According to the EFF, CNET has not been living up to its standards with regard to bundled ware:

The blogosphere has been buzzing about revelations that CNET’s Download.com site has been embedding adware into the install process for all kinds of software, including open source software like NMAP. For the unwary, some of the ads could have been read to suggest accepting the advertised service (e.g., the Babylon translation tool bar) was part of the installation process. Users who weren’t paying attention may also have clicked “accept” simply by accident. In either event, after their next restart, they would have been surprised to find their settings had been changed, new tool bars installed, etc. Gordon Lyon, the developer who first called public attention to Download.com’s practices, found a particularly egregious example last night: a bundled ad for “Drop Down Deals,” an app that, once installed, spies on your web traffic and pops up ads when you visit some sites. It’s hard to imagine that many users would choose that app on purpose.

This practice is not only deceptive, it directly contradicts Download.com’s stated policy, which promises users that it has “zero tolerance” for bundled adware and that “when it comes to fighting unwanted adware . . . Download.com has always been in your corner.” Indeed, that promise was one reason users and developers had come to trust Download.com as a reliable source.

CNet was really a pioneer in anti-bundling efforts. I remember when they first announced that they were no longer going to be accepting anything that relied on adware being bundled in. It was a questionable decision because some people (like me) wondered how these freeware providers were going to be able to make money. But it worked out splendidly because the freeware kept on coming and they either made money by having a beefier version that you had to pay for or they didn’t care that they weren’t making money.

I am increasingly loathed to pay for software. It’s not that I can’t afford it. It’s not just that there are free alternatives most of the time (this is necessary, but not sufficient – sometimes the paid stuff is really better). Rather, it’s because I don’t want to have to buy the product several times over. I keep a fleet of four operational desktops and regularly use about four laptops. I seek for a degree of consistency for what’s installed on them. I never really know, when I purchase software, whether I can install it on all my computers or only a limited number. Even when it starts off the first way, sometimes it converts to the latter. Then, further, I don’t know if when I upgrade to Windows Vista or Windows 7 whether it will continue to work or if I will have to buy it all over again.

With free software, I don’t have to worry about it. I can install my free version of TeraCopy anywhere I choose. Or OpenOffice/LibreOffice.

The major exception to all of this is Windows itself. If I ever make the transition to Linux, it’s not because I can’t stand spending $150 on an operating system. Rather, it’s because I can’t stand it when I want to do an F&R, can’t, and have to go to the illegitimate well I should be able to avoid buy paying for the license in the first place.

To bring this back to the subject at hand, what CNet’s policy normalized was making free software less hassletastic than the paid alternative. Even though they seem to be ignoring their policy, they normalized it so that I don’t have to just assume that any free software I get has something bad bundled in with it.

Apparently, someone reached my original Trumanverse map by googling images for “map of the usa with state names”.

Relatedly, I wrote this on LoOG yesterday:

With Wikipedia down, Timothy Lee points out that this could be Wikipedia-alternative Citizendium‘s chance to shine. I tried to use it, but it’s pretty… thin. Personally, I thought that this was Uncyclopedia’s turn at the wheel. They joined the blackout, though. Shame. That would have made for some awesome term papers.

Much of last week was spent on computer stuff. It was a bad week, some of it my own fault and some of it not. The main goals were to (1) assemble and get a new PC up and running and (2) install a new SSD hard drive on one of the laptops. Though assembling a PC can be fraught with hazard and it’s a pain to go through and reinstall everything, it all should have been pretty straightforward. But nothing that was supposed to go right went right.

I expected that I might order a wrong part due to carelessness, or that I might forget to plug something in and freak out when the computer doesn’t boot like it should, but neither of these things happened.

Instead, things started happening everywhere else in the constellation. The laptop that was plugged in to the TV downstairs stopped working. The laptop I assigned to replace it wouldn’t do the one and only thing I really needed it to do: play video. So the laptop I had to use was the one I wanted to put the new hard drive in. So before I could get to that, I had to format and restore the one that wouldn’t play video (the typical things, such as installing new codecs and drivers, didn’t work). Then, after having taken the PC I am replacing apart, one of my other PCs started acting funky and was no longer reliable. That meant placing a last minute order for a new power supply as I had isolated that to be the problem.

