Windows essentials vs adwares etc?

[Martha Adams]

I was following the 'Windows Essentials' thread but a piece of (very
mundane) pathology posted there threw it off the track.

(When someone says something *that* pathological and stupid, isn't it
just a bit pathological and stupid to respond to it ...like I did. Um,
.....)

I think this is a very useful topic these days -- my new machine, an
Asus 1015 PEM with its memory immediately upgraded to 2G, was so slow it
couldn't post emails apparently owing to a time-out somewhere in the
process (among other stopper nuisances). I posted a query here but by
the time a useful response appeared, I had found Microsoft's
'autoruns.exe' (note that 's' in there) and stopped some of the ware
stuff that was killing my machine. When I run it here, it returns an
amazing list of things starting in my machine that I didn't ask for,
didn't expect to find, and don't want.

Regarding stopping some of that stuff, my experience is, kill just one
or two of those when you start your machine, and *keep notes* what you
did. If your Windows gets upset, then you have a good idea where to go
to fix it. Next time you start your machine, do that again, etc etc.
Move on thru that list slowly. No need exists to be hasty. If you're
like me, that current Windows OS will stay in service for years to come.

After which preamble. Does the serious user *really* want more of that
commercial antivirus and etc in her machine? Need it?

OK on the general badness of Microsoft products -- see books by James
Bamford for serious docs on this and on today's cyberspace generally.
But this world we live in has cesspools and the like in it, there are
parts of the city you don't visit: we just live with that. And it's
also a point about Microsoft that they sell to *millions* of users,
around the world. Some of whom will certainly advertise major faults
where this or that Microsoft product fails. Which leads me to ask, can
Microsoft products be *really* that bad? Where so many people see them
and use them?

That is to say, might the Microsoft Windows 7's, "Defender" and the
firewall there, *properly used,* be *good enough* for most purposes?
Yes, the American CIA and NSA and etc, who certainly have backdoors into
your personal Windows for America's "security" (Hah!), are seriously bad
for America. (Looking at today's Washington, I think they are going to
get worse.) But for most practical work, do you *really* need to fetch
in an Avast, or a, whatever? Is maybe, the ridiculously named "Windows
Defender," actually in fact, good enough?

It takes that "Windows Defender" more than 3 hours to checkout my Asus
1015 PEM in its today state. Is that because it's crapware and very
slow to do anything? Or maybe, is it actually doing something useful
and doing it well enough?

So my topic here is, does 'safe computing' really require importing
additional "security" softwares? Into a today's Windows 7? Are those
assorted security wares that tell you extensively how much you need
them, stretching the facts? Just a little? And generally, what does a
machine need to run a stable Windows, vs, what of all that arrives with
a new Windows 7, is best sorted out and killed from it?

Titeotwawki -- Martha Adams [2011 Jly 10]

 

[charlie]

Asus 1015 PEM

The Asus 1015 laptop is a slower than ideal model with a long battery
duration that uses a dual core Atom processor. It's faster than my Acer
netbook.
An additional compromise like my netbook, is the vertical resolution of 600.
Perhaps you expect too much from the laptop, or use it for things that
it is really not optimized for.

As to the OEM provided junkware.
It's mainly there for marketing reasons.
The quality or lack of is due to a lowest cost consideration, and,
naturally, the lack of knowledge of first time customers. Third party
"OEM" versions are often "cripple ware", and furnished to the computer
OEM at no cost, in the hope that some customers will then buy the full
version.

The biggest complaint I have had is that some of the stuff can be
difficult to uninstall properly, and the uninstall process may eliminate
some real "features" that were touted, and perhaps part of the reasons
why a customer chose a particular make and model.

In the past Norton was one of the big offenders, in that it usually
was a pain to properly uninstall. As a result, it's one of the first
things I remove.

Regardless of Microsoft's stand concerning XP, the 1015 would likely
have decent performance if it was running Windows XP. Assuming that XP
drivers exist, that is.

 

[Paul]

So my topic here is, does 'safe computing' really require importing
additional "security" softwares?

Well, what's your own track record ?

Has your computer ever been "tipped over" to date ?
And if not, why not ? What were you doing right ?

Paul

 

[Martha Adams]

The Asus 1015 laptop is a slower than ideal model with a long battery
duration that uses a dual core Atom processor. It's faster than my Acer
netbook.
An additional compromise like my netbook, is the vertical resolution of
600.
Perhaps you expect too much from the laptop, or use it for things that
it is really not optimized for.

