http://www.sbtechnicalservices.co.uk/biz/home.html

Once again, thanks for all the broken computers, its been fun

As we emerge from the coldest UK winter in living memory into a new spring, this company goes offline at the end of March 2011

It’s always a hard decision when running a small company, and a job offer comes up – do I expand the company to cater for this, or take the job – do I have a choice?

I was going to update you on Microsoft Office 2010  a few months back – I’ve been using it since it came out.
My verdict – you get used to it …  it’s not obviously a big improvement from Office 2007, and  I still miss a few features from Office 2003 – like the ability to scan into a document in word – thanks for taking that out guys …

But no – not a big enough improvement to justify changing everything – and I still hate the way Outlook decides to freeze up occasionally – you get a message saying “Outlook has stopped responding” – usually when you need to send an urgent email.  I think three options are offered, of which only “restart the program” actually helps.

Office 2010 comes in 64bit and 32bit flavours, and at first you think its great to pioneer and run the 64bit version, but it seems most 3rd parties who write plug-ins for Outlook are very slow to produce 64bit versions for their code, so make sure you’re not going to need one of those first, before you take the plunge.

Having said that, I don’t dislike Office 2010 enough to consider the alternatives, so think it’s business dominance will continue for some time to come.

Apparently mac owners can get a shiny new Office 2011 from Microsoft.  Goodbye entourage, hello Outlook on the mac.  Apparently, Outlook 2011 doesn’t talk to an Exchange 2003 server.  Ho-hum – so much for backwards compatibility eh?

Now in my roundabout way, coming back to the main theme of the blog – Newtss Ltd is going dormant from the end of March.
May be back in the future – who knows – we live in uncertain times.

Thanks to my 3.5 readers for paying attention to these wise words

remember, its not kicking the computer that fixes it – it’s knowing where to kick …

oh – and if in doubt, turn it off, then back on again …

That’s not bad for a business that nearly went bust in the 90′s, and, at one time, sacked it’s legendary CEO Steve Jobs.

So what does that mean for us in the computer support business – most of which is Microsoft based?  In reality Microsoft still own more than 90% of the business operating system market, but Apple and others are eating away at that market share, and frankly, Apple have brought the fun factor back to computing – devices like the iPhone and the iPad are winning market share because they are a joy to use.

For us at Newtss Ltd, we have one solitary Mac Mini on the bench for those rare times when someone needs Mac support – but we hope to get our hands on an iPad as soon as we can!

The Mac mini is getting on a bit now, but still is incredibly reliable, and our web-site looks gorgeous on that platform – more so than when running in a windows browser.

So yes, our main business is windows support, but we are not going to ignore the Mac revolution, and really, it is up to Microsoft to deliver products that compete.

We are still suffering from the awful, awful experience that was Vista – some of the laptops we have seen shipped with tiny amounts of memory and Vista have been truly appalling – the stuff of nightmares!

So, if you want Mac support “Yes we can!” – but it’s early days yet – we are not mac experts, but watch this space …

Today I got my new office 2010 – the professional plus version no less – clearly our friends in the states haven’t heard of pro-plus – Here in the UK this version sounds like it contains something to pep up the older folks  and maybe it does!

First Impressions?

It installed on 3 computers without a glitch – Windows 7 64 bit – runs like a dream – Word opens with a snap !  Noticeably faster than the version it has replaced.  Windows Xp 32bit, no difference in the installation experience that I could see …

In Office Outlook 2010 all my accounts came up without a problem, after a pause for “optimisation”, which wasn’t too long.  For the moment I’ve dispensed with Xobni, the 3rd party add-on for Outlook, which was all the rage a few months ago.   If I find I am missing it, I will re-install it, but so far the jury is out on the search built into Outlook 2010 – although in a check I just did, I don’t think there is any need to bring Xobni back from the cold.

In the coming weeks, I will be looking at the new programs in some depth, and will share my findings here – but so far, so good – it’s looking like a very worthwhile upgrade.

By the way – I did un-install Office 2007 on all computers first, but didn’t lose any data files, so all is good.

If you are like me, you will be no fan of 18 month mobile phone contracts, the Sky contract, the BT contract that is only cheap for the first 3 months?  I hate being “locked-in” – what if you change your mind – want to move on or even worse – find something better and cheaper the week after you signed up …  Do you have a sneaking suspicion that the big energy deal’s aren’t in your favour at all – are you “confused dot com” and wanting to switch all the time for the cash incentive?

If you are in agreement, then maybe it’s time to consider WHY these contracts exist…
If someone knows you are going to be paying every month for a long time, they can start to count on the money that WILL be coming in, and give you savings and discounts – it makes it easier to plan, and they feel the security of stream of revenue for some time to come.

