Don’t go from XP to Vista unless you go 64-bit

All subscribers get Cory Doctorow's new book free

Cory Doctorow is co-editor of Boing Boing, a popular technology blog, and has just released his latest book, Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future. You can buy a printed copy for $11 or so, but all Windows Secrets subscribers can get the full, 224-page book as a PDF download for free.

Booklist says the new work is “a pleasure to read, not to mention thought-provoking.” Simply visit your WS preferences page by Oct. 1, 2008, and make sure your settings are entered the way you want them. When you click the Save button, you’ll see a download link on a subsequent page. Enjoy! —Brian Livingston, editorial director

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London readers: meet with me on Sept. 27

By Brian Livingston

I’m gradually working toward my goal of meeting Windows Secrets readers in every major city of the world.

For now, however, I’m slowly picking spots where I have an extra few hours between flights, and on Sept. 27 it’ll be London, England.

As you may recall, I announced last June a free seminar for readers who live in Hong Kong. A few wags suggested that my next two events would be in Cancún and Ibiza.

Well, I’ve proved them all wrong with my upcoming meeting location — everyone knows there’s nothing fun to do in swinging London.

The truth is that I’m too chicken to hold a free seminar in a place like New York City or San Francisco, where thousands of subscribers might show up. Until I figure out how to hold a free event in a stadium, I’m trying a few meetings in non-U.S. locations where no one knows me (well, almost no one).

To attend, registration is required. Space is limited to the first 60 who sign up.

To let me know you’re coming, use the following link by 9 a.m. Sept. 26, London time (if you’re reading this several hours after our e-mail newsletter went out, the seats may already be full; I apologize to anyone who can’t get in):

Use this link to register

Meeting with Brian Livingston
Saturday, Sept. 27, 2008
Doors open: 9:30 a.m., meeting: 10:00–11:00 a.m.
Hilton London Heathrow Airport Hotel
Terminal 4, Hounslow Middlesex, London, U.K. TW6 3AF
Free of charge

The hotel is easy to get to by rapid transit. It’s a 10-minute stroll via a covered walkway from the Terminal 4 station of the Tube. Car parking is also available. If you’re planning to attend, please see the hotel’s transportation page for directions.

Only subscribers to the Windows Secrets e-mail newsletter may register for the London meeting. It isn’t possible to register from our Web site, only from a link in the e-mail notice that was sent out, sorry.

If you can’t attend the discussion in London, don’t worry: I’ll publish a full report of the event in my Oct. 2 column.

I’m mainly interested in getting readers’ feedback on ways Windows Secrets can be more interesting and useful to you in the future. I got great ideas from subscribers in Hong Kong, as I reported on June 19. I’m sure my readers in London will have even more to say.

If you aren’t in London, would you like Windows Secrets to hold a free seminar near you one of these days? Be sure your country and ZIP code or postal code are set correctly in your WS preferences, so we can make plans. Visit your preferences page

Thanks for your support!

Brian Livingston is editorial director of WindowsSecrets.com and the co-author of Windows Vista Secrets and 10 other books.

Don't go from XP to Vista unless you go 64-bit

By Stuart J. Johnston

Early indications are that Windows 7 won’t be a major upgrade from Vista.

But the real choice isn’t between Vista and Windows 7; it’s between moving to a 64-bit version of Windows now or later.

The bottom line is that if you’re using XP, there’s no point in upgrading to 32-bit Vista. It doesn’t make sense to upgrade your operating system without upgrading to 64-bit hardware and software in order to get the most out of both. Allow me to explain.

Despite Microsoft’s best attempts to keep a lid on the next version of Windows — code-named Windows 7 — details about the new OS’s features are slipping out. The early word is that the successor to Vista, which is due to ship in early 2010, won’t be much different from Vista Service Pack 1.

To date, Microsoft has said only that the next version of Windows will launch within three years after the consumer release of Vista, which debuted officially in January 2007. A recent report by InternetNews.com pegs Microsoft’s current schedule as having the OS ready for PC manufacturers in June 2009, substantially earlier than advertised.

Microsoft executives have kept mum not only about the when of Windows 7 but also the what: specifically, what features will and won’t be in the next release. Significantly more information regarding Windows 7 will be available in late October at the company’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC) and in early November at its Windows Hardware Engineering Conference. Late word is that PDC attendees will receive a pre-beta of Windows 7 on a 160GB external USB hard drive.

