More Spam with Outlook.com!

As an IT company we have several Hotmail accounts for testing purposes only.  They have been set-up for years and never used to mail third-parties. Our spam boxes have remained empty up until now.

However, since being transferred to Outlook.com, our spam count has suddenly soared from zero to ten a day, on all accounts!

Is this just coincidence or has the unthinkable happened? Are Microsoft really selling email addresses on?

Has anyone else noticed a sudden increase in spam since the roll-out of Outlook.com? 

Browsing The Internet Without Ads!

We all know how irritating it is when you are bombarded by advertising on practically every website you visit. Sometimes it's even difficult to tell the ads from the content. Let's face it, no one visits a website for the advertising, do they?

Before: Weatherbug site with Three blocks of Ads

What can you do? Here's one of the best solutions; it works and it's free!

First of all, visit here and pick up the latest version of Mozilla Firefox browser. Once you have set up the browser, make sure you right-click on the top bar and put a tick by 'Menu Bar'. You'll then see the standard 'File Edit View' menu appear at the top of the browser.

Secondly, from this top menu, click on Tools and then Add-ons. That will open a new tab for the Add-ons Manager. From the left menu, click on Get Add-ons .

To the top right of the tab, you will see a search box. Type in 'Adblock Plus 2.2.3' (without the ') and click search. If the top results do not show Adblock Plus, click on 'See All 85 Results' at the bottom of the list. The next tab should have Adblock Plus at the top of the list. Click ' +Add to Firefox ' and follow the instructions. Adblock will work after you close down firefox and open it up again.

Go to the website with the advertising that annoys you most and test it out. You should notice a big difference. If you want more ads to disappear, carry out the instructions in the previous paragraph and this time search for and install 'Ads no more 2.1'. It's quite safe to have the two add-ins running at once.

After: Weatherbug site with all ads gone!

The examples shown here with the Weatherbug site illustrate just what can be achieved. There's nothing quite as satisfying as visiting a favourite website that was once infested with ads, to find that they have all disappeared and you're left with pure content...which after all, is what you went there for in the first place!

Create A Windows 8 Recovery USB Drive

If you've just bought a Windows 8 laptop, you might have noticed that it does not come with a COA (Certificate Of Authenticity). That's the blue sticker on the bottom of the laptop with the Windows key printed on it.

The authenticity key for Windows 8 is now more commonly encrypted on the recovery partition, which is usually hidden to prevent accidental deletion.

This state of affairs can have serious ramifications should the hard drive fail  terminally. If it does, the key is lost along with the recovery partition and the user will have to buy a fresh copy of Windows 8. Good news for Microsoft but very bad news for the user.

Luckily, Windows 8 allows the user to back-up the operating system and the recovery partition on to a USB memory stick. We recommend all users carry out this procedure as soon after buying a new Windows 8 laptop as possible.

Here's how to do it :-

1) In the Search utility type: create a recovery drive  and click on the result.

2) Say 'Yes' to the User Account Control warning.

3) Make sure 'Copy the recovery partition from the PC to the recovery drive' is ticked and click Next -

4) At the next screen, you will be advised how large your USB drive should be (usually about 8Gb).

5) Insert a USB drive of the recommended size and once recognised, click next

6) You will be warned that everything on the USB drive will be deleted. Click Create -

6) Copying will now take place. Do not disturb the computer during this time.

7) Click finish, DO NOT DELETE the recovery partition if offered, remove the USB drive, label it, and store it in a safe place.

8) You can make as many Recovery USB Drives as you wish, BUT each one is matched to the computer you created it on. Do not try to use it on another computer.

Turn Off Data Harvesting in Outlook.com

Microsoft have recently been complaining publicly about Google's practice of gathering data from Chrome and Gmail so that advertising can be targeted for  the individual user preferences. How noble.

Wait a minute, not so noble. Guess who's now doing exactly the same thing? Yep, Microsoft!

With the transference of Hotmail accounts to Outlook.com, Microsoft has turned on all the data harvesting tools by default.

