(Editor’s note: This is certainly valid advice, but this old post is light on explanations or examples. Look for a newer post.)

It’s been a while since I last posted on my blog, but today I was reminded of something that I wanted to write about. This is something most generally called crapware, or unwanted programs that piggyback along on other program’s installers and then install themselves on your computer. Well-known specimens include toolbars that only serve to provide completely useless “features” such as slowing down your browser. These programs can also change your homepage and make your browser unstable.

How they get onto your computer is a good question. Programs cannot generally install themselves without some sort of user initiation, but I doubt you planned to go out and intentionally install, say, the Ask.com toolbar. So, how did it get into your browser and why is your default search engine now Ask? These programs usually get hidden into the installers of other, not-so-great programs like video downloaders and fake PC cleaners. Side note: PC cleaning software is almost always a scam, especially if there’s a free trial version. An exception to this rule is CCleaner by Piriform, which is great. (Ed: Not anymore.) If the installer has options for “normal install” and “advanced install”, this may mean that the normal install automatically selects the options to install sponsored crapware and the advanced install process will give you options to deselect these unwanted programs. Usually the deselection options are intentionally confusingly written to try to trick you into installing the crapware.

The moral of the story is: Always try to install legitimate, well-known software. If you need to install something else, watch the install process carefully.

(Editor’s note: This is from when I was running Vista. VISTA. Nothing in this review is remotely applicable to LibreOffice today and it is reproduced here solely for archival purposes.)

LibreOffice is a free full office suit for Windows, Mac, and Linux. It is open source and includes a word processor, a spreadsheet program, a presentation program, a drawing program, a math program, and a formula program. LibreOffice comes pre-installed with Linux Ubuntu, and works very well with that OS.

I have LibreOffice currently installed on three computers: one running Windows Vista, one running OS X 10.7.5, and one running Linux Ubuntu 12.04. On the Windows machine, LibreOffice runs fairly well. It could open faster, and it does seem to lag a bit sometimes, but then again it didn’t cost anything. I’m not trying to say “Oh, it was free, so it doesn’t need to run very well to get five stars”. I have to say, I do prefer Microsoft Office 2010, but for a free program LibreOffice is pretty good. That’s the beauty of open source.

On Mac OS X, LibreOffice runs about the same as on Windows. It is the only word processor/office software I have on my Mac, and I get along fairly well with it. Every once in a while, a cool feature that I hadn’t noticed before will show up and I’ll like the program even more.

Ubuntu is where LibreOffice really shines. It’s a great fit, and it runs like it was designed with Linux at heart.

Verdict: If you have Windows or Macintosh and don’t want to shell out $100+ for MS Office, LibreOffice is a good open source office solution. If you have Ubuntu, you will definitely want LibreOffice.

(Editor’s note: Though Linux Live USB Creator still works (2016), I have a number of other lighter-weight programs I would recommend. Archived.)

Linux Live USB Creator, or LiLi, is a free program for Windows that allows the user to burn .iso files of Linux distributions to thumb drives. The program has some really neat options like the ability to create persistence files, hide files on the thumb drive, and check the integrity of the .iso file.

Pros: LiLi supports a LOT of Linux distributions (you can see them all here) and every time I have used the program, it has produced a working, bootable Linux Live thumb drive. LiLi also self-updates whenever it is opened. When selecting options for burning the thumb drive, there are traffic lights that tell you whether or not your selections will work.

Cons: The entirely transparent window background is unique but a little quirky, and I have had a few issues with the program freezing or crashing. These freezes seemed to relate more to the interface then to to the actual program.

Conclusion: LiLi is a perfectly acceptable way to create bootable Linux thumb drives in Windows. And yes, you can simply use the Linux Live thumb drive to install Linux on a computer. Unless you specifically delete the installer file, it will be there.

(Editor’s note: Tails is way past version 0.13, so this post is useless for practical purpose. Another one for posterity.)

I stumbled across Tails a few weeks ago while searching for stuff for getting around network blocks. Long story short, I found the Tor project website and noticed a link for “Tails – A Live CD/USB distribution configured to use Tor safely.” I liked the sound of that, so when I got the chance I clicked on the link and began to read through the documentation. It turned out that Tails was still in version 0.13 and that the documentation looked pretty complicated. Also, to burn Tails to a thumb drive like I wanted to do, you had to have a version of Tails already burned and booted because the official thumb drive installer program is part of Tails. I was bummed over this as I didn’t want to burn a CD, so I checked around and realized that Lili (Linux Live) USB Creator, a program that I already had, can burn a live version of Tails to a thumb drive. The only catch was that it didn’t allow for persistence files, but that didn’t matter for the way I wanted to use Tails.