As to the OEM provided junkware.
It's mainly there for marketing reasons.
The quality or lack of is due to a lowest cost consideration, and,
naturally, the lack of knowledge of first time customers. Third party
"OEM" versions are often "cripple ware", and furnished to the computer
OEM at no cost, in the hope that some customers will then buy the full
version.

The biggest complaint I have had is that some of the stuff can be
difficult to uninstall properly, and the uninstall process may eliminate
some real "features" that were touted, and perhaps part of the reasons
why a customer chose a particular make and model.

In the past Norton was one of the big offenders, in that it usually
was a pain to properly uninstall. As a result, it's one of the first
things I remove.

Regardless of Microsoft's stand concerning XP, the 1015 would likely th
have decent performance if it was running Windows XP. Assuming that XP
drivers exist, that is.

=========================================================================

Hi, Charlie. Well, actually, I didn't say what I use this machine for
nor why I bought it. Those topics are off my need, but just so nobody
else makes assumptions about that, I'll explain.

I bought the Asus 1015 PEM despite its rather awful "Seashell" design
with annoying glossy surfaces (optimized for dropping it and for
eyestrain); for its light weight (at age 80 my strength is declining and
lightweight things interest me greatly now); for its battery life (Asus
says, "10 hours" and I'm seeing better than 7 hours); and because I'm
not techie enough to install Linux anywhere I'd like to but I have *work
to do.*

In fact, this Asus is plenty strong for me. I spend much of my time in
a Cygwin environment, much better for serious work than anything
Microsoft. And nearly all of my work is just plain text, see my
personal Web site, http://www.mhada.info.

OK on the crapwares, my problem is to clean that pollution out of my
machine without further complicating my life and without hurting my
work, which is pretty far behind right now.

Is there some place this topic gets serious discussion? I looked at
Karp's Windows Annoyances site, but seems to me, it's been inactive for
more than a year except for auto management of forums in it. The former
Karp goodness for Windows XP, seems absent for the new Windows 7 now.
But considering the immense practicality of this Windows rubbishware
topic, and that the user needs something she can *use* (I'm sure very
many of us out here aren't just using our machines like some variety of
TV), surely something is out there that might help with my key question:

*What do I do* to tidy-up this Asus / Windows 7 machine for my work?

Titeotwawki -- Martha Adams [2011 Jly 10]

 

[Twayne]

In

I was following the 'Windows Essentials' thread but a
piece of (very mundane) pathology posted there threw it
off the track.
(When someone says something *that* pathological and
stupid, isn't it just a bit pathological and stupid to
respond to it ...like I did. Um, ....)

I think this is a very useful topic these days -- my new
machine, an Asus 1015 PEM with its memory immediately
upgraded to 2G, was so slow it couldn't post emails
apparently owing to a time-out somewhere in the process
(among other stopper nuisances). I posted a query here
but by the time a useful response appeared, I had found
Microsoft's 'autoruns.exe' (note that 's' in there) and
stopped some of the ware stuff that was killing my
machine. When I run it here, it returns an amazing list
of things starting in my machine that I didn't ask for,
didn't expect to find, and don't want.

Almost all of the items in boot-startup are there only to give the program
they belong to a faster startup time of a second or so and are very often
such small savings as to not be noticeable. So by killing them off, you may
or may not notice any difference and if you do it'll be a small difference.
A few make things seem to start faster, like LiberOffice's, but nearly all
the time they do essentially nothing but rob/hog resources.
MSConfig is an excellent program to temporarly stop some of the services
at startup to see what king of effect they might have. Once you've
identified a few, go and kill those services and repeat. Autoruns is even a
better program for reading what starts during boot.
Someone mentioined keeping a list, and that's a good idea in case you
remove something that gives results you don't want. Like, leave explorer
alone for one thing - it's what's running the whold OS! It'll just reload
itself if you stop it. There are a few others like that too, so don't let
them surprise you.

2 Gig of RAM for win 7 though isn't nearly enough to get a smooth running
system so before you do anything, get more RAM in there! IMO at least 6 Gig,
8 would be better. Win 7 is a real memory hog and a half!

