlook will test your account settings to make sure everything will work; click Close when this is finished.

Provided everything was entered in correctly, you’ll be greeted with a successful setup message…click Finish.

Gmail will be all ready to sync with Outlook 2010. Enjoy your Gmail account in Outlook, complete with fast indexed searching, conversation view, and more!

Conclusion
Adding Gmail using the POP setting to Outlook 2010 is usually easy and only takes a few steps. Even if you have to enter your settings manually, it is still a fairly simple process. You can add multiple email accounts using POP3 if you wish, and if you’d like to sync IMAP accounts, check out our tutorial on setting up Gmail using IMAP in Outlook 2010.

How to Change Registered Owner and Organization Information in Windows 7

2014-06-08T14:13:00.000+07:00

This is a note from Microsoft Suppot and "How to Geek" that may help you sometime :)

If you’ve ever wondered how to change the name of the person that Windows is registered to, this is the quick tip for you. It’s not all that useful, but it might come in handy if you got a computer from somebody else.

To change your name and company information after Windows is installed on your computer, follow these steps:

Important This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

322756 How to back up and restore the registry in Windows

Click Start, and then click Run.
In the Open box, type regedit, and then click OK.
Locate the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion
To change the company name, do the following:

In the right pane, double-click RegisteredOrganization. Under Value data, type the name that you want, and then click OK.
To change the name of the registered owner, do the following:

In the right pane, double-click RegisteredOwner. Under Value data, type the name that you want, and then click OK.
Click Exit on the File menu to quit Registry Editor.

How To Change A Windows Account Name And User Profile Folder Name

2013-05-28T18:39:00.000+07:00

This article from http://www.ghacks.net/2011/03/28/how-to-change-a-windows-account-name-and-user-profile-folder-name/ is valuable for one to change default user account name and profile folder name. Some programs needs to install with specific user account name and specific folder name under Windows 7 which has different folder structure from Windows XP.

Changing a user's account name in Windows is a straightforward, easy to achieve task. The problem that many users experience after changing the name is that the name of the profile folder is not changed during the process. Say you have a user account Martin and a user profile folder under c:\users\Martin. If you change the account name from Martin to Bob, you will see Bob during login. The user folder under c:\users is however still named Martin and not Bob. So what can you do if you want to change both the account user name and the folder name of the user profile?

Here is a step by step guide on how to change a user's name and profile folder name under Windows 7. Please note that the old user name will still be used by some Windows Tools, permissions come to mind.

It is recommended to create a backup or at least a system restore point before you start the process, as it requires some basic Registry hacking.

You can use a program like System Restore Manager to create a new system restore point, or one of the backup software programs in our overview for the backup.

You will also lose your current theme which you should backup as well if you want to continue using it.

New Admin account

You need to create a new administrator account to execute all the commands. You cannot use the account that you want to change the user name for. If you only have one account you need to create on first that you can delete again after you have made all the changes. If you have a secondary standard account you can temporarily promote the account to administrator for the process.

Click on Start, then Control Panel. Select Add or Remove user accounts from the options and click the Create a new account link. Name the account and switch to Administrator before you click on Create Account.

Renaming the user account

While we are at it; You can now change the visible user name of the user account that you want to change the name for. Click the Change your account name link in the user account view if you are logged into the account you want to change the name for.

If not click on manage another account, select it from the list and then pick the Change the account name option.

You can now log out of the current account. We have created a second administrator account and changed the visual name of the user account. Log into the admin account that you have just created or promoted afterwards.

Renaming the user folder

Open Windows Explorer or another file browser and open the users folder that you want to rename on the main drive. The folder is usually located under c:\users. Locate the folder of the profile that you want to rename, right-click it and select Rename from the options. Enter the new name and press enter after you are finished. You may see an UAC prompt that you need to accept.

The user folder has been renamed, but you need to edit the Registry setting as well as the old folder path is still stored in the Registry. You would get profile not found errors if you would now try to log into the old user account.

Editing the Registry

Open the Windows Registry editor with the shortcut Windows-r, then regedit and the enter key.

Navigate to the following Registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

You find several S-1-5-xx folders in there. You need to click on each folder until you find the the ProfileImagePath folder with the data set to the profile path of the old username, e.g. c:\Users\Martin.

You may want to use the search (by pressing f3) if you find many Registry sub folders there.

Double-click the ProfileImagePath name and enter the path to the new user folder into the form, e.g. c:\Users\Bob

You can now log out of the admin account and log in to the original user account. You will notice that the account name is now displaying the new name. Once logged in you will also notice that the folder under Users is now showing the new folder name that you have selected.

And that's basically how you change both the account user name and the user folder on Windows 7.

How to Change SATA Hard Disk Mode from IDE to AHCI / RAID in BIOS after Installing Windows?

2013-03-17T18:53:00.002+07:00

If you are using Windows XP in new laptops or PCs, this article may help you. I got it from this link.

Consider following scenario:
You got a new computer system in which the SATA hard disk controller mode in BIOS settings was set to IDE ( or IDE Compatibility or Standard IDE) instead of AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface) or RAID for better compatibility. You didn't notice that and installed Windows. After sometime you realized it and changed the SATA mode from IDE to AHCI or RAID in BIOS and BOOM!!! You made your Windows crashed. Windows will no longer start and will show a BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death) containing error code "STOP 0x0000007B INACCESSABLE_BOOT_DEVICE".

Why??? Because Windows can't load the new drivers for AHCI or RAID interface. Actually when Windows is installed, it automatically disables unused storage drivers to speed up Windows startup process.
As a temporary fix, you can reset the SATA mode from AHCI or RAID to IDE in BIOS but you'll find yourself in the same situation. Or you can reinstall Windows but that would require lots of time and efforts.
Then how to switch SATA hard disk mode from IDE to AHCI or RAID in BIOS after installing Windows so that you would not need to repair or reinstall Windows?
Here is the solution! You just need to tell Windows that hard disk mode is going to change upon reboot using Windows Registry and Windows will automatically detect the mode and will install the required drivers and you'll be able to successfully change the SATA mode in BIOS without any need to reinstall Windows.
So without wasting time lets start the tutorial:
1. First DO NOT change SATA hard disk mode settings in BIOS, leave it to the default settings which were used while installing Windows.
2. Now start Windows and type regedit in RUN or Start Menu search box and press Enter. It'll open Registry Editor.
3. Now go to following keys one by one:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\msahci
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\pciide

In right-side pane, look for a DWORD "Start". Double-click on it and set its value to 0 (That's zero and not alphabet O).

4. If you are using RAID or other interface, do the same thing for following key as well:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStorV

In right-side pane, look for a DWORD "Start". Double-click on it and set its value to 0 (That's zero and not alphabet O).

5. That's it. It'll reset the hard disk mode settings in Windows registry. Close Registry Editor and restart your system.
6. Now enter into BIOS settings and change SATA hard disk mode to AHCI or RAID according to your requirements.

7. As soon as Windows will start booting, it'll automatically detect the change and will install the appropriate drivers. Once the drivers are installed, Windows will boot without any problem and you'll not need to reinstall Windows just to change SATA hard disk mode.

How to Turn Off Windows Defender in Windows 7

2012-11-24T16:37:00.003+07:00

There are 2 good articles from internet ( link 1 and link 2) about turning off Windows Defender in Windows 7. I posted here as a good reference for who needs to know to turn off Windows Defender before installing other full complete anti-virus programs such as Windows Security Essentials.

Windows Defender isn't in Control Panel's list of uninstallers. Microsoft started bundling Windows Defender with Vista, and continues to do so with Windows 7. It's a real-time antivirus program, running in the background at all times and checking for malware as you download and open files. A quick note on definitions: Some people will argue that Windows Defender is an anti-spyware program, not an antivirus one. That once meant something, but not anymore. Today, any such program that doesn't look for all known types of malware is useless. Unfortunately, Windows Defender is completely built into Windows, and you’re not going to actually uninstall it. What we can do, however, is disable it. To do so, click Start, type defender, and click Windows Defender.

Open up Windows Defender, go to Tools on the top menu, and then click on Options.

Now click on Administrator on the left-hand pane, uncheck the box for “Use this program”, and click the Save button.

