This month it’s starting.  Microsoft is forcing Internet Explorer 8 and 9 on everyone, whether you want it or not, through their automatic updates. According to their Internet Explorer blog, you’ll be moving on to IE 8 and 9 soon.  They’re starting with Australia and Brazil in January. Unfortunately, they don’t say in the blog post which country or region will be next.  Will it be Europe, the US, Canada?  Wherever it is, soon it will be universal.

Their reasons are good.  The newest malware is quite virile and destructive and most antivirus programs can not prevent it. An up-to-date browser can provide better protection.   Most viruses come into computers through a browser or  email.

Microsoft also explains they want to deliver the richest internet experience possible and the old browsers just aren’t up to snuff.

Some people don’t want IE 9 since it is minimalistic like Google Chrome.  But there are ways of adding menus, favorites, and tabs so IE 9 can look like the older IE browser you prefer.  Right click on the very top of IE 9 and you’ll get a popup that will let you add menus and your favorites bar.  You can play around with these options until you get a browser that feels like home.

Microsoft is also allowing consumers and enterprises to opt out, if you’re  tech savvy enough. They have a blocker that keeps the newer browsers away, at least for the time being.

I know at Ducktoes Computer Repair Shop, we’ll be seeing some bewildered clients wondering what happened to their computers.   Some won’t even be able to articulate what is different, but will be totally confused.  If you’d like support for the browser switch, please let us know, we can help you at the computer repair shop or in your home or business with our onsite IT support or even come into your computer remotely for support, as we have done for hundreds of clients and friends.  Click here for remote support.

I’ve gotten this infected email four times, including one from my sister, and one from my sister-in-law. All four came from Hotmail or MSN accounts so I assume it’s a Hotmail/MSN virus.

The message looks like this or something similiar.  This is the one from my sister:

And the one from my sister-in-law was even more sophisticated because it put my name in the message:

If you click on it you will get the virus too and it will send messages to everyone in your Hotmail or MSN account. What I don’t know if it infects your computer or if it just infects your account on Microsoft’s servers. I don’t want to click and find out, unless I do it on a junk computer.  Until I have time to do that, I traced one email back to Spain.

I sent an email to the address in Spain of the internet provider to warn them, to this address: abuse@orange.es.

The other came from Turkey.

If you’ve received this email and clicked on it, I recommend that you run Malwarebytes. If that doesn’t fix it, then call Ducktoes Computer Repair and Calgary IT support to help you. We can even fix your computer over the internet remotely, anywhere in the world.

This is a guest post written by Peter Trigueiro:

If you ever wanted a museum devoted to yourself, your wish has been granted! Facebook’s new timeline allows everyone on your friends list to go through any post you’ve made on Facebook very easily. Whereas before a person would feel their stalker shame build the farther and farther they went back on someone’s wall, now Facebook has organized your wall and made it an easy to navigate timeline.

Not only that, but Facebook will have other events in your life that you weren’t sure you told anyone about listed as events on your timeline. It will know what happened in Vegas and it will tell everyone about it.

Make sure to take the time to manage your timeline to best reflect yourself. That probably means deleting the wall post from 2007 where you and your friend tried to come up with new, improved curse words.

So your boyfriend got drunk and spilled his beer on your laptop. Or your two-year-old spilled orange juice on your sister’s notebook. Or you splashed just a little coffee on the laptop’s keyboard. This can mean your laptop is toast or that nothing much is wrong with it, depending. Depending on what you do and how fast you do it.

Don’t cry or yell, don’t call your boyfriend a drunk, or apologize to your sister. These are huge wastes of time when your laptops viability is at stake. And don’t turn on the laptop to see if it’s okay.

So what do you do?

If the computer is turned off, keep it off. If it’s on, turn it off as quickly as possible. Hold down the power button for about 30 seconds..that should do it. Unplug it.

After it is completely off, take out the battery.

Put a towel between the keyboard and screen and leave it opened and turned upside down to dry out.

Take it to your tech and get it cleaned up or repaired asap. Liquid and electronics do not mix. A short could wreck the motherboard. Or a corrosive liquid like cola could eat away at the components.

Don’t do this:

Do not turn your laptop back on. You will be greatly tempted to turn it on to see if it’s okay. If you do, it definitely will not be okay. This is the worst thing you can do.

If you leave it off and get it to a professional, there’s a chance you won’t need to replace the motherboard or other costly repairs. A cleaning may be all that is needed. Or maybe only the keyboard will have to be replaced.

For all your Calgary laptop repairs and Calgary computer repairs, go to Ducktoes Calgary Computer Repair.

