Chicago Tribune Binary Beat Column.

By James Coates, Chicago Tribune Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

Aug. 24--Today's column will offer one worm-bitten wretch's advice about some unconventional ways to prevent getting overrun by worms, viruses, dialers, jokesters, blended threats, macro viruses, Trojan horses and other Internet vermin.

But first a word about how the great Internet worm infestation of '03 messed up my plans for the week:

Before the Internet got blitzed by the MSBlaster.exe worm, the Sobig.f worm and the notorious Klez worm, today's column plan had been to discuss how laptop computers make more sense this back-to-school season.

Portables, I was going to demonstrate, have become far less expensive even as they boast the kinds of business-strength hard drive space, processor speeds, memory and networking powers …