Limbtec Technical Blog

BT, Broadband and SEO

2010-01-30T11:46:00.004Z

BT

I didn't post a blog lat week, mainly because my Internet connection just wasn't working. I could have written it, put it on a USB stick, and sent it my carrier pigeon.

The problem is despite the fact i had no speed, and the connection dropped every minute or so there was nothing wrong with the line. Well according to BT when they eventually ran the test some 14 hours after reporting the error.

I complained some more and eventually they booked a broadband engineer to come out first thing on Monday to essentially show me nothing was wrong and charge me the fee £100 odd. Problem was the engineer came out and found a fault. Now this is were I completely lost it with BT! Broadband engineers only get 2 hours of time allotted to each job, run out of time and then it has to get booked on again.

It appears this got lost in a system and the next thing was the report from BT to say no fault found, and so it was closed. I then Email Ian Livingston The Chief Executive of the BT Group.
This means on Wednesday and after a lot of heated emails with Ian another engineer turned up.

Apparently because I was side stepping the ISP, who was doing what they had to do, but was missing some power behind them to kick BT up the backside and resolve this fault which was rapidly coming to 50 weeks old. Mr Livingston didn't like and compared it to have an issue with some food and going directly to the farmer and not back to Tesco. It isn't the same at all after all Tesco don't own the farm, but BT do own the part that is causing me a big headache.

Anyway back to our issue, the engineer came out, investigated the fault on the Wong line and investigated the fault on the right line. No problems found, then he decided if I wasn't having issues on the voice line, we could swap pairs, between the 2 lines. Which he did. OK it has been a couple of days since and things seem to be working OK, I have some of the speed back but not all of it.

The engineer was going to go back and request a test hole be dug in the likely place the fault was, but this was turned down due to the fact my moving the pairs around this has solved the issue. Problem is this also proves there was an error on that line that BT could not detect! And to frank and honest was completely ignoring the repeated issues being raised.

It also means that should this pair get damaged they have nothing to replace it with. We can only hope that H2O get on with rolling out fibre to the premises in Plymouth.

SEO

I have been playing around with some free tools to improve our Search Engine Rankings. We are already creeping up the results, and gaining new results. So it is worth while doing.

One tool is http://www.woorank.com/ well worth all business owners having a look at this tools.

1st post of the year

2010-01-15T15:29:00.006Z

Well, our first post of the year. It has been a slow start with the weather. but it has left us with some time to tie up lose ends on some new products, which we will be releasing over the next month or so.

One thing that has been in demand is for people to work remotely. A number of our customers had this in place, the problem for them was in the main it wasn't designed to work for the entire work force.

Now is the time to start to think about this and perhaps even a little bit deeper into full disaster recovery. If you are a Small business, do you use Microsoft Small Business server? if so why not use the Remote Web Workplace?
A short 60 second presentation is Available from Microsoft
Also available is a short presentation about sharing a conference call and presentation using Microsoft Office Live Meeting

Both utilise technology that helps with travel budgets, or ease of access if we get snowed in again.

New this month is our Disaster Recovery Solution, a very cost effective method of providing Disaster Recovery for small businesses details are available from our website For a small cost you can purchase seats in bundles of 6 or 12. Contact us for details.

We are starting to have discussions with a lot of our clients about how we can best improve their use of technology to help improve their business. Still carrying out IT Audits, and discussions with possible new clients, if you want to know more then drop me an email martin@limbtec.com

LAPTOPS
However you dress them up, they really don't like drinks being spilt into them, and they don't like being stood on or having things thrown at them. Basically treat them like they will break, as they will if you do any of the following.

BT
Well our BT issues keep on going on and on and on. It now appears that the shiny copper cable going from here to the street cabinet, may not be a shiny, or indeed contain much copper anymore.
You would have thought the simplest solution would be to rerun fresh copper from end to end, but apparently patching every couple of weeks or so with bits of cable is far better.

Come on BT get your act together and get this 11 month (actually 11 months and 1 day) issue resolved.

I am intending to post this blog every Friday PM, but this is subject to change!

Thanks for reading and more next week.

A review of the year

2009-12-30T09:35:00.003Z

Well, just about Evonne does a review of the year, although this year most of the TV programmes are a review of the decade.

