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Operating System History

admin — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 09:05:17 +0000

I think the mark of a true geek is someone who can actually partake in a meaningful conversation relating to a technology which was pioneered half a decade before they were even born. This realisation comes after yours truly found himself today discussing the old CP/M Operating System with our web guy and the PC techie.

The trip down memory lane got me thinking that perhaps it would be nice to remind ourselves of the path we have walked to have become unfortunate enough to end up with Windows as the most popular choice of Operating System.

CP/M – Created back in 1976, this command line based Operating System was developed to provide 8-bit computer users with an easier way of managing the most basic of computer functions, as well as installing and programming applications. It would be fair to say that the younger MS-DOS was very closely based on CP/M and indeed many of the Operating System structures and commands were retained.

DOS – Of course, there were in fact several different flavours of DOS available from various vendors but MS-DOS was the one that was used by most. Released in 1981, Microsoft continued to develop this Operating System right up until the release of Windows 95, at which point it was phased out. DOS was a command based Operating System without any form of graphical interface which remained popular even after the introduction of Windows due to the fact that not only was it faster and less hardware intensive but also that it was actually required as a base for Windows to run on top of. Up until Windows 95, your computer would load itself in to DOS by default and those that wanted to use Windows would actually have to load it on top of MS-DOS as a secondary Operating System.

GEOS – This remarkably compact Graphical Operating System was originally designed for the Commodore 64; a machine with just 64k of RAM and a 1 MHz processor. Released in 1986 by a company called Berkeley Softworks, GEOS went on to become the third fastest selling Operating System in the world at one stage. Despite the ridiculously miniscule system requirements, GEOS was a nippy Operating System which looked very similar to MacOS which ran on a machine costing ten times the price.

OS/2 – Originally a joint venture between IBM and Microsoft in 1987, at one point Microsoft publically insisted that OS/2 was the future and technically speaking, it was superior. Microsoft however managed to bundle Windows 3.0 with many new PC’s (a tactic they have been able to continue up through the years) and as such OS/2 become considered an expensive alternative. Unsurprisingly, the marriage between the two companies hit the rocks and despite IBM soldering on until 2001, OS/2 never managed to enjoy the success that Windows had.

AmigaOS – I truly think that the Amiga OS deserves to be remembered as one of the most revolutionary Operating Systems in history and to me it represents a remarkable technology that it took years for Windows to catch up with. The AmigaOS which was initially introduced back in 1985 for the Commodore Amiga line of machines and not only was it nippy, stable and incredibly fully featured but it also included support for multitasking; something that we take for granted nowadays but was the holy grail of computing back then. Unfortunately financial issues at Commodore led to bankruptcy which largely resulted in development on the Amiga platform being abandoned.

Wireless Security

admin — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 17:07:23 +0000

This week I was in a moral dilemma; we have just moved in to the new house and haven’t yet got a phone line or broadband connection. Writing and sending my Click article does require a certain amount of Internet access and so resigned myself to travelling back to the office at ten o’clock on this Tuesday evening unless someone out there was kind enough to be broadcasting a wireless signal that I could hitch on to.

Whilst I theoretically know how to crack a wireless network with minimal encryption, I decided that this could be considered a little un-neighbourly and so drew a line by saying I would only make a connection in the unlikely event that there was someone broadcasting with absolutely no security installed whatsoever. It turns out that what I assumed would be an unlikely possibility was actually surprisingly obtainable; as I sat in my conservatory I quickly picked up a dozen wireless Internet connections with three of them being completely unprotected.

Instantly I knew what I would be writing my article on this week; if you consider that within a very tight radius of my conservatory there were three unprotected connections I dread to think how many thousands exist in Torbay. Whilst I was able to send this article as a result of their oversight, the situation could have been a lot more serious if I’d have had malicious intentions in mind.

Wireless technology is currently treading a fine line; the technology inherently needs to be secure since the signal is usually broadcast well beyond the four walls of the property that the network is designed to serve, however they are also designed to be used by computer users with only a very basic working knowledge. Since security and usability don’t go hand in hand, the former is usually discarded in favour of the latter. It is reasoned by the manufacturers that whilst Joe Public probably doesn’t have anything they particularly care to hide from the world, they would be rather irate if they couldn’t get their wireless network set up without assistance within 10 minutes of removing the router from the box.

