Jane Talks Tech!

I'm so impressed by this version of Wordpress that I hardly know what more can be done to top it. I don't understand any of the code and while I'm certain there are a list of bugs waiting to be corrected, I'm happy with the product from the consumer's point of view (especially for a blog that does not have a large readership). Wordpress has a fantastic and large community of users who gladly contribute plugins and one of those plugins that currently serves me very well is the Broken Link Checker plugin. It scours your posts and pages for links that do not lead to working pages anymore i.e. give 404 errors.As you can see in the picture, it displays exactly what link is broken and gives you the option to fix it right there.

It is on my must-have list of plugins for any blog I start. With that said, information overload has a high potential of occurring with this plugin on sites that have lots of posts. Read More »

For those first-time visitors, I purchased Bitdefender Internet Security 2009 in August 2008. I was moderately happy with it, but after a while, things started going awry. First, Bitdefender caused the data execution prevention on Vista to kick in whenever I started Firefox. This was a well known issue and I was able to resolve the matter by disabling Bitdefender's toolbar/plugin for Firefox. After that incident, Bidefender would shut itself off for no reason so I uninstalled it. I then attempted to reinstall Bitdefender on my laptop and all my efforts failed. I've got the screenshots and log files to prove it. After several days of being without antivirus protection and trying out all approaches detailed on Bitdefender's support website, I could not resolve the issue on my own. Then, I went a step further. I initiated a chat conversation with a Bitdefender online representative who walked me through some more steps and when his recommendations didn't improve the matter, he sent me an email containing information on running some Bitdefender diagnostic tools. I dutifully ran those tools, packaged up the information generated and sent the data to the Bitdefender support staff. That was my last 'communique, if you will, that I had with Bitdefender.

Fast forward to the new year and approximately 6 weeks and 3 days after sending my S.O.S. email to Bitdefender's email support system, chatting with an online representative and running several diagnostic tests , I finally got a reply to my inquiry which is shown below:

Dear Jane,

We are sorry for the late reply and any inconvenience it may have caused. If the issue you reported still occurs please let me know, so that we can begin troubleshooting the situation. Looking forward to your reply. Best regards,
Xxxxxxxx Xxxx
BitDefender Technical Support Engineer

Read More »

I apologize for the long absence. I've had a lot of ideas to blog about, but interestingly, I've daunted by the flood of ideas and how best to present them. Like I always end up solving dilemmas like this (i.e. a lot to do and being at a loss for how to tackle tasks), I take it one step at a time. I've twittered about my woes with Bitdefender Internet Security 2009 and how I started a trial of Norton Internet Security 2009. Well, I'm here to let you know that I'm now a bonafide customer of Symantec once again.

I once used (back in 2005) Symantec Client Security and it bogged down my computer. I have had such a horrible experience with Symantec products, ranging from being a resource hog to being plain impossible to uninstall. Fast forwarding to 2009, I find that the installation experience for Norton Internet Security 2009 is remarkably smooth and very unobtrusive. I mean, I didn't even have to restart the computer!! This was mind-boggling to me after coming off Bitdefender Internet Security 2009's rather clunky installation method. According to a review on CNet, this streamlined installation process is indeed new and borrowed from another of Symantec's flagship products (Norton Ghost). Scanning my laptop (a full scan) does not leave my system hanging although in fairness to Bitdefender Internet Security 2009, a full system scan didn't bog my laptop down.

There are a few things I miss about Bitdefender Internet Security 2009 and I wish these things would be incorporated into Norton Internet Security 2009: Read More »