Early testers of the new release indicated recently to All About Microsoft blogger Mary Jo Foley that a public beta of Windows 7 is due around mid-December 2008. Microsoft has said it will sign up beta testers via its Connect site.

That would be the right time frame for Microsoft to get the final release to PC makers in time for the 2009 Christmas sales season — a critical mistake Microsoft made with Vista in 2006, say analysts.

Windows 7 emphasizes performance, stability

Testers of early preview releases indicate that Windows 7 will provide greater stability, reliability, and performance than Vista. The most recent of the three prebeta releases reportedly delivered all three of the promised benefits.

One of the three biggest complaints about Vista — or more specifically, the 32-bit version of Vista — is performance. (The other two big Vista problems, application incompatibilities and the lack of device drivers, have been solved over the past year and a half, with a few noteworthy exceptions.)

The 32-bit edition of Vista supports only 3GB of memory, a limitation that the 64-bit edition doesn’t have. How much memory can 64-bit Vista address? The range is from 8GB for Vista Home Basic to 128GB for the Ultimate, Enterprise, and Business editions.

All 32-bit operating systems, not just Vista, have greater memory restrictions than their 64-bit versions. At this point, if you’re considering buying new systems, you should be looking at setups that use 64-bit hardware and software. After all, what good are all those lightning-fast processor cores if the system runs low on memory to support them?

While there will be a 32-bit edition of Windows 7, the writing is on the wall: the future of desktop computing is 64-bit.

“The 64-bit editions support more than 3GB of RAM, which removes the headroom limit that 32-bit editions have,” principal anaylst Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group told Windows Secrets.

Some users echo that sentiment.

“I installed a full 64-bit copy of Vista six months after release and it runs great,” said a user who goes by the screen name Darkest Daze on one user forum.

“I love my Vista 64. I would never go back to XP,” said a posting by another user who goes by the screen name Ike_Skelton.

While there is a 64-bit release of XP, Microsoft plans to end free support for XP on April 14, 2009, although the company will continue to issue critical bug fixes. After that date, you’ll have to pay per incident for support from Microsoft.

One big reason why Microsoft should have no problem meeting its shipping deadlines for Windows 7 is that the OS will not be much different from Vista Service Pack 1, which shipped last spring. For instance, screen shots of the latest pre-beta that were briefly posted to the Web last week (until Microsoft’s legal department got involved) showed a user interface that is suspiciously like Vista’s aero look.

Windows components are moving to the cloud

As part of Microsoft’s broad initiative to evolve its product offerings to embrace its emerging software-plus-services vision, some features and programs that had previously been included with the operating system will become Windows Live services, residing in the cloud while remaining tightly integrated with Windows 7, the company confirmed this week.

“Starting with the next release of Windows, Windows Mail, Windows Calendar, Windows Contacts, Windows Photo Gallery, and Windows Movie Maker will no longer be available in the Windows operating system,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement e-mailed to Windows Secrets.

Instead, those capabilities will be provided via Windows Live services, the statement continued. Moving those features out of Windows 7 may also help improve performance.

“The whole idea is to have Windows Live be a piece on top of the Windows 7 platform,” Kip Kniskern, staff writer for Windows Live enthusiast site LiveSide.net, told Windows Secrets. Beyond that, however, he too views Windows 7 as a relatively minor release.

“I don’t think Windows 7 is much more than Vista SP2,” Kniskern added. “The code base isn’t much different.”

One feature that will be new in Windows 7 is support for multi-touch displays, which Microsoft’s Surface computer pioneered. Chairman Bill Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer demonstrated Windows 7’s support for that feature at the Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital conference in May.

As cool as this feature may appear, it’s unlikely to be reason enough for the millions of XP users in the world to postpone their next system upgrade for more than a year. When you’re ready for a 64-bit desktop PC, it’s ready for you.

Stuart Johnston is associate editor of WindowsSecrets.com. He has written about technology for InfoWorld, Computerworld, InformationWeek, and InternetNews.com.

Converters maximize your video-file options

By Scott Dunn

Video file formats can cause a world of headaches, from compression and bandwidth issues to media players that don’t support your format or compressor.

