I was looking around for other sites that are similar to mine, and I was dissapointed to find very few.
Most either had no useful information, or they had a few months worth of posts (with maybe 5 posts in one day, and then nothing for a month or two).
However, I did find 2 that stood out from the crowd.
The first one is Security Fix, a good rundown of computer security issues by Brian Krebs. Here is some of the latest information from Security Fix:
- In the fallout resulting from knocking McColo Corp. offline, this past week may prove to be a missed opportunity in the prevention of a dramatic reappearance of junk e-mail, as a botnet that once controlled 40 percent of the world's spam apparently has found a new home. The botnet Srizbi was knocked offline Nov. 11 along with Web-hosting firm McColo, which Internet security experts say hosted machines that controlled the flow of 75 percent of the world's spam. One security firm, FireEye, thought it had found a way to prevent the botnet from coming back online by registering domain names it thought Srizbi was likely to target. But when that approach became too costly for the firm, they had to abandon their efforts. "This cost us a lot of money. We engaged all the right people. In the end, it comes back to the fact that there wasn't a process - Spam volumes could rise considerably over the next few days now that one of the world's largest networks of compromised computers used for blasting out junk e-mail was brought back to life tonight. The "Srizbi" botnet, a collection of more than half a million hacked PCs that were responsible for relaying approximately 40 percent of all spam sent worldwide, was knocked offline two weeks ago due to pressure from the computer security community. On Nov. 11, the Internet servers used to control the Srizbi botnet were disconnected when a Web hosting firm identified by security experts as a major host of organizations engaged in spam activity was taken offline by its Internet providers. Turns out, Srizbi's authors had planned ahead for such a situation by building into each bot a fail-safe mechanism in case its master control servers were unavailable: A mathematical algorithm that generates a random but unique Web - A full two weeks after a Web hosting firm identified by the computer security community as a major host of organizations engaged in spam activity was taken offline, the volume of spam sent globally each day has yet to bounce back. The block graph over at e-mail security firm IronPort suggests that the company blocked around 35 billion spam messages on Monday. Prior to hosting provider McColo's shutdown, IronPort was flagging somewhere around 160 billion junk e-mails per day. A quick glance at the volume flagged by Spamcop.net shows that they're still detecting well below half of the spam volumes they were just two weeks ago. I'm not suggesting this is a permanent situation: I happen to agree with most experts who have said they expect spam volumes to at some point bounce back or even exceed previous levels. Still, it is nice to see this drop in junk e-mail - Extortionists targeting clients of Express Scripts -- one of the nation's largest pharmacy benefits management firms -- may have inadvertently picked a fight for which they were ill-prepared. Security Fix has learned that among the company's biggest customers is the federal government, and specifically almost every federal law enforcement, military and intelligence agency in the country. Last month, St. Louis-based Express Scripts said extortionists are threatening to disclose personal and medical information about millions of Americans if the company fails to meet payment demands. Express Scripts is the third-largest U.S. pharmacy benefit management firm, which processes and pays prescription drug claims. Working with more than 1,600 companies, it handles roughly 500 million prescriptions a year for about 50 million Americans. The company has refused to pay the demand, and since then the extortionists have moved on to targeting clients of its member companies directly. Locally, the Fairfax County Public Schools - A substitute teacher in Connecticut who faced 40 years in prison for allegedly surfing porn Web sites in the presence of seventh graders has been cleared of the charges after state prosecutors dropped the case. The remarkable story of Julie Amero touched a nerve with our readers the last time I wrote about it. Prosecutors had charged Amero with four felony counts of endangering a child, but security experts rose up to her defense. They argued that spyware and adware, which had infected her PC, was responsible for serving the porn sites on her machine. According to a story Friday in the Hartford Courant, Amero agreed to plead guilty to a single charge of disorderly conduct, which is considered a misdemeanor and came with a $100 fine. "Amero, who has been hospitalized and suffers from declining health, also surrendered her teaching license," the Courant's Rick Green writes. Alex Eckelberry, president - Microsoft is rising quickly on a running list of the Top 10 Worst Spam Service ISPs as maintained by spamhaus.org, a group that tracks unsolicited commercial e-mail. The software giant debuted on the list earlier this month at number 9 (one being the worst), and has slid over the past few days down to number 5. Spamhaus says spammers and scam artists are abusing Microsoft's live.com and livefilestore.com properties to redirect visitors to sites that peddle fake pharmacy products, porn and Nigerian 419 scams. Spamhaus explains how entities wind up on its Top 10 list: Although all networks claim to be anti-spam, some network executives factor revenue made from hosting known spam gangs into corporate policy