Had the same issues with Seagate 500gb Laptop drives. We had anywhere between 10-25% failure rates on those on a 400 laptop batch. Hitachi's were lower (about 8 to 15% on the worst batch) but not much in the 7200 spindle speed. 5400 Hitachi's on the other hand were rock solid (I can remember replacing only 3 in a 400 Laptop batch), and I would take those Seagates over Fujitsu's or Toshibas any day. Hell one batch of Fuji's back in 2003 had an almost 50-70% failure rate over three years. At least you had a decent chance of getting data from a failing Seagate. Most other drives were unreadable when they failed.

My last straw with Seagate was when my 2GB External Ghost image drive failed with our historical backups on it. It would read and write, but it was pause for 2-30 seconds randomly clicking the whole time. When I replaced it with a RAID External I couldn't get the drive RMA'd because it wouldn't fail Seagate Diagnostics (although it would fail smart tests from other test software like HDAT2) It finally gave me a Seagate code when I tested it non stop for 3 weeks.

Apparently it must not be an competitive marketplace or they just want to find a convenient way of going out of business, since the Local Cable company (if they have one) is going to make a killing there.

Hell, Verizon HomeFusion is about the same price as the 25GB plan. You can drop your phone line, It'll blow the doors off DSL speeds, and it can be added to a share everything plan so the data can be shared with a 4G hotspot/Phone. If you're going to pay that much you might as well get something that's going to travel and be faster.

No. what it should do is act like android plugins and pop a security warning if any permission level changes between updates, or if it modifies settings.

Disabling auto update may add more problems if the app has bugs that can be exploited. I'd rather have Chrome disable the plugin if permissions change instead of removing auto update altogether.

On another note. why is this all of a sudden news now? I've been seeing all of these Virus ads and plugins posts on slashdot this week and I've been seeing this stuff going in chrome for Months now. Hell 60-70% of my service calls are from this stuff.

Hell, I had two Chromebooks come in infected and you can't just remove the extension on a chromebook. You basicially have to log into google using Chrome on a windows PC, Infect that chrome, disinfect it using ADWCleaner or JRT to remove the extension enough in chrome so it deletes the plugin in your cloud settings, and reset the Chromebook to factory (otherwise it comes back). So much for "Chromebooks don't get viruses", although Google now has a browser reset button (The two chromebooks were infected before this feature was added in the WIndows builds) so that might make it easier to remove. I sure hope so for Chromebook's sake.

Google. You Seriously need to start monitoring and cracking down on this stuff ASAP. And start paying attention to your damn Google ads! I'm sick of people installing buldleware virii everytime they search for any of the following:

Firefox
Google Chrome (Thats right! They're hijacking your OWN BROWSER'S ADS ON YOUR OWN SEARCH ENGINE!)
Internet Explorer
Windows Media Player
Openoffice/Libreoffice ETC
VLC Media Player
7ZIP
Quicktime/Itunes ETC
ETC. (I can literally go on forever with this list. Just as a rule of thumb, if it's a popular software download, it's most likely been install hijacked by a Virus Inc.)

Anytime anyone uses adwords to get listed on a legitimate app, and it doesn't go to the Legitimate program's website, I want a big red light to start blinking with 150DB Sirens going off and a Evil Sounding voice that says WARNING!! ADWORDS HIJACK DETECTED!! going down somewhere in your security dept so your security team scours their ad submission in fear of the big red light of screaming Terror going off. And they better damn well ban that entire domain and any subdomains from ALL ADS FOR LIFE! Either Get Tough and declare war on spam and virus pushers or get steamrolled!

The same goes for you too MS. Fix Bing! See what Google is doing? You're doing the exact same thing and need the exact same remidies! Hell! Slahdot? Want a Bash MS Story for your front page? There's malicious apps in the Windows 8 Store! Just open up the store, search for "getdesktopapp" and see the Virus and Adware crap MS's Own Store is infecting people with! Now get on bashing M$ like you love to do. Chop Chop!

And as for Antivirus firms. (And frankly, I don't care who you are. You ALL suck when it comes to this) Wake The F Up! You detect Gator, A 10 year old adware/spyware mess as a virus, but Conduit SearchProtect is totally legitimate and in no way is a threat to computer users even though it does thins that are 10 times worse than anything Claria did? BS! Wake Up, Grow a Pair and start doing your damn job! It's a shame that the only people that detect these things is the people behind ADWCleaner and the Junkware Removal Tool (thanks BTW for making these two tools since noone else detects adware anymore). Adware is a VIrus now. Bundleware is a Virus. Start detecting and removing this crap as malware like you should! It's real easy to find out what to detect. If you install a wanted program (like Adobe reader), and it installs Something the person didn't want (like Ask Toolbar, or whatever garbageware of the day adobe gets paid to infect PC's with) It's malicious and should be flagged as such. I don't care if it's got a Checkmark to not install or who the hell is pushing the junkware or who the junkware creator is. the practice is bad and needs to die.

