Rising technology costs saw SME's increase their IT spending by eight percent in 2007, with increased outsourcing of IT among small businesses. Peter Scargill, IT Chairman for the Federation of Small Business (FSB) said "the amount of spending continues to go up every year as new opportunities emerge in IT". Mr Scargill said "...outsourcing is vital for small businesses to have access to a sophisticated pool of IT knowledge".

I can't disagree with that. For access to a sophisticated pool of IT knowledge call 01746 708114 or use the contact form . 

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Becta, the advisory body on the use of ICT in education in Britain, has released a report cautioning against the deployment of Microsoft Vista and Office 2007 in schools "... as the costs are significant and the benefits remain unclear." Becta give file format incompatibilities, particularly between Office 2007 and earlier versions as an issue, portability of documents between school and home should be ensured to prevent a digital divide and imposing an unnecessary financial burden on parents (ie by making a situation where they had to buy Office 2007). However  "...Vista can be considered where new institution wide ICT provision is being planned." they say. 

There can be no doubt that animal material can be damaged by electromagnetic radiation at radio frequencies - most homes are equipped with a device designed for this purpose (a microwave oven). The amount of damage is dependent on the energy the flesh is subjected to, this in turn depends on the transmitted power, the frequency, the distance from the source and the length of exposure. A microwave oven is an extreme example but how much exposure to r.f. energy can our bodies take without damage?  Is there such a thing as a safe level? Recently the UK Health protection agency cautioned against  allowing children to use wireless laptops on their laps and the French government have warned against allowing children to use mobile phones.

In this article I look at some of the evidence, and suggest ways of minimising the risk of RF exposure, particularly in the home.

You settle down to work, switch on the PC and stare disbelieving at the sceen as you realise your PC isn't going to start up.. For most computer users this is a scenario which I can guarantee you will encounter. The fact is that, although PC's are infinitely more reliable than they were ten years ago, failures can and will happen.

"You should have had a backup" is, you realise, good advice but not helpful at this point if you don't have a backup, so what do you do? There are two things you should do, switch off the pc and call us. Don't try and fix the problem yourself unless you absolutely know what you are doing. Any attempt to re-install the operating system or applications will just over write data on your disc and reduce the chances of recovery. We will get the data off the disc first and then you are free to attempt recovery of the operating system without risk of further damage. If the disc is still spinning (you'll hear it spin up to speed when the machine is switched on) there is every chance that all your data will be recoverable. If we find that your disc is physically damaged we will advise on the next best course of action.

If you haven't yet experienced this problem, and aren't comfortable you have a useable backup, contact us on 01746 708114 or e-mail now for independent advice.

A conversation on Radio 4 the other day discussing the recent data protection (or should that be data loss) stories reminded me of the most important and fundamental principle of information security, that is controlling who has access to your data.  This is simply done by ensuring that every computer user in your organisation has their own unique identity. Users have their own log-on name and password and this gives them access to the data their role entitles them to access, and only that data. In practice this simple principle can fail badly for three reasons....

A far bigger challenge than building and publishing your website is getting people to see it. Not so much a problem if you have a customer base that you can inform via direct marketing but what if you want to attract new customers? This usually means making sure that you rank highly on search engines.

It has to be said that there are no guarantees and no quick fixes when it comes to search optimisation (if anyone tells you otherwise don't believe them), there are a huge number of variables and it can take time for changes to your site to be picked up by the search engines, but there are standards of good practice that will improve the ranking of a site.

There are two main elements to this...

• Know what your customers are searching for
• Build your website to match the search
  

Joomla "out of the box" does not read well to search engines. At estm we have expertise in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and building SEF (Search Engine Friendly) Joomla sites.

 If you currently have a website, Joomla or not, and would like to see it ranked higher in Google and other search engines contact us now for detail of our Search Optimisation service. 

A traditional IT supplier may well offer you a support service whereby if you have a problem you call in an engineer and he investigates the problem. If he can he'll fix the fault there and then, failing that he'll take the affected pc back to the workshop for repair. If this describes your IT support arrangements then contact us now as it's really not good enough.

Imagine a simple scenario where your pc has just crashed, and won't boot up. (Don't think this won't happen to you because it will). Now ask yourself these simple questions..

1. Do I have a backup of my data?
2. How long would it take before I could carry on working with access to all my data?
3. How long would it take to get the failed pc back up and running with all the original applications installed?
4. Can I re-instate my pc without recourse to a site visit from an engineer?

If the answer to question 1 is NO call us now. You are in imminent danger of losing your business.

If the answer to question 2 is more than the time it would take to boot up another machine, contact us , time wasted is money wasted.

If a replacement hard drive is available the answer to question 3 should be no more than a few hours. Modern pc's allow the replacement of hard drives without even needing a screwdriver. You or any of your users should be able to re-install a pc from scratch just by rebooting it. There are a number of different ways of achieving this, contact us now and we'll discuss the most approriate method for you. 

Since the almighty blunder of HMRC losing personal details of every family in receipt of child benefit (25 million people)  (HMRC apologises for data loss ) other similar stories have come to light from private as well as public bodies. Security lapses at a Norwich Union call centre allowed fraudsters to steal 3.3m from pensioners while we learn that the driving standards agency have lost details of 3 million driving test candidates. These cases are almost certainly the tip of the iceberg; for one thing they were discovered and reported whilst most instances of data loss almost certainly go unnoticed and hence unreported. So what can you do to prevent it happening to you?