Conversion utilities help you solve these problems while making your videos viewable on cell phones, media players, and other devices.

Maybe you’ve tried uploading your family’s home movies to a video-hosting site only to discover that the files exceeded the service’s size limits or maxed out your Internet connection’s bandwidth. Perhaps your company’s training video isn’t compatible with all media players. Or it could be that you simply want to watch a video on your iPod as you exercise on the treadmill or take a plane trip.

In all of these cases and lots more, a video-converter utility can be just the tool you need.

Most such applications support multiple input and output formats, allow you to tweak individual settings within those formats (such as offering a choice of compressor or output dimensions), and let you clip off a designated amount from the beginning and/or end of your videos. (AVS Video Converter is the lone product in this roundup that lacks such video-editing features.)

Some video converters let you apply effects, although the kind of effect and the extent of these features vary. For example, AVS Video Converter lets you crop to adjust aspect ratio. MediaCoder takes the feature prize by including that effect plus controls for brightness, contrast, volume, hue, saturation, denoising, and other functions. With Digital Media Converter, you can adjust only your file’s brightness, contrast, and volume.

To test these and other products, I converted a QuickTime movie to an MPEG-2 file in an attempt to reduce the file’s size for easier uploading. I also tried to convert another video to the MPEG-4 format for uploading to my iPhone via iTunes.

#1: AVS VIDEO CONVERTER

The king of converters is simple but effective

AVS Video Converter is sold as part of the U.S. $40 AVS Video Tools collection. Other tools included in the package copy files between devices, transfer video from DV and VHS cams, and edit MPEG files without recompressing them. However, I reviewed only the product’s video converter.

Like Any Video Converter (see below), AVS Video Converter supports deceptively few output formats. In reality, however, you can edit the settings of each program to get more bang for your conversion buck. In my tests, the utility’s output was flawless. On the iPhone output test, AVS even tried looking for an attached phone to upload it to after it was done!

Figure 1. AVS Video Converter’s file-conversion options are easy to access via the program’s main window.

The program’s trimming feature was sluggish in updating previews. It was hard to tell whether the area I marked was going to be included or deleted in the preview.

Be aware that if you’re using the trial version of the program, a watermark will appear on your output files. Other than that, the trial version is not restricted in any way.

#2: ANY VIDEO CONVERTER

Friendly video converter has a free version

Any Video Converter comes in freeware and Professional versions. If you don’t need to RIP DVDs to disk or work with many different file formats (especially sound-file formats), the freeware version may suit you fine.

The program’s interface is straightforward: buttons across the top highlight the major features and file-conversion steps — Add Video, Encode, and Stop. You use the Profile drop-down on the right to choose an output format. The list of options seems short, but you can tweak the settings for each with the controls that appear below them.

In my tests, the MPEG-2 file Any Video Converter created dramatically reduced the size of my test file while maintaining an impressive degree of quality. The MPEG-4 test also succeeded in letting me convert a video for viewing on my phone.

The program’s trimming (or “output duration”) feature is somewhat limited, forcing you to specify cuts at the level of seconds rather than frames or milliseconds.

Any Video Converter also has a feature for downloading and converting video from YouTube.

Each conversion with the freeware version concludes with a message box telling you what you’re missing in the Professional version (mostly more file formats). This is a small price to pay if the rest of the free version’s features serve your needs.

#3: MEDIA CODER

The open-source solution is cool but complex

MediaCoder is the only video converter in this roundup that is open-source. It’s also one of the most thorough and full-featured of the programs I reviewed. The program even manages the difficult task of piling in numerous controls and settings without making the interface too complex or busy.

One drawback of MediaCoder is that the developers like coding a lot more than they like writing documentation. Consequently, there is no manual or help system to guide you. However, the site does provide a link to a “volunteer user guide” written by a third party.

Also, I couldn’t find a split-video feature comparable to the ones I found in most of the other programs I tested.

In my MPEG-2 tests, MediaCoder seemed to produce compact results in short order. Unfortunately, Windows Media Player couldn’t recognize the codec (compressor-decompressor) that MediaCoder used, so I was unable to view the result. Similarly, my MPEG-4 test wouldn’t play in QuickTime and wasn’t recognized by iTunes, even though I used MediaCoder’s built-in settings.