This time last year I sat down and wondered what on earth was going to happen through 2009, we had already been hit by a couple of Bad debts, and we needed to alter the way we work. The good thing for us was at the end of 2007, and moving in to 2008 we had sorted out our marketing, refreshed our log and branding. So the answer was all we could do was try our hardest, support our customers, try and reduce costs where possible, and offer to be flexible on payments should the need arise.

And so the year started, we were hit with another couple of customers going bust, but in the main our customers were surviving reasonably well. So we started looking for more customers, we have increased our Business to Business Support customer base by 25%, this has resulted in us keeping our income slightly above the previous year, as we had lost some customers and the others were not spending as much.

We saw rapid growth in our Home User market, particularly in our laptop repairs. Replacement Screens, and replacement power jacks accounting for most of the laptop repairs.

The biggest issue we have seen a rise in, for move businesses and consumers are issues with broadband. In the main and issue arising either with the router, or mainly issues with the actual connection and the ensuring battle with the ISP, but mainly due to BT.

We had a BT Install that had the filter int he wrong place, but the main issues have been with line issues, or other BT issues, I have to add most of these occurred after most of the exchanges in Plymouth were upgraded to BT's 21CN platform. We ourselves have had an ongoing fight for 10 months, other have faired better. But int he main if I had to award a technology villain of the year it would have to go to BT. Please BT in the new year will you take note that customers do have issues and mainly these issues are with your network and not their router or extension cable. And when you run one of your tests and it doesn't run due to a complete lack of bandwidth their is an issue, and the issue is with you.

Enough of that rant, the I-phone has grown in stature and with the host of apps is probably my recommendation for a smart phone for businesses.

Microsoft released Windows 7, and should have a raft of releases in 2010 scheduled. It was a pretty flat year for releases with manufacturers perhaps holding back until people have money to spend, but this has to change next year! (look for announcements by Google and Apple in January)

Looking forward, Plymouth has some major plans ahead this summer will see FIFA visit the city to select the venues for the 2018 World cup bid, I'm sure we will all blow them away. then we just have to wait til December for the announcement of who will get the World Cup. One unusual hero in technology in the city has been the chamber of commerce. Hopefully we will start to see the plans they have produced start to come true. We may well See H2O move into the city to provide fast (and i do mean fast, faster than we currently have) Broadband to the city, by laying fibre to premises using existing conduit (Mainly the sewer system). This will help move Plymouth ahead, and may help force BT to improve the plans for Fibre to the Cabinet in the City!

Well this is my last blog post of the year. Hopefully I will post even more next year, but you can follow the day to day ramblings on twitter - www.twitter.com/limbtec

BT Update

2009-12-03T15:49:00.002Z

Well, my customer is off line again, despite the promise this morning of someone calling before an engineer would turn up. The engineer turned up, and a massive surprise he can't get sync. Good job I diagnosed this on Monday.

Now he believes they have misconfigured the line.

So many issues, and yet they can't seem to just sort it our

BT & the Internet

2009-12-03T11:21:00.003Z

Just to follow on from the previous post.

So yesterday out of the blue the customers Broadband started working! Yes after 2 days BT had indeed found a fault, and had carried out a tie pair modification to get things working again.

Today we visited the site to change the router back over to their router, from our spare one we carry just in case.

Nothing, no sync, no connection nothing, we tried the spare nothing, and just to make sure we tried a brand new router. Nothing, then we changed the filter and tried again, nothing.

The customer phoned BT Broadband, and as soon as they gave their details the broadband suddenly connected (now I'm sure this is a coincidence?), The customer was told yet again, nothing is wrong with the line it mus be your equipment, at which point I managed to get in on the act. When pointing out that there is nothing else connected to the=is master socket other than an ADSL Filter, and connected to that is a broadband router, of which we have tried 6 combinations and not 1 of them was a winner. They finally conceded we need to run more tests, at which point the broadband died and didn't return.

Now if you can take off the faceplate of the master socket and plug it into the test socket we can run more tests. To be fair this did spark a connection, and Internet connectivity was re-established. Then I got the story if we send an engineer out and they find a fault with your equipment we will charge you- er hello nothing wrong with the equipment, but there is with yours.

