Microsoft chairman says there are no quick fixes for the deficit-burdened economy.

Despite some recent glimmers of hope, Bill Gates believes it could take several more years for the economy to fully rebound from the great recession, which many economists say began in earnest in late 2008 with the collapse of Lehman Bros and other investment houses.
“When you have a financial crisis like that, it’s years of digging out,” the Microsoft chairman said Monday during an interview on ABC’s Good Morning America. 

“The budget’s very, very out of balance,” Gates warned. “And even as the economy comes back, without changes in tax and entitlement policies, it won’t get back into balance. And at some point, financial markets will look at that and it will cause problems,” Gates added.

Gates’ comments come three days before Microsoft is slated to announce earnings for its fiscal second quarter. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expect the company to post earnings per share of 59 cents, on revenue of $17.79 billion.

In 2008, Microsoft posted second quarter earnings of 47 cents on $16.63 billion in revenue.

The interview coincided with the publication of Gates’ annual letter from his charitable organization, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In the letter, Gates said he talked to co-trustee Warren Buffett “more than ever” during the past year to gain a better understanding of the financial meltdown.

“Although the acute financial crisis is over, the economy is still weak, and the world will spend a lot of years undoing the damage, which includes lingering unemployment and huge government deficits and debts at record levels,” Gates wrote.

Still, there are indications that some markets are stabilizing and are in line for growth.

Research firm Forrester is calling for tech spending in the U.S. to grow 6.6% this year, to $568 billion, after being down 8.2% in 2009. Worldwide spending will jump 8.1% to more than $1.6 trillion, following a decline of 8.9% last year, according to Forrester.

Microsoft shares were up 1.42%, to $29.37, in early trading Monday as stock markets rebounded from Friday’s sell off.

URL: http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/microsoft_news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=222400437

Connectify takes control of Windows 7’s Virtual Wi-Fi feature and turns the laptop into a hotspot.

PC Advisor reports that Philadelphia developer Nomadio has discovered an unfinished Windows 7 feature (Virtual Wi-Fi) that can turn a laptop into a Wi-Fi hotspot. That means other devices in the near vicinity can access the Internet
without the need for special tunneling software. The company has now exploited the uncovered treasure and created a free application called Connectify, released just last week.

Microsoft’s research group originally began development of Virtual Wi-Fi years ago; the feature would take a network card and virtually split it into several, separate adaptors. However, Microsoft halted its development back in 2006, but apparently never removed the feature from the operating system. Now it appears in Windows 7 as “Native 802.11 Virtual Wireless Fidelity (Virtual Wi-Fi) object identifiers (OIDs)”.

Alex Gizis, CEO of Nomadio, told PC Advisor that driver support for Virtual Wi-Fi was never finished. With that said, the driver-level “stuff” isn’t present, however the “low-level code” is still intact. There’s also no application or setting to turn the feature on. Naturally, this is where Connectify comes in.

But Gizis was quick to point out that the software differs from Internet connection sharing. “For one thing, it shows up as a real wireless access point,” Gizis said. “Two, internet connection sharing has issues. It returns to the default settings every time you shut down a connection. And three, you can join another wireless network and still run the Connectify Hotspot on the same Wi-Fi card.”

Head to the official Connectify website to learn more about making your Windows 7 laptop an Internet hotspot.

URL:  http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Windows-Laptop-Internet-hotspot-Connectify,8971.html#

On October 29, 1969, the Internet came in not with a bang, but with a “lo.”

Letter by letter, UCLA computer science professor Leonard Kleinrock sent a message from his school’s host computer to another computer at Stanford Research Institute. Kleinrock was trying to write “login,” starting up a remote time-sharing system, but the system crashed after two letters, and lo! The Internet was born with the first data message sent between two networked computers.

To be fair, the creation of the Internet was peppered with other milestones that could be considered more or less historic. After all, at the core of the Internet was packet-switching–the process of breaking down data into blocks and routing them individually–and in 1968 Donald Davies of the UK’s National Physical Laboratory gave the first public presentation of the idea.

