Monthly Archive for January, 2007

Vista in a nutshell

Published on January 30, 2007 in Computers and Internet. 2 Comments

Microsoft released Windows Vista to the public today to the expected ho-hah – PC Pro have an excellent round-up of the launch at their site.

So what are the pro’s and con’s of Vista in a nutshell? In my opinion they are:-

Security – for businesses, I feel this will both be the biggest "plus". Vista’s security "out of the box" is much tighter than any version of Windows before it, but on the downside – expect a few applications to "break" under this new tighter control until Vendors release updated versions of their applications.

Appearance – Vista looks gorgeous. It’s well on it’s way to challenging the foremost Diva herself, the Apple Mac. Are business users bothered about these looks though? Probably not. What’s more – the wonderful new look comes with a requirement for much more power which leads us to…

Hardware – Vista needs more significantly more memory, better Graphics and a faster processor than any version of Windows before it. Yes, you can turn off a number of Vista features to enable it to run on older hardware – but if you are turning off features, why upgrade at all? For this reason alone, I can see many businesses holding off on wholesale Vista upgrades until their current hardware is long in the tooth. And then there is the issue of peripherals. Whilst Microsoft have worked hard to support tons of hardware devices – you can guarantee that not every webcam, printer, scanner or any other device you might own will work with Vista immediately.

If that sounds a negative overview of Vista, it’s not meant to be – I’m really excited about the opportunities Vista allows for deployment and management, for instance. However, I am being realistic.

In my opinion, more so than any other release of Windows before it, Business customers will adopt a "wait and see" attitude. Wait and see any bugs appear to be ironed out, wait and see if their hardware and applications will work, wait and see how long they can put off their upgrade until absolutely necessary.

At the other end of the scale, if you have a business full of Windows 9x or NT machines that are already creaking – moving to Vista wholesale should be high on your list of projects this year – probably in conjunction with renewing all of your hardware and perhaps upgrading your applications.

As for myself, my office Desktop PC remains XP based, my Games PC is moving to Vista Home Premium in the next few days, and I’m undecided whether my laptop moves to Vista Business or not in the next couple of months…

How to stop unwanted Telesales Calls

Published on January 27, 2007 in How To. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , .

As a small business, constantly being interrupted by unwelcome Telephone calls from people or organisations trying to sell you something (that you usually don’t want…) can be a real pain.

Many individuals are aware of the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) which you can register with to stop unwanted telephone calls to your house. It works to great effect, in my experience.

But from speaking to a number of other Small Business owners recently, it seems most companies are unaware that there is a Corporate Telephone Preference Service that does exactly the same thing for businesses.

I used to be plagued with non-stop Sales calls in the office - it became a very real issue draining time away where I should have been doing more productive things. Since registering with the CTPS, the calls have been reduced to less than a handful a week – and usually only from companies I’ve already done business with and so don’t mind hearing from as much.

So if you own any sort of business and want to cut down on sales calls – get over to http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/ctps/what/ and register your telephone number now.

Windows Live Writer Beta

Published on January 26, 2007 in Computers and Internet. 2 Comments

I’ve been using the Beta version of Windows Live Writer for the past couple of days. In a nutshell, Live Writer allows you to compose blog entries in an application and post them directly to your blog of choice.

This sort of app is nothing new – there are tons of apps out there to help you publish to a blog without using a web browser – but it’s the first one I’ve come across that supports Windows Live Spaces "out of the box".

Although the Live Spaces web-site has become easier to navigate and much more useable for posting blog entries since it’s first days (and wow, was it awful back in the day – I regular lost tons of blog entries when you tried to post, it didn’t work within Firefox reliably, etc.) Live Writer gives the ability to be able to compose something in a nice WYSIWYG style interface, insert pictures, save draft copies for later, and so on.

It also allows you to easily modify already published blog postings – so if you post something and notice a mistake, you can rectify the mistake and re-post without any duplicate entries or needing to go to the site to make the changes.

All in all – am impressed with Live Writer, perhaps impressed… and perhaps a little bit relieved that I don’t need to use the Live web-site to post entries anymore!

One positive effect it will have on me is the ability to compose longer blog entries. When I’ve got time to blog, it’s usually whilst undertaking some other task (waiting for a server to reboot, etc.) or is fraught with interruptions like ‘phone calls, so the ability to be able to save a draft of what I’ve written and go back to it 5 minute, 30 minutes or even a day later is nice.

The Windows Live Writer team has a blog here, and you can also download the software for free here.

