july 2014 the outer edge page 1 the outer e · july 2014 the outer edge page 3

July 2014 The Outer Edge

I want to express my appreciation to Mazen El Ghadban for his excellent Microsoft Surface Pro 3 and Microsoft phone presentation. As promised, I was part of the three-person Southwest Technology and Computer Convention (SWCC) tech support team led by Dr. Sexton.

We supported the audio and video in four rooms. There were major issues in one room that required most of Dr. Sexton’s attention. Unfortunately. I wasn’t able to attend full sessions.

Mazen El Ghadban of the Microsoft Store was a big hit at SWCC. The Microsoft store donated enough of their reusable bags for each attendee. They were defiantly a big hit with everyone. I use mine for my water bottles at work.

The SWCC presentations are posted at http://www.theswcc.org/2014-presentations.html. Bob Gostischa’s two presentations are posted at http://goo.gl/daVH38. I’m always looking for good information on privacy. I strongly recommend Data Privacy by Judy Taylour. She rec-ommends setting home on your GPS as the local police station because everyone knows how to get home once they are in the general vicinity. Judith Delgado’s macular degeneration presentation has an

easy macular degeneration test. I didn’t know the difference between wet and dry macular degeneration before the presentation. Her organization’s website is AMD.org.

Elliott Stern has agreed to present his Perfecting Your Computer Back Up presentation to us.

Judy Taylour said she’ll consolidate and post notes submitted by the at-tendees at http://www.theswcc.org. I strongly recommend reviewing the notes and presentations.

The Friendly Computer Club Helping Make Computers Friendly. On the Web at www.cipcug.org

COMMAND.COM By Sandy Tsutsui-Trujillo

Attendance at the

June general meeting:

43 members and guests.

We welcome three new members .

How to contact us The Outer Edge ……………[email protected] General Info..............805-289-3960 Mailing Address: P.O. Box 51354,

Oxnard, CA 93031-1354 On the Web: cipcug.org On Facebook: Facebook.com/groups/

cipcug Officers and most board members

can be contacted through the following aliases: President…[email protected] Vice President/Program Chairman ..……[email protected] Secretary...…[email protected] Treasurer……[email protected] Web Page Editor ………[email protected] TOE editor...……[email protected] Membership Chairman ……..…[email protected]

E d g e

The Friendly Computer Club Helping Make Computers Friendly. On the Web at www.cipcug.org

July 2014

Vol. 27, No. 12

Whole No. 325

ISSN 1055-4399

The Outer

Tsutsui-Trujillo

The Outer Edge July 2014

Root Directory Channel Islands

PC Users Group CIPCUG mailing address:

P.O. Box 51354, Oxnard, CA

93031-1354

Executive Committee

(Elected members of Board of Directors)

President………......Sandy Tsutsui-Trujillo .……………………[email protected] Vice President/Program Chairman ………………..………………..Craig Ladd ………………[email protected] Secretary…….Diane Mortensen-Henderson ……………………[email protected] Treasurer…………..….……....…Art Lewis …………………...…[email protected] Immediate Past President …………………………........James Brown ...……………[email protected]

(Appointed members

of Board of Directors)

Technical Adviser…………..Toby Scott Web Page Editor….………..Andy Toth ………………[email protected] TOE editor.…….………….John Weigle ……………………[email protected] Membership Chairman.…...Ken Church ………………[email protected]

Ex-officio members of Board of Directors

CIPCUG ISP Signups………..Art Lewis Sound Equipment Technicians ...……….Curt Davison and Tom Murray Program Chairman………..…Craig Ladd Publicity Chairman...……...…Rick Curry SIG coordinator…..……....Larry Hudson

Past Presidents

Walt Yates………………………1987-1989 Lois Evans de Violini…………...1989-1991 Terry Lee………………………..1991-1993 Jerry McLoud…………………...1993-1995 Robert Provart…………………..1995-1997 Toby Scott………………………1997-1999 George Lakes …………………...1999-2001 Andy Toth……………………….2001-2003 David Harris…………………….2003-2005 Lois Evans de Violini ........ ........ 2005-2007 Paul Westefer…………………….2007-2009 Rick Curry………………….…….2009-2011 James Brown………………….…2011-2013 (With the exception of the immediate past president, past presidents are not board members.)

Life members Frank Segesman* Toby Scott Lois Evans de Violini Art Lewis Helen Long *Deceased

The Outer Edge Editor……………………..John Weigle

P.O. Box 6536, Ventura CA 93006 485-7121………[email protected]

The Outer Edge is published monthly by Channel Islands PC Users Group (CIPCUG), P.O. Box 51354, Oxnard, Calif. 93031-1354. an independent, nonprofit corporation. Contents of The Outer Edge copyright

2001 by Channel Islands PC Users Group. Permission for reproduction in whole or in part is granted to other computer user groups for internal nonprofit use provided credit is given to The Outer Edge and the authors of the reproduced material. All other reproduction is prohibited without prior written consent of Channel Islands PC Users Group. Opinions expressed in this journal are solely those of

the authors or contributors, and do not necessarily

represent those of Channel Islands PC Users Group,

its officers or membership as a whole. The information provided is believed to be correct and useful; however, no warranty, express or implied, is made by Channel Islands PC Users Group, its officers, editorial staff or contributors. This disclaimer extends to all losses, incidental or consequential, resulting from the use or application of the information provided. Channel Islands PC Users Group does not endorse or recommend any specific hardware or software products, dealers, distributors or manufacturers. All trademarked or registered trademarked names are acknowledged to be the property of their respective owners, and are used for editorial purposes only.

Advertising in The Outer Edge Advertising is accepted for computer-related materials, businesses and services only. Rates are for Camera-Ready copy (clear, clean black and white masters). Typesetting and graphics are available at an additional fee. SIZE Cost/Issue FULL-PAGE (9½”H x 7¼”W)................$50.00 HALF-PAGE (4½”H x 7¼”W) or (9½”H x 3½”W )....….........................$30.00 THIRD-PAGE (3”H x 7¼” W)………….$25.00 QUARTER-PAGE (4½”H x 3½W)..........$20.00 BUSINESS CARD ad...............................$15.00 Discounts for multiple issues (3, 6, 9 and 12 months) Ad copy deadline is the 5th of the month of publication. Make all checks payable to CIPCUG.

Members’ classified ads are free but are limited to 105 characters, including spaces.

CIPCUG NEWS Benefits ......................................... 19 Board minutes ............................... 13 Coming CIPCUG events ................. 3 Contributors to TOE ...................... 11 Command.com ................................ 1 Editor’s corner ................................. 3 Map, schedule ................................ 20 Membership report ........................ 12 Officers re-elected ......................... 13 Program: Microsoft demonstrates its new Surface Pro 3 ..................... 8 Q&A session, SIG ........................... 4 Recent headlines from our Facebook page ............................. 17 Treasurer’s report .......................... 11

GENERAL Fun and knowledge with YouTube ...................................... 16 Penguin’s Lair: Linux and the malware threats ............................ 14 Performance, capacity, ports: tablet discriminators .................. 17 Web help sites ............................... 11

ADVERTISEMENTS Creative Technology ..................... 16 Members’ classified ads ................ 16 O’Reilly ......................................... 16 Ventura County Computers ........... 15

AWARDS 2004 APCUG: Large groups first

place for website. 2006 Southwest User Group

Conference: second place in both the newsletter and Web site contests.

2011 APCUG first place in the newsletter contest (medium groups).

2012 APCUG first place in the newsletter contest (medium groups).

.


Programs

This month’s presentation will be announced. Watch cip-cug.org for details. The meeting will be July 26 at the Camarillo Boys & Girls Club, 1500 Temple Ave. (Ponderosa Drive and Temple Avenue), Camarillo (see the map on the last page).

Barring unusual problems, the doors will open at 8 a.m. and the meeting will start at 8:45 a.m., with the pre-meeting SIGs (Internet and connectivity, and Android devices and their apps). The business meeting will start at 9:30 a.m., followed by the Q&A session at 10 a.m., coffee break at 10:30 a.m. and the program at 11 a.m.

Dates of other coming meetings: Aug. 23: Orv Beach, probably related to Linux Sept. 27 Oct. 25 Nov. 15 (third Saturday) Dec. 20 (third Saturday)

(Continued on page 4)

Door prizes We have two types of raffle tickets: one for prizes offered by

the presenter and one for club-provided prizes. The tickets for the presenter’s prizes are free and limited to one per member.