Everything with the new PC worked except for the high-falutin’ video card. Except, it being a new PC, I didn’t know the video card was the problem. So I had to run all sorts of tests to isolate that as the problem. In my investigations, I discovered that the video card wouldn’t work through a DVI-VGA adapter, which meant that even if it did work, it wouldn’t do what I needed it to do without a new monitor and KVM switch. But even accounting for that, the card still didn’t work. I called tech support and was on hold for four hours before giving up, leading me to question their “24/7 commitment to customer support.”

Then, the power supply I ordered didn’t fit into the machine I ordered it for. It was the right size, so it wasn’t an obvious mistake on my part. However, to get to the place where there was room for it, I had to go through a place where there wasn’t enough room to get it through. There may be a way to remove one of the offending bars, but it’s going to be a pain.

Note, while video cards and power supplies can be cheap, these weren’t. They cost $110 and $150 respectively. Oh, and I discovered that because of the pure awesomeness of the motherboard I got, having a 4-slot video card wasn’t even necessary because the mobo would let me use the PCIE card in conjunction with the mobo card.

So then on to the laptops. The F&R on the video-problemed laptop went smoothly until I installed a piece of “updater software” that updated everything from “working” to “not working”, forcing me to start again from stratch.

And the new SSD HD didn’t work. It took me several hours to figure that out (to rule out the possibility that the problem could be anything else).

Then, out of nowhere, the initial laptop that failed causing me to play the 3-card monty with my laptops suddenly started working perfectly again. I mean, a working laptop is better than a non-working laptop, but it rendered a lot of what I had been working on unnecessarily.

With the exception of a desktop sitting on the sidelines for lack of a power supply, and the inability to see video on one of my other desktops (I can still access it through Remote Desktop), things are working okay.

It does make me wonder a little – only a little – if there isn’t something to the whole notion of having “a computer” instead of “thirteen computers.”

On the other hand, throughout all of this I never lacked for a computer no matter what I did. Even on the PC downstairs, if I had really been adamant I could have hooked the Pentium Vista computer up and still been able to watch something. So it was and does remain nice that short of a nuclear bomb, I always have something.

Courtesy of my red-headed step-computer:

Issue

NTLDR is Missing.
Related errors

Below are the full error messages that may be seen when the computer is booting.

NTLDR is Missing
Press any key to restart

Boot: Couldn’t find NTLDR
Please insert another disk

NTLDR is missing
Press Ctrl Alt Del to Restart
Causes

Computer is booting from a non-bootable source.
Computer hard disk drive is not properly setup in BIOS.
Corrupt NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM file.
Misconfiguration with the boot.ini file.
Attempting to upgrade from a Windows 95, 98, or ME computer that is using FAT32.
New hard disk drive being added.
Corrupt boot sector / master boot record.
Seriously corrupted version of Windows 2000 or Windows XP.
Loose or Faulty IDE/EIDE hard disk drive cable.
Failing to enable USB keyboard support in the BIOS.

When the computer started malfunctioning, I feared it would be something easy to fix. Which is an odd thing to think, when I have spent twenty hours or so over the last week or two trying to get the computer back up and running. I had to do a complete Format & Restore because under the previous installation, tasks that should take seconds were taking minutes. I had hoped, upon reinstallation of Windows, that the problem would come right back.

Because then I would be done. Done, done, done.

This computer has been a pain since I very first got it. It’s required more attention than all my other computers combined. It had shifted from my second machine to my fourth by the end of its fourth year, passed up by computers five years older than it that had the virtue of actually doing what it was supposed to do (albeit at a considerably slower pace). But it never gave me an excuse to just junk it. Like the slowest kid in the classroom, I simply gave it the most rudimentary assignments with high malfunction thresholds (so if it locked up or something, it wouldn’t be a big deal).

But now it’s dead. Dead, dead, dead.

I mean, I could go through all of the various things, test this and that, and isolate the precise problem. And I confess a little piece of me is tempted. Just to get it back up and running. But perhaps the greatest irony in all of this is that I was going to need to permanently sideline it anyway. I’m building a new computer. The computer to end all computers (until it’s obsolete, of course). And that made for five computers in a KVM switch with only four slots. Once I got Windows reinstalled, the plan was to just stick it in a closet, not touch it again, and hope that it gets demolished in the next move.