But if we can all agree that communication–e-mail, chat, social networking–is what makes the Internet tick, Kleinrock’s first message was the most significant early step towards what we have today.

Today, 40 years later, life without the Internet seems unfathomable. In those rare occurrences where your Internet service provider has trouble, and you can’t connect, it’s as if the power is out in your entire house. Over 1 billion people are online, and last year, Google announced that it had detected over 1 trillion pages.

How did we get from Kleinrock’s anti-climactic, yet historic, “lo” to a society that lives and breathes on the ability to transmit data? Over the years, more computer terminals connected to the network, hosted by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and known as ARPAnet.

In the mid-70s, DARPA engineers Vint Cerf and Yogen Delal and Carl Sunshine developed Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol, abbeviated as TCP/IP, a means for networks to “internetwork,” hence the name “Internet.” You could, of course, call the development of TCP/IP, or its uniform adoption by ARPAnet on January 1, 1983, birthdays of the Internet as well.

Over the years, the number of connected terminals bloomed, and new networks outside of ARPAnet popped up. All of this set the stage for the World Wide Web, proposed by Tim Berners Lee in 1989 as a collection of Internet documents viewable in a browser. Five years later, we had the first Web browser in Mosaic Netscape 0.9. Then came “Web 2.0,” a term for participatory sites like Digg, Facebook and Flickr that becomes more of a cliché as the way we communicate over the Internet advances further.

And to think it all started with a truncated bit of text. Even then, the Internet was a work in progress.

URL: http://www.pcworld.com/article/174667/happy_40th_birthday_internet.html

NABC provides Northwest Washington farmers with the skills and the resources required to profitably and efficiently supply their products to consumers, retailers, wholesalers, foodservice operators and food manufacturers.

We look forward to walking with them and helping them reach their business technology goals.

In case you missed it, Windows 7 is available now. October 22nd was marked with a moderate amount of hoopla to introduce the new flagship operating system. Now, users are faced with the task of not only deciding whether or not to upgrade, but of choosing which of the many variations of Windows 7 to install.

Microsoft has 6 different versions of Windows 7 available: Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional, Ultimate, and Enterprise. The Windows 7 Starter version is aimed primarily at low-end netbook devices, and the Windows Home Basic version is only available in emerging markets, so we can rule those two out right away.

Microsoft thinks that it is doing you a favor by essentially making Windows Home Premium the de facto version. A quick browse through the systems available from Best Buy or Amazon shows that almost every system available now comes pre-installed with Windows Home Premium, with a significant percentage being the 64-bit version of Windows Home Premium.

Windows Home Premium is OK, but it lacks key features. Microsoft has this habit of adding all kinds of eye candy and multimedia bells and whistles to the home version, but leaving out important security features and customization capabilities. I chalk it up to an effort to provide a dummy-proof entertainment system and be more like Apple, but the result is that consumers get an inferior version of Windows that doesn’t come close to the Mac OS X experience.

Microsoft isn’t Apple and Windows isn’t Mac. If Microsoft focused more on providing the best version of Windows for consumers and less on trying to be cool or dummy proof, it would be doing itself and you both a favor.

Microsoft aims the cream of the crop of the security features at enterprise customers. Granted, they need them as well, but enterprises tend to have IT administrators and technical support personnel who install, manage, and oversee firewall and antivirus products, monitor the network for outbreaks, and provide security remediation and cleanup when necessary. Home users don’t have those resources so they need the operating system to be as secure as possible by default.

Home users should have Windows 7 Ultimate in order to have the full range of Windows 7 features and capabilities. Laptop users in particular should upgrade to Windows 7 Ultimate so they can take advantage of BitLocker Disk Encryption to protect the data on the laptop in the event that it is lost or stolen.

Small businesses are more or less ignored by Microsoft. They are not an enterprise or a consumer. Microsoft intends the Windows 7 Professional version for small and medium business customers. Windows 7 Professional has some enhancements such as the ability to join a Windows network domain, but still lacks key features like BitLocker, as well as the enterprise capabilities like DirectAccess and Branch Cache.

