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On Facebook? Upgrade your Account Security to HTTPS!
Facebook has been working on providing an HTTPS Account Security setting for some time now. It is a feature which has not been rolled out to all accounts everywhere as of yet, but you should check to see if it is available to you and if so, enable it.
Why?
HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) provides an addition level of security for your private information through encrypted communication and secure identification. This is the same level of security you use when you perform ...
<< MORE >>20% of Facebook Users Are Subject to “Malware Social Attacks!”
According to current statistics derived from Bitdefender’s ‘Safego,’ malicious code writers are increasingly employing a number of tactics designed to exploit the open nature of “social-networking” on Facebook. As many as 1 in 5 users have been effected. It’s all about having fun and sharing with wall posts and engaging comments from your friends, right? And it is, until you become prey from a personal ...
<< MORE >>Top 10 Q&A for Clients on the Move to Webmail
by Derrick Wlodarz
One of the most important migrations I have been helping clients with at FireLogic is the move from location-based to available-anywhere email. For lack of a better term, you can call this “web-mail” or email that is in the cloud, so to say. Naturally, clients have a lot of questions before such a life-changing move (some people, like myself, LIVE in their inboxes so yes, life-changing is a proper term). I've rounded up about the top ten which get asked time and time again and streamlined them into a quick Q&A that should help those looking to make the switch. Personally, I made the move to webmail back in 1999 with YahooMail, moving onto Hotmail for a brief period a short time later, and finally ended up at GMAIL in 2005. I have never looked back.
Q) What’s this “cloud” everyone keeps talking about in regards to email?
A) This “cloud” is infact nothing new. If you have had a GMAIL, Yahoo Mail, or god-forbid a Hotmail account since the yesteryear, then you have been an active “cloud” user. The cloud extends to online banking websites and net-based backup services such as Mozy which have been utilizing that “cloud” for some years now. The only thing different now is that the “cloud” has become accepted and established and not merely yet another tech experiment. It’s here to stay, so it’s best to get acquainted.
Q) Besides being the “in” thing, what are the real advantages to webmail?
A) A good portion of email users that come from the 90’s vision of what email is are still using Outlook or some other desktop client to manage their messages. I have many clients that still use such a client and I am slowly trying to wean them off this archaic (and outdated) way of managing their inboxes. Why? Security, message availability, and low-overhead are all major reasons why I push webmail to my clients. Think about webmail in this way: it is merely taking email and allowing you to read and compose it through a “window” on the internet. Outlook and other desktop clients instead take full messages and download them, along with all their attached viruses and such, onto your computer. If your antivirus is not top-notch or out of date, you just opened the floodgate to a h*llhole of possible malware. Webmail, on the other hand, takes all email, and scans it before your eyes can ever view it, and any attachments which may be infected are cleaned. When I worked at my old private IT firm, the number of clients infected through such Outlook-based malware from email was too numerous to count.
Message availability is also a problem solved with webmail. From the computer based perspective, think about how tied you are to one machine when you make Outlook your inbox-hub. Stuck, like a duck on a log that can’t paddle through water. Even if you manage to get POP or IMAP synching to work between Outlook and a mobile phone, you still have to download each message in each spot and hope that the mail server doesn’t mistakenly delete a message you intended to keep or likewise keep messages you through you had deleted. In general, this old way of managing email has too many leaks to stop gap. It works when it wants to, but often breaks and is a pain to configure properly on all ends. Webmail solves this by pushing you use a browser that has a common interface on any computer you may jump onto, and still allows you to use Outlook if you wish to. Connecting to a smartphone is easy as most new models are built from the ground up to work with webmail services. And you don’t have to “download” messages to every machine you want to view them on – a browser views all messages consistently in a common inbox which never needs to be synched up.
Lastly, overhead is something which not only applies to personal accounts but to small business and corporate accounts too. Even if you, yourself, as one user want to use Outlook to manage your email, you likely have to purchase Microsoft Office (and not the low-end version anymore – only Small Business and up have Outlook) but you need to pray that it gets configured properly. If not, you end up paying someone like me a pretty penny on the hour to set it up. And the headaches don’t end here. Outlook and other desktop clients have to have a local repository for messages that are downloaded, which can themselves become corrupted. You can see the chain of problems here. Multiply this by a few users for a small business, or times however many hundred in the average corporation. Yes, blah. Which is why I loathe the Outlook-way of managing email.
