Over the last few weeks, Microsoft has been researching reports that state that Windows 7 has been ruining batteries. Well, two days ago, they came out with an update stating that Windows 7 is not ruining the batteries, this is all part of the plan.

If you want a heafty read, look over this long post by Microsoft on their blog. It basically states that Windows 7 uses internal reporting in the batteries to determine when your battery has started going downhill. They set this alert up when 60% of the battery has effectively failed. This means that when you charge your battery, you only get 40% of the original charge, even though the battery says it’s 100% charged. This situation ends up with a 100% charged battery lasting only 45 minutes when it use to last almost 3 hours when it was new.

So, it’s not Windows, but your battery that you need to consider replacing. Most batteries retail for approximately $99. This is one reason I buy an extra battery every time I purchase a new laptop.
Justin

Normally, I don’t talk about sports, but today, I found some really cool technology during the half time show of the Super Bowl.

If you saw it, you would have seen the UFO looking stage that The Who played on. It had some really cool LED effects going on with programmable arrows, “glitter” effects, different colors, and a all kinds of neat stuff.

My hat’s off to the guys and girls that put that show together. That took a lot of technical work to get all that to function like it did. I’ll post some picturs later if you didn’t see it.

Yes, I know, it’s not computer repair related, but it was pretty neat stuff.
Justin

PS: We’re STILL open…

You may not have noticed it this weekend, except those on the website around 8:30PM on Saturday, but we did some house cleaning.

With my Voodoo Chicken Magic L33t H4×0R skillz (ok, maybe not), I moved the site from a static page, to something a little more dynamic to allow updates to the site to happen a little easier. While I broke the blog in the process, it’s fixed – it was only “broke” for about 10 minutes.

So, with that said, you, Google, and the rest of the world, should be seeing Protocol16 just as you normally do. If you have problems with a file, please feel free to report it and we’ll take care of it rather quickly.
Justin

So, with the advent of all the video floating around the web, there is a new scam floating around as well. It specifically attempts to attack Flash, which is installed on roughly 90% of all the home computers online. As the screen shot points out, the attacking website may get you to “Fix” or install a plugin to get the video to work. Sneaky stuff.

Why am I hitting on the whole Spyware/Virus issue lately? Because this is the number one thing we’re seeing right now. More specifically: Fake Antivirus software that attempts to get your credit card information, shows you Pornography, etc.

As always, if you have questions, please let us know.
Justin

There is a new type of infection happening that even has some of the best anti-virus companies stumped. Recently, it was found that Virus and Malware writers are getting more sneaky on how they infect you.

They are specifically targeting Google users. Recently, it was found that you could get infected simply by looking through Google Images. On top of this, other sites only infect you if you come from Google. This means, if you type the web address directly, you don’t get infected.

Very sneaky stuff indeed. This makes it harder to clean the infection, as the website owner usually goes directly to the website to check the problem directly.

Be careful out there, it’s getting more dangerous.
Justin

I was in Best Buy the other night returning some merchandise and ran across the Geek Squad trying to fix one of their customer’s problems. The poor Geek Squad tech was plugging and unplugging a drive, refreshing My Computer and the drive wouldn’t show up. To a professional technician, this is a 1-minute fix. Unfortunately, this technician couldn’t seem to fix it and his Geek Squad screen wasn’t telling him all the details.

In more detail, you plug in a USB hard drive, Windows states that it found the hardware, installs the software and you get a “It’s ready to use”, but when you go into My Computer, it doesn’t show up.

Well, here’s a secret for all of you that have this problem:
Right Click on “My Computer”, select “Manage”. Go to the Disk Management section and you’ll see a disk that’s there, that is the size that you just plugged in, but no drive letter. (Disclaimer, this next part: Use at your own risk as there is potential for loss of data if done wrong) Right click on the drive, choose “Format” and go through the prompts (choose NTFS). Within a minute, your drive will be in My Computer, as it should be. Again, use the above at your own risk, because you could wipe a perfectly valid hard drive…

Why does this happen?
Every once in awhile, a hard drive makes it out of a manufacturers facility without being pre-formatted for you. It happens, on occasion for some odd reason. Another valid reason is that the hard drive was replaced at some point, either by someone else, or by the manufacturer and it wasn’t reformatted as it should have been.

If you haven’t done so, this is a second reminder that Microsoft released an “out of band” update for Internet Explorer. Yesterday, it appeared that it was for Internet Explorer 6 only, but it turned into an update for Internet Explorer 6 through 8 by yesterday evening.

If you are receiving a notification to update Windows this morning, do so to plug a nasty little security hole.

Out of band updates are done when security holes are so “large”, but Microsoft feels that an update needs to be release ASAP, instead of their normal Tuesday release cycle.

Microsoft is releasing an out of band update today to patch security holes in Internet Explorer. After the recent Google China incident, Microsoft discovered that sneaky code inside office documents could attack IE and cause problems.

This out of band update should be released around 10am PST “or as close to it as possible”, according to Microsoft.

While home users should get update alerts tomorrow morning, businesses will want to patch their systems as soon as possible, after testing the update, of course.
Justin

It didn’t take long, but the scammers have already started spamming for Haitian relief. I actually received my first scam for Haitian relief last night and while it looked legitimate, it wasn’t. I also received another spam early this morning that was legitimate – how do you tell the difference?

It’s hard to tell the difference, but there is one thing to keep in mind. Stay away from any email that lists web addresses to go to. Many of these sites can be built to look like the real thing, complete with credit card processing, in under 2 hours. Stay away from mobile phone texting numbers that you don’t know about as well. Texting the wrong number can cost much more than you realize, and the amount doesn’t go to a good cause.

Here are legitimate donation sites and numbers to text to: (This is, by no means, a full list)

Red Cross: http://www.redcross.org/ – Red “Donate” button on top right.

Doctors without Borders: http://doctorswithoutborders.org/ – Red “Donate” button on top right.

CARE: http://www.care.org/ – “Donate Now” button in middle of page.

UNICEF: http://www.unicef.org/ - Yellow “Haiti Earthquake Donate Now” on right of page.

$10 Donation for Wireless Subscribers: text ” HAITI ” to 90999 to make a $10 donation that is billed to your cell phone. 100% of all money donated will be passed on to the Red Cross.

$5 Donation for Wireless Subscribers: text ” YELE ” to 501501 to make a $5 donation that is billed to your cell phone. Campaign run by Wyclef Jean and Yele Haiti.

To see who is donating (larger businesses) and their amounts, visit the Huffington Post’s Relief Round Up page.

Again, this post is completely meant to protect you, your credit and your donations. If something doesn’t look right, it just may very well be a scam. If you have any questions, please let us know.
Justin

[Edit: As of 17Jan10, CNN has put together a story on this topic as well, complete with FBI commentary.]

Hot on the heels of Best Buy’s “Pre-Optimization” service, which any user can do themselves, Best Buy has decided to release a new program. We’ll call it “More Trialware!” That’s right, Best Buy seems to think that users want even more trialware on their computers, and now they’re getting paid by the software companies to do it to you. All you have to do is buy an HP or Dell and click a few icons, install a program or two and Best Buy makes money.

They still have to take that new computer out of the box, load software on it before you even buy it, then try to put everything back in the box correctly – something they couldn’t seem to do correctly a week ago.

I’ll give you all a secret. If you want to “pre-optimize” your computer, download and install a program called Crap Cleaner and run it before doing anything else to that brand new laptop or desktop. There are a lot of other things to do as well, but that is be best place to start. After that, customize your computer to how YOU want it, and you’re already better off.