Information Avenue - January
21, 2005 - Issue #156
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| Information Avenue -
January 21, 2005 - Issue #156 You may read this newsletter online at http://thundercloud.net/infoave/archives2005/week-156.htm . |
Hi everyone,
Welcome to Issue #156 of Cloudeight Information Avenue.
Thanks for subscribing! You can find answers to your computer
questions or get help from our Information Avenue Forum!
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 InfoAve Premium E-Book The response has been fantastic and we appreciate the hundreds of compliments you have sent us about our new E-book. But there are still many of you who have yet to discover just how much $6.95 can buy! Our new InfoAve Premium E-book contains all the tips, tricks, questions/answers, Freeware Picks, Web Site Picks, Back to Basic Tips, and Reader's Tips, from the first year of InfoAve Premium. That's hundreds of tips and tricks and questions and answers, our complete list of freeware picks, Back To Basics, our favorite "Rants", and more. This e-book is specially designed for easy navigation, printability, and ease-of-use. This is an e-book you'll refer to often. It's a great reference for solving computer problems and getting great information on how to keep your computer running at its best and keep yourself safe from the dangers lurking on the Internet. This is by far the most extensive and best e-book we've ever produced! All sections are categorized for easy-reference. You'll see all our Premium Freeware Picks, Tips & Tricks, Sites of The Week, Back To Basics, Answers to hundreds of Questions, and more. Please click here for all the details and to get your copy of "Information Avenue- Premium E-book - The First Year". Special 48 Hour Sale on Cloudeight Email Guardian EXTENDED! - Now available for HALF PRICE - Click Here Now For All The Details! We're extending this offer so that all of our newsletter subscribers have a chance to get our great Email Backup Guardian for only $7.50. That's half-price! Please hurry, this offer will be closed as soon as all of our newsletter subscribers have been offered this special deal. Click here to learn more. |
| The Top Questions of The Week |
A Question from Anne
I frequently get forwarded emails showing at the end some Emoticons and a click here for
free emoticons. I do not click on these as I feel they might not be exactly free.
Is this part of Incredimail? Is it safe to click on this? I have read
pros and cons re Incredimail and wonder if it is a safe to use. Your new E-book is
terrific. Thanks for compiling it. Anne
Answer
Thanks, Anne. In our opinion Incredimail is not recommended, because, regardless of the
statements they make on their Web site, Incredimail's Terms of Service
(TOS) are contradictory; not to mention full of legal-speak and confusing. And, whether you have read the Terms of Service or their EULA (End
User License Agreement) you agree to be bound by them when you install Incredimail. The
TOS and EULA contain clauses that would make any thinking person shudder. Please review
them now; read them completely. To us it is "incredible" that any thinking
person would agree to such terms.
Additionally, the Emoticons, (advertising banner) at the bottom of the Incredimail email are not visible to the person composing the letter, they're only visible to the recipient. This is done purposely by Incredimail. We think that's wrong. If I'm sending a letter to someone I want to know exactly what I'm sending them, don't you? The person sending you the email has no idea he or she is sending an advertisement. But, more than an advertisement, this image or images are used as Web beacons (to see a definition of a Web beacon please click here).
Incredimail has branched out into other questionable products such as Incredibar, Incredidate, and Incredigames. They attempt to push Incredimail users into installing these other programs/services all of which come at a cost: Either in the form of adware, (some sites call them spyware), or subscription services. There seems to be no end to their aggressive and intrusive technologies. And, they offer no discernable tech support as evidenced by countless web references to this by its users.
We recently installed Incredimail on a test computer using today's 'Freeware Program of The Week - Total Uninstall". We tracked the changes Incredimail made to our test system. The results were "Incredible" indeed. Over 15,000 lines of changes were made to our test system and it's registry (we have the test results stored in a text file). We then used Total Uninstall to remove every single change it made and removed Incredimail from our test computer. We then installed Mozilla's Thunderbird to compare the changes it made with the changes Incredimail made. Thunderbird made only 300 lines of changes. Keep in mind that Thunderbird and Incredimail are both email clients. Any program which makes that many changes is bound to have some negative impact on the computer's operation. It is no wonder that many references on the Web refer to Incredimail's instability and unwanted changes to various normal Windows configurations. For example, read these comments and these as well.
To summarize: Incredimail's 20
page Terms of Service and EULA contradict the summary of Incredimail displayed on its home
page . Emails sent with the free version contain Web beacons. The free version contains
adware and according to the information on the pages above, potentially, spyware. Its EULA
is contradicted by its Terms Of Service. Yet, you agree to both, simply by installing the
program. Incredimail makes over 15,000 lines of changes to your Windows system and your
registry when you install it. When uninstalled, the usual way (i.e. without using a
program like "TotalUninstall") hundreds of the changes Incredimail made are not
reversed and fragments of the program lie cluttering up your system forever unless
manually removed. Once you install Incredimail you may be leaving your system open for
installation of other Incredimail (et.al) products.
Our advice: Don't trade your computer and your privacy for cartoons. It's not worth it.
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A
Question from Shelly
Is there a shortcut to return to Google search results page after you have
surfed a link without hitting backspace (often many times) or using the Back drop-down
button on the toolbar?
Answer
Yes, you can do
one of two things and this will work for all links you click on Google search results
pages. You can hold down the "SHIFT" key when clicking the link or you can
right-click the link and select "Open in a new window".
|
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| This Week's Tips & Tricks! |
InfoAve Subscriber Tip Of The Week
Tip Submitted by Bill
Bill's Tip - I really enjoy your Information Avenue Premium
letters. They're great. Keep them coming. Older people, like me, sometimes have trouble
using the mouse to highlight words or parts thereof. My tip is to put the cursor behind,
or in front of the words you want to highlight and hold down shift and tap the arrow keys
in the forward or back direction. It will highlight the individual letters or
words/sentences. It also works to delete up or downwards.