MediaCoder is best suited to advanced video users. Still, if the program’s default settings and presets don’t work with standard media players, what good are they? I had high hopes for this product, but given these results, I can’t recommend it.

#4: DIGITAL MEDIA CONVERTER

This converter asks for more than it delivers

Digital Media Converter is the least attractive of the programs I used, but it does offer some hand-holding to video-converter neophytes, including a Flash-based tutorial.

In both of my conversion tests, the program stopped the process to tell me I had to download an additional codec, even though I was attempting to use only settings found in its dialog boxes. At least the app offered to download and start the codec’s installer for me.

Unlike other video converters, Digital Media Converter demands a lot of free disk space. I was unable to complete my tests because the program wanted me to specify a drive with more space, even though there was nearly 1GB free on my main drive.

One nice difference with this program is that, if you click Settings, the Compatibility tab shows you the compressors on your system and gives advice on disabling some to prevent conflicts or solve problems. If only other programs provided such useful information!

Digital Media Converter has good documentation, but the program’s design needs a little more development.

A couple of products didn’t make it into my full review process:

• eRightSoft’s Super © consistently crashed on startup. Even before then, I had my doubts about the product, thanks to the overkill of the promotional hype on the vendor’s site. I had to wade through three long pages of text extolling the virtues of this free product before I could find the obscure download link.

• Cucusoft’s Ultimate Video Converter would hang in limbo each time I asked it to convert a video.

I wouldn’t recommend any program that had such problems.

Scott Dunn is associate editor of the Windows Secrets Newsletter. He has been a contributing editor of PC World since 1992 and currently writes for the Here’s How section of that magazine.

Balancing health-data accessibility, security

By Dennis O’Reilly

Few things are scarier than the thought of your medical history being used against you.

Last week’s Top Story by associate editor Stuart Johnston pointed out some of the threats posed when new cloud-computing services place private medical records on public networks.

There are many benefits to having this information available to health-care professionals via the Internet, particularly in emergencies. However, there’s also the serious danger of insurers and other organizations accessing this information and using it against you.

Fortunately, we don’t need to let this happen. As reader Paul DeLeeuw points out, sealing these records is relatively simple.

• “You are absolutely right that central computers subject health data to theft. But right now all our medical information is forwarded to several databases, where every prescription, test, and procedure is recorded. It is already “in the cloud.” Microsoft and Google are just newer competitors.

  “However, there is something you can do. There is an obscure part of the HIPAA law which requires all health providers to seal your records at your request. By phone, today, I had my pharmacy, GP [general practitioner], and local radiology center seal my records so no information can be released without my prior permission.”

What’s good for your financial data is good for your health information as well. You’ll find more details about HIPAA’s privacy requirements at the Health Privacy Project site.

Even though the risks Stuart’s column described pertain specifically to U.S. residents, our readers outside the states have just as much concern about the sanctity of their medical information’s privacy. Reader Graham Wing was one of several readers who pointed this out to us.

• “I wanted to remind you that you have readers all over the world. In many countries of the world, there isn’t the worry about finding insurance, or having an insurer turn you down. The article was still interesting, but it definitely had an American feel to it.”

Most countries do a much better job than the U.S. government does in protecting the medical records and other private data of their citizens, but not all do. Last year, Privacy International published a map showing the privacy ranking of countries around the world.

In fact, the only country to merit the organization’s top (green) rating was Greece. Among the nations joining the U.S. in receiving the lowest (black) privacy rating were the U.K., China, and Russia.

Taking note of RoboForm’s note feature

Scott Dunn’s review of password managers in last week’s issue stated that his top pick, RoboForm, doesn’t allow you to attach custom notes to the items you store in the program. Reader Michael Kairys points out the feature in the password manager that lets you annotate your entries.

• “Thank you for your review of password managers, which I found comprehensive and useful. There was one detail about RoboForm you may have missed; you say, ‘Unlike the other applications I tested, you can’t attach custom notes to each item or account in RoboForm.’ However, any passcard can have a note added by going to the Edit menu and picking Add Note.”

For information on a free utility that lets you sniff out the passwords hidden on your PC, check out Ryan Russell’s Perimeter Scan column in this week’s newsletter (paid subscription required).