In retrospect, I realize that this is kind of irrational. Not the least of which because, by salvaging the parts that excludes the motherboard, I will be saving about $300 on the new computer. And taking the slightest step back, I realize that the motherboard-processor aren’t worth a fifth of that, which is what I would effectively be paying to keep this computer operational, unplugged, sitting in a closet and waiting to die.

Of course, the thought occurs to me that I am 95% sure that the problem is the motherboard. I think the processor is fine. If I were to just replace the motherboard, it would probably be as good as…

Therein my madness lies. Not this time, though.

If I were really sincere, I would be looking at the computers I got in 2001 and junking those rather than going to the trouble of replacing the fan on the one that needs that and the case on the one that needs that.

I’m not quite that sincere at this juncture.

My sister-in-law recently asked me for some advice on a new laptop that she wants to get. I’ve decided to generalize it here for any of you all that are seeking to get a laptop.

As people who know me know, I am a Thinkpad guy. And so, if you’re looking for a cheap PC, I am not your guy. My advice would actually be to buy a used PC of a good make and model (maybe I will do a separate post on that). Most of the advice I give here is not limited to Thinkpads, though. The options on Dell Latitudes E’s are very similar. Notably, LatE’s are a part of Dell’s business line. That is perhaps my first piece of advice: Go with a business-grade laptop, unless you are on a serious budget or want a gaming machine. The main reason being that more care is put into quality of business laptops. Why? Because when they sell to a business, there is a strong likelihood that the customer will be buying another laptop. Customer satisfaction matters more. When selling discount laptops, they know that either (a) the person won’t be in the market for a few years if their laptop lasts, and (b) they’re looking at price-points and are less likely to be loyal customers the way businesses are (or are at least more likely to be.

Outside of Lenovo, I have generally heard good things about Asus, though I have never owned one. Dell’s business lineup is probably okay, as well. I’ve heard good things about Toshiba and Sony, though my experiences with both have been abysmal (quite possibly because I went with the consumer line). I’d be wary about Gateway, too. Truth be told, though, a lot of the laptops are built in the same place with similar or the same parts. The difference is often going to be how much care they put into parts. That’s why I recommend business line machines, where they are likely to put more care. Though I wouldn’t bet my purchase on it, what is true of Dell (which at least used to be notorious for cutting corners) is probably true of HP, Gateway, and the others. Increasingly, Lenovo is releasing cheaper models. Though they may be quite good, I am going to steer you away from that, as well.

Model:

For Thinkpads, I most strongly endorse the T-Series. I’ve never had a bad one, and I’ve owned more than half a dozen. Since they canceled the R-Series, I’ve more or less committed to T’s. The only one I ever had that wasn’t an T or an R was an X60, which quite frankly was a disappointment. The current model for Thinkpad T’s are the T420, T420S, and T520. The T420S are stock machines, meaning that there won’t be much customizing involved. The T420 has a 14″ screen and T520 has a 15″ screen. So the first decision is what size monitor you want. This is, of course, a personal decision. Get what you want.

Processor:

The processor is the main driver of everything. That makes it sound important, and it’s not *unimportant*, but processors have become so good over the years that it’s hard to go wrong. Since the conversion from Windows XP to Windows 7, though, this is less the case than it used to be. Windows 7 requires more in the way of resources and so you might struggle more than with a Windows XP machine with what used to be lower-end processors (excepting netbook processors, which can struggle with anything). This is the only reason I would steer anyone away from an Intel Core i3 processor. As more and more gets installed, it’s likely to struggle more and more.

When it comes to processors, the main thing you want to ask yourself is what you plan to be doing with it. If you’re only going to be using office software, email, and a browser, you don’t need much. The only exception is if you, like me, tend to keep a bazillion browser tabs open at once. Even then, I might suggest focusing more on RAM than on processor power. An i7 processor is still pricey at this point, so I wouldn’t get it unless you’re looking at a really good deal or plan on doing intense tasks. The other reason to consider it is if you want a quad-core processor. Quad-core processors can be useful to prevent overloading the CPU. With more flexibility, they generally keep responding even when your computer is hard at work. With single-core or dual-core processors, I occasionally have to killtask an overloaded Firefox. I’ve never had to do that on my quad-core processor. It’s also generally the case that newer processors will remain useful longer.

