June 2007 Newsletter
My experience with Dell seems to have struck a nerve. Lots of people have had similarly bad experiences. But I’ve also had lots of people saying about suppliers they would recommend. Read about who is good to buy from and who will leave you panting with annoyance…
Mini-article – good and bad places to buy PCs, printers and so on
Thanks to everyone who sent me feedback on different places to buy PCs and PC bits and pieces. Instead of listing it all here, I’ve made a web page which I can keep up to date with any new feedback I hear of. You can read it here: www.helpfulbooks.co.uk/goodandbad.htm
You can let anyone else know about the page – the more people who use it the better!
Generally there seem to be lots of good suppliers for printer ink, paper and the extra bits and pieces. PC shops/suppliers don’t seem to come out of it so well.
Oh, and my Vista upgrade from Dell? It arrived eventually, four and a half months late. The label on the disk and manual said “ExpressUpgrade”. I hate to think what Dell would call slow!
Download of the month – Recuva
If you delete a file and then realise you want it you can go to the recycle bin and “restore” it. But if it’s gone out of the recycle bin, then it’s not so simple. Recuva is a program that can get back files even after they’ve gone from the recycle bin. It can even recover files deleted from digital camera memory cards. Here’s the link: www.recuva.com
Reader’s Question
In the last week or so my friends haven’t been getting my emails – am I doing something wrong?
This has affected everyone who uses Tiscali for their internet connection – your emails just won’t get there. Crooks sending spam have been using Tiscali addresses and the other Email companies have automatically blocked all Tiscali emails. Tiscali say it should all be sorted by the 10th of June but they aren’t clear on whether emails sent in the meantime will be late or will disappear altogether. If you need to send email in the next fortnight I’d suggest setting up a web email account at www.hotmail.com or www.yahoo.co.uk and using that.
Word to the Wise – RSS
RSS is a technical bit of wizardry which automatically collects the information you want from differnt places on the internet. For example you can set it up to put together the news headlines from your favorite newspaper, Grand Prix results from a separate site and the weather forecast from the BBC. To use it you need to have a RSS viewer (for example www.reader.google.com)
That’s all for this month. If you do have any more good or bad comments on computer companies let me know and I’ll add them to that webpage (www.helpfulbooks.co.uk/goodandbad.htm) so we can keep it up to date.
Thanks
Tim Wakeling
All the above © Tim Wakeling 2007