BT you need to start some good engineering in fault rectification, honestly, work done at the exchange fixed the issue, for some 20 hours, so it is logical that the fault is with the customer.
This is like have your exhaust replaced, and when you get in start the car up it rattles. It is so obviously the fault of the driver for starting the car. The BT question in this case would be 'have you tried a different key, or a different driver'

Then we got on to question of Broadband faults and engineers just turning up un announced. This DOES NOT HAPPEN' Really I know of 2 cases in the past week alone, you even get a call when you have your shopping delivered by some supermarkets?

BT Broadband, and BT Broadband WholeSale, and of course BT Openreach. You need to raise your game in customer service. If the customer is seeing a fault, and it was working fine, and they have tried a filter change and a different router YOU have an issue. You need to get it resolved, if that customer is a business, specially a micro or small business this is likely to critical to that customer. They are likely to be losing money.

Customer stay calm, and keep contacting them. It may take months, but they will eventually find the faults and fix them.

All things Internet

2009-12-01T08:32:00.002Z

It's been a shambles in Plymouth recently.

Yesterday there were massive issues for Virgin Telecom customers in the city. Apparently the power was being taken off of exchange, and was going to be supplied by a diesel generator. However when the power was taken off the generator packed in. I have to ask would you rely on 1 generator to provide the power. I wonder if that generator is their backup generator, just in case they have a power failure! If it is then I would worry about being a Virgin telecom customer!

BT and Broadband, now this is the BT Broadband Wholesale and BT Openreach people. In February this year my Broadband was moved from the old 20CN system to the new 21CN system. With a pile of issues, I have Broadband since 2000, was 1 of the first to connect to it on my Exchange, and have a rock solid connection at ever increasing speeds. Finaaly reaching between 6 - 7.5Mbs. Then it was all moved, and ever since I have endless outages, and speed issues, resulting in my best speed last week of about 2 Mbs.

BT Broadband Wholesale couldn't find a problem on my line, it was working and because it had been connected for over 7 days there couldn't possibly be anything wrong with it? However as i pointed out, it is pointless being connected if you have no throughput, which actually happened more times than I could handle. Eventually, they ran some test and found I had an high voltage on my line, and a cross connection with someone else.

I have spent 10 months trying to get this resolved, I am now up to a blistering fast 5 Mbs still slower than I had, but at least for the last 3 days I have had a useable connection.

Yesterday I had a call from a customer who had lost there broadband, they described the lights on the router, and it obvious they didn't have an ADSL Sync light. It transpired they were moving their telephone lines back to BT, and as a thank you BT have cut their Broadband off! That was 20 hours ago, they still have no broadband this is going to cost the customer thousands of pounds their whole business is based on the internet. This sort of issue is just NOT acceptable.

A couple of weeks ago, I went ot a presentation given by the Plymouth Chamber of Commerce, about connectivity. They have come up with a wonderful plan, and I personall hope the H20 (A company who run fast internet connectivity through the sewer system) do actually invest in Plymouth.

It would give another option to businesses in the city, and would enable customers to have a fail over system.

What we will be recommending to all customers, whose business is reliant on the internet is to have multiple providers and to utalise that, with a router, able to both bond the connections to give faster speed, and also able to failover to a single broadband connection.

Pirates everywhere

2009-11-19T18:56:00.003Z

Pirated software

We as a business loss £1000's of income every year because people use pirated software.
Now apart from it being illegal, there are reasons why you may want to spend a little.

With Pirated software you don't get any support, when it goes wrong you have to sort it out yourself. If you aren't able to or get it wrong you could end up with a box of bits, and some software on it!

We had a call recently from someone who had got hold of a Windows 7 Disc, and installed it. However he had lost everything. During the discussion about what had happened, he stated he had been passed the disc by someone, and theirs had all gone through OK!

Now we have only done 1 job for the customer and his PC is about 5-7 years old. And from memory not that powerfully equipped.

He tried to do an in place upgrade, that having failed, and phoning his Friends he then did a fresh install, reformatted the drive, and then lost all of his data. When I said he was looking at a data recovery job, and that I couldn't say how much of his data we could recover, he decided he would go away and try to reinstall the software again.

Even ignored the warning this would destroy more data??

So you can advise customers, about what they should do, but you can't make them take the advice. This has been a constant theme recently. For us it means eventually the customer will realise they are wrong and then we have to sort the issue out. But if you want advice, actually take the advice and do something about it.

