We tried this app in the early beta a couple of years ago and found it did not perform as well as Sendit and other established FTP type programs for sending large files attached to emails. This time around the Adobe desktop app and Outlook plugin seems to be working as expected without any glitches to date.

If you work with plan drawings, CAD files, large video or picture files, go grab the desktop app or the Outlook plugin. Both are a breeze to install and it’s free!

Our pick of the best overall value in business class laptops is the latest HP Probook (4530S).

The Toshiba laptops in 2011 seemed slow even at the high end core i7 so the HP Probook was a pleasant surprise when we started one up out of the box to see very little of the usual proprietary software programs loading at startup. After working through the registration forms we were up and running in a matter of minutes.

This is the 15.5″ screen and an attractive brushed aluminium case, Intel Core i5-2400 series, Windows 7 Professional, 4GB DDR3 RAM, backlit LED, SRS Premium Sound, spill resistant keyboard.

Exceptional value in business class at $988.90 delivered to your door in Perth metro areas or plus freight Australia wide. Onsite tech service available. Place an order today.

The easy and quick way to fix Java update issues is to go here to the java update test center, check for out of date Java applications, and install the latest version.

You’ve been out for the day at Kings Park gardens with the family and taken dozens of snaps. You get home and load them up in My Pictures library but they all have very uninspiring titles such P1000365.jpg

You can heap them all into a folder called Kings Park but they are still not easily identified as you browse. You could rename them all individually or you could simply rename them all Kings Park.

You can do this by selecting all the pictures in the folder then tap the F2 key on the keyboard, then rename the first of the series Kings Park. All subsequent files will be enumerated making it easier to locate and manage images.

 One of the tings I loved about those very early Unix systems was how everything was just a click away on the desktop. Today storage is so much bigger so we have to navigate to an often used folder, all the worse if it’s a nested folder. You could make a shortcut and place that on the desktop but if your desktop is anything like mine, cluttered with stuff, you can spend just as long trying to locate it.

A neat alternative in Windows 7 is to pin the folder to the taskbar. We know that we can pin a program or app to the taskbar but there doesn’t seem to be a pin to taskbar menu on a folder. We need to create a toolbar for that folder. Here’s how.

1. right click a blank area of the taskbar and unlock it
2. select toolbars >new toolbar
3. navigate to your often used folder and choose select folder
4. your folder will now appear as a permanent link on the taskbar

Neat!

The ipads and ipods connecting into this onsite wireless network just kept dropping out, even in close proximity to the router. Users needed to “forget this network” and rejoin. Even refreshing the DHCP didn’t help. The problem we discovered was a type of congestion and compatibility issue within the 2.4GHz range. In this situation we were able to resolve this by dividing the network into 2.4 and 5GHz. Problem there is the 5GHz has high speed coverage but poor depth of field. We resolved this by deploying a wireless access point (not an extender) at a midway point.

For Perth users in the home, an educational situation, or a business that uses ipads we set all this up for you. Contact one of our mobile computer technicians in Perth today.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ia3zBs42cc

With Windows 8 on the not so distant horizon we are starting to see trickles of information about this much anticipated operating system with an emphasis on delivering what users want, in the tradition of Windows 7.

One of these features is improvements to the boot time from cold start. Data shows that a greater number of users turn off a PC or laptop rather than send it to sleep and load time is one of the holy grails of new designs and improvements to operating systems and software. Microsoft is reporting improved boot times between 30% and 70% over Windows 7. You can see in the video the Microsoft program manager holding the HP Elitebook is booting Windows 8 with a solid state drive (SSD) with pretty startling results. 

Microsoft teams have worked closely together to change the way Windows shuts down and starts up.  The record boot times are the result of new methods to shut down the session kernel with multi-phase resume capability relevant to multi-core systems particularly with Intel’s second generation Sandy Bridge Quad Core processors.

This form of hibernation does not require full system initialisation at start up but full system hibernation (waking computer from S3 level sleep) will also benefit with fast boot times.

More to come on Windows 8!