decisions to continue to sell services to spam operations. Others simply decide that closing the holes in their end-user broadband systems that allow spammers access would be too costly to their bottom lines. Richard - Earlier this year, Security Fix criticized Apple for making iPhone users wait for security updates that Apple had fixed in its other products four months earlier. Now, it appears that iPhone users may have received a patch for a critical security hole four months before Apple fixed the flaw in its other products. Taking a look at the vulnerability summary from the update Apple released last week to fix critical vulnerabilities in Mac and Windows versions of its Safari browser, we can see that Apple corrected a serious flaw in WebKit, the rendering engine used by Safari on Mac OS X, Windows and the iPhone: WebKit CVE-ID: CVE-2008-2303 Available for: Mac OS X v10.4.11, Mac OS X v10.5.5, Windows XP or Vista Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution Description: A signedness issue in Safari's handling of JavaScript array indices - One of the casualties from the unplugging of McColo Corp. is fraudcrew.com, a Web service that offered paying customers the ability to hide their identities online by routing their traffic through computers controlled by others. Fraudcrew, which has not been charged with any crime, offered subscribers a point-and-click way to mask the source of their Internet connections, so that Web sites could not tell the true location of visitors using the service. The site was advertised heavily on Russian online forums catering to computer hacking and identity theft. There are a number of services like those offered by Fraudcrew (Security Fix profiled another one earlier this year) that not only aid in hiding one's identity online, but could also defeat security measures put in place by financial institutions. Many online banks will check to see whether the customer's Internet address is coming from a location already associated with the customer's - Washingtonpost.com today published a follow-up story to the pieces we ran last week on the unplugging of a California Web hosting company and the subsequent worldwide drop in spam levels. Today's piece tries to answer the question we heard from so many readers: "How Can So Much Spam Come From One Place?" Some of the less newsy but just as interesting stuff was cut from the piece for space and story flow reasons. One of those was a section on what security experts think the incident will mean for the evolution of botnet technology and its use by the bad guys: Security experts worry that botnet creators will learn from the experience and make key changes to improve the security, stealth and resiliency of their herds. One of the largest and most advanced spam botnets ever designed, "Storm," was successful in large part due to its decentralized nature. As the - A massive swath of some 65,536 unique Internet addresses that appear to have been swiped from early Internet pioneers by a convicted spammer has been reclaimed by Internet regulators, Security Fix has learned. In April, Security Fix reported that a huge block of Internet addresses once assigned to San Francisco Bay Packet Radio -- an organization that was involved way back in the 1970s in testing the predecessor to the global commercial Internet that we all use today -- was being used to send e-mail for a company called MediaBreakaway. That company's chief executive is Scott Richter -- a self-avowed "spam king" who has been sued by a number of the Internet's biggest players -- including Microsoft and Myspace -- for sending spam. When I was first presented with this information, I put the relevant questions to the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) -- one of five regional Internet - Apple and Mozilla have each issued updates to fix a large number of critical security flaws in their respective Safari and Firefox Web browsers. The Apple update, which brings Safari to version 3.2, is reportedly causing many users to experience frequent browser crashes. According to an article Friday at MacFixIt, some of the problems seem related to several Safari plug-ins, including "Concierge" bookmarks manager, "PithHelmet" ad-blocking software, and "AcidSearch" search enhancement software. Other problems with this update may be related to a new anti-phishing feature built into Safari 3.2 (Firefox and Microsoft's Internet Explorer have had this feature for more than two years now). MacFixIt and other forums suggest those having trouble with the Safari update should disable the phishing filter and see if that helps. If not, check to see if removing any installed add-ons fixes the problem. While the Safari update fixes more flaws in the version built - Yesterday, we published a story about Web hosting firm McColo being knocked offline after being accused by the computer security community of serving as a gateway to organizations engaged in spam activity. In trying to get a sense of the activity attributed to McColo, I put together a flow chart, or mind map, showing McColo's relationship to various sites associated with botnet activity, spam, pharmacy domains, etc. I created the flow chart with the excellent and gratis FreeMind software. I've included a screen shot for those who don't have or want this software installed (click on the image to enlarge it). For those who do have FreeMind installed, check out this file, which allows you to click any arrow in the graphic and view some of the source data for those citations. Others can view the source material at the end of this post. The upper right-hand section of the - The volume of junk e-mail sent worldwide plummeted on Tuesday after a Web hosting firm identified by the