http://www.fireflyits.com This RSS feed shares all of the information that is published onto the main page at Fireflyits.com and includes uptodate news and advice for small businesses and business owners. en-uk richard@fireflyits.com (Richard Lander Stow) Copyright (c)2011 Firefly IT Solutions ltd http://www.fireflyits.com http://www.fireflyits.com/images/logo7web.jpg 143 63 http://www.fireflyits.com/ We all love having access to the internet, but the article that we link to on today's update can show you how to work around some of the major pitfalls. Thu, 6 Feb 2012 10:30:00 GMT http://www.fireflyits.com/feed00010036 http://www.fireflyits.com/#disablepcanywhere Symantec have published a document on their website detailing an increased security risk for users of PC Anywhere and have advised that users disable the product until Symantec issue a final set of software updates that resolve currently known vulnerability risks. The document includes a set of security recommendations and best practices that are worth a quick read, but should be common knowledge for any IT expert. You can find out more on our website. Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:30:00 GMT http://www.fireflyits.com/feed00010035 http://www.fireflyits.com/ Happy New Year everyone. We are back and will resume our normal updates. We hope that you've all had a great holiday period and that you haven't come back to the office too reluctantly. In the meantime we'd like to remind you to use social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, cautiously in the New Year. There have been a number of instances in 2011 of people losing their jobs over careless tweets, not to mention all of the personal information available out there from people that haven't locked down their Facebook pages adequately. Tue, 03 Jan 2012 10:30:00 GMT http://www.fireflyits.com/feed00010034 http://www.fireflyits.com/#harddrivewarrantyreduction It has been announced that Seagate and Western Digital are to reduce their hard drive warranties. On some lines this has meant a reduction from five years to just one. Seagate claims that these changes have been made so that they are "more consistent with those commonly applied throughout the consumer electronics and technology industries." Go to our website to find out what this means to your business. Tue, 19 Dec 2011 16:00:00 GMT http://www.fireflyits.com/feed00010033 http://www.fireflyits.com/#ieupdate Internet Explorer is soon to be included in Microsoft's automatic updates. To find out what this could mean for your business check out our website for more details. Fri, 16 Dec 2011 08:00:00 GMT http://www.fireflyits.com/feed00010032 http://www.fireflyits.com/#harddrivedeath We've just put up a quick guide to hard drive death and what you can do about it. Check out our website for more details. Tue, 6 Dec 2011 10:00:00 GMT http://www.fireflyits.com/feed00010031 http://www.fireflyits.com/ After starting up our Devon office last May we have now moved into the Falcon Business Centre in Plympton. It is just a few minutes off of the A38 and is an ideal location for us as we continue to expand. If you want to talk to us then why not call on 01752 424 373 or if you fancy something less formal you can often find us at the first and third Friday breakfast meetings organised by South West Innovation Centres at either Ivybridge or Paignton. http://swinnovationcentres.co.uk/ Thu, 1 Dec 2011 12:30:00 GMT http://www.fireflyits.com/feed00010030 http://www.fireflyits.com/#lumiaminireview Anyone that has been keeping an eye on our Twitter feed will know that we have been waiting for our Nokia Lumia 800 phones for a couple of weeks now, you'll also now that I received mine yesterday and it appears to be accident prone. The phone itself is very pleasing to hold, with the screen and case both feeling very tactile and comfortable whether ini your hand or held against your face. The rounded edges make it feel very small in your hand, although it is about average in size compared to other major smart phones. It is running Windows Phone 7, so there were no suprises there. Read more on our website... Thu, 1 Dec 2011 12:30:00 GMT http://www.fireflyits.com/feed00010029 http://www.fireflyits.com/#facebookphishing I receive Facebook status updates by email and this morning I had a very convincing looking message saying that someone I had never heard of had put an update on one of my posts. It wanted me to click on a link to supposedly go to my Facebook page to respond, but when I hovered the mouse over the link the tooltip (little pop-up message) showed that it was obviously going somewhere else. This is called phishing and mostly you'll get fake bank emails or fake message from a distant relative that you've never heard of. The idea being to get you to click on a link that will either cause malware to be installed on your PC or ask you to put in some personal information. They are often badly worded or don't look convincing, but occasionally they are like this one and look very authentic. In this instance I caught it because I am quite strict about who I allow on my friends list and knew