When each deal is a “one-off” you never know whether you will be in “feast or famine”, but if you have a number of contracts, you can work out exactly how many days / people you will need to look after them, for a given year …

So, that’s the thinking behind my support contracts – but I want to stress – I’m not interested in locking people in for a long time into something they cannot get out of, without an expensive “buy-out” –  I hate that idea, and the companies who peddle such inflexible contracts.

So what would a Newtss Ltd support contract give you?

What I offer is a menu of choices – for things that need doing every year – things that need to be remembered if you want your computer equipment to keep running smoothly, for important files to be backed up, for your security solutions to be up to date, for someone to turn to for unbiased advice when you need to make a decision which might involve a new IT purchase.

So you choose the things you think you need, and I work out what that would cost on a monthly or annual basis.  Then you decide whether you want to go ahead – simple as that.

If you want to end the contract during a covered period, just let me know, and I will work out any payments or refunds needed to end the contract.  I would like to think I stand or fall on reputation, and the quality of the service delivered.

One other thing, where I think the big companies fall down, is in the size of operation – it’s all too easy for your needs to get lost in the noise from thousands of jobs going on at any one time – for your computer to get fixed, but people forget to tell you it’s ready.

My promise to potential customers is that, if you take out a contract, you will be joining a select few – I know how many organisations and individuals I can support with the staff I have, and I don’t intend to go beyond that, without making sure the staff to support ratio is correct.

I happen to specialise in Groove, and have done since 2003 – It’s the main part of the “collaboration” aspect of my business.

I happen to think it’s a great piece of software engineering.  I use it every day – it underpins all the work I do, and keeps all my key data up to date across several physical machines.

I’m not convinced it has fared too well since Microsoft bought the company in spring 2005.

It’s funny how few people have actually heard of Groove – five years on since the acquisition – it hasn’t become a familiar name in the software world – unlike its stable mates Word, Excel and Powerpoint – I suppose you could say the same about Infopath or OneNote for instance – other distant cousins of the big names – however, at least they are not treated like a mad relative, kept locked up in a lonely mansion somewhere far away …

So what’s the future for Groove – is it being sidelined as a Sharepoint add-on ?  One other blog I read the other day described it as “superflous”.

Does Sharepoint need a dedicated client ?

What about the people who just want to use Groove functionality, and don’t actually need the Sharepoint bit?

I’m wondering whether Groove is being consigned slowly to history, has it served it’s purpose for Ray Ozzie – just something from the past – a stepping stone ? – not what we need to focus on now.

As a Microsoft partner, I recently tried to price up a solution that would include Groove in a Microsoft Office 2007 deal.   It turned out to be very hard work, and the quotes that came back were both very expensive and very confusing.  If you can’t answer the simple question “How much does it cost” quickly and easily, then you are looking at a very hard sell.

It turned out that the best price I could get was from an on-line software discounter, for the Office 2007 ultimate version – which is now selling at a below half of it’s original price.  All the licensing programs worked out dearer.  Oh yes – and Microsoft no longer offer the entry level subscription service of $70 per annum, so that road is now closed too.

Needless to say, it was all way more than my potential customer had been expecting to pay, so that deal did not come off.

I heard today that we now have a release date for Office 2010 and Sharepoint 2010 – May 12th.

One of the very early messages I heard from the Microsoft folks was that Sharepoint Workspace (Groove) would become more accessible in this release – what I see in the press is that it is buried in the “Professional Plus” version of Office 2010 – only available to enterprise / volume license users.  The only way the average punter can get hold of a copy is to buy the stand-alone version – it is not included in any of the retail bundles, as far as I can see.  Thanks a bunch Microsoft – I hope I’m wrong about this, but I don’t think so.  If I’m right – it’s a great shame, and another kick in the teeth for the people who have stuck with Groove these past few years.

Personally, I think it’s time to start looking at other collaboration software solutions – time to move on !

… and the winner was … SurfAnytime !

I’ll wager most of you have never heard of them ?

Visit their website here:   http://www.surfanytime.co.uk

How did I choose this provider?

I made a spreadsheet and selected the packages that most closely fitted what I wanted from a provider, then added columns for features I needed the most, and compared what each one did in that category.

ISP Selection Spreadsheet

I was looking for a provider with a monthly cost very close what I pay now (£21.50), which had the best set of features.  In particular I did not want to be locked in to a service I could not get out of.  (Many service providers include a “lock in” for at least 12 months).

How did I find the service provider?

This independent web site http://www.ispreview.co.uk has a list of the top ten internet service providers according to how their customers review them.  They also maintain a list of providers by customer base size, so you can see who the “big” players are, and compare them.

