Starting off with Vista; those of you with this Operating System would be advised to download the Service Pack from www.microsoft.com or via Windows Update as along with fixing hundreds of little bugs [...]]]> We have two things to discuss today; Vista Service Pack 2 and cheap broadband.

Starting off with Vista; those of you with this Operating System would be advised to download the Service Pack from www.microsoft.com or via Windows Update as along with fixing hundreds of little bugs and glitches it also adds a number of new features. Most notable changes include support for Via Technologies new Nano 64-Bit CPU, support for Bluetooth 2.1, BluRay writing directly from the Operating System and improved performance for WiFi connections.

This update is 348mb in size meaning that you would really need to be on a broadband connection to consider the download; this leads me neatly on to my next point.

I was contacted this week by a reader who was still using a dial up connection. I had assumed that this hardcore group of users had disbanded and joined the 21^st century but it appears that I was mistaken. Try as I might, I cannot rationalise in my own head why someone would still be using dial-up; it’s slow, temperamental, ties up your phone line, and if you use it for more than a handful of minutes a week it can actually work out quite costly.

In order to reach out to these users (and indeed anyone currently on an overpriced broadband package) I thought it prudent to overview the cheapest broadband packages on the market; these represent a perfect stepping stone from dial-up. The following recommendations are suited primarily to light Internet users and as such I would not recommend them for intensive use such as gaming or heavy downloading.

Sky TV – Sky TV customers can get free 2Mbps Broadband with a 2GB usage limit when they also subscribe to Sky Talk (the most basic of which is free) for the phone calls. Of course you still have to pay your line rental to BT, as you would with dial up. While 2GB isn’t a particularly large bandwidth limit it will satisfy most home users and is in excess of what could be feasibly downloaded via dial-up in a month.

Talk Talk – Talk Talk is £6.49 a month in addition to your usual line rental and includes 8GB Broadband, a 40GB usage limit, free local calls and free national weekend and evening calls. The company has had a fair amount of bad press over the last couple of years mainly due to its unprecedented growth since its incorporation in 2003 but things seemed to have improved of late. If the planned merger with Tiscali goes ahead, Talk Talk will have become the largest residential broadband provider in the UK.

Tiscali – For £14.99 a month including your monthly line rental you can get up to 8GB broadband and unlimited free weekend calls. As BT would usually charge you around £12 for your line rental you are essentially getting a capable broadband package for less than £3 a month.

PlusNet – If you don’t fancy the idea of having your telephone calls handled by your broadband provider, the PlusNet Value package at £5.99 a month is an extremely competitive standalone package. With speeds up to 8Mbps, a 10GB daily download limit and an unlimited evening download limit the PlusNet deal is also surprisingly fully featured.

Before committing to a broadband package it might be an idea to first check out www.moneysupermarket.com to compare a number of other deals on the market. Most Internet Service Providers (ISPs) don’t levy a set of charge all of them will provide the equipment you require and many of them will even chuck in a free wireless router; there really is no reason to stick with dial-up.

This week the following question has prompted me to revise and republish an article that I printed last year as I believe that the program I recommend should still be one that all users have installed on their machine.

A question I [...]]]>

This week the following question has prompted me to revise and republish an article that I printed last year as I believe that the program I recommend should still be one that all users have installed on their machine.

A question I have been asked recently about Broadband & Premium phone number pop-ups; is there anyway of telling whether a pop-up during surfing or of inadvertently wandering on to a Premium site can be avoided. The reason for me asking is of course obvious as I want to avoid the kids, Granny etc running up my phone bill unbeknown to me. This of course can happen on both broadband & Dialup connection.

Tom Blakesley, via E-mail

Before we start I think it is quite important to note that this issue would not affect broadband; there is no way that a broadband modem can ‘dial out’ as such. Although it is true that when using ADSL windows does have to create a dial up connection this is more a placebo effect to allow it to verify your user name and password – The broadband link is always active and your modem cannot dial another number; premium rate or otherwise.

