Agh! I keep feeling like I’m in my bedroom at home; in my mind there’s a wall directly to my right. My brain does a serious reconfiguring when it realizes there’s no wall, but a lot of space. *mind boggles*
Umm, what else can I talk about … I uninstalled Norton Antivirus 2007 from my laptop because it would seriously slow performance down during scans and during/after my computer shut down it would pop up errors of memories not being written. I’d already contacted Symantec once about that problem, and the advice I got fixed the one error, but then others popped up afterwards, and I didn’t think it was worth the hassle to get it corrected.
Instead I installed ZoneAlarm. It got second on Consumer Reports’ latest anti-virus programs reviews. It was $10 cheaper for the program and for subscription renewal than the number one program, and it also had better virus detection. It was second because it had lower ease of use and speed, and a third category that didn’t really catch my attention. So yeah. I thought the second one was better for me.
After one week of having the program, my opinion is: yeah, the scanning speed is dang slow. It took three plus hours last night. Although I’m not sure if that’s because I put the laptop to sleep (ZoneAlarm didn’t alert me to the fact it was scanning! o_o). But it’s still a bit faster than Norton, so I am quite the happy customer. I had Windows Media Player, FileZilla, Firefox, and Photoshop open, and didn’t really catch on until maybe after half an hour that my laptop was lagging a bit, and oh maybe it’s because ZoneAlarm is scanning!
But right now a complaint has popped up. I have the same programs open (and more, but those are the bigger memory hogs), and my laptop is still a bit slow to respond. That makes me a sad puppy. I am hoping that ZoneAlarm is still getting used to my computer and program usage, and that after a while this slowness will disappear. Otherwise I’m satsified with the program. :) I’ll probably give my NAV 2007 to Mickey.
(I still have NAV 2006 on my desktop. Only my laptop’s dinosaur age and speed made me choose another program. Just in case anyone thought I despised NAV. I don’t. Exactly.)
On another note, I saw a sign that the holiday season is near: there was a display of Ferrero Rocher chocolates at the end of an aisle in Staples. Of all places! Hm. Oh well.
At dinner tonight I finished reading Happy All the Time by Laurie Colwin. I really liked it. The plot wasn’t anything mindblowing, just following the lives of two couples. It was those two couples that made the story different from anything I’ve read. Okay, I haven’t read much, considering how many authors are out there (nevermind how many books), but these characters were still new to me. I’ve never even met anyone in real life like any of the characters. (Again, I haven’t met many people, but still…) Well, Guido is probably the most normal, and I probably have met someone similar to him. I can’t keep going on about how the characters are so interesting, so I will just say that they truly are different, without being out of what you would think of as ordinary.
And to think this book was randomly reshelved in the bookstore and what caught my attention at first was the author’s last name being out of order. haha!