The reality is that whether or not you have something to hide from the world, you don’t want anyone with a wireless card in a 100 metre radius having access to your network. If we put aside the most serious possibility of someone obtaining confidential information from your compromised network there is also the fact they may simply abuse your Internet connection. Every couple of weeks I speak to a new person who wants a wireless network card so they can access their neighbours’ Internet connection for free; even if they only use it for simple tasks it will affect the speed of their network as well as counting towards any usage limit if on a metered connection. There is also the real possibility that if they use your connection for less savoury activities then it will have the IP address associated with your Internet account stamped all over it.

Fortunately securing your network is a simple process that shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. There are several methods of securing your network from the popular WEP (Wireless Encryption Protocol) and MAC filtering to the more recent and secure WPA standard. It is important to choose the right one as there are some serious security flaws in some of the standards so we will discuss the advantages and disadvantages to both next week.

New Years Resolutions

admin — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 16:38:05 +0000

It’s that time of year that we start making a list of resolutions for the coming year and as such I’d like to be bold enough to suggest a couple of things that you may like to adopt in to your computing lives of 2008. As these are mainly bullet points I’ve included links to previous articles that can be used to obtain further reading material.

To make things more interesting I have decided to separate my readership in to two extremes – one designed for regular computer users, and one for the hardcore. This may prove more beneficial than reading off ‘one size fits all’ list and we’ll start with the ‘regular’ users.

Backup your hard drive – Why not start with the most obvious point which is also the one that’s most likely to be ignored. We all know we should backup but yet none of us do, myself included. Head to http://www.computerarticles.co.uk/driveimage-xml/ for a review of some software to make the process less painful however don’t say I didn’t warn you if you choose to ignore this advice.

Keep your Windows installation clean – It’s amazing how much of a difference a trim and tidy version of Windows can make to the speed of your computer. In the past I’ve highlighted software that can assist you with this, and several reviews are archived at www.computerarticles.co.uk. Despite the range of software available, one of the most effective ways is simply going to Add/Remove programs and taking out any applications you don’t need. This point has been included as a gentle dig towards my girlfriends’ mother who had me cleaning up her bloated, slow Windows installation until ten o’clock this evening, when she knew I had an article to write!

Stay healthy while using your machine – Don’t underestimate the effects of RSI; it is a serious condition. Simple precautions can easily help you avoid any conditions or discomforts associated with using a computer. Check out http://www.computerarticles.co.uk/repetitive-strain-injury/ for further reading.

Keep up to date – Although this is a task that can easily be put off, it is worth making an effort to ensure that your Windows, anti-virus and any other important software is up to date. By doing so you’ll be minimising the chance of experiencing any security issues along with potentially increasing the speed and reliability of your machine.

The hardcore computer users (otherwise often known as ‘geeks’) will probably appreciate all of the above however there is an equally important set of skills involving moderation which may need to be learnt. This section is intended to be taken very tongue in cheek; we do however have some truly geeky friends in our friendship group so for the sake of sanity some of these points must be learnt.

Extend your conversational skills beyond computers and mobile communications – Whilst I do appreciate technology myself there is something unsettling a person whose range of conversation doesn’t extend past this one subject. Yes, I know that if you turn your mobile phone to 90 degrees that the screen automatically rotates itself, however this doesn’t necessary make for good conversation every time we’re in the pub.

Enjoy the outdoors – Some studies suggest that we only spend, on average, approximately three quarters of an hour every day (3%) outside. I would imagine that for some IT guys this figure is much lower so try to make an effort to experience the real world once in a while; in many ways it is superior to the virtual one.

Eat healthy and exercise – Hardcore computer users either tend to be very skinny, due to lack of exercise or very large, due to a poor diet. Sitting in front of a computer for five hours eating pizza and drinking Coke can’t possibly be good for you.

Turn it off every now and again – Force yourself to do other things; read, socialise, try to do some cooking. I can’t think of a better New Years resolution than to commit to rediscovering the real world. It is an old parody on the game Second Life I do know but www.getafirstlife.com is an extremely poignant site.

