texupport » Microsoft Windows

Norton Antivirus 2009 (finally) delivers

admin — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 20:39:00 +0000

I first began using Norton products in the early 90s, with Norton Advanced Utilities version 4.5, and I was a huge fan of their products for a number of years. For well over a decade, though, Symantec’s Norton line of products has been extremely bloated and every one of them that I have run has added a very noticable system lag. I’ve always found it a little ironic since many of their products are supposed to enhance or monitor system performance. For many years, running Norton System Monitor was analagous to adding a 500 pound fuel guage, a 1000 pound spedometer, and a 1500 pound odometer to your car. The last version of NAV that I ran, which was either 2004 or 2005, was about the same. After installing NAV, even doing something as simple as opening notepad was executed with a bit of hesitation and a lot of grinding. (Note: I’ve never had problems with Symantec’s corporate line of products, such as SAV.)

With that said, now that I have a newer notebook, I had to find an Antivirus program which would run on Vista x64. Over the years, Norton, despite its bloated footprint, has consistently scored at or near the top in all of the virus scanner reviews that I’ve read. Since they offer a version which will run on x64, I decided to give it a shot. I’m extremely pleased with my system performance since installing it – which is to say that I don’t notice that it’s there. Without being able to quantify it, I can simply state that there is no noticable difference in overall system performance with NAV 2009 installed or without it.

Since the license allows me to install it on up to three home computers, I installed it on my older XP Pro (32) system, and I’m happy to report that the results are about the same: NAV 2009 is installed but there is no noticable lag.

This is exactly how system utilities such as antivirus software should work. Since the work that we all do is predominantly productive work (right?), then we shouldn’t know any utilities are there until we need them.

Disclaimers:

Yes, I’m aware that there are free versions of Avast and AVG. I’ve used them before on some systems and I’m likely to use them again in the future.
Yes, I’m aware that as of this post, MacOS and Linux are less susceptible to viruses. I also can’t run any of my applications on them so it’s a moot point.

Things that should have been better in Vista

admin — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 02:11:00 +0000

I’ve been working with Vista x64 for about a month now and while my experience has been surprisingly positive, there are a few very simple things that could have and should have been much better.

Since Windows ‘95, Microsoft has earned a lot of bad publicity by making it way too easy for grandma to double click on things like README.txt.vbs when file extensions are hidden (which I believe was the default in 95,98,ME, NT4, 2k, and XP). With security supposedly being a top priority of Vista, this would have been such an easy change to make, but, by default, extensions are still hidden.
There are now dozens of available columns in windows explorer, but there still isn’t a column for “extension.” If I want to sort by extension to find *.PAT in a particular directory, I naturally look for *.PAT, not “AutoCAD Hatch Pattern Definition.”
The smallest unit in Windows Explorer is still a kilobyte. I don’t care how large hard drive capacities are now or how large they will be in the future – there should always be an option to show file sizes in bytes.
It’s incredibly difficult to make “Remember Folder Settings” work. I like details view. For everything. Really. Don’t try to outsmart me. Luckily, this article seems to have a fix which actually works.
Shift-RightClick / “Open Command Window Here” only works in explorer’s right pane.
Windows Explorer’s status bar no longer shows the total size of files in the current folder. It used to in 95,98,ME,NT4,2k and XP. Now it doesn’t. To get the total file size, you have to ctrl-a to select all and then the status bar shows you the cumulative total size of the files.
In previous versions of windows you could log out with just the keyboard. CTRL-ALT-DEL followed by “L” would log you off. Vista has removed this functionality. CTRL-ALT-DEL gets you to a purely point and click page where you must then use your mouse to hit “log off.”

Windows Tip: WindowKey + E starts up Windows Explorer

admin — Fri, 30 May 2008 02:21:00 +0000

After years of observing Windows users, I’ve learned that most users enter windows explorer in the following directory:

c:\documents and settings\username\start menu

This doesn’t seem to be a very good starting place, but from what I’ve seen, most people launch windows explorer by right clicking on the start menu and selecting “explore.” Going back to the advent of Windows ‘95, this method was probably intended to manage the shortcuts in your start menu. Since the explorer shortcut was originally very deep under the start menu, I guess users just found their way to explorer via the start menu editor.

A quicker method of launching Windows explorer in all modern versions of Windows is to hold down the window key and the e key together. It also starts you in the “my documents” folder which is a better starting point.

Vista x64 first impressions

admin — Fri, 30 May 2008 01:59:00 +0000

I recently upgraded to Windows Vista x64 on a Dell M6300 with 4GB of RAM. So far I’ve been blown away by the snappy performance of the system itself and, in particular, all of the Autodesk software that I’ve run on it so far (Civil 3D 2009, AutoCAD 2009, Map 2009).

I’ve heard all of the horror stories of Vista and, yes, I’ve seen the Apple commercials, but since I purchased the system new as a 64 bit workstation, Dell naturally configured it with hardware which is all supported by Vista x64. The only peripheral that I had to worry about was my old Lexmark P4350 printer, which luckily, Lexmark provides a driver for.

I should also point out that I’ve turned off all of the eye candy which I just don’t need. Even in XP, I’ve always been one to turn off window animations, cursor shadows, smooth scrolling, start menu animation, and all of the rest of the fluff that just doesn’t add to productivity. With Vista, I’ve decided to configure it about the same. After just a few days, things are going extremely well.

It’s still way to early to tell, but I think I’m going to be very happy with Vista x64 and this system in general.

I’ll post some benchmarks as soon as I can.

(For the Linux trolls, I should also point out that this system is for business apps that Linux simply won’t run. I like linux. I get it. I know that it’s good and I have ubuntu on my old old laptop. I’ve used it off an on, when I had a specific use for it, since about 1993 when I used slackware on a ‘386. So please don’t try to convince me that any Linux flavor is superior to Vista. For the apps I run, it’s very apparent that Vista x64 was a wise choice).