For all those who might have been affected; we recently had been experiencing some difficulties with our web server stalling for a few minutes at a time.
There was no obvious reason for this but we need to provide a reliable service to our hosted web users.
We have therefore replaced our old server with a better model (still based on AMD, Fedora and Plesk) and transferred all the data to the new server. For the most part the transfer went well.
We had a few problems with the emails.
The new server no longer accepts short email names so if you have your username entered as say 'fred' you now need to change your settings to 'fred@mydomain.co.uk'.
The new server also need smtp authentication so you need to change the outgoing mail server settings to read 'mail server requires authentication' and then set this to be 'same as pop3 server'.
Any difficulties then phone our support team in the normal way.
We apologise to users that experienced problems but we hope the new server gives a better and more reliable service to all our users.
Thursday, 23 July 2009
Wednesday, 24 June 2009
New Digital Printing from MPL Print
The image just above this box is the cover of a new colour brochure produced by MPL Print on their new Xerox X700 digital printer.
The cover is printed on 300gsm gloss art board, the first insert is on 170gsm gloss art paper, the second insert is on 112gsm simulator (transparent paper) and the final insert is on 160gsm white pulpboard.
There is good colour saturation especially on the rough finished pulpboard.
We have recently had 400 DL size flyers produced on this machine. Litho quality printing without the need for long print runs.
If you are interested in producing short run professional presentation packs the contact MPL on 01708 757999, ask for Steve or Sarah.
The cover is printed on 300gsm gloss art board, the first insert is on 170gsm gloss art paper, the second insert is on 112gsm simulator (transparent paper) and the final insert is on 160gsm white pulpboard.
There is good colour saturation especially on the rough finished pulpboard.
We have recently had 400 DL size flyers produced on this machine. Litho quality printing without the need for long print runs.
If you are interested in producing short run professional presentation packs the contact MPL on 01708 757999, ask for Steve or Sarah.
Thursday, 11 June 2009
DON'T BUY DELL - THEIR SERVICE STINKS
It is appalling! One hour on the phone to ask a question which they won't answer.
I have a customer laptop which has come in. Initially it looked like virus issues but after checking with two AV systems it isn't.
The symptoms are that sometimes on boot there is no mouse cursor. Sometimes the keyboard does not work. Sometimes it is OK.
So I phoned Dell to ask whether the machine was in warranty and if they could help identify the best way to fix it.
The first call lasted 6:30 minutes, after which time I closed the call. If I want to listen to music I will buy a CD of music more to my liking .
The second call lasted 10:30 minutes which got transferred between a number of departments before it finally failed when I asked to speak to someone who could speak and understand plain English.
On the third phone call which lasted 6:15 minutes, I asked for the postal address to find out where to send my invoice for wasted time only to be put back into a queue with some awful music again.
The fourth call lasted 31 minutes. I got the postal address so now I know where the invoice is going but back on the support desk I gave the service tag and was asked where the machine had been bought. I don't have that information - it is not mine - it belongs to a customer. After a stand up row I eventually got to speak to a supervisor.
I had another battle. Where was the machine bought? I don't know. We cannot progress your enquiry without validating this information. This is an enquiry to determine if the machine is in warranty. Once the service tag is given it is surely a simple matter of saying Yes or No. But no, "we have so many calls, we cannot give out that information without validation".
I was eventually directed to a web site where I can put in the service tag and it tells me. Only 9 days left by the way. Maybe they were hoping those extra 9 days would expire before they acknowledged the complaint and thus could charge extra because the warranty had expired.
I now have a good mind to put some random numbers into this just to check the warranty status of someone else's machine - all without the need to specify where the machine was bought. How ridiculous.
If I treated my customers like this I would soon have no business.
How do Dell survive? They sell crappy equipment at ridiculously low prices and then they have a captive audience - you have to use them to get anything done.
In a Customer focussed, service led industry Dell do not deserve to survive. I hope they don't.
A word to the wise. If you too have wasted YOUR time in this process send them the invoice - they might soon get the message.
I have a customer laptop which has come in. Initially it looked like virus issues but after checking with two AV systems it isn't.
The symptoms are that sometimes on boot there is no mouse cursor. Sometimes the keyboard does not work. Sometimes it is OK.
So I phoned Dell to ask whether the machine was in warranty and if they could help identify the best way to fix it.
The first call lasted 6:30 minutes, after which time I closed the call. If I want to listen to music I will buy a CD of music more to my liking .
