It’s a very old computer – about ten years old – and it’s only got 256MB of RAM. It’s running Windows XP, so it’s not surprising it’s quite slow. But she was right about the network being really slow.

She’s got a BT HomeHub broadband modem, which is connected to the computer via a network cable. That’s fine and it should have been a fast connection as she was close to the centre of town. It took me a while to work out what was going on, as the modem wasn’t configured in the way I would have expected it to be. I tried connecting to it via wireless with my laptop, but hit a brick wall there, as the wireless connection was set up so it wasn’t available, even though it showed up in the list on my computer. I tried connecting my laptop to the modem via a cable, but that didn’t work either.

Then I tried to get some sense out of the BT HomeHub management software, but it just kept asking me for a password and refused to accept it when I supplied one – with no explanation, just going back to asking me to set up a password. It didn’t appear to be expecting an existing password, but it wanted me to set up a new one. I tried resetting the modem and using the default password from the manual, but it didn’t make any difference. My client had spent a long time on the phone with BT previously, trying to resolve this matter – but they just blamed her!

In the end, I worked out that the software from the installation CD supplied by BT with the modem, had set up the connection in the most stupid way possible. It had set it up so that all the work of the broadband connection was being done by the computer, with the modem just passing it through to the BT network. This is so retarded it was quite hard to believe it was real!

It was no wonder the network was running slow – when that low powered computer had to do all the work of keeping the broadband connection running, as well as displaying web pages at the same time. That’s how the old type of USB modems work – and anyone who’s used one of those knows how slow they make the system. The advantage of a modem like the HomeHub is that it’s not necessary for the computer to do any of the work – that’s what the modem’s for, after all!

So I uninstalled the stupid BT software – which was difficult in itself, as the software appears to be appallingly badly designed. Once I’d done that though, and reset the modem again, the network link just worked – without any special software. And it was much faster! That’s exactly what I would expect, as there’s absolutely no need for any special software to run an internet connection like that on a modern Windows system (or any other system, for that matter).

The simple solution is don’t install BT’s stupid software if you use BT HomeHub! If you have installed it and you computer is running slowly, it may be worth consider uninstalling it and seeing if it improves. Don’t forget to reset the modem once you’ve uninstalled it though.

But maybe it would be a good idea to steer well clear of BT broadband completely, as a company that can’t even manage a sensible connection between a computer and a modem is surely not capable of running a massive broadband network properly!

However, although there’s not nearly as much of this sort of thing available to Windows users, there are still quite a few exceptionally good software packages that you can download and install for free. Here’s a list of some free and safe Windows software that you’re likely to find useful.

OpenOffice is a drop-in replacement for Microsoft Office. OpenOffice Writer does pretty much everything that Word can do – and more. And OpenOffice Calc is a replacement for Excel, which does pretty much everything that Excel can do. Writer can open and save Word documents and Calc can open and save Excel documents, so there are rarely any problems when it comes to sharing files with Microsoft Office users.

OpenOffice also comes with a presentation program, Impress, which replaces PowerPoint, a drawing program,  a mathematics formula program and a database program. All of this is downloadable in one package for free.

One of the nice things about OpenOffice is that it comes with an inbuilt ability to save documents as PDF files – something which Word doesn’t do (or at least it didn’t do it last time I looked!).

There is one very minor drawback with OpenOffice and that is that, by default, it saves documents in its own file formats (although, of course, “Save As” allows you to save them as another type of document). But that’s very easily fixed if you want your documents to be compatible with MS Office users and not have to mess around with “Save As” all the time – you just change the default to save documents as Word files, Excel files, etc.

Download from http://OpenOffice.org

Firefox is a web browser. In my opinion, it is considerably better than Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer 7 was a big improvement on version 6 – and included the ability to open web pages in tabs (like Firefox). But Firefox 3, which came out recently, has taken Firefox into the lead again.

Download Firefox from http://mozilla.com/firefox

Thunderbird is a mail reader from the same people who created Firefox. Windows comes with Outlook Express for reading and writing email – but it’s not very good, because Microsoft want you to pay for the full-featured version. Thunderbird is a free alternative.