Granted, small and medium business customers need to have a Windows Server 2008 domain environment to take advantage of these advanced Windows 7 features, but it is worth it for organizations with remote and roaming workers or branch locations. To gain access to these features, I suggest small and medium businesses also invest in Windows 7 Ultimate.

There you have it. If I were calling the shots at Microsoft we could instantly narrow the field down to three options: Windows 7 Starter for netbooks, Windows 7 Enterprise for large corporate customers, and Windows 7 Ultimate for everyone else.

If you are going to spend the time and money to upgrade to Windows 7, you may as well invest a little extra and get the version that has all of the features, and capabilities rather than choosing one with limited functionality. You’ll thank me later.

Tony Bradley is an information security and unified communications expert with more than a decade of enterprise IT experience. He tweets as @PCSecurityNews and provides tips, advice and reviews on information security and unified communications technologies on his site at tonybradley.com .

URL: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/174388/windows_7_choosing_the_right_version.html

By Mitch Wagner,  InformationWeek
Oct. 26, 2009
URL: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=220900375

Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch aren’t just for entertainment and productivity. Healthcare pros can use them to improve treatment for their patients, and individuals can use them to get healthy and stay healthy.

The App Store has an entire category devoted to Healthcare & Fitness, with myriad entries. We’ve highlighted apps to help healthcare pros with diagnosis and treatment, and to help individuals with diet, exercise, weight loss, diabetes, and other health issues.

We’ll also look at a couple of general-purpose productivity apps that can be very useful in healthcare regimens, and take a quick peek at how the apps that come free with the iPhone and Touch can help individuals take better care of themselves.

Epocrates
Epocrates Inc.
Cost: Free

Link

Epocrates lets healthcare pros access information on thousands of drugs, including doses, adverse reactions, formularies, pricing, and images of pills. It can check drug interactions for up to 30 drugs at a time. Epocrates also includes a number of medical calculators. For instance the Body Mass Index (BMI) calculator uses a ratio of weight-to-height used to gauge obesity, and the Glomerular Filtration Rate (GFR) calculator measures stages of kidney disease.

Healthcare pros can upgrade to a premium version on the Web, providing access to in-depth, peer-reviewed clinical content on diseases, an infectious disease treatment guide, references on lab tests, and information on herbal and over-the-counter remedies.

AllOne Mobile
AllOne Mobile Corp.
Cost: Free

Link

AllOne Mobile is a service for healthcare providers and insurance companies. It’s designed to allow those companies to give their individual members access to their own health records. The iPhone app allows users to access this information remotely, and coordinate those records with healthcare providers and health plans. Users can make corrections on their own records, and also share records with new doctors. Users can also use the app to confirm insurance coverage, list people to contact in an emergency, fax information to a doctor’s office or any other fax number from their mobile phone, and more.

Users can download a general version of the app. AllOne also has private-label versions available in partnership with Microsoft HealthVault, BlueCross of Northeastern Pennsylvania, and the U.S. Army.

Calorie Tracker
LiveStrong Demand Media Inc.
Cost: $2.99

Link

People following the popular LiveStrong health and fitness program will like this calorie-tracking app. Use it to look up nutritional information on the food you’re about to eat, and keep track of daily calories, fat, carbs, and protein using the service’s Daily Plate database. Also use Calorie Tracker to log calories burned by exercise. The app is a companion to LiveStrong’s free Web service, with two-way synch, but the app works even when you’re offline.

Weight Watchers Mobile
Weight Watchers International
Cost: $29.95 sign-up, plus $16.95 per month

Link

The 46-year-old behemoth-among-weight-loss programs recently released an iPhone app, allowing users to track food and exercise, search food options, find nearby meetings, and calculate nutrition and exercise value based on Weight Watchers’ trademarked “points” system.

The app won’t win many new converts to Weight Watchers. It requires a network connection, and, while the app itself is free, it requires a Weight Watchers subscription to work, and the subscription is pricey.

