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Is Spectre Giving You a Meltdown?

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Irwin Electronics Weekly Digest

Is Spectre Giving You a Meltdown?

For personal PC users, it’s mostly media hype
by David Irwin on January 15
If you’re an Enterprise server administrator, I feel for you! I used to be responsible for over three thousand servers at the bank. And the problem only gets worse when management doesn’t understand tech. They buy into the media hype and demand everything be patched... yesterday!
For the average personal computer user, it’s mostly hype. It’s a big story because it’s hardware related and affects nearly every processor in use today. Being a hardware issue it doesn’t matter if you use Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, or Android. Virtually every computer is affected! Now that’s scary, and the media is on it like white on rice. Now for a little truth. For one, it is very difficult to exploit. The software would have to be installed on your device. Your antivirus should detect and thwart any attempts to exploit the vulnerability. Another media hype is the fact that patching the issue could slow your computer by about 30%! That’s a worst-case scenario and again applies more to servers than personal computers. Chances are, the impact of a patch on your PC would be negligible. Good news for the server admins, a developer at Google developed a patch with zero impact, and they are making the patch available to everyone. More truth, the exploit potentially allows an attacker to view passwords and keys from other users. Most personal computers only have one user, so any data collected would be minimal. The target here again is servers with hundreds of users. What can you do right now to be protected? Remain calm, don’t fall into the hype. The software vendors are working on patches. Windows will check for updates at 3AM every morning. Leave your computer on at this time so it can receive the updates. Most Linux computers will tell you when updates are available. I’m sure Mac will also notify you. Just be sure to apply the patches as they become available.
If you want a professional to check your PC, we would be happy to help. Irwin Electronics does not charge for diagnostics! We can remote into your PC and verify the automatic updates are scheduled and working properly. We can also test your antivirus to be sure it is up to date and functioning. If we do find a problem, we can usually fix it right away, over the phone, within minutes. Most Windows Update problems are simple fixes. We may charge a nominal fee to repair. We are here to help you and want to help save money. If we can fix it in just a few minutes, we might charge $20. We want to earn your business. When big problems arise, we want to be the company you call for help. You know that we have the tools and experience to get the job done right. Even with that, our service charges are very reasonable. In fact, most of our reviews say we do not charge enough. How could we charge more? If you can buy a new computer for ~$300, and our service fees were higher, you’d just buy new and we wouldn’t earn anything. I don’t know about you, but I like to eat. I’d rather work hard and earn a little on a bunch of jobs than see perfectly good computers going into landfills while not making any money. If you’ve been reading my blogs, and read our reviews, you know we would never charge you for service you don’t need. I may not be a good businessman, but that to me does not seem like good business. I certainly wouldn’t want to be taken to the cleaners, so why would we do that to the most important thing in our business... you, our customers! Give us a call at 480-382-4761. We’ll check your computer for free, no strings attached. If everything looks good, you will not owe us a dime. Down the road, if/when something breaks, we know we’ll be the first company you call. When your mom, or your neighbor, complains their computer is a piece of junk, you can say you know a guy. I am that guy. I am David Irwin, owner of Irwin Electronics, LLC. Where we make old computers run like new!






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