computer security community as a major host of organizations engaged in spam activity was taken offline. (Note: A link to the full story on McColo's demise is available here.) Experts say the precipitous drop-off in spam comes from Internet providers unplugging McColo Corp., a hosting provider in Northern California that was the home base for machines responsible for coordinating the sending of roughly 75 percent of all spam each day. In an alert sent out Wednesday morning, e-mail security firm IronPort said: In the afternoon of Tuesday 11/11, IronPort saw a drop of almost 2/3 of overall spam volume, correlating with a drop in IronPort's SenderBase queries. While we investigated what we thought might be a technical problem, a major spam network, McColo Corp., was shutdown, as reported by The Washington Post - A U.S. based Web hosting firm that security experts say was responsible for facilitating more than 75 percent of the junk e-mail blasted out each day globally has been knocked offline following reports from Security Fix on evidence gathered about suspicious activity emanating from the network. For the past four months, Security Fix has been gathering data from the security industry about McColo Corp., a San Jose, Calif., based Web hosting service whose client list experts say includes some of the most disreputable cyber-criminal gangs in business today. On Monday, Security Fix contacted the Internet providers that manage more than 90 percent of the company's connection to the larger Internet, sending them information about badness at McColo as documented by the security industry. On Tuesday afternoon, I heard back from Global Crossing, one of McColo's major Internet providers. Their spokesman declined to discuss the matter, except to say that Global - Express Scripts, the nation's third largest pharmacy benefits management company, is offering a $1 million reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the individual(s) responsible for trying to extort money from the company. The St. Louis-based firm said last week that in early October it received a letter that included the names, birth dates, Social Security numbers and in some cases prescription data on employees from 75 of its customers. The authors also threatened to expose millions of consumer records if the company declined to pay up, Express Scripts said. Express Scripts handles roughly 500 million prescriptions a year for about 50 million Americans. Since the company has said it has no intention of paying the ransom, the attackers appear to be trying new tactics. Express Scripts said the extortionists have now moved on to directly contacting companies who use their services, by sending letters to the
The second one is Absolute Raleigh Laptop Repair Blog, which (obviously) deals with laptop repairs. Here are some current posts from the site:
- 
We had a Lenovo 3000 N100 notebook come in this week. Our customer lives in Wilmington, NC but brought their machine to us for a second opinion. The local shop to them in Wilmington told them that their laptop motherboard needed to be replaced and that the boards were around $600. When they called we informed them that our diagnostics are free and that we would be happy to check the unit out. The unit would turn on but would shut off when they tried to access the Internet.
They dropped the machine off and we took a look at it. The laptop would shut off after being on for just a minute or two- it didn't matter if the Internet was accessed or not. The unit was simply overheating. The area where the hot air is supposed to blow out was clogged with dust. We thoroughly cleaned it out. The unit also only has 512MB RAM and it supported DDR2. DDR2 memory is very cheap right now and our customer authorized us to bump the machine up to 2GB RAM which quadrupled the amount of memory.
The laptop now runs fast and cool!It was also repaired about 75% less than what the other people quoted, and correctly repaired. - 
We had an X41 Tablet come in this week with a bad power jack. We haven't had a whole lot of these in for this particular issue but we're seeing more. We're one of the few businesses out there that carry these rare parts. The power jack was repaired using our standard power jack repair service. - Affected models: Laptops with serial numbers in the following range: UV117XXXXXX to UV342XXXXXX. iBooks with the serial numbers listed above may be referred to as:
* iBook (16 VRAM)
* iBook (14.1 LCD 16 VRAM)
* iBook (Opaque 16 VRAM)
* iBook (32 VRAM)
* iBook (14.1 LCD 32 VRAM)
* iBook (800MHz 32 VRAM)
* iBook (900MHz 32 VRAM)
* iBook (14.1 LCD 900MHz 32 VRAM)
* iBook (Dual USB)
* iBook (Late 2001)
* iBook (14.1 LCD)
These laptops have GPUs on the motherboard / logic board which may fail and cause the following symptoms:
* Scrambled or distorted video
* Appearance of unexpected lines on the screen
* Intermittent video image
* Video freeze
* Computer starts up to blank screen
Apple was covering these issues for quite a while but the warranty period is over.
Home remedy:
A home remedy has been implemented for the G3 laptops with some success. Read about it here. - This is a follow up entry to our blog posting regarding bad computer stores.
One of our good customers from Holly Springs came in the other day. She just recently found us. She has several laptops. She had a very bad experience at a computer store right near her house. We won't name names but the store is in 27540. Her laptop hard drive crashed. The store charged her $280 for a hard drive plus $120 labor to replace the hard drive and told her that her data was not recoverable. Yikes! Our price would have been less than half of that! The hard drive should have been under $100. $280 is highway robbery.
