Don't Waste My Time!
As much as I like the way AVG Antivirus works, I was about to replace it in early August. And if one of the company's "upgrades" wastes another hour, AVG will be gone from my machine. What's more than a little disheartening is that I reported the problem to the company's support operation, which used to be one of the best in the business. In this case, there was absolutely no reply. None. No explanation. No apology. No indication that the company plans to do anything to resolve the problem. Just silence. But make sure you check out the entire account because there's a happy ending.
I'm certain that part of the problem is Vista, but companies that provide antivirus applications should have enough test beds and enough expertise to deal with the current iteration of the operating system, particularly now that it's been out in the market for more than a year.
What happened — twice — is that an AVG update caused the application to stop working and did so in a way that the only solution involved uninstalling AVG and reinstalling it. The total cost in time for the first incident was more than 90 minutes because I first had to diagnose the problem and then try several approaches to fix it. When none of those worked, uninstalling and reinstalling took "just" 30 minutes or so. Above you see the Tray following the AVG update: The AVG icon is nowhere to be found and the Window Security Service is showing danger status.
The second time it happened, I recognized the problem immediately and knew what the solution was, so recovery time was no more than 30 or 40 minutes. The trouble with that is that I never have a spare 30 or 40 minutes available to resolve a problem, and I'm particularly annoyed when it's a problem that's not of my making.
The Windows Security System recognizes when the computer is running without antivirus protection. In this case, it told me that AVG, which had stopped running following the update, had an update available. I tried to run it (see the image on the right, and click any of the images for a full-size view.)
After installing the update and restarting the machine, I saw a familiar problem. AVG is reporting trouble (left) and (right) it shows which components need to be updated.
But I had already installed the update. From this state, the only option that works is to uninstall AVG and reinstall. Since this is the second time I've had to do it, the process won't take very long.
Here (left) I've reinstalled AVG and it tells me that new components are available. This is both normal and expected.
On the right, I've finished updating AVG, but the status message says there's still another update needed.
Install update, reboot, continue.
This time I'd lost only 15 minutes (or so I thought) and AVG was running again.
Except (below, left) it still has more updating to do!
I could perhaps be forgiven for thinking that I'm in some sort of endless loop.
The update is complete.
But more updates (gee, these look familiar) are waiting.
Finally! Green lights everywhere, but another system restart is required. That's going to chew up another 3 or 4 minutes.
Finally, 24 minutes after I started working on the problem, AVG is again running and the computer is protected.
It would be nice if someone at AVG would explain what the problem was. I have received no response from AVG's tech support or from AVG's PR firm here in the US. On August 17, I reached out to AVG's home office in the Czech Republic.
An update from AVG
The AVG media relations person in the Czech Republic replied immediately and the US-based media relations person checked in a few days later. Since then, on August 21, I've heard from Martin Šebesta, AVG's head of engineering (in the US, this position would be called "chief technical officer"). Martin explained that the "apparent lack of response" is a result of AVG's rapidly-growing user base. He said that AVG is in the process of "building out our customer service operations" and that he believes the problem will not happen again.
AVG provided an application that removed the existing version of the antivirus program and Šebesta suggested that I download and install the latest version, which includes a lot of changes: "The update from build 93 to build 136 involves a lot of changes in AVG, some of them being fairly complex changes in the structure of the application itself. An additional update step and reboot is necessary in order to ensure the proper function of the update mechanism and of AVG 8 itself; this is the reason for the larger than normal number of update steps."
I'm happy to report that so far all subsequent updates have progresses without incident. That's good because I've come to rely on AVG and the prospect of finding a replacement wasn't appealing.
I can understand that a company with a popular product can be overwhelmed by rapid growth, so I'm accepting AVG's explanation at face value, for now.
Safeguard (or Move) Your Firefox Settings
I've never had it happen, but I've heard that Firefox occasionally trips over its tail and forgets all of its stored settings. If that ever happens to you have you've used MozBackup, you'll not feel so bad about it. Or if you have a home computer, an office computer, and a laptop computer that you'd like to have the same Firefox settings and extensions, you'll find that MozBackup is the easiest way to accomplish the deed.
When I decided that it was time to remove Firefox from my computer so that I could get a clean installation of Firefox 3 to repair some problems that were caused by having several versions of the browser on the machine, MozBackup helped me get back to normal in just a few minutes. At the right is the fresh, new installation.
The computer had Firefox 3, Firefox 3 beta, and Firefox 3. The 3 versions of the application tended to get in each other's way.
I had run MozBackup to capture all of the important settings before uninstalling Firefox, so brining the browser up to date, required only that I have access to the backup file and that I tell MozBackup where the file is when I run it in restore mode.
