Dirtection Inc: episode 2

fluff-headerThe secret history of fluff - now it’s war...
People often ask me if it’s boring. The job, I mean – cleaning other people’s computers. “Boring?” I say,
“Is white-water rafting boring? Is tightrope walking over Niagara Falls boring? Is swimming naked with man-eating sharks boring?” If they are being honest, they generally say “No,” or “Probably not”. At which point I snap my fingers, affect a smirk of superiority and say, “Pah! Dull as dishwater compared to cleaning computers!”

The Case of the Headless Corpses, Part 2

In which a crime is solved – and then unsolved again thanks to a piece of mouse fluff.

Danger, USB!

USB has given us fast, easy access to devices and files – but it’s also a security nightmare. How can you lock it down for clients?

GPO for IE8

If you’re using Active Directory and Group Policies to administer computers on customer networks, suggest they adopt Internet Explorer 8 to get more than 100 new Group Policies that you can use to maintain a stable configuration.

Partner Focus: Peter-Hortensius-Lenovo

The computer maker Lenovo has 9% of the worldwide PC market, and in 2009 it ranked as the world’s fast-est-growing PC company. In the three months to December 31st, Lenovo grew sales by 42%, against an industry av-erage of 17%. We asked Lenovo what that means for small business resellers.

Managing networks with System Center Essentials 2007

Microsoft’s System Center tools manage everything from updates to virtualisation. Now there’s a version that will help you manage an entire SME from one screen.

Document management with Microsoft Search Server

Storage is cheap and it’s easy to create documents, so most companies have tens or hundreds of thousands of documents on the computers in their companies. So how do your customers find a document on a particular topic? The worrying answer is probably that they can’t...

Setting rates: should you charge the same rates to all IT clients?

Probably the stickiest moment in agreeing a new piece of work is the one when the client asks, “What do you charge?” The natural temptation is to say, “As much as possible.” How do you really decide on a price?

Backing up Exchange

Like any other database, Exchange needs a little TLC if you want to recover from any downtime.

How to spoof a MAC address (and why)

MAC spoofing is one of those odd tricks: it’s not very useful most of the time (and it can be extremely awkward in a well-managed environment) but sometimes it’s the only technique that will solve the problem.