You Know If It Isn’t Broken
This week we have still been seeing a lot of activity with phishing scams. There are a lot of emails circulating trying to suggest that you have missed a parcel delivery or that customs is holding a parcel for you and urging you to click on a link or open a Word document to find out more. Please look at the original email address or the reply to email address which is often a convoluted attempt to look like Australia Post or UPS.
The other email that occasionally finds a willing victim is the type along the lines of – I am writing to you because of my extreme miss-fortune of disease or dismemberment or family death and only need a few dollars to prevent certain death or worse. Just think for a moment about this plight and whether the originator from whichever 3rd world country would even have the funds to have a computer and Internet connection? Don’t let your good nature turn you into a good sucker.
With the above scams and also a few instances of CryptoLocker virus we often have customers asking why their anti-virus program didn’t stop whatever misfortune happening? The answer is that they are a helpful prevention but by no means do they offer a total fail safe system. Do you think that if you have really good tyres and brakes on your car that you will never have an accident!
Another near disaster from this week was a customer who had purchased a new desktop PC from us and within 2 hours of picking it up they were on the phone in a state of panic as they had decided to run the Windows setup disk again – in case it needed it! When you get a PC or laptop home and it is all working fine then don’t be tempted to put a disk in and run it ‘just in case’. Always adopt the old adage of “if it aint broke, don’t try and fix” as this applies to computers just as much as anything else in this world.
If a PC has all of the features that you are needing – if it browses the Internet, sends / receives emails and prints then there are no magical features that the original Windows disk will give you. For a while now all of the available features in Windows are loaded automatically with the initial install – even if they are not activated. You now only have to go to the control panel to activate extra features which does not require the original disk. This is also the same for Microsoft Office versions.
We still get people shopping around for computer prices and saying that they have been told to stay with Windows 7 or Windows 8 – this is not a smart idea. Technology never stands still and especially in the world of IT. If you are not trying to get to the latest versions of Windows / Office / MYOB / Reckon when you upgrade then it is akin to always swimming against the current – not fun. If there were something really wrong with Windows 10 then there would be 300 million people worldwide that would be pretty upset!
The only problems that we see with Windows 10 is either small problems with the annual anniversary update or mostly when Windows 10 has not been setup correctly. Either of these can be fixed very simply by a tech that knows what he is doing. On this same subject we normally get the ‘too hard’ problems after a lot of other people have had a go.
If you are a motor mechanic they you will know exactly what I am talking about. You often get a problem brought to you that could have been fixed in 20 minutes in the first place but because some butcher has had a play it will now take 2 or 3 hours and a greater amount of expertise. In nearly all, but unfortunately not in every case – you get what you pay for.
Future Byte Me topics can be emailed to [email protected] and Bruce is contactable at Kerr Solutions, 205 Musgrave Street or on 49 222 400.
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