The netbooks are neat devices, provided you’re ready to give up computing horsepower, keyboard size, and screen size.
It is true emailing attachments is so old school. With online solutions like Google Docs, webmail and Netsuite, who really needs a standalone machine. Give me high speed internet access and I’m ready for the world.
Bottom line: If size does matter (if you don’t want to tote around a normal sized laptop), then take a look at the netbooks. I’ll take one if you wanted to give me one. But to really solve my road warriors needs, all I need is my iPhone and a fold out, full-sized keyboard. Anyone got one?
The main difference between http:// and https:// is security.
HTTP stands for HyperText Transport Protocol, which is just a fancy way of saying it’s a protocol (a language, in a manner of speaking) for information to be passed back and forth between web servers and clients.
The important thing is the letter “S” which makes the difference between HTTP and HTTPS.
The “S” stands for “Secure”.
If you visit a website or webpage, and look at the address in the web browser, it will likely begin with the following: http://. This means that the website is talking to your browser using the regular ‘unsecure’ language. In other words, it is possible for someone to “eavesdrop” on your computer’s conversation with the website. If you fill out a form on the website, someone might see the information you send to that site.
This is why you never ever enter your credit card number in an http website!
But if the web address begins with https://, that basically means your computer is talking to the website in a secure code that no one can eavesdrop on.
Bottom line:
If a website ever asks you to enter your credit card information, you should automatically look to see if the web address begins with https://. If it doesn’t, there’s no way you’re going to enter sensitive information like a credit card number.
Mugging someone at knife-point is so old-school. The bad guys have moved on to more elegant cons, where you may not even realize you’ve been ripped off.
This recent article in the New York Times does a good job of capturing the current threat environment:
