tagware.info

Land comes up for Auction in Thwing Today at Noon.

Well, finally the day is here for the Auction.

We have been busy looking into the use that we can make of this small patch of land of 0.5 acre.

We are looking to balance Tagware’s carbon use.

So, we are looking into planting Xmas Tree’s on the ground. Utilising the tank as a liquid food store for BioMethane production for providing power which will be exported and the heat generated to help in carrying on the warming our little friends in the tank, doing all the hard work. For above ground we are looking at placing a Wind turbine.

So, all in all this land is going to be well utilised!

Just have to see, if we are able to become the owner.

TalkTalk going back on promises?

When this advert was running back in May 2006.

I signed up for the full International Package that allowed me to make phone calls up to an hour in length both in UK and Internationally. True, until recently you did have to add a rather long… code to add to the front of the international number. But, other than excluding the 0871 and 0845 numbers. It did what it said it would.

The additional benefit was that they provided an broadband connection for FREE FOREVER – (Eternity, a limitless amount of time)!

There were no exclusions to this offer on the broadband. True, it was a 2Mb download. But, at the time, this was the best that you were going to get from BT wholesale anyway. With Talktalk then promising, once the BT exchanges had their equipment installed the line speed would increase too up 8Mb.

Bar a few hiccups along the way the service has been good. Although, I accept that other customers have had considerable difficulty. In Talktalk’s defense the firm did try and resolve these issues by adding more resources to the company. I just think they were over whelm with the response.

Well this morning I received an e-mail stating that I was using to much Broadband capacity and if I didn’t stop I would be fined £5 + VAT for the next 40Gb.

On the current Broadband sign up page called TalkTalk Essentials they do state that there is a 40Gb cap.

However, I didn’t sign up to this service. I signed up to the one that was FREE FOREVER!

I appreciate that some subscribers are using large amount of bandwidth. But TalkTalk provisioned the 8Mbits ADSL link! This with a contention ratio of 1-50 would allow a constant 160Kbits. Which, works out at 9.6Mbits per min. This over a 30 day period is 414,720Mbits. Therefore, the 40Gb cap limits the line to less than 10% of it’ contention capacity.

Calling the 40Gb cap “Huge” is completely false and the ofcom regulator should stamp out this sort of claim from the industry.

If TalkTalk have to place 40Gb limit on new applications (Which, I pointout again, isn’t me!). It would be sensible to have the words ‘12 month average’. This would take account of peaks and troughs of usage. Rather than a crude monthly tally.

Yes, I know things are not great in the UK. But, you made a promise and I expect as a shareholder for you to make good on this promise.

David Vincent

www.tagware.co.uk

We help when we can – :-)

Windows 2000 Professional multiple proplems

Hi I have windows 2000 professional (service pack 5) and i am experiencing multiple problems with my computer.

I have no tool bar at the bottom of my screen and the background has disappeared and been replaced by a completely blank blue screen.

Secondly my computer keeps showing a error message that my virtual memory is too low, this keeps appearing until eventually the computer stops working and needs to be restarted.

Third problem is that the computer will not shutdown or restart unless i hold the power button in or press the reset button.

Any help in resolving these issues would be greatly appreciated

Alway useful to remember what you did last.

Santander showing they have a grip on Customer Service!

Santander Credit Cards showing off there Customer Service and of course
FSA and Information Commissioner’s Office are definitely on top of this one obviously.

General public again are paying lots of money for toothless regulators.

Well it’s a nice job in a nice office and pretty unlikely to get fired!

Thursday, 13 August 2009.

The Complaints Department
Santander Card Customer Services
PO Box 700
Leeds
LS99 2BD

Dear Sirs,

I received a computer generated letter dated 10th August from Tim Woods that states the following.

Santander had mistakenly sent out two cards due to its own incompetence. It’s not a computer problem, it the people that are using it. Or, lack of testing the system in the first place.

The first card of which I have received expires on xx/12. The second card which I haven’t received expires on xx/12.

As you now wish me to use the second card. I suggest you find out where it is! I’m the customer in case you had not noticed. I have no intent to pay Santander indirectly by using 0871 (chargeable at 10p a min) then to have to plough thought Customer Service nightmare on options, whilst paying for the privilege to clear up your mess. To then be cut off because Santander has not enough agents to take the calls.

You sent out the letters and therefore could manage this problem by phasing there release and providing a dedicated fast track option within the letter or allocate a 0800 number. I repeat – it is your error.

