Category: Tech Stuff

As a quick followup, mysteriously my icon is back. I’m happy ’cause now I can quickly look at it if I think anything odd is happening and try to convince myself that I’m not the victim of a root kit exploit (thanks Sony BMG for putting *THAT* at the forefront of our collective consciousness).

I *did* just apply the latest of Microsoft’s Updates and rebooted. I wonder if that had anything to do with it?

This is a little thing, but recently my Local Area Connection icon (that little icon showing two overlapping computers that each flash depending on whether you’re uploading or downloading information), has stopped showing up in my systray.

Checking the properties for “Local Area Connection” I can see that “Show icon in notification area when connected” is still selected. But I did de-select it, click OK and then come back and re-select that option to ensure that it wasn’t simply a matter of “resetting” it.

Rebooting the machine hasn’t helped either.

With all the talk about “root kit exploits” I’m a little paranoid and I like to be able to see if my computer is talking to the outside world when it’s not running anything that is *supposed* to be doing so.

Window’s XP firewall is enabled, Symantec anti-virus is installed and up-to-date and Windows defender is installed and up-to-date. But, of course, none of these can yet detect root kit exploits so I view the symptom of the disappearing network icon with some concern.

Still looking for a solution…

*Update* Over the Christmas Holidays (December 2006) I replaced the unit that my mother purchased with a WRT54G as well. Her D-Link started exhibiting the same symptoms as did mine and was eventually too much of a nuisance to ignore. These things are junk. I highly recommend against buying them.

I’m back using my WRT54G router. The D-Link DI-524 started locking up on me more and more often. I couldn’t even get it to reset using the reset button (hold for 30 seconds and all that).

I’m pretty disappointed with the wireless routers I’ve seen in general. The technology is here to do WEP and MAC Filtering and not broadcasting SSID, but don’t try to do all that at once!

To be fair I think the D-Link was probably just a crap unit. It’s seizures were directly related to whenever I would bittorrent something for a long period of time (maybe overheated?). Anyway, in getting more and more creative in ways to “unseize” it, I eventually just physically broke the unit (the antenna isn’t as strong as I thought it was…).

A friend was asking recently about broadband alternatives as well as wireless. I thought I’d post our exchange so that other folks can see and compare with their own experiences. Or better yet maybe this can help clarify the alternatives for somebody.

Can you tell me what you know about the best DSL and wireless internet companies? I am thinking about making the leap to DSL and wireless and I know you have probably done tons of research.

My neighbor went with EarthLink for both and they seem pretty happy. Right now they are running a special for 19.99 per month for 6 months and then it changes to 39.99 per month. This includes start up fees (what ever that is) and equipment.

Which company did you go with and are you happy?

It really depends what you want to do with your Internet connection whether you go for DSL or cable for your broadband.

If you think you’ll enter the VOIP realm, then give the DSL a miss and go for Cable. You cannot unbundled your phone service from DSL so you are stuck with “ma bell” phone service. VOIP is VERY inexpensive. I’ve been using it for a little over a year now and have been impressed.

$39.99/mo. sounds like a VERY good deal. You’ll want to ensure that’s not one of their “Lite” products. If you can get 3 MBPS download at that price you’re doing well. I personally would not settle for any less than that. My current cable offering is 6 MBPS download and 384 KBPS upload which is ample for my current needs.

I have other friends who are using Earthlink and they’re quite happy with it too.

I originally started with Bell South directly and was pretty satisfied with them. I believe they actually run the DSL on behalf of Earthlink.

I’m never totally happy with any of these companies. They always do something that I find bothersome. But it’s a matter of getting as many positive features and as few negatives as you want. I found uptime with Bellsouth and Comcast to be roughly the same. There are always hiccoughs with both systems – it seems my comcast modem needs to be reset more often than my DSL needed. But it’s twice as fast. The DSL folks occasionally reinitialize their modem which would cause my home network to fail until I set it back to what I wanted. I think they’ve stopped that foolishness now however.

To help you gauge, I’m currently paying $63 / month for Comcast’s Internet which is more expensive than the DSL, but when you factor in the savings on Telephone and Long Distance charges, the Comcast service with Vonage VOIP comes out something like $15 – $25 less per month. It’s ironic that I get my TV from Satellite and my phone via my cable company. Oh, and my company pays for the broadband connection so it’s a theoretical cost for me now..