She brought the drive to us for a second opinion and we recovered all of the data that she wanted. (Sometimes data really is not recoverable, and this was a more advanced recovery, but we got it when the other store couldn't. See: Data Recovery).
To top it all off she had to bring the laptop to us. It was running slow and crashing and the other store wanted to charge her to look at it again even though they had just worked on it. We plugged it in, tested the hard drive & it failed. The drive installed was defective.
The defective drive could have been an honest mistake. The data recovery may have been over their head. But the $400 charge to replace it was just wrong. We make most of our money on services here. We currently sell Hitachi hard drives which have a 3yr warranty and they're marked up about $15. The behavior of the above store is absolutely ridiculous- what makes us cringe is the combination of inexperience and overcharging. - This is a follow up post to our blog entry regarding bad computer stores.
Parts of the ad are blanked out to hide the company's identity. We asked if it was a misprint but they would not respond. We sent a follow up letter telling them if these specs are correct we will buy every single machine in inventory and they still would not respond. This is typical bait and switch. The deal is too good to be true. There are several problems here that jump right out at us.
1. The ad advertises a 60GB 7200rpm drive. No way. The T41 uses a PATA drive- the 7200rpm drives are no longer made and the existing drives are worth a lot. There is no way that this company is putting 7200rpm drives into these laptops.
2. 14.1" SXGA+ LCD? Nope. The 23738SU uses the base XGA screen.
3. 14" SXGA FlexView Screen? What?! FlexView is a great feature on some ThinkPad laptops! But it only comes on UXGA screens and those are not even available in 14"! Anyone with a hint of laptop experience knows that.
4. 64MB ATI graphics? Nope- these only have 32MB.
5. Bluetooth? These don't have Bluetooth!
5. Serial port? T40 laptops don't have serial ports! Does any laptop of this generation have a serial port?
6. Now this isn't the end of the world but the CPU is a 1MB cache, not a 2MB cache. Our ThinkPad expert here knows that this base T41 laptop used a BANIAS processor. These save power, make your battery last longer, etc. A DOTHAN processor would give you 2MB cache.
7. Free Shipping. The ad says free shipping but the bottom of the ad says you must spend $500 to get free shipping. This is just shady.
8. 300 employees?! What?! There are only a few people over there. Let's say they really do have 10,000sf like they say they do and their storefront takes up 1000sf and inventory takes up 2000sf- that leaves 7000sf left. Imagine stuffing 300 employees into a 7000sf area! That would be like a building full of clowns. Hmmm....
9. That isn't a T41 in the picture.
10. The people that sent out this email had the police called on them before when one of their employees broke into and robbed another computer store.
As a final note, we used to sell a lot of quality refurbished ThinkPad laptops online until people like this came along. We still sell quite a few to ThinkPad fanatics however we remain focused on repair technologies. - 
This is a follow up entry to our blog posting regarding bad computer stores.
Today another MX7000 laptop came in. These laptops have several different names but we call them the MX7000. The original owner had gone to the g**k squad and after paying for a diagnostic and waiting 2 months they were toldthat their machine was not repairable. They gave it to their friend for free.
The friend looked up laptop repair and found us. He brought the unit in for a free diagnostic. He dropped it off. A few days later his unit came up in line and our techs got to it. Having seen so many of these before we instantly knew what the problem was. A piece of plastic underneath the power button breaks. The new power button assembly is $119 installed. We quoted the customer and ordered the part.
When he came to pick the unit up he was blown away. He told us the above story and that he was thrilled to get a working laptop for $119. - 
This is a follow up entry to our blog posting regarding bad computer stores.
Our customer took their machine to the G**k squad. She paid them about $70 to diagnose her machine. They shiped it off to some undisclosed location. She demanded it back. 6 weeks later it came back diagnosed with a "bad motherboard".
She brought it to us since we specialize in free diagnostics of laptop repair.
upon inspection and the unit turning on we could hear the system making some normal POST beeps and we immediately knoew the sound on the motherboard was ok. We got into Windows XP and the driver was disabled. It could not be re-enabled so we instantly know to check the hard drive at that point.
Testing the hard drive revealed some bad sectors. We were able to replace the hard drive using a new hard drive in stock which came with a 3yr warranty. Laptop hard drives are under $100. We backed up the requested data and moved it to the new drive.
The unit was in and out of here in business 3 days.
Our customer is a Doctor who assists with Aids patients in Africa. We were able to get the unit back to her just before her trip. She almost had to leave without the machine due to the inexperienced people at the other store. On top of that they had quoted her around $950.