You will then be told that the program is turned off. Awesome!

If you really, really want to make sure that it never comes back, you can also open up the Services panel through Control Panel, or by typing services.msc into the Start Menu search or run boxes. Find Windows Defender in the list and double-click on it…

And then you can change Startup type to Disabled.

Now again, we’re not necessarily advocating that you get rid of Windows Defender. Make sure you keep yourself protected from malware!

Create or Delete A Service in Windows XP

2012-11-08T16:10:00.004+07:00

Services in Windows XP are programs that run in the background and perform certain functions relative to the operating system or a program running on the operating system. If you are a fan of tweaking your system and disabling services, you might find that over time your Windows Services list becomes huge and unwieldy with a large number of services in the list that will never be enabled.

Instead of just disabling a service, you can alternatively completely delete the service. This technique can be especially helpful if you’ve installed some piece of software that doesn’t uninstall correctly, and leaves an item in the service list.
Important Note: Once you delete a service, it’s gone, and it’s going to be a pain to add it back. Use with caution.

Here is a good article from "The Elder Geek" about it. This is the link

Services are added from the Command Prompt. You need to know the actual service name as opposed to what Microsoft calls the Display Name. For example, if you wanted to create or delete the Help and Support service, the name used at the Command Prompt would be "helpsvc" rather than the Display Name of "Help and Support". The actual service name can be obtained by typing "services.msc" in Run on the Start Menu and then double clicking the Display Name of the service. Once you know the name;

To Create A Service

Start | Run and type cmd in the Open: line. Click OK.
Type: sc create "service name"
Reboot the system

Fig. 01

To Delete A Service

Start | Run and type cmd in the Open: line. Click OK.
Type: sc delete "service name"
Reboot the system

Fig. 02

If you prefer to work in the registry rather than through the command prompt to delete services;

Click Start | Run and type regedit in the Open: line. Click OK.
Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services
Scroll down the left pane, locate the service name, right click it and select Delete.
Reboot the system.

How To Uninstall Firefox Add-ons With No Remove Option

2012-10-21T02:25:00.003+07:00

This article is a copy from Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand. You can follow Martin on Facebook or Twitter. The original page can be accessed here.
I considered that the article is quite important for the one who needs to solve his problem with troubled plugins in Firefox so that I copied and shared here again as one of my favorite tools to solve my problem too. Enjoy..

You can uninstall most Firefox add-ons from the addons manager page in the web browser. All you need to do is type in about:addons in the address bar and tap on the enter key to open the page. A click on remove next to an add-on uninstalls it from the browser. You may need to restart the browser to complete the process. The add-on afterwards has been removed completely.
Some add-ons on the other hand do not show a remove option at all in the addons manager. Most of the add-ons that you cannot uninstall from within the browser are called global extensions. They are installed from third party sources, for instance when you install or update security software or another application on your system. The Babylon Toolbar is an example extension as it is often attached to software installations.
The majority of extensions are installed in the extensions directory of the Firefox profile folder. I’d suggest you start there to see if the extension that you want to remove from Firefox is listed there.

You may run into two issues here. First that extensions sometimes install with cryptic names so that it may be difficulty to identify them, and second that you may not find the extension that you want to uninstall listed here.
The easiest way to identify add-ons here is to load them into archiving software like 7-zip. Double-click on the install.rdf afterwards and look for name there.

Some extensions are already unpacked in a folder. Just open the folder of the extension in that case and double-click on the install.rdf file in there to identify its name.
It is however likely that you do not see the extension in the directory.
Global extensions
Global extensions can be installed into any directory. The most likely folder is the extensions folder in the Firefox installation folder. This is usually C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\extensions for 64-bit Windows operating systems, and C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\extensions for 32-bit systems. Keep in mind though that you can install Firefox into any directory. Portable Firefox users need to open the extensions folder under the portable path.
Repeat the steps outlined above to identify all extensions listed here.
The third and final option is the Windows Registry. You may find extension information under the following two Registry keys:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Mozilla\Firefox\Extensions\
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Mozilla\Firefox\Extensions\

Use the shortcut Windows-r to bring up the run box. Enter regedit in there and hit enter. Navigate to the keys in the Windows Registry and check if extensions are listed there.

Information that you will find there includes the extension path.

Backup the Registry key first by selecting File > Export. Open Windows Explorer and navigate to the directory of the extension. Backup that directory as well, before you delete both the directory and the Registry key that links to it. Repeat the step for all extensions that you want to delete.
Please note that you need to close Firefox before you start deleting extensions on the system this way.
If you follow the method, you should be able to delete any extension that you cannot uninstall from within the browser interface.

How To Remove Plugins From Firefox

2012-10-21T02:22:00.000+07:00

Google Update: Google Update
Microsoft Office 2010: Office Authorization plug-in for NPAPI browsers
Microsoft Office 2010: The plug-in allows you to open and edit files using Microsoft Office applications
Quicktime Plug-In: The Quicktime Plugin allows you to view a wide variety of multimedia content in Web pages. For more information, visit the QuickTime Web site.
Silverlight Plug-In
Windows Live Photo Gallery: NPWLPG

Other Firefox users will probably find other plugins there that have been installed automatically.

Plugins can be disabled in the Plugins manager, but not uninstalled or removed completely from the web browser. Entering about:plugins in the Firefox address bar will display additional information about each installed plugin. Users who visit the screen for the first time may want to type in about:config first, to change the preference plugin.expose_full_path to true. This displays the path to the plugin in the about:plugins dialog.
Displaying the path to the plugin does one thing: It enables the user to locate the plugin source on the hard drive. Just open the folder on the hard drive afterwards, backup the plugin file and delete it afterwards to remove it completely from Firefox. Here is how it is done for the two Microsoft Office 2010 plugins.

Locate the plugin paths in about:plugins and open the folders on the hard drive. In the case of Microsoft Office 2010, both plugins are located in the C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\ folder on the hard drive (Please note, that the location on 32-bit systems is C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14\ instead).
The name of the first plugin is NPAUTHZ.DLL, the one of the second NPSPWRAP.DLL. We highly suggest to backup plugins before deleting them from the system, just in case they need to be restored at a later time. Plugins can be deleted while the browser is running, and doing so will immediately remove most of them from the about:plugins information window and the plugins manager in Tools > Add-ons. Some plugins may require a browser restart before they are completely removed from the browser.
To remove all plugins that are not used or needed simply go through the listing of plugins in about:plugins, locate the paths of those plugins on the hard drive, and backup and delete the plugin files.
There is also the possibility that some plugins have added themselves in the Windows Registry, Google Update comes to mind for instance. You can take a look at this guide How To Stop Automatic Plugin Installations In Firefox for an in depth walkthrough, or locate HKLM\Software\MozillaPlugins or HKLU\Software\MozillaPlugins in the Windows Registry to see if plugins have been added there as well. Again, export the Registry key first before deleting it, for the ability to restore the setting at a later time.

Uncompress Old Files after Windows XP Disk Cleanup

2012-09-21T20:28:00.001+07:00

After using Windows XP Disk Cleanup, you may find that some files in your drive have been compressed by that action. In the previous article, it is shown how to disable this act of compression during Windows XP Disk Cleanup. However, if you have been using this utility without disabling the compression, many of your files end up being compressed which can take more time to open or access them.

Below you will find a simple procedure how to uncompress ALL the old files after using Windows XP Disk Cleanup:

Goto Start
Goto Run and type cmd to open a command prompt
Type cd \ at the prompt to goto the root directory
Type compact /u /s /a /q /i *.* to uncompress all files in all directories

That's all folks!

Disable "Compress Old Files" during Windows XP Disk Cleanup

2012-03-17T06:08:00.000+07:00

When you select the Disk Cleanup function in the Windows Disk Properties dialog box, you might need to wait longer then you want. Cleaning up your system is normally something you do when you notice your computer is getting slow, so waiting for a cleanup operation is not desired.

The main reason the disk cleanup function in Windows XP takes time is because of the Compress old files function. One of the cleanup options involves a file compression possibility, where Windows checks for the amount of space that can be saved by compressing old files.

If you do not want to wait, or simply never use the compress old files option, you can disable it and speed up the disk cleanup check. Follow the steps below to change the Windows configuration to disable the compress old files function.

