So much for Virgin superfast broadband! I've clocked mine at 192Kb. Superfast my arse!

Add a comment

 | Link | Back to top |

I use Linkedin, but I must say I find the "People you may know" section quite ridiculous. When I log in it seems to assume I am likely to know other people only on the basis we have the same name.

Add a comment

 | Link | Back to top |

My name has an apostrophe. This precludes me from being quoted for car insurance on quotezone. Apostrophes are not allowed. I can only be quoted if I make up the surname or leave the apostrophe out alltogether. Such nonsense! Don't they like the 'Oirish'?

Add a comment

 | Link | Back to top |

I thought this might be the smallest blog post in the world but I remembered Blacksheep already won the blog awards in that category for his blog which contained no content at all. That untitled blog, which his harshest critics lambasted as being an error, also, controversially, won best punctuation and spelling for a blog.

And, as if that wasn't enough hardware for the night, his blog also won first place for best regional submission from an area around Maynooth. Fans admire the blog post for its nihilistic candour and have even drawn parallels to the ground breaking conceptual artist, Marcel Duchamp.

For me, I think he made an error, was too eager with the return key. I can't even link direct to the blank post as the lack of title means it can't be indexed, but enough about the blog awards, I want to talk about shirts.

Why is it when you buy a non iron shirt the first thing you have to do is iron it to take the creases out?

Add a comment

 | Link | Back to top |

We oldies don't do much mobile calling but we know about "cheap"! We call Dublin twice a week on our landline at 1 half pence per min. (how do you do fractions?) How? - Dial 0844 200 20 20. Wait for Robot instructions, then dial Irish Number followed by "hash" (where's that on the keyboard?) They are called "Telestont" I believe. Calls to uk mobiles from landlines can be made at 10p/min. by dialling 08719 997 997 and follow instructions. Hope this helps somebody - (Maiden Blog!)

Add a comment

 | Link | Back to top |

When I penned my original blog about iphone, iphone me bollocks ,this piece of technical crap was'nt available in Ireland yet, well come March 14th all that will change.

Please follow the link below as Pat Phelan articulates these points much better than me. If you decide to buy one of these phones after reading his blog God help you.

 

Add a comment

 | Link | Back to top |

If you're buying retail and go into any of the high street stores such as PC World, Comet, Currys, John Lewis, Dixons, Tesco all laptops on sale come pre-installed with Windows Vista. If you go online to Compaq, Toshiba, Sony, HP, Acer and the rest, you have no choice but to buy Windows Vista. In fact, all websites display the same message "Toshiba recommends Windows Vista", "HP recommends Windows Vista", "VAIO recommends Windows Vista", "Acer recommends Windows Vista" on and on ad nauseam.

With the consistent wording, these recommendations clearly originate from Microsoft rather than clinical engineering tests. Microsoft are heavily incentivising manufacturers to push Vista which has unbelievably been in development since 2001, consuming Microsoft people and money. Despite this, Vista, delivered three years late, doesn't perform any better than XP and needs some serious hardware just to run the graphical "Aero" interface such as 1GB of system memory and a 40GB hard drive capacity.  

Business customers running Vista Business were thrown a life buoy, being quietly allowed to "downgrade" to XP. Retail customers, however, don't have the same licensing choice. If you have it, you're stuck with it. The main change in Vista is the unnecessary user interface and an improved search function as it tries to catch up with Google. Oh, and My Computer has been renamed Computer.

With Vista OS I am reminded of the Apple II being replaced with the Apple III in the early 1980s. The Apple III was designed by Marketeers and was the beginning of the end of Apples leading market position until it started to find itself again with the iPod. Vista has the look and feel of a development being led by Marketeers, it's not an operating system of choice.

So what is the alternative? As you can't seem to buy a laptop with XP you can return to Apple and the MAC OS (once it's not the "leopard" 10.5) or you can build your own with a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu, i.e. buy a Vista Laptop and uninstall the Vista OS. For the moment, my choice is not to buy.

Is it any wonder Vista is ranked number one by PC World as the biggest tech disappointment of 2007?

1. Windows Vista
2. The High Definition format War
3. Facebook Beacon
4. Yahoo
5. Apple iPhone
6. The Broadband Industry
7. Voice Over IP
8. Apple "Leopard" OS 10.5
9. Microsoft Office 2007
10. Wireless Carriers
11. Microsoft Zune
12. Internet Security
13. Social Networks
14. Municipal WiMax
15. Amazon Unbox

 

Add a comment

 | Link | Back to top |

Despite having the Techguys with "a wealth of knowledge, years of experience and unrivalled expertise in all manner of computer and technology related challenges" I couldn't get onto the PC World website as it was too busy. I am advised the store will open soon, and bizarrely, am asked to try again in 1430 minutes.

