Invaded by False Alarm

I was surfing the net for some information when a program called My Security Shield appeared on my screen. It told me that my computer had viruses in drive C, windows and documents subdirectory. Then it asked me to click remove viruses. I fell to its trap and clicked it and it installed a program which became a nuisance to me because I could not delete the exe file. It kept reminding me that my computer had viruses. It even disabled my taskmaster so that I could not delete the program at all. The unlocker program which I downloaded could not do the job too. In the end, I had to do Windows Sistem Restore to get rid of this program. Later I did the scanning of my computer, it proved to be false alarm after all.

So readers, when you come across such a situation, do not panic as I do to avoid this vicious program. If I had shut down my computer and restarted everything would be back to normal.

Lack of courtesy

Last weekend I went down to Kuala Lumpur to attend my daughter's convocation. We spent a night in Corus Hotel near Wisma MCA where the convocation ceremony would be held. In fact, we just had to walk across the pedestrian flyover and went about 200 steps to reach the venue.

The receptionist manning the check-in counter was the worst I had ever met. He refused to see the reference number of the online booking I did two weeks before. Instead he asked for my IC. What is the use of doing online booking when you had to do the same thing exactly as you had not booked the hotel and went to check in personally. He did not say words like 'Welcome to Corus Hotel' or any utterance of welcoming the guest. He acted like a dumb keying in information. There were guests behind me and he did not even acknowledge their presence by say 'Please wait awhile. I will attend to you real soon.' Then he handed me two slips of paper to claim my room keys at 2.00pm because I registered earlier.

When I returned to the hotel after lunch, another receptionist who attended to me was another voiceless being. He did not say a thing after receiving the two slips I gave him but just keyed in something before he produced the two room keys to me. I expected him ti say 'Have a nice stay here.' But no. He just pushed the two keys to me and there was it. At least he must point to me where to take a lift up the sixth floor because I was not familiar with the geography of the hotel.

The last complaint I like to voice here about the hotel is the lack of courtesy. When I checked out, it was another receptionist who handled the job. It was a silent affair to the end. When I finally gave him the credit card and sighned the receipt and got the duplicate back, he did not say 'Thank you' - a basic manner expected of the front line personnel. I don't understand why this hotel could employ such people to man the front counters.

How to keep tab on your hard disk's temperature

Many computer users keep complaining that their hard disks cannot be accessed anymore. One of the reasons might be the temperatures being two high most of the time, that is exceeding 47 degrees Celsius. In order to prevent this from happening, you can install a free program such as Hard Disk Sentinel Pro to keep tab of your hard disk's temperature. If it is too hight, then shut down your computer for an hour before you use it again. Alternatively, you can buy an extra fan and direct the air towards the hard disk to keep its temperature down. In this way you hard disk can last longer.

Here is the url to download hard disk sentinel pro 3.20:

http://www.hdsentinel.com/dl.php

Happy keeping tab on your hard disk's temperature.

The new Dewan Eja Pro 2010

The Name Technology has done a good job by upgrading Dewan Eja Pro, a Malay spelling checker cum dictionary to the 2010 version. In the new version, Kamus Peribahasa is incorporated in the software making it easier for those who like to upgrade, not having to upgrade both software.

The feature I like about the Dewan Eja Pro 2010 is the display box to display any word we like find. It will be explained in Malay using Kamus Dewan Edisi Keempat, in English using Kamus Bahasa Melayu - Bahasa Inggeis, and in Chinese using the Kamus Bahasa Melayu - Bahasa Cina. The most interesting part is each Malay word will have its jawi equivalent in bracket. I have forgotten my Jawi. With this software, I can be use of the right Jawi transcription then.

Another useful thing about this software is its ability to identify 40 grammatical errors but I have tried out the features as claimed but found that not all can be identified as there might be some programming bugs yet to be fixed. These are the grammatical that this software can identify.

1 Beberapa pelajar melayari Internet di Pusat Sumber Sekolah. [Beberapa pelajar will be underlined in green. When you click grammar to see the explain, it will tell you that beberapa should be followed by a penjodoh bilangan because pelajar is a concrete noun. The sentence should have been : Beberapa orang pelajar melayari Internet di Pusat Sumber Sekolah.]

2 If you type ianya, it will be changed to 'ia' immediately.

3 If you type 'Buku ini dibaca oleh saya, 'oleh saya' will be underlined in green and the explanation given is 'kata ganti nama diri pertama dan kedua tidak boleh hadir selepas kata kerja pasif yang disertai di walaupun wujudnya 'oleh' [The first and second personal pronoun cannot be placed after the passive verb formed by adding 'di' in front of it)]

4 If you tpe mereka-mereka, the suggestion given is 'mereka' and you can click 'chane' to replace the hyphenated word to 'mereka'.

All in all, it is a Malay spelling checker worth buying although it may be a bit expensive as it is priced at RM238. I upgraded mine for RM69. I first bought Dewan Eja for RM199, then upgraded it to Dewan Eja Pro for RM99 and now I had to part with RM69. If you like the software, you can use it free of charge by downloading it from 'The Name Technology' website at http://www.tntsb.com/ for a period of 60 days.

From my experience, if you use it every day, you will buy it after the 60th day because it is so useful that you will not want to leave it.

So much for bragging about Dewan Eja Pro.

Another way to convert ami pro files to word

I had a lot of amipro files because in the past amipro was a very popular wordprocesser. As I went through my old files, I found that I had quite a lot of such files which I can't read with MS Word now.

I downloaded Wordport the trial version hoping to do the job of converting my amipro files to word files. Alas, the software writer had made it a point to purposely mispell words and alter figures. I had to read every word of the converted version to get rid of the nonsense.

Now, I have found a better way to convert my amipro files to Word. All you need is to download a file viewer such as Quick View Plus. Have the program read the file you want and you just highlight the whole document, right click, save and paste it in your Word.

Using the method, I managed to convert all my amipor files to Word although the trial version can only be used for 30 days but I have done my job. For those who still possess amipro files, you can try it. Best of luck to you.