Sunday 22nd November at 10:24 pm by Sam Francis
Road to recovery
Do you know what a recovery disk is?
Well, it will comfort you slightly to know that you are far from being alone. Most conversations we have with our customers suggesting to carry out a full installation of their operating system using their “recovery discs” normally hit a lengthy silence followed by the inevitable question – “what’s one of those?”
A few years ago this meant that they’d be thrown out with the packaging (which should have been recycled!) – but nowadays it means most people ignore the instructions from the manufacturer to create a backup as soon as the computer is used.
So what is recovery disc?
Basically speaking it’s a disc or form of media that contains the operating system as it was when you first got your computer and can be used to revert back to this initial condition – sometimes useful when repairs are needed. A lot of these when they come from the original manufacturer have information with them that can be used in the need to revert back to the original state, if needed for the purposes of repair.
However in recent years, these CDs have begun to be faded out for two distinct and rather different reasons. Firstly – by keeping this information on the actual machine (normally with hard drive partitions) potential distribution of the CD for “unofficial” use is completely eradicated. Secondly, and you may say cynically more importantly – a large cost saving is made by not having to create the CDs in the first place.
This does, however, bring a potential issue for the user as should the system fail completely – you no longer have a backup CD as invariably the partitioned backup is lost. This leaves you no option but to turn to your manufacturer to obtain a duplicate copy. This can cost up to £49.99 so hits your pocket – when really it could be avoided.
Alongside this we see the issue of changes to hardware configuration changes – the recovery image becomes out of date each time this happens. This adds a lot more complexity to what could be a simple process.
Lastly ignorance around software and license management is still abundant and can cause further issues. It is essential that you understand how you can re-install your software should the worst happen; otherwise you will end up spending a lot of time on what could be a fairly straightforward operation.
Monday 9th November at 11:10 pm by Sam Francis
How good is your antivirus?
 Everyone knows that antivirus software is good, right? But like anything that starts of a bastion of well being – in time people begin to use it for nefarious ends. Because of this we get a lot of our customers contacting us, quite often reaching a level of desperation, when they’ve downloaded software that has led to their machine becoming corrupted. Added to that we now see a rising number of cases where people have bought what they thought was anti virus software – but have been mislead and now their payment details are in the hands of come very dodgy people!
For most of the successful (if that’s the right word) bad software and the latest of these goes by the name of “Antivirus XP 2008” and “XP Antivirus 2009”, it succeeds because it looks very much like legitimate Windows program. Because of the realistic nature of the fake software – it is no surprise that the number of people being fooled is so high.
So what’s our advice?
Well, firstly when buying antivirus or firewalls – our advice hasn’t changed since the inception of antivirus, and that is buy the product in a box and install it without being connected to the internet. Even if you were to download the software from a reputable site it can cause issues, this way is the still the safest way. Particularly when you are visiting sites – don’t follow links from marketing e-mails, even if you know the company this again can lead to problems.
When it comes to choosing your security vendor, it is something that is worth investing time in and making a reasoned decision on. Take the time to search online (without downloading!) and find out about potential suppliers. You will certainly almost come across some free products, but if you are not sure about them – it’s worth investing some money as well as time to keep you safe. You also have to make the decision based on how many attachments you click on or unknown emails you read or downloads you do, if you hardly ever do it, you’re actually at less risk of viruses anyway. Then of course if you have an Apple MAC, this risk is actually minute.
It can be unreliable sometimes to follow online advertising as this obviously takes a biased view of the product itself. We’ve spotted an interesting article on the top 10 vendors, it may not be a perfect hitlist of potential suppliers but it will give you a starting point for a proper quality search http://www.antivirusmonthly.com/
Friday 30th October at 02:05 pm by Richard Ashdown
Laptop Power Issues
Here are some of the statements we hear relating to power issues with laptops;
“My laptop is dead”
“I have to wiggle the lead to get it to work”
“The port is loose in the laptop”
“The thing where you plug it in is broken”
“My charger is not charging the laptop”
On some occasions it is just the adapter that has given up the ghost and is no longer providing power to the laptop however, 80% of cases are due to the DC port being damaged and not passing charge to the system board to power it up.
Many companies will suggest you need a new system (mother) board which is the most expensive route of repair and most of you would abandon that laptop and buy a replacement. The other option at a third of the price would be to consult a company that will replace the DC port by an affective re-soldering job. We have been doing this at the Laptop Specialist for over 8 years now.
Our biggest piece of advice if for you not to attempt the repair yourself as we promise you, you will regret it as one of our customers did when they tried to glue the port into place and this resulted in an irreparable laptop but it became a great door stop!
Wednesday 23rd September at 10:48 pm by Sam Francis
Throughout my formative years there were many things my mum tried to teach me, but the one thing she taught me that stuck was "you get owt for nowt" in life. A fairly simple piece of wisdom you may think but one that people regularly forget as they chase elusive freebies. Nothing is really free and badging it as free is misleading to say the least.