Still, the app is potentially a valuable tool for iPhone and iPod Touch users who are already “on program.”

soundAMP
Ginger Labs
Cost: $9.99

Link

soundAMP turns your iPhone into a hearing aid. It’s designed for students looking for a hearing boost in a lecture hall, and hearing-impaired people looking to participate in conversations.

The software amplifies soft sounds and softens loud sounds, providing clarity at all volume levels with minimal distortion, the vendor says. It uses the iPhone’s built-in microphone for input. On-screen controls let you adjust the volume and modify the tone, and the software even works like a TiVo for real life — a “repeat” button lets you play back what was just said.

Now hear this: While the App Store rating gives soundAMP a good overall rating, three out of five stars, nine of the 18 reviews are one-stars, with seven five-star reviews. However, the vendor says that it recently released a new version, it’s popular among the hearing disabled, and Apple itself is promoting the app.

iFitness
Hooman Zohoor
Cost: $1.99

Link

iFitness is a personal trainer that fits in the palm of your hand; it provides pictures, videos, and instructions for how to do over 230 exercises, sorted by body region and target muscle. The software lets you choose a target, tap an exercise, and get a picture of the exercise. Double-tap to flip the image and view text instructions. The app also provides video instruction for more difficult exercises. Users can create different custom workout lists for different days, add custom exercises, and track progress.

Islet
Michael Connor
Cost: $2.99

Islet is a diabetes management app that lets users record blood glucose readings, carb intake, insulin injections, and exercise, and e-mail results to a healthcare pro, parent, or anyone else. Users can view and edit all database entries, navigating by month, filter by date, time, or value, and export as comma-separated records for easy import to Excel. The app displays graphs of high, low, and average readings for a variety of data. The developer, a Princeton undergrad, recently received a $100,000 grant to continue developing the app.

Good Food Near You
Global Fitness Media
Cost: Free

Link

Everybody eating a controlled diet has this problem at one time or another: You’re out on the road, you didn’t plan your next meal, but you’re hungry and you have to eat. You need something fast and convenient — but “fast and convenient” usually means “unhealthy junk food.” What do you do?

Good Food Near You solves that problem. It provides a list of nearby fast-food and family dining locations, where you can get a fast, healthy meal.

I tested it out by searching near my home, it successfully located the neighborhood Subway, Marie Callender’s and Denny’s, and suggested healthy food on the menu for each.

Good Food Near You is far from perfect. For example, the very first choice it gave me wasn’t a restaurant at all — it was the nearby florist, which does not actually provide healthy food choices unless you are a cow. Also, at the local 7-Eleven, it suggested a jelly donut as a healthy food choice, and at Starbucks, a cinnamon raisin bagel.

You have to go through the app’s list of suggestions, and throw out the garbage–and there’ll be a lot of garbage.

Also, the database is thin, and it’s pretty much limited to fast-food places. You won’t find that darling little Asian-fusion place that just opened up the street with the delicious vegetarian menu.

Still, if you’re caught on unfamiliar territory, and you need to get something to eat fast, and you want to eat healthy, Good Food Near You will help you. And it’s free. Just don’t expect too much.

MotionX GPS Sport / Sport Lite
Fullpower Technologies
Cost: Free/$2.99

Link

I use GPS Sport for a pretty simple purpose: I walk for exercise outdoors most days. GPS Sport tracks how far, how fast, and how long I’ve gone, so I can keep track of calories burned. I don’t use it every time I walk outdoors, just every couple of weeks to get a status update.

But GPS Sport does a lot more than that: It draws a map of routes, using street, topo/terrain and satellite maps. You can e-mail your track to multiple recipients, post photos, share information on Facebook and Twitter, and access and control your iPod music directly.

If you’re looking to use GPS Sport the same way I do, the free Lite version should be fine for you. It stores up to three waypoints, and a single track. If you want to stretch your geeky fitness muscles, go for the paid version, which stores up to 303 waypoints and 101 tracks.

Weightbot
Tapbots
Cost: $1.99

Link

Weightbot keeps track of your weight. The software lets you enter your weight every time you weigh yourself, set your goal, keep track of progress toward your goal, and view your BMI. It tracks your average weekly and monthly weight loss or gain and shows units in pounds or kilograms. Weightbot even lets shy persons password-protect their weight information.