that an unknown person wouldn't be able to put anything on my wall, so I checked the link out before thinking about clicking on it. The moral of the story is to never trust links in emails unless you are 110% sure they are genuine. Instead it is simply a case of manually opening a browser and navigating to the site directly to check what, if anything, is going on with your account. If in doubt then don't click! Tue, 22 Nov 2011 09:30:00 GMT http://www.fireflyits.com/feed00010028 http://www.fireflyits.com/#cloudminireview We have published a mini review of The Cloud aimed at business owners. Have a read if you are considering your options in The Cloud, or even if you don't know what The Cloud is. This article is a great starting point. Thu, 17 Nov 2011 09:30:00 GMT http://www.fireflyits.com/feed00010027 http://www.fireflyits.com/ Valve's online video game service, Steam, has been hit by hackers. It is used by over 35 million people and was hacked on the 6th November through Valve's discussion forums. The attackers were able to go on to access a database that held personal information and credit card data. Go to the news article on our website for information on what data was taken and what you need to do about it. Fri, 11 Nov 2011 15:00:00 GMT http://www.fireflyits.com/feed00010026 http://www.fireflyits.com/#powervsperformance When your laptop or netbook is working on battery power it will often be working in the "Balanced" power saving mode. This particular mode means that when running on mains power the laptop will be functioning at full speed, but when it is running purely on battery power it will sacrifice some performance to make the battery last longer. This performance hit can actually be quite significant and can potentially cause some grievance if you don't realise that there is a good reason for your laptop performing poorly. The performance hit can be particularly noticable on cheaper laptops and netbooks. The moral of this article is to check your power saving mode and to set it so that you are running without compromise to see how much of a difference it makes. To check or change your power saving mode in Windows 7/Vista click on the battery icon in your taskbar (near the clock in the lower right hand side of your screen) and select the "High Performance" power saving mode. This will probably half your battery life, but give it a try and see if it makes a difference. If it does, then you know that you aren't likely to have another more serious problem slowing you down, and running in the Balanced mode may be a compromise that you are willing to make for the extra battery life. Tue, 08 Nov 2011 07:30:00 GMT http://www.fireflyits.com/feed00010025 http://www.fireflyits.com/#voicemailalert We recently noticed that our voicemail notification texts weren't coming through on the Vodafone network and had a quick look into it. For some reason the phone was ignoring the text message that Vodafone were sending through. To get around this we switched to icon alert, which seems to be a bit more intelligent in certain situations. Firstly we seemed to get an alert a lot more quickly and the icon then remained on screen until the message had been listend to. It also showed an indicator of how many messages we had. The downside is that the number of messages seems to remain at one, even if you have more. We figured that we would rather know we had a message, rather than not know so have decided to stick with it. Check out our website for detailed instructions on how to change your message alert type to something that suits you better and a description of each option. Mon, 07 Nov 2011 14:00:00 GMT http://www.fireflyits.com/feed00010024 http://www.fireflyits.com We've been very impressed by Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 operating system and have been using it on the LG Optimus 7 for some time. In particular the recent "Mango" update to the phones seemed to make them even quicker, as well as stepping up the Social Media integration quite a lot by adding new Facebook features and further integrating all of your social media feeds (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Windows Live etc). Today the Nokia Lumia went up for Pre-Order and will be the first flagship Windows Phone 7 device from the new Nokia/Microsoft partnership. The Lumia 800 sports a very high quality AMOLED 3.7" screen with Gorilla Glass, an 8MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics and a 1.4GHz processor, amongst other features. We've pre-ordered a couple to try them in the field, to see if they are worth the money. Our existing LG phones were cheap and cheerfull, but they've survived the "accidental drop test" a number of times without so much as a scratch. WIll the Lumia be just as much of a survivor? Fri, 04 Nov 2011 15:00:00 GMT http://www.fireflyits.com/feed00010023 http://www.fireflyits.com The Firefly IT Solutions Amazon store has just opened for business. Currently we have put our first allocation of stock online and it is here, ready to ship. We will only sell products that we use and have faith in, so you can rest assured that our products