Download it from http://mozilla.com/thunderbird

Gimp is a graphical image manipulation program. A basic Windows installation doesn’t include much in the way of graphics software, so if you want to edit photos or produce graphics for desktop publishing or the web, you’ll have to find some software to do it with yourself. You may have heard for Photoshop – it’s a professional graphics application. And it will cost you more than five hundred pounds! But Gimp can do pretty much everything photoshop can – and it’s free.

Download it from http://gimp.org

Hopefully, with a computer, nobody’s going to get killed. But the mess that will inevitably follow from using one when you don’t know what you’re doing could be quite devastating. At best, it’s going to be very inconvenient. At worst, it could cost you a lot of money in lost work – and possibly even lost customers.

There are two important areas that most computer users tend to ignore: viruses and backups. Failure to fully understand all the issues involved in both of these subjects is sure to lead to problems sooner or later. In this post, I’ll talk about viruses and similar problems. I’ll write about backups in a later post.

Some of the things I talk about in this article are very slightly technical. Unless you don’t speak English well, if you don’t understand what I’ve written then you’re not going to be able to maintain your computer in a secure way – and you’re almost guaranteed to get a virus sooner or later. So if there’s anything you don’t understand, don’t just ignore it – learn about it! Antivirus software won’t save you if you don’t know the basics of computer security and use your computer accordingly.

Most computer users (and by this I mean most Windows users) think that if they’ve got anti-virus software installed they’re safe. Unfortunately it’s not that simple. There are various estimates, but it seems likely that anti-virus software finds less than fifty percent of the viruses that could infect your computer at any particular time.

You would probably be much better off throwing out the anti-virus software and learning how to use your computer in a safer way.

Unfortunately, Windows doesn’t encourage that sort of behaviour – unlike Mac OSX and Linux. So you’ll probably have to learn a completely new approach to using your computer. If you use Mac OS or Linux, you might as well stop reading at this point because the rest of this article only applies to Windows…

The menu items referred to in this article apply to Windows XP and they may be slightly different if you use a different variety of Windows. But the principles are the same and you should be able to work out which are the equivalent menu items in your version of Windows.

The first and most important thing to do is to make sure you’ve got Windows automatic updates turned on. You should be able to do this from the “Windows Update” item in the start menu. Personally I prefer to control what’s going on on my computer at all times, so I set the automatic update options to notify me when updates are ready, but not actually do anything until I say so. However, if you’re not bothered about it, it’s best to set it to automatically check for updates every day and automatically update your computer when necessary.

The reason why this is important for security is because there are new weaknesses found in Windows security all the time and, when they come to light, Microsoft produces a fix to prevent people from using them to hijack your computer. If your computer isn’t updated every time a fix is available your security is at risk.

The next step is to take away your administrator privileges. The normal way to set up Windows when it’s installed is with one user who has the power to do everything on the computer – including install new software. This is a serious flaw in Microsoft’s approach to security and neither Linux nor MacOS make it so easy to do this.

In general, if you can’t install software it’s almost impossible to accidentally install a virus. It’s probably not completely impossible, but it reduces the chances of it happening to an insignificant level. So what you have to do is to create a new user for yourself – a user without administrative powers – and always work on the computer as that user – preferably by having to log in and type in a password when you start up the computer.

There should be a user called “administrator” or something similar, who has all the administrative powers. This account should have a password. If you need to do any administrative functions – like installing software – you should log out as yourself (or switch users) and log in as administrator. Doing this should increase your awareness of the fact that what you are about to do is potentially dangerous. When you’ve done the adminstrative tasks, log out as administrator and log back in as yourself to carry on working.

You will need to set up Windows automatic update while you’re logged on as the administrator.

This way of working is absolutely essential. If you don’t do it you are considerably more at risk of getting a virus!

Thirdly, never install software unless you’re absolutely certain you know where it’s come from and that it doesn’t carry a virus. Downloading software from Microsoft’s download site should be safe – so long as you type “microsoft.com” into the address bar of your browser (not the search bar) and get to the software download that way. Installing commercial software from a reputable company, which you’ve bought on CD, should be safe. Apart from that, there are very few other places where you can safely get hold of software.

