Steve Litchfield

Here's a rant that should strike a few chords with regular geeks out there. The number of PC and Mac applications which state in their installation instructions: "Make sure you do the following before you install the software: Turn off any virus-protection and security software that you may have installed on your computer." - This is from installing Final Cut Express on a MacBook by the way but I've seen plenty of other examples on a PC. I can understand why the developers state this: it's because anti-virus and firewall software might possibly get in the way of the bludgeoning installer that the developer has bodged together. Look, let's get one thing straight: you should NEVER turn off your firewall or anti-virus, unless you REALLY know what you're doing. For example, my router has a built-in firewall and I know it's turned on, but most users wouldn't know this and it's a really bad idea telling them to 'make sure' to turn off their s...

I was always terrified of Outlook - it seemed a monstrosity of a program to carry out the functions it did - far too many settings and functions and they often got in the way. I used it because it was the only thing to reliably sync to my phones. But then I started to sync to 'the cloud' (GooSync/Google) and I've been migrating my working environment online ever since. As a result, I only fire up Outlook every once in a while, to check on some old data. But get this - even after 'File > Exit'ing Outlook, part of it still hangs around, auto-checking for new emails and grabbing them for itself! "I'VE CLOSED YOU DOWN, YOU STUPID PROGRAM" I shout, to no avail. I end up having to reboot in order to stop the auto-check behaviour. Application? Seems more like a virus to me.... mutter, mutter....