Skylon, Business, computer and IT consultantcy for SME's

I have now retired from Management & IT Consultancy

after more than 40 years in it, but still support local home PC users

Most of my work now, is for local groups such as Rogate Computer Club and the computer group of Liphook U3A . If you are a home user in East Hampshire or the West Sussex (Petworth - Rogate area) and you need help making your PC work well or need help choosing computer products then call to discuss your needs. 01420 538900 or email me

My clients usually save the value of my fees in buying product
or just in peace of mind!

Remember: Expert help costs less than inexpert help.

A useful book for U3A Members Computer Basics for Seniors-5 Computer basics for Seniors. Contact a U3A committe member to purchase it. £6 including postage. The book is for beginners but there are lots of useful tips for those who have been using Computers for a while but are still learning.

Are you properly protected?

Or do you have a false sense of security?

"When anyone asks me how I can best describe my experience in nearly 40 years at sea, I merely say, uneventful. Of course there have been winter gales, storms, fog and the like, but in all my experience, I have never been in any accident of any sort worth speaking about. I have seen but one vessel in distress in all my years at sea...I never saw a wreck and have never been wrecked, nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort."
-- Captain E. J. Smith, RMS Titanic


Anti Virus & Anti Spyware Fast and very low impact on your daily work. One scanner does both at the same time without you even noticing	iHateSpam Everyone gets it. If it annoys you that much, this will help reduce the annoyance	Free Firewall If you want some independent assement of how good it is, just have a look at matousec.com firewall challenge

I consider these products "Best of Breed" whether you are a home user or a business user. If you do not protect your system you will get attacked. Millions of users world wide get attacked and the result can be from a little annoying to a complete financial disaster. Microsoft's own firewall is almost completely useless as it fails to prevent crackers "calling home" with all the information from your PC.

Getting protected is not just about putting locks on the doors, you need it to be easy to use and run unobtrusively. If the product brings your system to its knees or is too difficult to update or too intrusive you will be tempted to switch it off, thereby completely exposing your PC to the worst elements of cyberspace. That is the same as leaving the door unlocked with the key in it.

I used to recommend AVG for antivirus but its latest version 8.0 fails to come up to the mark. The free version has now changed its protection level to below what I consider a minimum standard and the paid for versions have started to become resource hogs and slow the system down too much. See their own comparison page.

My favorite firewall was Zone Alarm but although it is easy to use it now fails to meet an acceptable level of security. It is still many time better than the totally useless built in Windows Firewall but Comodo's Free firewall is hard to beat even by the paid ones

Declaration of interest: Vipre and iHateSpam are both products that I get commission on if you click on the link above and then buy the product within a few months. You can download a free trial version to test if it suitable for you. Comodo Firewall Pro is free and I do not get any commission from them although I used to from sales of ZoneAlarm.

Get well protected and keep it up to date.

Useful tips

Spam:- I get 200-300 a day and since I started using iHateSpam they all go into a junk mail folder. Until early November 2008 I checked the folder once or twice a day for false positives but since I started using it, at the begining of September 2008, I have not found one so now I don't waste my time checking. It is also rare to find spam in my inbox, perhaps as many as two in a week, then I just select it and click on the "is Spam" and it now knows where to put any more like it. When I changed from XP Pro to Vista Ultimate in Early November I was unable to 'Activate' iHateSpam after I re-installed it; I looked at Sunbelt Software's knowledgebase to find an answer but although it gave me a couple of things to check no answer, so I emailed the support team and by return I had the solution. So not only is the product good but when you can't find a solution to a problem, so is the service.

Email signing:- Have you ever thought about digitally signing your emails and letting other people send you encrypted ones. You might find this article from Comodo or this article from Secorio. If you want to learn a little more this white paper from Verisign or this tutorial from them. You can get a free email certificate from Comodo. Remember to renew it each year or get a new one if you change your email address

Another way to get protected is to stop using Microsoft's Internet Explorer and use Mozilla's Firefox then install the most valuable add-on No-Script. There are many other add-ons but don't get carried away and slow down what is a fast browser, once it has loaded. It is worth getting the British English dictionary if you regularly blog or enter other text information on the web as it will spot your spelling mistakes and offer UK corrections.

If you are not confident that you can do it yourself, then give me a call.

It's time to ditch dial-up. Get up to 8Mb broadband from PlusNet. Free setup now available - terms apply. PlusNet broadband.

How good is your ISP?
This one gives me good value for money especially now I use Home Phone Anytime+

I expect support to be understandable and knowledgable, the support team at Plus are based in Sheffield, and despite the being "northerners" I never have a problem on either count. You can call them on an 0845 number or a normal geographic number which is useful if your calls are through their "Home Phone Anytime+" as they are included in your monthly tariff. You can also get support via their website which is timely and usually the best way.

Working from home? You need premium quality business broadband. High-speed up to 8Mb broadband from only £13.61 per month with free hardware - terms apply. PlusNet broadband.

For Business users in the office or for teleworkers this is hard to beat

2-October-2008

This Speed test is my latest

Microsoft is pushing another "open document format" to compete with the existing one that is not broken. Because they cannot control it and didn't design it and because they would have to change Office 2007 to comply they think it should be changed. The existing standard has already been adopted by the EU as a common standard for inter govenmental document exchange, this leaves Microsoft out in the cold. The ISO committee has accepted Microsoft's specification as a standard but Office 2007 does not yet comply with the specification, which has a number of inconsistancies in it anyway. On 21 May 2008 Microsoft stated that with the release of Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) scheduled for the first half of 2009, they will include support for XML Paper Specification (XPS), Portable Document Format (PDF) 1.5, PDF/A and Open Document Format (ODF) v1.1. There is still no sign of them fully supporting the ISO/IEC 29500 (Open Office XML) that they "rammed" through.

What is the alternative?

An open existing standard ISO26300 Open Document Format(ODF)

An existing product that meets the standard is "OpenOffice" this free and is supported through "Free Community Support" for business and personal users.
If you are looking for a commercially supported product look at StarOffice from Sun Microsystems.
I think Open Office V2.4 is as easy to use as Microsoft Office 2003 for more than 90% of the tasks I need to do. It can read and write Microsoft format documents for Word, Excel and PowerPoint versions 97, 2000, XP/2002 and 2003 also the other common formats "rtf" (Rich Text Format), csv and many others including the new open standard ISO26300 ODF.

Skylon