1430 minutes, why that's just under 24 hours? What's the matter, can't the Techguys get the load balancing on the servers right? Is the challenge too great? Or maybe PC World, ironically, just doesn't have the hardware?

By the way, I assume the 1430 minutes is an error in their calculations, unless they've been really clever and included a variable to cover the amount of time a visitor will waste trying to find a laptop without rubbish Vista installed.

Wouldn't it be useful if PC World added operating system into their search function? You might feel you actually had a choice, even if it was only to select XP.

Add a comment

 | Link | Back to top |

I'm only here a day and already I have a moan about it. Comments. When I want to make one, I scroll down to the bottom of the blog I just read and notice a big ---------------------- dividing line above the comments link which makes it look like that's to place a comment for the blog below so I scroll back up like a good lad to make my comment which of course ends up as a comment in the wrong blog. Any chance the format could be changed to make it a bit clearer or have the blog printed on the reply page. This would also have the side benefit that you could copy & paste to quote from the blog you are replying to.

Add a comment

 | Link | Back to top |

Since Easyspace was acquired by Iomart for £10.5M at the tail end of 2004 services have been in decline. One of the problems, and I speak as a user and customer of Easyspace since the 90's, has been in their outsourcing of support services to India. When support was based on shore in Byfleet, Surrey, the technical response and customer service experience, was always spot on. 

This Thursday I contacted Easyspace support with a very simple problem to resolve. I had tried, unsuccessfully, to renew five of the domains in my stable with a debit card, as I have been doing, for what must be now almost ten years. 

The response I got back on my support ticket, time stamped 4:33am (about 9am local time India) claimed "Debit Card is for Monthly Customers Only.", and prompts me to follow a link about payment methods which goes on to explain about direct debits. 

My query had asked "I have tried to renew these [domains] on three separate occasions, even using different debit cards but I keep getting the same message - unable to process at this time."....

Iomart is a public company. You expect an appreciation of the difference between a debit card and a direct debit, but there isn't one. Perhaps this is an outcome of not properly managing an outsourced function, where you end up getting a customer response which begins "this is the wrong answer".

Of course, since last year I have been migrating all my services away from Easyspace, ever since I had been encouraged / miss-sold an upgrade to a dedicated server with a rubbish Plaxo control panel. In fact, this is the reason I registered the domain, reallyannoyshit.com and started this blog. Over a year later and this company are still annoying the s... out of me, and are still getting it wrong.

Add a comment

 | Link | Back to top |

The headline says it all "iGeeks" await €1400 iPhone launch" well there you have it, Steve Jobs was in London yesterday to launch and announce the coming of the new iPhone which will be available from November 9 2007, mark your diary.

 I suppose that there will be many that will be looking forward to the launch and more luck to you, but heres the beauty of this product, it will not be able to operate on 3G in Europe, that right it will not be 3G compatible, the so called "donkeys bollock's" of phone,music, and internet technology will operate at the same speed of dial up internet connection, brilliant, I suppose that when you buy the phone you'll be handed a 10 mile telephone cable which you will use to "Dial -up", but at least you'll be connected, albeit physically.

 Whilst the world has moved on in technological term's Apple still makes shite products but use's marketing ploys to tempt you into the Den that is non-compatibility, isolation and uselessness, but whipping £899 (€1400 approx) out of your pocket, remember "I'm PC, I'm Mac" well there you go, additionally it also be said that the same phone that does'nt work on 3G is available in the US for $399 and $599 in Japan but this price is under review, why, because the Japanese are'nt stupid.

 I suppose the next announcement from Jobs will be that Web 2.0 is overrated and the feck'in thing will be Web 1.0 compatible, or if that fails they will buy Digitals Vax.VMs system from a down and out on the street and get the Marketing Department working on it.

Christ as a child I used to get two tin can's put a hole in each, connect with string, and talk to my fellow soldiers during "our war", now Apple has "sexed" it up, to the Patent Lawyers seems to be the only option.

 Feck I'm annoyed by this Sh##t.

Add a comment

 | Link | Back to top |

Government insist there is no risk from Wi-Fi radiation

Read what other bloggers are saying....

