It seem that the numbers do not add up. This is the percentage of number of congested links taken from the most populous subscriber bases that Bell has. If you look at it it appears not that serious at all. Not near the doom and gloom Bell would have you believe.

For more information on this story see:

Link 1

Link 2

I was one of the first Bell Sympatico clients in this area. I had the old Nortel modem and had decent service. Compared to dial-up it was a dream but eventually as I wanted more speed the problems started to occur:

• Service drop-outs lasting minutes at a time.
• Service outages averaging once a week.
• Power supplies on old Nortel modem failing 3 times and 5 business days to get a new one.
• New Speedstream modem does not suppot new speed package as I am too far from the concentrator.

This week I called Bellnet tech support for a client and they have been paying for 6 MB/s internet access for years only to find out they can only get 1 MB/s! The “solution” was offered to “upgrade” the client to the new wireless internet access. Sure it was $6.00 cheaper per month but it was half as fast as the client was expecting from their original service.

It totally amazes me that someone would bother selling such services when the advertised thoughput is no where near the client’s actual experienc.

Reliant PC Consulting has a listing now on Google Maps Local Businesses listing!

Link

The Comment:

What would you guys recommend? I am looking for an Antivirus/Internet Security that backups up my important documents online because I live in an area where power blackouts occur all the time I also need something that protects my identity because I do a great deal of online banking. I only know of one product that does that and thats Nortons if there is something else does let me know because when it comes to online security I don’t want anything but the best not saying Nortons is the best out there but I would not trust anything they give away for free online.

My response…

Per your question, Norton 360 does what you require but to address your concerns:

Power Outages: A good uninterruptible power supply would address the power outages. Assuming you are using a desktop computer this is essential but still recommended even if you are using a laptop.

Free Antivirus Software: There are several “free” antivirus software that work well and give basic protection. They offer many of the features Norton does if you buy the commercial (full) version. The problem with defining the “best” is that the product offerings from some vendors are so diverse it is hard to compare apples to apples. In addition, with product renewal cycles and threats constantly changing one cannot easily define what best is.

This chart gives one a good idea of the comparitive value of some of the more popular antivirus software.

For me the primary consideration is utility: Does it do its job well and with minimal use of resources? Norton does not do its job without using a fair amount of computer resources and if you add the continued problem of it not uninstalling cleanly and without impinging on client computer use and up time it is a very poor solution. Frankly, NAV makes me money. Over and over again.

You do bring up a valid concern. There ARE free “antivirus” software that is simply malware. Good malware as in it is wonderfully malicious and most users do not have the time to adequately research if it is malware or not.

But remember, a good vendor like Avast, AVG and others represent their free products as legitimate solutions and in my experience they do a fine job.

Remote Backup:  With a vendor like Symantec I would be relatively confident that their solution would be reliable but what if that system is hacked? And 2 GB of space is hardly handy.

Some issues of online backups…

What if the user has slow internet service? What if the backups exceed their monthly data feed allotment? I would recommend online backups only for specific cases and am more apt to recommend an external hard drive or memory drive as a solution.

Protecing Your Identity Online: Well, some of that is up to the user and how they use their computers. Some sites for advice for this are:

www.OnGuardOnline.gov

Coping with Identity Theft: Reducing the Risk of Fraud

Watch Your Identity: Tips for Reducing the Risk of Identity Theft

Online-transaction Security Tools

From the CNET review Norton 360 does not offer one of the requirements you outlined. This hi-lights a problem with software. A catch-all catch-can solution is a master of none of the specific security solutions in many cases. In many cases the sites we use for online transactions need to have those security tools and protocols invoked on our behalf.

Norton does offer one such solution. This review gives us an idea of its utility.

Which begs the question:  What is the cost of all this protection?

Time: Time to research, buy, install, configure it and support it.

Money:  Not only the cost of the software but also to acquire it (buy travelling for example) and the possible need to upgrade your computer to run this and all the other software you already have installed.

Resources: In computer processing power and memory. All this is part of a best practices approach but if you have a Celeron I computer running 256 MB of RAM you will need to buy a new computer to have all this running properly.

Which brings the point I make to all my clients:  Buy the most powerful and completely configured computer you can afford at time of purchase so that as you software applications needs grow over time you will be less likely to be impacted by under-buying.

I have a low opinion of Norton Antivirus (NAV) and the family of products that Symantec produces. Time and time I do service calls and find this insidious software residing when it is APPARENTLY removed…

Today I was at a client site installing Avast 4.x and before I ever do an install of antivirus software I make sure it the computer has no existing antivirus software. I checked the programs and no NAV. I checked the Add and Remove Programs section of the Control Panel and no NAV. So good…or so I thought.

