Sights and Sounds of Multimedia
By George Harding
Oxyride Batteries …
We don’t think too much about batteries except to complain about the price and how short the life is!
Panasonic has been giving batteries a little thinking and have come up with what they think is a better idea, Oxyride. I don’t know what the name connotes, but the bottom line is longer lasting at a price comparable to other batteries.
Dry cell batteries for games, cameras, MP3 players and other devices come in many varieties, some more long lasting than others. The ingredients vary among several unfamiliar elements. The Oxyride batteries are based on nickel oxyhydroxide chemistry. Now you know!
Panasonic had some tests performed to prove their new batteries lasted longer than others. They used the ANSI test protocols, which neither you nor I really care about, except to say it is an accepted standard for comparing battery endurance.
The tests were performed using Oxyride versus AA alkaline batteries from Duracell and Energizer. Guess who won?
The measurement used was the number of photos that a digital camera was able to take using two Duracell types, two Energizer types and two Panasonic types of alkaline batteries. The Oxyride took 2-3 times as many pictures before exhaustion than the six other types.
So what about cost? Panasonic compared standard retail prices of the six battery types against Oxyride and found that with one exception, the Oxyrides were a bit more expensive, but when the number of pictures was taken into account, the cost of the Oxyrides was from 22% to over 100% cheaper.
I got a sample of four Oxyrides from Panasonic and have been using them in my camera since January. I usually use rechargeable batteries (Oxyrides are not rechargeable). I don’t take a whole lot of pictures, but I’ve probably taken 100 or so in the three months and the Oxyrides are still fully powering my camera. I know I would have had to recharge my normal batteries by this time, at least once, so the Oxyrides seem better to me.
Panasonic says Oxyride batteries are available at Walgreens, Target and other retailers.
Oxyride Batteries by Panasonic www.panasonic.com
McAfee Internet Security Suite V 8 …
McAfee is one of several organizations that has progressed from a simple one-product strategy to a product that seems to do everything. They started out with an anti-virus product, but as life became more dangerous, they added other features.
Now MIS8 contains not only anti-virus, but also firewall, spam filtering, spyware, adware and worm detection and more. Needless to say, when installed, the product takes a lot of space and occupies a good bit of computer memory as well.
I installed and used the product for about a month. The installation process was tedious. I get frustrated when I’m required to restart my computer, which I had to do five (count ‘em) times! The installation loaded many start-up apps. I guess that’s necessary, but it slows down the start-up process, of course.
One thing I noticed that was unusual was the license agreement. As an aside, I now read all license agreements; I didn’t used to, instead assuming that I was installing only what I thought I was installing. Not necessarily the case these days. Anyway, the MIS8 agreement said that the update service was not included. Usually updates are provided free for one year in other similar products. Updates seemed to occur anyway!
During installation I got a Windows message that no firewall was turned on. I think that must have been only a momentary situation, fixed by restarting (one of the five times).
SpamKiller is one of the included apps and it, too, required a restart. After restarting, I got another Windows message that antivirus might be out of date. Again, probably a momentary situation until the product could update after restarting.
Next was the Privacy Service install, with its own restart. When this was all finished, I found 9 items in the MSCONFIG file!
Now that I had installed the product, I did an anti-virus update and scan. I had to restart after the update, but otherwise it went uneventfully.
My experience with MIS8 was not perfect. I found that SpamKiller was killing some of my normal email, as well as the bonafide spam, so I uninstalled it. That fixed that problem.
It appears that when I uninstalled SpamKiller, the start-up item was not deleted. I began experiencing intolerable slow-down with my computer. I’d wait and wait and finally the cursor would come back in whatever app I was using. I looked in Task Manager to find what was causing the problem and found MSKSrvr.exe to be taking from 90-97% of memory usage.
Searching on the Internet gave me the info that this is part of MIS8 and should not be deleted. I ended the process anyway. MSDSrvr.exe came right back! It’s a persistent app and kept coming back several times. After a few end processes it would stay away until the next shut-down.
I went to McAfee’s web site to try their Support, which is supposed to auto-diagnose MIS8. It did its diagnosis and reinstalled MKSrvr.exe, which made the slowness problem reoccur. I also tried their Support chat method, but that didn’t work.
I finally uninstalled MIS8. While I can’t say it didn’t do its job, I can say that it interfered too much with my daily computer life, more than I was willing to put up with.
McAfee Internet Security Suite www.mcafee.com Price $70 including one year of updates, $50 download
Requires WIN 98 or better, 64 MB RAM (128 MB for XP), 100 MB disk space
CyberDefender …
CD Corp. has three products that are helpful in today’s risky Internet environment: AntiSpyware, Security Toolbar and AntiVirus. The AV product doesn’t take any explanation, since everyone understands the risks and the need to protect against them.
Spyware is a more recent type of danger for us. Email and other sources can install programs that monitor and record our activities, save the Internet sites we visit and report those findings without us knowing. CD’s product not only protects us against these dangerous programs and their reporting, but also incorporates an innovative method of keeping itself up-to-date.
CD calls this method the Collaborative Internet Security network (CISN). Each PC on which AntiSpyware is installed is a listening post that reports suspicious files to CD’s system for analysis. Attacks are rated as to severity and the signature file is updated. For very dangerous spyware, the signature file is made available to the user immediately without waiting for the scheduled update.
This method, which can take as little as one hour, keeps the local PC protected from damaging spyware much faster than other similar products.
Security Toolbar is designed to protect your PC against a different sort of risk, that of what’s become known as phishing and scamming. Phishing usually works through email. You receive an urgent message from your bank or credit card company that all client files are being checked and you will not be able to take any further actions until you verify your information with them. You are given a link to what appears to be the bank or card company and the web page appears to be bonafide.
The phisher, however, has carefully provided you with a link to – not the bank – but rather to some other site which looks just the same. The information you provide, probably social security number, credit card number, date of birth and more, is saved. The information collected may be used directly to defraud you or to get credit cards, driver license and more. Your information may also be sold to others who will use it to get your money or identity.
The theft of money is bad enough, but theft of identity can be catastrophic. Security Toolbar is designed to prevent these thefts and also uses CISN to keep your protection up-to-date.
I installed all three of these products, which seemed to work as advertised. However, even though Security Toolbar has been installed (I can tell from the Add/Remove listing) I’ve never seen any sign of it in action! There is no program entry in the Start menu, either.
The AntiSpyware app starts up when Windows does and scans the computer right away. There is a link to have the scan continue in the background, which is nice.
The AntiVirus app starts when Windows does, but only when Windows has been shut down or restarted. In my case, the AntiVirus app generates a Windows error message (… app has encountered a problem and must close …) and shuts down. So, if you simply Hibernate at end of day, as I usually do, Antivirus is not active when you resume, unless you start it manually. Thus, you lose the AV protection in this situation.
I found the apps to not be intrusive, an important feature. The price for AntiSpyware is about $30, while the Security Toolbar is free, at least at present. I could not find out the price for AntiVirus.
AntiVirus, AntiSpyware and Security Toolbar by CyberDefender www.cyberdefender.com
For WIN 98 and above
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