Unfortunately, we see this kind of thing daily here. - 
This is a follow up post to our blog entry regarding bad computer stores.
A local technician came in today, applying for a job. He said he couldn't take what was going on at one of the local shops. He said not only did they have no idea what they were doing when it came to laptop repair but that they were also ripping off their customers.
One recent customer was the owner of a DV6000. These have a special extended warranty due to known problems. They told the customer they needed to pay several hundred dollars for a new motherboard then had it covered by HP for free.
When we get one of those models in here, we'll tell the customer. They can then send it in to HP or they can pay us to handle the warranty. We usually charge around 1 - 1.5hrs labor to set up the warranty, ship the unit in, get it bacjk, make sure it has no problems, etc. - There as been a surge in customers coming in complaining to us about some of the other local computer stores lately who are attempting to fix laptops.
We're not going to name names or point fingers but most of the stores are either lying, trying to rip people off or simply do not know any better when they get into the laptops. It is a shame. We'll be updating this blog post with links to some of the stories once we post them.
* Update 11/12/2008 *
Here are some of the stories:
DV6000 Problems
Toshiba M55 Problems
Gateway MX7000
Misleading Laptop Ads
Hard Drive Problems - Today Circuit City filed Chapter 11.
They owe HP $118mil? Interesting...
HP refused to even allow most local computer stores to become resellers or resell their products, then they front the big chain stores millions of dollars. Nice.
Hopefully people keep shelling out $50 for ink refills! - 
As of 11/24/2008 we'll be using UPS to ship packages.
We've been happy with both DHL & UPS, but we will no longer be using DHL as they have discontinued U.S. domestic shipping.
Our standard shipping rate may remain at $15 or go up a few dollars- we will find out exact pricing shortly. - 
Today DHL announced that they will no longer be offering domestic shipping in the U.S.
In less than 2 weeks we'll be using UPS for shipping.
Quote from the DHL site:
Beginning January 30, 2009, DHL’s U.S. Express business will focus entirely on its international offerings and will discontinue its domestic-only air and ground services.
- Some HP Pavillion DV2000/DV6000/DV9000 and Compaq V3000/V6000 laptops may develop premature problems. The laptops are not being “recalled” but they do have a “Limited Warranty Service Enhancement”. Certain issues will be covered and fixed for free by HP.
Symptoms of the graphics chip being bad include:
Unit powers on with no video
Unit powers on with no display and does not boot. LEDs may or may not be lit.
Unit powers on but just produces 2 long, 1 short beeps.
(Go here for more information on defective Nvidia graphics chips.)
Other problems covered by HP include:
The notebook does not detect wireless networks and the wireless adapter is not detected in the Device Manager.
The notebook does not start.
The battery charge indicator light does not turn on when the battery is installed and the AC adapter is connected.
For detailed information visit HP directly. The document moves so we can't link to it but if you go to HP.com and in the search bar enter c01087277 you will find the document which explains which models are affected by which issues. Or call HP @ 1-866-671-7362.
If your unit is still working you are encouraged to upgrade the BIOS to a new version which runs the fans more often in an attempt to keep the machine cooler. More information on that is also in the above referenced document. - Some laptops that have been upgraded to XP SP2 will get a bluescreen/BSOD error when unplugging their power cord. When the laptop switches from AC to battery the error comes up and looks like:
STOP 0x000000D1 (0x0000000C, 0x00000002, 0x00000000, 0xF8E26A89)
gv3.sys – Address F8E26A89 base at F8E26000, Datestamp 3dd991eb
Solution:
1. Open Device Manager.
2. In Device Manager, expand Processors.
3. Right-click Intel Pentium M processor, and then click Update Driver.
4. When prompted "Can Windows connect to Windows Update to search for software?", click No, not at this time, and then click Next.
5. Click Install the software automatically, and then click Next.
6. Click Finish.
7. Yeah, that's it.
This is documented on MS's site here. - Some laptops with ATI Radeon chips are getting a CLI.EXE error. If you've just done a clean install of Win XP w/ SP2 and install an ATI video driver you may be presented with a CLI.EXE error on your next boot. For a quick fix just go to MSCONFIG | Services & disable CLI.EXE from running in the startup. But if you want to keep your ATI Catalyst Control Center you will just need to install .NET. A link to grab .NET is available on our support page.
I’ll be adding more to this list (as I find them).
If you know of a good (reliable) blog on Computer Repairs, let me know, and I’ll add it to this list.
If you found this post helpful, please consider donating (I'm not wealthy, so every little bit helps my family):
