Archive for the ‘Internet Explorer’ tag
PC Health Check 2.0: not as useful as it looks
At first sight F-Secure's Health Check 2.0 seems a useful addition to a PC owners' box of troubleshooting tricks. It is OK, but it is nothing to get excited about.
The online application is a Java program. Itworks with Firefox or Microsoft Internet Explorer to check a computer's security status then reports on potential risks.
On the plus side it is free, quick and simple to use. The code loads directly from the Health Check web page and after the fuss of accepting terms and conditions it takes next to no time to download even on my erratic broadband connection. I clocked the first download at seven seconds.
Once leaded the software steps through a familiar wizard-style process with four stages. The first stage is automatic. It checks you have anti-virus, anti-spyware and a firewall installed and up-to-date.
The 'next' button moves things along to stage two which investigates back-up – we'll look closer at this in a moment. Stage three checks key programs are up-to-date. The last stage is a summary screen with links to 'solutions' to identified problems.
Even if everything was perfectly hunky-dory, which it isn't, PC Health Check 2.0 is of limited use.
For a start alternatives do the same job either as well or better. For example, Secunia offers the free Online Software Inspector and the more complete downloadable Secunia Personal Software Inspector.
But my big problem with Health Check 2.0 is it is mainly a crude promotional device for F-Secure's products and services. It's compromised by its commercial function.
My computer failed the second stage back-up test. The software told me it didn't find any back-up. This is wrong. There are three back-up applications on my computer. I back up regularly to an external disk and to a server.
When I clicked on the Health Check 2.0 'solve' button to troubleshoot the 'problem' found by the software it told me I could protect my "valuable content" with F-Secure Online Backup. And gave a link to the F-Secure store.
I live in New Zealand. My computer has almost a terabyte of data. I'm theoretically on an unlimited broadband plan, but with shaped bandwidth for almost the entire working day. In other words, online back-up isn't realistic. And yet PC Health Check tells me it is.
If the application gets this advice wrong – what use is the rest of its information?
Lastly, when the program finishes, there's the opportunity to register an email address with F-Secure. Now why would I want to do that?
For an alternative view see F-Secure refreshes online PC Health Check by Stephen Withers at iTWire. His found other shortcomings, but reached a similar conclusion.
Firefox eating Internet Explorer’s lunch in New Zealand?
A press release from Nielsen (not online at the time of writing) says Mozilla Firefox is winning New Zealand users away from Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
It is, but Microsoft's browser still accounts for a 60 percent market share. According to Nielsen, Internet Explorer dropped from 72 percent to 60 percent between July 2006 and July 2009. Over the same period Firefox climbed from 11 percent to 20 percent. The remaining market share goes to rats and mice – with Google's Chrome picking up just 3.2 percent of the market.
At the current rate, it'll be at least two more years before Microsoft's market share drops below 50 percent – and longer again before Firefox goes past Internet Explorer.
Nielsen's press release doesn't explain what it means by market share. However, the company manages a net measuring business where it tracks traffic to a number of commercial websites. Browser information is included in the traffic information, so it's reasonable to assume Nielsen adds up each browser's share of the total traffic to these sites. Because Nielsen's clients are among New Zealand's busiest sites, it is a reasonable measure of total share.
What Nielsen doesn't measure is the way many users, myself included, switch between browsers for different jobs. I'd also like to see data on which versions of the various browsers are used.
There's also no mention of mobile browsers – which may still be very much a freak show – but are likely to grab market share quickly now New Zealand has two reasonable mobile data networks.