But the sweet spot right now is the Core i5, and for most people I think you would be okay going with a lower-end i5. In my experience, it tends to be processor model rather than hard speed that dates a processor. For instance, my lower-end Pentium and upper-end Pentium both became useless at about the same time. Ditto for the Pentium II. Speed is speed, and it’s nice. Pay for it if you want it. But this is a corner you can more easily cut.

Most Thinkpads come with Intel processors, though some will offer AMD. There is nothing wrong with AMD processors. For desktops, I almost always go with AMD. For laptops, however, since IBM and Lenovo have so long relied on Intel, I don’t have much in the way of good advice as to individual processor models. Phenom generally beats Athlon (and is more likely to come with more processors), and, be wary of anything that has a number with an “e” at the end of it (ie Athlon II 245e). AMD used to be a cost-cutting alternative to Intel without sacrificing performance, though more recently Intel has gotten their act together and done a better job of justifying the price premium.

Operating System:

I always go with Windows 7 Professional (and Windows XP Professional before that). However, Windows 7 Home Premium is going to be fine for most people who don’t tinker like I do. The main reason to consider going with Professional is if you want to be able to run programs in XP mode or the Backup and Restore. I’ve personally never used either; I just like to know that they are there.

I would go with Home Premium as a good way to save money by sacrificing features you probably won’t need if you’re not a geek. The Thinkpad T-Series doesn’t offer anything less, but if you do run across something that offers less, don’t do it. Just trust me on that. You never know what these lesser versions can’t do until you need to do it.

If for some bizarre reason you are buying a laptop with Vista on it (first, I would question why I am buying this particular laptop…), go with the 32-bit version. My experiences with the 64-bit version cost me a lot of headaches. With Windows 7, go with the 64-bit version. The transition is going in that general direction and I fear that 32-bit will rot faster. I’ve noticed no difference in terms of reliability. Also, 64-bit allows for more RAM. I rarely see the 32-bit version advertised anymore.

Display Type:

My philosophy is “the higher the resolution the better.” The resolution is the pixel-width by the pixel-height. So 1366×768 means that you have 1366 pixels wide and 768 pixels of height. The main reason that I prefer higher resolutions is for things like spreadsheets and databases. It also allows for you to use splitscreen and more easily look at more windows at once. For instance, right now, on the left side of my monitor is the Lenovo customization page in the browser and I am typing this on the right. You can do this with less resolution, but it’s more cluttered. (Also, if you care, 1600×900 looks nice and in my opinion 1366×768 does not.)

However, this is something that a lot of people don’t care about. Plus, lower-resolution notebook monitors tend to be more reliable. So if you don’t really multitask and want to save a bit of money, here is a place you can do that. Also, while higher resolution looks nicer, it can also be a little harder on the eyes because the text is smaller (albeit much more clear).

I recommend 1600×900 if you have a 14″ monitor. Either 1600×900 or 1920×1080 should be fine for 15″. But if the price differential ($50 between 1366×768 to 1600×900) puts you in a pinch, it’s not hugely important and here is a corner you can feel perfectly okay cutting.

System Graphics:

Unless you intend on doing graphic-intensive stuff, the standard (usually something like “Intel HD Graphics 3000” or will contain the word “Integrated” and NOT the word Discrete) should be fine provided that you get enough RAM (see below). Some models (Thinkpad or not) will only list one or the other.

Total Memory (RAM):

Do not, under any circumstances, go with less than 4GB. Do not. Under any circumstances. I would recommend 6 or 8. My laptop has 6. I intended to upgrade to 8, but got an especially good deal on 6. It’s been acceptable, though I may still upgrade to 8. I think you would be fine with 6.

Memory remains one of the most important and often overlooked aspects of a computer. With too little RAM, it doesn’t matter how fast your processor is because the bottleneck will be swapping information back and forth from the hard drive. Cut corners on the processor (within reason). Cut corners on video, or audio. Do not cut corners on RAM.

The most miserable time using a computer (except when it’s broken) is when it is having to swap data from the memory to the hard drive and when the CPU is overloaded. If you’re buying a new computer, you don’t have to worry about the second part. The more RAM you buy, the less you have to worry about the former.

