Is Buying an Extended Warranty Worth the Price Paid? [Opinion]

There’s no better feeling than coming home with a brand new expensive “toy,” whether it’s a computer, mobile phone, table, HDTV, or even a new car. In our elation over walking out the door with this new toy, we’re often talked into buying an extended warranty just in case the product breaks before we we can get our money’s worth.

The question: Is buying an extended warranty worth the price that we pay? It’s a hard decision to buy a big-ticket item anyway, then once you tack on even more money to buy the warranty it’s an even harder pill to swallow. Are the warranties even worth that extra money or is it better just to hedge our bets and hope for the best?

Here is what our writers feel about extended warranty:

Laura Tucker:

For my money it depends on what I’m buying and the company’s reputation, whether it’s through the the manufacturer, the reseller, or a company that specializes in warranties. I’ve been burned before when a company who has sold me an extended warranty has gone out of business, and I’ve wasted my money. When I’m buying computer products, I’m usually buying Apple, and they offer and extended AppleCare warranty ($249-$349 on MacBooks, $149-$169 on iMac and Mac Mini), and are known for their customer service. It’s saved me from costly repairs on both a laptop and a desktop. Cars factor into the equation in the same manner. With a larger item like that, that seven-year warranty is more than worth it.

I don’t bother to buy an extended warranty on my iPhones and iPads ($99), though, because I’m replacing them every year or two anyway, so there doesn’t seem to be a point of buying a warranty that extends past the first year, especially when the standard extended warranty doesn’t even cover water damage.

Emmanuel Banks:

Emmanuel feels the same, believing that it’s needed on “certain, big box items like televisions and computers.” But in regards to iPhones, his thought is to “just slap on a sturdy case and be careful after your complimentary warranty is up.”

Ruji:

Ruji also considers the brand of the merchandise. She, too, had an Apple computer and wished she had opted for the extended warranty. She currently has a Lenovo ThinkPad, and did opt for the extended warranty (Price unpublished, but they extend and upgrade standard warranties), but isn’t sure whether it is worth it or not, as “their customer support has been pretty abysmal so far.” This is despite the fact that it does cover hardware replacement and accidental damage and that it also offers next-day on-site support. Ruji appreciates the on-site support over having to ship the computer out to a factory to be serviced. Ultimately for her, it comes down to how long she plans on using the item and her confidence in fixing problems herself.

Trevor:

Trevor looks at his extended warranty options the same way. The only time he considers an add-on warranty or service plan is when he knows he “will really be pushing the item to the limit physically” or knows “it will be in an environment where it could easily be damaged.” He doesn’t typically purchase the warranties for tablets or laptops but has for items like speakers.

Damien and Soumen:

Both MTE editor-in-chief Damien and writer Soumen avoid extended warranties altogether. Damien considers how quickly electronic products become obsolete, making him realize “there is no point in getting the product repaired when there is a better and cheaper alternative in the market.” Soumen waits until later on to decide how likely he is to keep a product before deciding whether to purchase an add-on warranty or not.

This all comes down, of course, to a realization of your own personal use of the product coupled with the reputation of the manufacturer. If you know yourself to be really hard on products, then extended warranties are definitely something for you to consider. If the manufacturer doesn’t have a good reputation for carrying through on their promises, it might not be a good idea to make that investment into buying an extended warranty, realizing that you’ll just need to cut your losses when your computer, phone, or tablet experiences some type of mishap.

Back to you, will you buy an extended warranty for the products you have just purchased?

Take Our Poll

Image credit: Hand and stamp Warranty by BigStockPhoto

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Posted in: [Opinion],Buying,Extended,Paid?,Price,Warranty,Worth

How to Rollup Your Email Subscriptions into a Single Digest

Is your Inbox full of email subscriptions and newsletters from various brands and services? Are you looking for an easy way to get rid of the subscriptions that you don’t want and combine the ones that do want to keep? If you’re like me, going through all those messages each day is almost like torture, and it leaves you with a big headache!
Luckily, there’s an easy solution thanks to a service called Unroll.me; it includes two services, which are both great for cleaning up and organizing your Inbox. For starters, it lets you easily unsubscribe from email newsletters that you’re not interested in. Then, it offers a “revolutionary rollup” to organize and prioritize the rest of your email messages.

Today we’ll take a look at how to rollup your email subscriptions into a single daily digest using Unroll.me.
1. From the Unroll.me home page, choose the email service that you want to use with the service: Gmail, Google Apps, or Yahoo.

