What’s preinstalled on your PC?

Just recently a small storm of outrage erupted when a security expert alleged that Samsung had been installing secret spyware on its laptops to monitor user activity. The expert had scanned for and found what his anti-virus software (erroneously, it should be clearly and distinctly noted) identified as a keylogging application called StarLogger. In fact, it turned out to be language files for the Slovenian language that were falsely identified as the nasty spyware instead. The initial report was updated, and the anti-virus firm involved has apologised (which you can read here: http://sunbeltblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/samsung-laptops-do-not-have-keylogger.html).

OK, so Samsung was entirely innocent in this case, but the strategy that it (and most other consumer computer vendors) employ to pre-install software does still have some downsides and annoyances.  When you buy a new laptop or desktop PC, it’s often got lots of additional  software pre-installed. Most folks would expect an operating system (whether you’re in the Mac or PC camps, or even in certain circumstances Linux), but what else you get beyond that varies a lot from vendor to vendor and even by model. That’s partly determined by the capabilities of the hardware you buy. There’d be little point in putting handwriting recognition software into a laptop that didn’t have a screen capable of pen input, for example, or webcam software onto a machine that didn’t have a webcam.

It’s also determined by sponsorship, deals with differing companies, and whether the application in question is a “full” version or some kind of “lite” or time-limited version. For software that directly accesses the hardware, such as CD/DVD burning, it’s usual to expect you’ll get fully functional software, but the same isn’t true of most office suites or anti-virus packages. When you’re shopping for a new system, take careful note of terms such as “Starter Edition” “Lite” or “Trial”. You may think you’re getting a bargain having a laptop that comes with Microsoft Office, but not if it’s a version that’ll work for only sixty days. Likewise, the AntiVirus screen that pops up the moment you start up the machine for the first time — or even as the system is setting itself up in some cases — will expire quite quickly, requiring additional payment to keep your protection up and running. Most of those applications will nag you incessantly about updating, which can be annoying and distracting, especially if they pop up over work you’re trying to do. Applications that you never use may install themselves to run each time the system starts up, eating up small but significant portions of your system resources as they do so. If they’re applications you use constantly, that’s quite handy as they’ll start up more quickly, but if not, you’re just wasting processing cycles. Certainly don’t make the mistake of letting your AV expire — that way lies actual malware and spyware — but equally it’s worth realising that you can always uninstall all the extra applications and use your own, depending on your tastes, needs and budgets.

What do you think? Do you use all or any of the preinstalled applications on your PC, or uninstall all of them and start with a fresh PC every single time?

Today might be boring, but it’s not the most boring day ever.

One of the things I truly enjoy about having a whole Internet’s worth of data at my
fingertips day and night is the quantity of information it offers up at a second’s notice. Want
to know who won the 1947 Melbourne Cup, but can’t quite place it? It was Hiraji. Can’t
remember the names of The Commodores aside from Lionel Richie? They were Thomas
McClary, Milan Williams, William King, Ronald La Pread and Walter Orange.
Need to know, for reasons that need not be specified, the name of the world’s largest
earthworm? That would be Australia’s own Gippsland Earthworm, but I won’t link to the
video of them you can find on YouTube — you might be eating.

Not all information is created equal, though, and it’s worth keeping in mind the bias
behind anything you read online, not to mention the context it’s written in. For example, I
recently hit an online news story in which April 11, 1954 was stated to be “The most boring
day in history.” For the record, I can’t state that myself one way or the other with much
certainty, as it’s a little bit before my time.

Boring’s an astonishingly subjective term, though. Personally, rather like a somewhat
overused cartoon cat, I’ve always found Mondays somewhat on the plebeian side, but
April 11th, 1947 was a Friday, according to a quick net search. So what makes that
particular day so stupendously stupefying?