are of the highest quality. For example we list Draytek Vigor ADSL modems and access points as we have found them to be incredibly reliable, as well as having great range and throughput. We have also found that the Draytek routers in particular always seem to be able to get the best speed and stability out of any given broadband line. Have a look and let us know what you think, particular if there is a type of product that you would like us to try out and then potentially sell at a great price. Tue, 01 Nov 2011 13:30:00 GMT http://www.fireflyits.com/feed00010022 http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp?swid=119 Did you know that if you own a Western Digital Hard drive then you can use Acronis True Image WD edition software to help you clone your entire computer onto a new hard drive...for FREE? Most of you are now wondering what on earth I am talking about and what I mean by "clone" and "image." I apologise for getting carried away and using some techie terms, as I previously promised that I wouldn't. This software basically lets you copy all of the data on your hard drive onto a second hard drive, primarily to allow you to upgrade your hard drive without having to re-install windows and all of your favourite software and data. The reason that Western Digital provide it is that they want your new drive to be one of theirs and, as we usually recommend WD products, we can't see anything wrong with this. Unfortunately it doesn't help you with the rather more technical issues of installing and connecting your new hard drive, but it should save some of the cost of upgrading, should you wish to do so. Tue, 01 Nov 2011 08:00:00 GMT http://www.fireflyits.com/feed00010021 http://www.fireflyits.com The recent floods in Thailand have severely interrupted the hard drive supply chain to the UK. This means that many populer resellers, such as Misco, wont sell you a hard drive online at the moment. Instead you have to give them a call, as they don't want to sell you something that they might not be able to get. It has already caused a price raise in some external hard drives, and could potentially cause a small raise in PC/laptop pricing in the near future. General feeling in the industry is that this wont cause too much difference once things settle back down though. Mon, 01 Nov 2011 06:00:00 GMT http://www.fireflyits.com/feed00010020 http://www.fireflyits.com I've recently started using a Microsoft wireless desktop solution (keyboard and mouse to the rest of us), and have been quite impressed with it so far. There was one element that I hadn't considered though, that came to light earlier today, and rather suprised me. I was at my desk and turned to reach for my cup of tea, at which point my elbow connected with my new wireless mouse and it accelerated off of my desk at speed. This wouldn't have been a problem before, as a USB mouse has an integral "safety wire", but this time the mouse flew across the office and ejected its batteries across the floor. It's gone back together and is no worse for the experience. Sun, 23 Oct 2011 16:00:00 GMT http://www.fireflyits.com/feed00010019 http://www.fireflyits.com Occasionally we spot good deals and like to bring them to our customers. This HP DC7700 is great value at Misco.co.uk at the minute for just £116.66 excl VAT. It has a Core 2 Duo processor, XP Pro, 2GB RAM and an 80GB hard disk. It doesn't come with a keyboard, mouse or monitor though, so you'll have to re-use your own. It's a great deal if you have some really old computers lying around and you can't afford a larger upgrade. It is also fast enough to take Windows 7, if you want to upgrade it later on.. Wed, 19 Oct 2011 11:00:00 GMT http://www.fireflyits.com/feed00010018 http://www.fireflyits.com A solid state hard drive (SSD) is essentially a large memory card in the shape of a hard drive. This means that they have no moving parts so they run reasonably coolly, use less power, and don't break if you drop them when they are running...depending on how far you drop them of course! The key fact is that they are also a lot faster than a conventional hard drive, which is probably the slowest component in any modern computer. We would recommend that anyone spending money on a new computer considers upgrading to a SSD, although you may find it cheaper to add it as an aftermarket option. Some SSDs are also a lot better value for money than others. If you chose the right one it will also come with a caddy to put your old drive in, some good instructions and the software to easily copy your data across. We've just put a 128GB Kingston SSDNOW100 into a Core i7 laptop running Windows 7 and it turns on within a few seconds, rathar than the minute or so that it was taking before. Mon, 17 Oct 2011 16:00:00 GMT http://www.fireflyits.com/feed00010017 http://www.fireflyits.com So far hundreds of people have been queuing for the new iPhones across the globe in Sydney and Tokyo. Later today stores will open to sell the new phone in Germany, France, Britain and North America. The new phone looks similar to the previous model, but sports a faster processor, upgraded camera