2. After selecting your service and clicking the “go” button, you’ll use OAuth to select your email account and give Unroll.me permission to access it. For the purpose of this tutorial, I’m using a Gmail account.
3. You’re welcome to look through the short tour while Unroll.me scans your Inbox, which should only take a minute. The initial scan will find all of your subscriptions and pick them out so that you can go through them.
4. After the scan is complete, you will be able to see just how many items are in your rollup. From here you can manage your subscriptions individually.

5. Before going through each item, you’ll want to choose a delivery time for your rollup. At the top of the rollup you’ll see the Delivery Time is set to “morning” by default. You can change it to afternoon or night.
6. Next, go through each subscription listed in your rollup and use the action buttons at the far right of each item to edit them. There are three different icons that you will see:
Minus sign – used to completely unsubscribe from a service and remove it from your Inbox altogether.Circular arrow – used to remove an item from your rollup digest and send it directly to your Inbox; this basically keeps it as is.Gear icon – this icon will direct you to the actual website of the service in order to manage your preferences exclusively for that service; this is mainly used for social networking services like Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, etc.
7. Once you go through your rollup to unsubscribe and remove the items that you don’t want in your rollup, click on the “view rollup” button on the right side of the page. This will give you a glimpse of what you’ll receive each day.

8. In your rollup you can sort items by category, change the category that a particular item belongs to, and also add mark items as a favorite.

Just like that, the process of going through your email each day just got a lot easier. Unroll.me is sure to make any Inbox lighter and neater.
Image credit: Corrugated paper rolls by Big Stock Photo.


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Posted in: Digest,Email,Rollup,Single,Subscriptions

Keeping Your Droid Safe And Secure With Advanced Mobile Care 2.0 [Android]

February 1, 2013

By Erez Zukerman

It’s a sad truth, but you do need an antivirus to securely use Android these days. Google Play is teeming with beautiful and interesting apps, but it also has its fair share of bad apples seeking to misuse your personal data, drain your battery life, or be malicious in other creative and surprising ways. Fortunately, there’s no lack of high-quality antivirus apps: We’ve previously looked at three of the best antivirus apps (Kaspersky, Lookout, and F-Secure), and also reviewed Lookout on its own.  Today I’m here to look at another product that strives not only to protect you from viruses, but actually make your phone or tablet faster: Advanced Mobile Care.

Before we get started, full disclosure: IObit, the company who makes Advanced Mobile Care, also offers some of its software via MakeUseOf Rewards. This is not, however, a sponsored review. With over half a million Google Play downloads and a 4.7-star average coming from over 6,100 reviews, Advanced Mobile Care is impressive enough to review in its own right.

Initial Impressions and Getting Started

When you first launch Advanced Mobile Care, it starts you off with a  quick three-screen tour (also known as an “onboarding”). This sets the visual tone for the app, which is generally blue and glow-y:

Many people look at their smartphones and tablets as entertainment devices, and it looks like IObit decided the app should take this notion and run with it. It also stresses simplicity:

That’s the main screen, with a very clear “first action” you’re supposed to take. But since I’m an inquisitive type, I hit the menu button before scanning just to see what happens:

IObit eschews the traditional Android text-only menu for a more visual option. The colorful ribbons with the stars confused me, though; At first I thought they indicate sneaky “Premium features” for paid users, something IObit doesn’t hint at in the Google Play page. Turns out I was wrong: These features are just as free as the rest. I guess these are the ones IObit wants me to use or notice first. Interesting, since they seem to be randomly sprinkled in with the others.

What’s Included

Now would be a good time to list out everything Advanced Mobile Care tries to do with a quick explanation of what’s what:

Antivirus: Also scans apps as you install them.Game Speeder: A feature that purports to make your games run faster by killing tasks before you launch a game.App Manager: Lets you uninstall apps, sort-of in bulk (not really, though).Battery Saver: A bit like a built-in JuiceDefender for cutting down on power-draining activities.Task Killer: A downright irresponsible addition to the suite if you ask me. Android really doesn’t need a task killer to work correctly.Privacy Advisor: Scans your apps and summarizes the permissions they require.Privacy Locker: Safeguards your images and such behind a code. Still doesn’t make taking risqué photos with your phone a good idea.Invite Friends: For spreading and recommending the app.Cloud Backup: Only for contacts and call logs. Requires an account; only useful if you don’t sync your contacts with Google’s servers.

This isn’t a manual, so I won’t be looking at all of these, just a few that piqued my interest.

