Office and the Alternatives

Microsoft Office is used by hundreds of millions of people, both at home and at work. Whether it's just Word and/or Excel, sometimes it's the whole suite. In the past five years, Microsoft has seen big competition in the Office space, and while they might not be hurting too badly from it, computer users are benefiting from other entries into the space.

Traditionally, Microsoft Office has always been sold as an installable suite of applications that is purchased once and used until it becomes outdated. The basic suite has usually consisted of Word for document editing and Excel for spreadsheets. Additional programs like Outlook (for email), Powerpoint (presentations), Onenote (note taking), and Access (databases) often made the "Ultimate" Office suite too expensive for most. Even the least expensive version was usually pretty pricey.

In the 2000's, the most popular Microsoft Office alternative was the open-source (and free to use) OpenOffice.org, which was purchased by Sun, later by Oracle. It was a popular replacement for the most popular creative applications like Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Oracle didn't handle the product well, though, and it has since become the current [and excellent] product LibreOffice. I regularly install LibreOffice for many of my clients because it's more than capable of handling the basic needs of most users. It's free, doesn't need a subscription, and isn't tied to the cloud, so it meets many people's needs.

Currently, the biggest competitor to Microsoft Office is Google and their Drive product, which offers word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and more. It's also a free product as long as you have a free Google account, and all your work is kept on the cloud so you can access it from anywhere. Google's office software isn't nearly as full featured as Microsoft's or even LibreOffice, but it does 99% of what most users need on a daily basis. Whether it fits your needs or not will vary from person to person, but I personally use it for everything.

Lastly, the new alternative for Microsoft Office is...Microsoft Office. Their new product, Office 365, is a subscription service. It starts at $70/year for a single user or $99/year for five users. This can be a steep price for some, considering that it used to cost $150 for the software out-right. That's what makes the $99 subscription so appealing to families.

Office 365 can also be very appealing to small businesses as well, where it can handle email in addition to giving them the most recent version of Office applications. For my clients who use Outlook as their primary email client, I've been migrating them from Google Apps to Office 365 because it handles email much better with that application. If you don't use Outlook, I recommend Google Apps for your business.

How Phishing Works

There are countless methods that bad actors can use to gain access to your computer, and their objectives can vary, but here are some of the ones I've seen most often in my work. This is different from viruses, in that humans are trying to get you to do something to gain them access or information, instead of a computer program.

Method one: Pop-ups

Often, these will present themselves as notifications that your computer is infected or something else is wrong. It'll give you a phone number to call to fix the problem. Don't call this number and if there's an X to close it, click that. 

Method two: Phone Calls

A very common method these days is using phone calls to practice scaring users into letting the attacker in. You'll receive a call from someone claiming to be from Microsoft or other authority. They'll claim that your computer is infected, unlicensed, or some other lie to keep you on the phone. Once they've convinced you, they'll request that you let them remotely control your computer so they can fix it, or maybe just jump ahead to asking for money (depending on their goal). To protect yourself from these calls, simple hang up on them. Microsoft will NEVER call you about your computer. Nobody else will either, for that matter. They can't tell that your computer is infected.

What they have in common:

In either of these two methods, the attacker will start with the broadest assumptions and try to narrow things down to target you. It's similar to how fortune tellers work. For example, when you receive one of these calls it has nothing at all to do with you. They have a list of phone numbers and they're working down it. When they call hundreds of phone numbers in a day, chances are that Windows users will make up the largest group, so they start with that assumption. I once received a call at a beach condo informing me that a computer on the premises was infected (there was no computer). These people are casting wide nets and then narrowing from there.

In general, two things make these attackers happy: credit card info or access to your computer. As long as you don't give them either of these things you'll be ok.

If you do give them access to your computer, they use a few tricks to get you to give them what they want. The worst of these is to lock up your computer so badly that they'll hold it ransom until you pay them a large sum of money (anywhere from $500 to $1000). But a more common practice is to try and put you on a virus cleanup and protection plan. They'll scan your computer once for a few hundred dollars, and charge you a couple hundred a year for virus protection. Their method for proving your computer is infected is one of my favorite tactics. They'll often show you this:

That's called the Windows Event Viewer. It tracks thousands of things on your computer and can be a useful tool for figuring out problems with your computer. What the attacker doesn't tell you is that you can make the Event Viewer look like this on EVERY WINDOWS COMPUTER. The shot above is actually my own desktop that I'm writing this post on. Sure, errors come up every now and then, but usually they're not something serious, and they almost never give evidence of a virus infection. But the person on the other end of the phone will use this information to show you that your computer needs help.

Again, the easiest solution for these attacks are to not give them anything at all. You have all the control. If you ever receive a phone call about your computer, ignore it entirely. If you see a popup on your computer, the only thing that indicates is that you could potentially have adware on your system that needs to be cleaned off (in which case give me a call).

There are other ways for attackers to gain control of your system, mostly through viruses and other attacks that don't rely on social engineering. Again, having antivirus installed and being safe about web browsing and emails can help this tremendously.

Microsoft's "Helpful" Windows 10 Upgrade Process

Have you seen the notification on the right? If you have a computer running Windows 7 or 8, you probably have. It pops up all the time, bugging you constantly, trying to get you to upgrade to Microsoft's latest operating system.

It's possible to get rid of this message permanently. It's tied to a Microsoft Windows update that was installed as part of your routine security updates, but fortunately others find it just as annoying and have created tools to remove these notifications. Most people have been clicking the X without thinking twice, but things have changed and it's no longer a minor annoyance, so you might want to run those removal tools. Here's why.

