I bought a new laptop PC two months ago. It came with Windows 8, but was sold as compatible with the soon-to-arrive Windows 10 operating system. After about a week of use, Microsoft invited me to upgrade to Windows 10 for free, and I jumped at the chance. So I've been running Windows 10 on my laptop PC for a couple of months now, almost from the day I bought it. Mostly, I like Windows 10. It is chock full of really nice features, and (so far) appears to be a worthy successor to Windows 7.
I do have a few objections to it, which I will enumerate here.
1. Upselling
One thing I don't like about it is I feel like it's constantly upselling, trying to get me to download or buy more and more software. It's built-in advertising. Ironically, the upselling efforts backfire with me, as I usually end up uninstalling or at least deactivating the software that is doing the upselling.
2. Bloatware in the install
Another thing I don't like about it is that the Windows 10 upgrade came with its own load of bloatware or crapware. I'm still finding all sorts of apps and programs that I really don't want, and it takes me a few minutes every time I find one, to uninstall it. I've noticed, to my annoyance, that some of them can't be uninstalled.
If you leave the bloatware on your PC, it eats up disk space, which isn't a big deal, but it also eats up memory and CPU time, and those two things matter. In addition, the bloatware may be doing things in the background that you really don't want your computer to be doing. That takes us to the next point.
3. "We're watching you ..."
A third thing that I don't like is that Windows 10, and many (if not all) of the apps that come with it, are set by default to snoop on everything you do on your computer, and phone home to report it to a cloud server somewhere. Microsoft and its minions intend to perform "data mining" on this information, or sell it to third parties who will do their own "data mining", all this so that they can "enhance your online experience." That means that they want to sell you stuff, and they're going to bombard you with slyly targeted come-ons, designed to separate you from your money. And your privacy. You need to go into the Settings menus and manually disable all of this invasion-of-privacy stuff.
4. Forced upgrades
Finally, one thing that I find irritating to the point of profanity is Microsoft's insistence on automatically downloading and installing updates to the OS and the drivers, whenever they feel like it. I don't mind Windows 10 telling me that an update is available, but I absolutely hate the way it takes over my computer when it decides it's time for the update. I wrote a couple of posts about this problem and its solutions, here and here.
Showing posts with label data security. Show all posts
Showing posts with label data security. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 2, 2015
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Now *That's* Data Security
As an IT professional, I subscribe to a weekly publication called eWeek. Among its other features, eWeek provides product reviews. The Feb 15, 2010 edition had a review of a pair of USB flash drives built by a company called "IronKey." These USB drives are almost physically indestructible, and the data they hold can be made as secure as the user wants to make it.
The guts of the drive are encased in "military-grade epoxy" - just like the engine computer under the hood in your car, or in a Humvee or Stryker - and then "wrapped in a single-piece aluminum casing." The reviewer who tested them put them through all kinds of agony, and only one of the seven evaluation units died.
Each drive is serialized, with the serial number embedded in the electronics and etched in barcode on the side of the aluminum case. Data security is provided through a Web-based interface that can get to the drive wherever it is in the world, as long as it's attached to a computer connected to the Internet.
One of the coolest features of this device is its "self-destruct" feature. If it gets lost or stolen, the owner can issue a self-destruct command through the Web-based interface. The drive consists of one or more flash memory chips and a CryptoChip (capitalization is by IronKey, not me). (The CryptoChip is what manages the data security.) When the drive is connected to the Internet, it receives the self-destruct command, wipes its flash memory chip clean, and destroys its own CryptoChip. It doesn't blow up, Mission-Impossible style, but the device is essentially bricked.
Yeah, so I don't own one of these myself, but now I want to. To find out more about the IronKey USB flash drive, read the eWeek review at http://tinyurl.com/yjqe73j , or read more about it at https://www.ironkey.com/s200 or https://www.ironkey.com/d200. This is one cool toy.
UPDATE, 13 AUGUST 2019: Those product links don't work anymore, but fear not: IronKey is still around. The company was acquired by Imation, and then by Kingston Technology. Kingston has kept the IronKey product line alive, and greatly expanded it. Go to https://www.kingston.com/us/usb-flash-drives and scroll down, almost to the bottom of the page. The product line has expanded to more than 20 different drives, all of them with the same features as the original S200 and D200.
The guts of the drive are encased in "military-grade epoxy" - just like the engine computer under the hood in your car, or in a Humvee or Stryker - and then "wrapped in a single-piece aluminum casing." The reviewer who tested them put them through all kinds of agony, and only one of the seven evaluation units died.
Each drive is serialized, with the serial number embedded in the electronics and etched in barcode on the side of the aluminum case. Data security is provided through a Web-based interface that can get to the drive wherever it is in the world, as long as it's attached to a computer connected to the Internet.
One of the coolest features of this device is its "self-destruct" feature. If it gets lost or stolen, the owner can issue a self-destruct command through the Web-based interface. The drive consists of one or more flash memory chips and a CryptoChip (capitalization is by IronKey, not me). (The CryptoChip is what manages the data security.) When the drive is connected to the Internet, it receives the self-destruct command, wipes its flash memory chip clean, and destroys its own CryptoChip. It doesn't blow up, Mission-Impossible style, but the device is essentially bricked.
Yeah, so I don't own one of these myself, but now I want to. To find out more about the IronKey USB flash drive, read the eWeek review at http://tinyurl.com/yjqe73j , or read more about it at https://www.ironkey.com/s200 or https://www.ironkey.com/d200. This is one cool toy.
UPDATE, 13 AUGUST 2019: Those product links don't work anymore, but fear not: IronKey is still around. The company was acquired by Imation, and then by Kingston Technology. Kingston has kept the IronKey product line alive, and greatly expanded it. Go to https://www.kingston.com/us/usb-flash-drives and scroll down, almost to the bottom of the page. The product line has expanded to more than 20 different drives, all of them with the same features as the original S200 and D200.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