Staying with my original theme of copying my old post...

If they were serious about a revolt, or serious about sending a message to MS, they should go to CES with all of their PC's running Windows 7 / Full Featured Linux / ChromeOS, ETC... or nothing but Android Tablets.

Sure why not. Here was my last comment minus the revolt stuff. Hopefully We get a few more of these articles. The .NET Firefox plugin dupes needs some competition.

Adding android on an OS that's already got a Tablet interface is akin of adding spinner rimmed wheels to the hood of a car because people don't like standard rims. It's Basically Splashtop OS for 2014. It doesn't solve any problem, hell it probably makes it worse since Android isn't exactly designed for desktop use either

It won't

If they were serious about a revolt, or serious about sending a message to MS, they should go to CES with all of their PC's running Windows 7 / Full Featured Linux / ChromeOS, ETC... or nothing but Android Tablets.

Adding android on an OS that's already got a Tablet interface is akin of adding spinner rimmed wheels to the hood of a car because people don't like standard rims. It's Basically Splashtop OS for 2014. It doesn't solve any problem, hell it probably makes it worse since Android isn't exactly designed for desktop use either

They did it for Windows 2000. I read somewhere that MS charged a big company running windows 2000 at the time over $10000 for a single patch after windows 2000 expired.

The best option is to get rid of it. I dealt with this issue back when windows 2000 went EOL (primarily with scientific equipment that would lose certification if tampered with) and believe me you don't want to go there if you can avoid it. You can avoid it if the system is not network facing and you don't use media like USB drives on it. But any level of network from Internet to Sneakernet puts you at risk.

The only major problem I've run into compatibility when it comes to transitioning programs windows XP to 7 is 64Bit and UAC. Disabling UAC, enabling the Administrator account, and using the 32Bit version of 7 will 99/100 times get an old program to run in 7 using XP compatibility mode, and if it still doesn't work, then there's windows XP mode (although that can get infected, you can minimize the impact with NAT or Disabling Network support.)

Hardware is a different story. Many XP drivers will install in 32bit 7 but they can cause bluescreens and the like. I've honestly had better luck with Vista in this regard. Again with UAC Turned off.

Setting your answering machine to 6 rings seems to work for us. they usually stop after the 4th ring and flag the number as dead since they assume everybody has an answering machine.

Another option is to use a thrid party call screener like nomorobo or Google Voice, but I've never tried those so YMMV.

This is nothing compared to the .Net Firefox plugin

If Slashdot put as much effort in denouncing that plugin into Actual malicious plugins like Conduit, Dealio and the like, the world would be a better place.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qR3D-Jx6FQ

Honestly, I can't believe MS is even entertaining him as CEO. Their almost better putting Apotheker or Fiorina on the list.

I swear to god Microsoft has been infected by some clinical, idocracy level of Stupid or Brain Eating Slugs, and this is coming from someone that has a long Slashdot history of Defending Microsoft on this site. In the past year they have managed to piss off just about every customer sector they have to the limit at a time when they cant afford to lose customers and are the most vulnerable in decades to losing said customers to alternatives. They need to stop screwing around and start listening to their customers and fix the issues they keep bringing up instead of "innovating" themselves into oblivion.

As someone else already pointed out, It's the Ads. If you have ad blocker the top site will be the correct one. Many people do not differentiate between the ads and the real links, so they click on the first link that shows up, downloades it, and get hammered. This is why Ad blocking is so important these days, because Ad firms won't do the job of filtering malicious ads

Right now, in the past 30 days, I've dealt with 6 Viruses like Sirifef, TDSS and various FBI Viruses. This week alone, I've cleaned 9 PC's that had Drive By Downloader Infections and I usually keep that pace every week. I'd say I've cleaned roughly 30+ this past 30 days. If that's not a sign where things are going I don't know what is.

As someone else already pointed out, It's the Ads. If you have ad blocker the top site will be the correct one.

Many people do not differentiate between the ads and the real links, so they click on the first link that shows up, downloades it, and get hammered.

Right now, in the past 30 days, I've dealt with 6 Viruses like Sirifef, TDSS and various FBI Viruses. This week alone, I've cleaned 9 PC's that had Drive By Downloader Infections and I usually keep that pace every week. I'd say I've cleaned roughly 30+ this past 30 days. If that's not a sign where things are going I don't know what is.

It Gets worse.

Just about every popular Open Source program out there is Drive by Kidnapped. Just search for any Open source program on google and bing and see what I mean.

VLC media player, 7Zip and firefox seem to be the popular drive-by bait and switch downlaods I seen. There's even a chromium browser ripoff that impersonates google chrome, albeit with a square chrome logo instead of a round one.