The steps below involve changing the Windows registry. Make sure you create a backup of the registry before you make these changes, so you can revert back in case of problems.

From the Start menu, select Run.
In the Run dialog box, type regedit and press Enter.
In the Registry Editor, locate and open the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Explorer\VolumeCaches
In the expanded registry key, select the sub-key called Compress old files.

In the Edit menu, select Delete. Click Yes to confirm the delete operation.
Next, close the Registry Editor and restart Windows.

After this the disk cleanup will no longer check for the extra space gained by compressing old files. If you want to enable the function again, simply restore your registry backup, which will bring back the deleted registry key.

Free Software Collection

2009-10-10T08:00:00.009+07:00

If you just buy a new PC / Laptop with included Windows XP, what softwares will you install later on? Different persons will install different softwares, of course, depending on their preferences. For me, at this time, I will not expend some more money for expensive softwares for home use due to limited budget. I have been testing many free softwares and find that some free softwares can really help you but some can also turn your PC or laptop into "a pain in the ass".

Before adding new softwares on my new PC / Laptop, I will make an image of the disk so that I will easily revert back to the original if I make some mistakes during installation. For disk image burner, you may use bundled softwares from the PC / laptop vendors or Acronis True Image which is not free but I guess it's the best.

Here is the list of the free softwares which I consider the best to date:

I have migrated to avast! which is a very good and quite reliable anti virus software. I found a little problem with AVG. Luckily avast! can take care my notebook more than 1 year now without a single problem at all. avast! is most recommended for your current and new PC or notebook!
CCleaner (System Optimization and Privacy Tool): very handy to clean all your trashes and registry inside Windows and keep it running fast
Adobe Reader (pdf file viewer)
Mozilla Firefox (web browser) with many useful add-ons:

DownThemAll (makes your downloads much easier and manageable especially if interrupted downloads frequently happens)
Flashblock (Block the flash so that webpages show faster, but you can still watch the flash if you want to by clicking on the placeholder)
Ant Video Downloader and Player (recommended) or DownloadHelper. Using one of these addons you can download embedded movies on webpages such as youtube

OpenOffice 3.1 which provides you with similar applications to Microsoft Office Suites
You can disable CD autorun directly from registry setting as follows: My Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Cdrom\AutoRun value should be set to Zero (0).

Or you can follow the "tips" from Microsoft itself as explained here (recommended):

To disable Autorun yourself on operating systems that do not include Gpedit.msc, follow these steps:
- Click Start, click Run, type regedit in the Open box, and then click OK.
- Locate and then click the following entry in the registry: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\Explorer\NoDriveTypeAutorun
- Right-click NoDriveTypeAutoRun, and then click Modify.
- In the Value data box, type 0xFF to disable all types of drives. Or, to selectively disable specific drives, use a different value as described in the "How to selectively disable specific Autorun features" section.
- Click OK, and then exit Registry Editor.
- Restart the computer.
Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (Security Analyzer from Microsoft will check your security settings in your Windows Environment). NOTE: already included in Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 3
Fortunately, I have got very useful bundled softwares from the manufacturer of the laptop and Canon Scanner such as: CyberLink Power2Go (Disk Burner) and ArcSoft PhotoStudio (Scanner and Image Editing)
Windows Live Messenger : you can exchange messages with friends using yahoo id also!! So that I disable the original windows messenger. Moreover you can make phone calls to other live / hotmail users around the globe! NOTE: It's a good freeware indeed but I heard the security is not good enough. I am in search of new one similar to this and comparing which ones is the best --- if there is any :-) If you still want to use it as in my case, I only install 2 components of it, ie: Windows Live Messenger and Sign-in Assistant
Comodo Firewall Pro with Defense+: a very good freeware firewall to prevent your system from intrusion and other exploits using holes in TCP/IP ports. Recommended for new clean install system.
Windows Live Writer: helps you in publishing your post onto your blog.

One more thing, I also install Linux Mint 4.0 Daryna and use its bootloader to choose between Windows XP or Linux OS at startup. Both have run smoothly for around 1 year. It suits for Desktop PC or Laptop. But for server you may choose others. I never install Linux for server yet but it says that Fedora is one of the choices. Linux Mint is within top 10 best hit ranking at DistroWatch. Beside its beautiful appearances, I prefer Linux Mint because it uses Ubuntu repositories which allow you to install and manage free softwares inside Linux from the repositories easily. Linux Mint also improve the manageability of the updates both the system and installed softwares.

From Ubuntu repositories, you can install helpful and fancy softwares. One of them is Pidgin ("...multi-protocol Instant messaging client that allows you to use all of your IM accounts at once). Remember to install firewall for your Linux because there is no firewall by default.

Here are my new favorites and free softwares:

PDFCreator: create pdf file from other types of files by just print them to PDFCreator "printer"
Burnaware Free: to burn your CDs/DVDs. It can make a bootable CD or DVD too.
Easeus Partition Master: hard disk partition and management utility
PowerISO (recommended): a powerful CD / DVD / BD image file processing tool, which allows you to open, extract, burn, create, edit, compress, encrypt, split and convert ISO files, and mount ISO files with internal virtual drive. It can process almost all CD / DVD / BD image files including ISO and BIN files

I welcome any comments, corrections and suggestions to make this free software collection better and better.

Hasta la vista!

AVG8 Personal E-mail Scanner Configuration

2008-12-06T04:13:00.001+07:00

As I have promised in the previous post, I will show you how to configure AVG8 Personal E-mail Scanner. It is very simple indeed. In order to use e-mail scanner of AVG8 Free Edition, you have to setup it properly because it cannot be used out of the box. The e-mail scanner works as a proxy between e-mail client in your PC and e-mail server, for example at your service provider, as depicted below:

In this example we are going to use Google e-mail server, Gmail. There are 2 parts that we have to setup properly, ie: e-mail scanner proxy server (AVG) and e-mail client, that is Outlook Express for our example. I will quote the excerpt from AVG website about the configuration as below:

To set up AVG protection for e-mails on your Gmail account, please follow these steps:

open AVG - menu Tools - Advanced Settings - E-mail Scanner - Servers

go to POP3 - AutoPOP3, and edit this server:

Type of login: Fixed host; fill in your POP3 server and port (pop.gmail.com:995)

Local port: 5100

Connection: SSL (or SSL Default based on your e-mail services provider)

make sure that the server is activated

now go to SMTP - AutoSMTP, and edit the server:

Type of login: Fixed host; fill in your SMTP server and port (smtp.gmail.com:465)

Local port: 5200

Connection: SSL (or SSL Default based on your e-mail services provider)

make sure that the server is activated

This way, the AVG E-mail Scanner is set up to communicate with the Gmail server using SSL encryption (using port 995 for POP3 and port 465 for SMTP) as required by Gmail. You can set up with similar configuration for Yahoo Mail connection but with different local ports (eg: port 10111 for POP3 and port 10026 for SMTP) and server name (in my case ie: pop.mail.yahoo.com.sg and smtp.mail.yahoo.com.sg). I have both Gmail and Yahoo Mail in the PC.

NEWLY REVISED! Then, please configure your e-mail client so that it connects to the AVG e-mail scanner as a proxy instead of the actual e-mail server (Gmail). Connection between e-mail client (ie: Outlook Express) and AVG personal e-mail scanner uses NORMAL POP3 and SMTP connection, and NOT SSL connection. The ports for normal POP3 and SMTP are determined by yourself but I suggest that only unused ports are selected in order not to interfere with other TCP communication. The servers configuration in Outlook Express will be:

POP3

server: 127.0.0.1

port: 5100

user name / password: same as before (i.e. your e-mail username and password)

encryption: NONE (SSL disabled)

SMTP

server: 127.0.0.1

port: 5200

authentication: yes

user name / password: same as before

encryption: NONE (SSL disabled)

Very simple, right? In my case, I set the local port for POP3 to 10110 and for SMTP to 10025 for easy reference only (note port 110 is for normal POP3 and port 25 for normal SMTP). After setting the configuration, all the incoming or outcoming e-mail traffic will be routed to AVG personal e-mail scanner for virus / malware scanning before dispatching them to the intended correct destination. If you have a firewall installed in your system, you can see the mechanism of exchanging the message between those 3 above entities.