The Known Issues column brings you readers’ comments on our recent articles. Dennis O’Reilly is technical editor of WindowsSecrets.com.

Finally! Your Windows error messages decoded

By Katy Abby We’ve all experienced the frustration and anxiety that receiving a cryptic error message invokes. That tiny, unassuming gray box pops up on your screen unexpectedly, and as you read it you wonder, “Am I supposed to understand this??” Don’t call tech support. Instead, check out the hilarious alternative explanations in these pop-ups. Their wording leaves no room for misinterpretation. At last! Error messages for the rest of us! View the page

Universal IM clients link you to many systems

By Scott Spanbauer Instant messaging lets you communicate with friends and coworkers in a jiffy, but each different network uses its own software. Universal instant-messaging programs let you connect to lots of different services to chat and transmit files, audio, and video, all from the convenience of a single application.

Get a handle on the messaging mess

America Online’s AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and its sister service ICQ are two of the biggest and most popular IM offerings. Yahoo Messenger and Microsoft’s MSN Messenger likewise have millions of subscribers.

Each of these services provides Web-hosted chat interfaces and downloadable, standalone client software for one-to-one and group chats. They also let you share files and audio and video connections.

Even Google has recently jumped on the IM bandwagon via its text-only Google Talk service. All these offerings are free and generally work without a hitch whenever you’re ready to chat it up.

The only real drawback to using one of the IM networks is that — like estranged relatives — they don’t talk to each other. In order to chat with your AIM buddies, you need to log in to the AIM network. Talking to Yahoo subscribers requires a separate login to that system; messages from one of these networks can’t reach subscribers on the other networks.

Thus, keeping track of your myriad IM contacts can require installing and using a half-dozen or more different programs, an inconvenience that for many people outweighs instant messaging’s benefits. The Jabber IM system is based on the open Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) designed to allow competing IM networks to intercommunicate. Unfortunately, Google Talk is the only other well-known IM service that has adopted the protocol so far.

Here’s the good news: three alternative universal IM client programs take much of the pain out of this situation by allowing you to use a single login to access your many different IM accounts. The three are Cerulean Studios’ free Trillian Basic and Trillian Pro (U.S. $25); the free, open-source Pidgin; and the free, Web-based Meebo service.

Note that universal clients may not support such advanced features as video conferencing, so to use these bells and whistles, you’ll still likely need to launch each service’s native client.

Also, as each network makes changes to its proprietary messaging system, universal IM programs may stop working temporarily. Even with these limitations, these systems are unbeatable for shoehorning the most popular features of up to a dozen IM networks into a single interface.

#1: TRILLIAN 3.1

Top choice delivers features, compatibility

I was ready for one of the newer IM clients to trump Cerulean’s time-tested messenger, but it wasn’t to be. There may be a few networks that Trillian doesn’t connect to, but both the free Trillian Basic and the Pro versions offer the best collection of tools and network compatibility of the programs I looked at.

One caveat: Be sure to opt out of the Weather Channel Desktop and Ask.com toolbars Trillian wants to install during setup.

Trillian’s compact interface mimics the slim panels used by the classic IM utilities AIM and ICQ. The program manages to avoid clutter by shunting IM network account preferences — including notification, away status, and audio and video settings — to a separate window. If Trillian lacks a feature or setting you find indispensable in another IM program, you may find that one of the 70 plug-ins available on Cerulean’s site adds that option.

Figure 1. Trillian’s features are easy to find and don’t clutter your desktop.

Trillian Basic’s default configuration supports AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, and the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) protocol, which is the backbone of Internet chat. The main difference between the Basic and Pro versions is video: the Pro version supports it in AIM, MSN, and Yahoo (but not ICQ).

Trillian Pro also adds support for Novell’s Groupwise Messenger and Jabber/Google Talk via XMPP (these features are also available in Trillian Basic via free plug-ins). For small businesses that want to integrate a universal IM program with in-office chat, Trillian Pro uses Apple’s Bonjour protocol (formerly called Rendezvous) for discovering other Trillian Pro users on a local network without having to set up a server.

#2: PIDGIN 2.5.1

Free messenger app is a network know-it-all

If you’re an IM polyglot who sticks with text for the most part, Pidgin is your gateway to universal-messaging bliss. Not only does the open-source program connect to the usual big-name networks and protocols — AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, IRC, and XMPP/Google Talk — it also parleys with Gadu-Gadu, Novell’s Groupwise Messenger, Lotus Sametime, and a variety of other protocols, including MySpace’s IM system.