• BookDrunk
• NextLust
• ChrisBlogger
• ParentDish
• Technovia
• Computing
• Digamy

Add a comment

 | Link | Back to top |

Play once and it becomes an effort to stop. No fancy Xbox needed, no shoot em up gore...

This script runs Pacman

Add a comment

 | Link | Back to top |

Monster is a jobs board, which in the UK is billed as a leading careers website. The marketing gump on their web site includes the following statements

• It's committed to connecting organisations with individuals
• helps you explore the possibilities and find the opportunities that are right for you
• Offers innovative technology and first class services
• Changes the way people look for jobs and employers look for people
• Contains a searchable database
• Is part of Monster Worldwide Inc., (NASDAQ: MNST), a member of S&P 500 index and the NASDAQ 100.

They are currently spending god knows how much on their "monster works for me" global add campaign. Rob Brouwer, CEO, Monster UK & Ireland, comments "It's aim is to encourage and motivate candidates towards a positive career move in 2007 based on their own individual needs or desires - the reason they go to work".

Call me old fashioned but for me one of the key reasons people go to work is to be paid, but with all this "innovative technology" and "searchable database" thingy there is no way to filter your results by how much you would like to be paid or a minimum salary requirement. Everything is jumbled in together and it's a hit and miss whether the optional keywords field will successfully filter out what you don't want. The chances are it will also filter out the jobs you do want as they simply may not contain the chosen keyword.

The search structure is basically ten years old Web 1.0 ("very 1998") and you can't find anything on it unless you're prepared to set up camp for the day and "pan for gold". It would make far more sense to use some of that TV money to add new search parameters or new table columns or tables to the database. In fact, such small changes might only take a week of development work for one person, I'm sure this cost is probably less than the cost of one TV advert.

Rob, I am certainly motivated towards a positive career move, your marketing team have devised a good add, I just wish that when I peeled that label off there might have been some "innovative technology" and a "searchable database".

Add a comment

 | Link | Back to top |

I recently heard the Cork City Council web site was being criticized for failing to really appreciate the needs of the people who might use it, in particular it didn't consider how the site might be displayed by other browsers. This seems to have culminated in the Council putting a note on the site saying it "will only operate correctly by using Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5. or greater". The user is then invited to "upgrade".

With close to 90% of browsers already using Internet Explorer 6 or above or using the superior Firefox browser the number of people this invitation would apply to is a very small minority, given that we must also count browsers such as Safari and Opera.

To change from Firefox to IE would actually be a downgrade. The W3C browser statistics for November '06, rate Firefox browser usage at just under 30%, as it continues to take market share away from Microsoft's Internet Explorer. The Council web site does not display properly in this browser, suggesting it was only developed on Internet Explorer and not tested on other environments.  By web standards, this is very un PC (boom boom), as it has the potential to alienate a substantial number of visitors..

W3C, shorthand for the World Wide Web Consortium, are the standards body for the web. They develop and define the language standards that ensure the universality of the web. In addition to Cork City Council ignoring users with other browsers, the website doesn't meet these standards set by the W3C. In fact, it contains twenty three errors, which realistically, would take about ten minutes to correct.

They do include an accessibility roadmap which does mention attaining AA and AAA accessibility standards. This is all very well, but it's usually better to start at the begining: Lads, aim for the A standard first, a good point to start at would be to correct the twenty three errors, and sort out displaying the site on other browsers. As a local government body you should be setting a standard. Upgrade.

Add a comment

 | Link | Back to top |

When you start your computer the chances are you could actually go away and make a coffee while you wait for it to complete. Overtime your computer becomes so slow that you either replace it or you take a hammer to it in a moment of angry frustration. You only have a 256K or 128K memory card when they seem to be churning them out now with a 1GB card as standard.

Of course, this will help, and you will see an instant difference at start-up. Until, that is, you start to install all the other programs you used to run on your old computer.

The majority of these programs think you want to use them every time you start your computer. They also think it's perfectly ok to communicate with "VGER" when you're connected to the internet and even try to automatically restart your computer if they find and install an update. Marketing are likely to consider it beneficial to have the program load automatically. The user isn't likely to quickly forget the software or the maker or use an alternative, you're right there in their face every day.

This is fine if you actually want to use the program every day. If you only want to use it periodically then you should be able to easily turn it off, and when I say "easily" I mean you don't need a computer degree to do so or have to type "msconfig" or "regedit" into the start and run menu. Personally,  I would prefer my computer to start with only one program, Kaspersky anti-virus software. Everything else I would like to choose to start when I am ready.

