IT Support for Lincolnshire

Do you use a PC?

/ Business, Technology / , , , , , , ,

I read an interesting article on the BBC news site last night – referring to Dr Mark Dean, who was part of the IBM team who worked on the first PC.

Read it here

I have been away on holiday now for over a week and have been able to keep up with my work from my iPhone:

* it is a phone – holding all my contacts database and client info (securely – you cannot take the SD card out of an iPhone)
* I keep up with my email on it

To the basic out of the box software I have added:

* Documents To Go (to deal with MS documents – opening and creating them)
* GoodReader for PDFs
* the files are kept online in my DropBox

Battery life can be an issue when camping. I have a cradle in the car which keeps the battery topped up when driving – and it plays the iPod in the phone through the car stereo. I have two extra batteries – a pocket sized, booster/recharge battery and an extended jacket battery.

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I also have a power inverter for use in the car so I can use the Apple plug to charge both of these batteries when camping – and at the house in Aviemore.

A complete office in my pocket – a small pocket today. In 1996 when we came away on holiday I needed a bigger pocket!

* Psion Series 5 PDA, with a box of spare batteries and a mains psu
* 56k dial up modem for use at the timeshare
* Ericsson SH888 mobile phone with a built in data modem – car charger and charger for the mains
* data stored on memory cards – I think I had a couple of 1 MB and 2 MB CF cards
* no media player but I did read books on the Psion

Other things I have used the iPhone 4 for this holiday

* Stanza book reader app – I have about three hundred books on the phone so I have plenty of choice
* It is the only camera I have with me – I use the built in camera app and I have purchased Camera+, I really like the split focus and exposure points in this app
* I have watched videos and listened to podcasts and audiobooks on it
* I have used Google maps, MemoryMap and Navfree for navigation – we found Jimmy Chungs in Edinburgh with it
* browsed the web in full colour and with video and sound – although I did not keep up with the news as it was Thursday when I caught up with the fact that Britain had suffered days of rioting!
* and I post to the blog using the WordPress app

So do I use a PC – yes – but do I always need it, no. The screen is small on the iPhone but iOS is more than capable of supporting my business – the bigger screen on the iPad would be good for some jobs but it is not pocket sized.

Replace my PC with an iPad. No I cannot do that, there is just so much software available for Windows OS and that’s what I need – the Windows PC strength is it’s flexibility. I know a number of people who have Mac books – who will tell me how great they are, impressive hardware, no viruses, etc etc etc, and in the next breath they ask, can I help them to set the Mac up to run Windows as the need to run some Windows software on it!

One final comment – my company supports PCs, so selfishly I hope they don’t disappear, but as it says in the article they are no longer the single driving force for technological change. At Octagon we support a variety of tablets and smart phones, as clients now have these devices and find them very convenient and with the latest OS releases very easy to use – also they are fun!

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Musselburgh and ADSL

/ Technology, Travel / , ,

You are not going to get the ADSL tech support story yet as my client has decided the best place for him to sort this issue is to take them to court. (See last Saturday’s post.)

So you will have to wait for the story about how she thought changing my Ethernet cable between the laptop and the router/modem would restore my Internet connection, I had an ASDL signal but no Internet!. There is more, a whole afternoon’s worth of pearls of tech support wisdom.

Now to better things – tea and teacakes (well Jeremy had a glass of girders) in the Burgh Cafe, Musselburgh. A real old fashioned cafe, well worth a visit.

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Bridge over the Esk at Musselburgh

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New Printer for the Home and Office

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We have replaced our office printer – with another HP. As I tell my clients, you are never disappointed with an HP printer.

I bought an HP Laserjet Pro CP1525nw – mainly because it has HP’s ePrint, which means it will work with my iPhone (and my son’s iPod).

HP-CP1525nw
HP LaserJet Pro CP1525nw

I installed it to our network, on a wire and disabled the built in wireless connection and fixed the IP to match the IP plan I have and so I can find it easier when I want to manage it. It has a slightly larger foot print than the old HP 2600n but we were still able to fit it in that space on the bench.

