the shrewdness of apes

t.s.o.a. is dusting off the rarely used product endorsement shoes this morning to extol the virtues of Spybot Search & Detroy, a terribly helpful program that fixes a lot of problems caused by the rampant internet surfing anyone reading this is obviously engaged in. making it even better is that it's free and it kicks the crap out of AdAware and any other program someone might dupe you into paying for. if you're bothered by excessive pop-up ads, if your computer has become slow for no apparent reason, if you've had your home page hijacked or if you've found weird programs running on your computer, this program is really worthwhile. even if you haven't noticed anything untoward going on, you'd probably be surprised at what's been buried deep within your cookies and registry. i run this program on all of our computers in the office and have recently used it to help out some friends who were having problems.

quick instructions: download the program; donate a nominal amount if you're feeling nice; run the installer, then start the program (you'll have the find the English flag to get it in the proper language); before you hit the "check for problems" button, use the "search for updates" feature and install the updates that it finds; now run the problem check and when it's done (2-10 minutes depending on your machine) tell it to fix the problems it found. you can get more information about what it finds if you're curious. i also recommend running the immunize feature, which will help prevent problems down the road by blocking products whose intentions are less than honorable.

feel free to e-mail me with any questions you might have.