App Manager

The App Manager has several parts, with the uninstaller being just one. That’s the interesting bit, to me, so that’s what you can see above. It lets you checkmark several apps for bulk removal; but when you tap the Uninstall button, it doesn’t really remove them in bulk (like Titanium Backup does); rather, it triggers Android’s native uninstaller for each app separately, making you confirm each individual app. So, this saves a little bit of time, but not much.

More important, the uninstaller won’t let you sort apps by installation date, which is often the most useful way to track down apps you want to remove (mainly recently installed apps you realize you’re not actually using).

Privacy Advisor

The Privacy Advisor greets you with a quick explanation, alongside a hooded character that bears a striking resemblance to the guy you see on the top-left of a Chrome Incognito window. It then scans your apps, literally:

While the scan is running, icons for your apps slowly scroll down what looks like an armored window, with a laser running over them. Clear, amusing, and visual – I’m sure some users would scan their apps just for fun. Once done, you get a page with scan results, which are basically a list of Android system permissions showing how many apps require each:

Tap a permission, and get a list of all apps that require it:

You can now mark one or more apps and quickly remove them.

Game Speeder

Game Speeder tries to make games faster by killing apps before you launch a game. After a quick explanation slide, it aggregates games on your system to a single launch screen:

Yes, I’m not much of a gamer, and the games I do play don’t pose a challenge to my Galaxy S III’s capabilities.  When you tap a game, it literally launches it:

While Game Speeder sets your system up to run the game, you get an amusing animation showing the game launching. I like it because of how literal it is – just like the “scanning” animation.

I can tell you that Angry Birds Space didn’t run less well when launched through Game Speeder. I really can’t say it was any better, though. If you’re mainly a Sudoku kind of guy, you’re not going to get much out of this feature – but if you play graphically-intensive games on  a previous-generation device, I’d love to hear if Game Speeder did anything for you in the comments.

Scan Results

I won’t dive deep into Mobile Care’s scanner, because frankly, it’s not all that unique. Here’s the scan results screen:

I find this screen needlessly alarmist; it makes it seem like something’s wrong with the device (all of that scary color, and no less than 156 “junk files”!), when really, things are just peachy:

It’s interesting Mobile Care puts Browser History under “Junk Files” and marks it for deletion by default. I understand why it wants to delete gallery thumbnails by default, but browser history? It almost feels like it’s there just to inflate the number of items found (because people like it when their security scanner finds things – they think it means it’s being efficient).

Still, the scan itself doesn’t do any harm, and IObit isn’t known for missing known threats. I just wish it didn’t feel like it was trying hard to find something, anything, just to prove itself worthy.

Final Thoughts

Mobile Care’s strategy is clear: Try to do a lot while staying pretty. Well, the looks work, at least for me. This is an attractive app, and the layout is sensible and consistent. Animations, while pretty, don’t feel gratuitous and actually help communicate what the app is doing in a non-technical way. Some of the tools offered are interesting and valuable (The Privacy Scanner makes permissions very clear), while others feel almost irresponsible (Task Killer). So in that department, Mobile Care is a bit of a mixed bag. Still, if you don’t go crazy with it, it makes for a valuable mobile security tool that’s also fun to use.

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Posted in: [Android],Advanced,Droid,Keeping,Mobile,Secure

5 Alternative Podcast Clients for Linux

Most podcast fanatics on Windows and Mac OS X use iTunes as their main podcast client. What about Linux users? What are the podcast client that you can use?

Here are five alternative podcast clients for Linux that I would recommend based on my own searching and experimenting.

Graphical Clients1. gPodder

If you’d like to use a dedicated podcatcher, check out gPodder. It is available not only for Linux, but for Mac OS X and Windows too.

When you first run gPodder, it will give you the following options: choose from a list of example podcasts, add a podcast by entering its URL, and restore your subscriptions from gpodder.net.

On gpodder.net, you can browse, search, and play various podcasts that are registered with the service. It will allow you to sync your subscriptions among your clients and devices. To subscribe to a podcast on gpodder.net, you must first subscribe to it in your podcasting client and then upload your subscriptions.

In gPodder, go to “Podcasts -> Preferences -> gpodder.net” to set up synchronization.

Once you have set that up, your subscriptions will show up on gpodder.net where you can manage devices and optionally export your subscriptions list as an OPML file. You don’t need to use the gpodder.net service to use gPodder.

Overall, gPodder is a nice, dedicated podcatcher. It is lightweight and supports several different types of feeds. One thing you have to take note is that it does not provide its own media player; when you play a podcast from gPodder, it will open in your default media player.

