Downgrade? or Upgrade?

As you may have known, we got our hands on a free copy of the Vista Home Basic upgrade installation disc a few weeks ago and I put it on our desktop pc while the Romgi was at work one day. I will agree that it makes Windows look a bit nicer, but since we had the lowliest of the lowest versions, not much was changed from XP – except that now almost all of our computer’s thinking power was constantly being used.

The Romgi went out and bought new memory to double what was in the computer before, which meant that our upgrade was no longer free. It did speed things up, of course, but with all the stupid security popups and permissions problems, not to mention the continual delay caused by trying to delete files…I was losing my mind! Computers are not meant to be that slow. I realize this isn’t a new desktop – the Romgi got it when we started college – but it ought to be able to function with 1GB of memory…

So today, when I was finally over my battle with the stomach flu, I read a lot of articles and forum posts about how to get rid of Vista. Unfortunately, there’s no way to just get rid of the upgrade and go back to the pre-Vista computer. If you buy a computer that comes with Vista Business Edition already installed, the manufacturer may offer a free downgrade to XP, but there are no downgrade rights for Vista Home users. Microsoft says this is because they feel it would be extremely unlikely that a home user would have any reason to want to downgrade. (Don’t they read the internet?!?)

That being the case, I copied all of our documents, music, photos, game files, etc., to the other two computers in our apartment. After the Romgi came home from class he went through the files on the desktop again to make sure I got everything important; then we crossed our fingers and completely wiped the hard drive clean. It seemed to go well, so we stuck in the XP installation cd and hoped for the best.

And now…it feels so nice! Like coming out of a hot shower after you’ve been camping. Ahhh. I have plainly confessed to the Romgi that it was my fault for installing Vista to begin with, and I am very sorry to have caused so much trouble; but on the whole, I think the computer is working better now that it has less (much less!) junk on it, whether in the form of useless programs or useless operating systems.

I do agree with many dissatisfied Vista customers, going back to XP is not really much of a downgrade. Maybe if I’d had a really cool version of Vista I would have seen a big improvement from XP, and maybe Microsoft is steadfastly working on the bugs, but I don’t think I’ll be interested in “upgrading” for quite some time.

North Korean Blog?

So, as a few of you know, I have fully joined the blogging bandwagon by creating yet another blog. This one is for my Korean friends, so don’t be surprised if it is all in Korean. Blogs are pretty standard in Korea, so I thought that I might as well make one in Korean to keep people up to date on what is going on in my life.

Well, I didn’t want to use the exact same color scheme as this blog, so I chose a different template from the options, shown here.

I then sent out an email to all of the Koreans that I have an email address for, and told them that I had created a blog and that they were welcome to take a look at it if they so desired. One of my Korean friends, a man that I met near the end of my mission and was baptized a few months after I left, sent me an email about my blog.

It started out with the usual formalities of “how are you? I am great.” and then he began to talk about my blog. He said that he was glad to see that I still miss Korea, and that the blog was generally well made. He had only one complaint. He said that the design of the blog reminded him too much of the North Korean flag, and so it made him feel “rigid” and uncomfortable. The North Korean Flag (or as they would like to say the flag of The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) looks like this.

So, what do you think? Do you think that google is trying to send subliminal messages about our unfriendly neighbors to the east?

Message from eBay

Today I checked my mostly-junk email account, which is the one I use for all eBay transactions and communications. It’s been a while since I bought anything – a Nightmare Before Christmas messenger bag to help me feel better about having to carry my books all around campus. Anyway, I had a message from eBay.

The weird thing was, it was a Response to Question about Item, from a seller who requested that I “Please send me the money for this item or i will report you to eBay.” I’m very positive that the payment went through for the messenger bag, and what seller in their right mind would ever ship an item without receiving payment? So I looked at the email some more, very confused. It said the message was sent while the listing was active – and I thought that meant…not ended yet – and that the person writing the message, Stanley, is a potential buyer. More confusing.

An item number was listed as a link, so I clicked it and a new window opened with the eBay login screen. And yes, I did login, but was brought to a page to “update credit card and security information.” Ah…that’s not so great. But I still thought maybe I’d just see about that item listing number, so I skipped the information screen completely and did an advanced search on eBay. No such item exists. (Anyone surprised?)

Going back to the email, tested another link. It pulled up the same eBay login and “update” page as before, so I hovered over a link in the email.

http://www.electricgames.be/ was the domain name, and afterwards there was something about displaying an eBay login screen. This was now very obviously a spoof email, and I forwarded it to the eBay security center. But I hope that others are just as cautious! eBay guarantees that any message they send out will also appear in your “My Messages” center on eBay, and when in doubt, open an entirely new window and go to the official eBay homepage.

A few more inconsistencies: the message said it was sent to Verified Member, and that my name was included to show the message originated from eBay. Unfortunately, they did not include my name but simply referred to me as Verified Member. All other eBay communications have my full name and eBay username.

By the way, I just went back and actually read through all of what the “update” page wanted. It’s pretty incredible:

– Credit or debit card #
– Expiration date
– Card identification #
– PIN code, confirm PIN code (“Personal Identification Number (PIN) ensures that no one but you has access to your funds.”)
– Mother’s maiden name
– Your date of birth
– Social security number
– Email address registered with eBay
– Email address password

If you know people who are gullible enough to fall for this kind of thing, please warn them!!