Feel free to shoot me an email or give me a call if you have other questions. Nothing about any of this is black or white. No matter what you do, make sure you put a router between your computer and your modem. If you invest in a wireless router now (about $80 realistically) you’ll be primed for wireless access inside your house. But the router provides an important safeguard between you and the Internet cloud.

Thanks for your response. You are always on top of the newest technology. It is all too confusing to me…

I looked over EarthLink’s home page and they are saying the $19.95/mo for 6 months ($40/mo afterwards) service is for download speeds “up to” 3.0 Mbps. I currently have dial up and it is painfully slow. Not sure what my modem speed is though… Does the “up to” 3.0 Mbps download speed sound like it would seldom be at 3.0 Mbps?

What makes the internet wireless? Is it the router and/or special software or other hardware?

I still like the Satellite for my TV. I don’t want to go back to cable. Would you recommend DirectTV over DishNetwork if I went with EarthLink or does it matter? I didn’t know if they were affiliated.

I currently have phone service with BellSouth so would that service continue unchanged if I went with EarthLink?

You mentioned that your $62/mo for Comcast’s Internet is a savings when factoring in telephone and long distance. Are you saying your Comcast Internet provides you your wireless internet service and phone (local and long distance)? And, do you have some unlimited long distance plan as well?

Thanks again for your input..

Yes “Up To” is what they usually promise. For DSL I found that to be pretty optimistic. I typically would get 2.3-2.5 Mbps whereas with the cable I’m much closer to the “Up To” 6 at about 5.8 – 6.0 Mbps. Moving from dial-up to DSL I doubt you’ll be disappointed with 2.x Mbps. at $20 / month I’d say “go for it”.

Unless you opt to get your home network set up by Earthlink too (I believe you’ll find that’s an option on some other part of the website. Probably will run you about $10/month more) you’ll just get a DSL modem. Make sure you get the one that has an Ethernet output, not the USB output. If your computer is at all recent you’ll already have an ethernet card in it. And if not you can pick one up for under $20. This will give you the most flexibility going forward.

To have either wireless and/or more than one computer share your internet connection, you need a router. Even if you only have one computer hard-wired to the internet I still highly recommend you get a router anyway since all routers now come with a built-in firewall which provides excellent protection from the Internet.
I picked up a d-link 524 wireless router recently from Amazon.com for less than $50 and I’m very happy with it.

Of course you want to have a current antivirus too to round out your suite of protection. If you don’t want to drop the $40 or so that Norton’s Anti-Virus will run you, there is an excellent free antivirus package available out there (probably it’s appended a tag to the bottom of this email) called AVG. I use it on my backup server and have just switched to it from Symantec (even though I’ve paid for the Norton AV license) because Symantec is such a resource hog it was slowing down my laptop.

Yes, even though your DSL service will actually be physically provided by Bell South, your existing phone bill will remain unchanged and you will receive a separate bill from Earthlink for your DSL service.

I use Vonage for my VOIP phone service. I can see where Comcast is offering their own (more expensive) option now too. For $27 a month Vonage includes unlimited calls to anywhere in the US and Canada as well as amazingly low overseas rates (which I never need to use). Also it includes voicemail, conference calling, call waiting, caller ID and “simulring” (you can give it up to 5 phone numbers to ring i.e. your cell phones, and the first one to pick up “wins” and receives the call). You can configure it to send you an email when you receive a voicemail (you can even tell it to send you the voicemail as a WAV file if you want). It’s an excellent value. And get this, if you take your Vonage router with you, you can phone people from anyplace that has a high speed internet connection (i.e. many hotels nowadays). If you were in London, England you could phone folks using that system as if you were local the the US.

For the same services above for my Bell South phone (not including voicemail and the long distance) I was being charged over $40. It was really a no-brainer for me to move to Comcast & Vonage.

Good luck figuring out how you’re going to go. Earthlink sounds like a great deal unless you want to do VOIP, in which case you need to do the math. You may find it’s still worthwhile to get Earthlink and then eat the cost of basic phone service from Bell South and port your existing phone number over to Vonage. But YMMV.

Has anybody else out there noticed that Vonage’s voicemail notification (stuttered dial tone, LED indicator on your phone – if you have such) has been a little erratic as of late?

