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Invitation Facebook, Virus Warning, Olympic Torch Virus is a hoax

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Facebook users are once again warning their online friends about a threat – the only problem this time is that it doesn’t really exist.

Article published by Sophos

 

Messages are being sent across Facebook by well-intentioned Facebook users advising their friends to beware a virus that could “burn the whole hard disc.. C of your computer” while displaying an Olympic Torch.

A virus that actually physically burns your whole hard disk? Wow.. that sounds nasty. Especially if you’re resting a notebook on your lap at the time.

Could it even be possible? After all, you might have vaguely heard about how hackers might be able to set fire to your MacBook’s battery recently.

The truth is that the warning being spread on Facebook is nonsense, and although users are sounding the alarm to their online friends, they are actually doing nothing more than perpetuating a virus myth.

Here’s what a typical warning message posted on Facebook looks like:

PLEASE CIRCULATE THIS NOTICE TO YOUR CONTACTS!
In the coming days, you should be aware! Do not open any message with an attachment called: Invitation FACEBOOK, regardless of who sent it.
It is a virus that opens an Olympic torch that burns the whole hard …disc C of your computer.
This virus will be received from someone you had in your address book .. If you receive a mail called: Invitation FACEBOOK, though sent by a friend,
DO NOT OPEN IT and DELETE IT IMEDIATELY

Sound familiar? It did to me.

After all, there has been an “Olympic Torch” hoax (albeit one that doesn’t mention Facebook) doing the rounds for over five years already.

So what seems to have happened here is that a hoax has made the jump from traditional email to social networking site, and gained a Facebook-related element at the same time.

Remember to always get your computer security advice from a computer security company. Friends may be well-intentioned in passing on warnings, but it’s always good to check your facts before forwarding them any further.

If you want to learn about the real threats on Facebook you should join the Sophos Facebook page, where we’ll keep you up-to-date on the latest rogue applications, scams and malware attacks threatening social network users.

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Contact Details

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Contact information

Geoff Williamson. Proprietor
ituk.biz
and The Ultimate Search. www.yoursearchfor.co.uk

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and our One stop link shop www.onestoplinkshop.co.uk

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4 Greyhound Slip, Worth, Crawley, West Sussex, RH10 7FP

Main Phone: 01293-885833
Mobile Phone: 07411-149666  or Free 0800-0407048
email: it@ituk.biz

AOL IM ID: itukbiz
itukbiz@aol.com

Ecademy ID: geoffreywilliamson

http://www.ecademy.com/user/geoffreywilliamson

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http://www.ecademy.com/blog/geoffreywilliamson

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Facebook ID: Geoff Williamson

http://www.facebook.com/itukbiz

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Google IM ID:ituk.biz
ituk.biz@googlemail.com

Hotmail IM ID: itukbiz
itukbiz@hotmail.com

Linked In ID: itukbiz

http://www.linkedin.com/in/itukbiz

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Scoot

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Skype ID: itukbiz
Skype In No. 02081444604

Twitter ID: ituk

http://twitter.com/ituk

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Yahoo IM ID: itukbiz
itukbiz@yahoo.co.uk

Find us via Google Maps including Directions

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Let’s FACE It!

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Let’s Face It! Evening of Celebration 2010 on 25th October

 

ituk.biz was invited to the Let’s FACE it! celebrations as a contributor to the RHS Britain in Bloom campaign in 2010.

Since its launch in 2005, thousands of people have been taking part in Let’s FACE it!, Crawley’s environmental volunteering campaign.

Hundreds of volunteer residents and children were honoured for their environmental achievements at the ‘Let’s FACE it! Evening of Celebration 2010, held at The Hawth on 25th October.

We are very pleased to announce that Crawley was awarded CATEGORY WINNER in the Big Town/Small City category at the Britain in Bloom awards. Crawley also won SILVER GILT, beating Bedford, Derry City, Fareham and Whitehaven on points.

Crawley also won GOLD and CATEGORY WINNER in the Big Town/Small City category at the recent South and South East in Bloom awards. A huge amount of hard work by everyone in the community keeps Crawley’s parks and streetscene clean, green and colourful, all year round. Well done to all involved.

For more information on the awards

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ituk.biz were please to help in the success of this programme.

All companies who helped in this year’s Let’s FACE it! campaign were thanked during the celebration event

FSB National Chairman visits us at “We Mean Business” Exhibition

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John Walker National Chairman for the Federation of Small Businesses visited the We Mean Business Exhibition on the 7th Oct 2010

 

 

The FSB National Chairman visited the We Mean Business Exhibition on Thurs 7th Oct at Croydon.

During the exhibition which had about 100 FSB Member Businesses exhibiting there he visited our stand and was photographed with Geoff Williamson who is also the FSB Regional Vice Chairman for Surrey and West Sussex

Pictured on the left Geoff Williamson and on the right John Walker

Netbook Longest Battery Life

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Which is the best netbook with the longest battery life?

