ON COMPUTERS

Google improving Project Fi cellular service, keeping it inexpensive

We love our cellphone service from Google's new Project Fi, which we switched to almost three months ago after it won a user-satisfaction poll. It only works with Google Nexus phones, but if you get one, your bill might be as low as $20 a month with tax.

Google Fi is a virtual network that currently works with three phone carriers and with Wi-Fi. If the signal is strongest from T-Mobile, for example, that's who your phone will connect to. If Sprint is better, you'll be using Sprint. Google announced this month that U.S. Cellular will also provide coverage for Project Fi users.

A Google Fi account gives you unlimited text and phone calls for $20 a month. Each gigabyte of data (which is what you use up when you're on the Web) is an additional $10 per month. But you get money back for the data you don't use. If you pay $10 for a gigabyte and you only use half a gigabyte, you get a $5 refund.

Our comment on this is that it was inevitable that phone service would get cheaper. It was just too darn expensive, with users averaging $73 a month in charges.

Hacking Macs

The main reason hackers target Windows computers over Macs is because there are so many more of them. Global Macs account for only 7.5 percent of all personal computer sales. Thirty-five years ago it was around 6 percent; not much change, eh? (The top PC vendors are Lenovo, HP, Dell, Asus and Apple, in that order.)

But that slight increase is just enough of a bump to attract the bad guys. According to a study by Carbon Black, a security firm, the number of malware attacks on Macs was five times greater in 2015 than the previous five years combined.

The Mac OS X operating system comes with its own malware detection program, but hackers still get through. According to Malwarebytes.org, a piece of ransomware called KeRanger has been downloaded by 6,500 Mac owners, some of whom saw their photos, files, music and what-have-you locked away. Ransomware is a term given to attacks that make your files unavailable unless you pay a ransom to have them unlocked.

Reach Out and Text Someone

We get emails saying, "Hey, check your text messages." Maybe you do too. Texting is used more often than email by the younger set, and it seems like it will soon be used more often by everyone. Why's that? It's simpler. Its users point out: "There's less overhead." Meaning, there are fewer steps to send a message.

Recently we wrote about one solution to check for incoming text messages. It's a free program called MySMS (SMS stands for Short Message Service), which pops up on your computer screen when a new text message comes in. But you have to remember to start up the program.

Now we have an even simpler fix: Tweak the settings on your smartphone.

Smartphones make sort of happy noises when new email comes in, when there's breaking news, and for all kinds of other reasons. It's a personality thing. So you can silence all of those except the ringtone for phone calls and the sound your phone makes when announcing a new text. That way, when you hear a sound, it means somebody is trying to get in touch with you. (Search on the phrase "how to shut off sound notifications on Android," or "how to turn off sound notifications on iPhone," for detailed instructions.)

We get thousands of emails, so we used to turn the volume off on our phone so we wouldn't get bombarded with ding-a-lings every few seconds. We missed a lot of stuff that way, and yet the world seemed to go on pretty much as before.

Internuts

-- Search on "Passive Aggressive Office Notes" to see some funny examples. A note on the office printer said: "My name is now Bob Marley, because I'm always jamming." Seen on a vending machine: "Fix me! I take money but I don't give treats." A note inside a refrigerator read: "I don't know your name but you have been seen stealing my butter. Put it back in the fridge or I will lick everything."

-- Search on the term "The Making of a Marlin" to find a short YouTube video about making sculpture from plastics washed up on the beach.

Windows 7 Redux

We recently wrote about the $5 program, Start 10, which brings back the look and feel of Windows 7, and buries the annoying distractions of Windows 10. A reader reminded us that a free alternative to Start 10 is ClassicShell, from ClassicShell.net, which we wrote about before Windows 10 came out. ClassicShell is out in a new version, and is still free. Like Start 10, it returns normalcy to your Windows experience.

The reader says her brother is a computer network administrator who puts ClassicShell on the computers of all the medical office computers he services. She writes: "I don't know what Microsoft has been thinking, but the Windows 8 and 10 setups cater to the teeny-boppers who are on touchscreen devices for personal reasons, not professionals who are earning a living and paying bills. I am rather dumbfounded why the target market actually is the unemployed, the nonprofessionals, and the non-taxpaying sector." We got the impression she was a wee bit ticked off.

App Happy

-- MyScript Smart Note is a free app for Android and iPhone. It lets you make handwritten notes on your phone or tablet using a stylus. What's fun is you can edit those notes with easy gestures. Put a line through a word to erase it. Draw a line between letters or words to insert a new word, an apostrophe, or some other mark. Your notes can be turned into digital text and are searchable. Or copy your signature by holding your finger on it, tap copy and paste it into an email.

-- MyScript Calculator lets you make calculations using handwriting instead of typing. It's also free for Android and iPhone. It even does algebra. We had trouble getting it to recognize a decimal point. But it's a quick way to calculate tips. We scribbled 15/100 x 16.8 to figure a 15 percent tip on a $16.80 bill: it's $2.52.

Bob and Joy Schwabach can be reached by email at bobschwa@gmail.com and joydee@oncomp.com.

SundayMonday Business on 06/27/2016

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