Simple Family Computing

The family was getting sick and tired of actual and imagined virus, tojan and keylogger invasions. Having personal FW and virus software on each PC (like ZoneAlarm, Norton, McAffee…we’ve tried them all)  is important, but as the only line of defense seemed weak. Also this is hard to administer for the 10 PCs we’ve got kicking around here.  After all, sometimes one does skip the updates.  So Mr. Wolverine and Ms. Weasel agreed it was time to step up to network firewall with intrusion prevention and content security filtering. 

After considering everything from open source Linux distros to a $3000 Astaro appliance, we settled on the Sonic Wall because it was a) cheaper ( around $800) and sounded like it would be easier to use. Mr. Weasel would be in charge. We also prepaid for 2 years of updates to IPS rules.  We opted out of the McAfee PC virus deal.

It has been installed since Xmas season 2007.  More about our user experience in the next post

How many email accounts are enough?  2 per person? 20 per person?  How many email clients does one person want to use?  A couple of full email application clients like Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird or Eudora or Agent?  Maybe 2 or 3 webmail browser “clients” like hotmail or yahoo mail?  

Norma has put herself in email hell.  Pacbell begat SBC, begat SBCglobal, and has changed  the look and feel of the web-based administration of our core family accounts … which still carry the Pacbell domain. Change is ok, but what Norma objects to is that SBC forces each account name to also have a customized Yahoo home page as part of the email administration process! Basically she has multiple Yahoo personal web pages that she doesn’t want.

Norma also has an account on the att.net domain through her recent marriage to Tony.   And in the course of developing this web blog, expertly hosted by netfirms, we now have up to 100 more accounts.   Plus the family recently acquired a Microsoft Small Business Server with Exchange, which could enable 5 more Outlook 2003 IMAP accounts, which we expect to set up only for internal LAN use, like an intercom. Norma has a notebook chock full of user names and passwords for everyone’s email and for Windows logons and various Web logons. Password management and single sign-on is something the family will be looking into. 

The core Pacbell/SBC DSL service has been doing some weird stuff with incoming email in the last month or so.  Several messages, sent by neighbors who were working with Norma on a local election, apparently got stuck in a server for a couple of weeks before finally popping up in her current favorite client Mozilla Thunderbird.  Today, Tuesday, a business contact phoned her asking if she received 4 emails sent last Thursday.  No she hasn’t.  Norma is getting more than a little upset with Pacbell or whoever they are this week.

Norma has no concrete plan of action.  One course of action would be put everyone on the att.net plan.  Clearly the current situation is way too complex.  Watch while we try to make it simple. 

We need to backup not just data files in My Documents, but also it is essential to periodically make an image of your OS, applications and settings.  Create a bootable CD or USB drive.  Ideally one family member would be able to do this from a central location rather than running around from PC to PC

The OS and applications we own typically have bugs.  Some of the bugs make the OS or app malfunction. Some of the bugs allow hackers or their programs to perform mischief or theft of our data or CPU computing cycles.

We are a family of five, ages 20 to 58, who operate eight computers at home. There is lots of info and advice on the Web and in popular magazines on how to take care of an individual PC, or even how to tend a small peer to peer network with perhaps 3 PC’s. But there is NO ADVICE that caters to us.

Even though between the five of us, we probably have one whole geek brain, we till have a chaotic computing environment. Things go on the fritz; our record-keeping is spotty; e-stuff usually breaks at a “bad time.”  Stress, stress, stress. We’d really rather be hiking, biking, swimming, watching a movie or even cleaning the garage than doing computer housekeeping and damage control.

You can watch us as we try to apply a more business like approach to our computing….in the hopes it will save us time, stress and money.