However, the default on the majority of software installations seems to be to run when windows starts and to automatically search for updates or newer versions of the software when you're connected to the internet without giving you the option to change it.

I was actually surprised that MSN Messenger 7 included the ability to un-tick "run this program when Windows starts" in the options tab. Prior to this version this wasn't included as an option. Instead you had to click start and run. Type in regedit.exe and click ok. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersion un. Once you're there click on the MSMSGS entry and select delete. Then click yes to confirm.

At least one piece of software has made a positive change, if only the rest would follow.

Add a comment

 | Link | Back to top |

Why do web designers assume if we hit the button which says "exit" or "logout" we've done so accidentally?

I don't know anyone who either randomly clicks all around a web page because they don't know what to do or whose hand slips, moving the mouse over the exit button, and in their confusion, they click "exit".

Luckily for those a pop up message will appear saying, "Are you sure you want to exit?" - for the rest of us, I guess we'll have to continue, each time thinking to ourselves, "well why else would I have clicked the button?"

Add a comment

 | Link | Back to top |

As much of a fan as I am of Google I find it incredibly annoying to click on a link in a page of search results, only to have to wait while Adobe Acrobat wakes up, yawns, stretches, puts on its slippers, scratches, walks to the bathroom, brushes its teeth, gargles, goes downstairs, puts the kettle on, starts frying sausages - and I am still waiting for the page to display. Lately when I see this happen I just click the back button quickly and exit. Why does Adobe Acrobat take so long to start?

But now in our page of Google results we can also click on a link and be presented with an RSS or XML file. This would be great if we were computers, rather than human, as we're not, opening the page is a waste of time. You can't easily read the content, so it's not as if we're going to say "just what I was looking for, I'm going to add this to bloglines".

One small thing we could do to make Google even better would be to put a little icon against each entry indicating the type of file we are about to click on. That we don't have to endure the "surprise" of clicking on a .pdf file.

More about search results: I hate clicking on a link only to be presented with another site offering nothing but sponsored searches or sponsored results. I hate clicking a link and not having access to the content without subscribing or giving away my email. I hate clicking on a link where the content is completely irrelevant to what I was searching for.

Add a comment

 | Link | Back to top |

Spamming is a numbers game. The more you send out the greater the probability that someone is going to open, read or act on the contents. It's all about arithmetic. The evil spammers are playing a numbers game. For them it's not personal, it's business. If you send out eight million emails there's a far greater chance of some "mug" opening one than if you only sent  a hundred. The more emails you send  the more successful you'll be.

The spammers use increasingly sophisticated techniques to circumvent and confuse anti virus programs and avoid detection. You've probably seen some of these in your inbox. Emails, which contain strings of random words, where the text is written on a graphic, which contain graphics and words, which seem to come from yourself. They don't care who the recipient is, so you get young kids being sent links to pictures and sites "caligulinks") which are wholly inappropriate.

Worryingly there is also a trend to hijack genuine mail domains. I've had this happen to me twice on two different domains. Every email contains header information such as the reply to address, the sender address etc. It's very easy to forge email headers so they appear to come from elsewhere, a genuine source. All of a sudden you start to receive hundreds and hundreds of mail delivery system errors in your inbox saying the mail program wasn't able to deliver your message. You become inundated with bounced email messages, in addition to your normal quota of spam. Your mail domain can also be blacklisted.

Spammers have a number of distribution channels. These include free email accounts like yahoo and hotmail, hacked servers, relaying messages, mail servers purchased with stolen credit cards, your own PC infected with a worm or Trojan virus ("zombie PC's"), even that innocuous contact form you have on your website can have alternative email headers injected into it.

Your details can be guessed at, harvested by program crawlers, be purchased, stolen, or be already included in a "marketing database" (wow..., email advertise like this to 8,000,000 people - sound familiar?). Genuine database directories can be "scratched" for your information, as it's too readily accessible.

All companies seem to view the collection of your data as an asset but fail to adequately protect it. Web sites are designed so you have to opt out from mailing lists. The opt out buttons can even appear on each page of a multi page form. I did a double take when I saw this on the application form of a major UK bank. Spam can contain illegitimate "unsubscribe" links. When you click you're added to a database, your identity reduced to currency. Instead of reducing your spam your increasing it.