The story was seeded by a company called “True Knowledge” (http://blog.trueknowledge.com/2010/11/most-boring-day-in-history.html) as something of a
publicity stunt, with the key criteria being not so much how engaging the day in question
was, but how many events of world significance actually took place. I’m sure if you
happened to be born on April 11th 1954 you probably found it pretty interesting, although
the distance of time may have faded your memories of the day somewhat. Sadly, though,
unless you happen to be Turkish scientist Abdullah Atalar, your birth wasn’t seen by True
Knowledge as being significant enough to be worth noting down. It’s also worth noting
that the tagline of it being “the most boring day in history” is somewhat undermined by
the fact that it only covered days in the 20th Century. Admittedly historical knowledge for
the preceding centuries does get a little thin the further back you poke, but it’s well worth
keeping in mind.

Despite the veneer of objectivity, this is still fairly subjective information; in this case
it’s subjective to what you find engaging. No doubt billions of fascinating things actually
happened on April 11, 1954 if you happened to be there, and many more tedious things
happened last Thursday. Just because you’ve got a wealth of facts at your fingertips
doesn’t make the context of them any less important.

Which Tablet Is Right For Me?

Apple’s iPad made a big splash when it was released earlier in the year, but up until now there hasn’t been a lot of competition in the tablet form factor. With new release products from Samsung and Telstra, though, there is finally a modicum of choice in the Tablet space.

It’s worth knowing what a Tablet can and can’t do before you plunk down your hard earned cash. They’re not exactly notebook replacements, generally being less powerful than the kind of notebook you can get for the same money. At the same time, the touch-specific interfaces they sport can be great for quick work and especially media consumption on the go or comfortably around the home. That being said, let’s take a look at the field of contenders.

Apple iPad

Price: $629-$1049 (depending on memory and 3G capability)

Why you’d want one:

Apple’s Tablet still leads the market in terms of available touch-specific applications, and if you’re already an iPhone owner, your applications can be shifted across at no charge — although some will look rather pixellated if they’ve not been iPad optimised. The 10″ screen is clear and works much better for content creation than the smaller Samsung and Telstra tablets.

Why you wouldn’t:

Apple controls all things “i” branded with an iron fist, and this means certain application categories get knocked back. There’s no direct file system access without specific hacking, and the Windows iTunes client isn’t always the most stable. Unlike the Telstra or Samsung tablets, there’s no inbuilt camera or phone functionality.

Samsung Galaxy Tab

Price: $999 or on contract

Why you’d want one:

Samsung’s Galaxy Tab is smaller than the iPad with a 7″ display screen. It runs Android 2.2, giving it a wealth of applications, has internal cameras and phone capability. The Australian released model will come with Navigon’s GPS software built in, as well as e-reader capabilities and a dedicated application for the Australian newspaper.

Why you wouldn’t:

The outright price is comparatively very high, considering you could buy the 10″ iPad in almost every configuration for the cost of the Galaxy Tab. There should shortly be contract options for the Tab from most carriers, taking some of the sting out of pricing.

Telstra T-Touch Tab

Price: $299

Why you’d want one:

Telstra’s entry level tablet is priced to go, and the price is the key appeal. It’s an Android 2.1 tablet with plenty of Telstra specific applications, inbuilt camera and an excellent inbuilt mobile Foxtel client, although that will cost you extra to access. If you just want a consumption device, it’s adequate.

Why you wouldn’t:

The T-Touch Tab uses a resistive screen that’s much harder to use than the capacitive screens found on the Galaxy Tab or iPad. Any application that requires a lot of touch will bring with it a lot of frustration, marking this out as best used for passive consumption activities, and certainly one we’d suggest you try before you buy. Some users simply cannot get on with resistive screens without the use of a stylus.  Battery life is less than a quarter of the competing pads, and it’s comparatively a little heavy.

Charity Begins Online

Unless you’ve been living under a rock — which could be nice and cool in this weather, but is equally likely to be simply crushing — you’re probably aware that it’s not only November now, but also Movember (http://au.movember.com/). Chances are high that somebody you know — including perhaps your good self — will be growing an upper lip companion and hopefully generating some charitable donations (and as few jibes as possible) along the way.

