2013-September-05

Well, blink and another two months have gone flying by! The Green Books for August and September have been published since the last new report, continuing my series of regular security articles. As highlighted previously, the two versions are slightly out of synch so the Over Wyre editions contained articles 8 and 9 (external wifi and shopping and banking) with Garstang including 7 and 8 (passwords and external wifi). You can always see the content of all these items by clicking on the Articles links below.

The problems for people experiencing issues with their email accounts being compromised seem to have died down again now, thankfully. But please do be aware that if you suddenly start receiving a lot of 'undeliverable' messages for emails you didn't actually send or people you know complain that you've sent them something odd, then it's time to take action (see 02 July News for detailed advice or give me a ring).

Windows 8 is now gradually starting to become much more widely used, with a number of new customers needing a hand to get going with this. At first this seems to be a totally different beast to anything we've seen before, and it can take a bit of effort to find some things which previously were available with a couple of clicks. However, once you get past the initial "what on earth...?" stage, it's actually a pretty good system and I'm sure it's going to turn out to be quite a popular upgrade - eventually, and especially after the first major update appears in about October. I do think it needs a mouse when using a laptop - trackpads seem to be a bit more difficult to control with things popping up unexpectedly whenever you put the slightest bit of pressure on it!

Moving on from the newest version of Windows on to the subject of a very old version of Windows - XP. This one has been out-of-date for a long while (being replaced by Vista in 2006 and then Windows 7 in 2009) but is still receiving security updates from Microsoft. However, that will change in March next year when Microsoft stop providing updates completely so from April it will be much more vulnerable to viruses etc as the bad boys start to target the machines still running XP. I strongly recommend that anyone still using XP takes time now to start making plans for a replacement! More about this next time.

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Finally for this time a grumble from me about the joys of rural living - three power outages in the last month really makes life difficult when you are as involved in technology as I am! Oh well, back up again after three hours, time for some more work.

Don't forget - if there are any clubs or organisations in the area who would like to take advantage of me at one of your meetings, please give me a call to discuss.