Rebuilding Windows XP

Published on January 24, 2007 in Computers and Internet. 4 Comments

It’s undeniable that Microsoft Windows slows down over time. No matter how much sensible housekeeping you do, removing old files and software, defragging and the like – there comes a time when it’s sensible to bite the bullet and start again with a completely fresh re-install.

Here in my office at Tubb Towers, my main Desktop PC is suffering. I’ve been wrestling with a number of niggling issues ranging from dodgy ActiveSync connections with my PDA, to flaky VPN performance to some client sites, to a generally frustrating XP Desktop that performs like a slug struggling through Treacle. I’ve "fixed" each of this issues more than once over the last six months, only for them to crop up again.

Therefore a plan of action was drawn to re-build Windows XP from the ground up, with an attempt to install only the software I actually need, and to use the opportunity to try a few alternatives to my standard wares.

On the subject of wares (or should that be warez…) I also took the opportunity to review the licensing agreements of some of the smaller utilities I use, to make sure they really were "free". It did turn out that one or two were "free for personal use" – but not for commercial usage, therefore I splashed out for a few licenses where appropriate. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find Freeware or Open Source alternatives to others. More than once recently I’ve found it pays to check out places like SourceForge to see if someone has built the software you want without having to pay for a license.

Back to the re-build. After making sure my backup was upto date (I have good backup habits anyway, experience has taught me well…) I made a list of all the software installed. Everything went into a "keep", "chuck" or "maybe" (look for alternatives) pile. Then I dug out any media required for the "keep" pile, along with any relevant Serial Numbers or CD-Keys as necessary.

From there the process was a straight-forward wipe and re-install of Windows XP. The most painful part is always having to sit through the endless reboot and Microsoft Update cycle a new machine requires. I took this opportunity to spring clean the office in between clicks…

Once XP was ready, with custom drivers bang upto date and no outstanding patches showing on Microsoft Update – it was onto the software.

Thank goodness for the fact that most software nowadays has "Auto Update" features built-in. No more plodding around Support sections of web-sites – everything is done for you. The one frustrating experience here was with Adobe Acrobat v7. Whilst the Auto Update feature highlighted four updates, v7.05, 06, 07 and 09 – it forced you to download each update individually, install it and then reboot. What’s more, the downloads are sllllllow – this is over a 10mb Cable Modem connection. Any chance of "rolling up" previous updates into your latest patch release Adobe?

Once all the relevant software was installed, it was time to take a Disk Image. The benefits of capturing an image are numerous, but first and foremost – next time Windows grinds to a halt, you can simply backup your work, re-install the O/S from your image inside a few minutes, and voila – nice quick Windows again!

Historically, I’ve always used Symantec Ghost to do my imaging. However recently I’ve been won over by Acronis TrueImage Workstation. Not only does their Universal Restore feature make moving an Image from one type of PC to another (even with different hardware) easy – but installing the software on your own Desktop PC makes taking backups a synch. TrueImage creates a "Secure Area" on a disk (in this case, a spare 120GB HDD I’d put into my PC as secondary Disk) and backs up to that space. If you hose Windows in the future, no problem – press F11 at next reboot and TrueImage pops up allowing you to restore – no bootable media required, no fuss, no mess.

Post-image, I restored all my data and investigated some alternative applications to my standard fare. In this case that involved trying Windows Desktop Search instead of Google Desktop Search, Filezilla instead of SmartFTP, and others besides. I’ll document my findings in the weeks to come.

The whole process has taken the better part of a day – but it’s time well spent when you spend hours each week on a PC that isn’t running at optimum. It’s also a good auditing exercise, plus it opens your eyes to alternatives to your "tried and tested" software set.

Finally – I can predict the flood of catcalls I’ll get for not taking the opportunity to move to Windows Vista – Microsoft’s latest Operation System. However – in my defence I’m already aware of two or three "must have" apps that don’t work under Vista yet, plus this is my hub of operations – if this PC doesn’t work, customers don’t get work done for them, invoices don’t get sent – and that just will not do. Just like I predict the majority of SME’s I work with will, I’ll re-evaluate the situation a few months after Vista’s release – and will move up then. In the meantime, Vista remains confined to the Testbed PC and Virtual PC’s here at Tubb Towers…

Life without Sat-Nav

Published on January 21, 2007 in Computers and Internet. 0 Comments
I may have become too reliant on technology.

With my PDA out of action due to an upgrade in process, I tried to make my way across the City of Birmingham to a friends house party on Saturday night without my Satellite Navigation software. Not only did I get totally lost going there, I also managed to go the wrong way coming back.

I could learn to read paper maps – but it’s more likely I’ll buy myself a second Sat-Nav system in case of emergencies.