FoxIt PDF Reader

admin — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:35:57 +0000

At some point in our computing lives we will almost certainly stumble across a PDF (Portable Document File). These are extremely useful for transmitting a document, including any associated diagrams or pictures, in one single file which should look identical to the original on any compatible computer or mobile device. The fact that practically any modern day machine can use these files, coupled with the maintenance of the original appearance, has made this format extremely popular.

The possible applications are fairly obvious. For example, most modern day hardware and software doesn’t come with a printed manual but rather an electronic copy stored in PDF format on an accompanying CD. In the office, we send invoice copies in PDF format via e-mail as you can be sure that the recipient will view the document exactly as intended. Transmitting a complex document in an alternative format such as .doc would mean that the recipient would be unlikely to see things exactly as you intended, unless they had access to all the embedded pictures and fonts which are often unique to your particular machine.

The format was invented by Adobe back in 1993 and all that is required to read files in this format is the free Adobe Acrobat reader that can be downloaded from www.adobe.com. Unfortunately this software has become extremely bloated in recent years and can often cause your computer to crash or hang even when performing the most basic of operations. Therefore this week I’m going to tell you about an alternative reader which is an essential download for practically every person reading this article; even if you haven’t yet come in contact with a PDF file, you will soon.

The FoxIt PDF Reader is an alternative to the Adobe Acrobat reader that most computer users will have already installed on to their PC at some point. Whilst both pieces of software essentially do the same thing, FoxIt is just 2.1mb to download; approximately one tenth of the 25mb that’s required for Acrobat. The smaller application size means that when you open a PDF file it is on your screen almost instantly, whereas in some dire situations I was left waiting literally minutes when I tried to open some PDF’s embedded in e-mails when using the bloated Adobe offering.

As well as simply reading PDF files the software also allows you to annotate PDF files so that you can make notes, highlight text or draw graphics before saving or printing the changes. When saving you also have the option to save the entire document as a standard text file; this would be useful should you wish to import the content into an application such as Word for editing.

FoxIt reader is can be downloaded from www.foxitsoftware.com and alongside the Windows versions are also variants suitable for Mobile Devices or Linux machines. The software doesn’t include any spyware or adware and pays for itself simply by increasing awareness of the FoxIt brand as they do charge for various add-ons, as well as the more powerful PDF applications that they provide. Do look out on the site for handy other free offerings such as the Outlook PDF preview handler which allows you to view the contents of a PDF file from within Outlook without having to open it first.

I am always amazed that a small company on a shoestring budget can often do a better job on a piece of software than the original ‘pioneers’. The average man on the street will most likely find FoxIt a better piece of software than the Adobe offering; this is despite the latter having inventing the format, benefiting from years of experience and not to mention an almost endless budget.

Facebook vs. MySpace

admin — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 16:30:14 +0000

I’ve been putting it off and off but this month, with my willpower in tatters, I bit the bullet and signed up for a Facebook account. Since I wrote an article about MySpace last year people have been telling me to give Facebook a go but I hoped it was just a phase they were going through and that I would be fine keeping my social networking site membership to just the one; MySpace.

Social networking is the current 21^st century buzzword as it allows computer users to keep in constant contact with friends and family both quickly and easily. It works by getting you to create an online profile of yourself and from here you can then search for people that you know. Once located you request that they add you as a friend and then when approved you can then view their profile and just as importantly, their friends. The ability to see friends who are already added to their profile results in a pond ripple effect as you’ll often find others that you know in this fashion and before long you have a huge group of socially intertwined people all communicating together.

Naively I hoped that things would remain simple and that the established and popular MySpace would continue to reign supreme to avoid my having to set up another profile and search for my friends again from scratch. I assumed that with such a relatively simple concept that there wouldn’t be any real difference between the two but remarkably, there is. I’m now one of the converted and this week I’ll be giving you reason to follow me:

Profile Pages

Whilst MySpace does offer the user a larger degree of customisation due to the fact that HTML code can be used to create a truly individual page unfortunately this is also its undoing. If everybody in the world was a natural web developer with programming skills then our website design company Refresh Creations would be pretty short of work however luckily for us, this isn’t the case. MySpace pages are extremely inconsistent and often poorly designed; for the record choosing to put black italic text on a dark purple background makes for extremely hard reading.

