We’ve had a number of customers call us recently, quite concerned because they have been contacted by a company claiming to be Microsoft telling them that they have received alerts from their computer that say that it is in imminent danger of crashing.

It’s pretty scary stuff, and they will then walk you through the process of bringing up the event viewer and the prefetch directory and showing you all the alerts and “damaging files” on your PC. They will then offer to remote in to your machine and fix all these problems for you. In the end, I believe they will attempt to sign you up to a plan where they will remote in to your machine and look after it on an ongoing basis, for a fee.

We’re highlighting this for 2 reasons, one is that we have a similar service with our LogMeIn Pro2 support, so you you can have a local support company you know and trust look into it, but also to warn our readers that calls like this do happen (we’ve had one at the office) and not to panic. Whilst these companies may be a legitimate business, they seem to have a fairly dubious marketing technique, and we wanted to reassure our customers that:

a) No personally identifiable information is sent to Microsoft when you submit an error report

b) Sometimes your log shows errors or warnings. There is no cause for concern, a simple paper jam or clock that is not the right time will create an error in the log

c) The files in the prefetch folder should always be there, they help your computer to start up faster

d) If you are told that your emails have SPAM, it’s not a specific cause for concern. Pretty much everybody has SPAM mails these days. You only need to be concerned if you’re getting hundreds of them or
if a friend contacts you saying that they have received a SPAM message from you or that they haven’t received email from you that they were expecting.

So, if you get a phone call, Don’t Panic! If you are really concerned, maybe it’s time to call the Tech Doctor to book a Health Check for your computer?

Internet connection speeds vary greatly from connection type to connection type and from location to location, so how do you know how fast you are connecting to the internet and  how fast is fast enough?

Theoretical speeds vary from 65Kb/sec dial up through to high speed ADSL/Cable connections at 30 Mb/sec or more.

Some sample speeds are:

Of course, these are all technical maximum speeds, with things like line quality and distance having huge effects on the speed you will actually achieve to your computer.

How do I test my real connection speed?

The easiest way is to visit www.speedtest.net* and once the flash has loaded/installed, click on the orange triangle that represents your nearest server or the button near the top that says “Start test to recommended server – Melbourne” in my case.

The system will do a ping test then test both the Download an Upload speeds:

How fast does it need to be?

that depends on what your usage scenario is. For basic use we recommend the 512Kb plans, though with many ISP’s you will find you can upgrade to the 1,500 Kb (three times the speed) for only about $10 per month more). The 1,500 Kb plan is the base speed for a small business, and many would reap the productivity improvements of a 8,000 Kb or 20,000 Kb connection.

* It’s worth noting that speedtest.net is an ad supported website. Don’t be confused by the ads, and don’t click on the ads, unless you want to.

We’re frequently asked the question “Is our computer still up to the job, or should we get a new one?”, and it’s a good question.

The problem is that the answer is different for everyone. Someone doing a heap of video editing needs a (much) more powerful machine than someone who is checking their email and surfing a few web pages.

The second problem is most people have very little idea of how fast or powerful their current machine is, and what it might need to perform better.

Lets answer that second question first. In What version of Windows am I running? we learnt how to bring up the “System Properties” page (hint [Windows] [Pause Break]) and have a look at the appropiate section (Computer in XP, System in Vista)

How much is enough? For “Normal” home or basic office use, Any Pentium IV or Celeron above 1.7GHz with at least 1Gb of RAM will run Windows XP happily enough. If you have Vista then you will be wanting at least a Core Duo 2.0GHz with at least 2Gb of RAM. If your needs are greater, you will need a faster processor, and possibly more RAM.

Can I upgrade my computer? The short answer is yes. Most of the problems people have with slow computers is caused by not enough RAM. 512Mb is not enough to make any reasonable use of XP and even 1Gb is not enough for Vista. Extra RAM is cheap, and only takes a few minutes to install. Upgrading the processor is more difficult, and usually not worth the effort. Check back soon for another article on finding out which type of RAM you have in your machine.