Movember’s an excellent cause — I’ve grown a Mo’ myself for the past couple of years, but I’m not doing so this year as I reckon I’ve soaked about as many charitable donations out of those I know as it’s possible to do. Instead, I’ll be trying to write a 50,000 word novel as part of NaNoWriMo (www.nanowrimo.org) instead.

I would say that November’s a busy month for this kind of thing, but these days, charity drives run all year round, and especially online. Movember, like many other charitable causes these days, has a significant online presence, and the online world is a big part of the fundraising effort.

As an aside, if you genuinely don’t have anyone you know to sponsor, here’s a chap I know  who’s sacrificing one of the world’s finest goatees to grow a Mo’ all November long. Feel free to throw some cash his way — and remember, anything over $2 is tax deductible: http://au.movember.com/mospace/583604/

Anyway, the online world makes charitable fundraising both very easy, in that the scope of the audience you can attract is as large as you want it to be, potentially up into the billions. At the same time, it’s also significantly harder, as the signal to noise ratio is immense.

Every other worthwhile charity is out there, and on the Web most pages are identical in terms of appeal unless you’re personally associated with the charity or its causes upfront. Movember does well in signing up celebrity endorsements; last year they had Hulk Hogan; this year “Baby” John Burgess (http://johnburgess.com.au/welcome.shtml), but I reckon it’s only going to get harder for worthwhile charities to generate interest. And that’s leaving the whole issue of dodgy charities entirely alone!

Charity, it used to be said, starts at home. I think that’s still true to an extent, but at the same time, I’ve given far more to fundraising efforts online in the past few years than I have to people turning up at my doorstep soliciting for donations. Online is faster, can be more secure (both for collector and donor) and doesn’t involve anyone having to trudge down rainy streets with a bucket full of coins.

Google’s Instant Search Play

Using Google as your search engine has become so accepted that it’s accepted in certain circles as a verb. You don’t search for something, you simply “Google” it – although similar to things like Filofaxes and Kleenex, Google isn’t entirely happy with its trademark becoming a common word. Still, the company can’t be too upset with being seen as the world’s default search engine.

It’s not a spot that can be maintained simply by standing still, however, and recent figures suggest that Microsoft’s Bing search engine is gaining steam. Google’s latest tactic, rolled out recently in Australia is Google “Instant”, a modification to the main site’s search engine that leverages its database of search results to deliver results in real time while you type. Enter “Geeks2”, for example, and it’ll guess that you wanted Geeks2U, delivering that (at the time of writing) as the top result before you actually type the “U”. It’s slick enough technology that in my testing isn’t particularly taxing on the browser, but it’s also worth noting that Google’s limited it in particular ways.

Specifically, some words and phrases are blacklisted from appearing in instant searches, although you can still search for them. A reasonable number relate to what can only be deemed “Adult” search terminology (for those still determined, you can hit enter to actually search for them; they just don’t come up instantly), while others relate to hate speech or other potentially objectionable material.

On one level, there’s no way that some of this material should just pop up into a browser search window, given some of it can be triggered with relatively innocuous phrases. At the same time, it’s also become clear that Google’s filtering even affects the kinds of results you get from instant searches. Hacker title 2600 uncovered a list of the banned words and phrases (here: http://www.2600.com/googleblacklist/ — but be forewarned; it contains many phrases and words which may offend), noting that the instant search results for “murder” and the search results for “murder” when you hit enter were in fact different. At what point does that cross from filtering to censorship?

Google’s filtering the results you may see, so sometimes, rather like instant coffee, the “instant” option might not be exactly to your taste, and more delicate mixing of your search terms might be required.

Beware Of Tech Bargains

I recently flew back from the UK, and as I waited at Heathrow Airport, I looked at the longest queue in the airport. Not for checking in, but for reclaiming VAT (the UK equivalent of GST) on items purchased within the UK. As a foreigner, you’re technically exempt from that particular tax and can claim it back when you leave the country. There was one bloke in line with a 50″ Plasma TV.