The tickets for the club-provided prizes are $1 each, $5 for six tickets, $10 for 13 tickets, $15 for 20 tickets and $20 for 27 tickets and are available to anyone. Those who can’t stay until the drawing may sign their tickets and give the person selling the tickets a list of the prizes they would like in the order they’d pick them. Winners’ prizes will be held until the next meeting.

Consignment table A consignment table is set up at every meeting. Anyone can

buy, but only members can sell.

The club gets 10 percent of the sales price. Sold items must be picked up at the end of the day’s meeting.

Any items not picked up will become the property of CIPCUG and will be subject to disposal at the club’s discretion.

CIPCUG is not responsible in any way for items bought or sold at the table. Each item is sold as-is unless otherwise stated.

Meeting, SIG notices If you would like e-mail notices of regular meetings and SIGs,

go to www.cipcug.org, where you’ll find a link on the home page to sign up. The URL is cipcug.org/listserv.cfm.

You will need your membership number, which is on the

back cover of TOE, to complete the sign-up.

Coming events

This month’s program

to be announced

W elcome back to Vice President Craig Ladd, who suffered serious health problems after the May meeting that almost killed him. He is using a walker and still needs a liver

transplant, but he was back introducing our speaker and helping with the raffle drawings in June (photo on page 13).

My computer issues

For those who asked at the last meeting — or wondered and didn’t ask — my new NEC monitor is working perfectly (thank you, Rick Smith). The keyboards that I thought had died all worked when Michael Shalkey tested them at Ventura County Computers, so I assume that I must have some bad USB ports on the com-puter or the hub. I’m reasonably certain that I know how to plug USB devices in, so I don’t think that’s the issue.

Working with Windows 2000

The woman who is effectively an assistant manager at my condo complex was given a computer with Windows 2000, and knowing that I have a computer, she asked if I could help her with it. I agreed to see what I could do and immediately ran into the first problem: There was no power cord or monitor cable. After that was fixed, the second issue arose: The machine wanted a password before it reached the desktop. Of course, the donor didn’t bother to mention that and the new owner had no idea what the pass-word was.

Michael suggested using Hiren’s Boot CD (www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd) and I had found Offfline NT Password & Registry Editor (http://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd) with a Web search. The combination got me into the computer, where I found personal emails, tax returns and some other documents. Interestingly, most of the soft-ware — but not Microsoft Office — had been removed, but much — maybe all — of the data was not.

An anti-virus program was still on the machine but is, of course, outdated.

I think I’ve found a browser, anti-virus program and media player that will work, but I’m not sure because the new owner was out of town for the July 4 holiday. She wants to be able to play movies for her granddaughter, but we haven’t had any luck with that yet. I don’t know if it’s the old Windows Media Player or a video card problem.

Given my druthers, of course, I’d recommend installing Windows 7 if the hardware would run it, but the new owner doesn’t want to spend a lot of money on it.

We’ll see what happens when she returns.

Weigle

Editor’s corner

CIPCUG news and events

Welcome back,

VP Craig Ladd


SIGs

Special Interest Groups (SIGs) are sponsored by CIPCUG and led by volunteer club members. The SIGs are free to CIPCUG members.

Other than those presented during or just after the regular meeting, the SIGs run from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at Ventura County Computers, 2175 Goodyear Ave., Unit 117, Ventura; phone 289-3960. From the 101 Freeway, exit at Telephone, take Telephone south to McGrath, turn left and go one block. Turn right on Goodyear and right again into the second

driveway. Unit 117 is the back, right corner of the building.

The pre-meeting SIGs are at 8:45 a.m. at the Boys & Girls Club.

The general schedule:

Fourth Tuesday (July 22, Aug. 26, Sept. 23, Oct. 28, Nov. 25, Dec. 23): Linux.

Fourth Saturday (or regular meeting day): Internet and Connectivity SIG (Toby Scott) and Apps for Tablets and Smartphones (Jessica Scott), 8:45 a.m.

The July and August schedules:

July

Tuesday, July 22: Linux SIG. Mod-

erator Bill Wayson. We will try to answer any questions regarding Linux and open source applications. Saturday, July 26:

Pre-meeting SIGs on Internet and Con-nectivity and Tablet and Smartphone apps

at 8:45 a.m.

August

Saturday, Aug. 23: Pre-meeting SIGs on the Internet and Connectivity and Tab-

let and Smartphone Apps at 8:45 a.m.

Tuesday, Aug. 26: Linux SIG. Mod-erator: Bill Wayson. Topic TBA.

Be sure to check the calendar on

cipcug.org for updates on event pro-

grams, dates and times.

(Continued from page 3)

More on coming events ...


SIG, Q&A

Phones are taking over our lives today

Android SIG This month, we switched the pre-

meeting SIGs around: Michael Shalkey

discussed Android devices and apps in

the main meeting room, and Toby Scott

presented the email and connectivity SIG

in the smaller room. This report is on

Shalkey’s SIG.

General comments

Phones are “taking over our lives,” and this month we’re going to discuss some general ideas and apps for the de-vices.

Some interesting numbers were pre-sented at Apple’s World Wide Develop-ers Conference early in June: 80 million people use Macintosh computers; they’ve sold over 800 million iOS devices, the operating system for phones and tablets. This means that nine of 10 people who have iPads or iPhones are using Windows (or some other operating system) instead of Apple. Actually today, people don’t have to connect their phones to a comput-er at all. It is also interesting to note that more people use Widows 8 than all ver-sions of Mac OS. Some analysts pointed out later that the 80 million number for

Mac OS is significant in that more people are using the Windows Phone than Mac computers.

When you want to move documents and pictures from your Android phone to your computer, some find it complicated and confusing. A good solution is to use apps like Google Drive, Dropbox, or even OneDrive from Microsoft (as demonstrat-ed later by the Microsoft representative). I have Word documents, photos and many other things stored in my Google Drive, which includes access to the Google Docs programs. The website drive.google.com takes you to a Google Drive account if one has been established or to “Install Google Drive on your com-puter” if no account has been established.

I can put any documents from my computer in Google Drive and then ac-cess them with my phone.

Backing up phones

Q: My phone backs up its pictures to Google Drive, but I can’t get them from Google Drive to my computer’s hard drive.

A: Open your Google Drive and right click on the file you want to put on your computer. You’ll find options to down-

load a single file or, if you have many pictures to copy, boxes to check. You can also go home, open your browser, go to Google Drive and right click on the pho-tos you want to download. The pictures will go to wherever your browser puts downloads.

Q: My pictures show up as notifica-tions at home.

A: It is possible you are confusing your photos (photos you’ve taken) with notifications of photos posted by people you are following on Google Plus.

Q: Is there a way to automatically back up files or folders as they’re changed?

A: Put the files you want backed up after every change in the Google Drive folder on your computer (you have to download the program). If you use Google Drive only in the browser, you have to drag and drop files to the drive. If you have the program, you have a Google Drive folder on your hard drive, and the cloud folder and hard drive folder will synchronize. Dropbox works in a similar fashion. Remember, however, that if you



remove the files from the Google Drive folder on your computer, they will also be removed from the cloud Google Drive.

Carbonite, which is not free, will au-tomatically back up the folders and files you tell it to, although backing up your software requires an additional fee.

Parts of the phone

Michael Shalkey added this when reviewing the article: I wanted to talk about this to make it easy to talk about phones by using the “standard” terms for things, but while researching for this arti-cle I discovered there really isn’t a stand-ard. Many people use different terms for the same thing — while some telephone companies customize their phones to look a little different than other people’s.)

This website provides an introduction to smartphone terminology and more:: http://www.howtogeek.com/163624/welcome-to-android-a-beginners-guide-to-getting-started-with-android/

When you look at most Android phones or tablets (see photo above), you see three areas: the dock (at the bottom), the status bar — or notification window

(at the top edge) and the main content area (the large area in the middle).

The newer versions of the Android phones have a pull down menu called a notification shade. It tells you something happened, like “you have received a text, but we don’t want to fill up your screen with it.” To show the menu items, use your thumb or finger to pull the “shade” down and show the items.

The central main part of the screen (home screen) can be organized in many ways, from very clean to filled with tiles or icons. Users can organize it any way they wish. When you get used to it, you can also customize the other home screens — swiping left or right — until you have customized all five home screens, not just the middle one.

BIG TIP: Have icons only for apps you use all the time on the main screen. You can always get to everything by clicking on the app drawer at the bottom (usually a circle with a number of dots in it, this picture has 6 dots, mine is square and has 16 dots) to see ALL of your apps — usually many pages of them.

