One of my clients related a tale of woe today ~ he’d had an issue and (oddly) instead of calling me decided to go it alone.

Initially he’d had a problem with his Blackberry device after installing an ‘update’ which nuked his configuration.
He then decided to backup, reinstall and restore is current config ~ A moment of brilliance I might add. :)
After backing up, he uninstalled his software and reinstalled a later version ~ again, all good so far.
Once his software was installed he tried to restore the backup, with no success. This is where the problems start in earnest…

The error was reported as “cannot open file xxx.xxx, select a program to open this file with” (or some such), so he decided to find a program to open the backup file.
After tripping round some of the more dodgy ‘free’ software sites, and thoroughly infecting his system with spyware, he purchased the Pareto Logic driver fix tool ~ a mere $40.

The Pareto Logic software is a fake

Many hardware and software errors later I get an email detailing the problem.

Simon spends most of the afternoon backing up his data and rebuilding his laptop…

Sadly this will turn out to be a costly mistake

On the upside, his laptop is now a speedy little beastie!

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Tor’s back – normality reigns!

I put this image in the post simply because it looks like a peaceful place to be ~ I will not understand ANY jokes about Yorkshire men and sheep (though she does look quite attractive )

Still we are seriously busy, though it’s considerably easier when there are more than one of you. I feel sorry for the one-man-bands of this world; they must seriously struggle when things get hectic!

Taking today for instance:

• Started by resurrecting a ‘dead’ laptop.
• Fielded several client calls (installed a network printer, configured an SMTP server).
• Had lunch (this IS a rarity!! how novel!).
• Discussed the installation of some fake anti-spyware on a clients PC and the removal thereof.
• Installed Anti virus on 2 servers and several client PC in Scarborough and Selby.
• Advised on downloading content from the Internet to a client who popped in.

There WAS more but I forget…

Phew!

I DO love this job though – tomorrow will be a completely different set of issues and problems with a different set of people
It’s all change in the crazy world of I.T.

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That was one mental week!

Tor’s been on holiday for the week and I’ve been doing the headless chicken – IT IS A GOOD THING!
It’s great to be busy, it means somewhere along the line we’ll get some pennies and I’ll be able to afford some bread :)

Yeay!!!

I was talking to a client of ours who passed us some business
As is our nature, as a thank you, we heavily discounted a new laptop for her, configured it, and will perform the data transfer from the old laptop to the new for free (she DID pass us a great new client Thanks again!!)
She was saying that just prior to this she’d passed another client some business that turned out to be quite lucrative also.
The other people didn’t even say thank you
She was even at the point of saying she’d never pass business around again!
Some people are just so ungrateful…

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Spotted this too:
Microsoft profits down by a third
It doesn’t say as much, but alludes to the failure of the Windows Vista product ~ maybe they should have tested it on the public BEFORE releasing it
It’s nice to know they made ONLY £1,900,000,000 profit! (or £60.25 profit for every second last year!!)

That’s nearly as much as some solicitors charge

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Despite the recession, we seem to be doing extremely well :)

Historically, this quarter (the 2nd business quarter) is a little down on both turnover and profit. This is mainly due to the big holiday month of August ~ for some reason, people don’t seem to care about their computers if they are jetting off to warmer climes ~ people are odd.
With the start of the school holidays, we can almost see the drop off of calls.

Not this time!
We are getting more and more busy

Whilst discussing this with a colleague of ours (he is more like an non-executive director really), he said it’s our business philosophy which has been right, and now we are reaping the rewards.
It’s a great feeling to see your own business start to flourish, though the sceptic in me expects it all to go quiet again

I heard on the news recently, that more and more people are thinking that the recession has bottomed out, and that things are getting better, but people also expect it to take quite a while to settle down again.
I can agree with this…

If we all start thinking that these problems are coming to an end, then things should look a little rosier.
Though if you have just lost your job, I can see this would be hard…

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I heard from Jaimie at inet Engineers the other day.
He had heard from a client who we tried to help but “didn’t want to spend any money at the moment” on the things we recommend for ALL businesses (backup systems, antivirus etc…)
Apparently, they have just had an office destroying fire. In it they lost ALL of their computer records and stock.
Try to imagine that for a moment – ALL records of sales, invoicing, orders, clients, suppliers, financials, products and stock gone.
I think it unlikely that their business will recover
It’s a real shame, but a little foresight by the directors could have saved most of these losses.

If you are in a similar position, don’t think it wont happen to you, ‘cos if it does it’ll be too late…
Pay about £15 – £20 per month for an online backup AT LEAST!!
It might be the best investment your business makes…

Call us to discuss

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It’s back to the grind from the hiatus that was my holiday ~ kinda sad in a way but happy in others.

Sad, in that I had to leave the fantasy realms of the rich and famous and re-enter the problem strewn arena that is the I.T. world.
Happy in that, our business seems to be going from strength to strength. :)

Many of the businesses with which we deal on a daily basis are seeing signs of economic recovery – even the ones in the hardest hit areas (we look after a few businesses directly related to the property markets).
Lets hope that these dark times are soon to end.

In some quite astonishing news it appears Microsoft are releasing a FREE version of it’s up coming Office product (Office 2010) as a free online version much like the Google Docs system.
Read the full article here

It’s another step towards Microsoft and Google going head to head ~ especially as Google recently announced a ‘Chrome’ operating system (read all about it…) aimed squarely as competition for Windows.
This seems to be shaping up as a ‘Clash of the Titans’ and will hopefully make Micro$oft pull their socks up and release a GOOD operating system after the farcical Windows Vista.

In some other news, it looks like the big boys are seeing sense in relation to the Phorm advertising system ~ Both BT and TalkTalk are pulling out of the venture.
This is good news for users of the Internet as it MIGHT lead to less advertising, though I strongly doubt it…

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P.S. the image is from a McCain product ~ Smiley fries known as ‘Smiles’.
They’re aimed at kids but I kinda like them!

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