Set-Up Job

Every brand name computer you buy in a store or on the internet brings with it three areas of concern: Gunk software, missing updates and costly and questionable "security" software. I'll address these three concerns separately and then offer my suggestion to deal with these concerns before they become a problem.

1. Gunk software: Brand name computers come with some and sometimes a lot of "gunk" software pre-installed. You'll find anything from trial versions of programs that will cost additional money to outright spyware and even back door programs.

It goes without saying that this gunk should be removed before you even connect the computer for the first time to the internet.

I even consider programs like Microsoft's Internet Explorer and MS's email programs and Microsoft Office trial versions to be "gunk". By virtue of the very technology used TO WRITE them (called ActiveX) they will enable a large percentage of malicious software to be executed on your computer. Just by using alternative programs that were built without ActiveX technology you avoid all this malicious ActiveX software automatically.

Microsoft's Office is by now almost always a trial version; it will cost you additionally about $100 to $150 depending on where you buy the product key that you will need to use MS Office for more than 60 days.

There is a commercial program being offered to do this removing of gunk software but the computer manufacturers regularly modify what they pre-install and the names of what they install. Thus a program attempting the clean-up will almost always be outdated and work only incompletely. Or it will offer you a list of installed non-Microsoft programs and ask for your decision on what to remove; and you bought the program because you don't know that in the first place!

2. Missing Updates: The brand name computer you buy was designed and originally configured months ago, sometimes many months ago. For good reasons software companies like Microsoft, Adobe and others regularly release security relevant updates. Microsoft does that on a monthly schedule, others do it when required.

All these mandatory updates from when your computer model was designed until when you bought it are missing. That mostly is a lot to download and install. These downloads should be done in a safe environment to protect the machine from eventual hack attacks before all required updates are installed.

3. "Security" Software: All of the commonly pre-installed anti virus programs or "security systems" will in the future cost additional money. Some are considerable, clearly perceivable heavy workloads making your computer slow; see this article for real life experiences with security suites slowing down perfectly well working computers.

Some others are not always working correctly and/or proving their questionable quality by not un-installing correctly or quietly stopping to work altogether.

After seemingly error-free uninstalling of some security suites I have found that they left sometimes parts of their software still running. Due to the nature of what these programs have to do these left-over drivers and orphaned processes can wreak havoc.

This clearly calls for a knowledgeable human doing the uninstallation and the checking for left-overs.

My Solution: I offer a set-up job for new brand-name computers; I even offer a fixed price if I can do it at my house because I can overlap some of the time with answering my emails and other activities.
This set-up job includes:

• De-gunking the computer (manually and completely removing unwanted, potentially risky and all kind of trial software)
• Updating the operating system and all other software in a safe environment
• Installing and updating security software (currently Microsoft Security Essentials)
• Installing Mozilla's Firefox web browser, currently my choice as alternate web browser
• Installing Mozilla's Thunderbird email client if so desired.
• Installing Libre Office (Microsoft file compatible office software)
• Installing Google Earth
• Installing Picasa (photo management and editing program)
• Installing a virtual PDF printer (creates PDF files from anything you can print! You don't want to email a job application as a Word document that anybody could modify!)
• Installing an easy to use screen shot program (so you can send me the pesky error message that is bugging you)
• Installing a remote control program that enables me to give you remote support 

All above mentioned software is of excellent quality, officially FREE for home use and guaranteed to be free of advertisements and spyware.

Should you be interested please send a personal email to ejheinze_at_gmail_dot_com; thank you.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

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