Webster's latest from The Oldie

February 2012

It has long been my habit to sneer at electronic books; rather I have banged on about the sanctity of the printed word, the beauty of a well printed book and the satisfaction of casting an eye over one’s own library and finding a book worth a re-read.

So when Amazon offered to lend me their latest electronic book reader (the “Kindle”), I accepted with a curled lip and a mocking laugh, and warned them not to expect too much by way of praise. However...

Click to read more ...

Security software links

In the January 2012 Oldie, I recommended some free methods of protecting your Windows computer; here are the links to the sites I mentioned:

• Microsoft Security Essentials, which runs all the time and protects against most things.  Note - you should not have this and another similar product (such as AVG Free) installed at the same time.  They will argue!
  Click here to download Security Essentials 
• Spybot and Ad-aware – use these to run scans of your system every so often; they will find stuff which you want rid of, and which sneaked in under the radar.  Most of it will be benign, just related to advertising, but it will certainly be slowing you down.  You can install both of them at once without problems.
  Click here to download Spybot
  Click here to download Ad-aware Free version 

I’d be pleased to hear how you get on; email webster@theoldie.co.uk or click here

Another scam warning...

I've written before about the crooks who ring you up and try and give the impression they are from Microsoft, then load foul stuff on your computer and take money.  Click here to read the full details of just such a scam, drawn to my attention by a reader (thanks).

Rule 1: Microsoft will NEVER telephone you out of the blue to "sort out" your computer.  If someone does call making those claims, put the phone down at once and pat yourself on the back.

I've written about scams here and here.

Lock-a-folder - a warning

In the latest edition of The Oldie I recommmended a useful little widget called Lock-a-folder, which is supposed to put passwords on individual foldres.

It's a good idea, but it seems that the latest version (not the one I tested) has some bugs in it, so PLEASE DO NOT TRY IT until I am satisfied that it is corrected.

I will post a note here when the coast is clear.

I'm very sorry if you've been caught out by this - it's very irritating.