That's it for now. Any comments, please welcome...

Mosquito Trap

2008-11-10T09:57:00.000+07:00

Have you been annoyed by mosquitoes? Besides that, mosquitoes can infect you with many kind of diseases. One of them is malaria. For detailed information about mosquito and its diseases, you may visit this site http://www.comosquitocontrol.com/Mosquito_Biology.html

Here is a good short article about this biting insects:

Only the females bite!
Only the female mosquito bites. Male mosquitoes feed primarily on flower nectar, whereas female mosquitoes require a blood meal to provide protein for their eggs. Typically, they consume more than their own body weight in blood. Different species of mosquito prefer to feed at different times of the day or night.

Midges and sandflies, as well as mosquitoes, locate you by sight, smell and by sensing the heat radiating from your body. As well as being able to see you with their large compound eyes, they can smell the carbon dioxide you exhale and the lactic acid in your perspiration. What's more, they detect movement by infra-red radiation. This ability to sense you in three different ways means that mosquitoes can find you from up to 36 metres (120') away.

Methods of mosquito and midge control
The key to mosquito control is adulticiding the pests. This simply means killing the adult insects so that they don't have the opportunity to breed. Your local council helps to do this by using larvicides. Larvicides are simply chemicals that kill an insect's eggs or larvae. This might be effective in the short term, but it fails to eradicate an insect population in the long term. The Mostrap Mosquito Trap breaks the breeding cycle of these insects by eradicating the adult females before they have a chance to lay their eggs. The Mostrap Mosquito Trap not only controls the local insect population but also prevents new populations from establishing. Typically, most mosquitoes and other biting insects do not migrate. 90% live and feed within 100 metres (300') from where they breed (swamp mosquitoes are an exception) and the other 10% are blown in from neighbouring areas by the wind. By attracting and eradicating these renegade mosquitoes, the Mostrap Mosquito Trap prevents new populations establishing. Mosquitoes produce up to 3000 offspring during their six-week lifecycle, so for every mosquito killed it prevents 3000 offspring being born.

Biting insect fact: Carbon dioxide
In recent years, scientists have established that blood-sucking insects are attracted to their blood meal by the smell of carbon dioxide. That is, the exhaled breath of humans and animals. But while they are attracted by short bursts of carbon dioxide, continuously released carbon dioxide has the opposite effect. Carbon dioxide released mainly from the breath but also from the skin serve as a long-range airborne attractant and can be detected by biting insects at distances of up to 36 metres (120').

Biting insect fact: Lactic acid
Lactic acid is produced as a result of vertebrate muscle metabolism, and is released through human and animal perspiration. Mosquitoes have chemoreceptors on their antennae that are stimulated by the scent of acid. And, although humans are unable to smell it, blood-sucking insects find it irresistible.

Biting insect fact: Octenol
Octenol, described as 'cow's breath in a can', has been found to be a remarkable lure for mosquitoes. The discovery was made by accident by scientists in South Africa studying the Tsetse fly. It was later confirmed when a mosquito outbreak in Florida USA was killing cattle. It was found that the lungs of the cattle were filled with mosquitoes, they were inhaling more mosquitoes than air!

Biting insect fact: Heat & Moisture
At close range, skin temperature and moisture serve as attractants. It has been known for many years that females of many species of mosquitoes will be attracted to a source of heat via infra-red radiation, in particular warm moisture

Biting insect fact: Spectrum & Ultraviolet light
Adult insects possess both compound eyes and ocelli. Compound eyes are used for navigation and sensing movement, patterns, contrast and colour, while ocelli are believed to sense light levels. Research has found that the retina of the compound eye in differing species of flying insects is sensitive to differing wavelengths of light.

Biting insect fact: Color
Mosquitoes are attracted to dark colors.

There are many kinds of methods for avoiding and terminating this sucking-blood insects such as:

Mosquito Repellant Incense Coil
Mosquito Aerosol
Mosquito Repellant Electric
Mosquito Repellant Liquid for Skin
Mosquito Repellant Ultrasonic
Mosquito Electric Swatter
Mosquito Electric Killer
Mosquito Trap

I try to find a method of eliminating mosquitoes around my house without using any chemicals effectively. At last I found and selected the latest method, ie: using mosquito trap. I try 2 different brand which are used a similar method though a little bit different in just one piece of extra part that will be explained below. According to the supplier, the first one is made in Korea with a brand name "Black Hole" priced around Rp 550,000 and the second one is made in China with a brand name "Venus" priced around Rp 275,000. But I guess the first one is also from China :-) with doubled price. There is an extra part in the first brand Black Hole, a kind of conical screen made from plastic. This conical plastic screen is to retain trapped mosquitos from escaping the container whenever you turn off the fan. Some of the mosquitoes are killed by the rotating blades of the fan. But most of them are still surviving and trap into the bottom chamber of the container. Be careful not to turn off the fan, because they will fly off escaping the trap as soon as the fan stops. Black Hole has better capability of retaining those strong mosquitoes from escaping due to the extra conical plastic screen.

So how the mosquitos will die if they still survive from the blades of the fan. I do not know exactly but they might be dead after sometimes because of the heat and radiation of 2 small ultraviolet lamps at the upper chamber of the container. One UV lamps only consume around 10W so that the total power consumed by this device are around 30W. You can easily exchange the dead lamp with a new one by opening the lower chamber and reach for the lamp at the upper side. It cost you around Rp 30,000 for each piece of new UV Lamp.

You must maintain this mosquito trap at least once a week depending on how many it traps and kills mosquitoes. The supplier provides you with a small brush to clean out all the dead mosquitoes inside the lower chamber. Before opening up the lower chamber, I usually prepare with a sheet of tissue. Place the tissue from the top of opened lower chamber to prevent remaining strong mosquitos from escaping and then pressing it down to kill them all instantly. Furthermore, you must prepare yourself with very bad smells of the corpses. Once I heard it can also make you sick because they emits diseases.

The most important thing is how to place your trap appropriately in order to catch mosquitoes effectively. You should place it around a rather dark place without windy air. Usually I put it on a small stall or open chair with more or less 1 meter high from the ground. The mosquitoes like dark places and they will flying around the trap due to the attractive UV light and suction of the propelling fan. The brochure inside the product box says that the trap uses a kind of material TiO2 that reacts with UV lights to produce CO2 to attract mosquitoes. But in fact I cannot find such a material inside it. Maybe I miss it or don't know this kind of material at all :-)

Good luck for catching more mosquitoes then!

Ink Refill Kit

2008-10-14T20:03:00.000+07:00

How much money do you spend for ink refill of your personal printer? In my case, it is quite a lot because I use it for my daily work. My printer is Canon PIXMA iP1300. It has 2 catridges in it. One is black color catridge and the other is 3-color catridge. A new original one will cost me around Rp 180,000 for black and Rp 225,000 for color (around USD18 and USD 22.5). They will last for about 1 pack of 500-sheet of A4 papers for draft mode and usually less than 1 pack for standard mode. But you can refill the catridge at refill or recycle center for Rp 30,000 for the black and Rp 50,000 for the color (around USD3 and USD5). In addition to these, you will spend some more time to get the new catridge or find the refill center.

Recenly I decided to install an automatic and continuous ink refill kit on my little printer. I think the kits have been popular for quite sometime but I just decide to use it now :-) Actually there are 2 kits. One for the ink refill and the other is the ink disposal. As you maybe know that, each time the printer finish all the queued jobs, the catridge will go to home positon and dump quite a lot of ink through intenal tubing to its sponge pad at the base. I guess a lot of the ink go wasted with such a mechanism :-) You will hear a lot of noise when the printer goes to its home position and wastes its precious ink.

To install the refill system is a lot more easier than to install the disposal kit. You need good catridges both for black and color because the system relies on the small flexible tubing which acts as a capillary tube, I assume :-) You make a hole on top of black catridge and 3 holes for the color. Insert one end of the tubing into the catridge through the hole by using a kind of special connectors included in the kit. The other ends go to 4 containers of black, cyan, magenta and yellow ink. The containers are already filled in with ink. Paste the containers with double tapes at the left side of the printer.