Q) How many options do I have and what are they?
A) To be honest, the total number of webmail services out there are too numerous to count or name. But I will point out the ones that offer the most “bang for the buck” (how ever oxymoronic this may be, given that the best ones are all free anyway). The number one pick I always recommend, and most others agree stands above the rest, has been Google’s GMAIL service for about five years now. While the search giant is often criticized, its email service has been excellent since I first opened my original account in 2005. The interface is clean, the spam filters are top notch, and its integration with most mobile phones these days is a big advantage for on the go users. Not to mention its ingenious usage of a new way to work with email, called “threaded conversations” which turns a reply-response chain of emails into a single long thread which can be easily organized from the first email sent to the last received. This is unlike other services, which consider every single message a new separate “email” which clogs just as much space as the last, even if the reply may only be a sentence long.
Some other viable alternatives include Microsoft’s LIVE Mail (which is the new Hotmail) and YahooMail. Both offer similar advanced interfaces but are cluttered with ads and are not as “new-age” and intuitive as Gmail. They are slow to add features, and don’t add as many nuanced features as Gmail has. Yahoo Mail offers the least amount of space among the three, with Live Mail coming in second and Gmail coming in first (with over 7GB+ now and counting).
But one viable webmail account which near any broadband subscriber has is tied to their ISP. Comcast, ATT, Yahoo and all the other smaller ISPs all offer their own “webmail” accounts now that come standard with packages. Comcast for a fact offers at least 7 accounts from last I checked. I would not recommend these over one of the above, free services in that not only are they more feature-limited but they are also considered DEAD when you shut down service with one ISP and move. This is why I warn people from these accounts and prefer they go to a non-ISP account since you have email portability. Unlike the post office which can route your snail-mail no matter where you move, an ISP will close your webmail account tied to your service once you cut your subscription. Not good for someone who may have hundreds of people with your old address in their contacts book.
Q) Can I move to another service at any time I wish? How easy is it?
A) The short answers for the above are absolutely yes, and fairly easy. Webmail services, especially the established big names, do not hold you hostage in most regards. Being held hostage is a term used in the tech world to metaphorically describe how hard it is to move between services across the same spectrum of offerings. With increased competition, this became a non-issue more than a few years back. Moving address books is monkey-easy, with import/export tools found in nearly every big service, and transferring email is a bit more involved, but still doable if you NEED to move messages. I recently had to move my side-work emails over from my personal GMAIL to our FireLogic Google Apps GMAIL account and simply had to use Outlook as the go-between. The process is similar for nearly any other webmail service. I think Gmail will make this process even easier in the future, allowing for export/import of messages directly within the web interface. Only time will tell, but with Google’s ingenuity powering Gmail, my guess is most likely yes.
Q) What client (read: Outlook) features will I lose by going to webmail?
A) A good question indeed, and a very common one. The two largest features which no webmail service (that I know of) has been able to replicate with 100% accuracy yet is read receipts and drag/drop capability for message moving and attachments. Gmail has just recently introduced limited drag-drop but it is not yet available for moving messages. However, this feature is one which can be easily adjusted to when it comes to webmail usage. After a few days without it, I doubt it will become that large of an issue unless you are accustomed to moving large amounts of attachments in/out of emails.
The second, readreceipts, is a client feature which I do not think serves much useful purpose anymore. To be sure, Gmail cannot both SEND or RECEIVE receipts. This lack luster 90’s email feature allowed people to get confirmation when an email was opened. But the good intentions of the feature have been destroyed by the poor implementation by various email providers. Some email servers are set to auto-respond to all read receipts so the user never even has to intervene, and some email servers just toss them entirely. There was never an industry accepted standard for this poor-man’s excuse for confirmation delivery, and so it has faded. I don’t miss it, and if you still use it, I would highly consider looking at phasing it out because more than likely half or more of your recipients are not providing you with a “genuine” response for receipts you send out.
The rest of the features which you may miss out-of-the-box have either been replicated with third party tools or as add-on features within the services themselves. For example, notification of new messages has been replicated in Gmail by Google’s own Google Talk program and various third party offerings. The ability to place images into messages inline has been an experimental Gmail feature available to all users for over a year now. If you have a need, it can likely be added on with some tit-for-tat tool. This is something I help recently migrated users with frequently and any IT pro worth his salt will be able to find you a stop gap.