Modern NAT routers and firewalls offer some level of protection against hackers, but there’s always the chance your computer will get stolen. A password protecting the user account is a small obstacle to a thief with some easily available know-how to bypass account passwords.

A password protected Word file offers similar levels of protection. Lose this password and you may be able to recover it using programs available on the internet. Still, we think it’s a handy thing to protect Word docs at the user level. You can find more information about protecting Word docs and removing user history here. Further information to restrict editing, or to add an invisible digital signature and mark the document as final can be found here.

To password protect a Word 2010 document

1. Open a new blank Word document
2. Navigate to the file menu
3. Look for the info tab and in the right hand pane choose permissions
4. Choose the Protect Document button

 2. Outlook Quick Parts

If you receive email enquiries regularly that you can answer with a standardised reply Quick Parts is for you!

Steps to enable and insert Quick Parts

1.  Click reply as usual to the email enquiry
2. write the standard reply
3. with the cursor in the body area of the email choose the insert tab in the Text tab
4. choose Quick Parts Choose Save Selection to Quick Parts gallery

In future you can use Quick parts to reply

One of the issues with power boards is that in a surge event they will shut off the power to the board, causing the computer to shutdown.  In technical circles this is known as “unexpected shutdown” and is a common causes of disk failure or data loss. The event is logged in the systems error reporting  and is an important area of risk management for data.

Surge boards are not cheap and the high cost can give you a false sense of security. If it costs this much it must work, right? Wrong. Surge boards that suddenly interrupt power to your computer often cause problems rather than the intended purpose of protecting sensitive computer electronics.

The solution for the office and home.

An uninterruptable power supply that offers true sine wave technology was something that only large enterprise could afford, but units have now become smaller and affordable. The most important part of good UPS technology is the line interactive capability. This straightens out the sine wave to deliver clean power, along with the ability to switch to backup battery when the power fails. If the power is not restored within a specified time you can shut down your computer gracefully.

Protect Computer & ADSL Line to 750VA

There are many brands of UPS for the office or home available through technology outlets such as computer stores but few with capable and reliable Line Interactive Technology.

You can protect your PC equipment and ADSL line with a good quality UPS for around the same cost as a premium priced power board. We can install a UPS with Line Interactive Technology  (for $171 at the time of writing) during a standard service call.

Book an onsite computer service today and ask for a Upsonic Line Interactive UPS installation. It takes around 10 minutes and could save you from unnecessary power related data loss or component failure.

How does malware get on my computer?

Sometimes malware and rogue programs are unknowingly downloaded when searching online for help with a slow computer, or free virus scanners. This is what people do a lot. Malware that silently injects code onto a system when visiting a legitimate website that has been compromised through its advertising network is difficult to detect. Other infection or attack vectors include Facebook, clicking on bad links in chat programs such as MSN Messenger and Live Messenger, and clicking on infected attachments or links to phishing sites. An example of a phishing link is the spoofed seek.com email. Clicking on the link in the spoofed email leads to a phishing scam website that looks remarkably like the real thing. It’s hard to spot the difference.

One way to spot the difference is to upgrade your browser to the latest version for your operating system, and upgrade to Internet explorer 9 for suitable systems. In the address field of the URL the domain is highlighted and the remainder is greyed out. If you seen jobs.seek.com for example it is likely to be a scam because the seek domain is seek.com, not jobs.seek.com.

But some phishing emails look perfectly like the real thing. How can you tell if the email is spoofed? It’s not that hard. You can read the header of the email by right clicking on the unopened email in the Outlook 2007 window and choosing message options. Here you can see the sender domain after the @ symbol and the reply to address.
In Outlook 2010 you can enable message options to the QAT by following these simple instructions over at slipstick.com

Steps to Securing your System
You cannot run a computer without a good antivirus and malware scanner, in spite of some malware being able to shut down either of these types of defences. Malware and spyware are also often downloaded by a dropper using a Trojan to deliver the payload so AV and malware level protection is an essential, but not front line defence – anymore.