Because Facebook doesn’t allow this degree of customisation, pages are always black text on a white background – the way they should be. Facebook does allow a large amount of non visual customisation by allowing users to add and share small applications which can enhance your profile page and these range from the genuinely useful to the completely pointless.

Advertising

I am sympathetic to the fact that people need to make money, however, MySpace appears to have turned in to one great big advert just recently. With Facebook there is one advert which is always in the same place and as such it doesn’t affect the user experience or make you feel constantly targeted.

Community

Unfortunately MySpace appears to now be a breeding ground for spammers; practically every day a random scantily clad woman requested to be my friend. Whilst I would sarcastically say this kind of behaviour is normal in my life when I’m around the opposite sex, these women were all blatantly advertising sites of an adult nature and so I was forced to reject them all. Since Facebook doesn’t allow users to add friends in bulk you don’t tend to suffer this problem and the focus appears to be more on connecting to, and staying in contact with genuine friends rather than simply winning an online popularity contest. Facebook keeps you up to date with anything that your friends have added or updated whereas MySpace relies on you laboriously checking each and every one of your friends profiles individually in order to stay up to date.

I haven’t had space to cover all of my reasons for preferring Facebook, so sign up for a free account at www.facebook.com to see for yourself. Whilst I still appreciate that MySpace is a good social networking site unfortunately unless they make some changes they will continue to see users flock to Facebook in their droves.

PC or Mac?

admin — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 16:16:15 +0000

The great thing about computer geeks has to be the passionate way that they can either loyally defend or implacably slate a particular system; fanatics are polarised so much by two competing platforms that only very rarely can some kind of sensible middle ground ever exist.

I remember when I was younger, talk in the playground often turned to which console was best, your Sega Megadrive or your mates Super Nintendo – You can guarantee that if I were a fly on the wall in a school today, that the same kind of discussion would still be raging between the X-Box and Playstation gamers.

A similar kind of discussion, ‘which is superior, the PC or the Apple Mac?’ has been burning between adult computer users for several decades now. Personally I don’t have the time to worry about the issue a great deal, nor do I feel the need to militantly argue my points in forums all over the Internet but clearly many enthusiasts do; a simple Google search for ‘PC vs Mac’ returns hundreds of thousands of matches.

The debate has been taken to a new level by a series of adverts recently commissioned by Apple in which the two comedians Mitchell and Webb take on the rolls of the two systems; Mitchell acts as a PC and Webb as an Apple Mac.

In these adverts the two ‘systems’ compare their features and of course, PC comes off looking like a a boring, inefficient dinosaur while Apple Mac humiliates him and generally comes off looking a little too smug. I’m not certain that any of the adverts would tempt me to move over to the Apple Mac platform but I suppose the real question is, if you look behind the advertising, is the Mac really better?

So we can understand the two platforms a little better we should probably look at how they have developed and changed over the years. Hopefully this will somehow justify Apples name calling and rationalise them insulting pretty much everything about the machine that the large majority of us use on a daily basis.

What most users would come to term ‘PC’ refers to one of the many machines evolved from the original IBM Personal Computer which was introduced back in 1981. The success of this machine can be predominately attributed to the fact that IBM decided on an open architecture so that other manufactures could produce and sell peripherals and software for the machine. The rather loose copyrighting and availability of technical specifications meant that it didn’t take long before other manufacturers reverse engineered the BIOS to produce their own legal IBM PC ‘clones’. This lead to the PC standard being adopted and developed by a number of competing companies which of course had a positive impact on the range of devices and software available for the machine as well as reducing prices.

Nowadays IBM, the original founders of the platform have relatively little influence on the development of the PC as it is continually evolved by the thousands of companies who manufacture the computers, peripherals and software which are compatible with this open standard.

On completely the opposite end of the scale is Apple who released their first Personal Computer, the ‘Macintosh’ back in 1984. Since this time, Apple have been the only company to manufacture, sell and support the Mac which of course means that they have full control over the brand including the Hardware and Operating System.

Whilst retaining complete control over your platform would appear to be a good idea, especially when it comes to monopolising on sales, it has certainly hurt the popularity of the machine in the industry. With so many more companies supporting the PC it has certainly dominated sales over the past twenty years which has resulted in Apple Mac being regarded as very much a niche machine by many.