2. Amarok

Amarok is a popular music player for KDE, and it is arguably the most full-featured application of its kind for Linux. It is rather heavyweight to use just for podcasts, but if you already use it for managing and playing your music library, you may wish to make use of the podcast feature.

You can access your podcasts from the “Podcasts” item in the left sidebar.

Unlike gPodder, Amarok will play your podcasts natively. One disadvantage of using Amarok instead of gPodder is that it does not display show notes for individual podcast episodes, while gPodder does.

3. Liferea

Liferea is not a music player; rather, it is a feed reader with podcast support. When you first install Liferea, it will provide some pre-subscribed feeds and podcasts. You can find the podcasts in their own folder in the left sidebar. To subscribe to a new one, just add the subscription as if it were a regular feed URL.

When you click on a podcast episode in Liferea, the show notes will show up in the main window. Click on the “attachments” section on the bottom to view attached audio files. Double-click to play. The first time you do this, Liferea will prompt you to choose a media player.

By default, Liferea uses wget to download audio files. You can change this behavior by going to “Preferences -> Enclosures”.

Command-Line Clients4. Podbeuter and Newsbeuter

Podbeuter is actually part of Newsbeuter, “the mutt of RSS feed readers.” It can be controlled entirely by keyboard, and the shortcuts are customizable.

Before you can run Newsbeuter, you must populate the file ~/.newsbeuter/urls with some feed URLS. Alternatively, you can import an OPML file with the command:

newsbeuter -i opml-file.opml

Once you’ve done that, you can run Newsbeuter with newsbeuter, and your feeds will show up. Hit R to refresh them.

From the Newsbeuter interface, you can view episode titles and show notes, but you’ll have to use Podbeuter to grab the media files. Like Liferea, Newsbeuter recognizes media files, or “enclosures,” in feeds. The “Podbeuter” part refers to the download manager that handles these enclosures.

To tell Podbeuter which feed you want downloaded, paste your direct episode links into ~/.newsbeuter/queue. You must also create and edit the file ~/.newsbeuter/config to add some configuration commands. At the very least, you must specify a player for your media files. For instance:

player mplayer

You can also specify a download directory (which defaults to your home directory) and a maximum number of simultaneous downloads:

download-path /home/ruji/Music/Podcastsmax-downloads 3

Now you can run podbeuter and hit d on any episode you wish to download. To play a finished download, hit p.

I wouldn’t say that Podbeuter is the most elegant solution, since you have to manually copy and paste the direct links to the episodes you want downloaded, but it could be useful for someone who already uses Newsbeuter or who specifically wants a command-line podcatcher.

5. Mashpodder

Mashpodder is a user-contributed fork of the classic podcatching script BashPodder. After downloading, place the files in the directory from which you wish to run Mashpodder.

You must configure Mashpodder before you can use it. Open file “mashpodder.sh” for editing. First use BASEDIR to specify the directory in which you placed the mashpodder directory itself. For example:

BASEDIR="home/ruji/Apps/mashpodder"

By default, podcast episodes will be downloaded into this same directory. To change this, specify PODCASTDIR:

PODCASTDIR="/home/ruji/Music/Podcasts"

Now open “mp.conf” for editing. Three pieces of information for each podcast are needed: the RSS feed, the sub-directory in which to save downloads from that feed, and the number of episodes to download at a time. If you don’t want to manually name a subdirectory for each feed, you can use date to have date-based subdirectories automatically set up. For example, these are a few feeds I’ve listed in my mp.conf:

http://www.opensourcemusician.libsyn.com/rss OpenSourceMusician 2http://gnuworldorder.info/ogg.xml date 3http://feeds.feedburner.com/meta-podcast date all

Now when you run Mashpodder, your specified podcasts will download into the directory you chose. You do need an external program to enter that directory and play them.

Conclusion

GPodder is probably the most feature-rich podcatcher/podcast client on this list, but one of the others might suit you better depending on your needs and which applications you’re already using.

Please let us know in the comments what your favorite podcast clients are!

Image credit: Equationaudio on Wikimedia Commons

( Printo PDFq Readerg Read Later

Ruji Chapnik is a freelance creator of miscellanea, including but not limited to text and images. She studied art at the University of California, Santa Cruz and writing at Portland State University. She went on to study Linux in her bedroom and also in various other people's bedrooms, crouched anti-ergonomically before abandoned Windows computers. Ruji currently lives in Portland, Oregon. You can find her experiments at rujic.net and her comics at dondepresso.rujic.net.