Busy day

2009-10-22T18:23:00.002+01:00

Another busy day

Been to lots of customers this morning, I always enjoy spending time with customers and understanding where they are going with their businesses.

This afternoon was fun, or should that be funny. I went to a seminar about the changes to Company Law that came into effect on the 1st October. You have to stay up to date.

Finished that and now supporting a customer in Portugal, technology is wonderful, if used properly.

Windows 7

2009-10-22T07:47:00.002+01:00

So it is here!

Windows 7 is here and yesterday we had endless emails regarding should I upgrade, what will I get?

So the marketing machine of Microsoft has finally got it self together and has produced a good marketing campaign for the Launch of Windows 7.

Some people, who shunned Vista, not because it wasn't any good or it didn't work, but because it was different to XP are going to concerned. The User Interface (UI) is obviously been tweaked from Vista, we would recommend that you get to grips with this UI as it isn't going to go back to the XP interface, which lets face it is the same as it was in Windows 95, and well past a make over. It works better with newer hardware in particular with the search functionality and the use of Hard Drives which may well be a terabyte or larger in size.

Our Recommendation is to get some training in how to use it.

One comment we have heard from people who did make the move to Vista is "We found nothing wrong with Vista as such – but absolutely nothing beneficial about it either" Please remember Windows is the Operating System it's job is to allow you to use the programs and access features to allow you to actually do the work.

Under the Hood

OK there are some good features under the hood, with the above now published, some of these new features just won't be found the home group could be a very good feature if you take your laptop home from work, it is a feature that has been mentioned to me from a customer who got his hands on a Release Candidate version of 7

All being well, and software running on it , our recommendation will be the same as it was to Vista, the changes from XP to Vista will only be built on. Likewise the changes from Vista to 7 will only be built on, keep on saying XP is the platform for me, will mean you end up with something to old to repair, and use effectively.

From the real world

For those who followed our experience of using 7 in the real world when Microsoft released it to partners, was far from inspiring. For the first week the systems would crash 2-3 times a day.
During the weekend, and just as we were going to uninstall it we had a whole stack of Windows Updates.
I took the decision to run it for another week, and it has been running ever since (Literally, I think I have turned it off once).

It works, it hasn't altered anything really we were running Vista before.

The last word is a warning don't forget if you are administering a WSUS installation then go and add Windows 7 to the products so you have the updates.

A week to catch up

2009-10-20T15:04:00.002+01:00

We have finally caught up with all the work we have had in, over the last coupe of months.
Just 1 Laptop screen to be done, unfortunately there seems to be a lack of this size screen around at the moment, so I guess we will have to wait until next week.

Time to catch up on things in the business, We have a meeting tomorrow with a provider of backup services so we may well be able to offer even better prices on our online back up solution.

What do you look for in Anti-Virus Solutions, looking at a couple of new platforms, 1 of them uses 2 different scanning engines. Giving you double protection.

Been a while

2009-10-18T13:00:00.002+01:00

Well it's been over a month since our last post, as we have been very busy, but have still managed to find time to post on twitter. Well lots been going on.

Laptop Repairs
We have been doing lots of laptop repairs including screen replacements, and replacement DC Jacks. We have also been told by our screen supplier that the prices will be rising, and they are already on the way up, an 8.9" screen we did recently had increased by over £15!

Data Recoveries
Also doing a lot of data recoveries, both physical, and logical. It is always better to have a copy of your data, than relying on it being recoverable. It might just no be recoverable.

Business Support Contracts
This has been growing rapidly, with a whole lot of new business support customers.

Coming Soon
Microsoft will be launching Windows 7 on us next week (22/10/09) We have been running it on some of our desktops for a month for so now. It was a little bit difficult to begin with, as we had issues with some of the drivers, but the platform has been stable for about 3 weeks now.

The last post was not strictly true

2009-09-06T09:39:00.002+01:00

The last post was not strictly true, it wasn't a busy week, the week was bonkers.

Laptop Screens - we ended up repairing about 10 laptops.
Top Tips on looking after your screens

These are fragile items, so don't pick your laptop up by the screen, the weight of the laptop maybe enough to break the screen.
Don't leave it lying around someone will either standa on it or drop somethign on it, and again this will break the screen
Don't hit it in rage, this will break the screen
Do clean it with a wipe.
Do use a proper laptop case to keep it in - these normally provide some protection.