You could do all this just using the iPhone’s built-in software, but Weightbot is a fun little app. It makes nifty clicking and creaking noises as you work it, as though it had a clockwork mechanism doing the calculations for you. It’s fun, and it only costs two bucks, so give it a go.

Lose It!
FitNow
Cost: Free

Link

One of the most important thing you can do to lose weight is to keep a food journal, writing down every single bite of food or drink that passes your lips. That’s what Lose It is for, it’s a food journaling app that also helps you track calories, nutrients, and calories burned during exercise.

Enter your current weight, how much you want to lose, and your activity level, and Lose It gives you the total number of net calories you need to eat each day to achieve your goal. It’s easy to enter foods and exercise when you’re on the go, as well as update your weight over time.

Lose It is far from perfect. The food database is pretty bad; I find it to be very incomplete. Instead of using the database, I get nutritional information from food packaging or on the Internet (often using the iPhone’s built-in browser) and enter calories manually; Lose It makes that easy to do, and once you’ve entered a food item once, Lose It makes it easy to re-use it for a later meal.

Likewise, the weight-history data in Lose It is weak; you can’t look up what you weighed last week or last month. On the other hand, Lose It does provide you with a nice-looking line chart to show your progress losing or gaining weight over time. I use Weightbot as well as an Excel spreadsheet on my desktop to track more detailed information.

The best tool isn’t the perfect tool, it’s the tool you actually use. Despite Lose It’s problems, it’s the most useful health and fitness app that I’ve found and it may be the most useful iPhone app, period. With Lose It’s help, I’ve lost 28 pounds since March. 63 more pounds to go!

Documents To Go
DataViz Inc.
Cost: $9.99

Link

Documents To Go isn’t a healthcare app, it’s a general-purpose productivity program. But exercise programs, diets, and other healthcare routines require record-keeping, and that’s where DocsToGo comes in. The software lets you edit, create, and view Microsoft Word and Excel spreadsheets on your iPhone, and synch them to your desktop.

Use those documents to track your weight, exercise programs, keep a food journal, and more. Professional race car driver Charlie Kimball controls his diabetes by keeping records in an Excel spreadsheet template designed by his doctors, which he synchs to his desktop using Docs to Go and e-mails to his doctor.

Simplenote
Codality Inc.
Cost: $1.99

Another general-purpose app that can be applied to healthcare record-keeping, Simplenote is similar to the iPhone’s built-in Notes app. The major difference: Simplenote synchs to a Web application, while the Notes app requires Apple Mail on the Mac, or Outlook on Windows. Simplenote also has a different font and background color than Notes.

Native Apps

Don’t overlook the iPhone’s built-in apps, which are standard when you buy the device:

The Clock app includes a stopwatch and timer, useful for timing workout routines, intervals between taking meds and, for diabetics, testing blood sugar after meals.

The Mobile Safari browser is useful for looking up calorie counts on the go. Just enter the name of the food and the word “calories” in the search bar. For example: chipotle burrito calories.

The Maps app can help you find local restaurants; use your own common sense to figure out which ones have healthy food.

TheiPod app keeps you entertained while exercising; I particularly enjoy listening to podcasts when I work out.

And you can use the Notes app to keep a health journal, writing down food, exercise, and anything else you need to keep track of.
Consumer electronics have had a huge role in making Americans unhealthy; we work all day at computers, rather than outside moving around, and then we come home and sit and watch TV or play electronic games. Using the iPhone, consumer electronics can be used to push back, and put back on the road to good health.

By John Foley,  InformationWeek
Oct. 23, 2009

Now that Microsoft has released Windows 7, government agencies face a decision. Do they deploy Microsoft’s new operating system? And, if so, when?

Troy West, general manager and VP of Dell’s federal government business, writes in a blog post that federal IT managers will deploy Windows 7 “more broadly and more quickly” than they have Windows Vista. However, that prediction, based on a survey of federal IT managers, isn’t surprising because government adoption of Vista has been low. A majority of government offices still use Windows XP.

