Chapel Hill Tech

Another very useful tool for keeping your PC running smoothly is Secunia Personal Software Inspector (PSI).  This software scans your computer for programs with vulnerabilities and installs the patches for you.  Free for personal use too!  Find it at secunia.com

Qualys (one of the leading computer security companies) has a free tool for checking your web browser and associated plugins for vulnerabilities.  Just go to http://browsercheck.qualys.com and scan your computer.  The report will let you know if you have an outdated or insecure version of Java, Flash Player, Adobe Reader, QuickTime, or other web-related program running on your computer.  If you want to make sure you stay current, use a patching tool like Ninite Updater to do the updating for you automatically.

Now that Lion is out, the obvious question that comes to mind is “Should I upgrade?”  The answer (of course) depends.  I’ve been running it for a few days and I’ve been pleased with it so far.  Here are a couple things to consider before upgrading:

• Is your computer new enough to use it?  Lion requires a 64 bit CPU, which means a Core2Duo CPU or newer.  If your computer is 3 years old or less you should be fine.  RAM is your friend – Lion wants 2GB as a minimum.
• Is all of your software compatible?  Check for compatibility with the manufacturer of any programs you can’t live without.  Also make sure you have drivers available for peripherals like scanners.
• Are your backups current?  You can use an external hard drive for Time Machine if you haven’t already set it up.  A disk clone using a utility like Carbon Copy Cloner isn’t a bad idea either – it’ll let you get back to Snow Leopard instantly.
• Do you have time to roll things back if something goes horribly wrong?  Don’t do the upgrade if you’re under a deadline or are busy with other projects.  Wait until your life settles down a little bit before doing a major OS upgrade – if there’s a problem it’ll be much less stressful to fix.

If you have more than one computer at your disposal, choose the one that is less important to upgrade first.  Stagger the installations so that you have time to discover any bugs before you upgrade all of your systems.  I’ve been doing these upgrades for years and they usually go well… but every once in a while they fail miserably (usually when you get a little carried away with system hacks and customizations).  If you need some help getting Lion installed just let me know.

Spotify has recently launched in the United States and I got my account invitation this morning.  With instant access to over 12 million songs, Spotify will change the way you think about music.  Instead of buying albums, you rent free (ad-supported) access to their entire library.  For $5/month you get rid of the ads.  For $10/month you get smartphone and offline access to your music.  Think of Netflix streaming for your music.  I’m very happy with it so far.

Update: after using Spotify for 24 hours and downloading 100 tracks, I am absolutely thrilled with it.  No more iTunes for me!

I frequently get asked how to safely dispose of old computer equipment. There are a few key steps:

1) Retrieve any data you might need.
2) Securely erase the device.
3) Sell, donate or recycle the device.

For step one, plug in the computer and fire it up if it still works. Save the files you need – to an external hard drive, flash drive, cd or copy them over the network. If you have current backups you might be able to skip this step.

For step two, I’d use a bootable CD of Darik’s Boot and Nuke (DBAN) in most cases. For a Mac, the operating system disk can be used to launch the Disk Utility. Be sure to do a multiple pass erase (it will probably take a couple hours).

For step three, sell the computer if it’s worth anything. Craigslist and eBay are typically pretty easy. If the computer is more than 5 years old it’s probably not worth a whole lot so consider giving it away to someone that might want it. If you can’t find someone that wants it, take it to a computer recycler. In Orange county, the landfill and some of the recycling centers take computer equipment.

If you need help with this sort of thing let me know and I’ll get you started.

If you dislike how Gmail clumps messages together, you can disable this feature.  Google refers to this as the “Conversation View” – just look for it under Gmail’s settings and turn it off.

With it disabled, your messages will come in in chronological order instead of being grouped by subject.

It’s always a good idea to verify that your backups are working correctly.  To check on Time Machine backups on the Mac, click on the Time Machine icon in the menu bar as shown.  As long it displays a recent time and date then you should be covered.

My latest experiment is using the QuickBooks Connect service, which is made by Intuit and costs $10/month for one user.  It lets me access all of my customer and company data on the go with their iPhone app and it (supposedly) syncs back seamlessly with my desktop edition of QuickBooks.  So far it looks promising, it’ll be great to create invoices on the job site if it works!

Update: After using this for several weeks I can say it’s definitely a worthwhile investment. There are a few caveats:

1) It ignores your existing invoice numbering scheme and starts over at WEB00001.
2) It can’t handle receiving payments (a Deposit@Mobile feature like USAA has would be a nice plus).
3) The formatting of invoices could be improved.

Eventually I suspect I’ll move to the web version of quickbooks entirely but I think I’ll let it mature a bit first.

“Based upon your examination results, a review of your application and acceptance of your endorsement, the (ISC)2 Board of Directors awarded you with the CISSP designation. By virtue of becoming certified by (ISC)2, you are a member of the (ISC)2 Electorate and have certain voting privileges that are specified in the (ISC)2 Bylaws.”

All those months of hard work have paid off – I am now an official Certified Information Systems Security Professional!