The below program that I am about to recommend isn’t a solution to your problem because as far as I am aware there is no ‘one fits all’ solution to these problems caused by rogue programs although Windows XP service pack 2 does make it harder for these things to install themselves without your permission. Instead it is a utility that can be used to locate already installed programs such as these and potentially avoid your machine becoming infected in the first instance.

It has to be said that quite a common complaint submitted by readers is intrusive software which often installs itself onto their systems with no easy way to remove it; whether it dials out premium rate numbers or not. Quite often the software contains questionable content such as pornographic links and it can be quite concerning if the computer is shared with other members of the family as there is often no way to delete the links that have been created. A piece of software that I’ve always found useful in all these instances is ‘SpyBot Search & Destroy’ which can be downloaded free of charge from http://security.kolla.de

Once you’ve started the program you should scan your system for spyware & adware which takes a couple of minutes to complete and the program then displays a list of the problems that it found on your system along with the option to automatically repair them. It’s surprising how much rubbish many of you will have running in the background constantly as I keep a regularly clean out junk applications and the program managed to detect at least a dozen or so unwanted applications installed on my hard drive. By removing them you can free up valuable system resources and also make your computer slightly more pleasant to use and an important point to note is that the software does make a backup as it goes along so if you find that certain programs won’t work anymore then you can always restore your system to how it was previously. Once you’ve cleaned out all the rubbish which has then the program has the option to immunise your system which installs preventative measures to help prevent rouge software from installing itself again.

If you head to http://security.kolla.de/ then the file is 3.5Mg in size so even on a 56k connection it should only take 10 minutes or so to download and the best news is that it’s completely free of charge although the author does ask for a donation if you find it. To conclude, one of the most annoying areas of the modern Internet is the large number of programmers on the Internet who believe that it is acceptable to install useless software on to your computer without your permission and without any easy way to uninstall just so they can make some quick money. Much of this software exposes you to constant pop up advertising without your permission, tracks your browsing habits or in the case of Toms concern above it can actually end up costing you money; personally I believe that any program which tries to kerb this abuse has to be worth installing.

I received the letter below a week or so back following on from my advice for readers to upgrade their copies of Windows XP to the newly released Service Pack 2. I thought this users experience would serve as a good example to explain how the majority of problems can [...]]]>

I received the letter below a week or so back following on from my advice for readers to upgrade their copies of Windows XP to the newly released Service Pack 2. I thought this users experience would serve as a good example to explain how the majority of problems can be solved or explained by a simple visit to the manufacturers’ website.

I was wondering if you could help me with a problem that I have been experiencing since downloading Windows XP Service Pack 2. Being a fairly novice computer user I downloaded this update after reading your column and now I can’t get my CD writer to work. I am using Roxio Easy CD Creator Basic 5 and as I have not had any problems before I was wondering if have you any ideas as I currently can’t back up some important photos.

I find your column in the Herald Express very useful and entertaining.

Jan Jackman, via e-mail

Unfortunately for Jan, Roxio are responsible for making some of the buggiest and least compatible software in the market; back in the day that I repaired machines on a full time basis I must admit to many a late night spent fighting with their products when trying to repair customers’ machines. Rather amusingly I’ve also seen technicians shudder in fear whenever the threat of using Roxio software is presented to them

The point of the article this week is to hammer home the fact that if you are having problems with any item of software on your machine it is often a good idea to visit the website of the manufacturer and check to see if problems similar to yours has already been reported. By heading to www.roxio.com I was able to find the less than helpful comment from a Roxio technician ‘Easy CD Creator isn’t compatible with Windows XP Service Pack 2 so uninstall it’.

Bottom line is that they want you to make your Windows XP buggier than it was previously by uninstalling Service Pack 2 so that you can continue to use their naturally buggy software – What a great idea. Several users helpfully suggested that updating to the latest release of the software might solve the problems that you are having so it’s certainly worth a go but I personally would take the CD out of the drive, burn it, go down the shops and purchase a copy of the far superior ‘Nero’ instead.