HTH,

Twayne`

Regarding stopping some of that stuff, my experience is,
kill just one or two of those when you start your
machine, and *keep notes* what you did. If your Windows
gets upset, then you have a good idea where to go to fix
it. Next time you start your machine, do that again, etc
etc. Move on thru that list slowly. No need exists to be
hasty. If you're like me, that current Windows OS will
stay in service for years to come.
After which preamble. Does the serious user *really*
want more of that commercial antivirus and etc in her
machine? Need it?
OK on the general badness of Microsoft products -- see
books by James Bamford for serious docs on this and on
today's cyberspace generally. But this world we live in
has cesspools and the like in it, there are parts of the
city you don't visit: we just live with that. And it's
also a point about Microsoft that they sell to *millions*
of users, around the world. Some of whom will certainly
advertise major faults where this or that Microsoft
product fails. Which leads me to ask, can Microsoft
products be *really* that bad? Where so many people see
them and use them?
That is to say, might the Microsoft Windows 7's,
"Defender" and the firewall there, *properly used,* be
*good enough* for most purposes? Yes, the American CIA
and NSA and etc, who certainly have backdoors into your
personal Windows for America's "security" (Hah!), are
seriously bad for America. (Looking at today's
Washington, I think they are going to get worse.) But for
most practical work, do you *really* need to fetch in an
Avast, or a, whatever? Is maybe, the ridiculously named
"Windows Defender," actually in fact, good enough?
It takes that "Windows Defender" more than 3 hours to
checkout my Asus 1015 PEM in its today state. Is that
because it's crapware and very slow to do anything? Or
maybe, is it actually doing something useful and doing it
well enough?
So my topic here is, does 'safe computing' really require
importing additional "security" softwares? Into a
today's Windows 7? Are those assorted security wares
that tell you extensively how much you need them,
stretching the facts? Just a little? And generally,
what does a machine need to run a stable Windows, vs,
what of all that arrives with a new Windows 7, is best
sorted out and killed from it?
Titeotwawki -- Martha Adams [2011 Jly 10]

 

[Twayne]

In

With Windows, yes. With Linux, no.

Wrong about Linux: t's subject to the same social engineering problems &
suckers as any other OS these days, and social efforts are growing like
crazy. You need to do a little research before you go spouting "no" like
this. Because you're willing to put up with the limitatons of Linux or are
able to find all the drivers & apps you need, does not mean by a long shot
that anyone else can. A stranger to Linux has a long learning curve in front
of them. Only techie types should mess around with Linux. If it was as good
as the fanatics and idiots claim, it'd have more than the tiny market
installed base that it has; what was it last week, something a bit over 1%
of the overall market of all OS's, wasn't it? Anyone experienced with ANY
other OS s gonig to recognize the shortcomings in a hurry.

HTH,

Twayne`

 

[Big Steel]

On 7/10/2011 11:43 AM, Martha Adams wrote:

<snipped>
<yawn>

You are just another loud mouth dumb home user lunatic.

 

[Big Steel]

In

Wrong about Linux: t's subject to the same social engineering problems&
suckers as any other OS these days, and social efforts are growing like
crazy. You need to do a little research before you go spouting "no" like
this. Because you're willing to put up with the limitatons of Linux or are
able to find all the drivers& apps you need, does not mean by a long shot
that anyone else can. A stranger to Linux has a long learning curve in front
of them. Only techie types should mess around with Linux. If it was as good
as the fanatics and idiots claim, it'd have more than the tiny market
installed base that it has; what was it last week, something a bit over 1%
of the overall market of all OS's, wasn't it? Anyone experienced with ANY
other OS s gonig to recognize the shortcomings in a hurry.

Yeah just look at the security of Linux on the Android phone as the
masses use that phone. The phone is leaking like a siv, as the crooks
are after those users, and they are all over the phone. If that's how
secure Linux is in the hands of the masses, then it doesn't look good
for Linux if the masses start using Linux at the desktop, which is never
going to happen it it seems. But if the masses did use Linux at the
desktop, the crooks are going to be all over Linux there too.

I was told by a sales person at Verizon when I got my Droid that it was
using Linux, and I would never have to worry about malware. I just
looked at him knowing he didn't know what he was talking about.

I should go back to the store now and see what he has to say about the
security of Linux on the phone. Thank god, I use Lookout on the Droid to
provide some kind of protection from the many attacks that are being
programmed against the Droid.