As a company, as with any company - even charities, we can’t afford to provide a service for free. Someone somewhere has to pay for it so why don’t we just be up front with it and we can have some transparency in what we’re paying for and not get muddled up in hidden costs. Allow me to demonstrate how this is beneficial. We recently had a (fairly disgruntled) customer who had used a company promising "no fix, no fee" on their unit. They sent it away, having to pay for the carriage, but soon got it back - unfixed. We then collected the unit and found that the system board had been rendered useless by a botch job of a repair (evidence opposite the burnt board as a result of shoddy workmanship). At £320 a new board is un-economical so the laptop is a write off which might be no fee but a new laptop is going to be a lot of money.
Somewhere along the way we’ve created a huge divide between companies trying to hide costs (as above) and some high street retailers charging an exorbitant flat fee to fix any unit which ensures they cover all their costs. Why don’t we just face facts - couriers cost money, engineer time costs money, new parts cost money. If we simply looked at these costs and were open about these we might just end up paying for what we’ve actually received.
So free really isn’t free. But some companies offer good value for money whilst actually paying for the service you receive. Surely that’s what you should really be looking for.
Tuesday 11th August at 05:23 pm by Sam Francis
| A shocking news story from Sky, emanating from an undercover operation, last week uncovered some shockingly bad practice from companies repairing laptops. The findings initially highlighted that engineers were misleading the laptop owner on the faults and subsequently overcharging for work undertaken. More alarmingly though the engineers were then seen to hack into the personal data within the machine copy this data and even then try to log onto the customer’s bank account. |
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The story makes difficult reading and raises some fairly stark questions around trusting organisations, and in essence complete strangers to repair IT equipment. Trust is not something that can be accredited or easily proven – and can really only be earned over time. Whilst that trust builds though there are some ways to minimise the opportunities (as these miss-uses are most often opportunistic) given to dodgy engineers. Firstly never, ever pass on your system passwords – this should not be required for any type of repair. Secondly, and more comprehensive, is to simply remove the hard drive (as long as it’s not part of the problem). By removing the temptation and the opportunity the engineer can focus on the task at hand – repairing the laptop.
The initial issue of overcharging whilst less serious and intrusive is never the less one that can also be minimised. Our five tips for getting quotes should help -
1) Get a quote from at least 3 different companies (this is standard purchasing behaviour but is surprisingly forgotten when it comes to repair work)
2) If it seems too cheap by comparison, someone isn’t being honest about the problem and are probably faking the repair but charging you for something you do not need
3) Avoid the ‘no fix no fee’ scams, you get owt for nowt as our Mum’s have always told us
4) Check for availability for parts, don’t send in your unit unless you get an idea how long it will take
5) If the company is found on the internet, check out their site fully and go on your gut feeling. If the site looks like it’s been put together poorly, how does this rate the company servicing your computer?
To read the full report follow this link.
Lastly – do remember that not everyone out there is a shark. Based on the Sky stats 16% of us can be trusted, and if only those 16% start to get people’s business then we can begin to make the industry a bit more trustworthy.
Wednesday 1st July at 10:42 am by Richard Ashdown
Managing Battery Life
In a 2002 survey by chipmaker Intel, 57% of laptop users said they wished their batteries lasted longer. Since then, a lot of research has gone into improving the battery power and life span, they are indeed more efficient however the average laptop’s power needs has also increased resulting in an average battery life a painfully short three to four hours.
Many of our customers only manage to get 1 hour out of their laptop but much of the time this is due to lack of knowledge in the way they could improve the battery life of their laptop. So here are our top 10 simple tips for you to follow;
1. Under ‘Power Options’ in your control panel. It allows you create the settings that suit your use. Remember, your screen when on full power consumes the battery immensely, getting your laptop to dim when not on the mains will also conserve your battery.
2. Power down all nonessential functions. Switch it off if you're not using it. Many business travellers already know that you don't want to take the DVD player for a spin on the plane, and that every time you hit "save" it can set the hard-drive whirring, which devours even more power. Users often also forget to turn off their wireless card when they are no longer using it, so it sits there continually searching for networks.
3. Stay out of extreme temperatures. Temperatures can affect the performance of your battery. It's best to use (and especially charge) your battery at room temperature. Extreme conditions can drain your battery quickly. Also, avoid partial charges and use the battery until it is dead. Battery experts liken partial charges — and discharges — to eating a cup of lard every day. It significantly shortens your battery's life. Considering that a lithium-ion battery can explode if it's improperly used, it could also shorten your life.
