Technology

A salesperson has guided you through the purchase of a new PC (desktop or laptop) and it?s now sitting in a box in your home. Assuming you can see the little symbols showing where to plug in the keyboard and mouse (which in reality are usually all just USB these days anyway), you should be good to just plug everything in and go, right?

Ah, well, almost.

Chances are that most PCs you?ll drag home from a retail store?have a manufacturers release of Windows 8 installed on them. Unfortunately, there are usually a ton of updates that have been released by Microsoft since that PC has its software installed ? the most important being the immensely helpful upgrade to Windows 8.1

Time Magazine�has just told me that the way to end the gender gap in tech is to run girl�s summer coding camps.�Sure.

And then what do you do when those girls try to enter the industry? How are you going to ensure that their potential employer gives them and equal chance � and an equal�salary? How will you ensure that her peers will cheer her on,�value her�opinion and accept her recommendations? And what happens if, heavens forbid, those girls don�t actually like to code and�write off the industry because of it?

I�ve seen a few discussions amongst the Australian IT community recently from people who are very anti-Cloud. Aside from privacy concerns (NSA access to data centres not located in Australia) and Internet infrastructure concerns (yes, many businesses still have pitiful Internet speeds), the next favourite objection involves every time a Cloud service has ever has an outage.

Microsoft�s Office 365 service didn�t help my cause today with a 3hr�degradation in service, where emails couldn�t be sent or received for a number of customers. When the service was restored though, all the emails caught up.

An IT technician migrated a customer over to Office 365, including using the hosted Microsoft Exchange service for email. He followed the right steps, verified their own domain name, adjusted the MX record and added the right SPF entry.

However, some people sending to this email domain were receiving a delivery failure report error (though some people could send to them successfully):
SMTP error from remote mail server after RCPT TO::
host recipientdomain.com [223.99.99.99]: 550-Please turn on SMTP Authentication in your mail client.
550-delivery5.spamserver.com [116.99.99.99]:54447 is not permitted to relay
550 through this server without authentication.

Today I upgraded my laptop to Windows 8.1 Pro. By �upgrade� I actually mean backed up, formatted & installed Windows cleanly. It went surprisingly well and was pretty fast. The only Microsoft glitch I had were some updated that failed to install until after I rebooted, then away they went (though they gave me no indication that a restart was needed).

I�d been running QuickBooks Pro 2012/2013, so it was time to install the new version � Reckon Accounts Pro 2013. And this is where I went around in circles.
The product is supported on Windows 8, but the installation failed with �Error 1920. Service QuickBooks Database manager Service (QBCFMonitorService) failed to start.� The installation would then roll back.
This kb was hopeless:http://www.quicken.com.au/kb/issue_view.asp?ID=4906
And another kb was hopeless that told me to delete a bunch of folders (that hadn�t been created) and try it again. It mentioned that my installation was having trouble connecting to the company database file, which made no sense seeing as I�d pick the stand-alone client option (as our company file is on our file server, no my laptop).

Windows XP laptop with a DVD writer not working � can�t see or play CDs or DVDs, not even appearing as a drive letter.

Device manager shows the drive with an exclamation mark and the error:
�Windows cannot start this hardware device because its configuration information (in the registry) is incomplete or damaged. To fix this problem you should uninstall and then reinstall the hardware device. (Code 19)�

The troubleshooter suggest uninstalling & reinstalling the device, which gives exactly the same error. Updating drivers & windows etc didn�t help. It was hard to find any information on this message that actually related to the registry.

I had the pleasure of showing a team the features of their new CRM software. Have I lost you yet with how boring that sentence is? Fortunately the reality was far from boring.

To me�� the CRM system is a plugin to a Joomla website. There are some bits I can configure & some bits I can�t (especially as I�m not the Joomla site admin nor do I ever ever want to be.
To the business owner�� the system means no more monthly fees to a Cloud CRM system. This one off purchase will last her for at least 3 years and will handle the growth she is expecting. It�s also one place to see how her sales pipeline is looking & to get instant access to the conversations had with & information that�s been provided to her customers & prospective customers.
To the team members�� this is a �central console�, one place to get a picture of what they have on the go and what others are working on too.

Just a quick post to show you some spam emails I�ve been receiving. My fantastic spam filter (http://www.ctscleanmail.com/) has been quarantining this stuff, but the subject AND the fact they are coming from the same domain name earthlink.net made me curious enough to do a little more research.

A quick internet search shows that while earthlink.net is a valid email provider, it has been known to have issues with spam from user�s accounts in the past, especially spam that has been coded to include your name in the subject. See this July 2011 blog post�http://blog.onlymyemail.com/endless-spam-from-earthlink/

Disturbing email doing the rounds over the long Easter weekend in Australia, pretending to be from BigPond. I?m blogging about this in the hope that you?ll find this entry?if you receive that email and Google it first.? It?s a scam, and a very clever one.

First the details: sender address?ebilling@bt.com?(that?s your first alarm bell-bt.com is not a bigpond or telstra domain name)

Subject: Your ADSL Service Cancellation Notice?(second alarm bell ? I am not and have never been a BigPond ADSL customer)

Logitech Australia Product Tester � Harmony One Remote (Dec 2010)

Logitech Australia reached out to its social media community and asked for volunteers to test some of their products.� I was accepted as one of the �chosen few� and here is my completely unbiased report on their product.� Enjoy!

On arrival, the Harmony One remote was staring at me through clear plastic, just waiting to escape!� The packaging did a clever job of hiding all of the boring bits (software installation CD, instructions, charge cradle and cable), whilst leaving the feature product on clear display.� The plastic was a bit of a mission to get in to� or maybe that was just my impatience!