Never, ever, ever, ever rent a computer

Forgive me, had that silly Taylor Swift song in my head wi that headline.  If you immediately know what I am talking about, you have that song in your head as well.  Regardless, never rent a computer.  Besides being a complete and utter rip-off financially, recently we discovered that those companies have been spying on you with that rented computer. The federal government hasn't thought too kindly of this.

Eight firms settled with the Federal Trade Commission this week over charges that they spied on consumers via rented computers.

The FTC contends that the offending organizations used PCs to capture screenshots of confidential personal information, log users' keystrokes, and even take webcam photos of people in their homes, all without notice to or consent from the renters.

This week's settlement bars the charged companies, including Nevada-based design firm DesignerWare, from further illegal spying, activating location-tracking software without consent, and deceptively collecting and disclosing information about consumers, according to the FTC.

My First FBI/Ransomware Virus Case

This afternoon I picked up a laptop that had the much reported FBI/Ransomware virus.  Essentially the virus puts up a bogus FBI page indicating that you have been caught downloading copyrighted material and tries to extort $100 or $200 from you.  I must say that this one is a particularly nasty virus to eradicate.  I really did not want to wipe the whole drive, so on to Google research...   Come to find out the virus disables most malware detectors, leaving you (in this case, me) up a creek.  But along comes RogueKiller!  I found this great piece of malware killer from MajorGeeks.com.  Do not go to the author of the malware's page unless you can read German.  Long story short, this piece of free malware killer is.....killer!  A new add on to my malware kill package.

The Apple Maps App is just awful

After downloading IOS6, I was hopeful for some of the changes that were made.  The map app was not one of them however.  After a week of using it, it is just god-awful.  I hear that Google is prepping the google maps app, that day cannot come fast enough for me.   I use the app extensively for work and the Apple map just stinks.  I must say that Apple is 0 for the last 2 apps for me.  The Podcast app is buggy as heck, not up to the standard that Apple has set, but it's heavenly compared to the Maps app.

Record your own VHS tapes now

This advice is not given because it is so easy to to do now, but because your tapes are disintegrating.  The typical shelf life of a VHS tape is not that long, especially if they have not been stored under good conditions.  The quality will only get worse, so do it now.  This advice is given because I am in the middle of a conversion and I come to find out that my custom software from ION (probalby the most popular maker of USB turntables and VCR's) does not work in Windows 7, at least not without serious bugs.  As an alternative try Windows Movie Maker, it works just as well as anything on the market and it is free.  Keep in mind, you have to download Microsoft's Windows Essentials to get it and all the other programs that you will probably not use ( you can deselect programs in the package).  A second option is NCH's Golden Video which is also free and easy to use.

Back up your online files locally with Goodsync

With so many cloud storage services available to you, you don’t ever truly need to pay for online storage. When your 2GB DropBox runs out, you can always get 5 free gigs from Amazon. When that runs out, why not open up a SkyDrive account for an additional 7GB? The only problem with this plan is that your files get spread out over different services, which can make it harder to find things, and can also increase your exposure to risk of losing access to files. If you use 3 online services, there’s three times the chance that some of your files will be inaccessible at any given time, due to service outage. A new product called Goodsync can help mitigate these problems.  Check out the full article under What's New for more.

Solid State or Traditional Hard Drive - Your choice

As the price of SSD hard drives have crashed down to a reasonable price, the question now is, "Should I get one?"  For me, the choice is simple, yes!  You can get SSD drives for around $100 for a 128 GB model.  In case you are wondering if that is big enough, the answer is yes.  With cloud services everywhere, you have no need to store so much on your hard drive.  In fact, for most of you, you don't anyway.  Check out the article under What's New for a comprehensive review of the two types of drives and you can decide for yourself.