|
There are isolated problems with current patches, but they are well-known and documented on this site. |
(Youtube here) This week’s Tasks for the weekend is brought to you by MuscularPortfolios.com. Brian Livingston brings his tech mind to the Investing
[See the full post at: Tasks for the weekend – Nov 20, 2021 – It’s the annual geek clean up]
Susan Bradley Patch Lady
KWGuy: I don’t know what Susan’s take on this would be; but my “go-to” browser for more than a decade has been Firefox. I’ve taken a brief look at Brave; but personally I’m not all that impressed by it. One thing that especially turns me off of Brave is its “Private Ads” rewards, where the browser has some algorithm to monitor my “level of engagement” with the ads. That’s something that I strongly object to. And, of course, (as you already mentioned) a big concern is their connection to various crypto currency sites.
In general, I use Firefox for almost all my daily web surfing, along with these three add-on extensions: NoScript, Adblock Plus, and DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials. That combination of Firefox and these add-ons works just about everywhere for me except for a very few websites (less than 5%) that occasionally have some issues. And in those rare cases, my alternate browser is Chrome — which seems to be the gold standard for web developers.
For a good comparison of features between Brave and Firefox, here are links to two reviews by TechRadar:
One last comment I’d have is regarding Microsoft Edge. Lately, Edge has been getting better in terms of new added features. However, despite that, I would strongly discourage using it just based on its lack of privacy and user controls. If you don’t mind sharing everything with Microsoft, it’s probably OK; but personally, I like to limit the amount of data Microsoft collects about me and my systems as much as possible. So for me, Edge is a “no-go”.
My brother still runs Windows 7 on an old PC (with Blocked Windows 10 upgrade).
When I visit him I first check that his browser (Chrome) is up-to-date.
I then check that 0Patch Pro is running and updating.
I go over his Gmail mail looking for spam, phishing…mail.
I check that his free Kaspersky A/V is updated…
When visiting some (not all) family members I sometimes am asked to look into issues with their computer or home network.
For the computers, I always start off doing what most here have already mentioned: check backups are being done, make sure AV & anti-malware is working & updating, check logs, looking for persistent errors, etc. I added “BIOS check” to this checklist after visiting a relative a last year.
During that visit I discovered they had a fairly new but virtually unused high end custom workstation (from a local mom&pop computer shop) that they bought for their CAD work. I asked about it and they said it would always crash after a few minutes of any kind of use, so they just didn’t use it. The vendor had apparently been of no real help & the relative was just too embarrassed to pursue the issue any further.
I looked over the system & confirmed the issues – but none of my typical checks uncovered an obvious cause. I spent hours on this and then – as an afterthought – I checked the BIOS.
OMG! The vendor had set one of those lame auto-overclock options… which I quickly confirmed had mis-configured memory and made the memory very unstable. Disabling the auto-overclock & setting proper explicit parameters for CPU, power and memory resulted in a stable awesome system.
So now when I debug a relative’s (or friend’s) computer/laptop I always look over the BIOS settings first.
Donations from Plus members keep this site going. You can identify the people who support AskWoody by the Plus badge on their avatars.
AskWoody Plus members not only get access to all of the contents of this site -- including Susan Bradley's frequently updated Patch Watch listing -- they also receive weekly AskWoody Plus Newsletters (formerly Windows Secrets Newsletter) and AskWoody Plus Alerts, emails when there are important breaking developments.
