Rich’s Ramblings for July 2005

Ok, I admit, I am a tech junkie. I was looking for a new laptop or mini that would be easier to carry around versus my 6 pound Toshiba. Not that the Toshi isn’t a good machine but lugging it around does get a bit tiresome. I have had nothing but Toshiba laptops for the past 15-20 years, all the way from the Toshiba 3200 which was a roaring Intel 80286 luggable with an orange screen and a 20 megabyte hard disk.

So, to continue to ramble about my search. I went to the web looking for small screen lightweight powerful computers. I looked at a couple and they just did not strike my fancy. Then I was in my favorite CompUSA for something else and I wandered around as I am prone to do. Back in the laptop area I found that Toshiba had come out with a small (around 2 pounds) really powerful Libretto model U105.

Back in, I believe it was ‘99, they came out with a libretto and it was not that great. In fact it was a dud and was pulled from the market after a short time. This new Libretto comes with a small removable docking station underneath with a DVD reader/writer. And 500Megabytes of Ram and a 60 Gigabyte 1.8” hard disk. It even ran Windows XP professional.

What a really small powerhouse. Now this is not for everyone but it sure is my cup of tea. Some of the downsides are that the keyboard was designed for people with really-really small fingers. But it is useable for short messages. (Much better than a blackberry) Second the screen is a 1280 X 860 bright screen that is only about 6 ½” by 3 ¾”. These old eyes can see the screen and read the writing but thank god for glasses and the ability to change the resolution. The power block is pretty small and lightweight. It has a touch mouse button and a fingerprint reader on the front of the keyboard which I really don’t care for. I picked up a small USB Optical laptop mouse with a retractable cable which works great. It has built in wireless G networking as well as a 56Kb modem and standard Network Interface jack. They provide you with a dongle for connecting to an external monitor or video projector. There is a lot of power in that little box and the two USB 2.0 ports are fine. It also has a Fire wire port for cameras, a PCMCIA card slot and a smart card slot. The cost included the DVD unit and the system $2175, which included tax, title and tags.

One thing about the Toshiba Libretto U105, They really need a spelling checker program for their label as they spelled Information as informaiton. No biggie but still you would have thought that a company as big as Toshiba would know how to spell check their labels..

For people who give presentations on the road, this might be just the ticket, combined with a good video projector you could give demos and sales pitch’s without having to lug a larger laptop.

New Subject:

Again, I have found Symantec’s Norton Anti-Virus 2005 lacking. On 30 May, I received an e-mail with nothing in the body of the message, but it had an attachment called 5.zip. I was suspicious even though I run NAV all the time. I of course would never open an attachment that anyone sent me regardless of who it was. UNLESS, they let me know well in advance that they would be sending me an attachment. And a message with no text in the body is a red flag. That along with the attached files from Microsoft with all the latest security fix’s.. <GGG> (those are big grins) I know that Microsoft NEVER NEVER NEVER sends out attached files with security fixes. They always make you come and get them via windows update. Anyway, I digress. I copied the file from my attachment directory to a shared directory on my hard disk where I can look at it from within a Virtual PC session running Windows 2000 and Grisoft’s AVG antivirus program.

As Emril would say BAM!!.

Right away, AVG said that the 5.zip file contained a virus and cleaned it up. Now I had just a few minutes before used NAV’s liveupdate. No updates were noted. And two days later, NAV finally updated and recognized the file with the virus. And, I had sent Symantec an email via their web page telling them about my find and they did not respond. Now it is Grisoft’s AVG program for all my clients and no more Norton’s. I have been having my clients purchase the 5 user version of AVG which ends up much cheaper than Norton Anti-Virus.

I am still using my Mac-Mini and the Virtual PC on both the Mac and my laptop/libretto.

Now to answer those emails that I have received as to why I would want to run Kbuntu Linux, W2k or DOS 6.22 and Windows for Workgroups on my Mac or my PC. Because I can and also so that I can experiment with programs designed for the older operating systems.

PS: I have been messing with DOS batch files and decided to try to figure out how to create a sub directory based on today’s date and copy certain files to it. All from within a DOS batch file. Don’t laugh, DOS batch files work great under Windows XP and other versions. In fact, they work faster… I put the complete batch file on my blog that you can look at if you’re interested by going to http://www.bloglines.com/blog/RichNRockvilleMD and looking at it. I ramble on that blog but I do not get into politics or religion. After all, I am older and supposedly wiser.

Rich Schinnell has been a volunteer for Capital PC for over 20 years and enjoys new toys and challenging projects. He is retired from the USN and Vitro Corporation, still doing some consulting for a half dozen small businesses’s who demand his services. He can be reached at schinnel@cpcug.org or on his web site at http://www.schinnell.org there are references to most of the programs he has talked about are on his cpcug.org web site at http://www.cpcug.org/user/schinnel/ Some are free and some will cost you but like he always says, you don’t get nothing for nothing.