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**** NewsBytes **** NewsBytes **** NewsBytes ****
IE7 to download automatically
Despite a lot of hysterical headlines, Internet Explorer version 7 won't suddenly appear unbidden on the desktops of Windows users, though it will be delivered by the Windows Automatic Updates (AU) facility. According to the MSDN blog on IE7, there will be a prompt Install/Don't/Later for users to click, following the official release in October/November. For those who can't wait, you get it at the MS official IE download site and for those admins who want to prevent IE7 being installed on their workstations, there is a Toolkit to Disable Automatic Delivery of Internet Explorer 7, though MS have advised that everyone should complete preparations by November 1. Read more about the IE7 toolkits.
Seminar: Web 2.0, Accessibility, Finance & CRM
The next free nfpSynergy seminar geared specifically for voluntary and community organisations takes place on Thursday 9th November 2006. Find out about "Web 2.0" from Jamkit, learn more on 'Assistive Technology in Practice' from AbilityNet and hear Roger Chester at LionHeart explain integrating finance, CRM, the Internet and an extranet in 'Joining up the dots'. More info and booking at http://nfpsynergy.net/eventsandseminars/.
Demon web hosting dive
Some Demon clients recently had problems with lack of web hosting facilities though only a handful of our clients were affected. The problem for those who lost sites was that, while upload is relatively easy, either their web admin wasn't available or the passwords were not known, or no current local copy of the site was kept. The lesson is "Don't assume remote web data is secure. Always make your own full copies." The Demon network status page reports that since 25-Oct the previously reported issues on the Demon Web Hosting platform are now resolved.
Spirit of Ubuntu wins users over
Ubuntu, loosely translated as "humanness" in English, seems to have lived up to its Monika as the name given to one of the friendliest Linux operating systems (OS).
Results of Ubuntu Linux desktop tests in the voluntary sector showed positive acceptance from users, who found it intuitive despite adverse prejudices. By contrast, contracted techies were resistant to switching from Microsoft, which caused concern among management levels about support and existing investment. Read the report on
Ubuntu Linux computers distributed in the East of England Region.
XP SP1 support ends
Those who still haven't applied Service Pack 2 (SP2) to their PC should do so asap, since Windows XP at Service Pack 1 level (SP1) is now officially retired.
More battery recalls
Fujitsu joined a growing list of companies to recall batteries that power laptops and portable devices. The latest battery recall in excess of 250,000 units again concerns a potential fire risk with Sony batteries and follows on similar announcements by Toshiba, Apple and originally Dell back in August. Analysts predict the resulting battery replacements may soak up half of Sony's net profit ($500m) in an exchange affecting up to 10 million computers.
Fujitsu Notebook Battery Exchange Program
Fundraising comparison survey
Ever wondered how well your fundraising compares with other organisations? Your chance to find out has arrived with the Global Fundraising Benchmark (GFB) which is collecting headline fundraising results from all charities that participate. The results will be made freely available though individual data will remaremain confidential. The survey deadline is 30th November.
**** end of NewsBytes ****
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1. Shake-up at the Office
Where do you buy your office software? Will the halcyon days of Microsoft's flagship soon be over now that you can pick up a package at the supermarket or even find opens source offerings for free? | ||
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In the beginning was The ClichéFrom the minute Microsoft produced their first graphical version of Word, the landscape of word processing changed irrevocably; from that of mere typing to one of layout, font manipulation, picture placement and eventually on-the-fly spelling correction, grammar and a whole host of other minor editing tools. Soon, Excel arrived on the scene, with that and the associated capability of embedding live spreadsheet charts in documents to produce flashy reports with up-to-the-minute stats diagrams. With the appearance of Access database and Powerpoint slide presentation, the buzzwords not only grew popular enough to enter dictionaries and encyclopaedias, but sufficiently numerous to warrant the label “suite”. The addition of 'killer application' Outlook, bundling indispensable email, contacts, calendars and to-do lists completed the set. The rest is Office history and, aside from what can now be looked back on as minor skirmishes in the 90s with Office-like competitors such as Novell/WordPerfect, Microsoft's flagship collection of tools has grown to become the software of choice for the office worker and many a home user too. And there it rests one might conclude, given the over-arching dominance of the MS empire. Except that moves are afoot to unseat the king of the office from his leather-bound and buttoned executive swivel chair. Office SuppliesWe take a look at the stalwarts and the new pretenders, in descending order of price. A question of compatibility For as long as people have wanted to exchange documents (or any other digital data), the thorny issue of “Will I be able to read/edit it?” has remained. There are broadly two solutions:
What has become the standard office software for Windows PC users still moves from strength to strength with its latest impending incarnation, Office 2007. The full range of modules in the suite-of-choice is now Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access, Outlook, Visio and Business Contact Manager add-in for Outlook. ProsUsability. Difficult to overstate the impact user-friendliness has had on the uptake of any software, and Office has punningly 'excelled' itself in this department, more so than Windows perhaps. A fountain of features from calendaring to collaboration so prolific that '2007' has to look to new display interfaces to prevent overwhelming the user. Wide public acceptance has become a self-fulfilling reason for purchase – the "Why buy something different from everyone else?" motive. The most comprehensive of suites? A burgeoning range of packages (Basic, Standard, Student, Pro, etc) is available to choose from, now with add-ins like Business Contact manager for tracking calls and linking those to calendars and event history. Office updates service from Microsoft are free for the product's support lifetime. ConsPrice! Except for those lucky enough to qualify for discounts, a 'normal' version of Office will set back a commercial company upwards of £300 per user, depending on how many they want to splash out on. Critics also cite bloated programming as an issue, with ordinary installations consuming hundreds of MegaBytes of disc space and slowing down computer processes. One of the few office suites to require critical security patches against hacking. For Apple Mac users, the suite always lags a version or two (currently Office for Mac 2004) and for Linux owners there is no native MS offering, though a Linux MS Office has been talked up as inevitable in the next year or so. No PDF export except via third-party converters. PriceAs many ways to pay as you like: student educational discounts, free MS software, software assurance (SA), charity sector discounts, corporate and open volume licensing schemes for large quantities. Contact us to find out which will give you the best value. The 'second cousin' to MS Office if only because it has endured the competition for years. A full range of modules including Write, Spreadsheet, Presentation, Database, Photopaint, Photoalbum available in 5 increasingly sophisticated suites from Ability Office Basics (4 products) to Ability Office Professional (all 6). ProsLatest version has Office 2003 look and feel. Intelligent menus learn to display only the most-used options. New support for opening and saving of MS Word documents. Thorough auto-spell and grammar checker. Modules can be purchased individually at £19.99. Subscription for 1-year of upgrades to new versions and free email technical support. ConsAs with every other competitor, the worry of up-to-date compatibility with Microsoft equivalents hangs in the air. Features often lag behind the latest MS offering by a version or so. PriceA reasonable £30 to £50 per user, ideal for small offices. The 'cut-down' baby-brother version of Microsoft's flagship Office suite aimed at home users and SoHo start-ups. Word processor, spreadsheet, database, calendar, address book, project organizer, email and Internet tools, currently at version 8.0. ProsBundled free with some new PC purchases. Full range of modules including a database. Generally capable of reading current MS Office formats, though not saving them. Includes enhanced calendar functions like multiple calendars. Powerpoint viewer. ConsFeature list generally lags a year or so behind MS Office features. Tight integration of Outlook is missing. Viewers for products like Powerpoint act as hooks into the more sophisticated Office, and makes it feel like a poorer deal. PriceAround £28 per user where purchased. ODF: the new DOC? A potential rival to Microsoft's reigning .doc format, the Open Document Format goes further in that it encompasses multiple formats like spreadsheets as well as documents. Since the format developed by the OASIS industry consortium is open, rather than proprietary, it is being adopted by an increasing number of other programs too, like Koffice. ODF goes smaller too, compacting the size for efficient transmission by email. Microsoft is funding an Open XML Translator plug-in for Microsoft Office that will be freely available under an open-source licence and that will allow open formats to be brought into Office. The first complete version for Word is due end of 2006. Originally famed for its implementation as a MS Office rival-for-free on the Linux platform, OOo (its geeky alias) has been available as a Windows version too for quite some time. Includes Write (word processor), Calc (spreadsheet), Impress (presentation), Base(database), Draw(graphics) and Math, an algebra and equations tool! (Now that'll come in handy). ProsAs good an Office mimic as you'll find anywhere. The menus, icons and toolbars are as similar to Microsoft's as one could imagine. Phrases like "I can't believe it's not MS" and "How did they get away with it?" spring to mind. Built-in export to Adobe's widely-used PDF format is a doddle to use. Uses and actively promotes Open Document Format (ODF - see panel) - the XML file format used in StarOffice, OpenOffice, IBM's Workplace and the Novell desktop. ConsNo Personal Information Manager (PIM) or email, though plenty of open source alternatives are on offer (Thunderbird). Spellchecker doesn't find repeated words, no grammar checker, though a few projects are underway. Falls down when compared with more sophisticated aspects of Office, like scripts, charts and using spreadsheet as a database. Slow first time start up. PriceFree, plus the time it takes to download from openoffice.org