Recently, Microsoft switched strategies to improve their upgrade numbers. They switched from the notice above to this one:

In both cases, a couple clicks gets you upgraded to Windows 10, but previously, clicking the X meant that nothing would happen and you were ignoring the prompt to upgrade. But now Microsoft is saying that you don't have a choice. They've downloaded all the files and you WILL be upgraded to Windows 10 by the time specified. If you click the X then come back to your computer after the time in the notification, you'll be coming back to a Windows 10 computer.

This is highly problematic. While each version of Windows has brought a smoother upgrade than the last, things can still go wrong. Most of my clients experience driver compatibility issues, so things like scanning or printing might not work like they used to. But I've had other users end up locked out of their computers, and other major problems. At the very least it should be up to the user to decide when they're ready for this kind of major process on their computer.

Now, even with this new notice there's still a way to deal with it. Take a close look and notice the word "here" in blue text. That can take you to a screen that will let you delay or cancel the upgrade. However, I've seen some instances where you don't have the option to cancel. My own desktop computer, for example, had to be upgraded and I had no choice.

Once the upgrade has happened, if you decide you hate Windows 10, you can always downgrade back to 7 or 8 within 30 days. Either way, make a backup of your files before you do so to make sure nothing gets lost.

In the end, there will be no choice. Windows 10 is the future of Microsoft whether we like it or not. To be clear, I actually think Windows 10 is pretty nice and miles better than 8 (7 is my favorite). But I think users should have the choice of when they switch to it. Fortunately, others feel the same way. Again, you can download a tool here that will remove the prompts to upgrade.

As I've mentioned in a previous article about this upgrade, Windows 7 and 8 will be supported until 2020 and 2023, respectively. At that point you'll probably want a new computer which will come with Windows 10 anyway. Until then, you can fight off these update notifications, downgrade automatic upgrades, or give in and live with it. If you have any trouble, just give me a call.

Recharge Your Batteries!

I haven't bought a battery in four years.

More accurately, I haven't thrown away a battery in four years. That's because around that time I switched to only using rechargeable batteries for anything that took AA, AAA, C, or D batteries.

I remember my family trying to use rechargeable batteries in the 90's. I also remember that there was a decent amount of confusion about which chargers would work with which batteries. I also recall that those batteries lasted very short amounts of time between charges, were very expensive, and had a limited lifespan in general.

Fortunately, rechargeable batteries have come a long way since that time. Several years ago, I decided to try the most popular rechargeables, the Eneloop line from Sanyo (now made by Panasonic). This is a line of AA and AAA batteries that stores their charge very well when not in use, can be recharged a claimed 2000+ times, and work with most chargers.

I have a battery storage center in my laundry room where I keep dozens of rechargeable batteries, ready to go at any time (I need to get some more AA's as you can see). This is my workflow: when I remove a battery from something in my home, I put them right into my charger. Once charged, they go back in the battery holder, ready to go when I need one. I always pick from the first ones in line, and return charged batteries to the end, so I can cycle through my batteries evenly. The time to recharge isn't super quick - usually about 4-8 hours - but that's not bad if you have some extras on hand.

So far, I've found that my Eneloops offer up about the same battery life as a traditional alkaline battery. The life might be a little shorter, but that doesn't bother me when I don't have to run out to the store to get more, or keep 50 alkaline batteries on hand to make sure I have enough at all times and not making repeated trips to the store. I don't have to scour for deals on batteries, either, which brings us to the cost. This pack of eight Eneloop batteries costs $21.28 at the time of writing this. That comes out to $2.66 per battery. This pack of 48 Amazon-branded alkaline batteries (the cheapest I could find in a quick search) comes out to $0.25/battery. That's pretty cheap, and makes the Eneloops look quite expensive. But if you use one Eneloop more than 10 times, you come out ahead. Even if you take their claim of 2100 recharge cycles with a huge grain of salt and assume it's more like 700 cycles. Even if you factor in a shorter life on one charge than an alkaline would have (lets say 70%). You still come out way ahead (I've done the math at the end of this, if you're interested.

Eneloop used to make rechargeable C and D batteries, but they've decided to simplify their line and focus on the AA and AAA sizes. Instead, they now make plastic sleeves that act as spacers for C and D sizes. These sleeves accept a AA battery, and will power the device just like there were a real C or D battery inside. I was surprised to actually see this work, but the major downside is that a AA battery just doesn't have the same amount of charge as a C or D, so while it'll work, you'll find yourself changing and charging these batteries pretty often. When our son was an infant, I used these batteries in a swing we had. It worked, but I ended up replacing them every other day, so we ended up plugging it into the wall. If you're interested in C or D batteries, the EBL brand gets good reviews on their batteries and chargers. They even have 9v batteries!

I can't recommend rechargeable batteries highly enough. In the end, most brands these days will be fairly similar. I recommend Eneloop because they've been so good for so long, and still have some technological advantages over the others. They all, however, have significant environmental advantages over regular alkalines.

Lets do some math! I'll use my extraordinarily conservative numbers from earlier to make my calculations. I said that an Eneloop AA only had 700 charges instead of 2100, and could only power a device for 70% of the time that a 25 cent alkaline battery could. That means that 700 charges of the Eneloops had the same total supply of power as 490 alkalines. That still means You'll need to spend $122.50 on alkaline batteries compared to the $2.66 cost of one AA Eneloop. Rechargeable batteries do, however, have electricity usage costs associated with them, but those are surprisingly minimal - often in the realm of a couple dollars a year for all the rechargeable batteries in your home! The conclusion is simple: the more alkaline batteries you go through in a year, the more financial sense rechargeables make. Plus, just think about how massive a bag of 490 alkaline batteries is, and picture those in a dump somewhere. Then think about a single AA rechargeable battery. When that finally gets disposed of, it's going to take up significantly less space.