One anti virus/spyware program is enough

When it comes to protection, surely you can't have too much, or can you? Well, yes you can actually and some people are reducing the performance of their computers by forcing it to work with layer upon layer of security. On several occasions I've been asked for advice about security and the person has revealed that they are running two or even three anti virus and anti spyware programs, or they run an anti virus program and then not realising that it also checks for spyware too, go and install an anti spyware program too or leave Windows Defender running at the same time. They also install a firewall and have Windows firewall running at the same time too. Two anti virus programs are not better than one and they aren't guaranteed to catch any more viruses. They just get in each others way and limit the performance of the computer.

When you choose an anti virus program, check whether it also scans for spyware too and if it does, don't install any anti spyware software and disable Windows Defender. When you install a firewall, turn off Windows Firewall because it's not needed.

If you're looking to buy anti virus/spyware software and want to know what is best, go to the Virus Bulletin website and check out the history for each vendor (free registration required).

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Is Apple's MacBook Air a netbook?

After saying for a long time that it would never make a netbook computer, Apple, goes and launches one, or has it? Is the new MacBook Air with the 11in screen a netbook or not and how will it affect the existing netbook market? It's debatable whether the Air is a netbook or not and some people regard it as a netbook competitor, but others don't. It is half way between a netbook and a laptop and it has a bigger screen than netbooks, which are usually 10in. However, it is also smaller than a laptop and usually laptops have screens of 13in or more. Most netbooks come with 1Gb of RAM, but the Air has 2Gb and laptops often have 3 or 4Gb. It has an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, which isn't used in other netbooks and the Intel Atom is more common. The MacBook Air is therefore more like an ultra-light, compact and portable laptop.

There are three main selling points for netbooks and the first is that they are true computers. They can run all Windows software and you can attach all manner of peripherals to them, just like a regular computer. You can even format the hard disk drive and intall a different operating system, such as Linux. This is where netbooks differ from the iPad. The iPad isn't a stand-alone computer that can run the software and operating systems used by desktop computers. Of course, netbooks are low powered, so they are slow and you wouldn't want to edit 20 megapixel images in Photoshop, but power aside, they are true computers. The MacBook Air is just as capable of running desktop software as a MacBook and if anything, the Air is more powerful than the current crop of netbooks on the market. The MacBook Air is therefore a winner here.

The second selling point is that Netbooks are small and light. This makes them easy to carry and to store. The Air is slightly bigger than a standard netbook, but not by much and it is incredibly thin. Some netbooks are quite chunky, so here we have a draw and some people might prefer the smaller size of a netbook, but others may like thinness of the Air.

The third selling point of netbooks is their low price. They are the cheapest computers on the market and prices for bottom of the range models are much lower than for laptops. Top of the range netbooks can cost more than bottom of the range laptops and there is some overlap, but not much. If you don't want to spend much money on a computer then a netbook is clearly an option. What about the MacBook Air? It is actually surprisingly cheap for a MacBook and I expected it to cost a lot more, but it is still double the price of netbooks and it obviously won't appeal to the majority of people that buy netbooks.

The price of the MacBook Air puts it in a different market to netbooks and it is also competing with other MacBooks. MacBook and MacBook Air prices are in the same range and so you have a choice of  the light, but low powered MacBook Air, or a bigger and heavier, although far more powerful MacBook for the same price. You would have to really want that portability to choose an Air over a MacBook.

It's interesting to compare a Dell Inspiron M101z with the entry level MacBook Air. They both have 11in screens with a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels, they both have 2Gb of RAM, they both have dual core processors (the Dell's is an AMD). The Dell has a 250Gb traditional hard disk, but the Air has a 64Gb solid state drive. The Dell has an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4225 graphics chipset and the Air has an Nvidia GeForce 320M.

So there's not much difference in the specifications of the two netbook/laptops or whatever you want to call them apart from the extra storage offered by the Dell. However, the price of the Dell is literally half that of the MacBook Air. The Dell is £429 and the MacBook Air is £849 including taxes and delivery. That's a huge price difference.

The MacBook will definitely appeal to people that want a small, light and ultra-portable MacBook, but it won't affect the Windows netbook market much. The price difference is just too great. That Dell is one of the more expensive netbooks and there are much cheaper ones and it was only chosen for this comparison because of the similarity in specifications.

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Cloud based music from Apple?

There have been rumours for some time that Apple is working on a cloud based music service and that this is why it hasn't yet launched a streaming music service. Time is running out for the company and it needs to get this service going as soon as possible. One reason why timing is crucial is because the streaming music service, Spotify, has been doing very well in Europe for a few years now and it is said to be planning to launch in the US by the end of the year. Whether that end-of-year deadline is real or not, Spotify's ambition to launch in the US certainly is and it wants to do it as soon as possible.