The following sites are safe (and recommended) for downloading software:

http://mozilla.com/firefox - for downloading the Firefox web browser – an improvement on Internet Explorer – and free!

http://mozilla.com/thunderbird – for downloading the Thunderbird email client – an free improvement on Outlook Express.

http://openoffice.org - for downloading OpenOffice – a free drop-in replacement for Microsoft Office. In my opinion it’s better than Office, too!

There are several other sites which are safe. But if you don’t know anything about a site, don’t download software from it!

Never download “cracked” commercial software. Cracked software is software that normally costs money to buy, but someone’s worked out a way to install it without paying – usually with a cracked licence key. This sort of software often contains viruses. There’s plenty of it floating around on the web – but if you think it’s a good deal, you’re wrong. It will cause you endless trouble if you try and use it.

Set Windows to always show the file extension – that is the “.exe”, “.jpg”, “.mp3″, etc, endings to file names. Windows comes with this turned off by default, which doesn’t help with security. You can change that setting by opening up a file browser window (e.g., double click on “My Computer”) and then going to Folder Options (in the Tools menu). Click on the View tab and un-tick the option Hide extensions for known file types. Then click the Apply to All Folders button. After that, you will always see the file extension.

Be wary of email attachments. Even if you know who it’s from, a file you receive as an email attachment could contain a virus. If the computer it was sent from is infected by a virus, it could be passed on that way. Don’t be too paranoid about attachments though – if you open them in the right way, they’re fairly safe.

The right way to open an attachment is to start up whatever application they would normally be opened with and then open them using the Open File option in the File menu. For example, if it’s an mp3 music file, you will probably play it using Windows media player. So save it to the desktop or somewhere where you know where it is and start up media player from the Start menu. Then open the File menu in media player and select Open File and play the mp3 file that way.

The same goes for image files – use Windows picture and fax viewer (or something similar, if it’s installed on your computer).

An alternative, easier way to do this is to always save the file to (say) the desktop and then right click on it with the mouse. This will give you a menu – go to Open With and select the application you want to use from that menu. If there’s no Open With option that probably means the file is a program – and not what you think it is – so don’t open it.

The reason why this way of opening files is safer is because sometimes a file looks like an image or a music file when it’s not. If you’re alert – and you’ve set folder options to always show the file extension – then you should spot this. But you may not always be as alert as you should be and it’s much better to develop safe habits and reduce the risk of accidentally opening a file that can install a virus in your computer.

If you created the file yourself, then it’s probably safe to open it by double-clicking on it. But if you’re not absolutely certain about it, don’t do it – use the Open With menu option above.

These are just some of things you should be aware of if you want to keep your computer free of viruses. It’s not everything, but it covers the basics. If you need help with any aspect of computer security, or would like us to train you to use your computer safely, contact us.

There are many different operating systems in use around the world today, but most of them are used for specialised applications. The most common ones in general use are Windows and Unix. Windows runs on most desktop computers, but the majority of internet servers run some type of Unix.

Unix is an older operating system than Windows – and it was much better designed. For a start, Unix was designed with security in mind from the outset – Windows wasn’t.

Putting it simply, Linux is a version of Unix. Mac OSX is also a version of Unix. The server that this web page is stored on is running a version of Unix called FreeBSD.

Whereas Unix was created as a commercial product, Linux was created to be available for free. It has been written by a loose team of hundreds of programmers, all around the world, working together via the internet. Some of them are employed by large companies to write and improve Linux – and their work is given away to anyone who wants it. IBM, one of the biggest computer manufacturers in the world, is an example of a company that writes software and gives it away for nothing.

Such a concept may seem bizarre, but it actually makes very good commercial sense – if it didn’t, they wouldn’t be doing it. One of the benefits of taking this approach to producing software is that you only have to do part of the work yourself – most of it is done by other people. So for a small amount of input, you have access to a powerful operating system which it wouldn’t be viable to create from scratch yourself.

