Deepcool laptop cooler

We see a lot of laptops with heat issues which is a bit like having high blood pressure and not being aware of it. Hard drives that are overheating are one of the leading causes of data loss when the drive suddenly fails. You can check the temperature of your hard disk and keep a check on it by downloading this free tool from Active HDD Monitor, then going to options and tick the box to load when Windows starts,  to monitor the temp of your drive.

We have bought in a big box of DeepCool laptop coolers suitable for 15.4″ laptops. This model retails at $29 but yours free with every onsite service call for our Perth customers, until the box is empty. Please let us know if you want this item when calling! No backorders. Offer expires when the box is empty.

• compatible with up to 15.4″ laptops
• large 120mm ?hydro-bearing quiet fan with for optimum cooling
• wide area aluminium mesh for distributed airflow
• anti-slip design for laptop safety

Visit our main page  or call 1300 661 624 to book a service call.

New Windows 7 tweak tool

TweakUI was very popular with XP and did lots of useful things. It’s now available for Windows 7 from our friends at TheWindowsClub. This has some powerful tweaks so user beware, but it also has a restore defaults button.

It’s called Ultimate Windows Tweaker and you can download the latest version here at no cost.

You may already know that MYOB bought out the popular Smartyhost website hosting platform in 2008.  The offer posted at gettingbusinessonline for a free website and hosting for a year is a MYOB and Google initiative to help small business get their business online with no upfront costs, and low ongoing costs after the first year.

Your new website will have the look and feel of a template design, but the fairly basic starting presentation can be customized. Google is offering a $75 Adwords starter package (which is available elsewhere as well) along with tips and advice for small business.

Your site will be automatically added to Google’s index so you will need to put some planning into your SEO (search engine optimization). See the SEO how-to post here.

This is a good offer if you are looking for an entry level website, a com.au domain name, and a reliable host partner.

The Windows Myphone application allows you to backup SMS, contacts, photos and other folders to the Myphone website. It’s already installed on new Windows 6 Smartphones. If you need to install it on earlier versions of Smartphones visit http://myphone.microsoft.com/install.

Trusteer Rapport add in

Keyloggers are not difficult to install on a computer and there are variations of this type of spyware that can run in stealth mode that only an experienced technician can detect using process analysis.Keyloggers intercept data (your keystrokes) before it reaches the secure site you are logged into, such as your bank. Keyloggers run and record data regardless of secure website technology.

In addition to effective antivirus and malware protection, we install Trusteer’s Rapport security on any business computer used for financial transactions.

The home edition of Rapport is free and easy to install and gives you peace of mind when you are using your browser for secure transactions.  Internet Explorer 9 is now supported as well as firefox.

One of the problems we see commonly in Outlook and other email clients with no quotas applied, is a reluctance to delete anything. I know, I do it, or rather don’t do it myself. I shudder when I see the size of my deleted items folder in Outlook but something in me resists hitting the permanently delete button.

IT admins are always looking for ways to avoid using PST because a large PST can become corrupted with the potential for all data inside the store to be lost. Backing up your PST or exporting the PST to a backup has inherent risks. A better solution would be to archive /backup emails independant of the personal store in Outlook.

It’s also common to have multiple email accounts at work or on the home PC, such as gmail, Yahoo, Windows Live Mail, Mozilla Thunderbird. Now you can backup and archive your emails from these multiple accounts from one centralized program. You can also use MailStore for importing purposes from other email clients.

The MailStore backup/archive becomes a searchable database to quickly and easily locate emails based a range of search criteria.

Where do I get such as a useful program and how much is it? Head on over the MailStore where you can grab a copy free.

Solid state drive and data safety

We see the failure of electro-mechanical hard drives on an almost daily basis. These clumsy but delicate devices are nearing the end of their technology life and SSD (solid state drives) with large capacity and mainstream pricing will take their place. The end-of-life for these troublesome drives is welcomed, though I must point out that while everyone moans about the unreliability of IDE and SATA drives, they are built to a price and you got what you asked for. Some drives seem to be a little more reliable than others, while the WD Velociraptor is very reliable, at a price.

We would expect to see data retained when the flash drive has reached its write cycle and this presents its own security issues for enterprise, medical, and all other users where critical data is stored.  Researchers at the non-volatile-systems -laboratory found that commercial erasing programs were not entirely affective with data remnants still available to testers.

A SSD drive that is unmountable or no longer appears to be working may be mistakenly discarded with accessible data on it.

I have a few email accounts over at Yahoo called throwaway email accounts that I use when I am posting in online forums for example. When these accounts start getting spammed out I close the account. Easy. And all this helps keep my life-long email addresses relatively spam free.

The problem is I have to sign in and sign out to read each accounts contents. Microsoft has recognized the need for throwaways, especially in pro-sumer and technical user areas, and created a single login system for multiple throwaway email addresses.

You can find out more over at cnet.

Dropbox file sharing

Dropbox is a great free tool for retrieving your documents and files on another PC or laptop anywhere there is a network connection.

Like the name implies, it is a drag and drop operation which can be a little time waster you don’t need. So our friends over in Germany made this free tool called Dropbox Shell Tools so you can have a right click menu to add files quickly.

Why are the best tools always the free ones? Download Shell Tools here.

A quick guide for small business and prosumers.

 “which is the best laptop to buy?”

The majority of our clients at Wired office fall into the small business, prosumer, home office category. While enterprise and corporate have an IT manager who knows how to buy laptops, small business usually ends up at a retail outlet to buy a new laptop or notebook.

There are so many options on the shelves and, at a retail level and buying a mid priced laptop is not always a reliable rule of thumb because you could be buying more than what you need, or what a salesperson recommends. This is not always reliable advice or objective advice.

The buying criteria?

First consideration is buying a laptop for what you want it to do, not for what you will never use. An example of this is paying $1700-$2000 for a consumer level laptop with multi-media and gaming capabilities. If you are thinking the high end processor automatically relates to faster overall processing power you would be wrong. Hi-end processors such as Core i7 show their mettle under load or high CPU use. For everyday computing such as reading and sending emails, surfring the web etc., you will find a Core i5 processor better fits the need. Core i7 processing power is typically useful for gaming, spreadsheets, line drawing, video editing. In normal computer use this level of processor core is not accessed because it isn’t required by the application.

Another consideration when buying a new laptop is the technological life of laptops these days, the durability of modern laptops, and the limited standard warranty period. For example, screen replacement or motherboard replacement can approach the cost of a new laptop and remain among the most vulnerable components we see for repair enquiries.

Our recommendation is to spend as little as possible without sacrificing performance. Yes, it is possible!

a)       Buy your new laptop from an IT channel reseller to benefit from unbiaised advice; you get the same warranty, with reliable after sales service.

b)      Avoid Windows home edition software; business editions offer data safety and ease of data restoration.

c)       You can buy new IBM Lenovo laptops with state of the art Intel Core i5 chipsets and next generation DDR3 memory for around $1000-$1200 with business editions of Windows, yet pay the same price for outdated retail stock.

Visit our notebooks page for more info