Computer Solutions in the greater brisbane area.
October, 2008
Archive for October, 2008
McDonalds announce free wifi
Great news for us iPhone users is that McDonalds is going to roll out free wifi access at pretty much all its restaurants. There is to be some filtering to protect the young ones, but all in all if I need to check my email the service McDonalds will offer should do the trick nicely.
Of course, I won’t be buying any of their food, but I could see myself grabbing a skinny latte for the privilege.
2008 Shift Solutions Excellence in I.T. Winner
The Redbank Plains State High School awards evening was held last night, and our 2008 I.T. Award winner was announced. Congratulations to Vannasouk Phadilok for his outstanding achievement in taking out this years prize.
It was again fantastic to see the large numbers of students being awarded and celebrated, including last years I.T. Award Winner Adam Linsket picking up the Ron Rice Quiet Achiever Award.
Congratulations to all students!
Gmail adds auto responder
Gmail users can now setup auto responders, which Gmail calls “canned responses”, to automatically reply to emails matching any filter the user can dream up. Looks like a worthwhile innovation, full details in the writeup on C-Net.
Bigpond Wireless Liberty
Bigpond have announced that they are bringing “shaping” to their wireless internet offerings; Now they have a 5 Gig plan at $89.95 and 10 Gig at $129.95 per month, but there are no longer any fees if you go over those limits, just a slow down in speed.
This is good news for the many customers Telstra force to use this service because it refuses to expand it’s ADSL network to accommodate demand. Here’s hoping our government gets its finger out and gets moving on the national broadband network, which will, if done right, solve this anti competitive problem once and for all.
In the mean time, users suffering along with the Bigpond Wireless service should phone Bigpond immediately and ensure they are on one of these “liberty” plans. The cost of the previous plans for excess data can easily lead to hundreds or thousands of dollars in excess charges.
Dodgy ISP charging for complaining.
I just got wind of a local Brisbane based ISP which had as part of its terms of service a fee for clients who were so aggrieved that they needed to take their complaint to the TIO.
crn.com.au has a writeup about it, the company and it’s director have been fined. I think a better punishment would have been to force the company to pay any costs incurred by its current clients to switch to a different provider, which seems like what the unhappy customers would want.
Fake Anti Virus ripping off users
PandaLabs says that more than 30 million internet users have been tricked into installing fake anti virus software that steals personal information and bank details. They report that there are now over 7000 known variations of the fake AV scam, with that number increasing.
It is thought that about 3 percent of users have been tricked into paying for these fake programs, generating about A$19.5 Million for the scammers every month.
Anyone reading our site regularly who doesn’t already have our recommended anti virus solution should get in touch immediately, and from then on be sure you are running a legitimate and quality product.
Quality Tech Support from Bigpond
If you weren’t sure if you should switch to a different ISP, then an APC article this week should convince you it’s time to look at other options.
Firstly, All Bigpond technical support will be done in the Philippines from early next year. If that wasn’t going to be painful enough, Bigpond are going to force all clients requiring technical help to go through a painstaking computerised support system. That doesn’t just mean you have to use voice prompts to get through, you have to actually go through a whole raft of questions with a computer, before you can speak to a human.
Having said all that, you can listen to a typical call with the computer at the bottom of the APC article; I tend to think as painful as it is, in many cases the computer is probably more helpful than the call centre staff!
Queensland fraudster in bankruptcy proceedings
Word today that Gav’s Mobile Computer Services has been put into bankruptcy by Microsoft after the software maker proved that the business was selling illegal copies of Microsoft Office.
When Mr Richardson, the principle, failed to pay damages awarded by the courts of $31,383, Microsoft was successful in proving that he had committed an act of bankruptcy.
You can be assured that any software supplied to you by Shift Computer Solutions is 100% legal and sourced through proper approved channels. This guarantees you our ongoing support, as we won’t be bankrupted due to illegal behaviour.
Trend Micro destroys windows
I’ve just become aware (yes, let to the party I know!) that Trend Micro PC Cillan earlier this month falsely identified a windows dll file as a trojan and deleted it, rendering affected machines useless and causing their owners to have to call in tech support to fix the problem.
This isn’t the first time Trend have had this kind of problem, with reports back in April of a similar problem. Norton Anti Virus has also suffered from similar faults in the past.
We continue to recommend users of these packages consider upgrading to a more robust solution; Give us a call for more information.
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