Not the first attempt at an online office suite by any means (examples like InterOffice go back 10 years), but certainly one of the most intuitive and accomplished. Google bundles together its proliferating set of web tools/services which includes Gmail, calendar, photos, Page Creator (web design), Talk (Instant Messaging and VoIP telephony à la Skype), blog and, latterly but crucially, Docs & Spreadsheets (does what it says), a recent acquisition of a product called Writely. Files are uploaded to Google's servers and all accessed via any browser. No installation required - it's all done online! Wide variety of popular file formats accepted by Docs & Spreadsheets, namely DOC and XLS (Microsoft), ODF and ODS (see panel), RTF (MS Rich Text), CSV (universal comma separated variable). Familiar desktop feel with all the usual toolbar buttons for bold, font, background colour, etc. Real-time document editing with multiple people means online collaboration with tracking of revisions/dates/owners and without the hassle of downloading, configuring and updating software. Work can be published as a web page without web experience and withdrawn again just as easily. Documents contains good intuitive spellchecker with pop-up prompter for suggested words. ConsRelies totally on active Internet connection. Needs a Gmail account, which itself requires you to had received an invitation from another Gmail user. Spellchecker doesn't find repeated words, no grammar checker. No PDF integration. As always, how far are you going to trust a remote company with all your data, and how much mobility value do put in placing all that online? Consider while a computer failure may put you temporarily out of action, adding into this mix ISPs, routers and remote server storage makes for a more volatile scenario. PriceFree, plus the time it takes to sign up to gmail.com Amid jibes of "Pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap", supermarket giant Tesco announced it will offer 6 software titles including office software (Complete Office), security systems (Antivirus & Antispyware, Internet Security), photo editing (PhotoRestyle), Personal Finance and CD/DVD burning (Easy Record), each one coming in under £20. ProsIt's a high street purchase, to be available in 100 stores by the end of October and across the UK over the next year, so you can take it back if you don't like it. Office suite comprises Tesco-branded Ability Office (described above). Security package add-ons will help to make more home PCs secure. ConsComputer support only available via FAQs or a web form at www.tescosoftware.com PriceComplete Office suite is £19.97. What about email? And the calendar?With all the alternative office suites on offer, one module stands out (or rather doesn't) as the missing one, and that's Outlook, the all-singing, email-calendar-task list application with which Microsoft has made its distinctive and user-friendly mark. For email, Thunderbird now has a popular following, supporting all the popular email protocols like IMAP and POP that you could need, and even outstripping current Outlook with self-learning junk mail filtering and full built-in RSS reading capabilities. Two alternative PIMs that warrant attention are SunBird, a stand-alone calendar application, and like Firefox, from the Mozilla stables. From the same supplier there is Lightning, a plug-in that integrates tightly with Mozilla's Thunderbird email application, and from the Open Source Applications Foundation (OSAF) Chandler. All of these beta products are not nearly as fully-fledged as Outlook, but are making rapid progress towards competency, while already offering features such as multiple and shared calendars, iCal imports, synchronising, on- and off-line use. Being open source you can simply download and try them out now. Office on Linux?A story of much talk, no progress, but the possibility of Microsoft releasing a version of Office that will run on Linux is being hailed as "inevitable by some industry specialists. Meanwhile, a Linux-running substitute for the Outlook portion of Office has been satisfied for some years by the versatile email/calendar/PIM Evolution, though the installation is a convoluted process compared to most Windows wizards. Now though, Linux users can share the same application across operating systems by installing Evolution on Windows, a combined effort by Tor Lillqvist and Mark Pinto. When the going gets tough ...... the tough go shopping, and suppliers start slashing prices. Expect to see discounts appearing to head off the competition. When you are as big as Microsoft, it is possible to commandeer a certain degree of muscle-flexing advantage in the market to lure customers back; indeed MS have made offers of free software to UK charities under their grant scheme. The bottom line comes when a large company has to consider losing its margins, perhaps for only a short time, to undercut competitors, though to risk incurring the losses paid for through development can be a game of brinkmanship. In the meantime, the flourishing of alternative products has resulted in a heyday for fresh developers and exciting new features for users. Contacts
-IB-
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2. Who is recycling your old data?
