I receive emails and phone calls every day from worried people all around the Costa Blanca, asking whether the email they have just received from Microsoft, Yahoo, Adobe, Apple (insert any company name you like here), is legitimate. Of course, the honest answer is “I don’t know without looking at it”. Most of these emails are so sophisticated and look so much like the real thing that it’s almost impossible to tell whether the one you’ve just received is a scam, spam or legitimate so this month I hope to give you some pointers in order to help you figure out truth from fiction.
Would you believe that it’s been 8 years this month since I started writing for this auspicious publication? In those 8 years we have covered many topics from backups, solid state drives and upgrading your computer all the way through to astronomy and astro photography! The first article was related to the “I’m calling from Microsoft” scam and its probably worth revisiting this, as believe it or not, its still doing the rounds.
So, although I am sure that many of you will have heard of this and other scams where you receive a phone call from someone purporting to be from Microsoft / Apple / Your Internet Service Provider / your bank etc. to tell you that your computer is, sending out spam / viruses / compromised / etc. Read this entire article »
Welcome to 2022 everyone!
I sincerely hope this will be the year that everything gets back to normal – and by normal, I mean that old use of the word, not this funky “new normal” that we all keep talking about. I hope you all had a happy and, just as importantly, healthy festive time over the past few weeks.
It seems that if we want to go anywhere more interesting than the living room or kitchen nowadays, we must carry our Covid passport with us and this month I thought that I would share with you a little app I have found that helps keep a copy of this important document stored in an easily accessible place on your phone or tablet. Read this entire article »
Is it really December already? Wow that year really passed by quickly! Hopefully next year the world will settle down a bit and we can get back to what might be something like normal, fingers crossed.
One of the things that has changed this year is Microsoft’s flagship operating system has been upgraded and if you have a qualifying computer, you can download it for free. Read this entire article »
If you’ve a house here in Spain or holiday apartment, you might have wondered before how great it would be if you could see what’s going on in your home when you’re not there?
Wi-Fi enabled home security cameras have moved on a fair bit over the past few years and are now very easy to setup and use yourself without any specialist knowledge. This month we look at one of the options for home security. Read this entire article »
Nowadays, we are so used to being able to connect wirelessly from our phones / tablets / computers that it´s hard to believe that not so verylong ago Wi-Fi was a thing of science fiction. We’re so connected nowadays that we expect it to work in every part of our homes from our beds to pretty much anywhere we happen to be sitting in, around or outside our houses. Read this entire article »
In the “online world” that we live, I hear two different stances when talking to people about accessing and managing their money online, some – old school – say “I never buy anything online nor do I use online banking” whilst others confidently assert that “it’s safe and easy, I’ve never had a problem”. So what is the truth? As always, the truth is somewhere in between these two extreems.
Read this entire article »This is something I see asked a lot on social media, and a number of customers have asked how to get their Covid Certificate, so I thought I would do a “step by step” guide on how to do it if you’re in our region (other regions may differ of course.
Read this entire article »As many of you already know, I do like to mix computing with other things, cycling, astronomy etc. Well, this month we are going to have a look into the perplexing world of astro photography!
Ordinarily you would need a lot of expensive equipment to take pictures of the big wide universe around us but now with a new website its all possible now from without even venturing outside. Read this entire article »
Few things in “modern” computing time have made as much of a dramatic difference to the speed of computers as solid state hard drives. Computer technology and speed increments over time, we know that. I’m regularly asked “Why is my computer slow?” and of course the answer is “it depends”, it depends on a number of different things but it normally comes down to only three – the type and speed of the processor, how much RAM the computer has and the type of hard drive. It’s this last part that we are really interested in exploring this month. Read this entire article »