Like the "do not call list" that every one running for public office is using this year. Sure they may block spam from other people but they will spam the hell out of you themselves.

I bought Norton a few years ago, then upgraded last year for $29.95 or so. Then a month before my subscription expires I get daily or sometimes hourly pop ups from Norton letting me know that my Norton Internet Security subscription is going to expire in 31 days I choose later, then ok and sure enough it pops up a few hrs later. This has been going on for weeks now and after choosing a few hundred later and then ok I've decided the Hell with Norton time to try someone else.

LICENSING COMPLAINT - I really don't mind paying for licenses ... just make it logical and affordable for us!

Another complaint of mine is why can't software companies give us home user licenses, let us register a few computers under our name and use one license for all of our PCs. In a perfect world, we should all have a pc, each kid, maybe a media center or two for recording TV, so several in the house. If you are like me and have been working on PCs since ... well a long time. I have a lot of old PCs sitting around the house that are great for the kids ... well kind of great, another blog about kids wanting to play Sims 2. I think we have one on each floor and each kid has one so 5 or 6 PCs from p3-500 to p4-3.2 ... I'm waiting for a quad core ... another blog someday about how slow fast really is.

McAfee -
Great idea 3 pc license ... but poor implementation. Ok McAfee may work too but its such a hassle that its probably not worth it. I though wow the same price as norton and I get 3 licenses, lets give it a try! Wrong! Ok I have a 3 user license but I have to register 3 times with 3 different email addresses no less uh! To really botch things up try making restricted accounts for your kids on their pcs so they cannot install free smiley faces with spyware. Yah works great but really screws up McAfee and it cannot update the virus checker unless admin is logged in, kids get so many errors their heads start to spin.

Wait I'm not done.... mcafee get a hint here you are close just fix these hassles for us. Ok for some reason the mcafee license needs to varified ... great now what email address did I use on what computer. Shish I give up on McAfee TOO! NOT Worth the hassle, I should just let the kids destroy the machines and teach them how to rebuild their pcs.

MICROSOFT LIVE - Anyone use it? What do you think? Good, bad or avg?

What about Microsoft Live antivirus. I bought a 3 user license again even cheaper than Mcafee but then my concern is do I have to use Internet Explorer and all other Microsoft crap to get it to work. I emailed support and the girl thought so. I'm holding off on installing it until I figure this out. I've learned to hate microsoft over the years although its a love hate, they do some good but they really should have broken up the company a few years ago. They screw with their stuff and mess up the world who uses it all of the time. I got some bug fix to I.E. the other day and ebay stopped working. I use netscape and firefox whenever I can but Microsoft is constantly working to destroy everyone in the world. Its part of Bill's plan screw the world and then give some back to the people who's lives he's destroyed to get his photo with Bono on some magazine. Ok enough bill bashing. Should I load this or take it back?

RECOMENDATIONS:
I do use avast at home for my kids pc's and is NO Hassle and Free, I would not even mind paying something for it. It gets updated automatically and seems to work fine.

First apple wins design hands down, best design for their macs, monitors, stores, websites, icons and ipods. But it kind of stops there. You'd think with 343 million other users you'd try to write good software. My wife was a mac lover and we still have 3 macs in the house gathering dust, even the big G3 is on the shelf. Suppose to be easy to use, intuitive right! Well one thing is for sure they look great. Really good, maybe we should use the G3 as an end table in the living room. Guess it goes back to bleeding edge ... back in the days when every mac designer got the bomb on the screen. They lost all of their work and had to reboot and still none of them complained. For us PC users, we where horrified that anything like that would ever happen and even more horrified finding a bunch of people who did not think anything about it. My wife use to say ... oh that ... yah it does that ... just hold these keys down and ... Aaahhh. Ok early pc's were not perfect either but most of their problems were user errors loading software from the net and other things. But on the mac side these were the applications, these were hard core users, designers you know right brain people, not mom and dad hacks trying to learn a computer for the first time (... look Martha press this button and this cool cup holder pops out ... what will they think of next dear?).

Not to mention Mr. Jobs had the monopoly on the macs either, although its the life long battle pc vs mac, right brain vs left. Sure Bill Gates had a monopoly but not on the hardware just the software. Jobs on the other hand had it all. I remember my wife wanted a 1.4 mb floppy drive for her mac, wow those were the days imagine 1.4 mb. Well on a pc it would set you back $25 or so but on a mac that crashed several times a day it was $250, yep that is correct there was some special chip in the floppy that made it work with the mac. Think my wife's mac II was around $10,000 with a 20" monitor and a laser printer. My pc for reference was $1,500 with a 15" monitor and dot matrix printer.

Then came the ipod, wow another beautiful thing, having one is great, using one pretty good, we'll get to that later. Mr. Jobs hit the hammer on the head again. But the legacy of apple was soon to follow, although not until your battery ran out. When it did it was the $250 floppy all over again. Oops battery dead, send it to us, we are the only ones who can replace the battery and you will pay through the nose for this, maybe even more than the unit is worth. Well when you have a product that's hot, your bound to piss off some pc users who don't put up with the bomb crap. Sure enough they sued apple and won, they got the right to replace batteries themselves. Oh but wait it gets better ...

Ok back to the point of this blog. You'd think if you have 98% more pc users than mac users you'd try to win them and regain back some of your market share. Well not sure anyone at apple thinks like that. I get the impression its right brain only apple, with a brain dead left brain.