The phone icon is used to make phone calls. It takes you to a screen with the number pad or your recently called peo-ple.

The so-called “hamburger menu” (above) — which consists of three

vertical dots or three dashes, indicating bun, meat and bun — is usually seen at the top left or right in every app to pro-vide options.

(More suggestions on ways to organ-

ize smartphone screens can be found at

http://lifehacker.com/5610032/a-guide-to

-organizing-your-android-home-screen.

— Editor)

A recent survey said that 80 percent of the people surveyed have a phone, laptop or tablet open in their laps while watching TV so they can check Web pag-es to get backstories or learn more about myriad characters in complex series. In my wife’s case, it is to play solitaire while watching TV.

Battery life

The more apps that are running on a phone, or any other device, the faster the battery will lose power. A free app called Advanced Task Killer (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rechild.advancedtaskkiller&hl=en) lets users shut down any or all of the apps that are running but that might not be immediately noticeable. Although it’s similar to Task Manager on a computer, it does not show services that must be run-ning for the phone to work. You’d be amazed at all the things running. The app does not remove any apps; it simply stops them from running. It’s best to use the store to download apps of any kind be-cause they’re vetted before being placed online.

Stopping apps — or programs on a computer — from running can also speed



This month’s topics Android SIG General comments Backing up phones Parts of the phone Battery life Computer taskbar Phone protection Battery information Extending cellphone range Exploding batteries

Laptops Q&A Printer installation fails Windows 8 Task Manager Internet Explorer and Windows 7 Windows 8.1 and Control Panel Preparing list of DVDs Printing in black and white Password storage Chrome and XP Search engine changed Using Description to store pass-


This is a typical Android screen.


up the device you’re using. Q: So I don’t need anything running

all the time? A: That’s right. I can kill everything

that Advanced Task Killer shows and not have any problems with the phone.

Computer taskbar

Q: On the computer taskbar, the ones on the right are running and the ones on the left are not, correct?

A: Generally, that’s true, but pro-grams on the left that are highlighted are running.

Q: How can I move the things on the right to the left?

A: You don’t. You find out where the programs launch from and pin a shortcut from that location to the taskbar. Your taskbar can have several rows.

Phone protection

Q: I have Norton on my phone. A: I like the free Lookout for the

phone. You don’t really need an anti-virus running all the time, just when you’re installing or updating a program. Phones are inherently safer than desktops and laptops because everything on a phone runs in its own sandbox and can’t affect other programs or files. At least for now, the phones are safe from things like CryptoLocker, but I’m sure that hackers are working on ways to get the program on to phones.

Battery information

If you want to find the most recent information about how to handle and use batteries, go to Batteryuniversity.com. It has information on the latest research and safety tips.

It seems to say basically what I’ve been saying: do what you want because batteries are going to die when they’re going to die — usually in about two years — and the way you charge or drain them makes little, if any, difference on their lifespan.

Such information is important because “almost every device you use has a bat-tery” today.

Q: Why doesn’t Apple use AAA bat-teries for its phones?

A: I’m sure one reason is possible leakage. If a battery leaks and ruins your

pants, you’ll sue Apple. A couple of years ago, one of the lap-

top manufacturers had problems with exploding batteries. And Apple doesn’t want you opening anything, even to re-place a battery.

Another reason is design and keeping the experience the same for everyone. If people provided their own batteries, the lifespan would differ depending on the manufacturer of the batteries. The latest MacBook Pros, which can cost $2,000, can’t be opened. You can’t put a new battery in one. They’ve hot glued and cemented in all the parts. You can’t change memory or hard drive.

Q: I have a Samsung laptop and want-ed to replace the battery because it’s not lasting as long as it seems like it should. But it has something called an internal battery. What is that?

A: Manufacturers do this for many reasons, one of which is planned obsoles-cence. Users can void the warranty just by unscrewing the screws that hold the back or bottom of a computer on. Manu-facturers did it for weight. They can make batteries in any shape to fit the empty space available. The manufacturers don’t really want you to be able to use a ma-chine for 10 years, like you did with Win-dows XP, because they’re not making any money by keeping old machines or pro-grams running. They want you to buy new versions.

I can’t even get parts for old Sony laptops from Sony or other suppliers. I have to go to the equivalent of computer junkyards to get them. “When they (Sony) come out with a new one, they won’t sell parts for the old ones.”

Extending cellphone range

Wilson Electronics (http://www.wilsonelectronics.com) specializes in equipment to increase the range of cell-phone signals. I looked at it because my cellphone doesn’t work well in my house. I have a box that plugs into my Internet connection, but the connection isn’t fast enough to do both phone and Internet, so we have to pick just one sometimes.

Exploding batteries

Q: There’s a picture circulating on the Internet that shows a car that has been pretty much destroyed because a laptop or

phone left on the dashboard exploded. A: Heat can make batteries explode,

so be sure not to leave them in the trunk or on a dashboard.

Laptops

Q: I’m looking for a laptop. Can you make some recommendations?

A: As always it depends on what you’re going to use the computer for and how much you hate Windows 8. Price differences are mostly determined by the quality of the parts used. If you’re going to be playing high level games, you’ll need an expensive one. If you’re just do-ing some writing, email and Internet surf-ing, you don’t.

I like the Acers. There are so many choices for consumers that it is extremely hard to say “Brand Y model X” because what would be perfect for one person would be inadequate for others. Do some searches on the Web and compare prices and what you’re paying for to get a good idea of what’s available and at what pric-es. I’d go for a solid state drive, which will be faster than a standard hard drive. If you’re a contactor or someone doing a lot of work outdoors, you might want one made of heavier metal. We (Ventura County Computers) still sell Windows 7 machines, which are hard to find in the big box stores.

Q: Can I leave a laptop on 24/7? A: As long as it’s plugged in, yes.

Batteries won’t power it for 24 hours.

Q&A Unless noted otherwise, Toby Scott

answered the questions and Michael

Shalkey handled the computer duties dur-

ing the session.

Printer installation fails

Q: A member who couldn’t come today asked me to present this question. He was trying to install a multi-function printer, but the installation failed, and now he can’t complete the installation or uninstall what’s already there. Any ideas on how he can start over again?

A: If it’s a new printer, he should be able to get chat help or telephone support from the company that made it, but be prepared for a long wait to get through.





Most companies have special uninstall programs to get rid of the failed remnants of an installation and start over. The in-structions can vary even from model to model, let alone company to company. They might ask you to install a program so they can work directly on your com-puter.

Michael Shalkey: When you’re look-ing for tech support phone numbers, be very careful and look at the results of your search before dialing the number. The first several search results are likely to be ads from other companies that might be able to help you — for a price — or that might install all kinds of things you don’t want on your computer. So far, the search engines identify these listings as ads, but it’s still a good idea to look at the Web address they point to.

One of the first searches at the meet-ing was from iyogi.com, which is based in India. Some users have complained that iyogi personnel made their computers worse than they were before the company worked on them. Both Scott and Shalkey said to be wary of the company.

Toby Scott: At the very least, they’ll put crapware on your computer.

Windows 8 Task Manager

Q: Task Manager looks different in Windows 8 than it does in Windows 7. I have trouble telling what programs are running in the Windows 8 version. I’ve been hearing some strange noises and am trying to track down the cause.

A: Task Manager looks different, but all the information that is in the Windows 7 version is still there. When you open Task Manager, you get a screen that shows only what programs are running and lets you stop them. To see such things as the services and processes that are running, click on the More Details button.

Michael Shalkey: Usually the comput-er noises are not caused by programs that are running but by the services that run in the background. The odd noises are often caused by processes that are running, but you have to be very careful about shutting those down.

Toby Scott: The first thing to check if you’re hearing an unusual noise is to

open the CD/DVD drive drawer and make sure no one left a disc in it that is periodically starting to spin for some rea-son. That’s the No. 1 cause of strange noises.

(For a full discussion of the rede-

signed Task Manager and Microsoft’s

reasons for the changes, go to http://

technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/

jj663511.aspx — Editor)

Internet Explorer and Windows 7

Q: I’m using Windows 7 and was having problems with Internet Explorer. The Verizon techs said not to use it. Chrome worked find.

A: The dominant browser in the Win-dows world is Microsoft’s Internet Ex-plorer, so it’s the one that suffers the most attacks by virus writers. Many observers have said that the most recent version of Internet Explorer is safer than Chrome and Firefox.