I didn’t even consider the so called “big five” providers because I have enough grief with them from my customers.  I’ll go into more detail about that situation in another blog later on.

I used the ISP review top ten to form my short list, and then added Eclipse to that list, because even though they were languishing at no. 34 on the best provider list, their price and package seemed excellent.

In the end it was a “special offer” that won it for SurfAnytime.  I am actually prepared to pay more for a service if the providers have the confidence to offer it on a monthly rolling basis, so even though this was slightly dearer than Eclipse, there were less negative reviews on ISP review, and no lock-in.

If you want to take advantage of this special offer, I see it has now been extended to the end of March 2010, so see if they have a package to meet your needs !

In summary, see what other people are saying about a service before you buy into it.

Try to avoid getting locked into a single service provider if you can.

Finally, don’t believe everything you see on TV – Mass marketed broadband is not usually the best choice if you want customer service !  There is a battle going on for customers at the moment, but most of the big players think it is OK to outsource their Help Desk and Support call centres abroad, and provide lousy customer service.  Want to listen to the on-hold music ?  Want to pay for the phone call while you wait ?

As someone who often provides advice on which broadband provider to choose, it’s ironic that I have just suffered a 12  day long broadband outage.

Being careful, I have a back-up provider too, but that too has proved to be difficult or scary to use, due to uncertainty over download limits.

It’s getting to the point where I am checking where the free internet cafe’s are in Wakefield, because I am going to need to take my laptop and go and sit there.

The big debate at the moment is whether or not people should choose one of the “big 5″ broadband providers where everything is “bundled” or choose one of the smaller specialist providers who do excellent broadband and little else.  It sounds great to have all your phone calls and maybe, TV package in the same place, making savings on broadband, and getting a generous call package, but if something goes wrong, you will soon realise the changes that have taken place over the last few years, as you find yourself navigating an automatic phone line menu, and speaking to people in other countries who staff the modern call centres … and then there’s the 12 or 18 month lock-in and you find you cannot change to someone else for a long time …

So what’s my story?  Let’s name and shame …

I switched my main broadband for cost reasons, a  year ago.  I was paying £30 a month to Zen, for a business service that was capped at 50GB download per month, but was reliable, and fast enough at 8MB download, which it usually attained.   I got this down to £19 per month, for an unlimited service that was supposed to go as fast as 24MB down – 3 times that of the previous provider.  For a long time, I was very pleased with the service I got from “Betherenow”.  (Now part of the O2 group).

Only this year, I realised that the speed had dropped considerably, and even though it was still unlimited and stable, I was only getting download speeds of between 3 & 4MB – a lot less than advertised, and half the speed of the previous provider.  I checked my contract and found I needed to give 3 months notice to cancel.

In itself, this wasn’t a big thing, as I could put up with the slower speeds until the contract ended, sometime in February I calculated.

Then I found the only way you could cancel was by ringing a “cancellation” line.  I soon realised, when I rang the line in late November, that this was actually a “persuade the customer not to cancel” line.  They offered to fix the problem, send a new router and give me a free month, all of which sounded great, so naturally I took them up on it.

When they wanted to send a third router, and the line was still going slow, I started to realise this would not be straightforward.  Eventually, they sent a BT Openreach engineer, who said the line was fine.  (It’s interesting to see the relationship between BT and other providers – to say this is not an ideal situation may well be an understatement).  I was told that the line was to be re-connected at the local exchange, and that this would fix the problem.  In actual fact, things got worse – even though the 3rd Bebox would connect at speeds up to 8MB, there was no onward connection to the internet anymore, so I was actually much worse off.

As well as complaining bitterly, one of the first things I had to do, was stop hosting my web site at home, and move it onto the internet itself.  I found a member of the family who had some web space I could use, and moved it there.

Next, it was time to look at the back-up internet provider.  Now, my backup was Sky Broadband, part of a package from Sky, which was free for the first year.  This worked fine, but was only the base package, 2MB download speed, and a 2GB download cap per month.  I found I used that up in a couple of days – in fact, just Windows updates accounted for most of it!   Looking at the Sky web site, I expected to find a charging system for the extra download used, but instead, they stated they would update me to the NEXT package automatically.  I didn’t want that, because there was a one year minimum contract attached, and I didn’t think it was LEGAL to upgrade somebody without their consent.   A day or so later (probably after calls from outraged customers) they had changed their web site to say customers would not be upgraded if they went over their limit.  I also noticed that Sky’s broadband monitoring tools appeared to be patchy, inaccurate and often, simply not working at all.  I just hoped that Betherenow would fix their service soon.