Q) Can my BlackBerry or Android or iPhone mobile telephone handle email just like before?
A) Of course, and with much greater ease. Knowing how many people are moving to webmail services, the big boys of webmail have gotten their own “express lanes” on most recent smartphones for allowing mobile email access. Simply select your service and input your credentials and you are all set. I personally have been using a BlackBerry for personal email/contacts/calendar for over three years now and the process has been streamlined ever more so during this time. For example, Gmailemail/calendar/contacts can be easily attached to any Android phone, but BlackBerry requires the use of a free Google download called Google Sync which handles on-the-fly synching of calendar and contacts over the air. With the majority of the major webmail services (GMAIL for sure; Windows Live Mail and Yahoo Mail most likely allow this) you do NOT have to plug your phone into a USB cable anymore to get everything synched. This is a beautiful thing for many reasons, but everyone’s seemingly most important is of course convenience. If you currently are tied to a mobile phone (likely a Windows Mobile powered phone) which requires tethering to a desktop PC in order to share emails and the like, you are dearly going to be in for a genuine (yet pleasant) shock if you move to a webmail service.
Q) Why are the best webmail providers entirely free? What’s the catch?
A) There is no catch. This day in age, the providers make no money (OK, relatively very little for those who opt for upgrades) on offering actual email. And as far as I remember reading, Google actually loses money on the raw GMAIL aspect of its operations. But what they lose in offering GB of storage space for emails they make up tenfold in advertising income. Plain and simple. And with some of the providers, you can opt to pay for more services or storage space. For Gmail, for example, you can pay for 25GB of space for your email for a set cost per year if you require this kind of space. And likewise, for business Gmai laccounts, you can pay per-user to get advanced archiving functionality and better spam controls. But in terms of “basic” accounts that the average person requires, what you get is usually more than plenty. I will attest personally to the fact that there are no loopholes generally, no hidden clauses to be afraid of. The only one worth mentioning is the fact that Google can, in theory, cut service at any time. But in reality, they would never do so (and likewise for Microsoft or Yahoo) since the negative publicity would tarnish them greatly. Inessence, it’s in no one’s best interest for any of the big webmail services to be shut down. Even the dinosaur Hotmail users all got moved over to Windows Live mail when Microsoft was in the process of switching its online “image.”
Q) Do I have to sacrifice my Address Book or Calendar to move to webmail?
A) Not at all. Every major webmail provider has this functionality, and in most aspects, I’d say it’s better than what Outlook, Thunderbird, or Entourage offer. One of the biggest benefits is being able to check and update both items on the fly from ANY computer in the world as long as you have internet. You can’t do that on the former, unless of course, your laptop is the main hub you keep your emailclient on. Yes, the resistors will say that you can sync across machines but the number of horror stories I have dealt with in such scenarios goes higher than my two hands can count. If you need mobile phone access, you can get these items onto all the major carriers’ phones with ease today. And for example, Gmail has been increasing the number of features on its calendar and contacts interfaces for a while now without any installation needed by the end user. If you want new features on your desktop client, you must first backup all of your email data, upgrade your client, patch your client (in Outlook’s case), and then run the program with the hope that no data or configuration was destroyed in the process. This is a tiring, archaic way to handle such an integral part of our lives such as email – bypass the whole quagmire and take a look at webmail.
Q) Can I use Outlook or Thunderbird (or any other email client) if I truly want to?
A) Previous questions solidified the reasons why I prefer clients stay away from Outlook and the like, but if you must, then yes, you can use any program you wish to manage your email. Most of the advanced webmail providers (including Live Mail and Gmail) offer what is called IMAP access now which is the best option of the two popular ways to download messages to your desktop. POP, which is still available, is what I call a “messy” way to handle email synching. I have successfully used IMAP with Gmail and can say it works fairly well. IMAP basically takes your email inbox and creates a second “mirror” image in your preferred email client. It’s a bit touchy if it isn’t configured right, but when set up, you can truly use Outlook and the web interface hand in hand without worrying about email-doubles or other common problems of POP access. Again, I provide the above answer with hesitation since I stress that this should only be used if you TRULY have a need for a desktop client – such as for someone who needs to do frequent mail-merges.
Q) What is the best browser for webmail usage?
