chengrob

The Need for Speed

chengrob / August 19, 2006

Hello, my name’s Rob and I’m a speedaholic. I am addicted to bandwith. The fatter and faster my pipe to the internet, the better I feel about myself. Me and my internet connection are inextricably linked at the hip for better and worse. As soon as my bandwidth provider has a higher speed, I am always among the first to purchase the faster service. Right now, I have 8000 kbps in the United States and 2000 kbps in Brazil. But the future is even more exciting! One day soon we will be downloading at 50,000 kbps.

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G-Boomers

chengrob / July 15, 2006

I was born in 1959, which puts me at the tail end of a trend called the Baby Boom. I’m a Baby Boomer. I remember long hair, Jimi Hendrix, LSD, bell bottoms, and Kent State as a rebellious youth. Maturity and greed replaced our wayward spirit; and with it came junk bonds, the personal computer, compact discs, IRA’s and the internet. We, Baby Boomers, have impacted, changed, and molded American society like no other generation before or after. Until now.

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Vista – RAM Guzzler

chengrob / June 19, 2006

In 1985, I remember fondly opening the box to my first PC. It had 768K of memory, a 6 Mhz processor, and a 10 MB hard drive. It was a state of the art, technological marvel. I wrote my master’s thesis in a program called EZ Writer, and I planned my life and balanced my books in Lotus 123. It did everything I wanted it and more. I never thought it was slow, except when I saved to the 5.25 inch floppy.

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Dirty Spyware Tricks

chengrob / June 15, 2006

If you had a complete knowledge of what most spyware was doing to your system, you would never agree to install it. So how does it end up installed on so many PCs? Here are some of the dirty tricks that spyware uses to worm its way onto your system and stay there. (Not all spyware uses every technique.)

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My Outlook for Outlook

chengrob / May 15, 2006

My friend Jeanne called in a panic the other day. Apparently, she had lost all her email stored in Microsoft Outlook. She had spent the last week on the phone with Microsoft and doing Google searches to find some glimmer of hope that she could recover her last five years of email. She was clearly distraught, and I did my best to help her and calm her down. But inside I was livid. It was deja vu because the exact same thing had happened to me 3 years ago.

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Fixing Security in Windows

chengrob / April 16, 2006

It’s no secret that Windows has security holes so large you can drive a truck through them. My last article analyzed the difficulty Microsoft faces with Vista in winning acceptance of an improved security model. But this of course begs the question, what can Microsoft do to make a more secure computing environment for us all? Even if Microsoft is one of the most profitable companies run by the richest man in the world, I hope they can take a little constructive criticism.

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Microsoft’s Windows Vista Dilemma

chengrob / March 19, 2006

By and large we live in a world of standards. Wouldn’t it be a drag if we had to buy a new faucet each time we bought a new garden hose? Or a new electric outlet whenever we bought a new refrigerator? We live in a world of standards, and this is no more true than in the PC industry.

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Taming the Wild West

chengrob / January 14, 2006

Does everyone remember a few years ago the wacko guy that was blowing up mailboxes in the midwest? What I remember most of all is that suddenly everyone was afraid to open their mailboxes. The ramifications were huge. Millions of businesses rely on the US mail to deliver marketing materials, invoices, and other important communications. What would have happened if the US mail became unreliable?

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Sony and Spyware

chengrob / December 15, 2005

When I was going to high school in the late 70’s, required reading for all English students was George Orwell’s 1984. I still remember reading about the overly structured life created by a highly bureaucratic government dubbed Big Brother. The book is essentially an anecdote for many of today’s problems related to governmental power versus the privacy and self determination of citizens such as ourselves.

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FREE Protection vs Paid Protection from Spyware

chengrob / November 19, 2005

There is no doubt that the lines are being drawn for a galactic cyber battle for control over your PC and your desktop. Spyware and adware companies make barrels of money installing their clandestine applications on your PC without your knowledge. Even for an advanced user, typically the most expedient solution is to install an anti spyware product. This article will take an in depth look at the various anti spyware solutions we have seen at PC Pitstop. During this discussion, the reader should refer to our anti spyware graph from our research section.

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