Glary Utilities is a freeware application designed to be a swiss army knife for maintaining PCs. It is designed to be very simple to use so it is something I would feel comfortable leaving with my clients (or family) to give them the ability to “house clean” their own computers. Although this application is powerful, it doesnt give them the ability to do any serious damage to their computer (unlike something like Hijack This!) Glary Utilities has the following features:
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Techrepublic.com has posted an article about a survey that was conducted by KACE, a company which makes systems management appliances.

KACE surveyed 1,100 IT managers and they found that sixty percent of them have no plans to use Windows Vista. Forty-two percent said that they would consider Linux and Apple as an alternative OS (operating system). Ninety-two percent of them answered that their plans did not change when Microsoft released the first service pack for Vista.

The author of the article, Larry Dignan, notes that KACE made the survey in order to pitch its KBox appliance which is designed to manage multiple OSs.

Source: Tech Republic

I want to share with you a really simple trick to generate more computer and hardware sales. This article is a relatively short one because this trick is just so simple.

I have always been turned off by “salesman sleaze”. I hate salesmen that do this to me and I don’t want to become one myself either. I found the best way to sell to your clients without being a sleaze is to be a problem solver.
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The search tool in Windows Vista will be automatically upgraded according to Computerworld’s report that was posted earlier today. Microsoft said that, “If a Windows Vista user has set their machine to automatically install updates, Windows Search 4.0 will automatically install on PCs running Windows Vista SP1.”

The release date of this upgraded tool is in mid-July according to the blog of Microsoft Update.

Windows XP users can also have this upgrade but they must call up Windows Update first and select Search 4.0 to be installed.

After the installation, the operating system will completely re-index the data of the user which could take several hours.

Source: COMPUTERWORLD

Various sites have reported that a data corruption fix will be included in the final Power Pack for Windows Home Server.

Besides a fix to the data corruption problem, the pack will also include new features such as more efficient power consumption, support on Windows Vista 64-bit version, and the ability to back up shared folders.

Due to the bug, the programmers that were assigned to fix the problem had to completely rewrite the storage subsystem for the operating system.

A beta version of the Power Pack was released to testers last month.

Source: Beta News

F-Secure released an article about security advisories on Microsoft products including Word Viewer and Access Snapshot Viewer.

It notes that there is a bug in Word 2002 with Service Pack 3 and they advise their readers to download Word Viewer 2003 as a workaround.

For the Access Snapshot Viewer issue, it is a vulnerability in the ActiveX Control which could allow remote code execution. One of the cases that they studied is a patent themed site. They note that it was hacked and the ActiveX exploit was also taken advantage of.

The Snapshot tool ships with many versions of Access prior to the latest version which is 2007.

Source: F-Secure

Sophos has posted a blog entry yesterday about trends on spam and malware. The author notes that malware authors still use the same old social engineering tricks to fool users into infecting themselves.

The blog includes an outline of two malware. The first is Mal/EncPk-DA. It is about an attacker who sends spam messages that contains a link in every message. The link points to a site that may be legitimate but various malicious files have been loaded onto it.

The second malware that was discussed is Mal/TibsPk-D. It is about an attacker’s attempt to lure recipients to click on a link which is supposed to point to a web page that contains nude photos of the actress, Angelina Jolie.

Source: Sophos

The other day I posted about how to handle computer warranties and I listed my favorite hardware brands based on quality vs price which was well received by readers.

It is because of this I have created a short survey to find out what brands other technicians use in the computers they sell. I will be releasing the results to all next friday so we all can make better purchases with the stock we buy.

Remember, this survey is about having quality that is value for money. Something that you would sell to your clients.

What hardware brands do you find to be the best in Quality vs Price?

Take The Survey Here

A new version has been released for Firefox 2 and Firefox 3. The version number of the former is 2.0.16 while 3.0.1 is the version of the later.

As the article in The Register notes, 2.0.0.16 fixes vulnerabilities in its CSS reference counter and it also fix a flaw that allows multiple tabs to be launched in Firefox while the program is not open.

3.0.1 fixes the same bugs that are described above. It also included a fix for malformed GIF files. This version came out yesterday but the other version (2.0.0.16) was released a day earlier. Mozilla will stop the support on version 2 by mid-December according to The Register.

Source: The Register

A website has reported that there is a strange bug on the Wi-Fi Link 5000 chip from Intel. It doesn’t talk/communicate with 64-bit or 128-bit WEP security and keys that contain all zeroes in hex format.

This means that a key with a ‘0000000000′ access point cannot communicate with a Centrino 2 notebook.

The article notes that the operating system is not part of the problem since access points run on older laptops with a variety of operating systems. This bug does not occur on WPA or with non-zero WEP keys.

Centrino 2 was just released and this bug is considered as very, very minor.

Source: Register Hardware