A) Every IT pro has his/her own opinion on this question, but seeing as I literally live in webmail these days for work and personal email, I will hold strong in the belief that Google’s Chrome browser best handles most any webmail interface well. Not onlywell, but faster than any other browser. While I am literally talking about the difference of half-seconds or less, add this up for an 8 hour workday, across five days a week, and sprinkle in all my personal usage outside of work, and you can tack up those minutes (hours?) lost. Naturally, Google Chrome handles GMAIL like butter but since most every advanced webmail service is now AJAX-powered, almost all of them work equally well on Chrome. Some will say they prefer Firefox since it has many more established add-ons which some rely on, but I find this argument less and less justified seeing as Chrome now allows for add ons. If you must use IE (and only if you MUST such as at work) then Internet Explorer 8 is your best bet of the Microsoft family of IE browsers. 7 is decent, and version 6 is just downright horrid in slowness and security. For Firefox, I would not recommend anything lower than the most recent stable version.
It should be noted that if you download a stable version of Google Chrome (there are early beta and dev versions available, which should not be used by a non-techie) then the browser will auto-update when Google releases a newer version of the same branch. Firefox works in a similar, yet more methodical manner. IE – well you need to wait a while as these usually only come once every 3-4 years.
Q) Which mobile phone is best suited to handle webmail?
A) The experiences across all the hot phones on the market right now (BlackBerry, iPhone, Android and my dreaded Windows Mobile) is fairly similar, with each having its small upticks against the other. The Android handles Gmail accounts extremely easily for the obvious reasons of being Google-powered, but essentially, whatever you choose should come down to what features/battery life/screen size you are looking for and not necessarily what your webmail provider is. For example, I have been using the BlackBerry for many years now and love how easy the integrated email experience on such a device, and therefore have little reason to switch (again, my LIFE is in my inbox, as sad as that may be). Seeing that Ihave a plethora of friends on the BlackBerry-only BBM messaging service, and am already comfortable (read= satisfied) with the BlackBerry, I probably won’t beswitching anytime soon. But this is not to say that iPhone or Android purchases won’t have just as smooth experiences. The short answer? All of them will play equally well with whatever email service you choose. And if you do run into issues, every telco and email provider has plentiful help resources that should lead you along. And of course – a hapless plug for my own kind – the local IT pro should be able to assist if worst comes to worst.
5 Reasons for an Alternate Browser
Google Chrome's extensions market can be found here:
The Case for Disabling Messenger Service
In their native state, going back to Windows NT and moving forward, Windows operating systems include a "background service" called Messenger Service, which provides a method for network users to communicate with one another using "pop-up" messages. By design, the original intent of Messenger Service was for system administrators to notify users on their networks of system-wide events or other useful information. It was never widely employed by legitimate users. However, Messenger Service remains as a legacy feature of Windows which allows, if you are online, anyone on the Internet to actuate pop-up messages on your system. At best this includes unscrupulous spamming advertisers. At worst, malicious individuals distributing viri.
Let me make it clear that I am not talking about "Windows Messenger," "MSN Messenger," "Yahoo Messenger" or any other instant messaging program you may be using. Although it has a similar name, it is completely different from and not related to these other programs. (Although these programs also have their own security issues.) By default, Messenger Service runs quietly and unnecessarily in the background as an Internet Server, actively listening on open communication ports for incoming network packets. As it does not require being actively maintained by a system’s user, it automatically serves what ever communication is aimed at it. While it does so it is unnecessarily utilizing system recourses such as CPU cycles and Memory. So hopefully, you can see that leaving this unattended, unneeded, unwanted and almost never legitimately used "service" active on your system is not only a bad idea but as a practice, dangerous.
To sum up:
Messenger Service unnecessarily consumes systems resources which can be better used elsewhere – BAD.
Messenger Service unnecessarily provides a major security breach into your system when you are online - BAD.
And did I say that Messenger Service was unnecessary?
So at this point, most rational users will be asking themselves, "How do I get this thing off my system?" Well, the average user is not going to get it "off" their system, but they will disable it. And remember, this will have no ill effect on any other instant messaging applications you may be using.
In order to disable Messenger Service, we will explore and employ the "Computer Management" applet of Windows:
Click Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management
If you have never been in the Computer Management applet before, know that this applet can be the Tech’s best friend. It contains an arsenal of tools to battle various computer issues, but for now, we will just focus on the task at hand, disabling Messenger Service.
