Hello Everyone,

 

Just another short(ish) newsletter with timely reminders and also an offer of free stuff!

 

Firstly, a warning about passwords and recovery accounts.

A friend recently got locked out of their Facebook account and only then discovered that the recovery email address was an old hotmail account that she no longer had access to. We tried everything including filling out the forms with information of previous email address and subject lines of recent emails but nothing was enough to convince the Microsoft robots that she was indeed the entitled owner of the email address and she had to eventually give up and create new accounts instead. So there are actually a couple of reminders to take note of here;

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1) Make sure you use a strong password for your Facebook/Email/Twitter etc. and turn on 'Two Factor Authentication' for the ultimate security. The lowest level of strength of a password I'd recommend is something like Clouds!@3589 or R0ver$1840. Using a combination of upper and lower case letters, special characters and numbers and avoiding dictionary words is the ultimate. These following examples I would consider not strong enough, Louise1976, Charlie123 etc. If you have passwords like this it's not a question of whether you will get hacked but when you will get hacked.

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2) Make sure your recovery information is up to date. If you do need to reset your password, most places will send a reset code or information to the email address or phone number they have on record. If you don't have access to those then you could get locked out permanently.

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Facebook allows you to choose 'trusted friends' from your friends list and they would be able to assist you if ever you need to regain access to your Facebook account. Click here for information about that.

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Free RAM! Conditions apply, of course :)

If you have a computer between about 4 to 1 year old I might have some 2nd hand RAM that could go into your computer to upgrade it's performance. RAM is the Random Access Memory of your computer and more RAM can help a computer that gets sluggish when there are lots of tabs open in your web browser or lots of Word docs open, that kind of thing. That's what RAM does, it stores all the stuff you've got going on at once. The more RAM, the more stuff can have going on at once without the performance dropping. There are other factors too (more and that later) but RAM is the big one.

 

So if you think your computer would benefit from more RAM get in touch. The free RAM is available to computers running DDR3 memory when they are booked in for a cleanup and service. This is $60 when dropped off to my workshop in East Victoria Park and includes a flush with compressed air to get rid of dust and also virus/malware scans to get rid of any crap on the computer, check updates as well as a general health checks.

 

A dusty computer can cause the processor to get too warm and when this happens they actually throttle themselves down to protect against overheating and the performance of the computer can drop rapidly when this happens. So as the warmer months approach you might want to ensure you're computer is not full of dust.

 

Another very popular upgrade for a slightly older computer (1-4 years) is a Solid State Drive upgrade. This can turn a computer that boots up in 120 seconds into a computer that boots up in under 20 seconds, it really is that much of an improvement. Depending on the size of the drive required, this upgrade can cost only $140.

 

 

That's all for this newsletter, expect for my usual reminder to be backing up your important data and don't get scammed by people phoning saying they're from Microsoft or Telstra or anything. Just hang up on them. Also, there is an increase in scam emails. If you receive something suspicious and you're not sure about it, forward it to me. It might go through to my Spam folder so I might not see it so email/phone/sms me to let me know you've sent something for me to look at.

 

Thanks again to all my great repeat customers for your continued business and referrals. Please feel free to forward this newsletter on to anyone you think might benefit from it.