and voice-activated software that allows users to ask questions. This is the first new device to be released by Apple since the death of Apple visionary Steve Jobs and Apple are hoping that strong sales will be a sign of things to come. Are you planning to upgrade? Let us know what you think info@fireflyits.com Fri, 14 Oct 2011 08:00:00 GMT http://www.fireflyits.com/feed00010016 http://www.fireflyits.com As of yesterday RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis reported "We have now restored full services." While this is great and will come of something as a relief to those of you with Blackberries it does make you wonder how much this "little" incident has cost people and businesses worldwide. Apparently through the last 18 months the Blackberry network has had a "99.97 percent service level," which I assume means that they've only lost service for approx 0.16 of a day in that time period. Again, this is great news, but it is a little bit like a burglar turning around and saying "well I didn't steal anything from you for the first 30 years of your life, so that makes it better that I'm stealing from you now..." Perhaps I'm being harsh - Richard Fri, 14 Oct 2011 08:00:00 GMT http://www.fireflyits.com/feed00010015 http://www.fireflyits.com/newsletterArchive.html Today we have officialy launched our first free newsletter. It will be emailed out to all existing customers and affiliates and it has a number of aims: 1) To promote interaction between our customers by giving them visibility of one another; 2)Provide small businesses and business owners with relevant tips and information in a language that they understand; 3) Give more information on the services that we can provide to our customers. Let us know what you think and if you would like any free hardcopies to hand out to your staff: richard@fireflyits.com Thu, 13 Oct 2011 08:00:00 GMT http://www.fireflyits.com/feed00010014 http://www.fireflyits.com Blackberry have been having a lot of problems in the last few days which certainly raises a few concerns for the industry. For those of you that don't know, all Blackberries communicate through RIMs network for added security and at the moment that network is down, so all Blackberry devices are having problems. The question to be considered by business owners is do you really need this level of security on your phone? If not then why not use a Windows Phone 7, Android or Apple device as it's less likely that the whole of your companies mobile devices will stop working at the same time! They are also very secure if configured correctly. Wed, 12 Oct 2011 08:00:00 GMT http://www.fireflyits.com/feed00010013 http://www.fireflyits.com The co-founder and former CEO of Apple has died at the age of 56 after a long battle with cancer. Steve Jobs was considered a true visionary by many and was responsible for coming up with the Apple Mac as well as having a pivotal role in the development of the iPod and iPad. In 1986 he also bought Pixar from George Lucas for $10 million before growing it and selling it on to Disney for $7.4 billion in 2006. In August of this year he left Apple for the last time, and yesterday Apple announced his death. He will be missed by many people throughout the world and the tributes can be seen pouring around popular networking sites such as Twitter. Thu, 06 Oct 2011 08:00:00 GMT http://www.fireflyits.com/feed00010012 http://www.fireflyits.com Apple have launched the iPhone 4S. It looks the same as the current model but houses a much faster processor (the same on that is in the iPad 2), a better camera and boosted battery life, amongst other things. It doesn't appear to have impressed investors though as Apple shares then dropped 4% in the next couple of hours. The iPhone 5 is due next summer so perhaps a part of the problem is that Apple are releasing new models a little too quickly? The iPhone is a great tool, but they are one of the most expensive smartphones and each time you buy one you know that it will be superceded in the next 8 months or so...We think that they should lower the price on them to make them more competitive with their Android and Windows counterparts. http://www.fireflyits.com/feed00010011 Wed, 05 Oct 2011 08:00:00 GMT http://www.fireflyits.com Microsoft are currently rolling out the latest version of Windows Phone 7. It is called Mango and it will eventually fit onto all existing Windows Phone 7 Devices. Currently a few people are seeing an issue, particularly those with the LG E900, or Optimus 7 as it is more widely known. Apparently some people are able to update their Optimus 7, but there are many showing an error. Microsoft are investigating and will resolve the issue shortly. They are sensibly performing a staged rollout over 4 weeks, so they will have fixed the issue before the update gets to many of you.....hopefully! http://www.fireflyits.com/feed00010010 Thu, 29 Sep 2011 08:00:00 GMT http://www.fireflyits.com iPads are great devices and can have a place in your home and at work, however before you buy one make sure that it will do what you want it to. If, for example, you want to use it as a portable