Order Management

The morning after our 30-plus-hour bus odyssey through Laos, Levi and I woke up fully restored after a night on a flat mattress. We stopped for a couple of tropical fruit smoothies — one of the great things about Southeast Asia — and some groceries before getting onto another bus that would take us down, this time, to Bokeo Province and the gibbons. Another fantastic noodle bowl later and we got onto a bus heading toward the Thai border. This trip was relatively uneventful, save for the amazing mountain scenery passing by our window. It took us to Houayxai, a pretty little Mekong River town where the Gibbon Experience office was located. We got a room at a guesthouse near the office, and checked in with them. It seemed that because we had not confirmed our reservation online, we couldn’t go out in the next day’s expedition. I felt like an idiot – I thought that surely, no one else would know about this gibbon thing, right?

Turned out it was hugely popular and drew people from all over the world. We would have to stick around and wait for a couple days to see if anyone canceled their reservations, or failed to show up. We didn’t mind hanging around this cute town for a little while, anyway. It had Lao and Chinese markets, some ornate Buddhist temples (where Levi and I posed with young, orange-clad monks) and a cute little tropical bar with pillows on the ground, art on the walls, candles and incense burning, and a potted marijuana plant for decoration. On our second day there, we got the good news that people had failed to show up, leaving open slots on the next day’s expedition for us to fill.

Our party consisted of Levi and me, plus five others of varying ages and nationalities. Early the next morning we got up early and were driven about two hours into the mountains. The van suddenly stopped at a tiny roadside grocery stand and we were told to get out, because this was the beginning of our trek. It was the rainy season, and the mountain roads weren’t navigable by any vehicle larger than a motorbike. During the dry season, the van would continue to drive up into the mountains closer to the Gibbon Experience, but in the rainy season we had to walk up.

So walk we did — for six hours, under the beating sun, up and down wet clay mountain roads, up and down forest footpaths on muddy ledges no wider than two feet, slipping on the red mud. It seemed as though there were never any flat parts to the trek; it was either up or down, usually pretty steep either way. It was exhausting, dirty, and draining. Five hours in, we reached a tiny village — little huts, this time without satellite dishes, and a tiny store with a bench out front where we collapsed to rest. We gratefully bought water and Cokes, ate, and gathered our strength for the last part of the trek, arguably the hardest. It took a little over an hour, mostly on a very steep and muddy uphill, through the forest. Most of the paths were a series of slippery steps. A few of the people in our group had been traveling and jungle trekking for months, and it wasn’t nearly as rough on them as it was on me. I thought I could possibly die, right there in the Lao jungle. Staggering up the last flight of mud steps, I could hear the sound of laughter and hollering above me … we were finally at the Gibbon Experience.

Contrary to what Mac cynics might say, the upgrades in Mac OS X Version 10.4 (also known as tiger) Apple’s latest operating system are not just cosmetic. New features such as Tiger’s search tool are powerful enough to change the way Mac users work, and intriguing enough to possibly convert a few Windows users.

The $129 upgrade should work on any G3, or G5 Fire wire Mac. I installed a shipping version of the Os in about an hour each on an aging 867-MHz Power book and a newer 1.67-Ghz Power book, with no problem.

Tiger’s breakthrough feature is Spotlight; a desktop search tool that rummages through files, folders, e-mail Apple applications, and major third-party programs such as Microsoft Word and Excel (but no Entourage e-mail) It then displays results neatly by category. Spotlight can search by the usual criteria (file name, keywords) but also buy a dizzying variety of deeper “Metadata” such as author audio bit-rate, and photo a[perture. You can even save Spotlight searches as Smart Folders that continually update and add related files.

Tiger includes plenty of other useful additions. Dash board Widgets are attractive misapplications that aggregate information like stock prices and flight times. You also get Safari support for RSS (Really Simple Syndication) for reading blogs and news feeds, as well as parental controls for the Finder, mail IChat, and Safari.

Reports of networking bugs have surfaced, so if you use a cross-platform network or VPN, check for compatibility. You don’t need this upgrade. But spotlight is cool and useful enough to make Tiger well worth the purchase price.

Antivirus powerhouse Symantec takes aim at spy ware with its free public beta of Norton Internet Security 2005 Anti Spy ware Edition. The final version, due by midyear, will sell for about $80, but my initial tests show that the beta, at least may not be your best bet for spy ware protection.

Norton Internet Security, the 2005 offering is meant to be all-inclusive, containing such necessities as a firewall and antivirus protection.

To check out the utility’s anti-spy ware chops, I subjected my test PC to 12 common spy ware and adware apps:  Bargain Buddy, Huntbar, Internet Optimizer, ISTbar, Perez toolbar, Total Velocity, and Xupiter, plus two variants each of the Downloader and Start page Trojan horses.

Though Norton Accurately identified and blocked the Downloader and Start Page Trojan horses, its results with the remaining spy ware and ad ware were mixed. It ignored Total Velocity and Xupiter; and when it alerted me to Hot bar’s presence, it recommended that I not only keep the program but also allow it full Internet access. And when Total Velocity and Xupiter tried to connect to a DNS sever, Norton recommended I permit full access for both.

The Beta software also lacks the ability to restore a Web browser’s hijacked start and search page settings, and it omits protection against modifications to your hosts file (essentially an Internet address book on your PC)

Still, the Norton Internet Security 2005 Anti Spy ware Edition beta showed promise, and Symantec fans will no doubt embrace its all-in-one approach to security. And you can’t beat the beta’s free price.