This update gives tips about several different
subjects that may be of interest, namely:
1. Windows
XP Service Pack 3 (SP3),
2. The importance of high quality media for burning CDs
and
DVDs,
3. Recommended printers,
4. Recommended hard drives, and
5. The usefulness of a program called RoboForm for remembering passords
and login ids.
Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP)
Service Pack 3 (SP3) for Windows XP was released by Microsoft
in
May of this year. It's been 5 years since XP SP2 was released, and SP3
will be the last service pack for XP.
I'm writing about SP3 because it
will eventually arrive on your system as an automatic update. For the
most part, SP3
is a roll-up of the almost 200 updates issued after the release of SP2,
plus a few extra things. Therefore, since most of you have
had
automatic updates enabled, you'll already have had most of these
updates
automatically installed, and SP3 shouldn't represent too much new.
Furthermore, I've manually installed SP3 on almost all systems
I've
worked on since SP3 was released in May, so you lucky folks don't need
to worry about this issue.
For the rest of you, I've had very few problems with these SP3
installations. However, I've been diligent in making sure
that
all
antispyware/adware, anti-virus, etc. programs were disabled or
uninstalled prior to applying SP3. (I did have a potentially serious
problem with SP3 when a program called Webroot Spysweeper was running.
BTW, I do not recommend Webroot
Spysweeper.)
I've also seen a serious, but repairable, glitch that occurs when SP3
is
applied to virgin SP2 systems, something that won't generally be an
issue for existing systems.
My research also shows a very serious problem with SP3 when applied to
those HP (and maybe some ASUS) desktops that use the AMD
processor: SP3 completely crashes such systems. The AMD related problem
isn't a problem with the AMD processor or even
SP3, but is a bug in the XP image HP and some others have released for
the AMD processor. (Essentially, these vendors incorrectly include
Intel driver information for AMD processors, and these drivers
get
activated when SP3 is installed.) There is also a
minor problem when SP3 is applied to Microsoft's XP Media Center
Edition 2005.
At any rate, SP3 is a very big and comprehensive update to XP that
updates hundreds of operating system files even if all previous updates
have been applied, and you might want to
have me apply this update for you manually in a controlled
environment, rather than waiting
for it to come in automatically, and perhaps start installing
automatically in a possibly problematic environment.
High
Quality
CD and DVD Media
If you don't burn your own CDs or DVDs and don't ever plan to, then
you'll probably want to skip this article, otherwise, read on.
Fundamentally, most blank CD/DVD media sold in the big box stores is
junk,
and often produces quite a few problems during the burning process, or
degrades in quality and may play poorly or not at
all after a few months.
Brand name doesn't help because most media is made by a few
manufacturers in China or Taiwan and rebranded under familiar brand
names. Many of the familiar (and store brands) sold in big box stores,
on
Ebay, and cheap Internet media outlets are rebranded products from the
worst of the Asian producers, plus these brands frequently change their
suppliers. As an example, Memorex is one of the worst of the
recognizable brands, and it typically uses one of the worst Asian
manufactures, CMC.
Basically, the very best media is made by a Japanese company
called Taiyo Yuden (TY), which is the company that originally
invented the CD media. Unfortunately, some of what is sold as being TY
is actually
counterfeit,
so it's also important to buy from reputable suppliers. One of the very
best suppliers (and the one I use exclusively for CD/DVD media and
supplies) is www.supermediastore.com.
I've provided links to them at:
Taiyo
Yuden DVD Media at supermediastore.com
and
Taiyo
Yuden CD Media at supermediastore.com
For more information about CD/DVD media quality look
here.
For more information about the many different and confusing DVD formats
look
here. (The page this link points to also contains a wealth of
valuable information under the "Related Articles" list.)
BTW, in researching DVD burners, I decided that, in general, Samsung
burners are among the best. These can be purchased from newegg.com
at here
and here.
Printer
Recommendations
I'm often asked to make printer recommendations. This is a somewhat
difficult subject as peoples' printing needs are varied, and I can
speak from experience based mainly on my own particular needs, which
are to print high volumes of black and white pages, and to print low
volumes of very high quality color art prints.
