A Geek's Opinion

Thirty five percent of all humans use the internet. The internet is used for many things these days, you can do your banking, communicate with friends overseas and download data in its masses. But unfortunately nothing is pure, nothing is safe and nothing can be trusted. The internet is full of virus, hackers and phishers. Today I will be focusing on phishers. Many people are unaware of Phishers.

Phishers ‘troll’ the internet and certain websites for personal information. They mostly go for things like credit card details or you bank details and do it very cleverly as well. Sending out emails that look identical to the Commonwealth Banks emails. They will asked for access codes and everything personal. Phishers usually use professional enterprises like banks, ISP firms and all other potential sellers.

I believe that people that just buy a computer should consider being taught how to be safe (safe as you can be) online. It doesn’t have to be anything major, just some background research on each threats and how to prevent falling victim to a cyber attack. Especially Phishing, not many people are aware of them or the threats it proposes. Recently a mate and I built a computer for an old lady and I made sure I sat her down and told her of the dangers that the internet holds. Now if she is unsure of certain things she calls me, great. We all need to teach the unfortunate.

One question comes to my mind every time I think of Phishing. Why do they do it? Honestly I can not think of an answer that would support the action of stealing personal information or causing a person stress. But for the sake of this blog post I will try to think of something. If you are talented with computers, like super genius with them and programming you might find this particularly easy, I think. I am not an expert on computer virus creation or web design so I have no idea on how simple it is. But lets just say you are. You punch in a few lines here and there you will be well on your way to gaining your goal, either payment or enjoyment from other peoples stress. If a hacking firm were to pay you BIG money for a simple task, would you do it?

I certainly would not, there is too much at stake. In Australia it is a jail sentence and a massive fine. But that’s just me. I am an Internet angel, I do not download anything illegal or carry out any illegal activities.

Many of us probably have grand parents or know someone elderly that is very uncomfortable with shopping online or giving out anything personal online. Basically not attracting unwanted attention. So should we listen to our elders and not give out personal information online?

I don’t think so, if you educate yourself on these topics (as I mentioned above) you will be safe. That is unless you have a mental breakdown and forget everything geek. But once a geek always a geek.

I have said some solution that I think you could do but what about the companies that are being set-up in these attacks? Companies like the Commonwealth Bank, someone is sending out emails asking for banking details to their customers. Commonwealth Bank has put a hoax enquire email address, any fraud emails must be forwarded to this email address to help stop them from being sent in the first place.

Well there you go, I hope you liked my opinion on Phishing and why I think it is done.

Netbooks have been a big hit ever since ASUS came out with the Eee PC 701. Since then they have evolved into nettops and netbooks with optical drives and touch screens. So what is the next step?

Curious with this question, I thought of cloud computing. Cloud computing is uploading your files onto some company’s servers and accessing whenever you please. I use Eee Storage. So if you combine an operating system with this, what do you get?

Cloud OS … Well that’s what I call it. It is your whole operating system through the internet. Your desktop is your internet. This OS is still in development, but I can see some potential threats, like hackers of course. If someone like Obama gets this (highly doubt it, but go along with it okay?), hackers will have a feeding frenzy.

But yeah I am currently looking into this subject – tell me what you think. Embrace me with your wonderful comments.

Now this is going to be an interesting review. I have used everyone of this browsers in their previous builds, so am particularly keen to get this underway.

Now since I already had Safari 4 I had to install the others. Firefox as per normal installed really quickly, but as for Opera it took a bit to get going. Hopefully it does not get beat by IE8. Sorry I am not a big fan of Internet Explorer.

For my browser tests I am using Futuremarks Pacekeeper Browser benchmark. A very unique tool.

The first right out of Pacekeepers oven was Safari 4 with a score of 4177. Because it had raised the bar yesterday with IE8 I knew Firefox and Opera would have to be quick.

It was pointed out to me yesterday that Safari is a RAM hungry beast, so to make my tests fair I took a look at how much RAM they each chewed. All these results are based on idle. (0%-5% CPU usage).

That is a lot of RAM. That is what we called ridiculous… But if you have plenty of RAM you should be right.

That’s better.

That’s bad but not as bad as Safari.

Okay now onto the results…

If you click on the image you will get a better view.

As we can all see Safari 4 is still the fastest Browser out there. But you have to have to the RAM to go with it. Firefox is a very good browser. I personally would recommend it, because it doesn’t use a lot of RAM and it is still quick. Opera did beat IE8 but it still likes a lot of RAM. So who wins?

I am not handing the winning title to anyone. There are really two winners. For people with a older system and not a whole lot of RAM go for Firefox but if you have the RAM get Safari 4. As for Opera, I feel it is getting better the ideas are good but it need the speed to go with it.

But wait I forgot Chrome, So I will have another review coming up today to see how polished Chrome version 2 really is. Will it make Safari use all the RAM I have got? I hope not.

This is quick review, a full in-depth will be coming asap.

Now I know this isn’t a fair fight but I wanted to show you all what pride Apple takes in their Free software.

Okay lets get down to business. This will be review one of many other reviews in my browser wars series. Next up I will benching the new Firefox and Opera. Later on I will also be conducting reviews of portable Internet browsers.

Now before we get to the scores I would like to talk about the the general feel of Safari 4 and Internet Explorer 8. Safari feels much faster and more responsive and it doesn’t bombard you with the Microsoft Bing service. Just Google, which most of us like.

Internet Explorer 8 however feels slower but feels much better than previous Explorers to use. So that means win.

Safari really dominated this round with scoring a final score four times larger than Internet Explorer 8. The picture below shows Microsoft has a lot of work to do.

So overall as we all new Safari is better and is currently holding the A geeks opinion Browsing king title. Next up Firefox 3.5  and Safari 4 go head. Will Safari be .5 better than Firefox?

I got up this morning and  downloaded  Safari 4 BETA. I will have a review coming up at the end of this week. I say the end of this week because I would like to deliver “experienced” reviews.

I believe that you can’t deliver a quality review without any experience with product. If you do a review with the product straight out of the box, you are essentially extending your “hands on” or “un-boxing.” But with hardware I am aware it is a different story.

I intend to get a good solid week with Safari 4 BETA, then you will see the review. But, if you are not as patient as others I will gladly post “first impressions.”

If you have any more products you would like to get reviewed email me, jameshillthegeek@gmail.com (I have no life so a response is guaranteed). 

On several occasions I have faced elderly couples or person who insist that Norton’s provide the best Anti-Virus and Internet Security programs. Of course I laugh at this. It just makes me think why they think this?

I have two beliefs, back in the dawn of Virus protection Norton’s was the only thing available and finally, it is all they know. I am leaning towards the second belief.

But what has stopped sales persons in the past to alert them on there are other suites out there. I myself use  AVG 8.5 Free and I am happy I do so. It is not in my face with warnings “it just takes care of it.”

But I will have to check out avira. Apparently it is more accurate than AVG. I will see about that.

Also has anyone got any suggestions on how I can test Anti Virus’ software.

For me, it is hardly ever, unless a hard drive fails or it tells me that I can’t do something. But hey, thats what PCs are like. But for some people on the fruity side, they don’t have this problem … as often.

Most PC issues are hardware-related: usually a motherboard failure or power supply fault. This is a lesson that many people go down the track many, many times before they decide to seek advice.

My advice is to not buy the brand name on the outside, like Dell or Sony, but pay attention to what is inside the box. Get a custom-built computer or a Mac.

There is also a saying you will always hear when you buy anything: “You will get what you pay for.” The same is true with hardware.

Hunt for value, value, value, and if you have any problems let me know.