Old computers are disposed of with little or no thought given to removing sensitive data first. | ||
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A recent report on second-hand computer discs purchased from various sources showed that information on the discs was still present or not effectively erased. What's more much of this information could be sensitive or confidential, concluded the report by the University of Glamorgan in conjunction with Edith Cowan University in Australia and BT. The problem arises when organisations dispose of surplus and obsolete computers and hard drives, but fail to put in place adequate procedures to destroy the data and to check that procedures are effective. Of babies and bathwaterThe result is that old computer and drives end up in completely unknown hands with the previous owner's data clearly visible or retrievable. The research involved the purchase of over 300 discs worldwide, from computer auctions, computer fairs or online. Some of the information contained found included payroll information, mobile telephone numbers, copies of invoices, employee names and photos, IP addresses, network information, illicit audio and video files and financial details including bank and credit card accounts! Dr Andy Jones, Head of Security Technology Research at BT, who led the research said, "Given the level of exposure that the subject has received in recent times, the availability of suitable tools to ensure the safe disposal of information, increasing legislative pressure and the increasing literacy of computer users, it is difficult to understand or explain why there is such poor implementation of this knowledge and tools in ensuring that disks are effectively cleaned before they are disposed of. Disc erasing: GMI or DIY?Finding a company that will process the irretrievable purging of data from old drives is not that difficult and you can two such firms at the itforcharities web site. Wiping a hard disc is a job that is easy enough to set running and come back to later, but one shouldn't underestimate that it still takes time and/or space to organise outgoing PCs in a production run to smooth this process. Finding software that does the job of erasing isn't that hard either and, for the purposes of disposing of old PCs and drives, the freely downloadable ones may well be sufficient, for instance Eraser or Active@ Kill Disk Hard Drive Eraser. These programs work by overwriting the drive sectors three times with specific, different characters, constituting one pass. Security experts recommend seven passes like this to render the data completely unrecoverable, but unless you know you're up against professional sleuths with expensive disc recovery hardware, a single overwriting pass will probably suffice. When it comes to the crunch ...Still not convinced that all the software out there on the web that claims to overwrite all your sensitive data actually works? Well, there's a cheaper, less elegant and more immediate way of making the hard disk unreadable - and that, to quote a famous reconstituted potato ad, is to smash it all to pieces! Contacts-IB-
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3. Broadband sharing: a contentious issue
The end of broadband contention ratios? | ||
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In the early days of broadband, sharing your Internet connection with anyone was frowned upon by the serving ISP. This was partly because they could provide specific business-style services for people who wanted to connect to the same line via a router and therefore didn't want to lose potential sales, but also due to an ISP's genuine concern as to whether enough bandwidth would be available for more than one person sharing a home-style broadband service. An ironic stance in a way, since the Internet connection arriving at one's computer was already being shared at the local BT exchange with up to 19 other organisations (eg a 20:1 business contention ratio) or up to 49 other individuals (a 50:1 residential contention ratio). Early adopters would find that they were sharing with very few other subscribers, but now that vast numbers of businesses and home users have switched over to ADSL connections, some local exchanges have reached those saturation levels of 20 and 50 and it is time for the provider - no longer necessarily BT - to bolt some faster hardware and wires into the local exchange. The source of the fundamental problem is a continuous demand for ever faster broadband speeds and who is going to pay for it; ultimately always the consumer, of course, it's just a question of when. One solution was that premium services sprang up to fill the gap, with contention ratios of 5:1 or less, like SDSL with its dedicated 1:1 ratio. In the intervening period, broadband service providers have found all sorts of ways of rejigging Internet tariffs and tackling unfair usage by mega-consumers like online gamers and those sharing huge files across the Internet. Otherwise the result is that organisations suffer slow and intermittent connection speeds at peak traffic times during the day and residential folks gnash their teeth because they can't read email or shop online when they get home. For speeds of 8Mbps and above, the old 50:1 and 20:1 contention ratios are no longer in use and the arrival of BT's Dynamic Line Management [What is DLM?] has meant it is possible to adjust speeds dynamically for the purpose giving a subscriber the optimum rate that their line can take, in other words, optimisation for efficient throughput without the line dropping. Now however it appears that some ISPs are using dynamic