I install Avast on a computer with Vista running. Now before this I had just configured a secure wireless connection and verified its operation. So everything should work but upon installation and reboot Avast would not update. I right-click and force an update and in the applet box it indicates that NAV is still installed and is not currently updated. In addition, the wireless connection will not work. I recheck for the existence of NAV and no, it is not installed but it really must be because Vista Security Centre says it needs an update. I run the applet Symantec provided to remove it and then reboot and then I have to reconfigure the wireless connection from scratch.

The computer is now running fine but how is a normal client to know if NAV is completely removed if they check the standard places one uses to verify if a program is installed or not?

I am not alone is this opinion…

Norton Antivirus
It’s a little unfair to pick on Norton Antivirus and make it carry the sins of half the desktop malware industry — but only a little unfair. If ever a class of software deserved to be cast into the lower reaches of Hell and run on Satan’s own desktop, it is this. Performance- sapping, space-hogging, noisy, irritating and prone to inducing just as many problems as they purport to solve, these horrible, ineffective, expensive lumps of digital thuggery keep entire platoons of support engineers in business and home users in tears. We know. We get the phone calls.

Could not say it better myself. You will notice that the poster considers NAV malware. I consider it malware of the worst sort. The type perpetrated by a legitimate company that uses it presence in the industry to make it almost a defacto “standard” installed or used by major computer vendors and ISPs. Boo on Rogers, Bell, and others for making my client’s computer experiences less than stellar.

…your computer may fail.

I had the privilege of having a client that was interested in best practices and I created a document for his use and today I got the call…the call that I am sure my clients dread to make.

‘My computer was making a funny noise and when I went to boot it up today nothing happened.’

The good news:

• My client was backing up his valuable data regularly.
• He has a laptop to fall back on.
• We can get him running much sooner and with less hassle because he did what ALL users should do. Back up their data at the very least and their operating system if practicable.

If we had implemented the use of a Sandisk Cruzer USB drive he would be golden. But we had planned to do that in the near future but fate reared its ugly head and struck at an inopportune time. But with planning it is not as inopportune as it could have been.

A previous post outlined what traffic shaping is and some of my thoughts on it and I thought I would update you on some news…One of the problems with traffic shaping is that it not only affects Bell Sympatico and Rogers subscribers but any third party ISP provider like Sentex or Execulink has been affected too. Therefore their customers are getting the degradation of service as well.

The Canadian Association of Internet Providers(CAIP) asked for interim relief from this practice and their request was denied but the story is not over yet!

This storyoutlines the CRTC’s response to this issue:

The CRTC has asked Bell to provide “full rationale and evidence” to support its claim that 95 per cent of its users were negatively impacted by peer-to-peer traffic and to describe where congestion is occurring, what other approaches the company considered as alternatives to shaping and to describe in detail its Internet traffic management practices.

Bell said it uses deep-packet inspection - a method of scanning and filtering Internet content - to scan for peer-to-peer traffic as a part of its Internet management strategy, but says that services such as voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) transmission are not affected.

The CRTC has asked Bell to clarify how it avoids shaping VoIP and online streaming traffic while CAIP has been tasked with providing information to support its claim that “all forms of file-sharing service and audio or video streaming services, such as Internet radio and YouTube” are affected by Bell’s practices.

Looks like we will have to wait until the fall to find out the results but applaud CAIP’s efforts and hope they help bring the primary providers to bay about this policy.

For those that care here is a comparison done in 2006 of ISP costs by speed - link.

In a previous post I outlined some important things to do BEFORE attempting the installation of the service pack. Good idea of me to follow my own advice…

On my prototype computer I attempting the installation and got an error which only goes to show that being systematic, or not, can have an impact on the installation.

Some things I learned/did:

1. If you have more than one user account log on as the computer administrator!
2. Turn off you anti-virus software before the installation.
3. If you have an Nvidia or ATI video card update the drivers. Nvidia has a new driver posted just this week and ATI has one for the Radeon series that was posted in April.

I attempted on first install by shutting down AVG but I got an error which delayed the install by some 30 minutes as Windows XP booted up again and in a two stage process reverted my OS to its former installation. An error was created because it recognized that a new driver was available for my Nvidia video card. I downloaded and installed it and started the install process again.

The install looks like it is going to be clean with no problems and the total time, if I had taken the precaution to upate my Nvidia drivers, to install the service pack would be just over an hour. I am just in the process as I write this of rebooting and the result is you will see a DOS (cmd) window open and some files being applied. Once that is complete you should be done.

Once you have a good install go to Windows Update and check the computer once more and apply any further updates listed. For this computer I had to install the latest version of Microsoft’s Malicious Software Removal Tool and a driver for my wireless network adapter.

All told, it went OK. Now lets see how it works for the next week or so before I trust the service pack.

PS: There is more than one version of the Malicious Software Removal Tool.

Note  The version of the tool delivered by Microsoft Update and Windows Update runs in the background and then reports if an infection is found. If you would like to run this tool more than once a month, use the version on this Web page or install the version that is available in the Download Center.