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The PC vs Mac debate is of religious proportions. It can easily start bar brawls, result in wars and may ultimate result in the end of civilization.

Okay, we exaggerate a little, but since it’s Friday we thought some PC biased folk would quite like this humourous video and there might even be some Mac fanboys who can see the funny side.

Warning: NSFW (maybe)

Technorati Tags: Apple, Bill Gates, funny, humor, humour, Mac, Microsoft, Steve Jobs, Windows, YouTube

Forget alcohol, forget heroin, the new addiction is “Technology”.

Technorati Tags: addict, addiction, technology, Word of Warcraft, WoW

Have you heard what Bill Gates said about Windows Vista? No! Well here goes and listen closely!

Your ears aren’t playing tricks, he’s saying that Windows Vista could well have been a candidate for more polish before it was shipped. Not really a revelation there!

However, it is fair to say that Microsoft have been working hard and Windows Vista is getting there now. A few customisations and a fully patched Windows Vista computer is now something we can recommend for home and some business customers.

We’d add Office 2007 as a close second place for more polish and that is even after Office 2007 SP1.

There is no truth in the rumour circulating the Internet that Office 2007 team members got polishing kits in their Xmas stockings… no truth at all. But it has been reported that the shiniest shoes in the US can be found in Seattle.

Technorati Tags: Bill Gates, Microsoft, polishing kit, Office 2007, Vista, Windows

This is a generic freephone telephone number used by BT India operation to show they’ve tried to contact you. If you don’t want to be contacted by their marketing people on a regular basis then you need to phone their sales team to tell them to stop the nuisance calls.

Why do we call them nuisance calls? Well a BT representative will initiate an unsolicited call and ask for details that they should already have. Let’s put this another way! They phone as BT and ask you to supply personally identifiable information that BT should already know - suspicious or what? Don’t they see why this procedure has serious data security and privacy issues?

How do people know that the call is indeed from BT without the customer hanging up and performing a 1471? They don’t! Ringing the number back is pretty worthless anyway, as all you get is a pre-recorded message saying BT phoned and they’ll call back. Again, how do customers know this isn’t part of a scam by fraudsters? You’d suppose that calling a different known BT customer service number and asking them if they called would be a solution, but no this appears to not be the case. They don’t seem to be able to tell you why they called earlier, a point revealed this morning when such an incident happened at our office. .

How do companies like BT fix this problem? They need to set-up a reverse security check system that allows us, the customers, to verify their identity! No one should be giving away data that could compromise their privacy to any person making an unsolicited telephone call.

Technorati Tags: 0800 3289393, BT, identity, nuisance calls

One of the innovations in Vista is the ability to easily upgrade to a higher version. Basically, Vista ships with all the features installed, but the functionality that is switched on depends on the license purchased/supplied. The purchase of a new license key upgrades to a higher version of Vista and switches on the additional functionality for this new version.

More details and the upgrade order process are here.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Vista, Windows, Windows Anytime Upgrade

For those of you who may have missed it, Microsoft Small Business Accounting was released a short time ago. Even although our US cousins have had their version for over a year, it took a while to get the UK version ready! It would appear that the UK and US have incompatible tax procedures and systems.

However, most people don’t realise that Microsoft have made available a simple cut down version for FREE. Yes, that’s right: zero pounds and zero pence is all you have to fork out! Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2008 will be suitable for many startup small businesses that rely on Excel and / or Word to do invoicing. It must be worth giving it a try when it’s not going to cost you a penny.

For those people who need a more feature rich version, the “Pro” version is competitively priced at £149.95. A 60 day trial is available if you’d like to see what all the buzz is about!

Microsoft looks to have designed a Sage and Quickbooks killer! Providing the Express (free) version will result in a rapid adoption of this new accounting package and result in this becoming the No1 accounting package in the UK. Move over Sage, the days of buying out any decent competition has now gone!

More information and downloads of the software can be found here.

Technorati Tags: accounting, Microsoft, Office Accounting, Office Accounting Express, Quickbooks, Sage

Best wishes to all our customers, suppliers and website visitors for a happy and prosperous 2008.

Technorati Tags: Happy New Year

Recently, the Acer D2D Recovery process was explored by us, with repair instructions provided for certain setups. Dell also have a similar system, Dell System Restore by Symantec, that can be just as easily broken!

Thankfully, Dan Goodell has already done the investigative work and come up with some tools to assist in analysing and fixing problems with the DSR system. Everything you need to know about this system and how to fix it can be found here.

Just like our earlier Acer warning, this is an advanced topic that should only be tackled by someone who knows what they are doing!!! You have been warned.

Technorati Tags: Dan Goodell, Dell System Restore, Dell, DSR, Symantec