The ePrint servcies have to be installed via the internet, after the printer has been installed on at least PC on the network. The ePrint services give you far more than just iPhone printing – you can also send print jobs to the printer by sending an email to it. On installing ePrint you set up an account with HP, from there you get a secure email address for your printer and a management console for the service. For extra security you can alter the email address to be something very complicated and also limit what email addesses can send jobs to the printer (I did this). To print attach the file you want to print to an email, send it and get a notification email back telling you the job was a success. This opens all sorts of possibilities – we try and run a paperless office but we still need some things in print. Diana is looking forward to when she is working in Spain and is able to print something out in the office here and having it put in the post or on file.Printing from the iPhone works from any app that has a print option – there is an HP ePrint app, when that is installed it gives you many more options for printing.Anyone with an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad should get one of these printers. 

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Probably the Best Server Backup in the World

/ Technology / ,

Last Christmas we had a real problem recovering a server, following a serious crash. Although we had a series of tape backup, using only the best quality tape, a Sony tape drive and BackupExec, when we came to move the tape drive to a new server to recover the all important data we could not find a driver for the drive. Neither the native drivers or the BackupExec driver would work. The skills of one of my engineers saved the day with the use of a PE type boot CD in the failed server with allowed him to access the one of the raided drives and copy the data to a USB portable hard drive.

So we have been looking for a better solution.

In conjunction with Basic Business Systems (http://www.basic.co.uk/) with now use CA ARCserve D2D for backing up servers, first to NAS devices and then we copy this to either USB protable HDD or across the internet to remote storage. Backing up is fine – but the real strength is its speed of recovery. The Bear Metal Recovery simply speeds up the time to recover a server. It is also practical to test the recovery process and several of our clients who are now using this software are going to have a Disaster Recovery practice – we will go in on a Saturday with a spare black server, turn off the working box and recover ti to the spare using only the D2D files. If it works great, but if we do have any issues we will be able to solve them, whennot under pressure of a real crash.

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Lost! One Domain – Last Seen Going That Way!

/ Business, General / , ,

I have been with a client today (who shall remain nameless) who could not answer the simple question of who is hosting their domain!

Let me put that question more simply. “To whom have you entrusted a vital asset of your company – one on which you depend for promotion and business critical communications?”

This is the second time this week this has happened – the other was an ex-client, who was always looking for the cheapest deal and moved away from us as someone he knew, who agreed to look after his laptop for far less than I pay for coffee! Following that he then moved his domain from the trusted partner we recommended. Now after several years he is going through the process of saying various companies are responsible for this loss when in reality, originally he put no value against his domain and took no care of it.

So the moral of this story is that everyone needs to know who has control of their domains – and the ultimate answer to this question should be THEMSELVES. Find a trusted supplier to host the domain (if you cannot do it yourself) and then get that supplier to talk to the web designers and support companies to sort the details out.

For support clients of Octagon Technology we offer hosting facilities and many take advantage of this so they know their domains are safe. We also work with a number of web companies (of which Develop and Promote is our primary partner) where our clients have their domains hosted but we keep the details on file so they cannot forget!

This article is sponsored by Octagon Technology of Lincoln, England

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Server Did Not Work

/ Business /

Back to work this morning with a bump, one of our client’s suffered a major power outage over the weekend – the UPS closed the server down without issue, except when it was restarted the clients could not log in, browse the web etc. (HP server running Windows Small Businee Server 2003). I promised the client one of my engineers would be there for 8am to see if the problem could be solved before his staff got in. I got to go!

A check of the event log showed several errors all of which pointed to a problem with the IPSEC service not starting. I tried to start the service manually but that did not work. In consultation with an engineer from another company it was decided simply to disable to IPSEC service and restart to server. This worked in as much as it allowed the office to start working again (including several staff who connect and use terminal services) but it did not address what was wrong. The client was happy – even though user who access their email via OWA were unable to without the IPSEC service running – as by 10am his people were working. We’ll work the solution out later this week.

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Pine Lake Resort Internet – Update Day 3

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I got a call from another Swisscom tech support engineer today at about 2.30pm – who said he could not log into the device in my unit, so would be passing it back to Pine Lake onsite staff who would replace the unit. (I now wonder why this onsite team could not have visited me on Monday and swapped the device anyway – at least I would have been happy.)

Needless to say I did not get a visit today – now fed up wit this I am going to ask for a refund tomorrow and tell them to forget it.

Saturday evening – paid my money but no internet – I bought 7 days although that is really 6 days in the unit
Sunday – no high speed internet – 5 days left
Monday – no high speed internet – 4 days left

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