contention to apportion tariffs and also to constrict unfair usage: pay more to get a lower contention ratio (less sharing), or conversely, use too much and your contention will go up temporarily. In other words optimisation for the ultimate purpose of prioritising traffic and reducing the load on the ISP. Such techniques are all very well for the provider, but because the amount of sharing going on at any given minute could jump up or down, a subscriber can't actually tell whether they are getting what they've paid for. Conventional speed testers become useless since the only true indication of value would be an aggregation of broadband speeds a subscriber receives over a measured period, and few consumers are going to have the time and patience for that. Though judging from the posts on some blogs and newsgroups, there are some diligent souls persistent enough to badger their ISPs with evidence of poor performance they have collected over several weeks. Contacts
-IB-
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4. The big picture: screens and viewing distances
How a new generation of screen technology has affected the way we view computer screens. | ||
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In the 1990s, the screens that most of us sat glued to were CRT made of glass and, by today's standards, of modest dimensions. Sitting across a room from a TV screen in those days raised few health fears, but mention the words "computer" and "monitor" in the same breath and the next phrase on everyone's lips was "radiation emissions". Pregnant women were the first to be singled out for early protective measures, such as limiting time spent in front of a PC. Not that these fears were unfounded or even conclusively resolved, but they were based on the undeniable statistic that some particles were emitted beyond the edge of the screen at the user - outside the box as it were. In the decade that's passed since then, two major changes have taken place: screens have got flatter and bigger. But the overlooked factor is that LCDs have paved the way to safer displays. Got an old dead CRT monitor? Don't put in the bin. 
Come closerSince plasma has arrived in the living room, we no longer hear complaints about the puniness of the screen area nor worries about the electrons being bombarded into couch potatoes; simply the resounding smug silence of thousands of TV fans dug deep into their sofas, broken only by uproar when the ball hits the back of the net – that'll be some way into the dining room on a very large screen. Clearly the picture has grown enormously while the rooms and viewing distances have stayed the same. But what of computer users who now sit closely in front of 19-inch monitors or 24-inch wide-screens? When does close become too close for comfort? How close should I sit?One starting point is the recommendation of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) that states for "optimum viewer enjoyment" one's field of view should only be 30% occupied by the screen; looked at another way, we should have room to view another two similar screens to the left and right of the one we focus on. Compare this with screens of old which occupied just 11% of our field of view. The advent of wider, hi-res displays turns the 30% rule into reality and allows us to sit closer to the screen. Putting this method into practice might place us about 24 inches from 20-inch widescreen or 17 inches from standard 17-inch monitor of 4:3 ratio, depending on one's personal field of view. It's certainly easy to remember, if rough and ready. Another SMTPE 'rule of thumb' was that an observer's viewing distance should be 3.5 times the monitor's diagonal dimensions, or 4 to 6 picture heights. That places the viewer over 1 metre away from even a 17" screen, which might outstrip the width of most desks. Bear in mind though that these calculations are based on typical cinema viewing. Arriving at a resolutionThe majority of 17-inch monitors sold today have the capability of displaying 1280 x 1024 pixels – a 60% leap on the 800 x 600 of before – and yet typical screen sizes have only matured from say a 15-inch diagonal to 17 inches, just 26% larger. Wide-screens often boast 1080 by 1650 or even up to 2000 pixels in width. These extra pixels often translate to a higher resolution, so we are effectively able to view much smaller font sizes, in some cases matching the tiny letters achievable on printed paper. So, a simple baseline would be "For a given font size, are you reading from the same distance as you would if it were in print?" A useful comparison for text, but not so helpful for working with images. Nor should we forget that reading print in natural, reflected daylight is a very different experience from reading text projected from a transmitted light source, viewed (probably) in artificial ambient light. Technician, monitor thyselfAt the end of the day, eye strain and posture matter as much as any pixel measurements. Taking screen breaks and remembering to adjust contrast and brightness controls (normally using buttons on the front of the monitor bezel) to suite one's eye comfort is also a faster way of improving the viewing experience while maintaining your health. -IB-
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5. Vista security: fireworks on the horizon
A decision to bar security specialists from the inner secrets of Microsoft's new operating system has sparked controversy. | ||