Advanced level steps:
1. Ensure your operating system is up to date. Malware will exploit vulnerabilities in the system and many critical updates in Windows are security related patches. In Windows 7 and Vista type “update” into the search (start) field and choose Windows updates. In WinXP you can find the updates website in the left pane of the control panel. Updates should be set to automatic but it doesn’t hurt to go through the steps above to check if your system is current. If you have pirated software you are at a high risk of infestation.
2. Java and the Flash Player are on most computers so it’s not surprising they are targeted by cyber-criminals. Rogue /scareware programs capable of injecting code from a website  commonly uses the CVE/Java Exploit.  To check if you have the latest Java version visit the Java test centre at Sun Microsystems.
3. On badly infected systems we sometimes find more than one malware/spyware scanner – in some cases competing with each other. We recommend ESET Antivirus and Malwarebytes which work together well. ESET is from Slovakia with an office in Brisbane and is the preferred antivirus shipped with new Intel 2nd generation motherboards.
4. The most common rogue infection is referred to as scareware (figure 1) because it wants you to believe that list of infections it’s showing you are really on your PC. Of course they are not, but it will attempt to defraud your credit card. Each time you click the red X to close the window it will install another instance of itself. This (type) of program is also known to install rootkits and keyloggers which are difficult to detect. If the malware program appears to have been removed by your AV program it may have installed its keylogger payload.
5. The Rapport web browser plugin from Trusteer.com is a highly regarded anti-keylogger tool used by many major banks in the US and Europe. The standalone version is free. Install this into your browser and click to protect specific websites such as your bank.
6. Recently we have seen a browser re-direct that is installed not in the PC, but in the router. Each request in Google search redirected to an unrelated website. The reason the bug was able to install into the router was because it had a default password. When setting router passwords or any password the usual advice is to use complex and difficult passwords. The downside to that is they are impossible to remember. The most common ways to find someone else’s password is to (a) guess (b) use brute force attacks (c) common words (guessing again). Using any of these methods involves a hacker using a script such as a dictionary script. A password like PASSWORD or FIDO3 will take between 3 minutes and hour to guess using an automated script which can be downloaded free on the web. Let’s look at a password example of gehdfa7. A brute force attack running an automated script with 100 passes per second will eventually be hacked (guessed) by the script in some short theoretical time frame (<12mths). If you create a mix of capitals such as gEhdFa7 it would be more likely to take >100 years with an automated script at 100 passes per second. But who’s going to remember gobbledegook? If you use a three word phrase like this “just in time” (with spaces or underscore) it will take in excess of thousand years to brute force hack. And bonus! You will always remember it. The places where passwords are most important is websites you visit such as ebay, banks etc.
7. The password on your computer is less important than websites because the likelihood of your PC getting hacked behind the NAT firewall on most modern routers with a password is remote. Why would your PC be worth the effort of a serious hacker anyway? But using your full name JAMES BLUNT as your login name will be recorded (a) when you upload a photo on some for sale website (b) In the meta data of a Word document. The person who terrorised a young girl in Sydney recently with the collar-bomb hung a lanyard around the girls neck with a USB thumb drive attached that had the ransom note and instructions on it. There was just the one document but data forensics found traces of deleted files including the meta data of an early word document which showed the user logged in at the time as Peter.P. The suspect in the case is Paul Peters. Word documents also contain a history of changes.

8. Using an open DNS server network helps to protect you from phishing sites and infected websites matched in the DNS databases by contributed to by over 20 million users of OpenDNS. OpenDNS is a service which also allows you to block access to Facebook and IM programs during working hours! Or at home. You can block access to naughty content at the router level which will affect all PC’s on the network. The free OpenDNS will often have a side effect of speeding up internet browsing. The VIPRE antivirus from Sunbelt Software uses a similar paid version of a DNS service called Clear Cloud to protect against infected sites and is a similarly very effective tool.
9. Be careful of other people’s USB drives. Beware the sales rep, or even the IT guy fixing your computer who inserts and opens a USB drive on your PC without a password. They could be transferring a virus, or silently installing a keylogger.
10. A lot of criminal-ware takes advantage of common download searches such as registry cleaners, system optimizers, and free antivirus scanners. Be careful what you wish for!

Call us for onsite mobile virus malware removal

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