I do a large amount of working from home and being the proud owner of two cats I quite often find that when my back is turned that they start interfering with my laptop so that upon my return I either find one of them perched on the mouse following the curser across the screen or ‘typing’ e-mails away quite happily to customers and friends.I have even had files I needed moved to the recycle bin before by ‘Smooopps’, the most menacing of my two moggies.

These constant disruptions to my work got me thinking that with the random nature of the Internet, what products would have been put together in order to discourage such eventualities from happening in the first place?A quick search in Google revealed a surprising number of related sites.

Step forward www.moggies.co.uk though as the site I … Read the rest

Since we’re on the run up to Christmas I thought we’d take a lighthearted break this week from learning about Firewalls, Anti-Virus programs and LCD Monitors and instead I’ve decided to publish the following e-mail which landed in my inbox this week.Finding any computer related jokes that’s slightly funny is an arduous task but this one put a little smile across my face.With the business that seems to come associated with Christmas, publishing this e-mail will also save me the smallest amount of time that can be used to allow me to give one final push in order to get my customers machines finished and PC problems resolved in time for the big day.

A language instructor was explaining to her class that in French, nouns unlike their English counterparts, are grammatically designated as masculine or feminine.

“House,” in French, is … Read the rest

This week we’ll be discussion Firewall software after I recently received this letter from one of my readers from the Midlands.

You talked in one of your articles about Anti Virus software, and mentioned in particular the free product from Grisoft called AVG. Can you recommend a free Firewall product?Just for your information, my dad thinks so highly of your articles that he regularly sends them to me here in Hereford!

Mike Coleman, via E-mail.

For those of you who are not entirely sure what a firewall is, let me just briefly explain. When you’re connected to the Internet you essentially become a part of this worldwide network, which also has millions of others connected to it at any one time.The majority of these people using these computers will go about their own business quite happily but there are also those … Read the rest

Some of you may remember a couple of weeks ago I was explaining the importance of having good quality components in order to interface with your computer – A good monitor for viewing the output of the machine and a good quality mouse and keyboard for inputting data.Without these essential components being up to scratch, even if you have one of the most powerful machines on the market, the experience of using the machine will not be enjoyable.

One aspect that is almost always overlooked by people looking to buy a new computer or to replace a failed product is the mouse; quite often users just buy the cheapest on the market as surely a £2.99 mouse does the same job as one that costs £25?As with most things in life, this is not the case as you do get what … Read the rest