Not exactly carry-on material, your average 50″ Plasma TV, and my thoughts quickly turned to the fact that whatever VAT saving he was about to make  once he got to the front of the queue was going to be totally obliterated by excess baggage fees, and then some.

Taxes and duties do add to the prices of the technology goods we buy, but even that extreme example (which most of us wouldn’t follow) is only part of the story. Wandering through the duty free section of Sydney’s International airport on the other end of the flight, I quickly ducked past the perfume and cigarettes (neither is my thing) and had a quick look at the technology and gadgets on offer.

Most technology gear isn’t what you’d commonly call cheap. Often decent value for what you can do with it (needs permitting), but the initial outlay is often quite high. As such, you’d think the removal of taxes should lead to some real bargains.

At least from an initial glance, it isn’t exactly so. Plenty of folks around me were scooping up cigarettes like their lives depended on it (an irony in itself) but the products laid out before me were priced more like they were in a high end department store than the theoretically cheap paradise of duty free. All of them, naturally enough, had huge notices proclaiming exactly how much of a bargain they were.

It’s a pattern that’s not restricted to duty free shopping for technology, however. I’ve lost track of the number of “cheap” printers, music players, notebooks and monitors I’ve seen in any number of ordinary retail outlets that have given me pause for thought on price grounds. Sometimes the “saving” price quoted is the RRP, but it’s an RRP that nobody ever actually pays, because every other retail outlet discounts the same thing at the same rate to get customers in the door. Sometimes it’s because the item in question did sell at the stated RRP twelve months ago when it was still new, but it’s now been superseded by a newer model with better features. Somehow, the stores never make note of that fact.

Does that mean that there’s no such thing as a technology bargain? Not at all. It’s all a question of research and preparation. Most technology purchases aren’t spur of the moment matters, so knowing the real value of a product upfront is key. Price search engines such as StaticICE (www.staticice.com.au) can help with working out a reasonable price bracket for a given product before you shop, as can keeping up with the current status of a given product. If the new model has features you don’t need and the old one is really cheap, that’s the very definition of a bargain. Conversely, if you find you need the new features quickly, it’s no bargain at all.

What can you do with 1TB of data?

Recent weeks have seen some immense shifts in the home broadband space in Australia. It all kicked off when Telstra announced new and surprisingly competitive plans. I say surprisingly simply because, historically speaking, Telstra’s been amongst the last of the ISPs to shift its data offerings forwards, pursuing more of the premium market (through its Next G wireless) or bundled offerings through mobile phones and landlines.

Suddenly, for less than $100, you could get 200GB of data per month, from Telstra. Competing ISPs weren’t happy, not the least because some of these prices were cheaper than they were selling wholesale to other ISPs. Many of them rely on using Telstra’s wholesale services in bulk to make their money, and if consumer rates are cheaper than wholesale rates they can’t do that.

While that plays out in the legal sphere, the other ISPs haven’t been sitting still. A week after Telstra dropped its pricing bombshell, Internode answered with plans offering 240GB.  A week later iiNet announced plans with a total of 1TB (1,000GB) per month download plans. Within hours, Primus was offering 1.1TB plans, and TPG now offers a 1TB plan as well.

Storage is cheaper than it’s ever been, but it’s a fair guess that many readers won’t have that much storage space in their entire PC. So, if relatively few users have 1Tb per month to spare, is there actually value in these plans?

To an extent – and it’s even a legal extent –  yes, there can be. The ISPs in question aren’t banking on every user on a 1TB plan using the whole 1TB per month. Like many services, they figure most users won’t go through that much, but they’ll get the money either way.

What 1TB does buy you is a fair amount of security in terms of getting shaped. You could download a month’s worth of legal download movies (from, say, iTunes) and still be within your cap. Stream an awful lot of video from those services that the given ISPs don’t already allow under the cap, catching up on as much free-to-air TV as you like.  Obviously there’s a market of people who will never need 1TB, but if you’re sitting on a plan where you consistently get shaped for the last couple of months of your plan, and it’s close to the typical $99 price point that many of these plans go for, there’s a strong argument to say that you could be doing better.