In this instance the website served to explain away the problem you were having rather than fix it but thankfully most problems you have with software installed on your machine would have been reported at some point or another by other users and so it is always worthwhile taking a look to see if an update has been provided.

Even if there are no apparent problems with the software you use on a regular basis then it still may be a good idea to sit down for half an hour and visit the websites of everybody whose software you are currently using and search for suitable updates. These updates will almost always be free as long as it is a revision rather than a radical update so you could upgrade your Easy CD Creator from your current 5.0 to the latest version 5.3.5 but you couldn’t get a free update to take it to version 6. Many updates will just be to repair bugs in the software but others may provide new features or enhance existing ones.

Finally, when trying to repair problems with software do type in the problem you are having into Google to see if a website mentions the issue. For example you could go to www.google.co.uk and type in ‘Easy CD Creator 5 won’t work with Service Pack 2’ as this will return several useful results. Google can also be used to look up the website addresses of the software providers if you are unsure of them off the top of your head.

This week sees the release of Windows XP Service Pack 2; another monster update developed by Microsoft to close a number of holes in their Windows XP Operating System. Most of you will know the procedure by now – Go to the Microsoft website, download [...]]]>

This week sees the release of Windows XP Service Pack 2; another monster update developed by Microsoft to close a number of holes in their Windows XP Operating System. Most of you will know the procedure by now – Go to the Microsoft website, download a huge file, install it on your system and whilst the majority of users won’t see any visible change in the way you will be safe in the knowledge that your computer is more secure and stable than it was previously.

I can’t overemphasise how important this service pack is as only last week I was setting up a new system and before I had even finished setting it up it was infected with half a dozen viruses due to the large number of security holes present in the initial release of Windows XP. In addition to addressing these vulnerabilities this service includes a number of new features to make life a little easier and I will feature some of the better changes below.

- Enhanced Windows Firewall – Most importantly this is turned on by default unlike previous versions of Windows XP which required the user to manually enable it. Should you turn the firewall off it will start to nag you and warn that your system could be vulnerable although these warnings can be disabled.

- Security Centre Dashboard – This feature will pop up whenever Windows detects that your firewall, anti-virus or automatic updating is turned off, absent or out of date. This could be a very useful tool for many home users although you can ask it to go away and stop bugging you if you would rather take care of these things yourself.

- Pop-up stopper – Internet Explorer now blocks annoying pop-ups from displaying when you visit certain sites although this feature can of course be disabled.

- Improved Bluetooth support – Windows XP initially shipped without support for Bluetooth technology and whilst this has been gradually resolved with software updates, Service Pack 2 sees huge improvements in the way that Windows detects and interacts with this emerging technology.

- Enhanced Wireless Network capabilities – I wasn’t completely happy with the way that Windows handled wireless networks in the past as they were tricky to set up and very often insecure. This resulted in many people being hacked by their next door neighbour or businesses being attacked from someone parked outside their building with a wireless network enabled laptop. Windows XP Service Pack 2 includes a nice wizard to help you set up a secure wireless network on your PC and will then create a disk so that you can put these settings on any other PC’s that require use of the network.

Bottom line is that if you don’t install this update then you are either very brave or very stupid and more than likely it will be these very brave, stupid people that continue to e-mail me in months to come when their systems have been attacked. I must be honest in saying that the download is huge and so in a fantastic move of compassion Microsoft have agreed to send out a free CD to those who cannot get the update online which would be useful for those who don’t have access to a broadband connection.

In an ideal world our software would be safe and secure from day one and the people who search tirelessly for security vulnerabilities would have lives and not bother with trying to make life so difficult for the rest of us. Unfortunately we do not live in an ideal world so there really is no excuse for not taking steps today to protect your system for tomorrow so head to www.microsoft.com and either download the service pack or order the CD today.