To install the disposal kit is quite hard. You have to open the upper cover of printer. There are quite many screws you have to dealt with. I will not cover how to do this in this post however :-) After opening the cover, you can reach the holders of the catridges from inside. There are 2 small tubings comes out of the holders each for black and color catridge. The ends of the tubings are left open and downward to the sponge pad which will adsorb the disposed ink everytime the printer does a home movement and cleaning task. Extend these 2 tubing with extra tubing comes with the kit. Join them so that the tubing run out of the printer. Put the other end of the additional tubing into a small transparent container which will accomodate the disposed ink. Paste the containing with double tape and extra tape at the back of the printer.

You must do several deep cleaning process and print trial until you can see that the ink can flow from the ink containers and out into the disposal container. It is enough if you can see that all part of the tubing is fully filled with ink. The appearance of the printer becomes quite ugly but anyway I just care for its performance and saving quite a lot of money. That's it folks.... You can see the pictures for clarity :-)

Automatic Switch Lamp Holder

2008-10-07T16:09:00.000+07:00

Several weeks ago I installed 2 (two) automatic switch lamp holders for the two lamp fittings at the front of my house. They cost me around Rp 25,000 a piece and are made in china (again?). I cannot find the brand on its casing but I know it is quite a good product which I usually get from my local supplier.

Why did I install this kind of stuff? Well, first of all, I like to try new interesting product which may benefit you especially concerning energy saving or the kinds :-) Furthermore, this automatic switch will switch on your bulb automatically if there is no sufficient ambient light, ie: at dusk or night, and it will swicth off your bulb automatically if there is enough ambient light, ie: at dawn or daylight. The photosensor is an LDR (Light Dependent Resistor) or photoresistor with a kind of lense in front of it. The resistance value of LDR decreases with increasing incident light intensity.

Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia about LDR made from cadmium sulfide cells:

"Cadmium sulfide (CdS) cells rely on the material's ability to vary its resistance according to the amount of light striking the cell. The more light that strikes the cell, the lower the resistance. Although not accurate, even a simple CdS cell can have a wide range of resistance from less than 100 Ω in bright light to in excess of 10 MΩ in darkness. Many commercially available CdS cells have a peak sensitivity in the region of 500nm - 600nm (green light). The cells are also capable of reacting to a broad range of frequencies, including infrared (IR), visible light, and ultraviolet (UV). They are often found on street lights as automatic on/off switches. They were once even used in heat-seeking missiles to sense for targets. Standard cadmium based LDRs have a frequency response that varies according to light level, but typical fall times range from 15ms to 25ms and typical rise times range from 50ms to 70ms, so they may be unsuitable for data links and picture scanning. Silicon based photodiodes and phototransistors are orders of magnitude faster. Probably the best known LDR is the ORP12. Smaller cheaper devices are more popular today."

You can leave your house whole day and night, and the automatic switch will take care of your home lightings, when to turn it on or off. The installation is very very simple. It is put between normal lamp fitting and the bulb. For detail, please see the pictures. Screw in the automatic switch on to the fitting till it is fixed. Then screw in the bulb on to the automatic switch lamp fitting. You may change the positon of the clip-on photosensor in order to adjust its sensitivity. In my case, I adjust the photosensor lense to face straight to the front of the house in order to get the exposed dayight from the sun. It can accept power till 60W as stated in the casing but I suggest half of the power rating will be much safer (due to made in china?), ie: 30W. Anyway, any energy saving lamps I use are less than 25W so that it is no problem at all.

So far, it seems the automatic switch works well. And furthermore, it just costs me around USD2.5 for a wonderful switch. I hope it will stand quite a long time before the sensitivity becomes worse. Let's see...

Solar Lantern Lamp

2008-08-27T14:40:00.000+07:00

I got 2 units of solar lantern lamp from a friend to test.They are made in China. One of the lantern is modified so that it has a charging indicator (green led) and low power indicator (red led). I also put a simple charge controller inside it and a brand new Panasonic 6V 4.5AH Sealed Lead Acid Battery. The other lantern is kept original.

I want to compare which one has better performance. Both have been put into test since the beginning of June 2008 and are still working just fine. I charge them whole day from dawn till dusk (effectively from 6:30 till 17:30). Both can light brightly whole night long... (Actually it is not as bright as 18W energy saving fluorescent lamp because one lantern has only 20 bright LEDs powered by less than 2 Wp solar panel, but It is OK for a night lamp though). I am very satisfied by those two and till now it seems there is no different in their performance.By the way, they save my electricity expense because 2 night regular lamps have been replaced by these two amazing simple lantern. But the aesthetic look of those two are not good :-)

You can see the picture of the solar panel and the lantern hanging by cable at the ceiling. It is very simple so that I think I will save some money to buy a bigger solar panel about 200 Wp and then install charge controller plus battery bank with several solar-powered lamps inside the house!! It is good but the price is even better too :-) So guys, wish me luck with the panel then...

By the way, if you are in the US, you may find the selected energy saving products at http://energysaving.shopmarking.com/ powered by Zlio

Free Avast Anti virus 4 Home Edition

2008-08-09T19:11:00.000+07:00

After having a little problem with AVG 8 free edition, I thought it was a good chance for me to try a new free antivirus from ALWIL Software based in Prague, Czech Republic. As a matter of fact, I was very happy with AVG 8 until it displayed a warning box telling me that "avgscanx.exe" had a problem during full scan. The scanning itself was stopped or interrupted and not completed. I could not find why this happened whenever a full scan was executed.

The brand new replacement was Avast Antivirus 4 Home Edition which is free for non commercial and home use only. The package already includes anti-spyware protection and anti-rootkit detection as explained in its home website at http://www.avast.com/. But you have to register and get a licence key in order to use it for one year period. After one year, it will expire and you have to re-register again.

The product has On-Access Scanner with 7 "providers" as follows:

Instant Messaging: "While chat itself would not impose any serious security risks in terms of viruses, today's IM applications are far from being just chatting tools: most of them support more or less sophisticated file sharing methods - which may quite easily lead to virus infections, if not properly monitored."
Internet Mail: It is supposed to scan all incoming and outcoming e-mail when I use Outlook Express as explain in their website, ie: "it is a generic scanner working on the SMTP/POP3/IMAP4/NNTP protocol level. It is capable of protecting any existing e-mail client that uses these protocols". But it seems that I cannot get my Outlook Express working well. You can see from Comodo Firewall Active Connection List depicted below that there are 4 open ports for these feature, ie: 12025 (SMTP), 12110 (POP3), 12119 and 12143. I use Gmail and Yahoo Mail which use SSL with port 465 (SMTP) and 995 (POP3) to connect to their servers. I try to use 12025 and 12110 for connection between Outlook Express and Avast but it fails. So that is the end. I cannot find alternatives. Maybe someone on the net can tell me :-)
Network Shield: "This module provides protection against known Internet worms/attacks. It analyses all network traffic and scans it for malicious contents. It can be viewed as a lightweight firewall (or more precisely, an IDS - Intrusion Detection System)."
P2P Shield: "The P2P protection module doesn't need much explanation - on today's P2P networks (such as Kazaa) there are thousands of infected files, and an effective protection is a must."
Standard Shield: "File system protection ensures that no virus will be started on the computer. It offers a wide range of settings, such as the possibility to specify that files will be scanned during copying, or that the scanning will include files with given set of extensions only."
Web Shield: "Web Shield is a unique feature of avast! that enables it to monitor and filter all HTTP traffic coming from the Web sites on the Internet. Since an increasing number of viruses (and other malware, such as adware, spyware and dialers) are being distributed via the World Wide Web, the need for an effective countermeasures has also increased. The Web Shield acts as a transparent HTTP proxy and is compatible with all major web browsers, including Microsoft Internet Explorer, FireFox, Mozilla and Opera." It is good to have this feature but if you set its sensitivity to "high", the performance of web browser will be low. It shows the pages slowly. Therefore I set it to "normal" in order to show web pages faster. All HTTP connections at port 80 are intercepted and scanned by Avast. I still set the proxy setting in Firefox to "No Proxy"and the interception stil works.
(Microsoft) Outlook / Exchange: I turn it off. It only works for Microsoft Outlook (not Outlook Express) and Microsoft Exchange only.