If you start getting pop-ups in Internet Explorer, stop using it and run Malware-bytes to see what’s going on; the pop-ups are usually indicators of some kind of malware. There are some 500 programs out there that claim to clean up malware, but only a very few that don’t install some kind of malware — Malwarebytes is by far the recommended program for this group. For those who remember Spy-bot, it is still free for personal use but is so difficult to use that personal users are probably exactly those who shouldn’t use it.

Michael Shalkey: You can restore Internet Explorer to the original factory condition by clicking on the gear in the upper right corner, going to Internet Op-tions > Advanced and clicking on Reset. Restart the computer, and all the Internet Explorer toolbars and other add-ons will be gone — along with your stored pass-words, type-ahead buffer and bookmarks, so don’t do this if you don’t have the passwords and log-ins stored somewhere else.

Toby Scott: If you have to do this, be sure to run Malwarebytes after you do.

Windows 8.1 and Control Panel

Q: I’m using Windows 8.1. I used to be able to call up the Control Panel by right-clicking the bottom left corner of the screen, but now it doesn’t work.

Nothing comes up for me. Toby Scott: Did you install any third-

party start menu software on the machine that would have changed anything? (The answer was no.)

I’ve never seen your problem, so I can’t suggest an answer. I do have a Win-dows 8 tip: If you move your Desktop icon to the top left of the Modern inter-face page, you can get to the desktop by hitting the Enter key.

Michael Shalkey: The keyboard shortcut Windows+D also gets you to the desktop.

(There are at least nine ways to open

the Control Panel. You can find them at

this website: http://www.7tutorials.com/

introducing-windows-81-9-ways-access-

control-panel. Several suggestions to fix

the loss of the Quick Access menu are

listed at http://answers.microsoft.com/en-

us/windows/forum/windows_8-

performance/windows-8-quick-access-

menu-not-working/ceea1ee5-a669-440d-

85d7-f4f50521c9b2. — Editor)

Preparing list of DVDs

Q: I have a lot of DVDs and want to prepare a list of them in Word. Can I al-phabetize them easily?

A: You’d be better off to do the list in Excel, where you can sort by highlighting the row and clicking on the column in-volved to bring up a sort menu. That would also let you easily add more infor-mation — such as music category, artists, etc. — in their own columns if you decide later that you need it.

(In Word 2010, go to the Home tab

and look for the icon that has AZ in a

vertical format with an arrow pointing

down. You’ll have several options to in

Ascending or Descending order. — Edi-

tor)

Q: What’s the equivalent of Excel in Google Docs?

(A Web search found the Google Docs

help site at https://support.google.com/

docs/#topic=2811806. It says the spread-

sheet program is Sheets. — Editor)

The following comment was made

later in the meeting but was moved here

to keep related information together. —

Editor

Q: A program called TagScanner






(http://www.xdlab.ru/en/) will create lists of music from your hard drive, search the Internet for many types of information, including album and CD covers for music collections, and allow you to sort on near-ly anything. It’s on the latest revision of the CIPCUG flash drive.

Printing in black and white

Q: I want to print emails of Web pag-es that have lots of color in black and white. Is there a way to do that?

A: Instead of using the program’s print button, go to File > Print, and you should be able to find a print in grayscale, print black and white or similar option. The location of the command might vary from printer to printer so it might take some searching to find it.

Password storage

Q: I have different programs on my laptop, desktop and phone that can store passwords. I’m looking for a program to store passwords and am considering LastPass and PasswordBox. Do you have any suggestions?

A: LastPass is available for Windows, Apple and Linux operating systems. I’m a little concerned that the company stores your encrypted passwords on its website, and you have to trust that the company does not have any backdoors or other security issues.

KeePass is available for all platforms and is open source so it can be checked by others for backdoors and similar is-sues. I can use it on a flash drive. If you created the password database on your computer, the KeePass for Droid can open and read it. The Windows version is on the flash drive.

Chrome and XP

Q: I’m using XP and switched from Firefox to Chrome for the browser. Then I got a notice that Chrome is no longer supporting XP.

A: Michael Shalkey: We have some XP machines at work, and I haven’t seen that message.

Toby Scott: You’re using an unsup-ported operating system and you’re wor-ried about an unsupported browser? Your priorities are wrong.

Michael Shalkey: Extensions in Fire-fox and Chrome can slow browsers to a crawl. Check to be sure that the exten-sions are up to date and that you don’t still have extensions you don’t use.

Toby Scott: I had a Firefox extension that wasn’t updated and stopped working. I didn’t realize it until I tried to figure out why Firefox was slowed to a crawl.

(A Google Chrome Blog entry posted

on Oct. 16, 2013, says Chrome will sup-

port XP until at least April 2015: http://

chrome.blogspot.com/2013/10/extending-

chrome-support-for-xp-users.html. —

Editor)

Q: I’ve been using Opera, and it’s really fast.

A: I have Firefox running all the time with lots of tabs open, but if I want to make a quick visit to a single site, I use Opera. It still has the best start screen, I think: tiles showing the sites you visit most often.

Search engine changed

Q: I’m using Windows 7 Pro with Firefox as my browser. I had my home page set as Google, but when I search, the browser uses Yahoo as the search engine. I’ve gone to the list of search engines in the search bar and deleted Yahoo and Bing, but that didn’t do any good.

A: Run Malwarebytes. I like Bing better than Google, which has a way of emphasizing sites of lists rather than a page of the specific company I want.

Michael Shalkey: If you search for video on Bing, you can see the videos without going to the actual website.

This comment came later in the meet-

ing but was moved here to keep related

information together. – Editor

Q: I’ve followed the suggestions you’ve made, but my search engine keeps switching back to Yahoo.

Michael Shalkey: I just thought of something. Check the properties of the shortcut you’re using to open the browser and see what page it’s set to go to (right click on the icon and go to Properties). The icons can be corrupted and infected.

(A year-old discussion at Mozilla Sup-

port (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/

questions/947985) offers several sugges-

tions that might fix the problem. — Edi-

tor)

Using Description to store passwords

Q: If you right click on a bookmark, there’s a Description section in the Prop-erties box that pops up. I’ve been using it to store passwords. I use a code word for the password so even if someone saw it, they wouldn’t see the password.

Michael Shalkey: That’s brilliant. I never even thought of it.

A: I wouldn’t do it for email or finan-cial sites, but it’s OK for others. Don’t use the browser’s “remember” function for email and financial passwords. Many such sites won’t let you remember the passwords, and many are using two-factor identification, such as requiring a log-in and password and then sending me a code on my phone that I have to enter.


Program

Microsoft demonstrates its new Surface Pro 3

By John Weigle

[email protected]

M icrosoft is billing its new Surface Pro 3 as “the only tablet that can replace your laptop,” and CIPCUG

members learned why at the June meet-

ing. Mazen El Ghadban, the assistant

manager of the new Microsoft specialty store in The Oaks in Thousand Oaks (see


More on Q&A ...



separate box for more store details), dis-cussed the store, Windows Phone, Win-dows 8.1 and Surface Pro 3 during the meeting.

Surface Pro 3

“Having two devices on the road is definitely a pain,” he said, “and I don’t want to carry two devices around with me, either.” The Surface Pro 3 solves that problem, he said.

The Surface Pro 3 runs on Windows 8.1 Pro, weighs 1.76 pounds, has a 12-inch screen and has a battery life of 6-8 hours of Web browsing. The processors available are fourth-generation Intel Core i3, i5 or i7, and the machines come with 64 GB, 128 GB, 256 GB or 512 GB solid state drives and 4 GB or 8 GB of RAM. The kickstand has been redesigned so it has many more positions than the one on earlier versions.

Users can take handwritten notes and mark up documents with the Pro Pen, he added, and users can rest their palms on the screen without affecting the results.

Prices range from $799 to $1,949. Accessories available for additional

money include a cover, mouse, 36W

power supply, Ethernet adapter, mini Dis-playPort HD AV adapter, and Display-



Photo by Jerry Crocker

Mazen El Ghadban, the assistant manager of the new Microsoft specialty store in The Oaks, prepares for his demon-stration. The table is filled with prizes, some of which will be red-ticket items in July.

Photo courtesy of Microsoft

The Surface Pro 3 screen works in both vertical and horizontal positions.



Port to VGA adapter. The Surface Pro 3 will come with a power supply and a Pro Pen in the box.