Click Services and Applications > Services.
You will now have the "Services Panel" open that lists all of the services included in Windows. You will notice at the bottom of the Services Panel two index tabs, "Extended" and "Standard." The extended tab will make readily available the entire description that Window’s provides for each service. The list is alphabetical, so scan down until you find the listing for Messenger. Click on it to highlight it. If you have the extended tab activated, you will find the description starting with: "Transmits net send and Alerter service messages between clients and servers…." to the left of the list. If this is what you see then you know that you have highlighted the correct service.
Right Click on Messenger. This will open a drop down menu.
Click on Properties, and open the Messenger Properties dialog box.
In this dialog box, which should be open to the General Tab by default, you will find a field labeled "Service Status." Click on the Stop button. Directly above Service Status you will find the "Startup Type" drop down box. Click on the arrow to drop down three choices: Automatic, Manual, and Disable.
We are here to disable this bad boy, so Click on Disable.
Click Apply > OK.
Now, when you look at the Messenger line of the Services Panel, note that in the Startup Type Column, the word Disable appears. Good job! You are finished. You can now close the Computer Management Window.
In this exercise, we took the long way around to achieve our purpose. As in just about any other thing you may want to do with Windows, there is more then one path available to take. I choose to take you through this particular route to expose you to the Computer Management applet under Administrative Tools. A more direct route to the Services Panel can be taken by utilizing the "Command Line Interface" or "Run Dialog Box."
Click Start > Run.
In the Open line, type in "services.msc" (no quotes)
The Service Panel opens directly up without being contained in the Computer Management Applet Window.
The procedure from this point will be as previously directed, with one minor modification. After scrolling to the messenger line, rather then Right Clicking it to open the drop down menu and Clicking on Properties, just double click the line. The same dialog box appears. Is it not great how Windows has a dozen ways to do just about everything? No wonder users can get somewhat confused.
Also, while you were looking through the Services list to find Messenger service, it may have occurred to you to ask the question, "If Messenger is unnecessary, are there other services in this list that are unnecessary?" Absolutely! But whereas elimination of unnecessary services is a practical method of computer performance optimization, one doesn’t want to just go through the Services list disabling things left and right. We will leave further discussion of other services which can be safely disabled for the future.
Nuff Said!
Set Desktop Icons to a Toolbar
So when I will ask a typical customer, "Do you use all these icons?" What do you suppose their answer is? "No, most of that stuff my kids put on there." And then I’ll ask, "Well… of these 80 or so icons, how many of them do you use?" Usually the answer will be: "Oh… I don’t know.... 5 or 6 maybe. I wish I could find my Icons easier." That is when I say, "How about we put the icons you use into a special tool bar?" Looking stunned and bewildered they ask, "You can do that?"
Well… absolutely! And hear is how:
Right Click anywhere on the desktop.
On the Menu click on New.
Now click on Folder.
While the name "New Folder" is still active, (highlighted in blue) don’t click on anything else, and you can change the name to something catchy like "My Game Icons." If you do inadvertently click something else before you have the opportunity to change the name just right click on the new folder and select "Rename." Now that you have your "Newly Named Folder" created, drag from your desktop all of the icons you want it to contain and drop them into it. In this particular case, that would be all of your Game icons.
For those that don’t know what I just said to do, left click on an icon that you want to move to this folder, keep the mouse button depressed (How do you keep a mouse button depressed? Tell it she’s fat.), and move or "drag" the icon directly on top of the folder and release the mouse button. Viola, the icon is now inside the folder.
You now have a folder full of icons. Now you need to decide where you want to make a tool bar. The choices are to either side or the top of the desktop. Simply drag the folder to the edge you want and drop it there. Magically there will be created before your eyes a tool bar containing all of the icons you placed in the folder and that is where they will live until you decide otherwise. Note that the folder you created is still on the desktop. If you wish to ad additional icons to your toolbar just drag them to the folder and they will pop right up.
Now it won’t matter if the kids choke up the desktop with another 100 icons, your 5 or 6 will be located in your tool bar where you can easily find them. One word of warning however, should the folder be deleted from the desktop, so will be the tool bar and all of its icons.
Neat, huh?