A report out today by IT security firm Sophos reveals that both the US Republican and Democratic parties distributed spam in the run up to the mid-term elections. Of course, we can't call it spam, as US political parties are exempt from legislation like the CAN-SPAM Act. Is this leadership? Sophos also reveal the top twelve "dirty dozen" spam producing countries.

Can we ever hope to do anymore than stay one step ahead of the evil spammers? There are a few actions we can take to help reduce the volume, they won't eliminate the evil

• Avoid email addresses that can be guessed easily like webmaster, sales, contact, info etc.
• Avoid "catch all" email boxes, basically you're saying yes to all sorts of combinations like a1aaa1azzzz1zaaaaa@yourdomain.com
• Use your full name in your email address separated with a full stop like firstname.lastname@yourdomain.com
• Always "munge" your email address if you're including it on your website, i.e. convert it into ASCII characters so instead of "m" you will write it's web friendly ASCII equivalent "&109"
• If you have a form to email contact form be sure to adequately protect it against attacks such as injecting new mail headers..
• Use a firewall
• Don't be seduced by the numbers game. Don't use broadcast email services to email millions of people ("wow..., email advertise like this to 8,000,000 million people" or "We will email advertise your web site to 8,000,000 people for free").
• Don't open spam. If you do open it do not act on its contents.
• If you run an affiliate program don't allow members to use it with email, certainly don't pay out if they spam.
• Don't feel you have to opt in to receiving product updates or anything else from legitimate businesses or even from free services you're signing up to. Opt out. Instead use RSS or Atom feeds to keep updated.
• Use an anit-virus program and keep your virus definitions up to date.
• Be like Google, "Do no Evil".
• Keep your operating system up to to date with security updates, not necessarily the optional ones. (read my blog on Internet Explorer 7)..

When a second domain of mine was hijacked, and I had time to calm down from the "web rage" I started to wonder if Don Corleone had a website....

If Don Corleone had a website, I imagined, just a small site he put together for the family. He had links to his favourite sites, an updated news section, and he even had a contact form. This internet thingy was a breeze. Then one day, after breakfast, he opens up his email and watches as hundreds of bounced email messages are downloaded to his laptop....

What would he do next?

Add a comment

 | Link | Back to top |

After my Toshiba had to be binned I got an IBM T21 and an IBM T22. I still keep the hard drive of the Toshiba as a reminder to myself to take backups. It sits over the fireplace with an old clock, a picture of Freud, a fossil, and a photograph frame made from cactus wood.

There still is some very useful data on the drive, but I've never been prepared to pay the sums needed to retrieve it. But back to my IBM's.....

The T21 I always used as a reserve, it's been the presentation machine, not cluttered up with some of the servers and applications I've been running on the T22. That was until I started getted the BSOD (blue screen of death) on the T22. It finally got to the point where it wouldn't restart after a crash.

After some internet searching I replaced the memory with two 256k cards, and for a while everything was great. The laptop powered up, and the overall speed improved - until yesterday, three weeks after replacing the memory, now the machine is a dud, the memory is burned out. Fortunately I've been able to slot the hard drive out and plug it into the T21, but the T21 is so slow. The screen freezes, I get terribly annoyed with it...

Is there anything better out there, I need the portability of a laptop with the resilience of a server?

Add a comment

 | Link | Back to top |

Why would anyone write a program that..........

Why would anyone write a program that would automatically restart your computer? A program so persistent that, when you click "Restart Later",  you only get a moratorium of ten minutes before the message pops up again with the same determined prompt? Every ten minutes, as though it were taking orders from the atomic clock. The message gives you five minutes to act. This is less time than it takes to go to the toilet, make a coffee and return to your desk. In which time, the relentless program has shut your computer, ignoring your unsaved work, like the spreadsheet or letter you've been painfully composing.

It doesn't even take a trip to the toilet.  You might be retrieving a file, or talking to someone or pacing the room on your mobile. Why would someone write a program that can restart you computer, and wipe your work, as you do that?

Before anyone says, "Well, you can change the settings", I already know that, and that's part of the problem. In an age of hot desking and shared computers you inherit the settings of previous users. Some, not unsurprisingly, might select the recommended setting, which will run this program.

For those that might not know how to change their setting click Start followed by Control Panel. Look for the icon below and double click.

Change the settings. My preferred setting as pictured below is to not download automatically. I like to decide what to install and run on my machine. I learned this after installing Service Pack 2, to discover afterwards my DVD drive didn't work anymore as there were no supported drivers.

