Spam Wars This Summer

Coming soon to a computer near you is all the spam, viruses, and Trojan-spawned malware that you’d ever want to meet.

The bad geeks couldn’t even spare the already tarnished memory of pop superstar Michael Jackson within days of his tragic demise. They had to create a worm piggybacking in an email that lured the unsuspecting into a treacherous Moonwalk when opened. The bad geeks have no shame.

The e-mail in question with the innocuous-sounding subject line “Remembering Michael Jackson” contained a corrupted zip file spread by USB memory sticks. Claiming to originate from sarah@michaeljackson.com, its wormy zip was supposed to contain secret songs and photos of the dead but bigger-than-life legend, but instead it was primed to infect your hard drive, and any others that you contacted with the efficiency of a Ponzi scheme.

Michael Jackson is just the tip of the gravestone. While spyware is on the wane, the new computer mal-boy of choice for evil geeks is the deceptive Trojans, no nicer now than they were in the time of Troy when Helen was still around. A Trojan used to be something else, an article worn that offered protection. Those safeguards are gone, only to be replaced by fake antivirus protections, counterfeit creations like MDW.

What to do? Where do you go to eradicate the lying software once it’s mistakenly loaded onto your ‘puter? An unlikely destination is the independent repair shop, the same place where you went to fix your iPod, Blackberry so cheaply and quickly you can take your notebook or your laptop. Increasingly as a sign of the times, these convenient places are becoming the ‘in’ place to find out what condition your condition is in – at least when it comes to infiltrators messing up your hard drive because some bad geek wants to have a little malicious fun at your expense. Don’t get mad, get even. Get rid of that MDW before it has a chance to cause too much hullaballoo.

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

Apple Has a Touchscreen Up Its Sleeve

The newest member of the Apple family is due to be born to consumers come October, and it will be a tablet computer priced relatively reasonably. But who will fix them when they inevitably break?

It’s only a rumor so far, arriving upon American ears via a Chinese website (Taiwanese). But come October, a splendid thingee might greet consumers as a boon to Halloween. An Apple in some bags of treats may be a leap in mass consumer technology featuring a handheld touchscreen computer, its attractive display less than a ten inch diagonal in size – smaller than most netbooks yet adding an iPod flavor to its ownership experience.

Apple has long hinted that such a tablet will be brought down from its R & D mountain, even if Moses has long been dead and so is Charlton Heston. Apple has never touted a netbook of its own, and to tout one just in time for the 2009 Christmas season would be a coup in itself. The touchy feely among us (of which there are many) would relish such a gadget, as would such denizens of Nerd-vana as Ebook readers and people beginning to get bored with their smartphones. The excited murmurs are predicting a price in the $800 range and sans a physical keyboard or a slider (it might come equipped with a slider) this newest electronic gadget looms as the next new fad impetus destined to slide the mobile internet into a nouveau perceived realm.

The size, precisely 9.7-inch as a diagonal, is probably influenced by the Kindle (which is practically identical as to how big it is, an often-asked question), and due to that product’s demonstrable success, should make the Apple tablet whatever it’s called into a hot item with brisk sales manifested during the buying season when retail counts the most.

But this Apple touchscreen to be, like anything sold by the millions, is bound to fail even before the novelty of its existence wears off. What kinds of warranties will Apple or distributors offer, and how useful will these be? It will be a rather expensive item to break, and certainly treasured by many leaving Nerd-vana. Will it be repairable at places that once fixed cell phones and iPods and Blackberries – like independent repair shops when all else fails?

Jeff Gasner is with CPR-Cell Phone repair. The leader in Cell Phone Repair and iPod repair offering cell phone repair services nationwide. To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

CPR Attacks Computer Viruses

CPR does more than repair cell phones and electronic devices these days. The independent chain of repair shops is now into cleaning up PC hard drives.

With the sad passing of pop icon Michael Jackson during the waning days of June, it was bound to happen: Evil geeks set loose a computer virus that played on the music superstar’s death.

In fact, at least a baker’s dozen worth of viruses, malware, and spam bearing the subject heading ‘Michael Jackson’ were making the rounds of computers worldwide.

One significant contaminant was posing as an innocuous e-mail under the subject line “Remembering Michael Jackson.” This techno-crawlie was circulating with a worm contained therein. A zip file attachment would latch onto a victim’s hard drive if downloaded. The e-mail, claiming to originate from sarah@michaeljackson.com, indicated that the attached zip contained secret songs and photos of Michael Jackson. But it was only a worm that was up to no good, no good at all.

Whether or not your computer has been “Michael Jacksoned,” you’ve probably picked up vicious viruses at some time in your downloading history. You might even have difficultly when trying to eradicate contaminants messing up your hard drive right now. What can you do about it when your name brand virus protection software package fails, and all else seems to?

You can have a good geek come to your computer to clean it up, at outrageous “house call” rates. You can take it in to a computer retail store where you got it, lock, stock, and hard drive – with all of the hassle and expense potentially entailed. Or you can take it down to CPR – especially your laptop or notebook – the same place where you got your cell phone and your Blackberry and your iPod fixed so cheaply and quickly.

CPR’s expert and experienced technicians are ready for any virus that might be ruining your Internet surfing, rearing its ugly head like a worm bearing fangs. It seems like there’s a new malicious virus or malware catching you unawares just about every week. If it wasn’t Michael Jackson, it might have been something equally trendy just to make you open it … open it … why don’t you open it? Not!

To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.

Will CPR Fix the New Touchscreen iPod-Like Thing When It Comes?

Before the end of 2009, it will be coming. The newest Apple will be a touchscreen, and though it will be a tablet computer sized like a Kindle, the prediction is that it too shall break.

CPR is fixing most anything these days. I-phones, Blackberries, Kindles, Palm pre, 3G, laptops & notebooks, it doesn’t seem to matter what it is. Their expert technicians used to just fix cell phones cheaply and quickly, but although CPR still fixes “at least several” of those communicating contraptions unknown to the Founding Fathers despite what Sarah Palin might say, and cell phone repair is still what they’re best known for, this trendsetting independent national chain of individually-franchised repair shops has become much more versatile. Since the realm of the I-touch has been breached by CPR’s fix-it gurus, anything seems possible, even engaging in a bit of speculative extrapolation.

Rumor has it that something made by Apple that looks nothing like a breadbox (if one were to guess) but might well resemble a Kindle in that it’s virtually certain to be a 9.7-inch diagonal, and that it will boast a touchscreen display computer tablet as it comes down from the R & D mountain in time for Halloween and that retail frenzy season otherwise known as Christmas – will become available by the millions. Assuming that this newest denizen of the mobile internet world will be reasonably priced (guesstimates of $800 for a single unit have been mentioned), this can only mean that the new whatsa-ma-callits, a touchscreen display iPod-like thingee made by Apple, will be widely available well before the dawn of 2010. Permitting yet another leap of faith, and notwithstanding any claims by Apple or its minions of the newest thingee’s indestructibility, or even similar boasts of such incentives singing the praises of extended manufacturer’s warranties, when the glitz wears off and someone is just a wee bit careless, who shall fix them, these newly-treasured computer tablets, when they inevitably break?

Just as the ingenuity of human error knows no bounds, so might the creativity of CPR’s expert technicians finally be challenged. The key word here is might.

To learn more about Cell phone repair, ipod repair, cell repair services, visit Chicagocellrepair.com.