Pointing device:

A touchpad is a little pad below the keyboard that you drag your finger across or gesture to move the pointer. A trackpoint (also known as an eraserhead or a combo word referencing a part of the female anatomy) is a little stick that points out of the keyboard with a hat that looks like a pencil eraser. Almost all Thinkpads will come with both. Almost all non-Thinkpads will only come with a touchpad.

Hard drive:

Thinkpads generally come with 500GB and that is more than sufficient space. There is also something called a Solid State Drive. These are smaller and more expensive, so why get it? Because it’s faster. When a computer has to move data from the hard drive to the RAM, that immediately becomes the system’s bottleneck. With SSD, the bottleneck just became a lot larger. I won’t say that it makes RAM a non-issue, but it greatly mitigates the effects of RAM overload when it does occur.

Also, having an SSD means that boot-up will be much faster. I upgraded an old, struggling machine with an SSD drive and boot-up went from taking six minutes to taking under sixty seconds.

I love SSDs, but if you have a tight budget, I would go with the standard hard drive for now and just stock up on RAM.

Expansion slots (of the Cardreader variety):

They’re nice to have, but far from a necessity. Thinkpads often come with them standard. Sometimes there is a “smart card reader” option. Ignore it.

Battery:

Whether to upgrade to a 9-cell depends on how often you want to use it without it being plugged in. If you want to be as wireless as possible, get it (I always do). But it’s not a necessity. You can always get a separate 9-cell later when you have more money. It can be helpful to have more than one battery.

One thing to keep in mind: On Thinkpads, at least, 9-cell batteries protrude from the laptop. So it makes it less likely to fit in a tighter carrying case and can be awkward-looking. This never bothered me, but I could see it bothering some people aesthetically.

Bluetooth:

Sometimes they come with it, sometimes they don’t. Honestly, I wouldn’t worry about getting it. If you need bluetooth, you can always buy a dongle later.

Wireless (WiFi) adapter and Mobile Broadband:

Here you can get the standard, as long as it is G-band and N-band. All of the Thinkpad options are (I would suspect the same is true for non-Thinkpads, too). Do not worry about “3G capable” unless you plan on paying a monthly fee for 3G access.

Anything comment with the “coaching” on it will be automatically deleted.

Because I really, really hate coaches.

Okay, not really. We’re just getting nailed with a spammer.

I prefer the drug spammers. It’s easier to blacklist words of obscure drugs that few use than a word that everybody uses.

Anyway, hopefully this will pass soon and we can talk 24/7 about coaching again. Or the spammer is a live person and they will get creative and I’ll have to not announce which words I am blacklisting.

I’m still trying to get a handle on the malware problem my computer picked up during installation. The CPU-hogging has been killed, but there are still other issues. The first problem is that it has its hooks into Internet Explorer and random ads pop up after the computer has not been used for a while. I can work on the computer for several hours, and it’ll be fine, but if I leave it on for an hour, I’ll come up with three porn ads. The second issue is that it has hijacked Google, Bing, and Yahoo. If I do a search, everything will come up normally, but the links themselves will send me to some link aggregator. Fortunately, it seems limited to IE, Chrome, and Firefox, leaving Safari alone, so if I need to do a search, I can. I just have to use a lackluster browser to do it. Even so, anything that gets in the way of googling has proven to be a major pain.

The first thing I did was install Avast Virus Proction, which thus far hasn’t been able to find squat (it didn’t find the CPU hog, hasn’t found any of the other problem). Then I installed Malwarebytes, which is proving similarly ineffective. But one thing they’re both dang good at is blocking one another. Unless I turn one of them off, I get a message every couple of minutes from one informing me that it has blocked something the other was trying to do.

The laptop that my work issued me did not come with enough RAM or hard drive space. The first part was easily-remedied, the second part less so. There was some encryption software installed that made any sort of cloning from small hard drive to large hard drive more trouble than it was worth. So I reinstalled Windows from scratch.

How secure is Windows 7? So secure that I hadn’t even finished installing all of my software before I’d gotten invaded by a host of spyware and adware. Now, generally speaking, adware has to be conspicuous in order to be effective. I get that. The spyware/malware, on the other hand, is completely getting it wrong.