If, I was a suspicious person, this so called problem, combined with a 0871 revenue generating number is a nice way of increasing the bottom line profits. After, all someone has to pay for these additional cards issued. Perhaps, all revenue from this error or even all 0871 calls should be donated to charity. Now, that would show me that you are truly sorry.

With regards to the Term & Conditions I believe it’s customary to include the complete agreement rather than starting at clause 8.

It would also have been nice, as this again is your error, for the agreement to be highlighted with changes, rather than expect the customer to re-read these. The text of which not surprisingly are again in the smallest type you could find. (Santander not heard of the Disability Act?)

Do your company lawyers get paid by the word? 3 pages of close text to get from section 8.0 to 21. Section 16.9 states that you are going to “Strive at all times” to keep my data safe. Under the Data Protection Act you ‘DO’, anything less than this is not acceptable. Should read “Your data will be kept in compliance with the Data Protection act xxx date at all times including overseas data centres”. Again, in section 16.10 second sentence states “Use of Personal Data” no reference to the section that this is included in. I would imagine that this should be included in the definitions section or at least referred to a numbered section of the agreement that states its meaning is within. The Credit Act requires the agreement to be in English and understand able.

If this is a new agreement or amended, then you surely you should have included the option to cancel this contract. I expect again this agreement has been changed, due to the issuer finding out that the previous agreement is either not enforceable or that it can gain secure status on a non-secured advance on what were until recently unobtainable assets of the house.

I will not going on, although I could.

All in all, a text book demonstration of how not to perform Customer Services.

Perhaps, when you have gathered you thoughts, you can suggest how you propose to sort out this mess in writing and insure that the current card is not cancelled until this has been resolved.

Yours faithfully,

David Vincent

www.tagware.info

Little Miss Granger

Hi Guys,
Sure you’ve probably seen this but it made me laugh anyway!

Harry Potter Parodie sélectionné dans Humour et Parodie / Doublage

Best way to find out Adwords used by your competitors.

This is a Firefox add-in that allow you to see who and how much you are being out bid on Google Adword’s.

You can read more HERE

Makes interesting reading.

Enjoy.

David Vincent www.tagware.co.uk

Speeding up Internet connections.

We are currently hearing a lot about download speed of the Internet in the UK press.

However, one of the most overlooked timings is the responce of DNS queries. OK, too technical.

When you type a URL (Uniform Resource Location) or for the non tech crew. www.google.co.uk for example, a number of processes occur before the content of the website is brought to you browser.

It’s demonstrated here visually for those who want to see what happens. The time that this process takes from you typing in the URL you want in you browser to it finding the IP address of the server can be a significant time.

As most ISP’s (Internet Service Provider) be they ADSL or Cable type run the own DNS servers theses generally can become flooded with requests, they then tend to become slow in responding to finding the IP address of the server. It’s very similar to you driving along the M25 or M62 at peak times. You do get to the destination, eventually! But, it can take 10 mins out of peak traffic or over an hour in.

By using an external DNS servers, they are available where ever you may find yourself in the world and they can still be used if you are sitting in an airport or hotel reception. As the external DNS servers are teamed together around the globe they provide faster response than that of local ISP.

Now, I can hear you say. “it will be extra m/s’s to respond”. True, but because the web pages are now fill with content from other sources than the original site it’s self. These extra times will quickly build up to make you weep when browsing.

If each section of the website is provided by a 3rd party (Goggle ad’s for example) and takes a 0.25 of a second to resolve, that’s 5 seconds added to a typical web page load. Five seconds may not sound like much. Count it out loud… it’s a long time isn’t it? Normally, this leads to the accusation that the ISP is not providing the download speed advertised.

But as experts, we know that it is normally DNS resolution and Latency that provides these issues. Not bandwidth!

That said, if an ISP is saying it provides 8Mb circuit in bold lettering. It should also be forced to show the contention in the same bold text. Normally, this is 1-25 or 1-50. So, divide that 8Mb by 50 and you get 160K/b a second on a bad day, if everyone uses the resource at the same time. That will make your IPlayer session come to a halt. As, being video it needs between 2.4-3.6Mbit a second. But, most web pages are kept slimmer than this. As the guys hosting the websites know, we pay for the amount of bandwidth we use. So, those pretty web pages are very economical with the bandwidth size they use.

