Monthly Archives: August 2009
Apple Mac OS X ‘Snow Leopard’
This autumn could provide an interesting shake up of the Apple vs. PC debate which has been raging for decades as both Microsoft and Apple unleash their new Operating Systems in to the world.
Windows 7 is due for release on the 22nd October however Apple announced on Monday that the release date of OS X ‘Snow Leopard’ had been bought forward from early September to Friday 28th August – the publication date of this column.
After covering the release candidate of Windows 7 some weeks back I will this week attempt to cover the Apple offering. I don’t own a Mac or the developer version of Snow Leopard and, as such, the overview will be a culmination of what is known by the community so far which, owing to the usual Apple intense secrecy, is relatively little.
It would appear that Apple hasn’t concentrated so much on … Read the rest
BT iPlate
I’ve been writing just recently about slow broadband connections and discussing common methods used to improve line speeds. This week I was pointed in the direction of a little device which claims to potentially increase the speed of your broadband connection for just under £7.
The BT iPlate is of potential use to broadband customers that have more than one telephone socket in their home. It consists of a small plate which is installed in to the master socket and works by attempting to reduce interference picked up by any extension wiring in your home.
It works by cutting out the ‘bell wire’ cable on your line; originally this would have been used by older telephones to allow a physical bell to ring however modern day handsets have a ring feature built in and, as such, it is now redundant. Ideally, (but somewhat impractically) the bell wire would be removed … Read the rest
Online Ticket Scams
This month police managed to shut down 100 online ticket scam websites by taking action through the organisation in charge of registering all website addresses, Icann (Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers).
Typically, however, these sites which sell fake tickets for events ranging from Bruce Springsteen concerts to the Olympic games are incredible difficult to shut down due to most of them being based offshore. As such, not only do many still remain but more will surely form to replace the fallen.
There are however simple steps you can take to help safeguard against potential online fraudsters:
- Does it seem too good to be true? Life can sometimes chuck you a nice surprise although more often than not if something looks too good to be true then you’re going to be left disappointed. Alarm bells should start ringing if you’ve been endlessly searching for seats at the O2, … Read the rest
Slow Broadband
Last Friday I talked about a new breed of superfast broadband heading our way, however it would seem that in the current day many users still aren’t achieving anywhere near the maximum speeds promised by their ISPs.
Several months back my parents had their Virgin Media line upgraded from a 2Mbps to a 10Mbps connection free of charge, due to the discontinuation of the older package. This week my father mentioned that he hadn’t noticed a difference and so I performed a quick speed check which confirmed he was still on the old package; an issue resolved by a single phone call to Virgin.
I had a similar issue when Virgin upgraded me to 20Mbps without replacing my old, slow modem; once again a quick speed test provided me with the fodder to give them a call and get a new, faster broadband modem free of charge.
It is always … Read the rest