For the past few weeks I’ve found that, as often as not, the indicators are not clearing properly after I’ve retrieved and deleted my voicemails. I would have to go into my voicemail box again, go to the deleted messages and re-delete them before the indicators would clear.

And, beginning about a week ago the notifications have been not activating for new messages. I received one yesterday morning and another message this morning and for neither one did the indicators activate.

I’m wondering if there is something awry with my setup or if this is something that other Vonage users are experiencing as well.

This is more a note to myself as it’s well documented here on the web.

It seems I SNAFUed myself by replacing the default “404 – page not found” with a customized version that prompted folks to search my site specifically for whatever it was they looking for.

After doing this, the tool I use to upload pictures “en masse” to my website – Gallery Remote – didn’t work properly.

To correct this, two changes needed to be implemented:

1) I needed to create a “fake” gallery_remote2.php file in my gallery directory containing the following code –

< ?php header("HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found"); exit; ?>

2) I needed to add the following line to the GalleryRemote.properties file (located in the “program files/gallery remote” subfolder) –

forceGalleryVersion.n=2

Instead of just renewing my subscription to Symantec’s Antivirus each year I actually go out and purchase the latest version instead.

I usually get the 3-pack which runs about $65 from Amazon and is scads cheaper than purchasing the subscription renewals from Symantec at $30 each. Their site is pretty hard to navigate but I’m pretty sure that they have no pricing at all for renewing subscriptions to the 3 pack anyway.

But availing myself of the latest antivirus engine seems to be a sound investment.

Of course, with each new version, there are always new challenges and features. Some features are more desirable than others.

For instance, the install and configuration of Antivirus 2006 is the smoothest so far.

But included with the install is something called “Norton Protection Center”. The idea is nice – a one stop shop to verify that your AV definitions are up to date, your firewall is working properly and several other OS and Miscellaneous items are set properly.
The problem comes from the fact that Symantec’s version of “set properly” and mine don’t quite mesh up. i.e. I don’t like my Windows updates to automatically install on my machine. I have them automatically download and then I manually initiate the install at a time of my choosing.
This simply isn’t acceptable to the Norton Protection Center and it keeps insisting my machine is at risk until I agree to let things be handled automatically.
Simple enough, agree to disagree and all that, you can simply uncheck the option to have Norton stop inspecting the Windows Updates parameter. The problem is… it doesn’t work. Also, you can’t get the warnings to stop. That little icon is sitting there with its little yield sign in my system tray begging me to pay attention to it. I loath useless warnings. I don’t want anything flashing at me or trying to get my attention unless it’s a real issue.
So, recognizing that there is a bug in the product, I initiated a chat with Symantec. The tech I got was typically unable to grasp why I would not want to simply do what the product demanded. Although at one point he started to describe how to disable the Norton Protection Center (I’d suggested that it really wasn’t why I had purchased the product anyway and I’m just as happy without it) but I think somebody at his end must have slapped his wrist as he backtracked and said that he recommended I leave the defective feature running.

To make a long story short. When you get fed-up with the well-intentioned but poorly implemented warnings. Simply head over to your services (My Computer > Manage > Services) and disable the “Norton Protection Center” service (fortunately they didn’t disguise it) and then stop the service if it’s already running. Voila, annoying icon gone.

A little ‘nit I have with their threat warning screens is that they do not let you see any details about the local threat as you could with previous versions. When Radmin (see below) was found on my machine the only information I could find about the supposed threat was generic information about the product, not where it was physically located on my system (filepath). When I restored the file it didn’t know where it belonged so the restore failed.

Another warning, apparently with the February 15th virus definitions Symantec got REALLY aggressive against my favorite remote computer software RADMIN and damaged the product on two of my machines. I reinstalled and all was well. But be warned if you use this product or any other remote computer product not manufactured by Symantec.

Since I initially allowed the PST file on my new tablet to be created from scratch rather than simply copying over the exising PST file from my main machine, I did not have any of the custom views available to me. Rather than recreate them I found this helpful article that walked me through the process.

This worked just fine for me with the caveat that I really needed to shut down Outlook after having imported the new views. Each time I tried to access them, Outlook would slow to a crawl and a Windows explorer window would open showing the folder where my ImportedViews.pst file was sitting. For good measure I deleted that PST as well while I had Outlook shut down. After opening all was well.

As with most things in Outlook, life would be much simpler if I were in an Exchange server environment, but at least there seem to be workarounds for us non-office folks.