4. Let your laptop do the saving. No laptop device handles a power source in the same way. Some of the more sophisticated laptops, which are designed with smallbusiness travel in mind, are misers when it comes to using power. And that's a good thing — if you can remember to take advantage of it. Most users make the mistake of simply not choosing to use a product's built-in ability to conserve battery life. Consult your user manual. Often, calibrating your laptop is as easy as double-clicking on the battery icon in the toolbar. Alternatively, if you laptop is an older model, you might want to turn off the autosave function, which would result in the hard drive doing less work.
5. Defrag regularly - The faster your hard drive does its work - less demand you are going to put on the hard drive and your battery.
6. Add more RAM - This will allow you to process more with the memory your laptop has, rather than relying on virtual memory. Virtual memory results in hard drive use, and is much less power efficient. Note that adding more RAM will consume more energy, so this is most applicable if you do need to run memory intensive programs which actually require heavy usage of virtual memory.
7. Keep the battery contacts clean: Clean your battery’s metal contacts every couple of months with a cloth moistened with rubbing alcohol. This keeps the transfer of power from your battery more efficient.
8. Hibernate not standby - Although placing a laptop in standby mode saves some power and you can instantly resume where you left off, it doesn’t save anywhere as much power as the hibernate function does. Hibernating will actually save your laptop’s state as it is, and completely shut itself down.
9. Don’t multitask - Do one thing at a time when you’re on battery. Rather than working on a spreadsheet, letting your email client run in the background and listening to your latest set of MP3’s, set your mind to one thing only. If you don’t you’ll only drain out your batteries before anything gets completed!
10. Lower the graphics use. You can do this by changing the screen resolution and shutting off fancy graphic drivers. Graphics cards (video cards) use as much or more power today as hard disks.
Tuesday 30th June at 11:57 am by Sam Francis
Backup or else!
The three most important words we will ever use when owning a computer, (a laptop, desktop or a company full of computers) are: ‘Backup, backup, backup’.
Everyone talks about backup: relatively few of us do it but it’s vital that we do. So what is backup and how do you ensure you perform it correctly?
Imagine your computer had been running fine and dandy for a year or so when suddenly it packs up. What’s happened to those emails from friends and family, your address book, favourite websites and all the letters you wrote and the family snaps that were all nicely saved on your hard disk drive? Answer, you have probably lost everything.
The hard drive does not have to fail to lose this information. You could be infected by a virus, you might delete files inadvertently, or your machine could be stolen. If you had run regular backups, all that data would be stored separately – and you’d be offline for a day or two, that’s all.
So, what and how do you back up? Microsoft Windows comes with a handy little utility called Backup. There are tips on how to back up all files and folders on your computer, or you can do it yourself by ‘drag n drop’ of your data on to removable media such as:
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DVD-R/RW
As standard, this stores up to 4.7GB of data, not ideal of you have lots of data to backup |
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Flash Memory
In our opinion, these drives are fantastic for moving data from one place to another however they shouldn’t really be used to backup all your files. Being plastic and very portable, they are very vulnerable to damage. |
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Portable hard disk
A great way to carry your data around securely. The caddy holds a hard drive and connects via USB. The hard drive can be any size you want and if you choose the laptop version, it is nice and compact and will connect to any type of machine. |
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PCMCIA hard drive
These drives are the simplest addition to a laptop computer, because they all have PCMCIA slots. The PC Card interface may also be used to plug in a cable from a very large portable hard drive. Maximum size available is 5GB |
Remote on-line backups
There are many more ways that you can keep data safe and many software manufacturers. Getting the right one depends on how important the files are to keep and whether you could ever replace them if they were lost. But what if your house burns down or gets burglarised? Automated remote/online backup solutions are now becoming the norm with many service providers providing the first so many GB’s of data for free. However there are some pitfalls to watch out for;
Data locations change
Data locations move and change over time. You might decide to have a tidy up and move folders from one location to another which fall outside your backup routine. Or you might accidently move something without realising. The same thing happens with databases, e-mail accounts, user directories, departmental archives, and other data. Unless backup operations are updated every time data storage locations change, backups run the risk of missing critical data.
Backup operations occasionally fail
Just because a backup operation is scheduled does not mean that backup procedure will complete. Electrical outages occur. Thunderstorms intervene. Backup media fills. Systems freeze. The list of elements that could derail a backup is unending. Thus, you should never consider backups covered just because they've been scheduled. Instead, make reviewing backup logs a routine. Better yet, make restoring backups to test their efficacy a regular event.
Preventable measures to keep your data safe
Do not leave your machine on when not in use and always shut it down correctly
Make sure your system restore is switched on and has an up to date restore point (Start/Programs/Accessories/System Tools/System Restore
If the system makes an odd noise, get it looked at immediately, it might be your hard drive starting to crash!
Service your machine at least once a year to ensure the system and it’s hardware is running well.
Make sure your data is backed up!
Backups back up bad data, too
When backup operations complete properly, they tend to complete exactly as programmed. Backups don't care if whole directories or partitions have been deleted since the last time they ran; backups usually back up what they're told to back up.