Many people looking to buy a netbook look to the battery life as being a key factor when determining which netbook to purchase.

Data used in this blog is from www.fantastic-netbooks.co.uk

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If you are intending on taking the netbook with you wherever you go then a long battery life is obviously a vital requirement. If you are moving about the house or office and always near to an electrical point to charge up your netbook then battery life may not be such as important factor.

We have put together a ranking table below showing the netbooks with either their actual battery life as found in real tests or, if we have not yet collated that information, the battery life quoted by the manufacturers.

Of course, the best indicator is the actual battery life, which has been reached during real reviews from well respected magazines and websites such as Laptopmag, CNet, PC Advisor and PC Pro.

Longest Battery Life Netbooks Ranking
The netbooks with the longest battery life either measured by actual reviews and battery tests or quoted by manufacturers*

No. Netbook Battery Life Actual/Quoted Overall Score
1 MSI Wind U115 Hybrid Light Use – 10 hours
Heavy Use – 5.5 hours Actual 72.9%

2 Asus Eee PC 1000HE Light Use – 8 hours and 30 minutes
Normal Use – 7 hours and 3 minutes
Heavy Use – 5 hours and 14 minutes Actual 83.2%
3 Toshiba NB205 Light Use – 8 hours and 27 minutes Actual 82.4%

4 Toshiba NB305 8.5 hours Actual 81.6%

5 Asus Eee PC 1005P 8.5 hours Actual 81.5%

6 Asus Eee PC 1005PE 8.5 hours Actual 81.3%

7 Dell Inspiron Mini 1012 8.5 hours Quoted 86.5%

8 Asus Eee PC 1005HA 8.5 hours Quoted 80.9%

9 Asus Eee PC 1101HA 8.5 hours Quoted 76.5%

10 Asus Eee PC 1001P 8.25 hours Actual 76.6%

11 MSI Wind U123 8.25 hours Actual 76.0%

12 Samsung N120 Light Use – 7 hour and 57 minutes
Heavy Use – 5 hours and 21 minutes Actual 83.5%

13 Acer Aspire One 531 Light Use – 7 hours and 30 minutes
Normal Use – 4 hours and 52 minutes
Heavy Use – 3 hours and 57 minutes Actual 78.4%

14 Samsung NC20 Light Use – 6 hours and 42 minutes
Normal Use – 4 hours
Heavy Use – 3 hours and 3 minutes Actual 87.3%

15 Asus Eee PC 1000H 7 hours Quoted 84.1%

16 Samsung N210 7 hours Actual 75.%

17 Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3 7 hours Actual 70.9%

18 MSI Wind U160 7 hours Actual 67.5%

19 Samsung N220 6.5 hours Actual 91.3%

20 Samsung N140 6.5 hours Actual 82.8%

21 Samsung NB30 6.5 hours Actual 70.0%

22 Packard Bell Dot S2 6 hours Actual 85.2%

23 HP Mini 5101 6 hours Actual 79.1%

24 Samsung NC10 6 hours Quoted 91.5%

25 Asus Eee PC 1008HA 6 hours Quoted 81.7%

26 Acer Aspire One AOD150 6 hours Quoted 75.5%

27 Samsung N110 6 hours Quoted 81.4%

28 Acer Aspire One AOD250 6 hours Quoted 78.4%

29 Asus Eee PC 1008P 6 hours Quoted 71.7%

30 HP Mini 2140 6 cell – 5 hours and 55 minutes
3 cell – 2 hours and 44 minutes Actual 81.0%

31 HP Mini 110 6 cell – 5 hours and 36 minutes
3 cell – 2 hour and 45 minutes Actual 75.0%

32 HP Mini 311 5.5 hours Quoted 76.2%

33 Acer Aspire One 532H 5.5 hours Actual 60.0%

34 Asus Eee PC S101 5.4 hours Quoted 78.4%

35 Asus Eee PC 901 5 hours Actual 84.6%

36 Asus Eee PC 904HD 5 hours Actual 81.0%

37 Asus Eee PC 1201N 5 hours Quoted 80.4%

38 Samsung N150 5 hours Actual 79.8%

39 HP Mini 210 5 hours Actual 75.8%

40 Lenovo IdeaPad S12 5 hours Quoted 71.4%

41 Acer Aspire One 751 5 hours Quoted 75.0%

42 Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3T 5 hours – heavy use (8 cell version) Actual 65.0%

