IT'S 2006 BUT IT'S STILL WINDOWS TOO

Clients,

Merry Christmas from the politically incorrect. Here's hoping your Christmas Season is one to be enjoyed rather than endured.

With that in mind I'd like to remind you of BJ's 1st rule of tech support: "Reboot before you call me." 95%+ of the problems on Windows can be cured by a simple Start -> Shutdown -> Restart. It's simple, it's fast and it makes all your holidays happy(ier).

PREPARE FOR A GLUT OF SPAM

October was a record month for spam. And things are only going to get worse. As Christmas approaches, spammers will be sending more and more messages. They'll be pitching everything from iPods to fake Rolexes.

This year, spammers have a new weapon in their arsenal: SpamThru. This Trojan connects an infected computer to a botnet. And the botnet is capable of sending more spam than other botnets. Combined with new ways of tricking spam filters, we're in for a record season.

As you're cleaning out your inbox and spam folder, don't get tempted by any of the offers. Just delete the messages.

(Reposted from Kim Komando)

NEW MICROSOFT CRITICAL UPDATES & IE7

Clients,

Take 'em. Go get 'em!

However, I'll say this about upgrading to IE7, think about it. It's big and 20-30 minutes to finish. If you don't have the time, don't start because you can't quit once it starts.

I've got IE7 on my box. It's good but it's incompatible with a number of things I do. Most, if not all of the special connections I make to routers, etc., won't be anything you experience. And to be honest I've seen a number of web sites that were broken by IE7 get fixed over the last few days. This is simply normal. Early adoptors pay a price, the rest of us cruise along at their expense. If you don't want any bumps, wait until Jan. 2007.

In the mean time, get those updates to keep the bad guys out of your computer.

WINZIP 11 BETA BACKUPS

For some of us, new fancy, makes the coffee as well as does the backup software doesn't help what we are trying to accomplish. I fell into the Beta 11 version by accident when purchasing a license for a client. Normally I ignore betas as I have work to get done and I have enough problems with flakly software without resorting to beta headaches. This turned out to be different.

I didn't send WinZIP a list of wants but someone did:

1) Let me choose folders and files.
2) Let me encrypt the archive.
3) Let me specify a destination and date tag it.
4) Let WinZIP decide what compression algorithm decide which gets the best compression on a file by file basis and don't bother me with the details.
5) Let WinZIP FTP the file to a remote location when done.
6) Let WinZIP email me the compressed or uncompressed log of what happened.

For those of use doing remote, drop dead, when the system and the backs have been destroyed type backups, WOW! Stop the databases, copy them and bring them back on-line. WinZIP backs up the copies and delivers the file to the offsite server and emails you the results good or bad.

At the offsite server, create a script that deletes ZIPs older than your drop-dead retention time of 1 week, 1 month, etc. Viola'.

WINZIP 11 Beta

FREE SECURITY TOOLS

Foundstone, a division of McAfee, has some free downloads for security professionals. They include security assessment utilities, forensic tools and scanning tools. These tools are designed for business networks.

http://www.foundstone.com