Fortunes may be about to change however; a partnership with Intel, a new Operating System on the horizon and compatibility with Windows means that many now consider Apple to be a viable option again. Join me again next week to hear my opinion on whether your next computer really should be a Mac…..

USB Flash Drives

admin — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 16:20:25 +0000

A good few years ago now, I wrote the first Click article to focus on USB Flash Drives and in it I rather optimistically sounded the death knell of the floppy disc which at the time was still very popular. Of course, I also thought the end was in sight when we were introduced to the rewritable CD, the Zip Drive and the 120Mb Floppy, but let’s not dwell on these points too much. The important thing to remember is that this time my prediction was accurate and this is down, in no small part ,to the remarkable success of the USB Flash Drive.

Despite the widespread use of Flash Drives, I often still find myself giving a crash course as many computer users as still unaware to what these devices are and their potential benefits. A Flash Drive, or Pen Drive as they’re often called, essentially consists of a memory chip encased in a small piece of plastic with a USB connector on the front so that it can be plugged in to pretty much any computer manufactured in the last decade. All Windows Operating Systems after Millennium Edition have the necessary drivers installed as part of the Operating System so you simply plug the device in to a spare USB port and immediately you will be able to view all the stored files using Windows Explorer.

There are many reasons why Flash Drives have become so popular of late and these include, but are not limited to, their speed of operation, small size, relatively low cost, high reliability and the amount of data that they can store.

Whereas the humble floppy disc can store a maximum of 1.44Mb the latest USB Flash drives on the market will store 16GB of data which works out as the equivalent of 11500 floppy discs being stored on a device that weighs less than one single floppy. Additionally they are a great deal faster and more reliable than their floppy counterparts and entry level capacities of around a gigabyte will give you a couple of quid change from a tenner.

Another reason for their success may be because they don’t need any hardware other than a spare USB port, system manufacturers were given the perfect excuse to avoid having to install floppy drives in to every machine they produced without limiting the potential for external storage. I’ve had customers come in to our store, purchase a pack of floppy discs and then return just half an hour later having found that their machine doesn’t include a floppy drive – invariably they then purchase a USB Flash Drive.

Windows Vista now also presents a new incentive to those who were thinking about buying a USB Flash Drive. To explain the benefits we first have to look at a system known as Virtual Memory which is a technique used by Windows in order to increase the amount of system memory available to applications. Ever since Windows 3.0 which was released back in 1990, the hard drive has been used in order to store any temporary files which exceed the storage capacity of the system memory. This means that the amount of memory available for the computer to use during operation is practically unlimited. Unfortunately the hard disk is still a relatively slow device because, unlike most other components that make up a computer, it still relies on moving parts. A Flash Drive doesn’t have such a constraint so if you plug one in to your machine whilst running Vista it will volunteer to use any of the free space available as Virtual Memory whilst still allowing you to use the device in the intended fashion of a removable storage medium. This will allow you to squeeze a little extra performance out of your machine without having to invest in any additional hardware.

A Flash Drive is certainly a worthwhile investment and they are available from all good computer stores including, of course, Refresh Cartridges.

Toms Hardware

admin — Sat, 03 Jul 2004 18:01:06 +0000

It appears that my article last week on Euro 2004 was a little bit of a jinx on the England squad and although my opinion of Swiss referees and David Beckham has gone down somewhat I suppose we should take defeat gracefully and admit that the better side won at the end of the day. At least now that we’re out of Euro I can once again get back to talking about what this article is supposed to discuss; computers.

I believe that there are two types of computer user in this world; those that just use them and those that not only use them but also have a desire to understand the technology involved. The latter of these two user groups will probably appreciate my website for today which is www.tomshardware.com which is a comprehensive database of computer news and articles.

Launched back in 1996 by Dr. Thomas Pabst, Toms Hardware has become one of the best sources for independent news, computer articles and hardware reviews and quite impressively now achieves more than 4.4 million visitors a month. The real appeal to the many computer users that visit the site is the sheer depth of the information available; the reviews area of the site for example will regularly publish 20 pages reviewing a specific product whereas a paper based publication would normally dedicate a page or so to reviewing the same item which makes the difference in detail quite apparent. It is true that for the majority of consumers that such a comprehensive review isn’t necessary when making a purchasing decision but if you are serious about your hardware it could easily prevent you buying a lemon.