The program’s support for Apple’s Bonjour network protocol means that, like Trillian Pro, Pidgin can connect over a local office or home network without requiring a dedicated chat server or Internet connection.

Pidgin uses a clean-and-simple interface. The program can be minimized to the system tray and gives you lots of options for buddy login/logout notification, away messages, and idle detection.

This IM client survives on mere breadcrumbs of system memory: it used less than 8MB on one of my test machines. A couple of dozen plug-ins extend Pidgin’s default features; these include additional notification options, buddy trackers, and transparency tools.

Unfortunately, Pidgin achieves its small footprint by omitting several key features. Though it supports file transfers, the program doesn’t offer audio- or videoconferencing with any network. If that’s a deal-breaker for you, try either Trillian Pro or Meebo, or simply use each network’s native client software for the occasional multimedia chat.

#3: MEEBO

Web-based IM lets you chat wherever you roam

These days, I spend about half my time working away from my home office. Most of these remote locations have Internet-connected computers available for me to use. With the Meebo IM service, I can roam freely about the globe and still access my main IM accounts with a single login.

The Web-hosted service supports six networks: AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, Jabber, and Google Talk. If you need to connect to another network or require more than Meebo’s basic features, you’ll have to look for another IM client. Unlike Pidgin or Trillian, Meebo offers no library of plug-ins to boost its features or enhance its network compatibility.

There are some cool ways you can customize your Meebo experience. The service offers a Firefox plug-in that loads and runs the service unobtrusively in Firefox’s status bar. Greasemonkey fans will find more than 25 Meebo-related scripts on the Userscripts.org site for use in posting to Twitter from your Meebo page and for other interface and settings customizations.

Meebo doesn’t support audio and video in the networks it connects to; instead, it embeds a link to the service’s own Flash-based conferencing feature whenever you invite a contact to an audio or video chat. The video feature didn’t always work well on my system, but since I stick to text most of the time, this isn’t a problem for me.

Some universal IM clients fit better than others

Trillian, Pidgin, and Meebo are far from the only universal IM clients out there. If Pidgin’s open-source roots appeal to you, you may want to give Miranda a ganda; the program supports text messaging in all the major networks. There’s no audio or video, but the program is highly customizable, thanks to its community of plug-in and skin developers.

Meebo has inspired a number of Web-based IM aggregators, though none of them inspires me to switch. However, if you’re looking for an open-source alternative to Meebo, check out Soashable, which connects you to AIM, MSN, Yahoo, and the site’s own XMPP-based network.

I tend to use a conventional IM tool such as Trillian on my main PCs and a Web-based service such as Meebo while I’m mobile, just as I rely on a combination of Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org, and Google Docs, depending on where I happen to be.

Scott Spanbauer writes frequently for PC World, Business 2.0, CIO, Forbes ASAP, and Fortune Small Business. He has contributed to several books and was technical reviewer of Jim Aspinwall’s PC Hacks.

Now you can get your Wi-Fi on wheels

By Woody Leonhard A few weeks ago, I found myself in Vancouver, British Columbia — scurrying like mad to make a meeting in Seattle — when I bumped into a technology I had never seen before. Travel far from home frequently brings big surprises, but I was shocked — stunned — to discover that my shuttle bus offered fast, free Wi-Fi, for the whole 140-mile trip, right there in my seat.

Wi-Fi boards the bus, train, and airplane

As I boarded the shuttle bus in Vancouver, I noted the “Free Wi-Fi” sign and expected to squeeze out a small dribble of data as the shuttle approached its planned stops. I popped open my laptop, made a beeline for Outlook, downloaded a sizable crop of e-mail, flipped over to Firefox, and started catching up on the news.

As the bus departed the Ballantyne Cruise Terminal, my connection didn’t hiccup — not even a little bit — and the link kept on going as we headed down the soaked British Columbia coastline. While the bus sat in the perpetually clogged U.S. Customs line at the border, I fired off a series of messages from Canada and the States, keeping my cohorts in Seattle apprised of my plight in real time.