Of federal IT managers with plans to move to Windows 7, 60% plan to make the move in six months or more. That’s almost certainly slower than will be the case among consumers and businesses. “Budget cycles and approvals will likely force the public sector to lag a bit,” writes West.

Among the factors influencing Windows 7 adoption by federal agencies are the time required for management approvals and any related IT upgrades. According to Dell, 60% of federal agencies with Windows 7 migration plans will make the move as part of their normal PC and laptop refresh cycle.

A few government agencies are early adopters of Windows 7, or are poised to be. The U.S. Army has been testing Windows 7, and the Air Force is working on a Windows 7 upgrade plan, even as it completes its migration to Vista.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory plans to be “very aggressive” in its move to Windows 7, according to lab CIO Jerry Johnson. Windows 7’s security features and its more reasonable hardware requirements (compared to Vista) are driving that decision, says Johnson.

Teresa Carlson, VP of Microsoft’s federal business, writes in a blog post that many government customers participated in the Windows 7 beta program, and points to the city of Miami, the state of Illinois, and the University of New Mexico as early adopters. She doesn’t mention any federal agencies in that post.

Carlson touts new and improved security features in Windows 7, including User Account Control, Direct Access, and BitLocker To Go, that should appeal to government users. She also addresses some misconceptions about the cost of Windows 7 and the time required to install it. With volume pricing and discounts, she says, federal agencies can deploy Windows 7 enterprise edition for under $100 per user, less than half its $220 sticker price. And “typical users” can migrate to Windows 7 in under an hour, though the process can take much longer for power users, she admits.

Microsoft is ramping up its Windows 7 push in the public sector. It’s offering 15% discounts on Windows 7 professional edition for small government customers, will host a Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 virtual event on Nov. 10, and is preparing a Windows 7 e-book for government customers.

Original Article from InformationWeek.com

Read InformationWeek’s first-ever analysis of top CIOs in federal, state, and local government, and how they’re embracing new expectations. Download the report here (registration required).

Windows 7 offers little more than incremental improvements and cosmetic enhancements over Windows Vista, and Windows Vista users may be wise to simply hold off until its time for a new PC. But the majority of users are still using Windows XP and even Vista users have reason to embrace Windows 7. Let’s look at 5 reasons why you should make the switch to Windows 7 today.

1) Vista haters. Whether you are one of the nearly 19 percent of consumers who are actually running Windows Vista and don’t like it, or part of the larger crowd of those who hate Windows Vista purely based on anecdotal stories and ‘I’m a Mac’ ads from Apple, Windows 7 is not Windows Vista.

The two most common complaints about Windows Vista are poor device driver support and annoyance over the UAC (user account control) pop-up alerts. Windows 7 has vastly superior device support, and Microsoft has modified the functionality of UAC to provide the user with more control over the alert prompts.

2) XP diehards. Security is arguably the best reason for a Windows XP user to make the switch. A lot has changed since the Clinton-era. Windows 7 has UAC, ASLR (address space layout randomization), and DEP (date execution prevention) in addition to improved operating system kernel protection. Certain versions of Windows 7 also include BitLocker and BitLocker-to-Go encryption.

There are also a number of improvements in the user interface that make it simpler and more intuitive to work with the operating system. The Windows Action Center, improved data backup, Blu-ray disc support, and jump lists stand out as good reasons to make the switch.

3) Home networking. Networking Windows-based desktops together in the home has theoretically been possible since Windows 3.11. However, it has been easier said than done and has come with certain security tradeoffs depending on which version of Windows you’re trying to network.

Microsoft is offering Windows 7 in a family pack with 3 licensed copies to allow families to upgrade all of the systems in the home at a discount. If you take advantage of that, you can also take advantage of Home Groups which greatly simplify the process of sharing data and other resources between Windows 7 systems while also providing better protection to prevent guests or unauthorized users from being able to access those same resources.

4) Media sharing. Since the days of Windows XP a lot has changed in terms of digital media. MP3’s are quickly replacing compact discs as the primary music format, and computers with TV tuners can act as DVR’s (digital video recorders).

