All Stop at the Refurbished Computer Warehouse

OK…I must admit, I've made some silly mistakes at the refurbished computers warehouse.

To list them all would require an index, table of contents and an appendix.

But at least I haven't done anything like what you're about to see.

From all of us at Simply IT Services, have a great weekend.

And check out our Blog next week where I'm planning to publish some Video Blogs on Mac OS X Lion.

Mac Lion - OSX 10.7

Over the next two weeks I’ll be publishing a series of short videos to help people with some of the minor changes they’ll be experiencing having migrated from Snow Leopard (OSX 10.6) to Mac Lion (OSX 10.7).

My initial impressions of OSX Lion are very favourable. I’ve noted that Apple has managed to maintain the same look & feel for the novice user whilst providing some essential and sometimes powerful tools for the experienced in the background.

The new Mail application is a great example of a good product, which is now even better. Whilst Apple’s Mail application was the first to provide access to Microsoft’s Exchange 2007 platform (long before Microsoft’s Outlook 2003) and its enhanced features, the application itself was limited and often prone to crashing.

Moreover, access to Gmail as an IMAP service was ‘hit-and-miss’. Mail messages would appear and disappear at random and the Internet forums where full of similar complaints from people utilising hosted Exchange mail. The application interface was agricultural and navigation between separate accounts was awkward. However, it was still a better alternative to Microsoft’s Entourage.

The new version of the Mail application has a very strong corporate interface. Navigation is intuitive and possibly a queue that other’s will follow. The ability to show and hide the folders is not new however the icon allowing this action (see picture) is both intuitive and convenient.

The ability to add shortcuts to folders whilst not new is further enhanced by the ‘show-hide’ feature of the folders. As a user who hordes mail messages and catalogues each one infinitum, my folder list is extensive and the simple task of filing messages had been inconvenient until the release of this evolutionary Mail application.

It’s not all good news though. Put simply, Safari is a disaster.

Whilst I’ve yet to determine if the issues I’m experiencing are related or otherwise it would appear that Safari in the Snow Leopard guise was bullet-proof and curdled milk in Lion.

I’ve noted that Adsense accounts will not display and that the CPU utilisation is sometimes at it’s maximum whenever Safar is launched. Understandably, most people aren’t concerned with Adsense advertisements’ however it’s a simple technology that all browsers should be able to accommodate. I’ve tested both Chrome and Firefox without issue hence I’m hopeful that Apple is aware of the issue and is busy working on a solution.

I’ve also read a number of forum posts where people are claiming that applications have stopped working since the upgrade. This is par-for-the-course normally whenever an operating system is overhauled. Most industry experts are advising that people wait a few weeks before upgrading giving software developers time enough to adapt to the new OS.

The next fortnight will be an interesting period as people upgrade and adapt to Mac OSX Lion. I’ll be keeping an eye on what’s being said and posting to my Mac Lion blog in conjunction with the video’s I mentioned earlier.

In the interim, let’s hope that Mac OSX 10.7.1 is on it’s way with some serious solutions for Safari.

Apple Mac Lion has arrived - Simply IT Services investigates

Simply IT Services are reviewing Apple's release of the latest version of their OSX called Mac Lion.

I found a compelling article written by Erik Eckel describing some of the pitfalls of allowing corporate users to upgrade from the Apple App Store.

Here's an excerpt;

"Businesses beware - Users are going to want to download and install Lion. Yet, there are numerous programs and applications that haven’t yet been tested with the new OS. Chances are Lion may break some very important and potentially critical business applications. My consultancy received alerts from Mac software developers before the OS was released. Those alerts warned customers to delay installing the new OS until the developer could test its software on the platform and ensure or patch any incompatibilities."

For more articles and video's please visit our blog.

New Staff Acting Strange

It's knockoff time here at Simply IT Services.

We've had a new starter in the computer warehouse who's taking a while to adjust.

See what you think.

My guess is that they're feeling a bit alienated.

See ya'll next week.

Stop Thief - Refurbished Computer Safety

Stop or I’ll shout STOP again.  It’s an old joke about ‘Bobbies’ aka the London Metropolitan Police. It comes from a time when their cousins in the America’s where equipped with bullets and the London Police where resigned to a whistle and baton.

In the refurbished computer market I’ve noticed that the average computer user will take the time to create a password for their device and may even password protect documents and programs.
However, the day that they replace their ageing computer is the day that their old computer is retired to the classifieds, back room or worse still the front lawn for pickup.
Once the computer is gone and the original owner finally realises how vulnerable their private data is they may as well simply shout STOP for all the good it’ll do.
'But I deleted everything'
Did you really – data recovery is as simple as data creation. The Internet is a flood with data recovery software that can recover up to 98% of the original contents after it’s first attempt.
'But I formatted the hard drive'
Most people are not aware that a regular format only changes the first bit in the byte. Consequently reverting to the original bit is quite simple.
So what should I do?
There are levels of safety just as there are levels of data privacy. If the information is clearly valuable enough that it could be damaging in the wrong hands then destroying the hard drive is a given. If anyone is unclear as to how to destroy a hard drive please contact me and I’ll organise my custom hammer and nail contraption. It’s very effective.

The disadvantage is that your computer cannot then be resold as a complete unit.
If however the data is private but not likely to cause anything other than embarrassment then consider a 3 pass wipe or even a 7 pass wipe.
A 3 pass wipe is a regular format performed three times. Each pass increases the complexity of recovery. The permutations are complex enough that a recovery becomes exponentially more difficult.
Naturally a 7 pass wipe is even more aggressive and Apple’s OSX offers as much as a 35 pass wipe.

The disadvantage is time. If a single pass takes 2 hours then a 3 pass wipe will take at least 6 hours and so on.
And remember, the same applies to USB’s, disks, phones, tablets, iPad’s,iPhones,iPod’s and external drives.
There are several free tools online that can perform any number of wipes or formats.
Ultimately the refurbished computer must be operable but unrecoverable. It’s simply a question of whether you’d prefer to be Dirty Harry or Bruce the Bobbie.

Refurbished Computers can wait - It's Friday

Our "boffins" at Simply IT Services have been hard at work this Friday.

Watch the video below and then answer the questions at the end of this post. NOTE - Question 1 is for men ONLY.

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Question 1: Does this look familiar?
Question 2: Should I still be paying my staff aka boffins?

Have a good weekend from all of us at Simply IT Services.

Clouds Are Gathering - Cloud Computing

It's with bemused interest I read the following account about the effects of Cloud Computing in a corporate environment like that of Di Data's.

The article can be found HERE.

I'll be following-up on these types of announcements with a blog post later this week.