There were no electronic hitches at the border: the connection just kept working. While I wouldn’t call the Wi-Fi link’s speed “blazing,” it was certainly adequate for my needs.

If you haven’t yet used Wi-Fi while in a bus or a train, you may soon. Greyhound announced its BoltBus service back in March, complete with Wi-Fi between New York and Washington, D.C. Many metropolitan bus lines in the U.S. now offer Wi-Fi. Of course, Europeans have been Wi-Fi-ing on buses and trains for years: the Hansa Buss between Estonia and Latvia, for example, runs all Wi-Fi, all the time.

How about Wi-Fi on airplanes? That’s been an on-again, off-again proposition for many years, but American Airlines has just launched Wi-Fi service on three long-haul flights inside the U.S. Delta plans to offer Wi-Fi service on all of its planes in 2009. Alaska Airlines, Jet Blue, Southwest, and Virgin America have announced similar plans, and most of the other major carriers are certain to follow suit. Unfortunately, at $12 or more per session, you’re practically paying by the second. Yikes!

Wireless broadband covers the bus route

So how do they do it? As I sat on that shuttle bus, I tried to figure out how the bus company could extend the standard maximum Wi-Fi coverage area of 300 feet or so all the way from Vancouver to Seattle. Ends up, there’s a trick, and it’s called a “mobile broadband gateway.”

Inside the bus is a box that’s very similar to the wireless router or access point you might use in your house. The box has a DHCP server for assigning IP addresses to wireless connections. The server broadcasts a system ID and performs Network Address Translation, so it functions as a stateful-inspection firewall. Various kinds of encryption are available, although all of the mobile broadband gateways I’ve seen have the security turned off.

Whereas the wireless router inside your house probably plugs into an ADSL line or cable connection, the mobile broadband gateway inside the bus uses a fast wireless broadband link to hook into the Internet. Depending on where you live and what kind of wireless connections are available, the mobile broadband gateway may use an EV-DO (CDMA) connection, which is offered by the Sprint network, or an HSPA or HSPDA service, like the service provided by Cingular.

Tracking your connection along the tracks

Trains have a big advantage over buses: fiber-optic lines can be laid on the track bed. The big disadvantage of trains is that many rail lines go through areas that aren’t well serviced by wireless broadband.

There doesn’t seem to be a de facto standard for train Wi-Fi configuration. Worcester Train-Fi in Massachusetts runs on Sprint’s EV-DO wireless broadband, much like a bus-based system. In the U.K., National Express East Coast (formerly GNER) has provided free Wi-Fi service since 2003, starting with the slow GPRS mobile phone technology.

The Utah Transit Authority’s fiber-optic line connects to 28 towers along 44 miles of its FrontRunner commuter train tracks. The towers transmit WiMax signals that passengers access via their computers’ Wi-Fi adapters.

Airplanes take a different approach to Wi-Fi

The company driving wireless access inside airplanes is AirCell, whose GoGo service runs from a grid of 92 cellular towers located in the contiguous 48 states (Canada will join soon). Three antennas on the airplane maintain the connection to the towers, while wireless access points arranged through the interior of the plane provide standard Wi-Fi service.

Because of the technology, AirCell advertises coverage “in the continental U.S. above 10,000 feet,” but access via the network may be best at altitudes in the sweet spot of 30,000 to 35,000 feet. To date, there have been few reports disclosing AirCell’s connection speeds or latency figures.

Airlines that offer AirCell will not allow VoIP, so forget about making those Skype calls (your fellow travelers will thank you for not phoning). However, you should be able to use VPN to get onto your corporate network via the AirCell link.

Now you can add network access to the list of reasons why you should get out of your car and onto a bus or train.

Woody Leonhard‘s latest books — Windows Vista All-In-One Desk Reference For Dummies and Windows Vista Timesaving Techniques For Dummies — explore what you need to know about Vista in a way that won’t put you to sleep. He and Ed Bott also wrote the encyclopedic Special Edition Using Office 2007.

Free utility displays all your PC's passwords

By Ryan Russell Most people are surprised by how many different passwords they have stored on their computers and how easy it is for bad guys to get at them. A free Windows program lets you discover — and recover — all the passwords lying around on your PC.