43 Samsung N130 4.75 hours Actual 67.4%

44 MSI Wind U120 4.5 hours Actual 68.7%

45 Asus Eee PC T91 4.5 hours Actual 81.3%

46 Gateway LT3103u 4.5 hours Actual 75.0%

47 MSI Wind U135 4.5 hours Actual 72.0%

48 Asus Eee PC 1201T 4 hours Actual 81.3%

49 Asus Eee PC 1201PN 4 hours Actual 72.0%

50 Sony Vaio M-Series 4 hours Actual 64.4%

51 Advent 4213 3.5 hours Quoted 74.9%

52 Lenovo S12 Ion 4 hours Quoted 65.0%

53 Dell Inspiron Mini 12 3.5 hours Quoted 66.5%

54 MSI Wind U230 3.5 hours Actual 66.5%

55 Lenovo S9e 3.5 hours Quoted n/a

56 Dell Inspiron Mini 9 3 hours and 21 minutes Actual 83.6%

57 Dell Inspiron Mini 10 3 hours Actual 74.0%

58 HP 1000 Mini-Note 3 hours Actual 75.4%

59 Acer Aspire One AOA150 3 hours Quoted 76.7%

60 Sony Vaio W Series 3 hours Actual 72.7%

61 Acer Aspire One 721 3 hours Actual 55.0%

62 HP Mini 700 2.5 hours Actual 68.5%

63 MSI Wind U100 2.5 hours Quoted 80.5%

64 Lenovo S10e 2.5 hours Quoted 72.8%

65 Samsung N310 2.5 hours Actual 69.0%

66 Advent 4211 2 hours Quoted 82.7%

67 HP 2133 Mini-Note 2 hours Actual 71.9%

Where we have completed a full netbook reviews roundup we have recorded all the battery life test results, separated them into whether they were a light use, normal use or heavy use test and then averaged those results to give us our final figure. If we do not yet have that information then we have use the manufacturers quoted battery life.

The MSI Wind U115 tops the table with an astonishing 10 hours in light use and still manages over 5 hours during heavy use. This is certainly a netbook that you could take out with you for the whole day.

There are another 6 netbooks that all manage over 8 hours use, which is still very impressive and all worthy of an extra mention. Those netbooks are the Asus Eee PC 1000HE, Toshiba NB205, Asus Eee PC 1005PE, Asus Eee PC 1005HA, Asus Eee PC 1101HA and MSI Wind U123.

So Asus and MSI really rule the best battery life rankings with the first Samsung coming in 8th with the N120 just missing out on the 8 hour mark.

New Business Website setup by freeindex

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www.freeindex.co.uk have set us up a Business Website

 

Every business on FreeIndex now gets their own dedicated website address.

Please feel free to give us a Customer Review on this site.

To view our website page

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The Importance of a Health Check

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We have been monitoring our jobs carried out since the beginning of the latest recession and our findings are quite disturbing.

 

The results of the monitoring are as follows.

PC’s that go wrong that have not had regular Health Checks tend have repair costs between 50% and 250% greater than if they would had regular Health Checks. This is mainly because they will require greater time spent to be spent on them and in many cases they need to be fully restored ie. backup down , full system re-install and data restore.

This cost does not include DOWN TIME incurred by the customer because of system failure.

A Health Check includes removal of unwanted files and makes sure that all Windows Updates are completed and your PC Security is sufficient and up to date.

Before the recession many of our clients had regular 6 monthly Health Checks where actions were taken to remove unwanted files and make sure that all Windows Updates were completed and Security was sufficient and up to date. Regretfully this is no longer the case and most clients have cut out Health Checks to save money and only call in an engineer in for an emergency.

As we appear to be coming slowly out of the Recession we would ask all our clients to seriously reconsider introducing a 6 monthly Health Check.

At ituk.biz we offer two types of Health Check

The basic one hour Health Check where we remove unwanted files and check the hardware

The full two hour Health Check where we do all the above plus update or install security protection and Windows Updates.

When scanning a PC for problems it is not unusual to find 10 times the number of files installed than was originally supplied when the PC was purchased this must inevitably effect the performance of the PC and slow it down.

Several years ago Memory for PC’s was very expensive so only the minimum required was installed, prices have dropped dramatically and a cheap way of improving the PC’s performance is to install the Maximum Memory for the motherboard on your PC. In many cases this could mean that your PC may be capable of running the new Windows 7 Software.

Please contact us if you would like to book a Health Check Free on 0800-0407048 or 07411-149666.

Business Talk Issue 4 Gatwick Diamond Area

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Technology is great…until it breaks down and you have to call in the “techie” who wordlessly arrives in your office, nods slowly at your crisis and then begins tapping on your keyboard like Mozart on acid.

 

If you’re lucky the problem is fixed embarrassingly quickly. For those who are less fortunate you may hear your techie sigh, tug at his goatee and mumble words like “trojan horse”, “infected” and “worm”. It’s going to be a bad day.