Windows 7 makes it fairly seamless and intuitive to share audio and video media between the various devices on the network. You can access and share libraries, play audio and video files to remote systems on the network, copy recorded shows from one system to another, and more with relative ease.

5) Go with the flow. When I was a teen lusting after my first computer, I wanted a Mac. The mother of a friend of mine worked for Apple so I got to play with the first-generation Mac at his house and that is what I wanted. My mother nixed that plan because she pointed out that they used PC’s at her work, and my uncle was a programmer on a PC, and we had family and friends with PC’s. The logic was that by getting a PC I would have more resources available to me than if I went with the obscure, albeit cooler, Mac.

Fast forward a few years and I was still trying to be a non-conformist even while using a PC. I ran the IBM OS/2 operating system on an AMD-based system (before it was the household name it is now). I used a non-HP printer and a non-Hayes modem. I made sure my sound card was not from Creative Labs. What I found was that all of that really just made my life more difficult trying to find drivers and make it all play nicely together.

So– reason number 5 to embrace Windows 7 is to go with the flow. Between Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7, the Microsoft operating system dominates nearly 95 percent of the operating system market share. Now that Windows 7 is out, Microsoft and third-party software providers will be quick to drop support and development for Windows XP.

Tony Bradley is an information security and unified communications expert with more than a decade of enterprise IT experience. He tweets as @PCSecurityNews and provides tips, advice and reviews on information security and unified communications technologies on his site at tonybradley.com.

Original Article from PCWorld.com

Original Article from WindowsSecurity.com

Introduction

Microsoft recently released Security Essentials, a free anti-virus and anti-malware ”pack” for Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. The software was created with consumers in mind, but, in a tight economy some businesses will undoubtedly be tempted to use it for PCs on their company networks. Is it a good idea? What are the drawbacks? This article takes a look at this replacement for Windows Live OneCare and helps you decide whether deploying it in your business is a great way to save money, an invitation to disaster, or something in between.

Download and Installation

For those businesses with an international presence, MSE is available for many different languages and locales. It can be installed on Windows XP (32 bit only), Vista (32 or 64 bit) and Windows 7 (32 or 64 bit). The installer file is 4.28 MB. It runs a validation test to ensure that you are running a properly licensed copy of Windows before proceeding with the installation. If you are, validation is quick and simple.

You should remove other antivirus and antispyware software before installing MSE, and you will be reminded of this at the beginning of the installation. The actual installation took less than a minute on my test machine and after you click Finish, the program will start and check for the latest definitions, as shown in Figure 1.

The interface is simple – perhaps a bit too simple for most business users. However, if your business is a small one with no centralized control over the network and users must manage their own AV programs, MSE will be easy enough even for those who are not at all technically savvy. As shown in Figure 2, there are three scan options: quick scan, full scan, and custom scan. You can schedule scans (by default MSE runs a quick scan once a week, on Sunday at 2:00 a.m.) and choose the type.

Updates are downloaded automatically, or you can manually update your definitions at any time, as shown in Figure 3.

The History tab allows for some limited filtering. You can select to display all detected items, quarantined items that were disabled and prevented from running (but not removed) or allowed items.

On the settings tab, you can configure the following:

* Scheduled scan
* Default actions
* Real-time protection
* Excluded files and locations
* Excluded file types
* Excluded processes
* Advanced settings
* Microsoft SpyNet

Your scheduling options are limited. You can choose the type of scan to run (Quick or Full) and set it to run any one day of the week or daily at a specified time. You cannot, however, schedule a scan on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays only. Nor can you schedule a quick scan daily and a full scan on the weekend (for example). You can, however, have the scheduled scan start only when the computer is not in use and force a check for the latest definitions before each scan.

Default actions are based on the alert level. MSE recognizes four alert levels: low, medium, high and severe. For each level, you can specify whether to allow, quarantine, remove, or accept MSE’s recommended action.

Real-time protection, which alerts you when a program identified as malware attempts to install or run, can be turned on or off. If it’s turned on, you can further specify whether to monitor file and program activity and/or scan all downloaded files and attachments.