Conclusion: I like all the features available in Avast with some setting adjustment but unfortunately its e-mail scanner cannot work with SSL for Gmail or Yahoo Mail. Therefore I rely completely on Gmail and Yahoo virus scanner to do that (if only the Gmail or Yahoo virus scanner is also active for their POP mail?). Because avast e-mail scanner is useless for me, I would turn it off later.

That's it for now. Please let me know your comments or suggestion to share with us... Thanks!

Free File Explorer for Symbian S60 Phone

2008-07-21T11:00:00.003+07:00

I was trying to find file explorer for Nokia N70 with Symbian series 60 V2 - second ed. feature pack 3 (Symbian OS v8.1) , which would have similar functions to windows explorer in Windows XP. Although N70 came with its default File Manager, I found it less detailed and informative when exploring the files or directories within the phone. Therefore I searched for alternatives to the default and found two at that time, ie: FExplorer and Y-Browser.

Here is an excerpt from Y-Browser download link above about the application:

Y-Browser is a free file manager application designed for S60 3rd edition Symbian smartphones. All testing is done with Nokia S60 devices only, but it should work as well with other manufacturers S60 smartphones.
Currently Y-Browser only supports 3rd edition S60 mobile phones. No plans to support for earlier edition S60 or UIQ mobile phones are planned

I tried to install it to the phone but after using it for a while, I found a little bit problem with it so that I change to FExplorer. I guessed it might be caused by the different version of S60? I felt disappointed that I could not use Y-Browser which had rich and powerful features. Here is the S60 version list:

• S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 - Symbian OS v9.2
• S60 3rd Edition - Symbian OS v9.1
• S60 2nd Edition Feature Pack 3 - Symbian OS v8.1
• S60 2nd Edition Feature Pack 2 - Symbian OS v8.0a
• S60 2nd Edition Feature Pack 1 - Symbian OS v7.0s Enhanced
• S60 2nd Edition - Symbian OS v7.0s
• S60 1st Edition - Symbian OS v6.1

Anyway, my disappointment had been cured after installing FExplorer though it did not have features as rich as Y-Browser's. But it was still powerful for us to sneak around into the phone. I thank Dominique Hugo, the creator of this application, because it helps me to delete unnecessary files or to move files around without the need of PC or notebook. But you must be cautious because you can mess up with system files and make the phone locked without notice :-) I think it is one of the best free applications for S60 out there...

Digital Free Currency: Electronic Money

2008-07-20T22:49:00.003+07:00

I bet you have heard about electronic money or e-currency or digital money. There are many kinds of electronic money in this world. The ones that I address this time are those being used in cyber world. People usually use them as means of payment and income from many HYIP (High Yield Investment Program) "companies". Yes, electronic money or you may call it virtual money is very popular among the HYIPers. I suggest you had better stay away from these so-called "companies", avoid losing your money. Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia:

A High-Yield Investment Program (HYIP) is a type of scam. At one time, it was used to refer to an investment program which may have offered a high return on investment. The term "HYIP" was abused by the operators of scams to camouflage their scams as legitimate investments. Due to this overuse by the operators, HYIP has become synonymous with scam or Ponzi scheme. The usage of the term has evolved to refer to a kind of Ponzi scheme that recruits "investors" through the Internet.

A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that involves promising or paying abnormally high returns ("profits") to investors out of the money paid in by subsequent investors, rather than from net revenues generated by any real business. It is named after Charles Ponzi.

There are about more than 7 types of electronic money out there which may be legitimate or illegitimate as listed below:

Item number 1 to 6 are very famous among the HYIPers or small traders in "forex market". I used e-gold and Liberty Reserve for dealing with Marketiva which is claimed to be "a financial services corporation specialized in providing traders with high quality online trading services" as stated in their website. Recently there are also warnings about Marketiva as a long scam so that I think I will not involve again in such a loose free digital money again (or I go broke due to forex market :-)

What is e-gold? Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia:

e-gold is a digital gold currency operated by Gold & Silver Reserve Inc. under e-gold Ltd., and is a system which allows the instant transfer of gold ownership between users. e-gold Ltd. is incorporated in Nevis, Lesser Antilles but the operations were conducted from Florida. In 2007 the proprietors of the e-gold service were indicted by the US Department of Justice on four counts of violating money laundering regulations

But then I left e-gold because there was problem with e-gold and I have found a likely-legitimate one ie: WebMoney Transfer. Be careful with e-Bullion because I heard they are also facing problem now?

IMHO, I rather choose WebMoney Transfer, or more trusted PayPay which is owned now by eBay and located in the US. WebMoney Transfer seems to be a real and well managed company though it is located in Russia and it offers a good security client interface, ie: WebMoney Keeper Classic and Keeper Light. I choose Keeper Light because it do not require installation onto your computer. What is WebMoney? Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia:

WebMoney is an electronic money and online payment system (transactions are conducted through WebMoney Transfer). WM Transfer Ltd, the owner and administrator of WebMoney Transfer Online Payment System, was founded in 1998 and is a legal corporate entity of Belize, Central America. Originally targeted mainly at Russian clients, it is now used world-wide. The company claims to have more than 4.5 million users.

WebMoney seems a little bit loose in its requirements than PayPal. But if I want a safer and surely legitimate one, I will choose PayPal for all transactions. Also you can use PayPal easily for eBay transactions.

Before you can use e-money, you have to change money from standard currency to digital currency. To do this, you must meet digital currency exchange by transferring your standard money to them and then they will deposit an amount of equivalent to e-money. Here are the list of these exchangers:

I used 2 of them, ie: eForexGold and TukarDuid. The process is quite long for eForexGold because it is out of Indonesia. So that I change the service to TukarDuid which is very fast due to simple and easy communication in the same region.

Recently I came across this site while surfing. The site is selling goods or services which one of the payment terms can be done in e-money. More over the shop is claimed to be located in Indonesia so that it is easier for us who live there to deal with the store. I haven't done any transactions with them yet because I have no more e-money and plan not to deal with such things again :-) So guys, be cautious with the world of capitalism and your own desires!

Save Electricity, Save Your Money

2008-07-20T19:16:00.007+07:00

Oil price goes high up to the sky :-( The bad impact is on the price of electricity. What is your move to tackle this if you want to decrease or at least to prevent the charges from rocketing. One way is to find an alternative energy source such as solar or wind energy. But for average people, we still use the electricity from state-owned company because alternative energy charges us higher cost of investment though in the long run the cost-benefit of it is much lower...

If you are still utilizing electricity from a supplying company, a simple way to save it is that you may replace your normal ballast of fluorescent lamp (which is a bulky and heavy one) with an electronic ballast. For a 40W fluorescent lamp (CFL), the normal ballast itself will consume approximately 40W so that the total power used in this case is about 2 times of the power of fluorescent lamp alone. 50% of the power is wasted as heat in the ballast! What a waste! Therefore if you are using electronic ballast, you will save about 50% of energy. You will also save the earth in the end.

Recently I have tested 2 brand of electronic ballasts which I purchase from a local store. Actually the storekeeper gave me 3 alternatives of brands with their selling price in Indonesian Rupiah as follows:

Philips around Rp 60,000
Elite (made in China) approx Rp 15,000
Oulex (the printed mark says made in Germany but I think it is made in China also) approx Rp 20,000

I do not select Philips because it is more expensive than the others but I indeed know that the quality should be much better. I may try it later.

The result is as follows:

The quality of Elite is lower than Oulex. Its retainer / supporting rings which screwed to the ceiling for clamping and holding the lamp tube, are made from plastic. Whereas the rings from Oulex are made from metal. The casing of Elite is also made from cheap plastic.
The brightness of the lamp if you use Oulex is much better than Elite. I guess the capacity of Oulex is greater than Elite due to the bigger size of unit. Elite unit seems to be made without proper design consideration. Just make for sell.
I haven't got any time to open or investigate the circuitry but I got a good impression on Oulex. The product looks more professional and has good & durable casing. My suggestion: leave Elite and purchase Oulex if you find it in the market

These product may only be available in Indonesia only....