Another major benefit is that because Linux is free, lots of people use it and test it – reporting bugs and, sometimes, fixing them themselves.

Until recently, Linux wasn’t very popular with desktop computer users – who almost all use Windows. However, it is gradually creeping onto corporate desktops around the world. One notable field where Linux runs on almost all desktops is the Hollywood movie industry.

But perhaps the most revolutionary introduction of Linux into the lives of ordinary people has come with the recent widespread popularity of a new breed of sub-notebooks. The first one to capture public imagination was the Asus Eee Pc. And there seems to be a new, cheaper sub-notebook coming onto the market almost every month. This month a British company, Elonex, is due to release its version – called the “One”. It will cost about a hundred pounds.

All these small, cheap computers are fully functional and usable. And they all come with Linux.

There are two reasons for that – firstly, Linux is free. If the computer is only going to cost £100, adding the cost of a Windows licence to that could raise the price by as much as 50%! The other reason is that, in order to be so small and cheap, these computers are built with fairly low-powered hardware and not much memory, and Windows won’t run very well on it (Vista won’t run at all!) But Linux runs perfectly.

I’ve been running Linux on my personal laptops and desktop computers since 1995 – and I wouldn’t change to Windows if you paid me. But it’s not necessarily the best thing for everyone. You need to know what you’re doing to run a Linux computer with no problems. But then if you don’t know what you’re doing, running Windows can turn in to a nightmare very quickly too.

Maldon IT specialises in Linux installation and support. If you want to know more, please contact us.

A lot of local small businesses are struggling to survive against the overwhelming might of a handful of larger ones. I can buy almost anything I need online these days – and it’s often cheaper than buying the same thing locally.

However, given the choice, I’d rather do my shopping locally – even if it’s going to cost a little more. And chances are that it wouldn’t cost any more if I could walk round the corner to buy it and not have to pay postage costs.

But the local businesses seem blissfully unaware of this. Many of them haven’t got a web site at all. And the ones that have got a web site have mostly got pitifully inadequate ones. I could walk or drive to a local shop and find out if they’ve got what I want and how much they charge for it – but it’s so much easier to do a quick check online and find what I need that way. If your shop hasn’t got its catalogue online, you’re not even on my radar.

I admit that I’m more computer literate than average – and that, therefore, my approach to shopping isn’t really representative of the majority of the population. But that doesn’t mean you can ignore it. The way I shop is gradually becoming the way everyone shops. And if you wait till the majority are shopping like that before you adapt, you’ll be out of business before you find your feet.

But it’s not just shops – the same goes for almost all businesses. It doesn’t matter much what sort of business you’re running, if you’re not on the internet you will eventually become irrelevant.

A lot of small businesses do have web sites and email addresses. But most of the time they’re not very good. And it never ceases to amaze me how often I see an email address on a small business’s web site that clearly shows they don’t know what they’re doing.

What I’m talking about is using the email address you get from your internet service provider. Don’t do it! For a start, it looks unprofessional. If you’ve got your own domain, you should be using an address in that domain. And if you haven’t got your own domain you should do it straight away. If you don’t, your email address is free advertising for your ISP – when it should be advertising you!

Secondly, what happens when you get sick of your internet provider’s bad service? You can’t change ISPs because if you do you’ll lose your business email address – and that could lose you customers!

A large part of the problem is that cowboys are rife in the web design and IT support business. If the person who looks after your web site for you hasn’t set you up with an email address in your own domain, it’s time to find someone who knows what they’re doing!

The subject of cowboy web designers brings me to another common problem – badly designed web sites. It may look flashy, but does it work? Most small business owners know nothing about web design – and they’re easily fooled by backyard web designers. A plain white page, with nothing but writing on it is often better than a garish-looking site that flashes at you and plays music or videos. And if you think having an “intro” page is a good idea, think again!

How does your web site stand up under scrutiny? Can potential customers find what they need quickly and easily? Is there plenty of text, so search engines have got something to index? Will it work for a blind person using a screen reader?

You need to ask all those questions – and more – before you decide you’re satisfied with your web site.

Maldon IT can help you enhance your business’s presence on the internet. Contact us for more information.