The news area of the site provides updates from all areas of the technology and computing market which often makes for quite interesting reading. As it is quite extensive, the news can also be sorted into specific areas; for example you could ask for news just relating to CPU’s or printers.

In addition, if you’re not looking to purchase anything but take a genuine interest in learning about technology you can head to the articles area of the site which discusses specific technologies or specific manufacturers’ business models and successes. As all articles and news are archived on the site it is easy to look back over the years if you require information dating back several years.

All the articles and news features are written by professional journalists and are nicely illustrated with videos and pictures; it isn’t as though the guys doing this site are 14 year old adolescents with no previous writing experience but a passion for technology. As with all the best sites that I review it is supported entirely by non intrusive advertising which makes it completely free of charge and allows the writers to be completely independent which is extremely important when professionally writing; if they don’t like a particular product then they can let you know about it without fear of site funding being removed by the manufacturer. One such example of independence that the site boasts quite proudly occurred several years ago when Intel released a new processor which was slated by Toms Hardware for having several design flaws; it was removed from sale a week later.

Bottom line is even if you take just a passing interest in technology and computing then you should visit www.tomshardware.com as there will be at least a few items on there that take your fancy however if you just use your computer and don’t want to know how it works, about the manufacturer or what you can buy to improve it then this probably won’t be your cup of tea.

Readers Question – Intrusive Pornographic icon.

admin — Sat, 08 Mar 2003 16:29:55 +0000

This week I will dedicate to a letter I recently received from one of my readers who is experiencing problems with an intrusive file that she picked up whilst browsing the Internet.

I recently subscribed to a Newsgroup, and when I next returned to my desktop I found a new icon entitled “Private-Archive”. When I clicked on it out of curiosity I discovered that it led me into a hard core pornographic site and said that, if I did not wish to view such things, I “should leave the site now” which, of course, I did. My problem is that the icon now refuses to be deleted and I receive the Error Message: “Cannot delete. Access denied. The source file may be in use.”

I desperately want it off my desktop and, indeed, completely out of my hard drive – It makes me feel dirty just seeing it there and younger members of my family have access to my computer. Can you help me, please?

Frances Mommert, Paignton

One of the biggest causes of complaint amongst computer users is intrusive spam or indeed software programs that trick you into allowing them to install onto your hard-drive. One of the most notorious ones was a program that would install itself onto your computer whilst you were on the Internet, drop your connection and then redial you to a premium international phone number. You would carry on using the Internet, completely unaware that you were not connected to your standard ISP but indeed to a £1.50 per minute line; a very costly mistake!

Luckily, all programs need some kind of authorisation to install themselves onto your computer and so whenever a pop up window that looks like it could be up to no good appears asking you a question, no matter how mundane the question may be, I’d recommend always hitting and together to close the window rather than clicking on OK. By clicking on okay, you may be inadvertently giving Windows the opportunity to install unwanted programs on to your machine. It is unlikely that you picked this up just by giving your e-mail address to a newsgroup and so I believe that it is probable you were tricked by another part of the site into installing the file.

Anyway, this is all slightly irreverent in your instance as the program in question is already on your computer so how do you go about getting rid of it? The reason it cannot be deleted is because it is resident in your computers memory and Windows cannot delete files that it is currently working with – Unfortunately, every time you start up your machine Windows loads this ominous program although I can only speculate on the reasoning that this program requests to be running continuously. What we need to do is find a way to remove the program from memory so that it can be deleted and luckily there are a number of ways to do this:

First try loading the computer in safe mode by hitting when your computer first starts booting up – The correct timing is when the message appears ‘Starting Windows 95/98 etc…’ appears on your screen – If you miss it first time around then wait for the computer to boot, reset it and try again and hopefully you should now be able to delete the file.

If this doesn’t work then boot your computer as normal and then try hitting , and simultaneously as this will bring up a window where you can shut down programs running in memory. Look for anything ominous, click on it and then click on ‘End Task’. This will remove that particular program from memory at which point you can try once again to delete the intrusive file – Continue closing down programs one by one and attempting to delete said file; don’t worry, there is no damage you can cause here as all programs removed from memory will be reloaded again when you restart Windows. Do not worry about ‘Explorer’ and ‘Systray’ however as these are integral parts of Windows so you should not try and close them down.

