Monday, December 18, 2006

The Linux Equivalent Project

Are you scared to switch to linux because most of your favorite windows applications do not work with linux. Or have you already switched but are not able to find a good alternative to windows programs.
Check out The Linux Equivalent Project, this site provides some usable alteratives to most popular windows programs. Most of the software listed are free alternatives to commercial software, hence they may not be as powerful as the commercial windows software, but they are still worth a look.

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

First steps: Secure your PC

You have just installed Windows on your new PC. You take a broadband connection and connect to internet. How much time do you think you have before it gets affected by viruses, worms and spyware? It can be as less as 10 minutes.
Hence I always advise the first thing to do when you connect to internet is to first make the computer secure enough for general browsing. Just 2 small steps should be sufficient for most home users. First, install Mozilla Firefox. Second, install an antivirus.

Why use Firefox? Cause IE is insecure. Because you think you have been just surfing the web and nothing else, and you will never know when a spyware hit you (especially true if you do not have SP2 on your Windows XP) . Take my advice, install firefox and forget about IE. You will never need it again anyways.

Now for antivirus. Typically, home users do not install antivirus because the only 2 antivirus software they have ever heard of and have faith on are Norton and McAfee are too expensive to buy for a home computer (or too much effort to get pirated copies). Or because it slows down the computer. To overcome all these issues, go for freely available antiviruses such as AVG Antivirus Free Edition. It works pretty good for home users and takes less resources than commercial antiviruses. I have been using it for quite some time and am pretty satisfied with the results. Another alternative is Avast Home Edition, which is also quite popular and free but has a limitation of registering and re-registering every year (free of course).

The next steps to take would be to install an anti-spyware and a firewall. I'll take those up in the next post.

Friday, May 12, 2006

About the advisor

I always thought of Computers as great facilitators to making life easier. However, as I have seen and faced over past many years, most non-techy people find computers scary rather than a tool to ease their lives. Infact, Using computers and internet upto its full potential is difficult even for the techy people out there who would love to experiment.

Being a geek and a software engineer for many years now, I have always tried new ideas that can help day to day tasks or just make me look cool.

Hence I came up with this blog where I could share some of those ideas and also get similar ideas from people. I would also like to hear about various problems people face and try to suggest resolutions. In case I am out of ideas, I'll post the problem here so that other users can comment.

So guys/gals, if you are facing any problems that you think can be solved technically, write a comment or mail me at goel.shakti+tech@gmail.com