Just a quick post for anyone who loves the Echo but prefers the audio quality of Sonos system.
Bloomberg Article – Echo & Sonos
Looks like 2017 is going to be an awesome time to move house! :0)
The UK has been hit by a major broadband outage today (20/07/16) after reports of power issues in one of BT’s internet peering partners’ sites in London. BT Tweeted shortly after 9am:
F8 IT Solutions have already been inundated with calls from clients reporting the issue this morning, due to lack of connectivity to their e-mail services and other websites. The outage has caused problems with DNS (one of the systems used by websites, services and computers so that they can talk to each other). Whilst the outage has been very disruptive to businesses this morning, the good news is engineers are working on repairing the service and here at F8 we have already seen a large portion of connectivity restored. Please note that no action will be required at the clients end and functionality will be restored automatically when BT have resolved the outage.
The map below shows the severity of the outage across the UK.
I am in my thirties and had a pay as you go mobile from age of 17, so my parents could check up on me or for emergencies. Every time a friend showed up with the newest model, you could bet it was smaller and thinner than everything we carted around. Barely leaving a bulge in the pocket and exceeding all our phones capabilities.
At some point during the smartphone revolution, most of us stopped caring about how small phones could get, instead how big the screen was and how much of the front of the unit was usable screen vs plastic bezel. I for one, don’t buy in to the marketing, big is not better and I don’t want to carry a tablet around in my pocket.
It would appear, Apple believes there is also a market for smaller products that have all the punch of a bigger model. The Apple iPhone SE, is essentially a iPhone 6S in the body of the universally loved iPhone 5.
So we should be paying extra for that amazing innovation right? Well 1999 me would have thought so, but 2016 reality is that you get the phone for a whopping 33% less than the bigger more fragile model! 1999 me would be freaking out right now!
We have one on order and will be testing it shortly. Ask Josh for info and his thoughts as its his turn to get a new toy.
We have grown a fair bit in 2015, with a need for more desk space for staff, workbenches for jobs and server room for backup solutions we now offer. Getting a little bit on top of ourselves so time for a move!
Hope to be in by end of this month, with a view of getting all the new furniture and IT in place this weekend. Same location as before, just a back room with a lot more space. Look forward to showing it off when it is done. Will even have a proper customer area to wait and have a coffee. We do like to spoil you :0).
Some pics, featuring our expert builder/father-in-law.
What a crazy year 2015 has been, so incredibly blessed how well everything is going and that we are still having a blast providing our clients support.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Thanks for all the support of our little company over the last 5 years. Means we can all come to a job we enjoy!
Microsoft released a security updates for Windows 7 on the 11/11/2015 with the number KB3097877 & KB3101746. These updates caused Microsoft Office programs, like Outlook and PowerPoint crashed uncontrollable and with no warning.
Outlook 2010 crashing
These updates should be uninstalled and this manual explains how that is done.
Step 1. Go to the “Control panel” and chose “Programs and Features”.
Step 2. In the menu at top left corner choose “View installed updates”.
Step 3. In the search field in the top right corner, you enter
KB3097877
Step 4. When KB3097877 is found, right click the update and choose “Uninstall”. When the uninstallation is done, the computer asks for a restart. Restart the computer and the problem should be gone.
Step 5. Repeat for KB3101746
Step 5. Once the computer is restarted the second time, you will need to click ‘Start’, ‘All Programs’ then ‘Windows Update’ and check for updates (this process may take some time)
Step 6. When the updates have been found click on ‘2 Important Updates are available’
Right click on the update a select ‘Hide Update’ on both updates ( KB3097877 & KB3101746)
Click ok and continue as normal
Apple released latest operating system last week. Which has caused a few problems for early adopters with latest Office 2016 installed.
We highly recommend turning on automatic updates for Office applications on Mac, as well as checking and installing updates if you are suffering performance problems and crashes in Office 2016 on your Mac.
Check us out! 5 Years today and still at it. Been a total blast and looking forward to the next 5 years. Thanks to all the clients and people who supported us, won’t bore you with fluff about how great we are, because you know that already right? ;).
Few fun bits of info about F8 IT Solutions Ltd
#1 – First months invoicing came to a grand total of £30 + vat
#2 – The first month of soul destroying door-to-door canvassing wouldn’t yield a single contract for another year after, then another year after, and oddly, someone still kept the flyer 3 years later and joined us! Wish I could have told dejected first-week-Kieran it wasn’t in vain.
#3 – We have closed 5790 support tickets at the time of this posting, ranging from 15 minute to 30 hour jobs each. First year we averaged 30 jobs a month, now closer to 130.
#4 – Josh who joined in 2012, struggled to convince me that his 205 GTI was a ‘classic’ car, that was until he featured on cover of Retro Car Magazine, along with a 4 page spread about him and his car. I keep a 205 GTI drinks coaster at the workshop as a constant reminder of how wrong I can be.
Love Dropbox? Want to learn a cool new trick? Read on…
So we know that Dropbox rocks for sharing folders between Dropbox users, but when you want to get large files from someone who doesn’t have Dropbox? Well they figured that out too! Introducing Dropbox File Request. Simply log in to Dropbox online, select File Request on the left and follow the wizard.
Dead simple and really handy for files too big to email.
Had our first chance to work on a super high resolution 5k Apple iMac 27″ all-in-one computer today. Had our concerns that the resolution of 5120 x 2880 would cause problems for user who remotely control Windows machines. Glad to report it worked flawlessly with the latest version of Remote Desktop from Microsoft (free from App Store). The app allowed scaling and selecting resolutions the Windows computer would rather run at (1920×1080 for example) and then to fill screen or not.
Happy customer, awesome hardware and worked a charm.