The final suggestion I would make if this doesn’t work would be to download an application which will disable certain programs that are included as part of the Windows start-up. This way we can prevent the file from ever being loaded in the first instance so to do this, head to http://www.startupmgr.com/startupmgr.htm where you will find a web-based interface that will allow you to do just that. Again, search for something that looks like it shouldn’t be there – You haven’t given me too much information on what the file is called but there’ll probably be something that will stick out like a sore thumb; if in doubt, disable it as you can always re-enable anything you pick out by mistake. Once you think that you’ve found the mischievous item, restart the computer and try once again to delete the file.

Please let me know how to progress with this issue and I would recommend that just to be on the safe site that you should check your system for viruses. Head to www.grisoft.com and download the free AVG anti-virus scanner and let it run through your system in its entirety.

Choosing the right ISP

admin — Sat, 12 Jan 2002 14:57:10 +0000

One thing that I have never ceased to be amazed at is the way many computer users make purchases that are completely unsuited to their needs. I have seen small businesses purchase expensive digital processing equipment to take one photo a month, elderly people that buy the fastest computer on the market to word process and fathers that buy their kids the slowest of computers to play high demand games on.

One of the most common stumbling blocks seems to be those who pay £14.99 to an ISP (Internet Service Provider) that they use for half an hour a week. To me this seems like a waste – If you think about it in relation to real life; would you go and buy a Merc for your weekly trip to the shops?

The first step to finding which ISP is must suitable for yourself is to consider what you actually need from these people that you will be using to get you onto the Internet. Questions you should be asking could possibly be along the lines of the following:

How often will you be using the Internet? This is probably the most important step in establishing your needs. A large number of ISPs give you the option of going either ‘Pay as you go’ or ‘Subscription based’. Subscription based ISP’s usually require you to make an upfront monthly payment (typically £12.99 – £14.99) which will then give you free phone access to their service so you can spend as long as you like online without worrying about your Internet phone bill. A pay as you go Internet service should involve no monthly fee but you’ll be responsible for your local rate Internet calls.

Which telephone network are you on? Eurobell customers in the area will benefit from cheaper local call rates (therefore possibly favouring a pay as you go Internet service) but will be unavailable to take advantage of any of the subscription based free phone Internet services, with the exception of AOL.

Do you need more than one e-mail account? Many ISPs now allow you to have a different e-mail address for every member in the family which is especially useful if you have, for example a teenage son or daughter who is concerned about their privacy.

Do you require your own Internet web space? Many ISPs offer a limited amount of web space which can be used to upload your own websites on to, either for personal or business use. If you require a service like this, or think that you may do in the future then it would be useful to check the details of the package provided by your potential new ISP.

Do you require any additional features? Some ISPs such as AOL offer their own software that can be used for accessing news information, sending and receiving e-mail or using Internet chat rooms. Some people swear by software such as this whereas others think of it as a hindrance – Most importantly is that you are happy with the software you will be using to access the Internet. Most other ISPs such as Freeserve connect you directly without using any of their own software and then rely on you to use programs such as Internet Explorer and Outlook Express to view Internet chat rooms, send e-mails etc.

Below I have briefly summarised some potential ISPs that you may want to look at which I have had good experiences with in the past – I am not endorsing any particular company and so I recommend that you check out the deals on offer yourself by heading to www.ispreview.co.uk.

Tiscali (www.tiscali.co.uk) – A pay as you go Internet service that offers a high speed connection for Eurobell and BT. A subscription based service is also available for BT Internet customers only.

Eurobell Internet (www.eurobell.co.uk) – Offers a cheaper pay as you go Internet service for Eurobell customers only – 1p a minute all times of the day.

Freeserve (www.freeserve.co.uk) – A fast service which I would recommend for 0800 subscription customers as their monthly line rental is only £12.99 compared with the usual £14.99 that most ISPs offer. Available to BT customers only.

AOL (www.aol.co.uk) – Offer a 0800 subscription service for Eurobell customers as well as BT. AOL use their own specialist software which some may find useful and easy to use. Recommend you try them for 30 days free of charge by calling 0800 3765599.