The second call lasted 10:30 minutes which got transferred between a number of departments before it finally failed when I asked to speak to someone who could speak and understand plain English.
On the third phone call which lasted 6:15 minutes, I asked for the postal address to find out where to send my invoice for wasted time only to be put back into a queue with some awful music again.
The fourth call lasted 31 minutes. I got the postal address so now I know where the invoice is going but back on the support desk I gave the service tag and was asked where the machine had been bought. I don't have that information - it is not mine - it belongs to a customer. After a stand up row I eventually got to speak to a supervisor.
I had another battle. Where was the machine bought? I don't know. We cannot progress your enquiry without validating this information. This is an enquiry to determine if the machine is in warranty. Once the service tag is given it is surely a simple matter of saying Yes or No. But no, "we have so many calls, we cannot give out that information without validation".
I was eventually directed to a web site where I can put in the service tag and it tells me. Only 9 days left by the way. Maybe they were hoping those extra 9 days would expire before they acknowledged the complaint and thus could charge extra because the warranty had expired.
I now have a good mind to put some random numbers into this just to check the warranty status of someone else's machine - all without the need to specify where the machine was bought. How ridiculous.
If I treated my customers like this I would soon have no business.
How do Dell survive? They sell crappy equipment at ridiculously low prices and then they have a captive audience - you have to use them to get anything done.
In a Customer focussed, service led industry Dell do not deserve to survive. I hope they don't.
A word to the wise. If you too have wasted YOUR time in this process send them the invoice - they might soon get the message.
Monday, 8 June 2009
Affiliate membership for Kashflow Accounting Software
We have now signed up with Kashflow online accounting software as an affiliate member. To access and sign up for Kashflow please navigate to our 'Partners' page and click on the Kashflow link.
Tuesday, 26 May 2009
Windows 7 RC1 under test at Hillier Consultants
Windows 7 Release Candidate 1 is now being run on one of our computers as a production machine.
Our set up is that all workstations connect to our domain server and all data is stored on that server so there is no locally stored data. Thus we can test Windows 7 in a real working environment without the risk of losing any data if things go seriously wrong.
The first viewing of Windows 7 beta left us unimpressed, however this release does seem a litle better.
It installed fine. Just a little annoyance when first installing there is a long delay without any progress bar while the disk is being formatted. Beyond that the install was trouble free. Most drivers were installed without the need for manufacturers disks but when we did the Vista drivers seemed to work OK.
We connected it to the domain without problem and at first glance it appeared to access the local network with better response times than Vista.
Internet access also seems to be improved.
The comparison with Vista is acute because we have set both machines to use a single keyboard, mouse and monitor via a KVM switch. Transferring from Vista to Win7 goes a dream, however there is a delay before mouse and keyboard respond when going from Win7 to Vista.
We are not installing MS Office on this machine yet but we have installed Open Office, Firefox & Thunderbird, Opera, Safari and FileZilla all of which loaded fine and seem to work without issues.
We installed Free AVG antivirus (Vista version) pro temp and this seems to be fine.
We are only at the end of our first 24 hours of testing so it is early days.
We will keep you posted of significant issues as we find them.
Our set up is that all workstations connect to our domain server and all data is stored on that server so there is no locally stored data. Thus we can test Windows 7 in a real working environment without the risk of losing any data if things go seriously wrong.
The first viewing of Windows 7 beta left us unimpressed, however this release does seem a litle better.
It installed fine. Just a little annoyance when first installing there is a long delay without any progress bar while the disk is being formatted. Beyond that the install was trouble free. Most drivers were installed without the need for manufacturers disks but when we did the Vista drivers seemed to work OK.
We connected it to the domain without problem and at first glance it appeared to access the local network with better response times than Vista.
Internet access also seems to be improved.
The comparison with Vista is acute because we have set both machines to use a single keyboard, mouse and monitor via a KVM switch. Transferring from Vista to Win7 goes a dream, however there is a delay before mouse and keyboard respond when going from Win7 to Vista.
We are not installing MS Office on this machine yet but we have installed Open Office, Firefox & Thunderbird, Opera, Safari and FileZilla all of which loaded fine and seem to work without issues.
We installed Free AVG antivirus (Vista version) pro temp and this seems to be fine.
We are only at the end of our first 24 hours of testing so it is early days.
We will keep you posted of significant issues as we find them.
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