Anyway, I got a thumb drive set up and booted from it. Tails loaded to the login screen at an acceptable rate of speed, which was when I noticed some reasons that Tails isn’t version 1.0 yet.

Tails seemed to work okay; the custom browser Iceweasel opened when I logged on and said that I was using the Tor network. Oddly enough, however, the clock wouldn’t synchronize. Though a pop-up said that Tails was setting the time, the clock displayed completely incorrect times on multiple boots on various computers.

One cool feature that Tails provides is Windows XP Camouflage mode (see image). This is under “Advanced Options” at the login screen and loads a custom desktop/window manager that changes the wallpaper, windows, and toolbar to Windows XP style. The effect is fairly convincing though the Start button and fonts don’t look completely right upon close inspection, and from a few feet back someone not extremely familiar with XP would probably mistake Tails for the 2001 version of Windows.

The drawback with this feature is that, well, it’s Windows XP. The reason you would need the camouflage feature would be to fool people around you into thinking that you’re using the computer’s original operating system. However, many computer nowadays run Windows 7 – and now Windows 8 – so an XP camouflage isn’t all that useful.

In the end, it’s clear that Tails is still under development. However, I think it has the potential to become a very powerful tool. This touches on my vision that someday everyone will carry around small, portable, bootable drives that have their own operating system and security systems.

If Tails gains a Windows 7 camouflage mode and undergoes some more refinements, I think it just might hit the spot. In any case, I’ll be watching for new versions.

(Editor’s note: I brought back this post — one of my originals — for posterity.)

Yes! Now we can search from the address bar! Oh, wait, they ruined the tab layout.

Let’s start with the new, improved address bar. I don’t know if you have ever used Safari 5.1.7, but in that browser the address bar did not double as a search bar. The last browser that I noticed this lack-of-a-feature in was Internet Explorer 7. Happily, this has been corrected in Safari 6.0.2.

One feature that’s been added to Safari 6.0.2 is a new tab bar. I guess that there must be some people who like these new, amorphous, size-changing tabs (the feature got added to the latest version of Safari, after all) but for me it’s a disaster. Besides the size-changing, the tabs are below the address bar so locating them quickly with the mouse is difficult.

The tabs (if you could find the option to show them) were all the same size until they exceeded the space available in the tab bar, like a normal browser. However, they were located below the address bar. For me, this is pretty much a deal-breaker: I usually have between 2-10 tabs open at a time, and with Google Chrome (yes, I am a Chrome user) all I have to do is shoot my cursor up to the top of the screen and move it horizontally to locate a tab. This works on maximized Windows browsers and full screen Mac browsers. Not to single out Chrome; both Firefox and Opera are also like this.

With Safari 5.1.7, I had to orient my cursor on both the horizontal and vertical axis to locate a tab. When I’m trying to work quickly, this is a noticeable difficulty as the tabs are also the same color as the tab bar and don’t stand out well. Safari’s tabs also don’t show the site’s favicon, which makes identifying tabs at a glance difficult.

This tab bar is different, but not better, in Safari 6.0.2. Now, the tabs change sizes to fill up the entire tab bar at any given time. That means that the first tab you open takes up the entire bar, then the second one splits it 50/50, then the third one divides the space by three, and so on. This means that when dealing with many tabs at one time, the tabs confusingly change size and position. Isn’t this why Internet Explorer 8’s tab setup was bad? (On that browser, the first tab was big until you opened another tab, then all the tabs would jump to a smaller, albeit uniform, size.)

Another problem with 6.0.2 that was also around in 5.1.7 – and all previous versions as far as I know – is that it’s difficult to clear browser data. In Chrome, Firefox, and even Opera and Internet Explorer the Clear Browser Data options open up in one view with options to clear download history, empty the cache, delete cookies and other site and plug-in data, and clear saved passwords at the minimum. In Safari, there are different menus for clearing browsing history, cache, and download history, and I’m not sure how to clear saved passwords except through CCleaner, a third-party utility. Also, when I chose to clear history and top sites, the top sites page just reset itself to a bunch of websites I have never or hardly ever visited.

Also, with the release of Safari 6.0.2, it looks like Safari for Windows is over. (Ed: …and the five active users were heartbroken.)

In conclusion: the above article turned out as a pretty scathing review. I’m not trying to say that Safari is a terrible browser, and it has lots of neat and innovative features (such as the 2 finger swipe to move back and forward between pages that literally throws the page to the right or left – I love that feature) and excellent HTML5 support. Unfortunately, the toolbar interface and layout of menus makes it not the right browser for me.