You can specify files and locations to be excluded when you run a scan, thus speeding up the scan but potentially leaving the computer less protected. You can also exclude specified file types from the scan, if you are sure that a particular file type is safe. For example, you might want to excluded graphics such as .jpg or .tif files. You can further exclude specified processes (executables). It is easy to add these exclusions and just as easy to remove them.

In the Advanced Settings, you have several options that can be enabled or disabled by checking a box:

* You can specify whether to scan for malware in archived files such as .zip and .cab files
* You can specify whether to scan removable drives, such as USB flash drives
* You can specify to create a system restore point before doing any cleanup, so that if something is inadvertently removed that should not have been, you can easily roll back to the previous state
* You can select whether all users are allowed to view the full History results (including users who are not administrators)

Finally, you can select your membership level in Microsoft SpyNet. You can choose basic membership, whereby Microsoft will receive basic information about malware that is detected and what actions are applied, or you can choose advanced membership, whereby more information is sent, including the location of the malware on your disk, files names and how the malware affects your computer. The default is basic membership. Note that unlike with some anti-malware programs, you cannot opt out of SpyNet completely. Also note the warning that “in some instances, personal information might unintentionally be sent to Microsoft. However, Microsoft will not use this information to identify you or contact you.”

What are the advantages for business?

For small businesses, MSE provides basic anti-virus and anti-spyware protection all in one package at no cost. It is easy to install and set up and easy to run. In my experience and according to testing reported by various web sources, it does a decent job of catching malware. PC Advisor’s tests showed that it came in with a 97.8 detection rate and did particularly well with proactive tests that measure detection of new, unknown malware.

Another advantage is that it runs very transparently. Unlike some anti-malware solutions, it is not constantly popping up messages. It is easy for individual users to manage on their own computers.

What are the disadvantages for business?

MSE is designed for home users and consequently does not have many of the features that all but the smallest businesses want and need. Its lack of flexibility in setting scanning schedules can be a real drawback, particularly the inability to set separate schedules for daily and full scans. It is often desirable to run a quick scan on a daily basis and a full scan less often. Of course, you can always set it up to run a daily scan and then manually run full scans, but requires a bit more interaction on the part of the user.

The biggest drawback for businesses is that MSE cannot be centrally managed. That means each user will have to set it up or IT personnel will have to set it up on each computer individually, creating a great deal of administrative overhead.

Most anti-malware programs allow you to enable or disable email protection. MSE does not have such an option, and it is unclear whether email files are scanned as part of real-time protection, or only attachments are scanned.

There have been some reports of MSE failing to detect malware in .zip files, even though the option to scan archived files is enabled.

Some companies may also be uncomfortable with the inability to turn off SpyNet, forcing you to allow information to be sent to Microsoft.

Conclusion

Microsoft Security Essentials was designed as a consumer anti-malware solution and is a viable alternative to other freeware AV products. Some small businesses may find that it provides adequate protection for their computers. However, for mid-size and large companies, the lack of centralized management and inflexibility of some of the features make it a less than ideal choice. Microsoft clearly intends Forefront Client Security to be its AV presence in the business world. If your business can’t afford or doesn’t want to use Forefront, a mid-priced third party commercial AV solution aimed at business may be your best bet.

About Deb Shinder:

DEBRA LITTLEJOHN SHINDER, MCSE, MVP (Security) is a technology consultant, trainer and writer who has authored a number of books on computer operating systems, networking, and security. She is also a tech editor, developmental editor and contributor to over 20 additional books. Her articles are regularly published on TechRepublic’s TechProGuild Web site and Windowsecurity.com, and have appeared in print magazines such as Windows IT Pro (formerly Windows & .NET) Magazine. She has authored training material, corporate whitepapers, marketing material, and product documentation for Microsoft Corporation, Hewlett-Packard, DigitalThink, GFI Software, Sunbelt Software, CNET and other technology companies. Deb lives and works in the Dallas-Ft Worth area and can be contacted at deb@shinder.net or via the website at www.shinder.net