An additional feature of using external DNS servers are there ability to flag bad server IP’s. Such as the ones that are trying to obtain you Credit Card or Banking information. So, whilst they are not totally 100%. As nothing is! They quickly become aware of servers IP that are being used for such activity. As, they know the IP servers for Barclay’s bank over the world and will flag this in your browser.

So, what’s involved?

It’s quite simple really to try the speed improvement out. You don’t need to download any software, as what you need is already there and it costs you nothing. So, give it a try.

There are two methods. First, is to change the DNS settings on your router. This makes all of the PC’s / Apple systems use the external DNS servers.

Or, to change the settings on a PC or Apple system individually. Now, unless you are technical. I would suggest to start by changing the PC settings. Unless you have more than 3-4 systems.

This is how you do it.

If you have broadband

Click Start > Control Panel > Network Connections and select your local network.
On the General tab click Properties > Internet Protocol (TCP/IP).
Click Properties

Now, be careful here. You only want to change the DNS section. Leave the allocation of IP address alone. This will normally be set to obtain an IP address from DHCP server.

The Internet Protocol window will appear. Click Use the following DNS server addresses and enter the DNS server(s) you want to use. You will have to select Manual allocation as normally this will be set to Automatically obtain. I would suggest the following. note: If your DNS settings have numbers in them. Then, make sure you take a note of what they are. Just in case you want to go back to these settings later.

156.154.70.1
156.154.71.1

Move the mouse pointer to the first of the DNS boxes. Far left-hand side. Then, type the figure and full stops into the boxes. Then, proceed to the next line below. Again, type the numbers and full stops into the boxes.

Once, you have completed this then select ‘OK’ until you return to the Network settings. Then, select cross on the top righthand side, to return to the desktop. Launch you browser and hopefully you should notice an improvement in speed when browsing.

Enjoy and as always constructive comments are welcome.

David Vincent – www.tagware.co.uk http://www.fixya.com/support/t1291830-dns_timeout_error

Windows Security Suite on a PC.

We have had several people call us today. Their PC/Laptop has had Windows Security Suite installed and it has reported virus programs are on the PC and the virus protection isn’t working.

I think these were on XP workstations SP2/SP3. But, that doesn’t mean it not happening on Vista or W7. It’s just my domestic crew are behind the times? (Or, perhap they have heeded my advise)

Technically, this shouldn’t happen in a corporate world as the systems would guard against running a unknown ‘.exe’ and you shouldn’t been log in as Administrator on the PC. Go and slap the IT department if it has.

But, do remember they will be able to tell where your browser has been! If, that embarissing then ask get them to rebuild the machine. (They still will look at the logs ) It should take 15 mins to complete in corporate environment.

However, for our domestic following. Who generally do work as an Administrator! (Ho Hum) Here is a work around to take back control of the PC/Laptop.

The normal suggestion when you get Windows Security Suite on a PC is to use System Restore. This is under Start/Accessories/System tools.

Restore back to a date you know the laptop/PC was working! As, this will restore the registery back to operation status.

Norton/AVG/Microsoft etc. are knocked out with a WSS install and they also knock out google/googlemail etc and mimic them so they can get hold of passwords for these accounts. Or at least until you have paid. If you have been convinced to pay anything to these guys then ring your credit card issuer and register a dispute against it- NOW.

Once you have got your PC back again. I would recommend changing ALL Passwords on accounts that could of been used whilst WSS was installed.

NOW, this doesn’t constitute as a guarantee, as I have no knowledge to where you have been or the configuration of your PC. But, it should get the PC back to usable state.

‘If unlike Sary, you don’t have a Microsoft engineer or IT department at hand. Then, let an expert sort it out for you’.

Following the above is reasonably safe as it is using the Microsoft Windows tools to complete the task.

Please post a comment if this works or not. As, it would be good to know numbers.

David Vincent – www.tagware.co.uk

Windows 7 Beta 7100

I have been running Windows 7 Beta for some time now on my trusty SONY VGN-S5M/s with 2Gb RAM and generally, W7 seems to be holding together.

However, tried to watch a DVD and this caused major upset to my box. Not quite sure if the Graphics drivers were the problem or not? Use the VISTA ones as SONY hasn’t woken up to Windows 7 yet.

However, the boot times are greatly improved.

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Welcome to Tagware’s new Blog

My name is David Vincent and I am one of the IT Consultants at Tagware.

Hopefully, you should find something interesting to read and even comment on.

Thanks for dropping by.

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