The most common folders to back up on to external, removable media are:-
- Your ‘My Documents’ folder, as long as all the files are located in there.
- The ‘Favourites’ that contains your saved web addresses.
- The ‘Identities’ folder that contains your Outlook Express emails.
- The ‘Address Book’ folder containing your saved email addresses.
- Any files located on the desktop.
If your data is invaluable to you, `backing it up’ is the only failsafe option!
Monday 15th June at 12:31 pm by Bill Hazeltine
Sony parts
Sony laptops are at the cutting edge of technology and design, with mostly good vendor support for end users which is reflected in their premium retail prices. But as soon as laptop develops a problem out of warranty, the costs can continue to mount.
Sony have a ‘closed shop’ repair policy and will have only a handful of authorised repair centres in Europe, and just an inspection will probably leave you out of pocket by over £100 – which brings into question is the repair worth doing in the first place?
Spare parts are expensive and difficult to obtain for 3rd party repair companies, the only two routes being to source from the USA or from brokers or second user after markets resulting in excessive repair costs and lead times on parts increased.
With hindsight, it may be worth considering a 3 year warranty extension during or immediately after purchase if your system is critical to you. When choosing a model of laptop, investigate how easy and inexpensive it will be when the warranty runs out!
Sunday 10th May at 01:31 pm by Bill Hazeltine
Failing Nvidia chips
Recently there have been many failures on the HP Pavilions, Dell range, and some Apple PowerBooks. This has largely due to Nvidia GPU chips failing. Last year the Company said it planned “to take a one-time charge from $150m to $200m against cost of revenue for the second quarter to cover anticipated warranty, repair, return, replacement and other costs and expenses, arising from a weak die/packaging material set in certain versions of its previous generation GPU and MCP products used in notebook systems”.
HP and Dell issuing a limited service enhancement for the laptops plagued with the faults such as;
- The notebook does not detect wireless networks and the wireless adapter is not detected in the Device Manager.
- There is no video on the computer LCD panel or external monitor.
- The notebook has no power and no active LEDs.
- The notebook does not start.
- The battery charge indicator light does not turn on when the battery is installed and the AC adapter is connected.
- The notebook issues a single beep during boot indicating no power.
- The external monitor functions but there is no image on the notebook LCD panel.
If the end user was lucky, the faulty system would be covered under the very model specific extended warranty. If not, the user is in for a large repair bill. We have seen this first hand and have had many frustrated customers with systems not covered by the recall. A quick look through a thread on one of HP’s online support forums reveals similar complaints. HP technicians, say the users online, will not acknowledge their problems as being related to the bad Nvidia chips. Luckily, if there is a BGA fault that has not developed, in 90% of cases a BGA rework on the Nvidia chip can repair the faults.
It is also worth upgrading the BIOS of affected models as the vendors have changes system settings which stop the GPU getting too hot and de-soldering itself!
Saturday 9th May at 03:20 pm by Sam Francis
There are so many great deals at the moment on laptop sales but the one that we keep being asked about is the free laptop when you sign up to mobile broadband.
Here are some questions to consider before making the decision. Firstly, look at the deal more closely. Mobile broadband is as little as £10 per month at the moment, so if you are being asked to pay £25 a month for 2 years, then in reality, you are paying £360.00 for your laptop over a 24 month period?
Do you really need a laptop? Laptops tend to lag behind desktops in terms of upgradeability and features. If you handle heavy graphics, do a great deal of video editing, or you are a gamer, a laptop might not be the best choice for you. If you are highly mobile or short on space then yes, a laptop is a good choice.
Which manufacturer should you go for?
Have you heard of the manufacturer and if so, how do they rate? Look online to see reviews of the make and model. Manufacturer’s reputations do change as well. A company may launch a model that has endless problems, 3 months later, they have learnt from that experience and invested heavily in technology to resolve certain issues.
What happens when it goes wrong?
Many of our customers go for good value and do not consider what happens when the machine has a hardware failure. Some manufacturer’s warranty turnaround is better than their competitors. How long can you survive without your laptop? Read the T&C’s properly, who do you have to return to the machine to and are you responsible for paying the carriage fees? Suddenly the deal might may not be such a bargain after all.
Is the laptop up to scratch?
Think about what you need to use it for. Does it have enough memory and if not, can you upgrade it? Does it have enough USB ports for instance? Does it have wireless? Does it have microphone or headphone jacks? One crucial question to ask is ‘Does it come with a recovery CD?’
Can you extend the warranty?
If you want the machine to last 3 years, then you might want to extend the warranty at the point of sale which is the most cost effective way of doing it.
Why is it so cheap?
If a machine seems too reasonable to believe then there’s probably a good reason for this. The technology used may be end of line, the plastics of a poorer standard,
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