NEW! For those who live in the US, you may visit my other site which displays and sells various energy saving items powered by Zlio at this site: http://energysaving.shopmarking.com/

OK guys, let's save the electricity!

System Crash: Clean Install

2008-07-20T18:23:00.012+07:00

What would you do if your Windows XP system locks up? The problem I had is explained in my "YouSayToo" blog. In my case around a week ago, after trying to find the best solution and saving back up of my data from my notebook Lenovo 3000 Y400 Type 9454-25A to a DVD, I determined to reinstall the whole system from zero (clean install) with the provided original Windows XP Home Edition SP2 and the drivers from Lenovo. I also intend to use its marvelous "One-Key Recovery" to save me from disaster later on. But I do not hope it will happen again :-) The smooth steps in brief are as follows:

Clean install windows by erasing all the existing partition on the hard drive of the notebook may have and assigning it as one big partition on whole hard drive as C:\ . Installing window is quite straightforward. You must make the notebook boot up from your system CD. Just follow the procedure including formatting the partition, filling in some entries and then installing and setting up the system which can be done without your attention or interfering.
After finishing the installation and setup by the robotic acts, you may give your personal touch on some parts of the system. In my case, I disable some services that are not necessary and may make your system less secure, set the environment and look-feel according to my preference plus set the system for best performance option such as disabling CD autorun etc in my case.
Then I install all the drivers for this kind of Lenovo in the right order and right choices as stated in its manual as follows: Chipset Driver 945GM, Graphic Card Discrete NVidia, Sound Card UAA driver firstly and then Audio setup, Foxconn Bluetooth 2.0 Plus EDR/Broadcom 2045 Bluetooth 2.0 USB Device (after enabling it firstly and you must install it by running D:\WinXP\Bluetooth\Setup.exe from driver CD otherwise all the bluetooth drivers are not installed correctly - it means that you cannot install it by just inserting the CD when the device found icon appears or when windows asks you to give the driver after autodetecting), Agere Systems HDA Modem, Energy Cut, LAN Card Realtek RTL8139/810x, Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Net driver using "Intel (NET w3x32) net / Intel (w29n51) net" (also after turning it on - running from driver CD D:\WinXP\Wireless Lan\INTEL\DPInst.exe), Touchpad driver for Discrete Graphic Card, Card Reader RICOH R5C832/843 Flash Media Driver, and the last Easy Button Driver (discrete) for custom buttons on laptop. The process is long and time consumed because you have to restart for each installation. NEWLY REVISED!
Now you can shutdown the complete and clean system. Then turning the notebook ON with "One-Key Recovery" button at exactly the left side of the power button. It will bring you to a custom screen with only 4 choices: make a backup partition image, restoring the whole partition to the last backup, clearing / deleting the saved backup, or exits the screen and brings you to normal boot-up. Please make a backup image so that you can use it if there is a disaster. You can have a clean install system again complete with already all its drivers in just a few minutes without going through step 1-3
My clean system can now be updated to service pack 3 (SP3) and other further updates such as drivers updates for LAN etc. I have to update the system to SP3 because I need WPA2-PSK for relatively securer wireless connection to a wireless router, in this case Linksys WRT54G. I am a bit disappointed with Linksys WRT54G Version 7 because its firewall setting is not clear or strange and not the same as mentioned in the manual (there is no inbound traffic policy). The configuration is a quite tiresome (a fail product?). You had better choose Netgear WGR614 than Linksys WRT54G.
The system needs protection from the beginning. Install a good firewall and anti virus plus anti spyware in order. In my case, I install "Comodo Firewall Pro with Defense+". You may not install the Defense+ so that you use Comodo firewall feature only because the Defense+ is a little bit chatty, many interruptions especially during learning phase. If it is so, you should not select Defense+ at the beginning of setup. I set the firewall mode of network defense to 'safe mode" and proactive defense+ to "clean pc mode". If you want to use this "clean pc mode", you must be sure that your clean install of system is free of malware from the beginning. Setting and tuning it up, then install "AVG 8 Anti Virus + Anti Spyware plus E-Mail Scanner". Setting up e-mail scanner in AVG 8 is a little bit tricky. If you do not set the rules in firewalls and the pop3/smtp server in AVG correctly, the e-mail scanner won't work. AVG acts as a proxy between e-mail clients such as Outlook Express (which I use due to its simplicity) and the pop3/smtp server at gmail or yahoo mail in my case for instance. I will post the procedure if anyone needs it. NEW! I have post the procedure of AVG8 personal e-mail scanner configuration in this blog...
After running both firewall and anti-* smoothly, scanning your entire hard drive and tuning your windows system, you may continue to install other useful software or freeware as I have mentioned in my updated previous post. Firstly I install CCleaner, Mozilla Firefox and Addons including McAfee Siteadvisor, Adobe Reader, OpenOffice and HijackThis. Configure them one by one up to your preference and judgement
Last step is reinstalling my file backups to "My Documents" only so that the files will not be shattered around causing them difficult to find. At this time, you may also install the drivers for external devices that will be attached to the system such as printer, scanner, or Nokia PC Suite etc. You may also install these driver at step 3 above, so that these can be updated too if the new ones available at windowsupdate. Then running HijackThis and looking for funny or suspicious signs. I hope not to see those in future time though :-)

That's it for now. Just a brief one. Later I will post the setting of Comodo Firewall Pro with Defense+ and personal e-mail scanner of AVG 8. Any comments or even critics, please welcome dude!

Free Mobile Chat & Call Client

2008-07-20T18:21:00.008+07:00

Do you like mobile chatting and free calls? Actually there is no free in this world :-) At least you must pay for your GPRS connection. But the rate is much cheaper than ordinary call because it is a data connection which charges each kB of data you send or receive. In Indonesia, it cost you only Rp 1 / kB if using Indosat Mentari GPRS connection, very cheap indeed! I have not used their 3.5G yet because the connection is not good at my place and I think it will cost you more. Or you can enjoy free surfing, free VoIP call and instant messaging if using Axis during promotion at this moment. I have tested 4 client applications for mobile chatting and free calls on my mobile phone ie: Nokia N70 (originally bought as N70-1 type RM-84, product code nr. 0530339, software v5.0638.3.0.1) with Symbian OS v8.1 (Symbian series 60 V2 - second ed. feature pack 3). I have upgraded its firmware to v5.0705.3.0.1 dated 30-01-07 from Nokia website. The mobile client applications can connect you to your friend using instant messaging or VOIP call. It is no charge for VoIP calls between same clients but the charge rates is also cheap if you want to use it for calling ordinary mobile number / fixed phone number around the globe. These applications are as follows:

Fring
YehBA*
mig33
eBuddy NEW!
Coogee which is prematurely dead because I cannot find its website anymore

I have tested all those 4 applications in N70 and find that Fring is the best till now. I have problems or difficulties using YehBA* and mig33. Fring is free (no charge at all as you will not find with agile messenger etc) and the setting is very simple. The VoIP connection is also simple and the quality of the voice is good. I can make calls to a friend in Sydney using Microsoft hotmail / live account only! It means that you and your friends should have accounts at the same provider such as hotmail or yahoo. But so far I just test it with Microsoft hotmail or live account. Just visit Fring website, and click download tab. The site will tell you to follow 3 simple steps. You can also see whether you cell phone is listed among supported ones at fring site. You download the application straightaway from your mobile after Fring sends you a message with a download link to your cell phone. After installing it, please do not forget to register as stated in step 3. New! Fring can accept MSN Messenger, ICQ, SIP (such as Gizmo etc), Skype, Google Talk ID for VOIP communication, and Yahoo or AIM ID for chatting only. Of course, you have to get one at least one account of those IDs to use it with Fring. But according to my experience, it is better just to set Fring only for MSN or Google Talk only (one use only). It is much lighter and faster than to use all IDs in Fring. There is a bit problem with Yahoo because it's too slow or heavy but still you can use Yahoo only for chatting (text based). Therefore, I use MSN only...