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Place yourself for a minute in the mind of a hacker. The security of desktop PCs has been getting tighter over recent years and you're looking for the easiest target. You don't need to look further than a miniature version of the same thing: the PDA. Heaps of people own a small handheld and - hey - many of them are even based on a portable version of Windows. With nearly half of all tech enthusiasts carrying a Personal Digital Assistant and connecting or synchronising them with office computers, this makes for an easy point of entry into large numbers of organisational networks where a clamp down on such security holes has not even touched the horizon of IT admin staff. Fortunately there have always been security specialists and some offer control of even these 'rogue' devices, broadening the security perimeter beyond just the conventional confines of physical machinery within the building. One such is security firm McAfee, whose Total Protection series of suites provide an excellent match to security problems for both large and small organisations. Saluting the kernelThe method employed by McAfee and others has up until now been a partnership with Microsoft, who has granted these specialists access to the very core of the operating system, called the kernel. Unlike open source operating systems, such as Linux-based ones, the Windows kernel is a proprietary and a well-kept secret, though with some historic exceptions. However, for the forthcoming Windows Vista, due in 2007, Microsoft has given notice that it will lock out specialist vendors, which, at an appropriate time of year has lit the blue touch paper to a smouldering row, at least in public. The MS justification is that secrecy maintains security; the fewer people that are cognoscent of Windows' internal workings, the fewer the leaks and resulting potential code cracks, so the reasoning goes. Indeed there have been some famous breaches in the past, with sizeable chunks of code for Windows XP being published on the web for all to see - effectively the foundation plan for a Guy Fawkes-style hacker assault. Surfing on a rocketThe argument in the security specialists' camp is that Microsoft is master when its comes to the upper level like the Graphical User Interface, but has never quite cut it with deep-down, hardened security measures. Many in the industry would agree, though to its credit, MS released a massive update during 2005 in the form of XP Service Pack 2, thus responding to many gripes about security weaknesses in Window XP. 'Leave us to look after security' say the specialists, and while cynics will mutter about boys and jobs, there's no denying that the spawning of a large number of computer security firms has created niche work for them and safer PCs for organisations and end-users; we only have to look at the specialist-driven anti-spyware market which grew out of small start-ups to witness that. What's more, Microsoft has actively encouraged partnership with developers within its Developer Network (MSDN). The gently-glowing fuse of this altercation is already threatening to take off with rumours that Vista is already broken (though the picture remains confused), meaning that key defences may have been hacked even before the system has made it to the market place. Whatever happens next, it Looks like the 2007 launch of Windows Vista will be an interesting one. Contacts
-IB-
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6. Q&A: Repairing an old laptop
Question 
Hi Mark, We have a Dell Inspiron laptop which is completely dead, it looks from our records as if it is nearly 4 years old. Would I be right in thinking that it's probably not worth trying to get it fixed? | ||
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The short answer is Yes, you would be right, and, No, it's hardly worth trying to get it fixed, at least not professionally. The first reason is that laptops have proprietary parts and nothing goes out of fashion faster than small electronics components these days. Because size, shape, weight and colour is everything in the miniaturised world of small notebook PCs and phones, manufacturers cannot keep spare parts for very long - or don't bother to. The second reason is that the brand "Inspiron" indicates lowest range of portable PC, which is aimed at home users and entertainment rather than business and thus likely to be installed with Windows XP Home or Media Center. Since this is a low-cost, high-turnover product often sold in a compendium price bundle, it is generally not intended to be maintained well into its dotage and that includes the hardware. Having said that, a popular model is more likely to be reparable than an obscure one, and Dell is certainly up there at no.1. The first port of call should be to go back to the manufacturer or supplier to at least find out if they have services and parts. Failing that, you are free to chance your arm with any number of repairers simply by Googling "laptop repair". The other ray of hope is that if "completely dead" translates to a hard disc fault, it may be possible to bring the laptop back to life with special recovery tools like those from Ontrack, or by going to a recovery specialist. Should all of these avenues lead to dead ends, the last bastion of hope still remains in the form of The Altruistic Amateur Enthusiast. Since you have nothing to lose and a revived laptop to gain, tracking down a geeky relative or friend may provide a solution for you and an interesting challenge for them. -IB-
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Clicks of the Trade - Excel format painter
--- Quick tips for happier clicks! --- | |||
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-IB-
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