Thanks for the tip, Bill, it's a very easy way to highlight just what you want if one has
trouble highlighting with a mouse. Do you have a tip or trick you would like to share with
our readers? Send it to us by clicking here. If we use your tip, you'll win a great prize!
This Week's Tips & Tricks
Better Shredder
Windows All Versions
If you've been reading InfoAve for any length of time you probably already know when you
delete a file in Windows it's not really gone. Anyone who knows enough about computers and
has the right software can restore almost any file that has been deleted. We use the
analogy of a chalkboard. A hard drive contains imprints of every file that has ever been
on it, just like a slate chalkboard. Somewhere, deep in the slate, there's a record, no
matter how faint, of everything that's ever been written on it. And so it is with your
computer's hard drive.
Paper shredders are becoming hot items in stores now. Most of us know better than to throw
out credit card bills or credit card receipts in the trash without destroying them first.
Identity theft is becoming a very menacing threat and one we should all take seriously.
But, what about files stored on your computer that contain sensitive information? Deleting
them won't get rid of them, someone could reconstruct them and find everything you
deleted. There's no way to completely render them unreadable/unrecoverable without a good
software shredder short of removing your hard drive and beating it to death with a sledge
hammer. So, we found a very simple and safe one (free of course) you can use to get rid of
those sensitive files so they cannot be recovered by anyone. It's called
"SuperShredder" by Analog-X. We suggest it to anyone who is concerned about
files with sensitive data and how to make sure they're not recoverable. You can download
SuperShredder from the following link. http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/system/shred.htm
The Need For Speed
Speed Up Control Panel's Add or Remove Programs
Windows XP Home and Professional
Have you ever noticed the long wait when you click Control Panel / Add or
Remove programs? If you have a lot of programs installed you will. You'll see a
message that says "Please wait while the list is being populated." and the
bigger the list the longer it takes. You can speed this up a great deal by making one,
simple change. At the top of the window, uncheck "Show Updates". Since this
refers to Windows updates you have installed, and assuming you're not looking to uninstall
them, uncheck that box and your Control Panel / Add or Remove programs will load much
faster.
The Tip of Tips!
The Tip That
Keeps On Tipping!
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all of the questions and answers (updated for 2005), Back to Basics, and our most popular Rants.
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| Our Site of The Week |
While we featured this program before (in 2003), it came to mind again while doing research this week for Information Avenue. This program is not for the beginner, but for those of you with at least intermediate computer skills who would like to track the changes that a program makes to your system and your registry when you install it, and then completely remove all these changes when you uninstall it, this is a very useful program It is important that you read the program documentation and help and understand the concept of it before attempting to use it. If used as directed you'll find it an invaluable tool when installing or uninstalling programs. (Please note you can only completely uninstall programs using Total Uninstall if you have installed them using Total Uninstall. This is not a program that you can use to completely uninstall other programs you already have.) Click here to read more about and/or to download this very useful application. Because it can come in very handy at times and because it is the best of its kind ...it's our Freeware Program of The Week.
Note: This program is very useful if you understand the concept of the program. We remind you this program is not a general uninstaller and it is for more advanced users. We do not provide support for any program which is not a Cloudeight product. Total Uninstall comes with documentation and help. If you need help using this useful program read the documentation or write directly to the author.
| Back To Basics |
How To Properly Shut Down Your Computer
While this sounds almost unbelievable, unfortunately, it's true. There are still people out there that shut down their computers by simply turning of the power (Really!). This came to our attention the past couple weeks, possibly because of Christmas and people getting computers for the first time. We had several letters from people who lost data because of improper shutdown (read: Turning off their computer by simply turning off the power). If you're one of those, please don't shut your computer by turning off the power. This can lead to a loss of data, corruption of data, unnecessary fragmenting of your hard drive, shorten the life of your computer considerably, and ruin your Windows installation. Always shut down your computer by clicking Start-->Turn Off Computer-->Shutdown.
Remember all software recommendations we make in this newsletter are based on our own experience and testing of the programs that we recommend. This does not mean we guarantee they will work on your computer. We assume you will read the program documentation and use the program according to the instructions. We make no guarantees about any program recommended in this newsletter or its suitability for any particular purpose. We will not be responsible for any problems you may have. We do not and cannot provide support for any products other than our own Cloudeight products. We urge you to use good judgment when downloading and installing software and to use a program only after reading the program's documentation. And, all Tips & Tricks in this newsletter have been tested by us on several different computers and were found to work as indicated. They may not work on yours. We make no guarantees. Anything we recommend you try and use at your own risk. We will not be responsible for any problems caused and do not guarantee any software programs recommended in this newsletter or tips and tricks in this newsletter to be fit for any particular purpose. That being said, if you have any problems, please let us know.
We would like to thank all of you who have subscribed to Cloudeight Information Avenue. We're glad to have you with us! If you have a question you would like to see answered in this newsletter please submit it to us by clicking here. Keep in mind we cannot answer every question, but we do read every one.
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We'll see you next week with a brand new issue of Information Avenue. Thanks to all of you for your support and for subscribing to Information Avenue Free Edition!
Best wishes,
Eightball & Thundercloud
Cloudeight Information Avenue Free Edition
January 21, 2005
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