In general, I'm not a fan of ink jet printers, since the cartridges are
extraordinarily expensive and the print heads tend to clog when the
printers are unused for extended periods, often permanently destroying
the printer. However, for really high quality color printing,
ink jets are the only game in town, and I use Epson's Stylus Photo
series printers with the UltraChrome inks, which are pigment-based inks
that have good longevity and light-fastness. However, these printers
are expensive and are overkill for daily color printing needs.
In general, I'm also not a fan of HP consumer ink jet printers
(particularly all-in-ones) as they tend to install a massive amount of
completely unnecessary, and often unstable, software, plus they tend
to break down relatively quickly, and of course are
essentially unrepairable and must be thrown away, and thus
are environmentally unfriendly. Also, as these printers break
down, people go buy another, newer model, and install another giant,
different batch of unnecessary and unstable HP software
without uninstalling the first batch of HP software. If you do
this enough times, eventually your computer won't run at all. That
being said, many people have decent experiences with HP printers. Also,
Lexmark ink jet printers, including the Dell ink jet printers which are
rebranded Lexmark ink jet printers, are even worse from both a hardware
and software perspective.
For B & W printing, I've used the Lexmark E238 laser printer,
which is no longer available. The successor
models
(which I haven't personally used) appear to be the Lexmark
E250d and Lexmark
E250dn, with the latter model being a networked printer.
Networked printers plug right into your network and are directly
available to all of your networked computers, though it can be tricky
to install the software.
I also use the Brother MFC series all-in-one B & W
laser printers, which are laser printers that print, copy, scan, and
fax. I use the MFC-7820N,
which is a networked model. I really like the Brother MFC all-in-one
series as the amount of software that is installed is minimal, and all
installed background programs are non-essential and can be disabled.
The MFC series is also nice in that it is a family of printers that
have the same features and use the same software, but spans a gamut of
duty-cycles needs, meaning that you can pay more money to get faster
and heavier-duty printers, but they operate the same as their less
expensive cousins.
For high-volume color printing, the Brother
HL-4040CN
color laser printer gets good reviews on newegg.com, though I have no
personal experience with this printer. Also, this printer is probably
not suitable for photographic-quality printing.
It's doubtful that many of these printers are available in retail big
box stores, and therefore must be purchased from reputable online
stores such as newegg.com and amazon.com.
Hard
Drive Recommendations
I recommend Hitachi hard drives for laptops (2.5"
drives) and Seagate
hard drives for desktops (3.5" drives).
Regarding external USB backup hard drives, it's easy enough to run down
to a big box store and buy a pre-assembled Passport-like external USB
drive. However, these devices use Western Digital and even
lower-quality drives, and I've seen these devices fail, which
sort of negates the whole point of a backup device.
You can roll your own high-quality backup device with either a 2.5"
Hitachi drive or a
3.5" Seagate drive and the appropriate Vantec external
enclosure (2.5"
Vantec enclosure or 3.5"
Vantec enclosure). The main drawback with building your own
is that once assembled (which is easy enough to do), the disk must be
initialized and then formatted. Initializing is easy as the operating
system will prompt you to do this when you first plug your device into
your computer, but it is less obvious how to format the device.
Whether you buy or build your external backup device, none of these
devices are really appropriate to leave plugged into your computer
permanently, as disk drives generate a lot of heat, and these
enclosures can not sufficiently dissipate this heat, and therefore,
these devices should be attached to the computer only while backing-up,
restoring, and transferring
data.
Using
RoboForm to Remember Loginids and Passwords
If you have to keep track of numerous login ids and passwords for
numerous Internet sites that you buy things from, or otherwise have to
login to, then read on about a nice piece of software that keeps track
of all of this for you. If keeping track of this kind of information
isn't a problem for you, then you'll probably want to skip this
article.
I almost never recommend a paid software
product because
there is so much free quality software available.
But there
isn't a good piece of free software that does what a program called
RoboForm does, namely remembers your login ids and passwords for each
web site you visit, and then lets you fill these in with the click of a
button. Furthermore, RoboForm can be configured with all the
information needed for filling in the billing and address information
fields when you buy something from an Internet store, greatly speeding
the process and eliminating the chance of error. RoboForm
also
uses the same database for Internet Explorer and Firefox, maintaining
consistency of information regardless of which browser is being used.
RoboForm can be
downloaded,
installed, and used for free as long as you
need to utilize loginids/passwords for no more than 10 web sites. If
you need more than 10, you can fully activate the product for $29.95.
Basil Irwin
reliancepc.com
303-774-1526