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fitting customers). To some extent, the same tablet. And, Google is busy modifying the
thing is true in the Apple world; while there is Chrome OS on Chromebooks to allow them to
no direct competitor for Apple products, inex- run Android apps; within six months to a year
pensive Chromebooks continue to make in- we should begin to see hybrid functionality in
roads in the educational field that had been a the Android world as well.
virtual Apple franchise some years ago. Ra- In closing, our Holiday Party is coming up
rd
ther than competing on price, Microsoft and soon, on December 3 . Watch for details.
Apple seem intent on developing high-end de- Please sign up with Linda Busch to bring a
vices with unique features that can command side dish. And, please get in touch with Judy
a significant mark-up. They may sell fewer Dunham to pick up raffle tickets to sell; our
devices, but will receive a much higher profit Holiday raffle is an important fund-raiser for
per sale. (The new 13.5” Surface Book sells our club!
for $1,899; the comparable 13.3” MacBook Thank you, and Happy Thanksgiving!
Pro sells for $1,999.)
Some competitors are taking a page from the Review:
Microsoft / Apple Book. For example, the No-
vember issue of PC Magazine favorably re-
views a $1,599 version of the Asus ZenBook 3 Traffic Light by BitDefender
saying in part, “The design of the Asus
ZenBook 3 is as close as you can get to that
of the Apple MacBook without laser-cutting an
Apple logo into its slick aerospace-grade alu- By Joe Durham, Editor, Quad-Cities Computer So-
minum body.” (On the other hand, instead of ciety, IA
May 2016 issue, Qbits
buying this 12.5” beauty you could buy a very www.qcs.org
high-end conventional 15.6” Asus laptop with joseph85_us (at) yahoo.com
a comparable Core i7 processor, 12 GB of
RAM, an NVidia graphics card with 3 GB of I recently added an extension to Google
dedicated RAM and the same full HD display Chrome called Traffic Light by
BitDefender. This is a cross-browser extension
for $1,099.) available from the Google Play store. It pur-
(Something to consider if you are drawn to ports to analyze, and notify you of tracking ac-
one of the high-end, slim and lightweight new tivities as you browse the web. Traffic Light
laptops is the fact that virtually everything in- places a green colored icon in the upper right
side is soldered in place. This will make it dif- hand corner of the screen if it determines that
ficult, if not impossible, to substitute or add the site you are currently viewing is safe.
memory or batteries.) If there are tracking activities present at this
Speaking of hardware, it has been interesting site, a small yellow or gold icon is superim-
to see what has happened in the tablet mar- posed on the green light. No tracking activities
ket. More and more, free-standing handheld are indicated if this golden symbol is not dis-
tablets are disappearing (other than offerings played.
from inexpensive off-brand companies). While
Apple still sells their iPads, Microsoft sells Sur- While at your website location, click on the
green symbol and a menu appears that shows
face tablets and Samsung and Lenovo still sell whether the site is safe, and below that the
Android tablets, that’s about it for the major number of tracking activities it detects.
brands. And, in many cases, buyers are pur-
chasing keyboards of one sort or another to A settings option in white text gives you the
turn their tablets into a form of convertible lap- ability to configure Traffic Light to monitor
top. Similarly, many laptop computer manu- those areas you wish. I choose to turn on the
facturers are offering a variety of convertible Facebook and Twitter protection and now Traf-
fic Light indicates on the Facebook newsfeed
laptops, which can be used as a laptop or a

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