The only problem is getting the music industry to agree to allow it. Apple hasn't revealed its plans, but it is fighting to stop Spotify launching and this may be because of the threat to its iTunes store sales, but it could also be because it is planning a similar service of its own. A cloud-based music service could be attractive for music companies, but giving Apple such a dominant position would not.

Apple's dream is for everyone to store their music not on their computers or on CDs, but in the cloud - some internet storage system that looks after everything for you. The advantage to the user is that you would be able to listen to your music on any device anywhere. You could stream it to whatever device you are using straight from the internet, or download and cache a certain amount for offline use when you don't have a Wi-Fi or mobile signal.

This is a great idea in theory, but knowing how much trouble I have with internet connections, it's not something I would want to rely on. The internet is brilliant when it works, but it's availability is patchy and the connection quality is variable. The Wi-Fi at a Starbucks I regularly visit has been down for a week and don't get me started on my home internet, it's been appalling lately.

From the music companies' point of view, a cloud based music service would be good because it would prevent people from pirating music. Copying and sharing music is one of the biggest irritations to the music industry and if everyone's music was stored online it would be difficult, if not impossible, for anyone to share it. Security within the music and internet service would enable it to work on your own devices, but prevent it from working with anyone else's if you tried to pass it on. What's more, it would be very easy for someone to flick a switch and block access to the cloud music service for anyone suspected of file sharing. One mouse click and the pirate's gone.

Of course, this wouldn't stop people from buying CDs, ripping them and sharing the files, so cloud based music would only be attractive to honest people and the pirates would continue as usual. However, music companies might see cloud music as being a step in the right direction.
The downside is that it would give Apple too much control and market share. The company is already the biggest seller of music and it sells more tracks online than music companies sell on CDs. Letting it also run a cloud based music service would give it even more power than it already has and it would take away power from the music companies. This is a bad idea and the music industry needs a competitive market, which weighs in Spotify's favour.

The music industry is stuck between a rock and a hard place as they say. The best solution for everyone would be for the music industry to do a deal with both Apple and Spotify. Competition and freedom of choice is always the best option.

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Poor service from PayPal

On Sunday 3rd October I logged on to PayPal and withdrew some money, transferring it to my bank account. It was a small sum, but I needed the cash. The money was instantly removed from my PayPal account, but it did not appear in my bank account until 7th October. Where was my money between 3rd and 7th October? It wasn't in my PayPal account and it wasn't in my bank account. This would be understandable 20 or 30 years ago when everything was done by hand, but in 2010 all transactions are carried out by computers and are pretty much instantaneous. The only reason I can think of why my money disappears for four days is because PayPal puts a countdown timer on the transaction. It takes the money off you straight away and it goes into PayPal's bank account. The company can then do whatever it likes with it for free, including investing it and earning interest, and then when the countdown timer reaches zero, it carries out the transaction and passes the money on. This is poor service and we shouldn't stand for it. Every time PayPal takes several days to transfer money to your bank account you should write an email and complain.


My bank used to be slow and like PayPal it took several days to transfer money from one account to another. It's sharpened up its act and it now does it in two hours. It's not instantaneous, but two hours is OK. Several days is not! If enough of us complain about this shoddy business practice from PayPal we might get the company to improve its service. Sitting back and accepting it will not. Write that email, after all, it's your money that PayPal is grabbing and the company is preventing you from accessing it. Why should this be allowed?

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Ignore tips that say your Mac doesn't need defragmenting

I was browsing the web today and came across a tip for the Mac: "100 Tips #28: How Do I Defrag My Mac?" The answer was, "You don’t. There’s no need to. The OS X filesystem is designed to look after files properly in the first place, so that’s one thing you don’t have to worry about." Well that's just nonsense and my tip is to ignore tips that tell you you don't need to defragment your Mac's hard disk drive. The Apple Mac's file system is good, but it is not that good and it does not eliminate fragmentation. One of the reasons Macs get slower as they get older is because file fragmentation builds up. If you don't believe me, here's how to check.

Go to Coriolis Systems and download the demo version of iDefrag. It won't defragment your Mac's hard disk drive (unless you buy the full version), but you can use it to analyse the disk and display a report on the fragmentation. I just tried it and here are the results:

As you can see, there's a file with 893 fragments, a couple more with over 500 and so on. Is this utility simply lying and displaying fake messages to get you to buy the software? No, you'll find other utilities if if search for them and they'll tell you the same thing. Files get fragmented on the Mac. It's a fact. Here's another view of the fragmentation analysis:

The strip along the bottom is a graphical display of the files on the disk and the red lines are the fragmented ones. Seems to me that there's quite a lot of fragmentation there.

Fragmented files are slower to access than contiguous files in which the contents are stored as a single block on the disk. That's why a Mac with a heavily fragmented disk runs more slowly than expected. Defragmenting the disk will speed it up.

This is well known of course, and OS X keeps track of key files and tries to prevent them from being fragmented, but it's fighting a losing battle and it can't automatically defrag every file. It just leaves many to get fragmented.