tool at work and you will need to access certain websites on it then make sure that you test those websites on an iPad before you buy it. The first reason for this is that the Safari browser on the iPad isn't as fully featured as many full Mac or PC browsers, nor does it support flash, so quite a few websites don't work as you would expect. The second reason is that many corporate websites are only designed to work in one or two browsers and might not have been fully tested on mobile devices. The problems aren't always on the first page, so it's worth trying the website out for a few minutes before commiting to a purchase. We have a variety of devices around the office, including iPads, so give us a call and we would be happy to help you test a particular website. http://www.fireflyits.com/feed00010009 Mon, 26 Sep 2011 08:00:00 GMT http://www.fireflyits.com Don't use an internet email provider such as Google, Yahoo or Hotmail as the only source for your email, contacts list and calendar. Always ensure that you have your own copy, even if it is simply by using software such as Outlook, Live Mail or Thunderbird to store an offline copy of the data. http://www.fireflyits.com/feed00010008 Fri, 23 Sep 2011 08:00:00 GMT http://www.fireflyits.com If you use gmail as your main email account and also use it to sign up to other Google services such as adsense, google docs, webmaster tools etc then you need to be aware that if Google decide to block your email for any reason, and they don't tend to give one, then you will lose access to all related Google accounts. Our tip is to use a non Google email account to register for Google services. You may think that this will never happen to you, however it happens quite regularly, and Google's lack of direct customer service means that it is very hard to get your account unblocked. http://www.fireflyits.com/feed00010007 Fri, 23 Sep 2011 08:00:00 GMT http://www.fireflyits.com If you are on an unlimited package then you may find that the performance of your broadband line is reduced elsewhere and your internet access may not be as quick as it should be. Consider a package with a cap if you want more performance, just choose the right cap for you. If in doubt give us a call and we can recommend a package as we offer very competitive broadband with great support. http://www.fireflyits.com/feed00010006 Wed, 21 Sep 2011 08:00:00 GMT http://www.fireflyits.com If you are getting emails from your ISP because you are regularly going over your bandwidth then I strongly recommend that you chose a package with a larger allowance. It may cost you more per month, but the data costs will be much cheaper than paying for a data top-up every now and then. http://www.fireflyits.com/feed00010005 Wed, 21 Sep 2011 08:00:00 GMT http://www.fireflyits.com A lot of people use the same passwords for multiple online accounts. After all, who wouldn't as it is impossible to remember them all otherwise. Our tip for today is to make sure that your email accounts have totally unique passwords compared to any other account that you may have. The reason for this is that if someone manages to get a password for one of your other online accounts, whether it is for a forum, a shop or anything else then you don't want them to be able to then get access to your email account as this will make it much easier for them to pretend to be youand much harder for you to access your emails to reset the hacked accounts. http://www.fireflyits.com/feed00010004 Mon, 19 Sep 2011 08:00:00 GMT http://www.fireflyits.com It looks like the upgrade to 4G for the UK is being delayed due to disagreements between Ofcom and the major networks. What does this mean to me? Not a lot really, the premise is interesting as raises the bar for mobile communication speeds, but if you look at where it would be available then it isn't likely to be an issue for you any time soon. Just look at 3G coverage, it's only available to a small amount of the UK and 4G wont be any better. There is also a chance that 4G will disrupt your digital TV signal, with upto three quarters of a million people are likely to be affected. This is due to how close the digital TV and 4G signals are in the wi-fi spectrum. http://www.fireflyits.com/feed00010003 Tue, 06 Sep 2011 08:00:00 GMT http://www.fireflyits.com On Thursday Facebook will start to rollout some significant security updates to Facebook, including the ability to approved tagged pictures before they appear in your profile and individual privacy control over everything that appears on your wall. If you are a Facebook user and hadven't looked at the privacy settings yet then I can seriously recommend having a look and locking them down a bit. Wed, 24 Aug 2011 08:00:00 GMT http://www.fireflyits.com/feed00010002 http://www.fireflyits.com This can be a useful website if anyone has sent you a link to a website that you are unsure of. Simply go to the site, select "Submit a URL" and then paste the link into the box provided. Within a few seconds the site will come back and let you know if it is safe. Wed, 17 Aug 2011 08:00:00 GMT http://www.fireflyits.com/feed0001001