If it does break, you are going to have to have it replaced, although normally covered on insurance it may not be worth claiming, a 14.4" Wide Screen will cost you £120 from us, that is fully fitted and includes the VAT. Smaller screens (Netbooks) will cost from £70, larger screens upto £170.

Also had to deal with the normal, day to day management of our business customers, along with some replacement motherboards.

NEXT WEEK

I think I want to have a quiet week next week, but the truth is we already have a lot of work booked in, and this will grow throughout the week, still hopefully we should get the Job Ad placed next week for an IT Technician to join the team.

Busy Week Ahead

2009-08-31T20:11:00.002+01:00

Well another busy week ahead, I hate bank holidays, we always end up having to squeeze 5 days work into 4!

Lots of feed back from Twitter, after SparksyOnRadio mentioned us on the Plymouth Breakfast show last week. Although people are now asking when are we going to be on TV.

Tomorrow, is going to be busy, machines that have been repaired Friday/Saturday to be returned, Ebay items to be dispatched, and a job for a webdesigner in setting up their clients email account.

All that along with the normal day to day stuff. Also Considering having to put up our prices for site visits, this is because of the governments rise of duty on fuel, another 2p along with the increase in VAT on the 1st January.

Another Late Night

2009-08-28T08:02:00.003+01:00

Another late night last night, had to resolve an issue with a customers server, where the password complexity rules had been changed. On top of that we also had to install WSUS on this server.

For those who don't know WSUS, enables you to control the windows updates from your server. We have finished the download, and have approved some of the updates, but not all. Looks like my wish to have an extended break this weekend is disappearing.

We also picked up a few machines yesterday that were infested with viruses one of them wouldn't even boot up because of this. If the cost of a good anti-virus programme is putting you off don't let it. It is going to cost them more than that to have it cleaned and to stop it happening again it will need to have a AV product installed.

Got a couple of repairs to pick up this morning, and then a router swap out to do. Hopefully finish early this afternoon, and get these machines sorted tomorrow. Leaving Sunday and Monday free.

More Busy Days

2009-08-27T07:42:00.002+01:00

Site Survey Completed, start work at new customers site on Friday, get the issues resolved. And ahve another HAPPY Customer.

Also Completed the Logical Data Recovery last night, recovered the 60Gb of data that had been deleted. More intriguing is why this happened in the first place. The customer was cleaning up the hard drive using the windows tools. However the laptop had, had windows reinstalled by another Computer repair provider in Plymouth. Now instead of carrying out a windows repair they had reinstalled windows, and had left all of the users data in the old folder. Windows believing the 'Windows.old' folder was surplus to requirements just deleted it.

Although we can't name the company in question we probably get at least 2-4 machines in every month after they have had their hands on it, and caused a whole lot of issues.

Essentially another site survey to complete today, as we carry out a pre-installation checks for a customer who is getting a new Line of Business App installed in the next month or so. And some more pick ups.

Will try and get the last couple of pages uploaded for our web hosting customer. Kind of chuffed at last after many years of trying have managed to blog in consecutive days.

Friday Morning is looking busy, but hopefully we should complete this weeks work by early afternoon, and then going to try and take some time off during the long weekend.

May try on Sunday to rebuild our on line shop.!! Keep you posted here.

What a Busy Week - So Far!!!!

2009-08-26T08:38:00.003+01:00

Well, I was hoping we would have a quiet week going into the Bank Holiday weekend!

Plans don't always go to plan, but it's been well worth it to date.

SO what have we been doing

Updating a customers website - We used to carry out web design and still host websites. We still have a couple of customers, who we look after their websites. They have been busy creating and updating pages. SO these have all (well almost been done)
Updating the lock out policy for a customer, You can control when your screen saver kicks in from Group Policy, unfortunately, that means if the policy changes we have to update it.
A customer who is rushing through changes to a Line of Business Application, means we have been ensuring everything is set up correctly and have some work to do to make sure this all runs smoothly.
The issue with a clients Internet connection look like it is fixed, we were out there yesterday. They get 4Mb and 600Kb which is twice the speed they used to get, and somewhere about 8 times more than they had during the last few months. This goes to prove that you need to keep on at your ISP to get the best, the ISP in question said it was there equipment at fault!
Answering questions on Office,how do I password protect a document, how do I do this in Excel. Mostly with customer who have now got Office 2007, and can't use the Ribbon interface.

