Google Mail Outage!

GMail is used by more than 113m people worldwide Business and consumer users of Google’s popular e-mail service were hit by an outage on Tuesday. The service went offline at 0930 GMT with Google saying it was “working hard to resolve this problem”. Professional users of Google mail are covered by a service level agreement that promises to be 99.9% operational in any calendar month. More than 113 million people use Google mail worldwide, according to comScore. In a statement, Google said “a number of users” were having problems with Google Mail. “We know how important GMail is to our users so we take this very seriously,” it added. Google directed people to its mail support page for further status updates. Some users reported that Google Mail was working on G1 mobile phones, which are powered by Google’s Android operating system. From BBC.

Antivirus Tips

With no one governing body in charge of online activities, the Internet has become rife with viruses, hackers, and fraudulent acts. It’s more important now than ever to keep your computer as safe as possible.   The banking industry has re-affirmed a policy that makes online banking customers responsible for losses if they have out of date anti-virus or anti-phishing protection. Section 12.9 says: “Keep your PC secure. Use up-to-date anti-virus and spyware software and a personal firewall.” Below are some tips on how to keep your computer as safe as it can be.
	Anti Virus New machines usually come with free trials of an Antivirus Software such as Norton or MacAfee. Beware that these trials can only last for a couple of months and can leave your machine unprotected due to a lack of up-to-date virus definitions.
AVG Antivirus is a free Anti Virus program that offers basic on demand virus checking and free daily virus definition updates. This can be downloaded and installed (without registration) by selecting this link onto your machine to provide you with up-to-date virus protection. After the installation and the updating of the antivirus, it is usually recommended that you perform a full system scan.
Spyware (Sometimes called adware) collects information about you without appropriate notice and consent. If you are running a machine with Windows Vista installed, you will already have protection from this using the tool “Windows Defender” If you are running a machine with Windows XP, you will need to download this tool and install this manually by clicking on this link and clicking on “Get This Now” Button.
	Firewall Both Windows XP and Windows Vista come pre-installed with the Windows Firewall. Sometimes however this gets disabled by other programs.
A good way to check that your Firewall is enabled, is by going to Start, Control Panel, Windows Firewall. This will then show you if your firewall is on or off.
	Windows Update An up-to-date windows machine can not only fix problems and bugs in Windows, but also make it secure from well known vulnerabilities. You can check to see if you Windows is up-to-date by opening Internet Explorer and selecting the Tools menu and click on Windows Updates
A loading bar should start to check your computer for needed Updates; after this has finished scanning it will display two buttons. Click on the Express Button. After this it will display a list of critical updates, make sure they have all ticks by the side of them and click on the button Install Updates. This will then start the download and installation of these files. This may require a reboot, and you will have a choice at the end whether to reboot now or later. By Jean Van Wyngarrdt

Mini Notebook Reviews

Ultra portable laptops have been around for many years, but in order to get all that power and technology crammed into such as small unit, you would have had to pay well above the £1000 mark.

Enter the Mini-Notebook (aka the Netbook)

While Mini-Notebooks aren’t latest ‘craze’ to hit the market, they are rapidly becoming more and more popular due to their ease of use and low cost. Before going into more depth let’s understand what exactly is meant by the term Mini- Notebook. 

In this blog we mean those developed specifically to use the new lower power processors (such as Intel Atom or the Via C7), have screens 10 inches or less and most importantly stay under the £400 mark.

I’ve rounded up a few of the latest to hit the shelves to see what they can do.  All of these have the bare essentials i.e. Speakers, headphone & mic jack, USB ports, network port & Wireless. While some even include card readers and Bluetooth, but we’ll get to that later.

First up we have the predecessor to the original ‘EeePC’. This latest offering from Asus bridges the gap between laptop s and netbooks that much more. Is this, the EeePC 1000 the pinnacle of Mini-Notebooks….or just a stepping stone on the way to the top? 

With the top spec model boasting a 10”screen, 1GB of Ram, an 80GB hard drive and Windows XP you have a very capable machine at a wallet friendly price.

The keyboard is a pleasure to use and the mouse track pad, unlike its rivals, supports multi touch gesture points. So you can stroke 2 fingers vertically or horizontally to scroll, or use a pinch or stretching motion to zoom in and out of photos -ala Ipod touch. Other useful features include Bluetooth, SD card reader and VGA output.