NEW! First of all, your phone must be able to connect to internet directly or indirectly, it means that it should have at least GPRS capability for direct connection to internet, or Wi-Fi connectivity which will indirectly relay internet connection to your mobile. If one of the feature is available, you can go to the Fring website, choose download tab, then follow the 3 easy steps there. Choose the brand of your mobile and the device type, which in my case is Nokia brand and N70 device type. Select your country, enter your phone number (with country prefix if required), and fill in your e-mail address, then click join button. Wait till you get an SMS from Fring to your mobile. In your mobile, open the SMS and click on the link referenced by the SMS. Don't forget to activate the internet connection prior to clicking the link in the SMS. It will download the program directly from Fring to your phone through your mobile internet connection. Just follow the instruction then...

Don't forget to read the minimum requirements on the download page. If your mobile is not listed in the selection or the requirements is not met, you'd better not to continue the installation procedure. When installing the program to your phone from Fring website through internet connection, the phone will pop up some messages for information or warning such as certificate, security etc. Just follow them, because you know that you download a valid program from a valid site. If you need other person who knows better about mobile phone, it will be safer to do so because it can lock the phone if it is not done appropriately. Anyway, it is simple indeed and I have no difficulty to follow the steps as instructed at the website. Then you can have free voip call to other part of the world...

One more thing... Before installing and activating the Fring, you got to have one account whether from Windows Live (or hotmail), Gmail, Skype, etc. Use one account only so that it won't bog down your phone. I suggest hotmail because I have proved it my own. Fill in your hotmail account onto Fring's e-mail address entry as described previously. Register also that account to Fring when setting the application after downloading and installing into the phone.

That's is for now and enjoy the application... Feedback is welcomed always

Wireless Router for Home Networking

2008-07-20T18:19:00.012+07:00

Do you want to make your own hotspot? Many hotspot areas using Wi-Fi appear recently in public places to offer people easy access to the Internet. New laptops and desktop PCs are equipped with Wi-Fi so that they can connect to each others or to the Internet. Even now some cell phones are also embedded with Wi-Fi. These cell phones can connect to other devices using its Wi-Fi interface besides already available bluetooth interface and USB connection. I haven't tested any cell phone with Wi-Fi yet but I wish I could buy Nokia N95 or Nokia E90 which has complete features than other cell phones including Wi-Fi connection. You may go to this website http://www.gsmarena.com/search.php3 for comparison, selection or browsing cell phones with Wi-Fi. If you own a laptop or PC with Wi-Fi connection, it is very convenient to provide it with Internet access via Wi-Fi especially at home or SOHO. Ethernet cable for LAN connection may be used for better security but I prefer Wi-Fi due to simplicity and convenience.

For installing my own hotspot, I propose 2 different units of affordable wireless router for home networking with price range around Rp 500,000 from 2 different brands ie: Netgear WGR614 and Linksys WRT54G. Both have strength and weakness as I mention below:

I guess the signal quality of Linksys WRT54G is better than Netgear WGR614 because Linksys has 2 antennas to handle fading caused by multipath propagation, especially for house with many wall partitions
The setup interface in Netgear is far better than Linksys due to simplicity, intuitiveness, and manageability. For instance, it is a bit difficult to setup firewall inside Linksys, whereas in Netgear you can open or block any ports very easily. You can also make restrictions and select other setting much simpler in Netgear without complicated ways

For ease of use, you may choose Netgear but for location with many wall partitions I think Linksys is better. At present, I install Linksys WRT54G as my home hotspot controller. The unit runs smoothly after tuning it up for around 1 month. It is not easy... Some links that may be helpful to those who want to setup their own wireless router at home:

NEW! In order to use WPA2-PSK for better security, you have to update Windows XP to Service Pack 3. Without it, you can only use WEP which is not as secure as WPA2.

I will show you my settings if I have more spare time to write the articles in later postings. For now on, good luck with your tweaking!

Cheap Mobile Tariff in Indonesia

2008-07-20T18:17:00.011+07:00

For you guys who live in Indonesia especially Jakarta and Java Island, which mobile service providers do you choose? Nowadays, It seems that average people use more than 1 provider, not for luxury but to save some money, due to expensive mobile service charges, especially at this time when the petrol price goes high up. It also depends on the activities you have using those services. I use mobile services (I prefer prepaid service than the postpaid one due to nature of mobile service "business" here so that I can change to other operator if it fails to keep the same service level) so that it will be easier for someone or clients to contact me. It is also convenient to bring along cell phones with you in case you need to contact someone or your clients in the middle of nowhere :-) I do not use it for long-range dating or surfing the Internet. I use it for voice telecommunication, frequently to different operators.

UPDATED! Mentari is not cheap anymore...

Tujuan		Tarif (Rupiah)
		23.00 - 04.59	05.00 - 16.59	17.00 - 22.59
Panggilan
Lokal	Semua Operator	5/detik	10/detik	20/detik
SLJJ	Semua Operator	5/detik	20/detik
SMS
Semua Operator		99
Int'l		500

I have been testing the service of different kinds of providers. In the first years of testing, there were not many choices. I had swung from one provider to the others till I fixed to one provider, Indosat Mentari prepaid GSM. It becomes better now due to the lowest cost (I guess for the time being - policies are frequently changed - promo time only?) to call any other operators, anywhere in Indonesia. It only charges you Rp 5 each time unit in second so that the cost is Rp 300 a minute. The other strong side: the quality of the signal is good wherever you use it around Indonesia. But the weak side is that you can only use this scheme from 23:00 till 17:00 for local calls and from 23:00 till 11:00 for long-distance calls. NEW! The rule has been changed recently :-) the cheap rate for long-distance calls are valid only from 23:00 till 05:00 which is practically useless for me because I or the one who will be called, cannot be awake till very late at night just to use that cheap call anyway. Rule changing is part of the marketing gimmick of many similar mobile service provider here...

To cover this weakness, you may add another new provider: "3" Three from Hutchison. "3" charges the second lowest cost for calling any other operators anytime, ie: Rp 399 each time unit in minute. At the beginning, the scheme is valid for either local or long-distance call but recently I notice that it is only valid for local calls as described in "3" website. NEW! The rule has been changed for long-distance call. They charge Rp 1000 each time unit in minute. One apparent weakness of this operator is the coverage of their service. There are blank spots inside shopping malls and at some areas. For the time being, their service can only be enjoyed in Java and Bali.

How about CDMA - fixed wireless providers? For me, the term "fixed wireless" is an oxymoron. Basically there is no much different in technology usage in both CDMA and GSM, ie: for telecommunication in voice or data. I guess the price policies make this happened. Or other politics? :-) At this time, Telkom Flexi Trendy prepaid CDMA is my choice due to its lower rates for calling locally to fixed phones, ie: Rp 250 each time unit in minute. Unfortunately the quality of the signal is not good at my place and there are many dropped calls during conversation if the handset is moved inside a building. You may consider to swing to Esia prepaid CDMA because the rate for local calls to fixed phone (PSTN - Public Service Telephone Network) is the same as Flexi Trendy. I heard from my friend that their wifone local call charge is cheaper than Telkom but you may not want to use it because wifone is not as convenient as common cell phone handsets. You may use it at home / office as substitute for fixed phone line from Telkom. I never heard whether the wifone can be used for fax though. NEW! But according to my experience, it is sometimes hard to contact an Esia phone number from other operators. Also it seems that the charging time unit is faster than normal so that I feel that my deposit value drains quickly compared to Flexi if you call a fixed phone...

For me, I will not use some providers because I have tested them 2 or 3 times and their scheme keeps on changing weirdly which may misguide you if you do not study their terms carefully. I do not know why they keep on doing that, because I think their policies may drive the old and new customers away. The other bad weakness is that their call center doesn't handle the complaints properly.

NEW! There is a good news about a new fixed wireless product, ie: "hepi" which is owned by Mobile 8. This operator also runs a CDMA mobile service "Fren" that has the same tariff scheme as the GSM operators have. I cannot find the tariff scheme for "hepi" yet from their website but the advertising says that the charge for calling to fixed phone is only Rp 200 which is cheaper than Flexi or Esia. I guess the tariff may be altered later according to the company's policy as usual :-)

There is also another CDMA operator running a similar scheme to "Fren" which can be considered as having "cheap" tariff with simple scheme because it doesn't differentiate between local and non-local call. Below you can see this "Smart" Telecom tariff:

That's it for now. Any comments, please welcome...