One minute later, I had all of my bookmarks, stored passwords, home page, extensions, theme, cookies — everything.
What could be better than that?
It could be free. And it is.
Bottom line: MozBackup, the fast and easy way to safeguard or move Firefox.
Besides backing up Firefox configurations, MozBackup also handles Thunderbird, so you can safeguard or move your e-mail settings, too. Although this application is provided for free, make a contribution if you find it useful. The developer will appreciate it.
For more information, visit the MozBackup website.
Will You Love Me When I'm 64? (Hmm. I'm almost that now.)
"I'm twenty-six, and I'm single and a schoolteacher and that's the bottom of the pit. And the only excitement I've known is here with me now. So I'll go with you and I won't whine. And I'll sew your socks and I'll stitch you when you're wounded, and I'll do anything you ask of me, except one thing: I won't watch you die. I'll miss that scene if you don't mind." (Etta in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) I'm quoting this because I wonder if there's much future in this "high tech, plain English" biz. I doubt that there is.
Remember when there were lots of photography magazines? Most of them are gone now. Even the magazines for professionals. Some still exist, but the generalist magazines are mostly gone now. So are many of the generalist computer magazines. I wonder how long people will continue to read about computer hardware and software as the "audience" becomes as adept at using computers (or more so) than the journalistic "experts".
Long term, there's not much to look forward to. The questions I receive are increasingly complex and indicate growing knowledge. Ten years ago, I could answer most of the questions I received with a stock response "off the top of my head". Today, the top of my head not only has no hair, but it lacks answers to most of the questions that are tossed over the transom (assuming I had a transom over which to toss a question).
Increasingly, those questions that I receive require real research on my part. That's good because every time I'm forced to research something, I learn something. But it's bad because it clearly illustrates the fact that more people have more knowledge about computers than at any time in the past.
This doesn't surprise me, but it does suggest that there is a time when programs such as TechByter Worldwide might be considered superfluous.
I'll try to delay/belay/avoid/postpone that day as long as possible, of course. But I do know that it's coming.
Nerdly News
Put a Lid on It
Starting in October, Comcast will limit monthly data transfers to 250 gigabytes. At first glance, that seems like a lot, but maybe it isn't. According to Comcast, 250GB is "an extremely large amount of data, much more than a typical residential customer uses on a monthly basis." Yeah, for feeble providers in the United States, that's true. In the real world (Europe and Asia) 250GB is a day's worth of downloads.
Even so, Comcast says that the limits are reasonable. To exceed them, a user would need to send or receive 50 million e-mail message -OR- download more than 60 thousand songs -OR- download 125 standard-definition movies -OR- view 25 thousand high-resolution digital images. Yes, that seems like a lot, but at least this finally gives Comcast customers a clue. Until now, Comcast has cut off service to customers who consumed more than their share of bandwidth, according to Comcast, but the company refused to specify what the limits were.
According to Comcast's acceptable use policy, "If a customer uses more than 250 GB and is one of the top users of our service, he or she may be contacted by Comcast to notify them of excessive use.... At that time, we'll tell them exactly how much data per month they had used. We know from experience the vast majority of customers we ask to curb usage do so voluntarily."
Comcast plans to display banner notices on its website and to include an insert in a billing statement. Until recently, Comcast has refused to admit that it has set limits even though the company has been shown, definitively, to be delaying peer-to-peer traffic.
Although 250GB is a large amount of data, on-demand video and other applications continue to push usage. Comcast's congestion problems should be dealt with by providing more capacity and not by blocking traffic.
Replacing a Cell Phone
My elder daughter washed her cell phone the other day. The phone was in a pocket when she dropped her clothes into the washer. By the time she realized what had happened, the phone had gone though the wash cycle and most of the rinse cycle. When she brought it to me, it was vibrating. I removed the battery and packed it into a container of rice for a couple of days. That didn't make it work again.
Rice is a decent desiccant, but when I put the battery back in, nothing happened. No vibration. Nothing when I pressed the "on" button. Well, maybe something. The keyboard backlight was on and I couldn't turn it off.
It was time for a new phone, but I didn't want to extend the contract any more and my daughter didn't want to spend $200 for a new phone. If you want the "free" phone, you have to tell the cellular company you'll continue to pay them for another 2 years. Do I really need to spend more than $100 per month for phone service that I rarely use?
Fortunately, somebody in a T-Mobile retail store (No, I'm not going to identify which one) told my daughter that she could simply go to a nearby Target store, buy a $40 pay-as-you-go phone, and put the SIM card from her super-clean but non-functional phone into the new device.
A few minutes later, my phone rang. "Just checking to see if it worked," my older daughter said. Problem solved, no thanks to T-Mobile Corporate, but with a tip of my hat (if I wore a hat) to the employee who clued her in.
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