Oxford-area PC and Mac expert computer support: Whether you are just beginning to use a computer, or are an advanced user with particular requests, I can help with friendly tuition, installations, computer repairs and advice. You can get computer assistance at home or at your office, on Mac or PC.

Call, even if you just need 5 minutes of free advice to get you going.

• Broadband installation
• System upgrades, tuning
• PC and Mac first aid
• Computer security (virus and spyware removal, firewall, parental controls)
• Data rescue, management, syncing, file conversion
• Website design

Home or office computer support visits are available around Newbury, Hungerford, Marlborough, Swindon, Faringdon, Lechlade, Witney, Burford, Chipping Norton, Banbury, Bicester, Kidlington, Aylesbury, Chinnor, Thame, Wheatley, Wallingford, Henley-on-Thames, Goring and Streatley, Pangbourne, Reading:

Contact John on 07530 274279.

Please call and if necessary leave a message. I’ve tried all the mobile networks, and I haven’t found one that gives reception in all of the area I cover!

It is not an easy thing getting the right RAM memory for your PC or Mac. There are so many different kinds. Just because it fits the slot does not mean it is compatible, and even if you do use a compatible memory module, it might not be the best partner for the other memory modules already installed. I have found that Crucial.com/uk have an excellent online scanner that can read the system data from your Mac or PC and tell you what memory modules you can buy. It is extremely useful to me to be able to help clients find the right memory.

In most cases, it can give a number of options, so that if you just want to upgrade one module you can, or you can replace all your modules with memory that maxes out your system and makes best use of its processor. Better still, for those buying relatively expensive Mac hardware, the advice has to be to think twice about getting the RAM memory pre-installed by Apple if you want more than the base configuration. It will almost certainly be more expense than you need, and a system scanner like Crucial’s will enable you to get more for your money.

At the other end of the market, if you are on a tight budget and have bought a cheap PC, especially a little netbook, you can probably cheaply upgrade the memory as they tend to be sold underpowered to keep the price down.

One of the things I also like about Crucial is that it supports really old hardware. Macs for instance just go on and on, and I have recently upgraded my lovely little G4 Mac Cube to 1.5 GB RAM. I would have been a bit stumped as to what to get otherwise.

However, on the subject of upgrading Macs the free MacTracker application* is great for letting you know what is inside each machine. This is possible because Macs are only made by Apple and they know what they put into them, whereas PCs are made it seems by just about anybody out of anything. Which brings me to something the Crucial scanner won’t help you with, and that’s a home-build PC or hackintosh Mac. You just need to remember to hang on to the motherboard documentation…

* MacTracker is also available as an app for your Mac or your iPhone/iPad/iPod

photo: ed.welker

When setting up an Microsoft Exchange mail account on the iPhone you will need to take at least one error message with a pinch of salt. I was running around for days with the settings for an Exchange account.

If the Microsoft Exchange mail set-up doesn’t work and the emails don’t instantly flood in, any error message can indicate how far you have got.

1. If the iPhone asks whether to accept a certificate, it at least means contact with the server has been made. Fed up with this error? Ask the server admin to send you the certificate in an email. Send it to your iPhone unzipped, open the email, tap the attachment and install it. You may get warnings about trusting the certificate. But you do don’t you?
2. The iPhone says the password is incorrect, and it doesn’t accept the password that you know is right. (Always the thing with the iPhone keyboard –  the nagging doubt that you haven’t typed it in right) But despite this message, the problem might be nothing to do with the password:

Instead, look again at what you have entered in “Domain”. If you are like me and you followed what works in Entourage, you might feel confident that you have it right. But double check. I found it was this “optional” entry that was the cause of my problems. It wasn’t until I used the company domain name that the emails started to arrive (rather than the name of any internal domain, or web email server, or anything else I was given or had ever worked in Microsoft Entourage/Outlook). And then there were no password errors. I have set up a number of iPhones with Exchange accounts and the so called optional domain setting has in fact been crucial.

What I don’t understand is why the iPhone didn’t just say “Unknown Domain” instead of “Incorrect Password”? It would have saved me a day’s messing about.

