By Peggy Pulliam, Secretary, Tampa PC Users Group
pegrance@yahoo.com

Kevan Sheridan provided a very interesting two-part presentation. On John Witmer’s desktop computer without an operating system, he installed Windows XP Professional. During the first part of the installation he went over the options we had during the installation and pointed out things we should consider regarding the choices available. The second part of the presentation was the installation of Zone Alarm and Spybot Search and Destroy on a second computer.

First, we saw Zone Alarm – firewall protection – installed and operated. It checks out any activity into or out from your computer and lets you choose which activities you want done.

If you don’t have this you will want to get it. There are so many ways for someone to get at your computer, and there are people out there with so little to do and who find it fun in fact to try to bust through. Who knows what they really want. Half the time there isn’t anything they could really want, but they can mess up your information and spread computer viruses that you are definitely better without. If you have your home business or your personal business on your computer, that’s just about everyone, you definitely want to find out more about Zone Alarm. Trojan Horses try to infect your computer. Virus Protection and Anti-virus programs will help protect – along with a firewall. You want them all.

“Spyware” can get into a computer; it tracks activity and even tracks keystrokes so it can get your code names by storing the keystrokes: its controller can retrieve your information. Spybot Search and Destroy is about the only thing that will handle spyware says our presenter, and it’s a free download!

When you load Spybot and go through and select which things to get rid of, you will want to keep many “cookies”: you are going to need them for other requirements. For instance, when you go to a site and want to receive a newsletter from them, say the Wall Street Journal, they require the use of a cookie to get that done; plenty of other sites do, too, you’ll see when you try it. Not everything that gets on the computer without your doing it specifically is bad, but you want the choice and it’s good to have it pointed out which ones are suspect; you learn about your computer doing it, too. If you delete something and later find that you now have a problem, it is all recorded and the choice can be reversed.

A lively discussion took place about how in the world something could get onto your computer and set up an application and program on your computer. One camp claiming it couldn’t be done, period. The other swearing it had done just that. If you have some fuel for that discussion, please send it in writing to the president, Kevan Sheridan. We can all hear about your input at the next meeting.

We then continued with the Windows XP Pro installation. It was a very enlightening evening. And, as usual, we had some great door prizes.

Ron Weinberg won a copy of Partition Magic. Wade Herman won two items, Microsoft Money 2003 and a club T-Shirt.

See you all next month u