The Latest News

by Bob Seidel

I thought I would use this week's column to just discuss some late news and stories that I have accumulated.

Symantec has announced the 2003 versions of its flagship products - Norton Anti-Virus and Norton Internet Security firewall. There is not too much change that I can see thus far, but the support to shut down popup and popdown ads during web browsing are improved - if this works well it alone would be worth the price of upgrading. I will be getting a version of NIS soon and will report later on what I see. But these products are, in my opinion, still the best in the marketplace.

The new State Port Pilot building is really beautiful; I am glad that I was able to help in my small way by setting up their computer network, email, and Internet access. Now, if I could just get them to switch from Macs (Apple Macintosh computers) to Windows-based PCs. But they would probably say exactly the opposite about me!

I have had a lot of service phone calls lately from people who didn't plug a particular cable into their computer, device, or into the wall jack. It's a good idea to check the connections first when any device doesn't function correctly.

Microsoft has released the first Service Pack for Windows XP. It is usually considered wise in the industry to never get the first offering of any Microsoft system and to wait for the first service pack to fix the bugs. This is still true to some extent, but Microsoft did release many of the service pack fixes beforehand and thus most of the major bugs were fixed long before the service pack came out. This brings up a subject: it's almost mandatory these days to have a high speed Internet connection. Many programs now regularly download fixes and updates via the Internet - sometimes you don't even know it is occurring. If you have a slow speed dialup connection, you just can't do this and will fall behind. You are then exposed to not only program bugs, but also security and virus issues.

I am just amazed at the quick shipment times from Dell and Gateway these days. This is probably because their factories have excess capacity, but it's to our advantage. One client recently ordered a PC from Dell on a Monday; it was shipped the same day, and arrived on Thursday. My experience with some of the tier three vendors has been exactly the opposite - we recently had to wait almost a month for one of those, exacerbated by slow ground shipment from California.

The new version of USB - USB 2.0 - has now become fairly standard and it is much faster than the old version. Almost all new PCs ship with it, and the needed parts, such as hubs and cables, are now available at reasonable prices. You should be aware that the cables for USB 2.0 are the same as for USB1.1. You can plug a USB 1.1 device into a USB 2.0 port with no problem - just be aware that it will run at the slower 1.1 speed. If you plus a USB 1.1 hub into a USB 2.0 port, this will also work OK, but the hub and all devices downstream of it will again work only at 1.1 speeds. You can get upgrade PCI cards for USB 2.0 fairly cheaply.

Well, I am off to install some updates - enjoy the fall weather!

Bob Seidel is a local computer consultant in the Southport / Oak Island area. You can visit his website at www.bobseidel.com or e-mail him at bsc@bobseidel.com).