Lately Ms. Ducktoes is practicing being funny in her blog posts. Nobody seems to notice except her youngest son who actually did laugh out loud while reading the post about
The Hidden, Sexy, Mysterious Other Inbox. And I didn’t even bribe him with a better Christmas present, although Ms. Santa Claus is coming to town soon. Yikes, Christmas is almost here, I better stop trying to be funny and get to the mall.

But it is much more challenging to write about computers and be funny at the same time than just drone on and on in a serious tone.

One way to be funny is to have one character act in an outlandish or funny way and put them up against a straight character who reacts to their silliness. Think of Lucille Ball as funny character and Ricky Ricardo as a straight one. In my blog about hard drives I have Ms. Ducktoes as the silly character, trying to get the parts store clerk to let her buy more than her allotted two drives by putting on a wig and trench coat and the parts store clerk not falling for the disguise.

Another way to be funny is to write in a self-deprecating way, that means make fun of yourself.

Most people coming into the our Calgary computer repair shop need some cheering up. They’re so focused on their computer problems, some are quite anxious. They do need some TLC which we try to provide, actually we do care, and they appreciate it. But lately I’ve also been putting in a promo for my blog, telling them it’ll give them a laugh if they read it. They nod politely.

I also have a Squidoo lens about Computer Repair. Also funny supposedly.

According to the LA Times, victims of the Winfixer, Drive Cleaner and Antivirus XP scam are entitled to a refund.  See here.  http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2011/12/scam-watch-computer-virus-warning-ponzi-scheme-fake-bbb-email.html.

If you fall for any other anti-virus scams or have a Rogue Anti-virus or Rogue Anti-Spyware, we can help at our Calgary Virus Removal lab.

Of course you’ve heard of the other woman or man. The words conjure up a mysterious, sexy individual involved in daring, clandestine activites. Yet in actuality, most likely the other woman or man is just an ordinary and somewhat lonely person having an affair with a married person. Perhaps not that mysterious after all.

The other woman is actually probably in reality quite ordinary.

Yet, as fascinating as relationships and affairs and clandestine activities are to Ms. Ducktoes, this post is about another hidden, mysterious, sexy “other” thing, the other Inbox on Facebook.

Yes, mysterious and sort of hidden, but unlike “the other woman” nothing to get too upset about.

If you have a Facebook account you do have an “other Inbox,” and there are messages in there you don’t know about. Messages Facebook assumes are spammy but may be messages of importance to you, at least messages you do indeed want to see.

That’s what some people are upset about. That Facebook has hidden some messages intended for them that they know nothing about, messages the senders assume they have received. Some of the messages have been reportedly quite important.

You can read about it here. http://mashable.com/2011/12/09/hidden-facebook-message-inbox/

Or watch the video below.

I looked in my hidden inbox and found a message from a handsome stranger, probably half my age, from Manchester, England who thinks I’m looking good in my profile. And how very true, I am looking good in my profile since I weed out photos where I don’t look good. Yet, instead of being Facebook friends with some handsome stranger, I’d rather sit on the sofa with my husband who accepts me as I am, who thinks I look better in my old robe without any makeup than I do in my Facebook profile. I mean when he’s not on his financial news websites, that is. So it’s a message I don’t mind missing.

However, there are other messages about events I might have wanted to attend, writing events, for instance, if I weren’t so busy as an owner of a Calgary computer repair business. Those might be worth getting upset about, at least a little, if in fact I could attend them. Yet, like the “other woman” the “other inbox” is in actuality not so sexy or mysterious, just an ordinary and lonely spam Inbox, lonely because no one ever looks in it.

A handsome stranger

Well, actually, I did try to get some use of the message from the handsome stranger. I thought it might make my husband a look up from his news website and pay attention to me a bit. I said, I got a message from a handsome stranger in Manchester, England. He thinks I’m looking good in my profile.

My husband was engrossed in some podcast on the decline of the stock market. “Huh?” he said.

I repeated myself about the handsome stranger.

“He thinks I’m looking good, too,” my husband said.

My husband has a guy with a really weird beard as his profile photo. He thinks its funny.

My husband's profile photo

“Oh,” I said.

To find your hidden Inbox go to your wall on Facebook, then, look on the left hand under your name and you’ll see the word “Messages.” Click once on “Messages” and under that you’ll see the word “Other.” That’s your “Other Inbox.” And maybe some handsome stranger thinks you are looking good in your profile too.

If you haven’t heard, Ms. Ducktoes will have to break the news to you.  Sit down and get out your hankies.  It’s a sad story. In Thailand there’s a flood and, sinking like metallic stones in the floodwaters, are oodles of hard drives.   Thailand, it turns out, produces many of the world’s hard drives.