Will Microsoft continue to dominate IT?

Microsoft recently announced that it has sold 175 million copies of its Windows 7 operating
system (http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2010/07/22/
windows-7-momentum-continues-175-million-licenses-sold.aspx). By the time you read
this, quite a few more copies will have shifted hands, as the official company line is that
more than seven copies are being sold per second, each and every day. Given the asking
price of Windows 7, that’s a serious chunk of change, although I guess it’s worth pointing
out that some of those copies will be bundled “OEM” versions that don’t generate quite as
much revenue as a fully boxed store bought copy.
No doubt the bean counters at Microsoft are rubbing together their platinum bars right now
in glee. Windows 7 has been a hugely needed hit for Microsoft after plentiful customer
complaints around Windows Vista and significant reluctance for customers to update from
Windows XP, an operating system that’s rapidly approaching ten years old.

To put that in perspective, if you were still running a ten year old OS when Windows
XP came out, you’d be running Windows 3.0 on the top of DOS. You’d also see a lot
of crashes, spend an awful amount of time mucking around with config.sys files and
wondering why none of your USB peripherals ever worked.

Ten years ago, however, Microsoft’s grip on the IT market, especially in the consumer
space, was pretty much iron-clad. A couple of months after XP hit the market, Apple
released its first iPod models, but they were Mac-only in a market that didn’t much care for
Macs. Ask people ten years ago to Google something, and they’d probably stare at you
blankly. Your TV was smaller and yet weighed a whole lot more than it currently does, and
hanging it on a wall would have involved some kind of industrial winch.

A lot has changed, in other words, and it does bear the question as to what the future
holds for Microsoft. The turbulent IT market is shifting with some users jumping over
to the Mac camp, others adopting the open source credo of Linux and plenty waiting
to see how Google’s Chrome OS pans out. A lot of actual computing is being done on
portable devices such as tablets and smart phones. Even the humble TV incorporates a
lot more in the way of IT. Within ten years a TV without Ethernet connectivity will seem
as technologically antiquated as DOS does today. To put it simply, operating systems
themselves aren’t likely to be the cash cow they have been historically.
Microsoft clearly still has lots of current market clout, not to mention spare cash. I doubt
that I’ll see Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer busking for pennies at my local railway station
any time soon. Still, the company will need more hits along the lines of Windows 7 in order
to simply maintain its market position, let alone expand it.

NBN alternatives

There’s been a lot of recent press surrounding the first folks to be connected to the National Broadband Network. I’m not entirely sure that it can be called “National” when there’s only a few connected users to date, but that’s splitting hairs. Unless you happen to be in just a few spots in Tasmania (or shortly a few more in mainland Australia), the chances are you’re more than a year or two away from being able to access NBN services.

So what do you do in the meantime?

For a (thankfully) decreasing number of users, dialup still remains the only method of internet access. They’re the communities that will benefit most from the NBN. The problem with dialup used to be speed, and it still is, but in a different way than a decade ago. Ten years ago, Dialup was common and web pages and Internet services were formatted with dialup users in mind. Today’s web pages and applications pretty much all presume you’re on some kind of broadband, and dialup won’t cut it for much more than very simple email checking.

What then of broadband? Here you split into several choices of broadband, dictated largely by where you actually are. Satellite broadband services (and associated technologies such as WiMAX) do cover some small (and mostly remote) pockets of Australia. Cable-based Internet speeds have increased in recent years on some services, but they’re still highly limited based on whether or not your home or business was a beneficiary of the cable rollouts of the mid 1990s, and the lack of price competition

For most people, broadband equals ADSL or ADSL2+ if you’re near enough to an ADSL2+ exchange. There’s been little to no movement in value in the ADSL space for years, as most of the hardware is Telstra-owned, even if it’s resold by other vendors. In the ADSL2+ space, there’s more competition, and as such a lot better value on offer — again if you’re near enough to an ADSL2+ exchange.

