"Doing
the Easy Stuff"
General Meeting - March 2009
Presented by PCCC Members
Online reference materials
• Using Podcasts with iTunes. – Warren Shanahan
• Picture Sharing. – Barbara De Mase
• Your Google Homepage – Dewey Williams
• Password Management Utilities – Ted Hessberg
Password Managers
Who needs 'em? Well, I don't know about you, but after I stopped using the same password for everything, I realized that I was being neither wise nor safe. Today, I have more than 140 passwords, and I can't remember them.There are two password manager reviews which I show. The links are
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1922881,00.asp
http://password-management-software-review.toptenreviews.com/
Both reviews rated Roboform as the best password manager. Well, I did something right. I realized that I needed a password manager about ten years ago. I chose Roboform. I chose it because it let me try it on ten different websites without buying. If I didn't like it I needed to go no farther. That's still true.
www.roboform.com
Their blurb beats anything I could write. But for form filling, website logins, password generation, timely and free updates, and prompt email technical support Roboform gets my vote.
One caution: if you buy it, Roboform gives you an activation code or license that converts the trial version to the pro version. Do not lose the license. You can reinstall on your next computer by downloading the then current version of Roboform and registering with that license. Lose it and you get to buy the software again. I, unfortunately, speak from experience.
• Using External Media – Bill Barnes
•
“Decommissioning” a Hard Drive
– Jack LaPointe
(Bill Barnes, presenting)
Ready for a new computer and planning to donate that old one to a
friend, child, or charity? Deleting files, or even
reformatting the hard drive won't protect your personal information
from a half-way competent identity thief. Maybe you've never used this
computer to do your taxes or banking, but you may have saved your email
or family photos on it. Online you may have logged into accounts,
entered your credit card at a shopping site, or done research on a
medical site. We recommend you remove the hard drive and physically
destroy it before transferring a computer out of your control.
For some fun ideas, watch the videos here. Realistically, beating the heck out of it with a hammer on concrete, driving over it a couple times, or putting a drillbit through its heart are the most effective ways for a home user to destroy a drive. If this is your first drive to decomission, you might enjoy disassembling it to see what's inside. Be careful in any case as the platters in some hard drives are actually glass and may not respond mildly to physical abuse.
(more
information to come)