And today off to carry out a site survey at a new customers site.

A Busy Week

2009-08-02T18:34:00.005+01:00

Well, we had a very busy week last week.

Still working away at the Insurance quotes, but looking forward to a week of our core work. Working with small businesses to get them using IT and Technology in a suitable manner and giving them an advantage.

We have just completed a server rebuild we did last year. OK it seems a long time, but this customer has an SBS server, and weren't using the Exchange part of it at all. However we did the change over yesterday morning, and that has all gone smoothly, today I have installed Blackberry Professional Software for the 1 Blackberry they have in the business. Which will shortly be getting replaced by an I-Phone.

All that is left is to move their current messages into their exchange profiles. The reason I left this til last, they are currently on a hosted Exchange solution, and so just to make sure they don't lose any emails we have left it until tomorrow morning.

They have been thinking about Swine Flu, and moving everything on to their box, they can all work remotely should the need arise.

A few upgrades, and a network install for a Small Business to do next week. Bound to be more coming in during the week.

Is it the weather

2009-07-29T22:18:00.006+01:00

Well, as we have now had the long term weather forecast, re-forecast for the worse! I am left wondering if our sudden increase in work load, is down to the fact people aren't going on holiday, so may as well get the computer sorted!

Macs

Not so smug mac users, in the last week or so we have been inundated with broken I-macs, ranging from faulty Logic Boards (mother, or Main Board for those PC Users), through to faulty WiFi connectors (Airport to Mac Users), to breaks in the case!

Laptops

A complete range of issues with laptops, and most of the owners are looking to get a replacement on the insurance. We have had drinks spilt in them through to laptops being pulled of of furniture.

Networks

An ever increasing number of enquiries about our business support, and network support services, good news all round.

Most of this is down to people being able to find us, and the reason for this is that we have kept up our spend on advertising.

Sky News Article

2009-07-22T15:20:00.003+01:00

So a slow news day today! well on Sky at least as the top story is about dodgy computer repair shops!

Having read the article and the comments, it looks likely it is going to be a tough summer.

OK, facts

Yes what went on in the clip is totally wrong, but they only reported that 5 out of 6 didn't get find the fault, and then centred on the really bad case. Did either of the other 4 either try and charge for parts not required or access the private data (except for if needed to find the fault) and bearing in mind with the memory missing they wouldn't be able to boot the machine up.

Reading some of the comments like remove your hard drive prior to taking it in for repair, well what if the issue is down to the driver, which of course is located on the hard drive. A part (say the sound won't work) without being able to check the driver we could check the generic driver from our diagnostic software, if that works, we have to sign the job of as complete. Customer picks it up, still no sound, have we failed in this. No of course not we have checked and can't find a fault, the fault has been removed.

We had a case like this recently, we were informed the hard drive was failing, we took the drive out, and it powered up. We then cloned the drive before carrying out any other work. This way if the drive was failing we could restore the whole system. Finished the clone, plugged in the hard drive nothing. Further investigation it was due to a faulty memory module. New module inserted system booted, clone drive destroyed so no data on it.

Customer charged for the memory and the time taken to repair, slightly longer than normal due to the time taken to clone the drive. Customer Happy.

Remember we make a living out of doing these repairs, we are more than happy to look at something, and then give a quote but ultimately we need to be paid.

If you want a trusted computer repair then make sure your chosen company is a member of a Trade Body. We are a member of the newly formed TCA (Technology Channels Association) This was formed from the PCA (PC Association), and the MTA (Mac Technology Association), also ITACS is out there.

We don't carry out in depth repairs in the presence of customers, we do carry out simple repairs in homes and offices. It is all a question of trust. But the best thing you can do if your computer starts playing up is get it looked at by a professional, these are complex machines. A good Computer Technicain can make it look easy.

Failurers

2009-07-21T15:30:00.002+01:00

It's been a little over 2 weeks since we last posted a blog, but we have been busy.

Having now pretty much caught up and entering our quieter period, now we have time to blog about various things.