Basic Windows Key Navigation on the Microsoft Natural Keyboard
One of the most used Logo Key combos is Logo+E. This combination opens a My Computer window with a Windows Explorer Side Bar.
Now let's say that you have your entire desktop covered because you have 6 or 7 windows opened up. There is just one more Application you want to get at but all the open windows are covering up your icons. This is where one of the next most useful Logo Key Combo comes in Handy. Logo+M will toggle all open windows minimized to the task bar. To reverse this process, combine Shift+Logo+M and all the widows you just minimized will be right back again. Now, you can do a simpler toggle to the same purpose by using Logo+D. This combination works as a direct toggle switch. So why would you use Logo+M and Shift+Logo+M instead. If you use the Logo+M combo, you can open another program window to your desktop and still toggle all minimize windows open again. If you open a new window after minimizing all windows on your desktop with the Logo+D command, the minimized windows will not toggle open.
Now that I have all of these windows on the desktop open. Where is the window I want? Logo+Tab will cycle through each of the windows' buttons on the Task Bar. Then pull the window you want to the front by pressing Enter.
Want to get to your Run Dialog Box? Use Logo+R. No need to root into you Start Menu with the mouse.
Want to search for a file? Logo+F opens the Windows search feature.
Want to find another Computer on your network? Ctrl+Logo+F opens the Find Computer feature.
Want your Systems Properties Box? Press Logo+Break and up she comes.
How about this? For some strange reason you want to get to Windows Help. Logo+F1 will get you to that wild goose chase.
Now the complicated one. Ctrl+Logo+Tab. This combination will cycle between the Start Menu, Quick Launch Toolbar, and System Tray. You have to pay very close attention to see this. Your mouse cursor will have to be on the desktop. If it is on an active window, this combination will not work. As you cycle through these items, if you look close, you will see a little dashed box appear in these areas. The first tap gives you the Start Menu. The second tap give you the Quick Launch Toolbar, you cycle through the Quick Launch Icons with your arrow keys. The third tap will cycle you to the System Tray, the little dashed box can be hard to pick out on the first Icon it attached to. Again, you cycle through these Icons using your arrow keys. The forth tap will kind of put you in neutral, and your ready to start a new cycle starting with a new first tap to the Start Menu. A little clunky, but if you ever have your mouse freeze up on you, it can be real handy.
There is a whole other series of Windows Logo Key Shortcuts available to you if you have the Microsoft Natural Keyboards companion IntelliType software installed. But that will be a subject for another time. If you would like to look at that as well as a whole bunch of other Keyboard Short Cut key combinations now, just click Keyboard Shortcuts.
Desktop Icons – Removal of Short Cut Arrows from the XP Desktop.
I am assuming the reader possesses "advanced user" skills. If you are not an "advanced user" you need to understand that anytime you make edits to the Windows Registry the potential for undesirable and possibly disastrous consequences is always present. If at anytime you do not understand completely what you are being told to do, then I would advise not to proceed. If something goes wrong, you can rant, rave and yell at me all you want, but I in no way assume any level of responsibility for your actions or consequences of such actions.
Now.... as that has been said, this is really a very easy process. If you pay attention and follow directions to the letter, you should have no problems.
In addition, there is a reason that Windows by default ads an arrow to desktop shortcuts. This arrow distinguishes a shortcut from an actual file. On occasion, or as a general practice with some users (don’t ask me why), files or documents are saved directly onto the desktop as opposed to some other location such as the "My Documents" folder. In other words, such files live on the desktop. An icon of a file located on the desktop will have no arrow because it is the file, not a shortcut to the file. If you remove the arrows from your desktop shortcut icons, the potential arises that you may at some point mistakenly delete a file or document thinking that you are only deleting a short cut. So… if it is your habit to save files or documents directly to your desktop, you may want to leave the shortcut arrows intact.
OK… after all of that, you have decided that you want to eliminate what you regard as those pesky little shortcut arrows. I know I hate them. So here we go….
Launch the Registry Editor. (If you don’t know or can’t figure out how to launch Registry Editor, chances are you don’t need to be tying to do this, but if you insist, Click on the Start button, click Run, in the box type Regedit and then click OK.)
