Here is January's Apple User Group Presentation.   The entertainment slides have been deleted to conserve space.   If you want the entire presentation, it will be available on the Macs in the lab.

Doug

Here is the newest "That's a Good Question!" presentation including slides on: How to make a panarama, Stopping tracking cookies, SOPA/PIPA news & Megaupload takedown, What's the Best Storage Media, Free Tax software and my Incredimail story.


And lastly, a link to the funny captions slide show: Captions.pptx

Do Not Use Incredimail - Ever!!

I had a task to convert Chef Raymond's NSC work PC from Windows 7 Home Premium (what it came with) to Windows 7 Enterprise so it would be the same as the other PC in the center. For some unknown reason he had been using Incredimail for his email. (An email client is a program running on you computer that manages your email, i.e., send, receive, store, file, store, etc. Other popular email clients are Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Windows Live Mail, and the most popular business choice, Microsoft Outlook.)

I saved all of the Chef's email in a folder, but Incredimail does not have an 'export' function, e.g., once you have your mail 'in' Incredimail, it's hard to get it out. (AOL has the same problem.) The mail format is not recognized by anything else than Incredimail. I found some programs that claimed they could convert them mail to a common format, but $50 to $100 is not what I wanted to spend. Therefore, I decided to install a copy of Incredimail on my PC to try other methods, maybe even just email myself copies to a different email account. *Bad* decision!

So I ran the Incredimail install program. Just a couple of prompts - do I want to change my browser home page to MySearch - NO. Do I want to change my seach engine to MySearch - NO. Do I want the MySearch toolbar - NO. Install. Guess what? The home pages on all *three* of my browsers got changed, IE, Firefox, and Chrome. All *three* had their seach engine changed. And it installed the toolbar. It also installed two addition programs and two icons it didn't even ask about. That alone is enough for me to blacklist any program. But it got worse.

Ran the program. Hmmm, it didn't ask, but it accessed my GMail. Thinking about it now ... it must have also stolen my GMail password as it never asked for it. So I imported Raymond's mail and could read it inside Incredimail. No, can't click and drag. No, can't save email in a separate file. No easy way to get it out. Gave up and put it aside, had to go to work.

Tonight, fired up my copy Outlook to check my email. WTF?  *All* my email in my GMail inbox is *Gone*! All the email in the NSCSeniorSurfers GMail is *Gone*! In fact, in the three Gmail accounts I monitor all the inboxes have been emptied - Incredimail downloaded it and erased them. And, as we now know, once in Incredimail, it never comes out.

So, bottom line Incredimail is worse than AOL. It lies, cheats and steals. A system restore got back most of program settings it screwed with, and thankfully GMail saves everything in a 'All Mail' folder. We didn't lose anything, it's just much harder to find.

Here are links for Bob's computer maintenance class

Reference Links
Backup Programs
Acronis - http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/
Comodo - http://backup.comodo.com/
Carbonite - http://www.carbonite.com/lp/media/leo-laporte.aspx
Synctoy - http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=15155
Scheduling Synctoy: http://www.pchell.com/support/synctoy.shtml

Updating
Windows Update: http://www.update.microsoft.com/
Microsoft Update: http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/
Microsoft Security Essentials: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/products/securityessentials
Adobe Flash Version Check: http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/
Hippo Update Checker: http://www.filehippo.com/updatechecker/
Secunia Personal Software Inspector: http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/personal/
Ninite Software Installer & Updater: http://ninite.com/

File Cleaning
CCleaner File Cleaner (and more): http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner
Steven Gould’s Cleanup!:
http://www.stevengould.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15&Itemid=69
Revo Uninstaller: http://www.revouninstaller.com/revo_uninstaller_free_download.html
Startup Inspector: http://www.windowsstartup.com/
Expert’s HiJackThis: http://free.antivirus.com/hijackthis/

Polishing
AusDefrag: http://www.auslogics.com/en/software/disk-defrag/
Piriform’s Defraggler: http://www.piriform.com/defraggler
IOBit’s Smart Defrag: http://www.iobit.com/iobitsmartdefrag.html
Scareware’: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_security_software
Malware Bytes: http://www.malwarebytes.org/
RAM Tester: http://www.memtest.org/
HD Tester: http://www.hitachigst.com/support/downloads/#DFT

File Sharing Talk - Doug Irish Jan 2012

Our first of the year! Some fun stuff, some simple Q&A, neat videos, and of course, the famous pre-show videos. (Be sure to check out 'Orme the Pig' if you have not seen it before.)