Dell TV spot for Bonzi Buddy–It’s “Purely You”

Field Reports

What’s wrong with the marketing team at Dell these days?

Here’s the scenario for the new Dell television ad, apparently targeted at the ‘Back to College’ crowd. A young man is sitting on a sofa, calling Dell. Voiceover: “Thanks for calling Dell. What can we build for you?” The living room wall rotates around, like the magic fridge in the SuperBowl beer commercials, and suddenly he’s riding a supermodern golf cart with a Dell staffer, visiting a Dell manufacturing floor that looks like a cross between the airport in the Tom Hanks movie ‘The Terminal’ and the end of ‘Star Wars III’ where the heros have to dodge the dangers of an assembly line at high speed. Yes, there is a battle robot hanging from the line. And a purple gorilla. The customer points at what he wants, and yes, it’s the dancing gorilla from Bonzi Buddy. He also chooses a college professor, and, OK, what the heck, decides he wants it all. Yes, there’s a button for that. It’s apparently the ONLY button that’s used, as the others aren’t labeled. We see the purple gorilla climbing into the new Dell notebook–it’s an Inspiron e1505, and the closing credits show the tag, “Purely You.”

This is apparently the second ad in the “Purely You” series. Dell is showing the ads in this series online, and will probably put the gorilla ad up soon.

You would think that associating Dell notebook computers with the infamous spyware program Bonzi Buddy is a bad thing. Apparently having the speed and power to run a notebook loaded with spyware and startupware is the the most important concept that has to be promoted in their marketing. It’s apparently also a good thing to load every piece of software available. I bet that half of what they load is startupware–it surely serves some purpose for all that junk to autoplay, so it’s not evil, or no more so than trying to eat too much peanut butter all at once–who remembers the “stick to da wuf of ma mouf” commercial? Of course, much of that junk is a based on a subscription model, and Dell will receive a commission on anything you click that results in a purchase, a renewal, or an upgrade, so if the entire computer is adware, adding a purple dancing spyware gorilla isn’t really all that out of place.

Should you buy a Dell? I’m admittedly biased–you should only buy computers from local system techs who actually build systems specifically for you. Like, um, me.

But a Dell? Really? Well, read reviews first–this isn’t one. But they do claim they’ll build it purely for you. Ask for the dressing on the side. They should load Windows, and hardware drivers, and put everything else on a DVD for you to choose to install yourself, or not at all. (Really. And report back here with the result when you make your request…)

Hint: Windows XP, when first installed, has only ONE icon on the desktop; it’s the recycle bin. If your new PC has anything else on the desktop, it wasn’t put there by Microsoft. When ordering most PCs by phone, it’s either ‘the works’ or it’s just a cluttered mess that runs like a doorstop on a thick shag rug.

Anyway, whatever you do, DON’T ask for the purple dancing gorilla.

What’s in YOUR PC?

Field Reports

This Dell Dimension has had a rough time. It’s been invaded, and although the hard drive was corrupted, I can’t prove a strict cause and effect relationship between the bad directory entries and lost clusters and the resident of the system.
When Dust Bunnies Attack...
When Dust Bunnies Attack

Evidence of PC Gremlins
Evidence found of PC Gremlins… Film at 11

Our Crack Technical Team Inspects the Site
Our Crack Technical Team Inspects the Site

This does explain the entire concept of lost files.

Well, after a quick low-pressure intervention with a Shop Vac, the patient has had a full recovery, and is being monitored for any further signs of invading colonies of gremlins.

Backups, Now-point-Oh.Oh

Definitions

The web evolves. Software security isn’t what it was. There was a time when backing up a computer was a reasonably straightforward operation, if a little time-consuming. Just run Archive Backup and back everything up to DC2120 tapes. Of course, that old program later became Backup Exec, was bought out at various times by Colorado, Conner, Seagate, and Veritas, and has most recently become part of Symantec.

Data backups are still a great idea. That is, if you can talk Windows into keeping all your business data in one place that isn’t on the C: drive, then that’s great, and easy. I do that here; all my data is on a D:\ partition of the hard drive, and I have a batch file that I run before major backups that copies my Internet Explorer shortcuts from c:\Documents and Settings (etc, etc, etc…) over to a folder on d:. Then I burn an uncompressed DVD disk, and store that away.

And then there’s the operating system itself. For that, the best bet is a disk image program. A disk image program creates a compressed snapshot of a drive, usually created from a boot disk or CD, and some burn it directly to multiple DVDs. Ghost is the best known of these programs, but there are others, including some from ASP authors. With an up-to-date disk image, restoring an entire partition or drive takes only a few minutes.

All right, so those steps are all very traditional, and bring us up to around 2003. And then came spyware and adware. When an adware infection gets past your software blocks, it can suddenly bring along dozens of its cousin programs, and it may not be possible to start any software for burning a new data backup. An image program is still a good idea at this point, to be sure that no data is lost during the cleanup process, but that’s not prevention.

So just what will you need to have ready to do a spyware cleanup? As a cleanup technician, I would just love to have a process list of the computer as it was when it was built or when it was known to be clean. That’s a list of every program that autoruns on the system. That would save a lot of searches; the automated cleanup tools are good, but everything that depends on a detection database is out-of-date 100% of the time, and if there is a list of what should be on the system, everything else can be removed.

Method 1, rough but helpful: Press Control-Alt-Delete, go to the task list for processes, press Alt-PrintScreen (nothing will appear to happen), exit the task list, go a word processing program or a good graphics application, and paste the new image of the task list, and then print it. If the list was too long to fit on one screen, be sure to repeat the process, after scrolling down
in the task list, and capture all the entries.

Method 2, more complete, but requires special software. Download the latest version of “HijackThis”. It doesn’t need installation; you can run it from a USB pocket drive. Although this is a cleanup program, it is also useful to use to create a record of your startup processes, and it is much, much more complete than the printout from Task Manager–it includes startup entries and registry keys affecting startups and security settings for Internet Explorer; not just Windows. Run the program, tell it to scan and create a log file, and print the log file.

Don’t rely on saving these lists; you’ll want a printout during any cleanup, and when you really need the lists, you probably won’t be able to print them.