So what can you do? One thing would be to buy a disk defragmenter like iDefrag. There are others, usually as a component of a utility toolkit like Drive Genius. Another way is to use a free program like Carbon Copy Cloner to copy the Mac's disk to a USB disk, then wipe the internal disk and copy the USB disk back to the internal one.

Of course, you could simply ignore fragmentation. Disk drives are getting faster it takes less time to find file fragments than it used to. I remember my first hard disk drive, it was 20Mb. Yes, that's 20 megabytes not gigabytes! I benchmarked the read speed and it was 90k/sec! At that rate it took all day to load a fragmented file!

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What Linux needs to do to be more popular

Linux distros are downloading in the background as I write this for a new group test of the operating system for a mag and one obvious thought is why Linux isn't more popular. Why is it that people choose to spend money on Windows PCs and even more money on Apple Macs when Linux is free and runs well on cheap hardware? There are several reasons and an obvious one is that all PCs are sold with Windows, so people get it by default. However, that can't be the reason why only 1% of PC users choose Linux because PC buyers also get Internet Explorer by default, but large numbers choose to use Firefox and Chrome instead. Here is what Linux needs to do to become more popular.

Firstly, there are far too many versions. Fedora, for example, is available in KDE, Gnome, LXDE, and XFCE desktop variations and in 32-bit and 64-bit forms. That's eight different versions and there are hundreds of different Linux distros, which means there are literally thousands of variations of Linux. There must be more people working on Linux than on Windows and for what? A 1% market share! It doesn't make sense.

The number of Linus distros confuses people who want to try Linux because they don't know which one to choose and there are so many to choose from. It also means that software developers can't support them all and software is often provided in just a handful of formats. If you don't choose one a popular Linux you'll find it hard to install software that isn't provided by the distro through its software package manager. Software written for one distro often doesn't work in another, which is very irritating.

Another irritation is that very few Linux distros can play videos or music, such as online streaming video from YouTube, movies on DVD, MP3 audio files and so on. A small number of Linux distros have got this sorted, such as Ubuntu and those based on it, but with others you have to spend time searching at Google looking for codecs and patches and upgrades and then typing in long and complex commands into the Terminal just to get audio and video working. People don't want this.

To make Linux more popular, the number of distros needs to be cut down to half a dozen. With Gnome and KDE desktops, 32 and 64-bit versions, this is still 24 different versions! However, it would be a big improvement on the current situation. With half a dozen versions, developers can get behind them and provide the support people want. Of course, it's never going to happen and all those other Linux distro creators aren't going to give up what they are doing.

Linux needs to get rid of the Terminal. This would force Linux developers to create software that can be installed, run, and configured with a few simple mouse clicks on buttons, menus and other graphical controls. Many Windows users and Apple Mac have never used the command prompt. It's not necessary, so why can't Linux developers get rid of it too? Of course, there are too many hard core Linux users that would never give it up.

Linux also needs to sort out its video and audio playing. Some have, but too many distros require you to search Google for the obscure commands required just to play your music or watch videos. Ubuntu and others have the problem sorted, so why can't other distros do this too?

Linux is a niche OS used by a few technical people and it will remain so until they start testing it on real people, not Linux experts. People that can point and click on a menu or button, but haven't a clue when it comes to the command line or how to solve video and audio problems.

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Symantec opt-out trialware is a bad idea

Norton AntiVirus 2011 is now available and it looks interesting. For example, it now scans your Facebook page for bad links to dodgy websites that might infect your computer with malware. That could be a useful new feature and there are more. It sounds like it might be worth trying Norton AntiVirus and seeing if it's useful. When you go to download the free trial version though, there is a subtle difference that might put you off trying it and it could make you head for a rival product. Instead of a free trial that you can download and run for 30 days without paying, Symantec now provides the software as 30-day Opt-Out Trialware. What's this?

What it means is that you have to add the product to a shopping cart, go to the checkout and enter your credit card details before you can download the software. After 30 days you will be charged for the software and a one-year subscription to updates... unless you go online to the Symantec website and cancel.

No doubt the company is hoping that you will forget to cancel or that you will leave it too late and miss the deadline. I can see why Symantec would prefer this to the standard download-it-and-use-it-without-paying model, because it might reduce the number of downloads and increase the revenue.

However, it is a risky strategy and having to provide credit card details in order to try some software might put potential purchasers off. Imagine what it would be like if everyone did this. You'd have to supply every man and his dog on the web with your credit card details. I don't know about you, but I try a lot of software and I don't want to be giving out credit card details to all and sundry just to try the software. The more people that capture your credit card details, the more likely it is that the details will get into the wrong hands. What's more, if you try lots of programs you're bound to forget to cancel some on the right date and you'll end up out of pocket.

No, I don't like opt-out trialware. I much prefer the standard 30-day trial and don't mind giving my email address. In fact, registering your free trail often leads to special offers in your inbox giving you special discount offers when the trial has expired. They can be very tempting!

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