Windows 7: The Windows 98 of Vista
Windows 95 was an exciting time for computers. We finally got rid of the Windows 3.1 method of running a clunky visiual interface on top of DOS and things were good. The problem was compatibility. There were issues with legacy software and device drivers. The difference was Windows 95 was SO much better than 3.1 people delt with it. When Windows 98 came out all of the bugs were worked out already, so if it worked in 95, it worked in 98. Software and devices were now compatible.
Fast forward 10 years and Windows Vista is released and the press destroyed it. Everyones printers broke, software didn't work, User Account Control (UAC) would always popup and harass you that your programs aren't trustworthy. Years after it's release people were still afraid to upgrade to it even if they haven't tried it. A year after it's release most of the issues had been worked out as long as you upgraded all of your software.
On October 22nd, Windows 7 will be released officially. What's the difference between Vista and 7? Polish. Windows 7 has no dramatic new features compared to Vista but it's polished. It's faster, thinner and most importantly in the last 3 years all of the software and devices have been designed with Vista in mind.
Should I upgrade?
The upgrade price for a home user is $119. If you are running Vista you most likely won't notice any big changes worth the price investment. If you are running XP, than it may be worth it for a fresh install or you may be in the market for a new computer.
If you are a buying a new computer, get Windows 7. There is no need to fear it and when I sit an XP computer it feels broken, old and slow.
Microsoft Security Essentials
It was only a matter of time before Microsoft would make it's own security product to fight against the Apple marketing ploy that PC's have too many viruses. While there are plenty of solutions out there, they all stink.
Microsoft Security Essentials is now available for free. It's Windows Defender just as a virus scanner. I've jumped on the no need for anti-virus solution since reading Jeff Atwood's article about the performance hit of using anti-virus software. Yes, there is a noticeable difference in performance if you uninstall your antivirus software. This may be an option for tech people that can avoid most viruses, but I still needed something to recommend to family and friends.
There were 2 solutions before this:
- Paid Software - Regular users tend not to renew this and become annoyed with the software so they just click to get rid of every message that pops up. They also try to upsell you to their premium security solutions. Symantec/Norton and McAffee fall into this category.
- Free Software - These will nag you to upgrade you to the paid solution, show you ad's for other products or just feel clunky to use. AVG and Avast are the best options if you went this direction.
Microsoft Security Essentials
I installed Microsoft Security Essentials and it was relatively painless. The interface is simple and just takes care of the basics, which is all most people want. I will recommend this to anyone going forward since it's free and while it hasn't proven itself at detecting viruses, it's probably just as good as the other options.
What's great for me is I no longer will get that call complaining about computer problems and see someone stopped paying for their virus protection months ago. Also, if you are tech savvy, you can turn off the real-time scanner to get back performance, while still letting it do weekly scan just in case.
Making Your Passwords More Secure
If you are like me, you are constantly creating new accounts online. You've probably done one of the following to try to remember your passwords:
- Use the same password everywhere.
- Have a handful of passwords that you use based on how much you trust your site. Ex: One for your bank accounts, one for your ecommerce account and one throw away for random accounts.
- You have a method to create semi-unique passwords based off each site.
With these methods, you run into several issues. What happens when you need to update a password? What if one is compromised? I was frustrated with these systems and started searching for a better solution.
I stumbled upon Joel's Password Management Scheme and decided to implement it. I did switch the application to one that works better for multiple computers. Here's how it works:
- Download and Install KeePass Password Safe
- Create a database, set a master password and start creating keys with unique passwords for each web site you use.
- If you use multiple computers, use Dropbox and save your password database file in your Dropbox. This means each time you save your database it will be synced to your Dropbox and all your computers. When you save, you can merge the changes as well so you don't have to worry about overwriting your changes.
- If you aren't using multiple computers and don't want to use Dropbox, make sure you backup your database. See my article on online backup solutions.
This may seem like a lot of work, but once you get use to it's not much harder to use and it is more secure. You also don't need to use the password reminder tool on the sites you visit occasionally.
Photoshop needs LESS Memory
Lately I’ve been running into an issue with Adobe Photoshop giving me an error that it has run out of memory (RAM) and can’t complete the process.
To combat this I made sure that Photoshop was set to use 100% of memory available and it was. Now I started thinking that maybe 3 gigs wasn’t enough memory. Wait, that can’t be right. I started to think something else was wrong, there is no way my process on five 5 MB pictures should eat up 1.5 gigs of memory that PS says it was available to use.
After searching around, I read some suggestions to try reducing the amount of memory you give Photoshop. What? I changed it to 50%, and viola, it worked!
It turns out many of the components of Photoshop, such as Photomerge and Merge to HDR, don’t use the memory that you allocated to Photoshop, but grab their own. This means when you tell Photoshop to take 100%, it takes about 50% of your memory, then between other apps, your OS and other misc. processes you run out of memory for these tools to use.
The lesson of the day is don’t give Photoshop too much memory unless you run into issues. You most likely will be better off giving it less as long as you have a good amount of memory.
Remote Backup: Jungle Disk, Mozy, Syncplicity and Carbonite
I’ve been searching for the perfect remote backup tool for awhile now, but today I decided to try them all, or at least the ones that I’ve considered using. I have automatic backups locally in case of hard drive failure, but I’m just too lazy to burn DVDs or getting an external drive to take off site. Today was the day I was going to find a solution.
Carbonite
Before I started, I thought Carbonite was the solution for me, but for me it was the least appealing. This is really designed for home users that don’t want to worry about the details, just backup all my stuff. The interface is missing a tree structure, so it wasn’t easy to select a directory and unselect sub-directories. It does the job, but doesn’t have a lot of options.
Mozy
Mozy offered something similar to Carbonite, but it has more control over the backup process. It was a little bit harder to use, but definitely more powerful than Carbonite. They also offer a 2 gig backup for free, which is nice if you only want to backup a small amount of data. Overall, Mozy was the second best backup tool I tried.
Syncplicity
Syncplicity isn’t really a backup tool, but more of a way to sync files online and between computers. I think this has a lot of promise and would be great for small offices or if you work with people in different locations. You can easily sync folders between all the computers.
You can access the files through a very nice web interface, but I had problems deleting files which I didn’t want sync’d. It also was always syncing, there was no way to schedule the sync. This means when you open up a huge Photoshop file and hit save it starts backing up even though you may keep making revisions.
Jungle Disk
Jungle Disk was the solution I settled on. It has the most flexibility, yet a very clean and easy to use interface. It also uses Amazon S3 (or Rackspace) to store the data, which I trust more than the other solutions. It offered the best options for encryption, scheduling, revisions, settings to auto-delete old files, email reports and web access. It is also the only solution that works on Windows, Mac and Linux.
You do pay per GB, but for less than 25 GB, it’s cheaper than the other solutions.