Add a comment

 | Link | Back to top |

For those who don't know, dmoz, or the "Open Directory Project" is the "largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of  the web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors."

The DMOZ database feeds search engines like Google, AOL, and Lycos. This is one of the reasons web developers will endeavour to have their sites included in there.

Oddly, the fact that all submitted content is human reviewed, is broadcast as a major quality control advantage. The volunteers or "net citizens" as they are called, can cull "out the bad and useless......keeping only the best content".

There are over 4million sites included in the directory, The directory has over 74,000 editors managing 590,000 categories. Anyone can apply to be an editor. You pick a category and then soon you too can keep out "the bad and useless".

If you ever have the patience to browse through the dmoz directory you might be surprised by some of the included sites. At various stages I've found holding pages, pages only made to click through to sales, pages without any useful content, pages that are badly made or inaccessible. These are clearly not "the best content" and their inclusion in the directory would seem to add credibility to tales of corruption among the editors.

There are stories that the editors can be bribed, stories they will deliberately sabotage competitors sites either by changing their classifications or not adding them at all to the directory. The dmoz directory aims "to become the definitive catalog of the web".

We are not living in some future world where corruption and greed have been erased from humanity; the ego has not been subdued and we do not live together in an open, intelligent and selfless society. Can a human edited database (which has to inherently include all the subjectivity, bias and preferences of the editors) therefore produce objective results, can it be relied on to keep only "the best content"?

Well done for trying but I think I would feel safer in the hands of an algorithm.

Add a comment

 | Link | Back to top |

I had a virtual server with a UK, aim listed, hosting company (I'll blog about them separately). One day I receive a sales call. The sales person advises me that the company is discontinuing its virtual server range and I would have to upgrade to a dedicated server. 

I was paying £39 per month for a virtual box. The upgrade was only going to cost me an extra Â£20 per month so I went ahead. There wasn't an alternative.

As I had a lot of domains on the virtual box (free hosting to startups) I had concerns about the time it would take to migrate. But "ah" they said the Plesk Control Panel is included in the Gold package. That will ease the migration.

Little did I know that there was a limit of 10 domains on the box. If I wanted to add more I would have to buy additional licences from Plesk. So the solution was completely unsuitable for me. Why would I pay more to host some sites which have no database backend and use up about 50K of disk space?

Aside from that, Plesk proved to be a completely useless interface for configuring and administering the server. It was't able to adequately configure other applications running on the box like MySQL, PHP and the Apache web server.

Unless all you want to do is administer some emails and domains and you are prepared to pay the licence costs invest in Plesk. If you actually want to control your box don't, just install Webmin. Webmin is free and gives you control over the whole box.

I eventually installed Webmin on the dedicated server but Plesk wasn't going to give up. It had damaged the configuration too much. The only solution would have been to start with a new box, no plesk installation. A dedicated server, without the Plesk control panel, was £49.99, so I thought that was good I save £10 per month. High five, and buy a bottle of wine.

But support tell me a different story to sales. If I pay £49.99 I won't have a MySQL database. So tell me what good is an 80Gb box without a database? At the moment I am migrating my business away to another company, and the cost of the dedicated server package I had has been increased by over 16%.

So that was a good technique, ring your clients and tell them you're discontinuing a product they're using. Switch them over to a more expensive product (50% more expensive). Wait awhile, then up the price of the more expensive product even further. Result: you almost double sales.

The board or the VC's must be getting ready for an exit!

Add a comment

 | Link | Back to top |

Once you’ve purchased Norton Anti Virus Software you’re unwittingly locked into a cage. Your machine is secure and you learn to live with the degradation in speed and performance but watch out if you decide to not renew your subscription. Getting out of the cage is difficult. Alerts dominate your screen telling you the obvious. Even if you click them they do not go away, they will reappear, like a virus, on the screen in one minute, like this one below.

 

If you untick the box above and click ok the alert will only disappear for one minute.

The best you can do is try to drag the box away off screen, but it doesn’t work for long. Wake your machine up from one of its forty screen saver winks and the Norton alert message has made a Hollywood reappearance, dominating your screen again.

The marketers have must have carefully devised this to be so annoying that the majority of users will end up opening Norton and renewing their subscription. As I completely detest hard sales and lack of choice my only option to escape the cage was to uninstall Norton completely and get a proper system from Kaspersky Labs.

Go Kaspersky!

Kaspersky Anti-Virus Personal Pro

Add a comment

 | Link | Back to top |