A good guide to Microsoft Exchange setup here:

http://support.apple.com/manuals/en_US/Enterprise_Deployment_Guide.pdf

Just a quick post to plead with mac users to back-up their stuff. Windows users seem to know they have to back up their stuff, but mac users are lulled into a false sense of security by their macs, especially if they have had years of trouble-free use. But I just came across another iMac with a disk that had suddenly become unuseable. Years of precious photos gone. I tried every disk utility I could find but no joy. This is sad and unnecessary because with TimeMachine* and a USB hard disk it is 2 clicks for hourly back-ups forever. How to here: http://macliveit.com/backup-and-restore-your-mac/

There are those unwilling to back up their whole mac, who perhaps just want backups of their pictures or music, etc. These could just be put on a few USB keys for instance. To save copying the whole lot manually each time there are utilities that will keep two folders in sync. My favourite is the free software Silverkeeper by Lacie. After setting source folder on your mac, and the destination folder on your USB key, the back-up is a one click process. You can have many different back-ups configured and they can be scheduled – so you don’t have to click anything. The utility also offers on start-up to back up your whole mac, or just your user folder, but this can be bypassed.

And if actually remembering to connect your USB disk to your Mac is to difficult – or perhaps plain inconvenient – there is the (rather expensive) TimeCapsule by Apple which will accept TimeMachine backups wirelessly over your wifi network. How to again here: http://macliveit.com/backup-and-restore-your-mac/ You can configure a cheaper wireless “NAS” box to do the same thing, but check support for TimeMachine first, and don’t expect help from Apple.

Persuading people to back-up is a bit like selling them a pension – they know it is important but they put it off. But Apple have at least made it easy, so please do set this up today.

*To use TimeMachine users of older macs need to upgrade to OS X 10.5 Leopard, or OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

Open DNS a is an excellent free service for home and small business* users which can give your router parental controls and filter your internet connection for all the devices that use it. Nowadays, internet access is not limited to the family PC.  All sorts of devices can access the web through your router, and as parents, or employers, we should take some responsibility for what may be accessible. The trouble is, you can’t go around putting content filters on all your children’s or employee’s gadgets and devices. This is where OpenDNS comes in. It is able to filter what is available through your network itself, and is easy to configure through a login on their site as well as a few tweaks to the router settings. It protects against undesirable content as well as phishing sites for added internet security. For me this has been a perfect solution.

However, I find that Sky broadband internet users are unable to have their internet filtered through OpenDNS because of how Sky has hard-wired the router they give you. Most routers are fully configurable so that you can choose which servers on the internet direct pages to you (DNS settings). Most people settle for their router’s default anyway, but if you want to change the settings – to OpenDNS servers for instance – it is usually an easy process. But not so with Sky routers. This is probably in the name of quality control or in order to sell you their own, or McAfee’s, limited alternative**. You’d think you could just use a different non-Sky router, but this is near impossible because of how Sky routers authenticate with Sky. Other routers will just not work because Sky won’t admit them to their network.

To get around this I have found that connecting to the sky router through another intermediary wireless access point can work instead. I use an Apple Airport, but any AP would do. I connect it to the Sky router via an ethernet cable, and then use Apple’s Airport Utility (freely available for mac or PC) to configure it. (If you use a different make of wireless access point then it will have its own configuration method). The Airport then passes on the internet connection from the Sky router to the PCs and devices on your network via its own wireless signal. And it’s DNS settings can be configured separately, it can use OpenDNS, thus filtering the internet for all devices connecting to it. In this scenario I have the Sky router’s wireless signal turned off.***

This method has worked well, and saves monkeying around trying to get Sky’s or an alternative router to work. As long as your devices connect to the internet via the intermediary access point they are fully filtered and any undesirable websites are blocked according to the preferences you set on the OpenDNS website.

OpenDNS is well worth setting up and very configurable. It can make the internet a far safer place for your family as well as your finances. I should add that if you need help making your home internet more secure and safer too, please do contact me as it is a service I offer.

* OpenDNS is free for home users, and a lot of us have a small business running on our home broadband. They also do a paid for version and they supply this to some pretty big businesses!

** Limited to Windows PCs. And PCs that you have admin rights over, that is. So when your son’s friend comes over for a sleepover with his laptop and plugs it into your network – McAfee filters will not apply.

***By the way, cunning children/employees who know their stuff could turn on the Sky wireless signal and hide it (from you) at the same time, so that only those who know it is really on, and exactly what it is called, can connect to it. So you should make sure you

1. lock down the sky router with a secure password. Otherwise your filtered intermediary wireless network setup can be bypassed.
2. password protect the intermediary wifi configuration – and I mean its configuration panel, not just a password on its signal.
3. keep the local IP address of the Sky router a secret (change it) as putting that IP into a PC’s connection settings as the router can bypass the configuration on your wifi.