Firstly we now have our reduced prices on our Hosted Backup. If you have 1GB of data on a laptop/desktop you are now looking at it costing just £3.40 + VAT per month. As you can see this is now what I will concentrate on for the next 3-4 weeks. And we have a whole host of new products and services to add, and hopefully an updated website, along with a new shop!

Just recently, in the last couple of weeks we have had an increase in people wanting new life breathed into old slow computers. Amazing how many registry faults can be found. We do, a yearly health check at £40, on top of just getting you machine cleaned from a software point of view we also carry out a full hardware clean, all in a single day, with pick up and drop off included in the price.

Well that is about all for today.

What a couple of weeks!

2009-07-06T20:13:00.002+01:00

Well in the last couple of weeks, we have completed the EPoS installation. We have also been negotiating with our Hosted Backup supplier so we can offer a better price to our customers. The prices have been announced to our customers, our website will be updated later in the month as the prices come into affect in August.

We currently have a whole lot of quotes out for new systems, and system upgrades, along with repairs.

Along with getting systems to work the way they should, from Windows, Macs, and a couple of Linux systems.

We are also moving along with some other plans, as always we will announce that through our Blog.

Technology & Politics

2009-06-24T11:22:00.004+01:00

So here in Plymouth we have a hot debate going on about the use of Social Media, and directly twitter?

Why should the council block our elected representative from posting their thoughts and ideas, to those of us who voted for them. I read the original comment from the councillor who posted it, and instantly knew something would happen as a result. It was too close to the knuckle! But it was clear what the message really meant.

This week we had an article in the Plymouth Herald from a councillor as why Aussie soaps are bad for teenagers, in glamorising Teen sex and pregnancies. You should read some of the reply messages from the public.

This just goes to show it isn't the delivery media that is to blame, but the elected officials need to learn how to present to the media, and now how to get your point across in only a handful of characters.

Most of the posts from the person who kicked this off, comes from his phone/device, a lot of them when he is travelling, so a global ban isn't going to work. It is about time our Civil Servants and elected officials start to tell us the general public what is going on. And in what ever manor is suitable

Extra Tax to have a phone line

2009-06-17T07:45:00.002+01:00

So the UK Government announced a plan yesterday to charge an extra tax to have a phone line, to help cover the cost of the move over to fibre. This is to enable the 15% of the population who can't get over 2Mbps, and to move us up the League table (we are currently 7th) and to get to the top we need to get 100Mbps to the majority of the population. And simply with this plan it isn't going to happen!

Some of this money is also going to help fund regional news programmes on the Commercial Channel, and to my mind the key word here is Commercial, if it isn't commercially viable then it can't be run as a commercial concern and should be run as not for porfit community interest companies.

For me I will in the coming months look at what we have both personally and commercially in the way of phone lines, and we will reduce these lines by about 50%, I would urge everyone home users. or businesses to consider the line you have, and consider using the very thing that this is designed to improve, your broadband connection and use VoIP (Voice over IP)

Certainly the days of homes getting extra lines installed, just to have more than 1 phone line due to kids usign are gone. And remember this tax will be here to stay.

Personally I would perfer for the backbone to sold off from BT and sold to a commercial company to be run as a commercial concern, this may mean a slight increase in Broadband charges, but then at least those of us who use the net to extremes will be paying for it instead of evreyone paying for it regardless of your internet usage.

I told you so

2009-06-13T15:53:00.002+01:00

I hate to ba an I told you so, but it appears that I was right at the start of the year that a platform that would see a rise in attack profile, would be the Mac.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8096822.stm item about the latest threat.

Don't leave it to chance, if you have a mac you are at risk, get some protection on it, and do it today.

Updates

2009-06-10T16:28:00.002+01:00

Firstly, it seems Microsoft has finally got round to sorting some of their security holes. On Tuesday MS released 10 new security patches for Office, Internet Explorer, and Operating systems.
Whist mentioning Operating Systems, Apple will release it next version (Snow Leopard) in September, the month before Microsoft's release of Windows 7.

We have been busy as well, our hosted email can now be on Exchange 2007, and we can offer a reduction if you already have an Outlook License. We are now also partners of WASP, and can provide a range of systems to scan items including EPOS.

We are also working on a new website for a local Cricket Club, which we hope to have up and running soon.