Category: Uncategorized

Today on MSN Tech, a ranking of the best tech retailers around in their story on All-Star Tech Stores:

“Who’s got the best prices, selection, sales help, and return policies among online and brick-and-mortar stores? We surveyed more than 5000 readers to find the best places to buy tech gear.

“To get a picture of how buyers are making those choices and of which Web-based and real-world stores best meet their needs, we surveyed thousands of PC World readers and PCWorld.com visitors. We then conducted interviews with some of the surveyed shoppers, performed our own in-person tests at brick-and-mortar stores, and took multiple spins around the most popular online retailers.

Highest rated?

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  Brick-and-Mortar Survey: Tops are Office Depot and Staples for overall satisfaction, and Staples for store design and its product return experience


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  Online-Store Survey Results: Newegg.com & TigerDirect top the list

Tags: Friday Link, online shopping

There’s an article on Wired on MSN with help on stumping would-be identity thieves:

“… several tools are available now to individuals that reduce their risk of identity theft, according to Hoofnagle and Tom Fragala, a volunteer with the Identity Theft Resource Center who is working on a free, do-it-yourself credit-monitoring and identity-theft recovery service.”

• Opt out of credit card offerings by calling 888-5OPTOUT (888-567-8688). 


• Check your credit reports frequently with a free credit report once a year.


• Put a one-year credit alert on your credit reports.


• Review your finance-related statements monthly. 


• Place a 90-day fraud alert on your credit reports – I’ve found that some credit agencies will extend thsi to a year if you have been victimized.


• If you have been a victim of identity theft, file a police report and contact the credit reporting agencies.


• Don’t use your full Social Security number as your ID, and be careful where and when you provide the full number.

Over the weekend at TechEd, info on Microsoft Forefront (which includes Antigen and Microsoft Client Protection) went live. Consumers and small businesses have products like OneCare and other solutions to help defend their home computers. Forefront provides “a family of business security products helps provide greater protection and control over the security of your network infrastructure.”

From the web site:

Microsoft Forefront is a comprehensive line of business security products providing greater protection and control through integration with your existing IT infrastructure and through simplified deployment, management, and analysis. The Microsoft Forefront line of business security products helps provide protection for the client machines, server applications and the network edge.

Here’s how the Forefront family fits into the MS product line:

More info:

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  What is Microsoft Forefront?
  
  
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  Microsoft Forefront FAQ
  
  
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  Microsoft Forefront datasheet

Tags: Microsoft, Antigen, Forefront, security, OneCare.

I miss this guy. http://www.douglasadams.com/  What a brilliant author and wit. 

My kids rented the The Hitchhiker’s Guide on DVD this weekend and it will be nice to enjoy something that spans generations.

I had the rare opportunity to work with Mr. Adams when I was at Digidesign in the early 90s — he was one of the earliest users of our Audiomedia card for multimedia art projects. He was a very personable and ego-less, had a super sense of humour and a great facination and appreciation for the latest technology.

Tags: Friday Link, humour.

Ove the past week there has been a rash of  stolen laptops, stolen hard drives and missing computers in the news. At our customer & partner Summit that BitLocker (with more initial tech details on BitLocker drive encryption here) will be available in Windows Vista Ultimate.

As noted in this article on the “Microsoft at Work” pages, Safeware reported that 600,000 computers were stolen in the United States in 2003, and “many of these thefts compromised company networks or confidential data.”

From the BitLocker page…

More info on protecting your PC and your data: