Puck’s Blog

Craig got himself a new computer recently and I immediately went into protective geek mode and started telling him all the security software and updates he should make sure he had installed and his eyes kind of glazed over and so I said “maybe I’ll make a blog post about it so you can just follow the links.”

Ok, so you have your new computer.  Why are you on the Internet with it already?  If you didn’t activate your Windows Firewall before connecting you may already have become infected!  I’m serious, turn it on!

Windows Firewall
Click Start > Control Panel > Windows Firewall and make sure it’s “On”.  Those of you who are more advanced users and have a hardware firewall (such as a hardware router like my DI-624) can pretty safely disable the WIndows Firewall.  There are other firewall options such as ZoneAlarm but it’s recently become nagware so I avoid it (their page really tries to get you to buy it too).  If you really care, get a router.  They’re great and can provide you with Wireless Networking around the house if you have a notebook.  It’s become really handy for us to have Internet anywhere in the house thanks to Wireless.

Windows Updates
Ok, then I want you to go to http://www.windowsupdate.com/ and get all the Critical Updates and reboot.  And then?  Go there again and do it again.  Because some Critical Updates won’t show up until you have other Critical Updates.  So keep going there, getting updates, and rebooting until they stop giving you ones marked as “Critical”.  Ok, now that we’re done with that, here’s the software you want:

AntiVirus
I use Symantec AntiVirus, but it costs money.  But I’ve heard very good things about AVG Free Antivirus so install that if you don’t have a paid alternative.

Anti-Spyware
The best anti-spyware software around is definitely Spybot.  Download Spybot, install and then run it through and update and then let it scan your system and “Immunize” it.  Spybot is freeware.

You should also get AdAware Personal as it can occasionally catch things Spybot misses, though I find this is quite rare.  As it’s also free (though they sell “better” versions) it certainly doesn’t hurt to install it.

You should run both of these programs about once per week to make sure you’re totally clear of spyware.

AntiSpam
SpamBayes is a great anti-spam program that works best as a plugin for Outlook (not Outlook Express)  If you have Outlook then definitely install this.  What’s great is that it learns what spam is to you as it goes along.  Outlook will gain a “Delete As Spam” button and SpamBayes will study the email you’ve done this to and figure out why it’s spam and remember that for later. 

After running it for a month or so it should catch almost everything and the few “false-positives” it has only get marked as “Junk Suspects”.  You can set up the behaviour for both Junk Mail and Junk Suspects.  I have Junk Mail go into a folder and get marked as read.  Junk Suspects go into another folder but are kept “unread” so I check them myself.  If you don’t use Outlook, you can still run SpamBayes as a “proxy” program.  I haven’t done it myself, but basically it sits between your email program and your email server and filters the email as it comes in for you.  Their web site has details on how to install it that way.

Decompressing
I used to recommend Winzip, but these days my decompression utility of choice is definitely 7-Zip.  It’s open-source, totally free and decompresses every format I’ve thrown at it, including their own .7z format.  Winzip was only a trial that you could continue past.

Web Browsing
This is a hard one.  Not because Internet Explorer is a legitimate choice, but because the two alternatives I like have different benefits and drawbacks.  First there’s Firefox.  It’s free, powerful, secure and extensible.  But it has a few nagging faults that drive me crazy.  My other choice is Maxthon, which uses the IE render engine but adds in ad and popup blocking, mouse gestures, and a great search-from-the-address-bar functionality.  However, a lot of the cool stuff requires you to go in and change the default settings, especially for that search.  They default to some really crappy search engines and leave out other cool stuff.

For the new, I’d suggest Firefox then.  I just wish you could totally force off its ability to make new windows and instead have everything load in a new tab instead, and that it would display font sizes the way IE does (even if it’s wrong!  I don’t care, stop making text so tiny!)

Video Player
What’s that?  Windows comes with one?  Well it’s junk.  It used to be good but it’s become bloated, slow and worthless.  So instead get RealAlternative, which comes with “Media Player Classic”.  It looks just like the old version of Windows Media Player but has a lot of the advanced features without being bloated crap.  The “RealAlt” part of it is a codec that lets you play RealMedia files without having to install the abomination that is the RealPlayer.  Avoid RealPlayer at all costs!  Get RealAlt instead!  Like everything else here, it’s free, no nagging, no trying-to-get-you-to-buy-something.

What’s a “codec”?  It’s short for coder-decoder and it’s what lets your media player figure out how to play audio and video files.  There are a lot of different codecs out there, so you should also get the All-In-One Codec Pack.  Again, it’s free.

One other media player you’ll want is VLC.  I don’t use it very often, but when I do I’m glad I’ve got it.  VLC doesn’t use codecs but instead somehow figures everything out itself.  It’ll even play DVDs, which you’d normally need a non-free program for.

I use MPC (Media Player Classic) for playing all of my media except my music.  For that I use iTunes.  Not only does it work with my iPod, but it’s got great features and works well, though with my 7,000 MP3s I admit it’s become a bit slow.  It’s very good at burning both Audio and MP3 CDs, and comes iwth QuickTime which doesn’t totally suck.

Instant Messaging
MSN?  Yahoo?  ICQ?  AIM?  Why install all four of those when you can install Trillian and have one program handle them all, plus IRC.  I liked Trillian so much I actually bought the Pro package.  The free version seems nag-free and works great.

The only additional IM program I’m running is Skype, which does voice chat.  Skype also allows you to call out to regular landlines and cell phones.  Normally this costs money but they’re offering free calls to anywhere in North America until December 31st, 2006.  Anyone paying for long distance until then when they have a computer, high-speed Internet and a microphone is just throwing money away.

Java
Several programs people create and give away for free these days require you to have Sun’s Java programming language installed.  I know, that page has a lot of confusing download links.  It’s annoying.  But you want the “J2SE Runtime Environment” or “JRE” link.  Download the right one for your version of Windows and install it.  Until you install some Java programs it won’t do much.

Cool Stuff
Google Earth is so much better than you’d think.  Not only does it let you play around looking at our wonderful planet with satellite image maps and terrain maps, but you can use it to find things near you.  With our recent move to Burnaby it’s been indispensible.  I simply go to the location we live in (added to “My Places”) and then search for “deli” or “hardware” or “hairdresser” and it finds the nearest dozen or so locations that match my search, and can provide driving directions!

File Sharing
Torrenting is the way to go these days, and my preferred BitTorrent client is uTorrent.  It’s so small and well written it doesn’t even have an installation program.  So the utorrent.exe that you’ll download is actually the utorrent program.  Move it to wherever you want to keep it (maybe make Program Files\utorrent\ and put it in there) and then run it and set it as your default .torrent program.  There are several torrent search sites on the net.  Try TorrentSpy or Torrents.to.

FTP
If you need an FTP program, you can’t go wrong with Filezilla.  Again, open-source, totally free, and powerful.

That’s everything I can think of the at the moment.  I’m sure there’s more, so if I think of it I’ll add/edit this post.  I’m sure some of you will have some comments/additions of your own.  Feel free to make them and if I agree I’ll also do an edit.