Locate the registry "Hive," HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT. Open this Hive by clicking on it or the plus sign next too it. You will now see a very long list of "Keys" which look just like file folders. They are all in alphanumeric order, so it is a simple matter now to scan down the list to find the following two keys: lnkfile and internetshortcut. Open each of these Keys by clicking on the folder, not the plus sign. You will find inside each of these Keys the "Value" of isshortcut.
Now… there are many on the internet that will tell you at this point to delete these Values. No, No, NO! Deletion of these Values will do the job, but it is both primitively brutish and unwise. Permit me to illustrate this point. If you had a finger nail that was getting a little too long, you wouldn’t pull out a pair of pruning shears and cut your finger off at the first knuckle. That would be just a tad excessive and unnecessarily painful. What you would do is carefully trim the nail with a nail trimmer, (or maybe like some people you would just chew it off, but you wouldn’t bite off your whole finger is the point.)
Right Click on the Value isshortcut and on the drop down menu select "Rename." A little box will form around isshortcut and it will be highlighted in blue. Place your curser at the end of this word and add these three letters: b,a,k. (You can type anything here really, but BAK is the standard file extension for a backup, so an "old school" practice is to mark changes you may wish at some point to reverse with a BAK . ) Make sure you save this edit by clicking anywhere on your desktop outside of the Registry Editor Window. After you have made this edit to the Value isshortcut in both lnkfile and internetshortcut Keys, close down the Registry Editor and reboot.
After the reboot, all of the little annoying arrows will be gone. If you should want to get the arrows back, it is simple to reverse this process and remove the BAK from the Values you edited. Had you deleted those Values the reversal process would be somewhat more complicated.
As a side note, there are some articles on the internet which also mention deleting or editing issshorcut in the Key "piffile" as well. You can certainly do this, however, unless you are using an older Window 9x system, it is unlikely that you would encounter any desktop icons related to PIFs. These would be out of the ordinary on an XP desktop.
MRAM, Looming on the Horizon?
Imagine this in your dream PC, 4 GB of the fastest DDR RAM available and it is nonvolatile. OK… so you are not sure what that means? The DDR RAM currently in our PCs is volatile, which means that it only retains data while our PCs are powered up. Turn the system off and everything in memory disappears. We have available to us nonvolatile RAM in the form of USB Thumb drives and various other forms of flash memory (Compact Flash, Smart Media, MMC, SD, XD) and what ever is loaded into these little gems stays put, but in terms of speed relative to main system RAM, this stuff is all pitifully sluggish. MRAM will combine that which is virtuous of both these technologies.
Still don’t see what is to be exited about? OK…. you sit down to your system, turn it on, and get near instantaneous booting to the same state it was the last time you turned it off. So take the time it typically takes your system to boot; add the time it takes to launch Doom, Far Cry, what ever; add the additional time to load your last saved game, and compress that all into a matter of seconds. Get the picture now?
Of course this would not be without certain problems. Viral infestations which stay resident in memory would be a little bit more insidious. So there would need to be a means of clearing this RAM at will in order to obtain a clean new system boot from the HDD. Additionally, current Flash memory degrades over time and has a finite lifespan. So… in any case, while this will be an interesting technology development to anticipate, it’s not going to be on the shelves any time soon.
File Extensions and Hidden Files and Folders in XP
This is a simple issue to solve, but it throws a lot of "basic users" because they are just not accustomed to having to think about making certain configuration adjustments. Nor really should they be. But here is what you need to do if you want to see all of the file extensions while looking through My Computer. With My Computer open, click on "Tools" in the menu bar. From the menu that drops down, click on "Folder Options." Now click on the "View" tab. In the View tab you will find "Advanced settings." Under the very first heading, "Files and Folders," count down to the eighth box which says "Hide extensions for known file types." Remove the green check mark from that box and presto, My Computer will now display your file extensions in the manner you are accustomed to.
Now… while you are here, another adjustment you may wish to make is to your "Hidden files and folders." Just above the "Hide extensions for known file types" box is a set of Radio Buttons that controls that. Click on the "Show hidden files and folders" button and they will now show up in My Computer. They will appear transparent, to indicate that they are hidden files. The only files and folders that still remain totally hidden now will be "Protected Operating Systems Files." I would recommend that you keep these files hidden. But you do need to know how to see even these files sometimes to perform certain repairs and quick fixes to your unit. In order to make that adjustment, simply uncheck the "Hide protected operating system files" box you will find directly below "Hide extensions for known file types."