Any version of Office can be installed on the Surface Pro 3, El Ghadban said, adding that Office 365 is subscription-based. It includes cloud-based storage for documents on OneDrive, and as long as subscriptions are kept up, users always have access to the latest versions of all the programs. Every subscription for Of-fice 365 will come with 1 TB of storage on OneDrive.

(The Surface 2, with fewer options available, ranges in price from $449 to $679. It has a longer battery life because it’s not a full computer, El Ghadban said.)

The Surface Pro 3 has solid state drives and a full-size USB 3.0 port, he said. The storage on Surface Pro 3 can be upgraded and is expandable with a mi-croSD up to 128GB, El Ghadban said.

With Surface Pro 3, “I don’t have to buy a laptop and a tablet,” he added.

Although it’s not available yet, a dock for the Surface Pro 3 is coming so users will be able to use it as a full desktop machine with full access to peripherals such as keyboards, monitors, and printers.

Windows 8

El Ghadban said he knows that many people are not familiar with Windows 8 but said we can adapt to change because technology keeps improving. It’s also easy to get to the old-style desktop, he said.

The Modern interface provides access to the standard desktop, and tiles can be added for favorite apps and websites so they’re just a click away. Users can rear-range the tiles, pin new ones to the screen or taskbar and remove tiles they don’t want.

Charms are on the right side of the screen and feature Search (for files and on the Web); Sharing (has email, a read-ing list); Devices (showing printers, pro-jectors and other peripherals); and Set-tings (which adapts to whatever app or program you’re using).

The Mail program can handle any email accounts, not just Microsoft’s.

On the start screen, all the tiles can be resized and are live, meaning that they

update regularly. This can be useful for those following a sports event or stocks. Live tiles give users the option to see what’s going on without having to open a full program or app.

“Having the desktop is a plus because now we’re back to using a full computer we are familiar with,” he continued. Us-ers are not locked in to the Microsoft Store for apps. Users can go online and download alps elsewhere, El Ghadban said.

Users can set Surface Pro 3 up so it opens directly to the desktop rather than the Start screen.

Clicking on the left side of the Start screen brings up a list of all running apps, allowing a person to have, for example, both email and OneNote side by side.

“We want to make it run great for you, and running fast is definitely some-thing. … We know this runs better than most devices out there, and it runs better than some computers out there,” El Ghad-ban said.

Skype, which Microsoft owns, is in-cluded in Windows 8.1 and runs on all platforms, he said in answer to a question.

FaceTime is comparable but is an Apple product that does not run on Win-dows devices.

For those who have their own tele-phone headsets, the microphone array on the Surface Pro 3 can easily be disabled, he said, noting that many new micro-phones plug into USB ports.

Windows Phone

The phone runs Windows 8 and has the same interface as the Surface Pro 3. It comes with Microsoft Office (Word, Ex-cel and PowerPoint) preloaded and works well with other Microsoft devices. A per-sonal assistant is being developed for the Windows phone, he said. The phone al-ready has Cortana, which is similar to Apple’s Siri.

The phone includes a kids’ corner that parents can set up to show only child-



Microsoft specialty store WHAT: Microsoft Specialty Store. Microsoft Specialty stores offer a cu-

rated selection of the best Microsoft products, including Surface, Windows 8 and Windows 8 PCs, Windows Phone, Xbox and more.

WHERE: The Oaks, 350 W. Hillcrest Drive, Thousand Oaks, Calif. 91360. The store is on the lower level, near Center Court.

PHONE: 855-270-6581. HOURS: Monday-Saturday: 10 a.m.-9 p.m.; Sunday: 11 a.m.-7 p.m. WEB SITE: http://content.microsoftstore.com/en-us/detail/theoakssp.

Photo courtesy of Microsoft

The Surface Pro 3 kickstand has many more positions than those of earlier versions.


Lewis

2014 contributors to The Outer Edge

Your name can appear here,

too. Share your knowledge with

other members by sending an

article, a letter or a computer tip

to [email protected].

CIPCUG MEMBERS

Ken Church Art Lewis Helen Long Toby Scott Michael Shalkey Jim Thornton

Sandy Tsutsui-Trujillo John Weigle

APCUG

Sandy Berger Phil Chenevert Steve Costello Linda Gonse Dick Maybach Lynn Page Phil Sorrentino

OTHER

Judy Elens

appropriate apps and other material and block access to making phone calls and shopping online. The phone has a 5-inch screen with a 20 or 40 megapixel camera.

OneDrive can also be downloaded to the Windows Phone and used to store pictures and other material produced on the phone.

The store

The Microsoft store in The Oaks opened June 12. El Ghadban explained that it’s a specialty store because it takes much longer to build and open a full-line store. The kiosk is near Nordstrom’s in The Oaks and sells all Microsoft hardware and software, although some of it must be ordered.

The store personnel can handle some questions and help buyers set up new hardware, but the store does not offer repair services or full tech support. It can also set up 15-minute con-sultations with a technician for more complicated issues at a full-line store, which offer free virus removal.

“You have a Windows device, we’re going to stand by it,” he said. “So we’re going to make sure if you have any prob-lems we’re going to make sure that you get the most out of your device, and we’ll help you fix it.”

“It’s a Microsoft product, and we want you to be able to use it how you want to,” he said.

The store handles desktops, laptops, tablets, Xbox games and consoles and all the Microsoft software.

A full-line store is planned in Canoga Park, but at the mo-ment the closest one is in Century City.



Treasurer’s report

for May 2014 By Art Lewis

[email protected]

5-1-14 through

5-31-14

Category Description

INFLOWS

CIPCUG emal income 40.00 Coffee Income 5.00 Donation 26.00 Membership Income Renewals $500.00 TOTAL Membership Income 500.00 Raffle 42.38

TOTAL INFLOWS 613.38

OUTFLOWS

CIPCUG email expense 214.00 Corporate Expense 47.25 Publication purchases 200.00 Rent Paid 200.00 TOE 326.50

TOTAL OUTFLOWS 987.75

OVERALL TOTAL -374.37

Unrestricted Funds 12,483.66 Restricted Funds 0.00

Bank Balance 5-31-14 12,483.66

Year to Date Income 16,422.36 Year to Date Expense 8,340.05 Net Year to Date 8,102.31

Web help sites (Updated 7-5-14)

Android phones: howtogeek.com/163624/welcome-to-android-a-beginners-guide-to-getting-started-with-android/

Battery information: batteryuniversity.com DSL reports: www.dslreports.com Steve Gibson: www.grc.com Kim Komando: www.komando.com Leo Laporte: www.leoville.com; techguylabs.com/ (among others) Jeff Levy: www.jefflevy.com

and http://digitaldoctorjefflevy.blogspot.com/ Linux distributions: www.DistroWatch.com Microsoft: www.microsoft.com OnGuard Online: www.onguardonline.gov PCMag: www.pcmag.com PC Pitstop: www.pcpitstop.com PC World: www.pcworld.com Recalled products: www.recalls.gov SANS Institute — Computer Security Education and Information

Security Training: www.sans.org Spyware Warrior: www.spywarewarrior.com User Group Relations (Gene Barlow): www.ugr.com Ventura County Computers (Rick and Toby’s shop):

www.vccomputers.com Virus Bulletin: www.virusbtn.com/index Windows Secrets: www.windowssecrets.com


W e didn’t have any visitors at the June meeting. Since the Thousand Oaks Club has turned into a

digital photo club, we may be able to welcome a few of its members who don’t mind climbing over the big hill. Be sure that you watch for some of these people and make them feel welcome.

The board participates in the Tech Soup program, which means we can buy some Microsoft and other programs at

deep discounts to be used to help operate CIPCUG. Stay tuned if you are interested. The ink cartridges are not doing very well. As many brands of car-tridges that they accept, there are a whole lot of them that they don’t

accept. We may have to consider drop-ping the program all together unless

someone can find another company be-sides eCycle that we can try. The ink car-tridges do not have a very big payoff. They bring in 2 cents to 5 cents each..

We did order Russ Walters’ “Secret Guide to Computers and Tricky Living.” We didn’t order as many of them as we have in previous years, and I believe most of them are sold.

Don’t forget that you can still upgrade the Flash drives for $1 for the older one and the latest version is $2.

Long

Bits & Bytes

Membership report:

Is it time to renew? By Ken Church email address: [email protected]

Welcome new members: Robert Agee and Gilbert & Rita Cooperman Attendance at the June 2014 general meeting: 43 members and guests (who signed in)

Total membership: 171 MEMBER RENEWAL INFORMATION $30 for single membership, $35 for two or more family membership. NEW MEMBER INFORMATION $40 first year for single membership, $55 first year for two or more family member-ship in same household. Please send your payment to:

CIPCUG MEMBERSHIP P.O. BOX 51354 OXNARD, CA 93031-1354

Or bring your payment to the members sign-in table at the July 26, 2014, meeting.