But, at least this can largely be disabled by the user, even though the link to the menu is tiny and most people would miss it altogether.

We're going to tell you how to turn off nearly all the data tracking -

Open your account in Outlook.com. In the bottom right-hand corner, you will see a tiny cogged wheel. Click on that and you will be taken to a page called My Data.

Click the link at the top of this page called My Choices. All the data gathering tools will be turned on as indicated by a green tick. If you click on the top tick, you will change them all to a red cross.

However, if you click on the More Services link, you will see that Microsoft are collecting even more data on you through Windows, MSN and XBox.

This does not mean you will be advertising free on the Outlook.com site, just that your browsing data, email content, etc., will not be collected...for the time being anyway!

Check these settings regularly as they could easily be turned back on by an Outlook.com update.

Microsoft Office 2010 Starter Edition Retired for Windows 8

If you are running Windows 7 or Vista, you may be using Microsoft Office 2010 Starter Edition. Briefly, it gives you a fully featured Word and Excel package in return for a small square of advertising. All for free.

This has proved very useful for ordinary folks who want to write the occasional letter or create a small speadsheet without having to pay huge amounts of money for the full edition of Office.

But this small act of generosity is against all that Microsoft believe in and the bean counters at MS have decided that they can bear it no longer and Office Starter Edition for Windows 8 has been withdrawn. Microsoft cite incompatibilities with Windows 8; which is strange as the full edition of Office 2010 works just fine with the latest operating system.

So, if you're running Windows 7 and Office Starter Edition, do not be tempted to upgrade to Windows 8, or you will lose your Starter Edition and have to find an alternative.

Talking of alternatives, why not try Open Office. It is fully functional and compatible with all the MS Office incarnations. We highly recommend it. You can download it Here.

The Memory Stick Massacre

Many of our customers have accumulated a drawer full of USB memory sticks, most of them broken. When I say broken, I mean they no longer function as they should, rather than being simply smashed to bits.

Is this memory stick massacre necessary? Are they of such poor design that they inherently stop working after a few weeks?

The answer to both questions is no. By taking a few simple precautions, you could extend the life of your memory sticks considerably and save some money into the bargain.

Memory sticks require power (5 volts) and it gets this from the USB slot. Each time the stick is inserted and withdrawn, a tiny arc of current is formed across the contacts. Under normal circumstances, this has little effect on the electronics within, but when the stick is withdrawn whilst being written to, the arc is powerful enough to short across the neighboring contacts. The result...a blown memory stick! 

If that last paragraph made you glaze over, it doesn't matter. Just follow these few guideline for extended memory stick life:

1) Always use the 'Safely Remove Hardware' feature on the bottom right of the screen, near the clock.

2) Never remove a memory stick whilst it's still writing or receiving information.

3) Never use a faulty memory stick after it has failed. It could kill the USB socket. Throw it away.

4) Always make sure the memory stick is pushed fully into the socket.

5) Blown USB sticks will rarely work normally again. Don't collect them, recycle them responsibly at your local recycling facility.

6) Always make a backup of your memory stick information.

7) And finally, if you have a faulty memory stick with information on it that needs to be recovered, don't keep putting it into different pc's or laptops to see if it might magically spring into life....it won't, and you might destroy the information beyond recovery. Take it to a reputable Data Recovery company like PC Partners to be assessed.

FREE Website Design Software

Compared with 5 or even 10 years ago, there are now very few free website design programs; especially highly specified ones.

Kompozer is one such program. It's fully WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get), with a raw HTML tab and a split tab of the two. It boasts a markup cleaner and a W3C call function to validate your HTML against current standards. Available to suit Windows, Mac, and Linux, it has a strong focus on standards compliance and clean code.

That is not to say Kompozer is easy to use if you've never designed a website before. It would certainly require plenty of homework on how to use its facilities properly. But, it is free and on an almost comparable level with many of the design packages costing many hundreds of pounds.

Let's have a look at some screenshots:

You can download the full, free version from here:-
Kompozer Download