11 days after I first lost the broadband connection, and another BT Openreach engineer later, my service was restored, albeit at the same slow download speed as before this all started, and I have to say, with a fairly patchy internet connection.  It seems to have a faulty domain name service, where some web sites will work, while others won’t.  I cannot understand how Facebook will work OK, while at the same time, I cannot do a Google search – BUT – I am past complaining to Betherenow.  They have cancelled the service, and reduced the notice period to one month, so it will all go away come mid January 2010.   Now I have to find a new main provider.  So far, with my back-up provider SKY, I have used 14GB instead of 2GB, so am about 7 times over my limit, but apparently, as long as I don’t do this again, in the next 5 months, I will not be penalised.

In my next blog, I will let you know which provider I decide to go with next.  I will be checking out this web site: www.ispreview.co.uk and seeing what other people think about their providers.   At the moment, I am leaning towards Zen Internet, or maybe Eclipse who are now owned by Kingston Communications, but have recently upgraded their email service to make it more reliable.

In summary, this has been an awful experience – I thought I would be without broadband over Christmas.

I think the “big 5″ internet service providers are looking to grab market share and are competing on price and long “bundled” special deals, whilst sacrificing quality of service, customer service and download speeds – in reality what they advertise and what you get bear little relation to each other.

Sky are a great TV provider, but it’s clear that broadband is not their top priority right now.

If you want good broadband, don’t go to a jack-of-all trades – get it from a specialist – and preferably one with a UK based help desk.  I think it’s time people voted with their feet!!

Computers and their bits are a glaring example of our desire to go in the opposite direction, as we build faster and more visually stunning products every year.

On average, power consumption comes well down the list of priorities for most people.

So what can we do?  How can my company help you get greener?

The main initiatives now revolve around turning things off.  I can provide power supplies which have a special socket for the computer – so that when you turn it off, it turns off all the other bits too – such as printers, screens, scanners and sound systems.

For small businesses, we can provide fully monitored remote control now, which, if you have the right sort of computers installed, will power them down on a schedule, so that if your people forget to turn things off, it can be done remotely.  Systems like this can often pay for themselves in power savings in the first year.  Both the major providers (Dell and HP) have systems with the new technology on board, which is, by the way, a development from Intel, the chip manufacturer, called “VPRO” – More reading here: http://www.intel.com/technology/vpro/index.htm

ALSO, there is now a computer assembler based in SHEFFIELD, South Yorkshire, who specialises in Green computers.  They are VeryPc – read more here:VeryPC, Sheffieldcontact us if you would like us to put a system together for you based on their components.

Another area where things can get very expensive and wasteful is printing – make sure you consider the “total cost of ownership” before you buy a new printer.

Over the years, Kyocera have pioneered with economical and environmentally friendly products.  They only do Laser printers, as far as I can see, so if you are in the market for one of those, check out one of their suppliers!

Another way to reduce power costs is via a technology called “Virtualisation”.   This technology works by creating computers within computers, so the actual number of physical computers you need to have plugged in is reduced.  We can tell you more about this, or check whether it might be able to help you, or your business – just ask.

Finally – check what you have plugged into the mains – if it’s not doing anything useful, switch it off !!

Here in 2009, just before Christmas, the choice is phenomenal. Computers do more things than ever before, and the lines between computers, phones, TV’s, media players and home appliances are becoming more blurred each day.

There also seems to be more places to buy computers from than ever before – not just the specialised stores like before, but you will find computers in supermarkets now, plus many department stores and a plethora of on-line shops of varying quality, security and speed of delivery.

Also, people like Dell who only used to sell direct to the customer, now sell through many other outlets as well, and the rise of Apple as a real functional and stylistic alternative to the PC is hard to ignore.

Another thing that many people overlook, is what happens when it goes wrong?   They are often left high and dry with little or no support.  The low price of many computer deals tend to give the lowest possible customer service – usually a one year “return to base” warranty.   Wouldn’t it ne nice if the price you paid included a 3 year “on-site” warranty, where someone comes to you to fix the problem?

When I buy a computer for my business, or for a customer, I tend to get a “barebones” computer, so I can customise it to do exactly the things I want it to do.  This might be a bit technical for most people, so instead, my advice would be “get a magazine” and see what they recommend.

Personally, I look at PC Pro magazine, (http://www.pcpro.co.uk) which includes a section called the “A” list.  All the computers on this list have usually come out top when pitted against similar rivals in lab tests.  They are divided into sensible categories, like “Value PC” or “Enthusiast PC” so you have some idea as to what type of computer you are buying.

One other thing – it’s worth looking at Europc (http://www.europc.co.uk) – a Scottish PC warehouse that specialises in discounted Dell equipment, amongst other quality makes such as Hewlett Packard.  See if you can pick up the computer you want with a 3 year on site warranty included – it often happens!