May 2014 renewals payment due:

June 2014 renewals payment due:

July 2014 renewals payment due:

Mbr# Last Name First Name Pd to

0691 Harmon Richard 201405

0774 Hoffman LaVern 201405

0692 Maidel Mark 201405

1065 Nicholes Mike 201405

0774A Reiner Max 201405

1234 Saal Fred 201405


1240T Bowman Steve 201406

1118 Haggard Roy 201406

1247 Jay John 201406

0593 Shalkey Mike 201406

1083 Stoutz Hank 201406


1122 Brody Richard 201407

1028 Burke Jim 201407

0354 Ferro Joe 201407

1154 Foster Don 201407

1029 Gelso Sandy 201407

1149 Little Robert 201407

0331 Livingstone Robert 201407

1144 Mortensen Diane 201407

1206 Ohrt Juergen 201407

0945 Segal Michael 201407

0019 Van Slyke Kathy 201407

0020 Van Slyke Noel 201407

CHURCH


We might gain some Thousand Oaks members


By Diane Mortensen-Henderson

CIPCUG Board of Directors held its monthly meeting on June 28, 2014. Members in attendance were James Brown, John Weigle, Craig Ladd, Art Lewis, Andy Toth, Ken Church, Toby Scott and Diane Mortensen-Henderson. Absent: Sandy Tsutsui-Trujillo. In the absence of President Sandy Tsutsui-Trujillo, Immediate Past President James Brown opened the meeting asking if there was any old business. There being none, the meeting was open to new business.

The board was very pleased that CIP-CUG’s vice-president, Craig Ladd, at-tended today’s general and board meet-ings. There was a discussion about who had/has keys to the front and another door at the Boys & Girls club. It was assumed that they were in Craig’s possession, but that was not the case. Two new door keys were made, and Jim will hold them for now.

Today’s speaker from the Microsoft store provided a great deal of good infor-mation and brought plenty free items for those in attendance. Ken will keep the many remaining items to possibly use for door prizes. Sandy, who helps sell raffle tickets, told Craig that, hopefully, she would be able to obtain raffle prizes for the next two months.

Board elections were held during the regular meeting, and being there were no volunteers choos-ing to be on the board, the current officers and ap-pointed members of the board will remain from June 2014 to June 2015. Diane will prepare the An-nual Meeting, Elections of

Board Members to be signed by the presi-dent and herself.

Art Lewis presented the board with a copy of May’s treasurer’s report. Previ-ously, the board approved spending the first $5,000 endowment from Richard McMurrary’s estate, which was stipulated to be used for the acquisition of club equipment to purchase the following: a projector for up to $2,000 and two new microphones and an amplifier for up to $800. Diane will write up a statement to this effect and keep it in CIPCUG’s file. Art announced that he will be on vacation from late July to mid-August. Helen Long will retain CIPCUG’s checkbook and Immediate Past President James Brown and sScretary Diane can sign checks in Art’s absence.

More revenue needs to be created to continue CIPCUG’s services to its mem-

bers. Craig stated that the Thousand Oaks computer user group was disbanding, which may bring some of those members to CIPCUG. If so, it could result in addi-tional revenue by way of new member-ships. Ken is willing to design a new bro-chure. Toby and John are going to work on new text. There has been a long-time need for a new brochure to be used as the club’s marketing piece.

Sandy has found a speaker for a com-ing meeting who will discuss how to cre-ate smartphone apps.

The board agreed to order 10 copies of Office 2013 from Tech Soup for possi-ble new volunteers from the Thousand Oaks club and a copy of Windows 7 for Craig.

Andy is willing to install new free-ware programs for flash drives updates. Toby suggested eliminating any XP pro-grams.

The board discussed the possibility of CIPCUG having a booth at the Ventura County Fair next year. Because the booth needs to be manned from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day the fair is on, sharing a booth with another organization might be more convenient. John stated that if the board agrees to have a booth in 2015, the organization of the event needs to begin in February 2015.

Mortensen-Henderson


Minutes of the June CIPCUG board meeting

CIPCUG board members were re-elected at the July meeting at which no one else vol-unteered to run. The results:

Vice president: Craig Ladd Secretary: Diane Mortensen-Henderson Treasurer: Art Lewis President Sandy Tsutsui-Trujillo is now

in the second year of her two-year term and was not up for election.

The other board positions — Technical Adviser Toby Scott, Web Page Editor Andy Toth, TOE Editor John Weigle, and Mem-bership Chairman Ken Church — are ap-pointed positions. Immediate Past President James Brown is also a board member.

Officers re-elected

Photo by Jerry Crocker

Craig Ladd, left, discusses his medi-cal problems that started after the June meeting. He required massive blood transfusions. Immediate Past President James Brown is at right.


By Bill Wayson

[email protected]

B y now, all users of Windows should be aware of the Cryp-toLocker ransomware Trojan software and be alert for it. If

you are not, CryptoLocker is a nefarious type of malware that uses social engineer-ing to do its work. It’s often disguised as an email attachment, and users who un-wisely click on the payload launch a pro-

gram that encrypts their files, deposits the de-cryption key on a serv-er, and then displays a demand for payment from the user to have the files decrypted. If the user doesn’t pay within a certain length of time, the decryption key is erased, rendering the files essentially in-accessible and, if not

backed up, lost. There is some variation, but this is the essential theme. This is nasty software, but is it something that Linux users need to be concerned about? The answer depends on what Linux is being used for.

Linux users, in general, do not need to be as concerned as Windows users about CryptoLocker or other malware threats. There are a few reasons for this: Not much malware is written for Linux; the Linux security and user models make it much harder for broadly damaging at-tacks to succeed; and vulnerabilities in Linux and open source applications are usually fixed quickly and continuously. Let’s dive a little deeper into how each of these contribute to decreasing Linux’s vulnerability to malware.

Some simply declare that Linux does not suffer from malware threats because nobody writes malware for Linux, and that little is written simply because the number of users of Linux is so small. While the first statement is true — there is little malware out there that targets Linux, and the number of home users of Linux is small, the two are not necessari-

ly related. The reason few crackers write malware for Linux is more complex than just the lack of a large target audience. Writing such malware is difficult. A sig-nificant hurdle is the number and variety of Linux distributions. A malicious exe-cutable program written for one distribu-tion of Linux, and sometimes for one specific kernel version, may very well not even run under a different distribution or kernel. If you want to propagate a large scale attack using executable programs, you may need to write or compile a spe-cific version for each distribution on your target list. While the Linux home user base is small, Linux is used in situations that are very tempting targets for the bad guys. A successful attack against Apache, a very popular Web server, or Bind, a popular DNS server, would place that malware at a major internet junction with access to millions of computers of every variety. Yet such attacks remain very rare. It is probable that little malware is written for Linux and open source soft-ware because of the difficulty of doing so coupled with the following two reasons:

● The Linux user model lends itself to users being able to work on their comput-ers with just enough privileges to do so, and no more.

● This works in tandem with the file and folder security model, which assigns different rights to the owner, a specific group of users, and everyone else for each file and folder. On any computer, successful malware can only damage what the user account it runs under can damage. Since virtually all software run-ning under Linux does so as “normal” (i.e. unprivileged) users, significant parts of the computer, such as the operating system itself, are protected. If I inadvert-ently launch malware while using my Linux PC, unless it can escalate its privi-lege level, only my personal files and folders are vulnerable. The rest of the PC will survive unscathed.

If some malware does successfully run on a Linux PC, achieve root (the Linux administrator account) privileges, and wreak widespread damage, such suc-cess will be short-lived. Linux and popu-

lar open source software are constantly being developed, fixed, and improved. Each Linux distribution vendor provides a software management system that easi-ly keeps not only its Linux OS, but all of the software included in the distribution up to date with fixes for vulnerabilities that are found. Even the revelation of the embarrassingly long-lived Heartbleed flaw in OpenSSL led to a change in the culture of that project that should reduce the possibility of a similar recurrence. Thus the hard work of a good malware writer is soon rendered moot.

There are some users of Linux who should be very wary of malware, not be-cause of their vulnerability, but because they may pass it on to others who are less fortunate. A notable example is anyone running a Linux-based mail server. They should be running up-to-date malware scanning software to avoid delivering malicious messages to email clients. Sev-eral Linux-based applications exist for doing just this.