ADSL/ADSL2+ might be a bit stagnant in terms of the deals getting better, but where there’s a lot of movement in the consumer broadband space currently is mobile broadband. Traditionally, using mobile broadband was a lot like playing Russian Roulette with the contents of your wallet. Unless you were exceptionally careful about how, when and where you connected, your mobile broadband bill could quickly inflate to catastrophic bill shock dimensions.

That’s changed very rapidly in recent months, with a lot of pre-paid options giving you 1GB of data for as little as $15 per month. That kind of data rate makes some low-speed ADSL options a little obsolete, especially when you consider that your mobile broadband is indeed mobile. Coverage can still be an issue depending on where you are, but it’s improving. On a recent road trip between Sydney and Adelaide, I tested a Telstra microSIM in an iPad on the road between Hay and Balranald. For those who haven’t done that particular run, describing it as the middle of nowhere is pretty apt. At the time I was in the car — I should note that I wasn’t driving and web browsing at the same time — there were few other users on that stretch of track. The mobile broadband speeds I got were better than my home ADSL2+ connection.

That’s mildly annoying, and admittedly I’m not going to move to the middle of the Hay plain just in order to get faster broadband. Still, it does point to a genuine improvement in mobile broadband access that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

Technology and water don’t mix — or do they?

Almost everyone over the age of six knows that electronic devices and water aren’t a good combination. There’s the safety aspect of not giving yourself a shock (and only a shock if you’re lucky), not to mention turning your shiny electronic gadgets into soaking wet paperweights, and not much else. Spill a cup of tea into your notebook, drop your iPod into the toilet or have your digital camera fall over the side of the boat, and you can pretty much kiss it goodbye, so the conventional wisdom goes.

Conventional wisdom, though, is changing, albeit slowly. In the notebook space, you might not think of Panasonic as a major notebook player, and with good reason. Head into any retail PC store and you’re less likely to see a Panasonic notebook on the shelves. That’s largely because they’re all out getting wet. Panasonic has for many years led the industry with its Toughbook line of waterproof, shockproof and darned near indestructible notebooks. At least within the context of other notebooks. I’ve seen things done to Toughbooks that would reduce other systems to so much digital dust. Toughbooks have been around for quite some time, but they’ve always been a costly option. Conventional wisdom again says that this kind of rugged costs big money.

Again, though, conventional wisdom seems to be shifting. In recent weeks I’ve hit examples of much more mainstream consumer tech getting the waterproof treatment. As I write this, I’m in the middle of testing Kodak’s PlaySport Zx3 handheld 1080P camcorder. It’s a pocket sized unit that uses flash memory, a category that’s exploded in the last twelve months and in which category leader Flip often draws the most headlines. The Zx3’s claim to fame? It’s waterproof up to 3 metres. I haven’t had the chance — yet — to find three metres of water to test it in, but even a camcorder that can survive a serious storm is something worth considering.

Sony, likewise is getting into the “don’t worry about the water” game with what it’s calling a “Washable Walkman” line. Way back in the dim dark 1980s, I once dropped a Walkman into a bathtub. Thankfully I wasn’t in it at the time, and I was most stunned when it actually worked afterwards. That was a tape based model with minimal electronics, however. I know plenty of people who got their iPods just that bit too damp and had to forego their dose of Wet, Wet, Wet as a result. The “Washable” Walkman doesn’t aspire to the same kinds of depths that Kodak reckon you can drop the Zx3 to, with notes that it shouldn’t be immersed in water, but can be placed under a tap with low to medium flow levels. Again, a perfect companion for the next time you go jogging in the rain. If only to get out of the rain, that is.

Not everyone will want a waterproof gadget. They tend to be a little bulkier and less aesthetically pleasing. Then again, there’s a strong argument that a gadget that still works after a little hydration is a whole lot better than a shiny brick that faints at the first sign of water.

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