The basics on cracking and recovering passwords

Those of you out there who have never forgotten a password, raise your hand. Okay, you two or three memory marvels can skip to the bottom of this column. The rest of you will want to hear about a great, free password-recovery tool I found.

A number of programs are designed to crack or recover the passwords stored on a PC. The utilities have three primary functions: find and decode stored passwords, sniff network traffic for password material, and crack password hashes.

The password-recovery utility I use is Massimiliano Montoro’s Cain & Abel. This free Windows tool performs all three of the above functions admirably, though its interface can be a bear. I tested version 4.9.22 on my XP Pro SP3 machine. (Note that the site doesn’t list Vista as one of the versions of Windows the program supports, and forum posts indicate that the tool doesn’t run under Vista.)

I’m going to discuss only the stored-password and sniffing functions of Cain & Abel. Disclaimer: As with any security tool, use this program only on computers that you’re authorized to access. (And, to keep your passwords safely encrypted, see Scott Dunn’s review of password managers in last week’s content.)

Extract all the passwords stored on your system

Downloading, installing, and running Cain & Abel is straightforward. The program’s interface is slightly cryptic, but you want to make sure the Decoders tab is selected. Under Cached Passwords on the left are a number of subcategories, starting with Protected Storage. Select that option as well.

All of the subcategories say “Press the + button …” on the right. This refers to the big blue plus sign in the toolbar, directly under the Tools menu. Click that plus sign to begin the password scan.

Figure 1. Click the blue plus sign above the categories listed in Cain & Abel’s main window to begin a password scan.

Most machines will display some results from the PC’s protected storage, though most of the information is not terribly interesting. There may be passwords listed, depending on your Windows configuration.

Select each of the other subcategories under Cached Passwords and click the plus sign. If you’re prompted for further options, accept the default setting.

Look for any information that you wouldn’t want someone else to know, which usually boils down to your passwords. When I ran the program, I found sensitive data listed under the Protected Storage, LSA Secrets, and Credential Manager categories.

If someone walked up to your computer while you were away but logged in, they could download this information to a USB thumb drive in seconds. There would be no record of the breach, and the perps could then use your passwords to impersonate you until you changed a given password.

Doesn’t this sound like something you’d want to prevent? Defenses against this type of intrusion include locking your machine whenever it’s unattended, logging out whenever you leave it, using a password-protected screen saver, or simply not allowing Windows to store the passwords in the first place.

If you store passwords in your Firefox browser, for example, use Tools, Options, Security to set at least a short master password. This encrypts your password data and makes it inaccessible to passers-by.

Sniff your passwords as they travel the wire

Another risk to watch out for is passwords that you send across the network unencrypted or weakly encrypted. These text strings are at risk from anyone who is able to monitor your network traffic. This kind of monitoring is usually not a difficult thing to do, especially if you use an unencrypted wireless connection. It’s not always evident that a program encrypts its network traffic, and these days you can’t even trust the https at the start of the URL in the address bar to be 100% reliable.

To use Cain & Abel to check your network traffic, click the Sniffer tab on the top and the Passwords tab at the bottom. Choose the NIC card icon in the toolbar (it’s the same picture as on the Sniffer tab).

As you send traffic across the network, Cain & Abel will attempt to sniff passwords for the various protocols shown on the left. Try logging into a site or retrieving your mail. If you get stuck for something to sniff, use the command-line program ftp to transmit unimportant files to a site such as ftp.microsoft.com. Type anonymous as the username and enter anything for the password. You’ll then see that password in Cain & Abel.

Always use encryption to protect your passwords. Today’s e-mail clients offer encrypted e-mail authentication, but only if the e-mail server you’re using supports it. Make sure the sites you log into support https, although, as I mentioned above, even this can be misleading.

Most communications protocols, such as ftp and telnet, don’t support encryption, so use an alternative such as ssh for transmitting sensitive data. In addition, a tool such as Cain & Abel is great for sniffing in the background while you work to catch any private information you may inadvertently send unencrypted.

The Perimeter Scan column gives you the facts you need to test your systems to prevent weaknesses. Ryan Russell is quality assurance manager at BigFix Inc., a configuration management company. He moderated the vuln-dev mailing list for three years under the alias “Blue Boar.” He was the lead author of Hack-Proofing Your Network, 2nd Ed., and the technical editor of the Stealing the Network book series.