Linux and open source software are not immune to malware. But the variety of versions and distributions make a suc-cessful, widespread attack much more difficult to achieve. And like any system, its vulnerability is directly related to its weakest link, which is usually the human user. If users can be convinced to do something they really should not do, all bets are off. Linux users can be more comfortable with the security of their PCs, but they should remain vigilant and aware. If something seems fishy, it may very well be fishy.

If you have questions or would like to learn more about Linux and FOSS, come to the July Linux SIG meeting on Tues-day, the 22nd, at 6:30 p.m., at Ventura County Computers in Ventura. Now that the performance issues with the CIPCUG PC have been resolved, we will try to answer any questions regarding Linux and open source applications. See the CIPCUG website for more information. If you have a question or topic you would like the Lair or Linux SIG to cover, drop me a line at [email protected]. Until next month, happy computing.

Wayson

Penguin’s Lair

General news and commentary

Linux and the malware threat



(805) 289-3960 2175 Goodyear Ave. #117 Ventura 93003

Please come in for a demo of Windows 8.1. Let me show you fifty reasons not to buy it.

Remember, let the force be with you. Open your mind and touch the windows key and any other

key and the force will be with you.


Please come in for a demo of Windows 8.1. Let me show you fifty reasons not to buy it.

Remember, let the force be with you. Open your mind and touch the Windows key and any other key and

the force will be with you.


I am getting sick and tired of Rick Smith trying to impeach Windows 8. I’ll have the final say and Windows 8 is here to

stay and if you have 2 hours I’ll explain why.

HP LaserJet printer gets high praise from user

By Jim Thornton

[email protected]

T he best printer that I have used over the 50 years that I have been involved in using comput-ers is my HP LaserJet 1022.

The HP LaserJet 1022 is a small printer with an input tray, dustcover, and located on the front panel of the printer are two small control buttons and three very small lights. The size of the printer is 14 by 14 by 10 inches and weights 12 pounds. The printer uses a USB cable connected to my computer and works very well on my local home network associated with four other computers.

The first button is the Cancel button and when the button is depressed, the printer will stop and cancel the current printing. The second button is the Go button and when the button is depressed, the printer will print out its Demo page if no other printing is scheduled.

The first light is the Go light and it will be flashing when the printer is re-ceiving data to print. The next light is the Ready light and it remains on when the printer is ready to print. The last light is the Attention light and when it is on it is indicating that the input paper tray is empty, the print cartridge door is not closed, the print cartridge is missing, or there are other printer problems.

The HP LaserJet 1022 is known for its fast printing speed of about 15 pages per minute. It easily prints onto various sizes of paper as small as, for example, 4 by 6 inches up to standard 8½ by 11 inches. Plus it prints on envelopes for use in the U.S. mail service and printing the com-plete return and the go to addresses. In addition, I have it print various sizes of Sudoku games with and without numbers and letters in the games.

My current HP LaserJet 1022 printer is over nine years old and still working

wonderful. I have the printer’s electrical cord plugged into my remote power con-trol box, meaning that I don’t manually turn my printer on or off. My computer controls this remote electrical power con-trol box that also controls the power to my external hard drive, my monitor, my scanner and my sound amplifier. The remote electrical control box turns these items on and off by supplying or not sup-plying electrical power, and this does not cause any problems to any of these devic-es. Before using the remote electrical control box, sometimes I would forget to turn off these devices after turning off my computer.

The average price of the HP LaserJet 1022 printer is $210, but I have seen prices on the Internet as low as $149. The printer works very well on all ver-sions of Windows and Mac. The printer cartridge is $27 and is available from



The Outer Edge is printed and prepared for mailing by:

Members’ classified ads

For sale I have the following For Sale (contribution to CIPCUG): 1 each Microsoft Optical Mouse, $2 each Video Selector Switch (5 in-puts/2 outputs), $5 — David Minkin, [email protected]

— Contact Richard Quint, [email protected] 1. Canon LiDE 30 scanner. USB supplies data and pow-er. $10 2. D-Link ADSL2+ modem unused, in opened box with all accessories. $20. 3. D-Link DIR-655 “XTREME N GIGABIT ROUTER” still in shrink-wrapped box. $30..

Wanted

Other categories as needed By Jim Cerny

2nd Vice President, Sarasota PCUG, Florida

February 2014 issue, PC Monitor

www.spcug.org

jimcerny123 (at) gmail.com

W hether you have a tablet, smartphone, or any kind of computer, YouTube is one application that can, all by itself, really justify the purchase of your device. YouTube can be found on the

internet at youtube.com (that’s easy to remember, right?) or you can download the free YouTube application for any device. Since Google has acquired YouTube, it can also be found on the Google website (it used to be Google videos).

YouTube is your access to millions of videos made by al-most anyone who wants to make them available to you for free. Many of the videos are fantastic and some are just a waste of time. But YOU decide. You search for the videos you want to see simply by entering your search criteria (regular English words) in the search box. Do you have a favorite entertainer? Just enter their name and you will have access to hundreds of their videos. How about a home improvement project? Just enter what it is you want to do and see a video of how to do it. Almost anything you can think of, there is probably a video on that subject on YouTube.

Here are just a few examples of fun things to see and ex-plore on YouTube: Famous people, science experiments, col-lege lectures, cartoons, news, products, companies, cooking, travel, painting, and, well just about everything.

The only thing it seems that YouTube does not give you is fairly recent free movies and TV shows. If you searched for a movie or TV show by its title, YouTube will probably only show you the “trailers” for free. However, YouTube does offer some movies and TV shows for a price. But the real fun for me is seeing all that is available to you at no cost whatsoever — and you do not have to join anything.

You could think of YouTube as the ultimate “window to the world” and all that is in it by just using your computer or de-vice. Why read a printed article or view pictures? YouTube can SHOW you what other sources only TELL you. Click on the


CIPCUG News /General news and commentary

many local stores. In fact, the cartridge is cheaper at Costco than at Fry’s, Radio Shack, etc., and the cartridge typically lasts for printing over 2,000 pages.


Fun and knowledge

with YouTube

More on printer ...


Recent headlines from our Facebook page


Here are some recent headlines from our Facebook page:

(https://www.facebook.com/groups/cipcug)

They have seen the future of the Internet, and it is dark Revisiting the Windows Secrets security baseline, Part 1 Best hardware archives on Windows Secret (with a review

of Surface Pro 3) Windows ‘Threshold’: More on Microsoft’s plan to win

over Windows 7 users

Faces photo contest by Focal Press The Is and Os behind cyber warfare The Secret Little Problem with Amazon’s Fire TV Modern tools for mom-and-pops Anatomy of an Android SMS virus — watch out for text

messages, even from your friends Content Insider #344 — Engagement — Google Docs Office Online versus Google Apps: Facts and FUD Series

— Windows Secrets

right-pointing arrow to play the video. You can click on any point on the pro-gress bar to go to that point in the video. And you can click on pause (usually the double vertical line symbol), just like you used to do with the old video VHS tape players. After clicking on “pause” you can go back to the list of videos just like you do with Google. Some videos may have a short advertisement that plays before the real video starts.

There is really no limit to what YouTube has to offer. I have yet to search for something that did not have

some kind of video to watch on that sub-ject. So do not limit your imagination either. Here are just a few things I have found — each of which can provide hours and hours of videos:

• Enter your favorite game and learn how to play the game or sport better.

• Enter “How to…” and learn a new skill or improve the skills you have.

• Tour your favorite city, park, or attraction.

• Ride all the roller coasters you want, at any park, and never have to wait in line or get dizzy.

• Attend a class lecture at a famous

university.

• View long-forgotten videos of fa-mous people and entertainers.

• View videos of how to use your digital camera or tablet or any device or contraption.

• See dangerous stunts, magic tricks, and stupid jokes.

• Discover new things about your favorite hobby.

So don’t hold back — be adventurous and explore the world! Your brain will thank you for it.


More on YouTube ...

Performance, capacity, ports: tablet discriminators Phil Sorrentino

Member, Sarasota PCUG, Florida

December 2012 issue, PC Monitor

www.spcug.org

philsorr (at) yahoo.com

P erformance, capacity, and ports — sounds like something you might think of when you are considering a vacation cruise.