How do I tell which version of Microsoft Office am I running?

Open one of the Office Applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook)

From the Help Menu*, select About

This will display a page of information including the version number.

Office Versions: 97, 2000, XP (2002), 2003, 2007

* If you don’t really have any menus, just a ribbon of Icons across the top of the screen, you have Office 2007. For more infoemation, click on the Office Button (top left corner) and then click the [Word/Excel etc Options] button (bottom right of the menu) and Click Resources, and then click About.

How do I tell which version of Windows XP I have?

The easiest way is to press the [Windows] key and the [Pause Break] keys together (roughly the bottom left and top right keys on the keyboard).

Or, if you don’t have a Windows Key, you can go into Control Panel and open the System Control Panel.

Alternatively, you can right click on the My Computer icon, either on the Desktop or in the start menu and click properties.

Doing one of these things will open the “System Properties” page which will tell you a lot of things about your computer including what Version of Windows you are running. Windows XP comes in two main Editions, Home and Professional, though Media Centre is another one that crops up occasionally. The service pack level is also listed, and will hopefully read “Service Pack 3″ as at October 2008. If it reads something else, you probably should run Windows Update

How do I tell which version of Windows Vista I have?

Again, the easiest way is to press the [Windows] key and the [Pause Break] keys together, or, you can go to the Start Menu, click on Control Panel and open the “System” Control Panel, or right click on the Computer icon, either on the Desktop or in the Start menu and click properties.

Again you will see the “System” page which will allow you to view basic information about your computer.

Vista comes in a range of editions from Home Basic, Home Premium, Business to Ultimate Edition. I’ll review the differences in a follow up post.

Again, the service pack level is listed, and will hopefully read “Service Pack 1″ as at October 2008. (with Service Pack 2 due towards the end of 2008 or early 2009) If it reads something else, you probably should run Windows Update

Q: I just need some help with why I’d be up to 80% of my Broadband use for the 2nd month in a row. What type of things use a lot? Today I’ve not used it … but it’s used 3%. All I’ve had open is my blog with me doing nothing and the local weather, which does update regularly – so that may do it.

Also, does uploading to my blog use much? Or does checking out other people’s blogs use much? That I do do a bit. Just let me know when you can so I can try to work out what to do.

And does Skype use much? …. or emails? .. hopefully last one – if I leave website open where the pictures are constantly changing – am i using up broadband?

A: The answer to all the above is that everything that comes to your screen from the internet has to be downloaded through your broadband pipe and counts against your download limit (unless you have some free services provided by your ISP.) The big question is how much.

A typical blog page can quite big, often containing big photos and video, and can be as large as 500Kb, while a fairly simple page like the weather will be as small as 50Kb. The problem is that if that weather page is reloaded every 5 minutes, that totals 600Kb/hr. Pages with pictures that change (like ads) are similarly high

Checking emails is probably only a few Kb every check (usually 5 minutes) plus the size of any emails downloaded. Skype is quite light for text, audio/video chat is approx 3-16Kb/sec.

Uploading things is quite different, and varies from ISP to ISP. Most ADSL ISPs do not charge anything for uploads, but I believe Bigpond, Optus & iiNet all count uploads towards the monthly cap

I had a couple of interesting questions posed to me today that I thought were worth sharing. Both related to backup type storage media sizes. The first was about memory sticks, and the assumption, (rather than a question) that a memory stick is bigger than a DVD. The second was asking how much info a CD can hold.

So I thought it was timely to add a quick chart of the current state of affairs in storage:

before we start, some rough idea of the size of some things:

and here are some things to put all that data onto, along with some rough prices:

There are lots of reasons you cant directly compare each of those items, like speed, size, durability and rewritability, which means that some media types are better than others for different purposes.

For example: 75 DVDs will hold the same amount of information as a 320Gb Hard Disk, for a fair bit less money, but you can only write to the DVD once.