Why... got my ipod and love it, then really tried to use it only to find out that the proprietary software does not work very well on a pc. Sure it may work for you but not sure any one at apple has ever used a pc before. XP is a nice os, microsoft has finely got one right, stable just what it should have been well ... years ago, although win 98 was also nice.

Any ways the problem with the ipod is multiple logins in xp, sure all of you single guys and girls out there could care less about this but us parents trying to shield our kids from web porn and phishers. If you are like me and have your ipod plugged in to the pc then have your kid login you see the problem right away, either everything on the ipod will be deleted, happened several times or it will get corrupted. Not to mention itunes will find all of the music again and put more duplicates in your system than you can imagine, I think we have 4 duplicates of every song on the system not sure if they are real duplicates or just errors in the software, will they ever get it right, don't think so.

I have been trying to get someone at apple to help me and listen to me about this but after many email messages that were never returned and messages on the forum's which it appears that I'm not alone on this one. Apple is shedding the blind eye yet again, putting that head down in the sand and only focusing on what it knows sell, sell, sell. Sure Microsoft has problems but as pc users we are use to a certain level of customer support. We expect programs to run pretty well and if not be fixed soon with free upgrades until they get it right. Although the apple programs still seem like the bomb is there its just hidden from view, the hardware is ahead of its time but the software is way behind its time and support forget about it. Sure there are updates but no real fixes just more buggy features.

The policy at apple has always been you buy it you own it, no returns, no exchanges and no support unless you want to pay for support. Microsoft is not much better but its software only so you know they will eventually fix the bugs, good thing they do not have a hardware monopoly, can any pc user imagine not being able to return hardware they do not like. I bought the ipod and probably find it like the early mac users, I have the bombs, my ipod has crashed several times and needed to be rebooted with a goofy holding down of buttons, the simple reboot button would have won us over. The itunes on xp still crap but all in all its still the best thing out there. Can someone else make a great mp3 player that is as cool as the ipod and works better!

Help us please. We hate the Bill Gates/Steve Jobs monopolies!

Thank you openoffice.org, sourceforge.net, avast.com home user license and others who give us a good alternative choice. Oh and if your listening IBM make OS/2 public domain and you can add a paypal donate here button on the website so we can thank you too!

If you think we have made it through 3 of these think again there are over 740 of these being tracked that will come within several million miles from the earth with new ones being located and tracked all of the time.

Actually the earth does get hit by about 25 tons of space garbage every day generally dust and sand from space most of which burns up and gives us an occasional shooting star. We made it again just happened to be the right place at the right time another near miss. No it was not a potential car crash or another accident, no terrorist either! Almost got hit by another big piece of space garbage. In fact over the past week we have been close to 3 pretty large rocks or technically PHA Potentially Hazardous Asteroids, Dec 5 distance 143,313 miles, size 114 ft , Dec. 9 distance 525,481 miles size 65 ft and Dec 14 distance 1,886,954 miles size 1213 feet. I know what you are saying yah but 143 thousand miles is a long ways away and you are kind of right it is almost as far as the moon, although when you consider that the earth moves 1.59 million miles on its orbit around the sun every day its only a few hours away. Again I am assuming its either ahead of us or behind us on our orbit, when it could be around us in any direction. However being a few hours away from being eliminated as a species of the earth is still scary. Assuming these passed in front of our path around the sun, the rock on Dec.5 was 2 hours 9 minutes away, Dec 9 was less than 8 hrs away and the major rock on Dec. 14 was a little more than 28 hrs away.

If you think we have made it through 3 of these think again there are over 740 of these being tracked that will come within several million miles from the earth with new ones being located and tracked all of the time.

Actually the earth does get hit by about 25 tons of space garbage every day generally dust and sand from space most of which burns up and gives us an occasional shooting star.

Instant rebate $125 - What the hell is that? a markup then discount so you feel better buying this product. What are we all stupid. Maybe ford should sell the explorer for $150,000 then give you a $120,000 instant rebate. Wow what a deal! Where do companies get off presuming we are all the dumbest people on earth. Come on now its computers not pencils and paper. Most of us who use computers have a certain level of intelligence. Maybe they should rename their store Don't_know_shit_about_computers_buy_one_here@compUSA.com or If_you_think_2+2=5_do_we_have_a_deal_for_you@compusa.com . I keep hearing homer saying Doh!

Don't go yet I'm still on my rag ... Take the example below from their website, note a compUSA rebate hello what's this for, oh it's after we destroy the box so it would be impossible to return in case it it breaks in the first 30 days. Another perfect example of a markup, that they can discount. But its their hope that if they make you jump through enough hoops you won't waste the hours qualifying for the rebates.

Hate to send you else were but the neweggs and tigerdirect and others don't play the heavy rebate programs. Costco is another one if there is a rebate its a painless form online that takes 2 minutes tops.

Call your congressman and get these stupid rebates easier for consumers if not made illegal. Give your business to companies that don't make their living on your stupidity.

And what about those $125 rebates where you need to sign up for Aol.com for 12 months at $23.90/mth ($286.80) wow so to save $125 you have to spend $286.80 where's the savings in that? Anyone want to explain this to me? Doh!

Of course you need to be a new subscriber to aol. Hum isn't net 0 cheaper, yep 12 months for $119.40 ... aol $286.80 - $125 = $161 vs $119.40

Hay I got a great idea, you buy a computer any where and I will give you a $1000 rebate after you buy my product for $2500 hee, hee, and he laughs all the way to the bank thinking I love the stupid suckers.... oh did I mention all the hoops you'll need to jump through too!... oh did I mention the $1000 rebate is actually a gift card to buy more stuff from me hope you did not read the small print. :-/