But performance, capacity, and ports are the three technical things to consider when contemplating acquiring many new devices. These three things should be considered, especially when you are plan-ning to buy a tablet, a computer, or even a TV. TVs and computers have been around for quite a while, so let’s take a look at these considerations for the new

kid on the block, the tablet. Usually, when it comes to choosing a tablet, the first thing that meets the eye is the tablet size. Today’s tablets seem to be roughly 7 or 10 inches. Once the size has been decided, then the Operating System be-comes a choice: Apple’s iOS (iOS5, iOS6), Google’s Android (and all of its versions, like FroYo, Ice Cream Sand-wich and Jelly Bean), or Microsoft’s Windows 8 (Pro or RT). And then, with the number of tablets and operating sys-tems, the choice can really get difficult. But another way to help you make the final choice may be just to look at perfor-mance, capacity, and ports.

Performance is a measure of how fast the device is and how well it accomplish-es the desired task. Capacity is a measure

of how much you can do with this device. And ports is a measure of how well the device will interact (interface) with the outside world.

Tablet performance is very hard to measure and quantify, but you really know when you don’t have enough. When you do have plenty of perfor-mance, it is hard to ascribe the quality to any one thing specifically. But usually we look at the speed of the CPU. However, performance is very closely tied to the memory features, so performance may involve the memory speed as well as the CPU speed. Performance of the tablet CPU is measured in GHz, and currently good performance tablets clock in at around 1GHz. Because tablets are typi-




cally touchscreen devices, the first thing we do to ascertain performance is to try to control the operation with our finger flicks and swipes. Objects should move when flicked and actions should take place when the screen is tapped. If there is any lag, it is immediately noticed.

There are many different CPU proces-sors used in tablets. Some of the manu-facturers are ARM, Nvidia, Apple, Intel, and AMD. Apple CPUs are found in the iPad and CPUs from the other manufac-turers are found in the Android and Win-dows 8 tablets. There are at least two high performance CPU chips being used in the latest tablets: the Nvidia quad-core Tegra 3 in Android tablets and the Apple A5X in the latest iPad. The performance of both of these tablets is breathtaking. But keep in mind, not all tablets have the lat-est processors.

CPU performance can be determined by running benchmark tests. Benchmark test data is rarely available, but some-times it can be found in reviews done by a magazine or other organization. Bench-mark tests attempt to measure perfor-mance by running typically very lengthy and very complicated programs to see how long it takes to complete the task. There are many different benchmarks and when many different benchmark tests are run on a group of processors, the results may not always be conclusive. CPUs are sometimes fast in certain computational areas and not so fast in other areas, like data transfer. To really evaluate a CPU with a benchmark test, the benchmark test should be as close to the eventual use of the processor as possible, but this is not always easy to specify. Benchmark tests that involve a user, such as testing a game on a tablet, are even more difficult to use, because playing and observing a game may be very subjective, especially if it

involves the screen display and input from the game player. So, the best test for performance is to try out the tablet your-self while doing some of the things that you intend for the tablet, like Web surf-ing, displaying pictures and videos, or playing a game (try Angry Birds for fun). Many tablets can be taken for a “test drive” at the big box stores like Best Buy and Office Depot.

So much for performance: now for capacity. The capacity of a tablet is typi-cally the amount of solid state memory the tablet provides. It is basically the data storage component of the tablet, which currently ranges from about 1GB to 64GB. This storage is space that is availa-ble for your apps (software programs), and data (used by the apps). Today, capa-ble tablets usually have from 8GB to 32GB of memory. Many Android tablets and Microsoft’s Surface also include a microSD slot for extending the memory capacity. Currently, the SDHC standard has been implemented in the microSD hardware, allowing for up to 32GB of added memory capacity. (At this time, Apple, unfortunately, has not included a memory expansion slot on any of its iPad devices, although they do sell a model with 64GB of memory.)

Ports refers to the availability of inter-face connections provided by the tablet. This is the way your tablet interacts with your other devices. Some tablets include a micro, mini, or standard size USB con-nector. The USB interface allows the tab-let to be connected to a computer (desktop or laptop) in order to move files to and from the tablet. This is one method of getting your entertainment media (pictures and videos) on to, or off of, the tablet. This is how you can get the pic-tures or videos that you captured with your tablet’s camera into your picture

collection on your computer. (Again, at this time, Apple, unfortunately, has not included a USB connection on any of its iPad devices, although it does provide a 30-pin dock connector that may be used to connect to a computer.)

Another valuable port found on some tablets is a micro-HDMI port. With this interface, the tablet can directly show video (picture and sound) on any TV with an HDMI input, which is found on almost every new flat panel TV. (Again, at this time, Apple, unfortunately, has not in-cluded a micro-HDMI port on any of its iPad devices, although they do provide a 30-pin dock connector that may be used to output video.)

Two other interface connections should be considered as ports although they are not obvious when you look at the hardware. These are Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, neither of which has a hardware connec-tion because both of these are wireless interfaces. These interfaces allow the tablet to interact with other devices that subscribe to the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless standards. [And finally, although few tablets incorporate this, let’s not for-get about NFC (Near Field Communica-tions). This wireless interface has many uses, but may only end up on smartphones. NFC will allow easy trans-fer of files between closely situated (within a few centimeters) devices. This interface may be instrumental in allowing you to use your device as a wallet, in the future.]

Once you’ve decided to buy a tablet, the next thing is to evaluate the perfor-mance, capacity, and ports of the most interesting offerings in the market. Usual-ly, there will be a few that meet most of your criteria. At that point it becomes a matter of value: capability for dollars. Good luck.

Beware of phone calls and emails that say they’re from a financial institution, report a

problem with your account and ask you for information like account numbers or log-

in names. The sender or caller wants the information to get access to your accounts. If

in doubt, visit the website of the company involved by using a safe link to determine if

there are really any problems.


Every month, members of the Channel Islands PC Users Group have access to:

♦ The Outer Edge newsletter.

♦ The general meeting, featuring a question-and-answer session and program on software or hardware.

♦ Special Interest Groups (special meetings held each month). The alterna-tive devices SIG (tablets, smartphones, etc.) is held before the regular meeting. The Linux SIG meets on a different day.

♦ Door prizes and raffle at the regular meeting.

Other benefits include:

♦ Special user group discounts on books and software.

♦ A flash drive containing many useful freeware programs.

♦ A chance to make friends with people who have similar interests.

♦ The ability to put your knowledge to good use by helping other members. The whole concept of user groups is members helping members.

Please clip the coupon below and send with payment to CIPCUG-Membership, P.O. Box 51354, Oxnard, CA 93031-1354.

Please make checks payable to

CIPCUG.

Dues for new members

Individual member, $40. Family membership (same address),

$55. Renewals are $30 and $35 per year

respectively. TOE subscription only (in the U.S.),

$20.

CIPCUG E-MAIL ADDRESS

Members who would like to have an email address through CIPCUG in the form of [email protected] may ob-tain one for $20 per year.

Why join Channel Islands PC Users Group (CIPCUG)?

CIPCUG MEMBERSHIP

APPLICATION

Amount enclosed: ____________________________ Please Print the following information: Name: _______________________________________ Address: ______________________________________ City: ___________________________, State:________ ZIP Code: ________________ Phone (Home): ______________(Work): ______________ E-mail address: ________________________________ User level: Novice ____; Intermediate _____; Advanced _____

Can you help the club as a volunteer? If so, what would you be interested in working on? Please list below or on a sepa-rate sheet if necessary. For CIPCUG use: Date __________________ Member # ____________


Channel Islands PC Users Group Inc. P.O.Box 51354 Oxnard, CA: 93031

DATED MATERIAL Please Do Not Delay

July 2014 meeting

of the Channel Islands PC Users Group

Saturday morning, July 26, at the Boys & Girls Club, 1500 Temple Ave. (Ponderosa Drive and Temple Avenue), Camarillo. Meeting schedule: 8:00 a.m. Doors open 8:45 SIGs (Internet and connectivity; Tablet and phone apps) 9:30 Business meeting 10:00 Q&A session 10:30 Break 11:00 Program: TBA Drawing

DUES REMINDER If the code above your name is 2014 JULY, your dues are payable this month.

The map shows the easiest route

to the Boys & Girls Club, but if

you prefer, you can take the

Carmen Drive offramp to

Ponderosa Drive, which leads to

Temple Avenue.

NON-PROFIT U.S. POSTAGE

PAID OXNARD. CA

PERMIT NO. 1785

CARMEN DR.

july 2014 the outer edge page 1 the outer e · july 2014 the outer edge page 3

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