I just spent nearly $1000 on a new Dell Studio One 1909 desktop computer to work on the X-Ray project. The reason I chose this computer is because the monitor is the computer itself and it takes up very little space. Other than that, only 1 cable is required that is the power cord. The mouse and keyboard are wireless and it also comes with a wi-fi adapter. Everything was so great about this all-in-one desktop but after using a while I noticed that it is lacking of control buttons to adjust the monitor’s brightness and contrast. I searched on the Internet and many people too confirmed that it doesn’t have a monitor brightness control on the monitor.

I always adjust the monitor’s brightness to a very low level so that I don’t strain my eyes. I believe that is the reason why until today my eyesight is still perfect even though I spent at least 8 hours a day on computer 7 days a week. I read the whole manual book, searched on the Internet but I couldn’t find a way to adjust the brightness of the monitor. I found a tool developed by Dell called OSD (On Screen Display) installed in Program Files folder and I thought it could somehow used to adjust the brightness but the program did nothing. After messing around for a little while, I found 2 ways to adjust the Dell Studio One 1909 screen brightness.
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I am staying in an apartment with a guarded entrance but somehow there are still quite a lot of house break-in cases that is never solved by the police. It is suspected that this is an inside job, done by some people who stays in the apartment. Some people goes out and comes back at a fixed time and this gives the burglar a pretty good opportunity to cut off the locks and get in the house to grab whatever they want.

Sometimes when I am away for a few days, I am always worried about my apartment. Thankfully I know my neighbor and I always inform them to keep an eye on my house. However, relying on neighbor is still not good enough because they can’t be looking out all the time so I needed something better which is can immediately notify me on my cellphone when there is a motion detected. The good thing about my apartment is the design where there is only one possible way to get in which is from the main door. So all I needed is to set up a motion detector that monitors the front door. This is my current setup and it works perfectly.
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The latest version of Norton 360 4.0 is finally here. Norton 360, developed by Symantec, is marketed as an “all-in-one” security suite. The package includes a personal firewall, phishing protection, ability to detect and remove malware, file backup and PC maintenance capabilities. The previous Norton 360 v3 is based on Norton 2009 products and it’s no surprise that this latest Norton 360 v4 is based on Norton 2010.

Norton 360 v4 claims to come with a few new features such as Norton Insight, Norton Download Insight, SONAR 2 Behavioral Protection, Norton System Insight and Norton File Insight but honestly we’ve seen these features more than 5 months ago when Norton AV and IS 2010 was released. There are only 2 new features which are really new that is “Reputation service” and “Web-based Access to Backup Files”. The reputation service adds an additional layer of protection to detect viruses, Trojans, spyware, and other threats. Norton reputation service technology scrutinizes different attributes of files and applications in real-time to determine if they are safe. As for the Web-based Access to Backup Files feature, it allows you to retrieve and restore files that you backed up online anytime, anywhere, from virtually any computer with Internet access.
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I have to be honest that I am a very traditional guy. If I am used to something that never breaks, I will continue using it until I get so familiar with it that I feel tough to make a change. One example is I still prefer to use my old laptop because it has Windows XP rather than my new and faster Acer laptop or Dell All-In-One desktop because they came with Windows 7 pre-installed. I know as a technology guy I have to keep up with upgrades so I slowly started to use Windows 7.

If you are familiar with Windows Vista, switching to 7 isn’t going to be much of a problem unlike from XP to 7 because so many things has changed! One of the changes which I am not used to is the missing Quick Launch in Windows 7. I normally keep my Quick Launch toolbar in XP very small with only 3 icons and they are Internet Explorer, Firefox and a Show Desktop icon to conveniently minimize all opened windows and programs.

Normally you can easily enable the Quick Launch by right clicking the taskbar, go to Toolbars and select Quick Launch but it’s not there in Windows 7. By default, Internet Explorer is already pinned and I thought I can just pin Firefox and Show Desktop icon and it’ll be done but somehow I just couldn’t pin Show Desktop. After messing around for an hour, I finally managed to pin IE, Firefox and Show Desktop icon together to taskbar but there is a problem where the pinned icons doesn’t look and behave the same as Quick Launch icons when either one of the pinned program is running.

After a lot of testing, I found out that there is no way to make the pinned programs to work like the Quick Launch icons. Then I figured I had to somehow create a Quick Launch toolbar in Windows 7 and I managed to get it right.
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When a person registers a domain such as “myown.com”, he/she is required to enter their public whois contact information so that anyone can contact the owner if a website is down or doesn’t have their contact email or at least a form. Since the domain registrar doesn’t really verify if the public whois information is accurate or not, many people simply enter bogus information such as “123 Fake St.” or “(555) 555-5555″. Actually it is wrong to provide fake whois details and if someone found out about it and reported the fake whois information to Internic, the domain owner will risk loosing the domain name. So, many people opted for Whois Privacy Guard for a few dollars a year where the information will be replaced by a generic Whois Guard contact information.

Don’t get me wrong, it is still possible to contact the domain owner even if the domain is being protected by WhoisGuard. When some one sends an email to your uniquely generated whoisguard email address, it will in-turn forward it your real email address which you specify. This essentially masks your email from the outside world. However, if you want to know the real name, address, email and contact number of a domain, it is also “possible” to dig out all that information using DomainTools Domain History service.
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One thing I don’t understand is why the latest Windows Live Messenger has to take up a space in the Windows 7 taskbar area? In Vista and XP, whenever you click the Windows Live Messenger’s X button at the top right, it doesn’t really terminates the program but instead it minimizes to the notification area or some people call it the traybar. But in Windows 7, when you click the X button, the messenger icon is still showing in the notification area and also takes up a space in taskbar which I find it annoying! Other than being annoying, I’m sure some of you wouldn’t want your boss to see that you have Windows Live Messenger running at taskbar.

In Windows 7, they have this new feature where you can pin programs to the taskbar so when you easily launch your most frequently used programs. However this is not the case for Windows Live Messenger in Windows 7. IF Windows Live Messenger is being auto pinned to taskbar, you should see “Unpin this program from taskbar” instead of “Pin this program to taskbar. After doing a little research, I’ve found out how to easily remove Windows Live Messenger from the taskbar and just leave it only in notification tray area.
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If you go to the official DefenseWall’s website which is at SoftSphere Technologies, you will find DefenseWall HIPS v2.56 but not the Personal Firewall v3 version. That’s because the v2.56 is about to be dropped and replaced with the new DefenseWall Personal Firewall v3. I’ve long heard of DefenseWall but has never given it a try but since I’ve been contacted by people from SoftSphere to do a review on v3, I’ve decided to test it out. DefenseWall claims to protect yourself from malicious software (spyware, botnets, adware, keyloggers, rootkits, etc.) and identification theft, that can not be stopped by your anti-virus and anti-spyware programs, when you surf the Internet.

I’ve been testing a lot on antivirus and this is actually my first time testing a HIPS software. This is nothing like the normal antivirus that you use. Well virus normally comes in to your computer from either the web browser, email, USB drives or network. If you disable all of them, it’s impossible that your computer will be infected by virus but who can live without an internet connection nowadays? So what DefenseWall does is it labels all those applications that comes from location where virus can come in as “Untrusted” and run them in limited rights in a virtual zone that is specially allocated for them.
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