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Posted in: Alternative,Clients,Linux,Podcast

How to Create a Community on Google+

If you haven’t heard, Google+ has a new feature: communities. They’re much like groups on Facebook and can be public or private. Communities are a great way to bring a group of family or friends together, but can also be used for teams or to bring people together with a common interest.

Best of all, you can do everything in your community that you can do on Google+: share links, photos and videos; create and plan events; and even talk face-to-face using hangouts. The Googe+ mobile app has also been updated so that you can keep up with your communities and post while on-the-go.

So now, let’s take a look at .

1. Go to the Google+ home page and click on Communities in the left navigation sidebar.

2. Click on the “Create a Community” button at the top right of the page.

3. Decide whether you want a Public or Private community; public communities can be seen by anyone in the world, while private communities are only accessible by its members.

4. Once you click on Public or Private, you’ll need to enter a name for your Community and decide whether to hide your community from searches.

5. “Congratulations, you’ve started a community,” is the message that you should see displayed on the next page. Now you can customize it further with a tagline, photo, description, guidelines, and categories.

6. Once you click on the “Done editing” button, you’ll be prompted to invite people to your community. You can invite people individually, invite an entire circle, or even make your invitation public.

7. Now you’ll be able to add new posts and events, edit your community, invite members, and start hangouts whenever you want; everything is pretty straightforward.

8. By default notifications for your community will be on, but you can turn them off if you don’t want to be notified of new posts and activity.

That’s it. If you happen to have a public Google+ community feel free to share it in the comments.

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Posted in: Community,Create,Google+

TrustedInstaller and why can I rename a file?

TrustedInstaller is a user account that has the built in Windows 8, Windows 7 and Windows Vista, the user account "" of the file system, as well as some files in the Windows folder, program files folder and the Windows folder, even the older were created after you upgrade from the Windows version to rename or delete these files, you will need to take ownership of their stores of TrustedInstaller user account.

If you have just upgraded to a new version of Windows and try to remove the old Windows folders is a simple way to do – there is no need to delete it manually.

Who is the TrustedInstaller.

The TrustedInstaller user account is used by the services to install Windows modules included in this Windows service is responsible to install, edit, and delete Windows updates, and more. Select Windows components, which have the ability to modify.

Delete old Windows folder.

If you are trying to delete the folder C:\Windows.old after upgrading to a new version of Windows and you will see a message that States that you must have permission from TrustedInstaller, you do not need to take ownership of all files. Just use the Disk Cleanup Wizard.

To open the Disk Cleanup Wizard. Press the Windows key and type disk cleanup in Windows 7, click the disk cleanup shortcut that appears on the start menu in Windows 7» set up click the shortcut and select "free disk space by deleting unneeded files.

Click the ngarabop button in the files window, dare disk cleanup.

If you have an older hard drive Windows folder you will see a check box for "previous Windows installation" in the list of system files that you can delete, you enable the option, and then click OK, Windows will delete the Windows folder to you-be sure to copy all the important files off it before you run a disk cleanup on.

Taking ownership of files.

Warning – the TrustedInstaller user account contains your system files to make the TrustedInstaller is that you can rename or delete the folder is usually a good reason, for example, if you rename the folder C:\Windows\System32 on your operating system to stop functioning and need to repair or reinstall.

You should only the owner of the file and rename, delete, or move if you know you're doing what? If you know you're doing what? Follow the instructions below as the owner of the file.

Locate the folder or file that you want to take ownership of. Click naman and choose Properties

Click on the Security tab in the Properties window and click the Advanced button at the bottom.

Click the link to change the ex-TrustedInstaller change.

Type administrator in the box and click the check names button, Windows will do the rest of the name by which the ownership of all system administration. Click OK to save this change.

Enable "Replace owner on subcontainers and objects" is change the settings if you want to use this on any subfolders and files in all. Click the OK button at the bottom of the advanced security settings.

Click the Edit button in the Properties window.

Select a user and administrator check box for full control permissions to the administrator account to a full activation.

Click the OK button twice to save the changes. You now have the ability to rename, delete, or move the files that you want.

If you find yourself on a regular basis. The owner of the file, you can download the reg file adds a "remove host" option in the right-click menu, you will be able to take ownership of files and folders with one click twice quickly.

For more answers to the question of technology. Check out MakeUseOf answers.

Why do you need to take ownership of a folder of TrustedInstaller issue opinions and share other tips that you have?

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Posted in: file?,rename,TrustedInstaller