If I am making some sort of spyware, one of my main goals is that it is not discovered. If I make spyware that sucks up 90% of the CPU on a quad-core machine, it’s not going to take people long to either start looking for the problem say “screw it” and reinstall Windows. It makes the computer that they’re trying to gather data from useless. People will be less inclined to use it. With a little bit of discipline, that thing culd have been on my computer for weeks and weeks without my knowing about. The virus scanner didn’t find it. I wouldn’t have known. Instead, I tracked down the file I was looking for and hit “delete” and that was that.

It’s usually the making of a bad movie when the bad guy is so bad that he gets in his own way. Yet, for the spyware industry, it seems to be standard operating procedure.

When it comes to computer performance, as often as not it comes down to bottlenecks. The computer can only move as fast as its weakest point will allow it to.

For a lot of people, the bottleneck is RAM. Their computer is fast enough, but without the memory, it spends all of its time and energy moving data back and forth between the memory and the hard drive rather than using the energy to do the things that you bought the computer for.

I’ve found that most of the time, the bottleneck is RAM. I’ve found that you can breathe new life into computers that are 5, 6, 7, or 8 years old if you just put in enough RAM. Most computers can take 2GB, and most of the time that’s all you need.

That’s been changing lately, however. I’ve started to run into memory logjams even on machines with 2 or more GB of RAM. Even when running Windows XP (with Win7 it’s a bad idea to even try). And unfortunately, upgrading beyond 3GB of memory is hard to do with XP. So the bottleneck becomes the speed of the hard drive that it has to swap data with.

Enter the Solid-State Drive (SSD). The solid state drive is smaller than a regular hard drive, and a lot more expensive. But it’s also super-fast. So even if the computer does have to move data back and forth from the hard drive, it does so lickity-split.

I’d been wanting to try one for a while, but wasn’t sure about where to implement it. Then I realized that my ultra-mobile Thinkpad X60 laptop was starting to simply become unusable. I don’t know what it is about the X60 model in particular, but its performance has simply never lived up to its specs. Hit Coffee friend Holic has said the same about his (indeed, it was what convinced him to become an Applyte*).

Anyhow, I’d read that SSD HDs were good at breathing life into old machines. While this machine wasn’t old, it was mature for its age. So I went and bought one.

The results have been amazing.

I didn’t think I actually cared all that much about boot-up times, but with the SSD HD, a process that used to take 5 minutes now takes one. This is quite handy for an ultra-mobile machine, but it’s something that I could get used to for other computers.

It turns out that slow boot-up times were something I just got used to, but now I am sitting here thinking “You mean it doesn’t have to be that way?” In fact, knowing I can boot the PC up in under a minute would probably make me more likely to keep them off, saving energy.’This makes it good for battery life, too, as before I would often just leave the computer on and close to take it wherever I wanted to know. With this, I just turn it off.

It’s taken one of the least pleasant computers I have and has turned it into one of the most.

Beyond boot-up times, it allows me to open up as many tabs on Firefox as I want without fear of going into swap mode. It used to have to think about it just about every time I wanted to move between any open apps. Now, if it does, it does it so quickly that I don’t notice.

These may sound like small things, but outside of actual malfunction, it doesn’t get much more annoying than waiting through ten minutes of swapping just so that you can get to the point of closing applications in order to free up memory.

So now I am re-evaluating SSD hard drives for all of my computers. The really old ones can’t take them, unfortunately. The really new ones don’t need them. My work laptop (where I am seeking out a HD replacement) needs the space more than the speed. My newest personal laptop.

There is potential for my desktops, though. Especially since I know I shouldn’t be keeping them on as much as I do but want them accessible at any point. With fast boot-up I can keep them off the vast majority of the time because I’m not using them the vast majority of the time. I do keep my main desktop on. But even there it could be worthwhile because it’s a place where 2GB is starting to no longer cut it. I’ve been debating upgrading the RAM. Maybe I’ll upgrade to SSD instead.

Anyhow, if you have an old but not super-old computer that needs some new life smacked into it, I would recommend considering SSD drives. The same is true if you have a laptop that you take a lot of places.

* – It actually started when he was talking up macs about how PCs can just spend forever and ever swapping with the HD for every little thing you do and every time you want to switch apps. I didn’t know what he was talking about. Then, I got this model, which was the last he had used, and I understood what he was talking about.