Alfa antenna not recommended for Mac

I recently purchased an Alfa 1000mW 1W 802.11b/g USB Wireless WiFi Network Adapter from (also known as ASUW036H) from Amazon.  I posted a review there but it has not appeared, and I'm not sure it will, so I'm repeating the main points here.  The bottom line is that while it works, it is not easy to install and it won't work on future versions of the Mac OS.

Recently, the signal from my home wifi antenna has been inadequate for my Mac. Whether the problem is with the Mac AirPort or the Verizon modem is not clear.  With Verizon on strike, I don't think that anyone is going to come out to diagnose that side of the problem, so I bought this antenna.  It works, but installation on Mac OS 10.6 is far from easy.

For the record, there is a video on YouTube, and you can download the driver from the alfa web site (here) but I got the instructions on the CD that came with the antenna.  That was harder than you might think, since the CD was a non-standard size and would not work with the Mac CD slot (I had to use an external CD drive).  The instructions themselves involve the following steps.
1) You have to download the driver, as a rar-encrypted file, from a third-party site (here).  I had to use another computer, since the Mac's internet connection was not working properly.
2) You have to unpack the .rar file.  To do this, I downloaded WinRAR, which came with the StartNow computer virus (see previous post).
3) The package can then be installed on the Mac, but must be activated using line commands entered onto a terminal window.
4) Finally, the RealTek software has to be run.

It works.  The antenna receives enough signal that internet works fine.  This is an important point, and I'm happy for it.

But there are two more negatives.

First, I found that upon restarting, the device is not recognized.  The command

sudo kextutil -t -v /System/Library/Extensions/rtl8187l.kext

has to be repeated each time the computer is rebooted (anyone with a better solution, please comment). 

Second, this device will not work with future versions of the Mac OS.  From the alfa web site:
AWUS036H is not compatible to Mac OS 10.6.7 and later version, due to the chipset manufacture has stopped its driver update for this particular model. In countermeasure, we have verified that our AWUS036NH, AWUS036NEH, AWUS051NH, and AWUS036NHR are compatible to Mac OS 10.6.8.

To be fair, I should point out that this is as much Apple's fault as Alfa's.  There are many other antennas that don't work with the Mac.  I suppose that the best solution is to use a repeater rather than an antenna.

The strange case of StartNow malware

Yesterday, after I downloaded WinRAR (from Cnet, here), I found that I had also installed something called StartNow, a toolbar for my browsers that also changed my home page on both Chrome and Firefox.

StartNow installed immediately after WinRAR

 I did some searches and found that this has happened to others.

What is strange about this case?  A few things.  First, both CNET and WinRAR have a decent reputation. Second, the StartNow malware makes no attempt to hide. The program even has an "uninstall" option that seems to work.  I carried out standard removal of the extension/addon, changed the homepage back and removed StartNow using their own uninstall option.  Unlike other malware sites, startnow has their own web site (startnow.com) and a support page that tells you how to remove their software (here).  Now that I've done so, everything seems fine (but I  do wonder if the other shoe might fall soon).  StartNow looks like a case of people who made a product that does something useful (although I still have no clue what that might be), who crossed the line into MalWare but don't realize they have done so.

Western Digital hard drives are great, but don't install Memeo!

I recently had an adventure with a computer virus (Virtumonde/Vundo!). If I find the time, I'll blog about that separately (the bottom line is that Malwarebytes, run in safe mode, is what finally worked). This post is about the backup that I attempted once everything was working well again. I will discuss Lenovo's "Rescue and Recovery" which I used and Memeo Backup and AutoSync.

Lenovo's Rescue and Recovery program, which comes with the Thinkpad, has some useful features but can also be aggravating. This goes with the territory. Automating backups is appealing, but it ties up the CPU, RAM and hard disc space. There are some serious issues here about giving the user control and knowledge of the process. I ultimately decided that while Rescue and Recovery could be much more transparent, it is worthwhile, provided that it is never ever set for scheduled backups (at least not in the case of a laptop which is not likely to be on at times when it is not in use). It needs an external hard drive to backup onto, and it will want to make that drive bootable.

So, I bought a Western Digital hard drive. It was a 1 Tb. drive, from Amazon, and cost $118. This is mind-boggling to me because I remember when 20 Mb. was the standard size for an external drive; that is 1/50,000 the size! The hard drive came with Memeo software (Autobackup and Autosync). I was prompted to install it, and I did, since it appeared to be free with the drive. Only after installation did I realize that it was a 30 day free trial. I used the Lenovo softare to back up my hard drive overnight. The next morning (today), after I removed the external drive and restarted my laptop, Memeo started up and prompted me to create a backup plan. I didn't. I closed Memeo and saw a message that it would be running in the background. There is no reason for it to be running at all when the backup drive is not connected! I selected quit, but it started again. Why? If users cannot turn software off, then that software is malware. This behavior certainly fits the definition (from wikipedia) in that it is "software designed to infiltrate a computer system without the owner's informed consent. The expression is a general term used by computer professionals to mean a variety of forms of hostile, intrusive, or annoying software or program code."

There was no uninstall option in the start menu, so I went online and found that uninstalling Memeo is a big concern of many people. I used the Windows "Add and Remove" (under Start/Settings) and it seems to be gone. Compared to others, I feel lucky (Yahoo Answers ultimately suggests reinstalling Windows). It strikes me that Memeo may be useful, and the free trial may be a good way to market it, but putting aggressive features into a backup program was really dumb. The name Memeo will forever be associated with malware.