That is of course unless you know Geoff Williamson of ITUK.biz. Geoff is one of the new breed of professional computer consultants whose approach is refreshingly different to the “can’t meet your eye” brigade, a self styled Champion of the Small Business his company is as much about supporting your whole infrastructure as fixing individual pc’s and servers.
I met Geoff at his base in Crawley, a glorious labyrinth of humming technology where he outlined his company vision:

“In the course of my work I do an enormous amount of networking, whether it be with customers or through the business associations I belong to.”(Geoff is the Chairman of the local Federation of Small Businesses, on the Sub-Committee of the Crawley & Gatwick Chamber of Commerce and Companion of the Institute of Sales & Marketing Management amongst others!). “I see how technology is both helping and hindering businesses on a day to day basis; when it’s broken I fix it, when it works I’m looking to improve it. The biggest challenge a modern business has is to keep up to date with new developments and protect themselves from malicious attacks. My role is to review the latest technology and proactively apply it where appropriate. For some businesses this means a minor tweak here or there, for others it could be a major system overhaul, at the end of the day it’s all about creating systems that are secure, robust and fit for purpose”.

This again is another classic case of Taming Technology. I asked Geoff what was hot in the world of technology and his eyes lit up. He then left the room. When he returned he was laden with boxes full of “toys”.

“Wireless!” he said, “a lot of my clients are enjoying the benefits of wireless technology but suffering from “dead spots” in their houses or offices. I can overcome these problems with a Wireless-G Range Extender. This natty little device can double the range of your network and works with all 802.11b/g Networks. If traditional wireless is not an option Netgear have released Powerline Networking. This turns any electrical outlet into a Home Network connection, sharing files, printers and your broadband connection”.

Unusually Geoff is as happy to support the home user as the business customer, “quite often I will be supporting a business and they’ll ask me to pop home to fix an issue. I’ve even set up a computer for a couple emigrating to Spain and supported a tricky broadband installation over the phone when they got there. It’s all about being flexible and supportive”.

Nowadays Geoff doesn’t even have to be onsite to cure a problem, “the majority of minor computer problems can be fixed remotely, after installing some specialist software I simply log in to your machine, diagnose the fault and fix it, job done”.

So the wordless, nodding techie could really be a thing of the past. Now that’s champion!

Business Talk Issue 3 Gatwick Diamond Area

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40 years in the motor trade and 31 years in computers have blessed Geoff Williamson, t/a ITUK.biz with the ability to reach the parts that other troubleshooters simply cannot reach.

 

 

And we are not talking cylinder head gaskets or some remotely positioned inlet valve but PC hard drives and operating systems, the parts that come under constant threat of virus attacks and Spyware infiltration.

“The vast majority of my work covers the removal of viruses and other invasive entities that businesses do not want on their PCs” SAYS GEOFF, who carries around a custom-built mini PC fitted with a veritable armoury of leading edge software that can debug computerware riddled with the nastiest of infections.

“It is very sophisticated and I am not about to reveal any trade secrets” SAYS GEOFF GUARDEDLY. “Suffice to say that my PC is fitted with software that will clean the majority of viral or Spyware infections off a client’s desktop, laptop or networked computer”

To cut a long story short, that generation in the motor trade culminated in Geoff running Out of house a 60-strong PC network with a Ford and Daewoo dealership in Crawley, before leaving to forge alliances with local companies as a software engineer.

From that initiative emerged ITUK.biz, now a member of an elite Business club of companies registered with www.checkatrade.com, a website that offers Visitors unprecedented access to the work that Members undertake.

“Anyone can log on and check the standard of my work” SAYS GEOFF. “You have to be confident in what you are doing to leave yourself open to that level of scrutiny”

ITUK.biz specialise in fixing IT problems. If you call them out, they come within 24 hours and give your system a thorough going over in order to diagnose the ailment. But prevention is better than cure, advises Geoff. PCs are like cars, they need regular health checks to keep them in prime condition. So call them out before those tell-tale warning signs point up a problem.

“PC infections are all too common” HE BEMOANS. “Anybody who has dialup or broadband is likely to be infected. Businesses must ensure that they download the latest Windows updates, and that their antiviral and Spyware software is fully up to date” The Gatwick Diamond is Geoff’s preferred operational area, however his client base stretches from Wimbledon, South to Brighton, East to Battle, near Hastings, and West to Pirbright, near Guildford.

How does he focus on delivering the best one-to-one customer care? “All my years working in the motor trade have given me those skills” HE STATES PROUDLY. That and a self-confessed young attitude that keeps him alert to the whirlwind changes in IT technology.

“Quote”Spot the danger:
PC running slow/drop in PC performance?
Sudden increase in PopUp advertising?
Internet home page changing unaccountably?
Random error messages suddenly appearing?Chances are you maybe already infected!

“Nine in ten of all PCs we have checked in the last 12: months have been infected with spyware or viruses”