"Bring IT together!"
You have to be persistent to establish and maintain healthy, two-way communication. We can help.
News and Comments
Happy 10th Birthday Windows XP!
Posted by admin
It's got its faults and faubles but on the whole its been a pretty good workhorse. So happy 10th birthday XP. Although many people are making the move to Windows 7, there are still millions of XP computers in the UK. Microsoft say that support for this very popular operating system will be stopped as of 31 December 2011. This means that they won't be providing further fixes or updates. Whilst this won't stop your XP computer from working, it will lack some good features and will slowly become incompatible with other technologies.
Got it covered - Where is your backup?
Posted by admin
Sometimes you've got to go back to the future. In other words very very infrequently there just isn't a fix to a problem and you have to reinstall the operating system to get a computer back working again. There are many things you can do to make sure you can recover from a failure more easily, starting from taking regular backups of your data and making sure that have the manufactures' installation DVD at hand, or have created them yourself using the manufacturers' Windows program when you first bought the computer. If you haven't then have a look through the programs on your computer and get them made!
Put a copy of your valueable data files on folders onto another drive, like a flash drive or external hard drive - but beware, you now have 2 copies of the data, so 1-keep it safe (encrypted and protected drives are obviously the best) and 2-keep it up to date (by making regular copies). Even better, invest in some off-site storage.
We can provide excellent advice on your data backup options, from home user to SME. We can help.
Is free antivirus software any good?
Posted by admin
Do you get what you pay for?
Is there such a thing as a free lunch?.
Erm, yes and no.
Many antivirus companies provide free basic versions of their software, whilst the more fully featured version is aimed at the corporate market. Microsoft however find themselves in a different place, and have provided their own free security and antivirus software.
Basic protection is better than no protection (including out of date protection), and the good free ones (AVG, MS Security Essentials amongst them), will prevent the majority of nasties from getting onto your computer, they also have their faults. These vary from the size of the program (which will run in the background all the time) to the number of threats they fail to detect.
Whilst we believe there are some good free antivirus solutions, it has to be said that protecting your computer shouldn't be something you look to save money on, and would always recommend a purchased product - there are some really good antivirus applications out there from around £20. But there are some absolutely awful ones out there too!
Call on our experience in resolving virus related issues, and we'll be happy to advise.