In conclusion the EeePC 1000 is a fabulous machine and coming in around the £350 mark it won’t break the bank. For surfing the internet, creating and editing documents and even watching movies this is a perfect alternative to the full blown laptop.

Pros – Large screen and multi touch pad
Cons – Weight
Engine Room Rating: 4/5

Next up I had a look at the offering from MSI, aptly named the Wind. While MSI have largely kept to motherboards and graphics cards in the past, they have come out guns blazing with their ‘Wind’ Mini-Notebook and have a genuinely stylish product that will give their rivals a good scare.

Going for around £330 this definitely won’t break the bank and is loaded with plenty of goodies, such as Bluetooth, 4-in-1 Card reader, VGA output and 1.3mp integrated webcam.  Plus the usual 10” screen, 1GB ram and 80GB hard drive.         

One of the Winds biggest selling points is its looks: it screams sleek and sophisticated, and it is ultra portable at only 1kg.

The screen is a pleasure to behold and keyboard is extremely responsive, with well set out keys. 

Unfortunately for the Wind it is let down by battery life and only manages around 2 hours movie viewing between charges.  But MSI have a larger 6 cell battery in the pipeline that addresses this problem.

So for a Mini-Notebook that looks the part and does what it’s meant to then the MSI Wind is a winner, and cheaper than most rivals.

Pros- Great Screen, responsive keyboard
Cons- Average battery life
Engine Room Rating: 3.5/5

While HP has entered the Mini Notebook market later than it‘s rivals it does present a terrific model on its first time out.  Enter the heavyweights at HP with the Mini 1000

Based on the ultra portable business 2133 Mini-Note laptop, HP has kept the best features, i.e. the large comfortable keyboard (92% of a full size laptop keyboard) and thin body.

For the typical price of £400 you get the same Atom processor, 10” screen, 1GB Ram, 60GB hard drive, wireless and Windows XP, USB

The screen has edge to edge glass which is borrowed from the new Apple MacBooks, and while this is aesthetically pleasing it does prove to up the glare factor.

All in all this is a worthy contender to sit up there with the EeePCand Wind, mainly due the fact that HP did right by the average user and kept the 2133’s large keyboard. Look out for the Mini 1000 to fly off the shelves when it becomes available in February.

Pros – better keyboard, thinner
Cons- Limited expansion, shiny screen, proprietary drive slot
Engine Room Rating: 3/5

Another one of the ‘big dogs’, Acer have joined the Netbook party with their take on what ultra portable ultra cheap computing should be: I present the Aspire One.

Like the HP Mini 1000 Acer have plumped for the biggest keyboard possible and succeeded, well almost. (They managed 95% of a full laptop keyboard) So you could pretty much touch-type on this as normal without losing much speed.  The compromise is the small touchpad with buttons mounted on either side instead of below, which can take some getting used to.  Elsewhere you will find the usual connectivity: usbx3, VGA output, mic/headphones, integrated webcam and network port.

But instead of one SD card read slot there are two. One is meant for semi-permanent use to add valuable space. Though it might not be needed as the £320 model comes with an 80GB hard drive, 1GB of ram and the Atom CPU.

Probably the biggest noticeable difference between the Aspire One and its competitors is the 8.9” screen.  But Acer have an ace up their sleeve and it comes in the form of an optional 3G/HSDPA adaptor, so simply plug in your 3G enabled sim card and you’re good to go browsing anytime anywhere.

Acer have thus capitalized on an unused, but often needed feature and this will be an important selling point in the Mini-Notebook sales war.

Pros- 3G Card, twin SD slots,
Cons- touchpad, battery life
Engine Room Rating : 4/5

Now with more and more of the big dogs sitting up and taking notice of this niche in the market (Dell have a Netbook in the pipeline and Packard Bell aren’t far off)  this technology is only going to get better, faster and cheaper much, much quicker.

Article Written by: Mike Burgondeeeeee.

Mobile and Home Working

On Thursday 15th Jan we ran a free ‘Mobile and Home Working’ Ninja Skills training hour at Adam St in Central London for 20 small businesses.

The hour is filled with 100 or so ‘ top tips’ delivered in a fun and interesting format. We ask attendees to take at least 3 tips back to the office that will change the way they work, saving time frustration.

These sessions are run within the context of ‘We don’t know what we don’t know!’. Every 6 weeks we offer a different subject.

Some attendees kindly offered to be filmed post session to tell us what they thought…. (apologies in advance for the poor audio quality in the videos below)