The bad news is for us, for computer repair shops and their clients that is, that as the muddy waters submerge thousands upon thousands of hard drives and their manufacturers, hard drive prices are soaring to dizzying heights. And, as troublesome as these flimsy rectangular cases of spinning metal platters are to us, and as often as they go bad and lose all our data, documents, music, and precious photos because we have failed to back them up, we are dependent on them. We have hard drive habits.  You many not realize it, but we are all hard drive junkies.  They have our life on them, and we go through withdrawal when we lose them. (The first step is admitting you have a problem, my little duckies.) And hard drives are notoriously bad, awful really, for going bad and needing to be replaced.

And as onerous as it is for Ms. Ducktoes to drive east on 16th Avenue NE in rush hour or a snowstorm, trying not to answer her cellphone all the while, to the parts store, now when she arrives, they will only sell her TWO AT A TIME. Even if she goes back to the car and puts on a wig and trench coat and returns to the counter, they refuse to sell her more.

“Weren’t you just in here?” the guy says. “Aren’t you Ducktoes?”

“No, I’ve never been in here in my life,” I say.  ”By the way, I need to pick up a couple of hard drives.”

“I just sold you two.”

“That must have been my identical twin sister.”

“It’s been nice seeing you.  Twice.”  He thinks he’s so funny.

It’s enough to make a grown woman cry.  Crying doesn’t work either on the parts store staff, by the way.

So now when your flimsy hard drive goes bad, my fine feathered friends, you’ll have to pay through the beak, so to speak, or should I say bill?  Aren’t you glad you have your hankies out?  I told you it was a sad story.

And as I say a thousand times a day, mostly to myself  as I careen down 16th Avenue NE, only answering my cellphone at red lights, don’t fail to backup your stuff.

Here is my computer repair Calgary shop.

Here's the Sad Page from Google Chrome

This is what I think the mother and daughter of the two Jim’s saw on her computer screen.

I was a bit disappointed that we weren’t dealing with a hacker, but Jody thought it was still pretty cool.  I agree, it’s cool and fun of Google to play around like this.  Enough with boring.

Hacker typing "You're going to die, Jim."

A client was online. She was typing away on an email. Then her computer blue-screened. A message appeared across the screen, “You’re going to die, Jim.”

So immediately her husband called our shop (Ducktoes Computer Repair Shop) and told the tech Jody what had happened. “Awesome,” Jody said.

“There are two Jims in this house,” the husband continued.

“Even more awesome,”  Jody said.

“Not to her, since the Jims are her ten-year-old son and 86-year-old father.”

“I can see that,” Jody said.

The next day, the man brought the computer in and told me the same story. “Cool,” I said.

He told me how Jody had said, “Awesome.” Then he laughed and said, “What is it about Jody and you that you like this?”

I laughed. “Because we’re weird?”

He laughed again. He mentioned the two Jims in the household. “Not so cool,” I said.

We did virus and spyware removal on the computer. It did have some malware and spyware, a password tracker among others. We decided the computer had been hacked.

But then at home later in the week, my husband said this error message appeared on his screen: “He’s dead, Jim.” My husband worried he had a virus. Noting the similarity to what had happened to the woman, I googled the phrase.

And in my next post I’ll tell you what I found out.

At Ducktoes, we use optimization tools up the ying-yang. One we dream about in our sleep is Auslogics Boost Speed. According to recent reviews, Auslogics speeds up computers by 15 to 20%. The reviewers used PC Mark to measure before and after results. And guess what all? Each computer lost over 20 lbs. and could fit into their old skinny jeans. Nah, Ms. Ducktoes has been going to Weight Watchers too long, and has skinny jeans on the brain, but the computers did lose the dead weight of needed tweaks and adjustments Microsoft failed to implement for speed. They ran 15 to 20% faster. Check it out here.

Before and After with PC Mark

Also AVG has recently partnered with Auslogics and incorporated Boost Speed into its PC Tools. Read about that here in a press release with PR Web. If you get PC Tools with AVG, you can use it once for free. According to AVG’s top programmers, the optimizations are also quite safe.

CNET Reviews Editors give Auslogics Boost Speed five stars. That’s the highest rating.

If you bring your computer in to Ducktoes, we’ll run all the optimizations for you. Then you’ll have to buy your computer a new pair of jeans. Or we can do this remotely for you, the optimizations, and, lol, even the shopping. Call 403-483-0105.

The above link doesn’t work, so, as a work around, do this: Right click the link where it says “Click here to read.” Then select “Copy link address.” Put your cursor in the address bar and right click again, this time choosing “Paste and go.”

Now you can read Jody’s blog post.