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Over the last few weeks, online security providers such as Trusteer and Sophos have given warnings about a new breed of malware that hijack the connection to your online banking and other secure sites and can stay connected, even after you log out. Nicknamed “Oddjob”, the malware once installed on your machine hijacks the secure browser session that you are using to view your bank account, nests itself in the browser and waits until you have made a secure connection with the banks website to attack. By hijacking this session, the malware keeps the session open and can edit the pages so it can display fake versions of what looks like your account while accessing your information and even using you bank account without your knowledge in the background.

There are steps you can take though to prevent this new strain of viral software from infecting your machine :

• Update your anti-virus or renew old versions (Norton, AVG, McAfee, Sophos)
• Install all the latest Windows Updates and Service Packs for your version of Windows
• Update Java, Adobe Reader and Adobe Flash Player (these can sometimes be used as a backdoor for viruses and malware on older versions)

If you have any problems with these steps or any other problems please don’t hesitate to call one of our qualified engineers and technicians and we will be delighted to perform the required steps to deal with your problem.

| Lo-Call 1890 219 219 (Ireland) | Freefone 0808-CALHELP (UK) |

| Business Hours: Monday – Friday 9:45 to 6:30 & Saturday 9:00 to 12:00

So last night, 0.08% of Google customer’s e-mail accounts got wiped. Not a large figure, although considering that Google hosts over 90 million e-mail addresses (source:https://www.email-marketing-reports.com/metrics/email-statistics.htm) for personal and business use, this is something that has affected thousands of people:

https://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/365563/thousands-see-gmail-accounts-wiped

For this reason, we’ve decided to do this weeks blog on backing up your e-mail account. A lot of people might be daunted by this task but its actually easy enough.

Firstly, log in to your Gmail account as normal. Once logged in, continue to Settings as illustrated below:

Once in Settings, follow the steps on the picture below (click to enlarge):

1: Click on the Forwarding and POP/IMAP

2: Click Enable IMAP

3:Click Configuration Instructions (under configure your e-mail client). This will bring you to a website that will give you instructions to configure the mail client you are using.

If you have any problems with these steps or any other problems please don’t hesitate to call one of our qualified engineers and technicians and we will be delighted to perform the required steps to deal with your problem.

| Lo-Call 1890 219 219 (Ireland) | Freefone 0808-CALHELP (UK) |

| Business Hours: Monday – Friday 9:45 to 6:30 & Saturday 9:00 to 12:00

Currently one of the top ways of viruses gaining access to a system is through an out-of-date Java environment. So in this blog post, we’re going to show you how to update your Java to prevent your system to be compromised. I’ll give a little background information about the update first though:

https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/readme-142177.html

As listed in the link above, the Java 6 Update 24, according to Oracle, ” fixes 21 security vulnerabilities, 19 of which allow attackers to remotely install malicious software on end-user machines”. This alone makes it an important upgrade to say the least. So, onto updating the Java environment:

Firstly, one must go to the https://java.com/en/ website. Here you can find a link that says “Do I Have Java” underneath the big red “Free Java Download” button. Once this is clicked, it will bring you to the page in the screenshot above. Click the “Verify Java version” button and you will be brought to a page like this:

After this page you will get one of the following screens, depending on whether you have the Update (Picture 2) or not (Picture 1) (click pictures to view):

If you end up having the top screen (as in no Update installed on the machine), the following steps are required:

Click “Download Java Now”. This will bring you to the following screen –

Click the “Agree and Start Free Download” button and a Run/Save screen should show up like so:

Choose “Run” as this will install it straight away, giving you peace of mind. A Java welcome screen shows up next and after this a second screen asks to close all browsers and browser windows so that the software can install.

Then:

The software should install now, to be sure that it is you should see something like this:

And thats it, your Java should be updated. Keep an eye out on future updates as they will cure any other vunerabilities in the system or system software.

We all have to write letters, documents and reports from time to time. But what do you do when you need to check on a word or look for an alternative to the word you’ve already used a couple of times. Many people don’t know that there is a great dictionary and thesaurus built right into Microsoft Word. All you need to is select the word you’re using, then hold down the Alt key and click on the work again. If you’re using Word 2007 or Word 2010, a dictionary and thesaurus frame will pop up on the right hand side of the window. So easy and so handy…

Here at Home Helptech, we strive to make sure we are knowledgeable about any upcoming new software, hardware or general computing breakthroughs. This week, I looked over information about Microsoft Cloud Services, part of cloud computing which you may have already heard of. If not, www.dummies.com explains it perfectly: https://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/what-is-cloud-computing.html

Cloud computing is already taking the internet by storm, as Google are developing an operating system to rival Mac and Windows which is solidly based around cloud computing.

In the (very near hopefully) future, everything on a software level of operations will be performed through cloud computing. Even now it is happening without us even realising it, and has been for years. Back in the day when we had dial-up, any one with an email account could only check it really from their home machine, simply because thats where the account was set up. Fast forward a few years, and everyone has an email account that they can check from any internet capable machine around the world. The great thing aswell is that web-based email clients such as Gmail or Microsoft Hotmail use one of the fundamental concepts of Cloud Computing: there is no need for local data storage, or in plain english, you dont have to carry around a laptop just to check your own emails, they are already stored on a server somewhere else.

The great thing is, this is not only happening to just emails. Soon enough, you can have your music, movies, pictures, contacts, you name it, on the internet, completely accessible away from your home computer. Here are some links to look at, they should help to make the move to cloud computing!

https://www.technobuffalo.com/blog/internet/five-examples-of-cloud-computing/

https://puddlegum.net/cloud-computing-and-music/

https://communication.howstuffworks.com/cloud-computing.htm

As most of you reading this know, when we do any kind of work on a system/machine, we try our level best to install any system updates available at the time. The only problem is, a lot of these updates and patches can come in drips and drabs. Enter Windows 7 Service Pack 1.

This new Service Pack will be great for anyone who is using Windows 7  for the first time or using a new machine. All of the previous updates and patches are included in Service Pack 1 (SP1) to save you the hassle of having to install them all one by one, and it also includes a few new updates too. We would recommend everyone running Windows 7 install it when it is released in February (Feb 22nd to be exact) as it will not only fix any bugs or glitches in the system, but it will improve performance, useability and system security.

One thing that always worries some people though (myself included), is the system stability after an update, as on the odd occasion a system update might show some other system errors or faults. So you can imagine I was happy when I saw this on the Release Notes:

“Currently, no critical issues that require you to take corrective action either before or immediately after installation have been reported or discovered in testing. The document is continuously updated, so if any such issues are discovered or reported, they will be available in the Release Notes document.”

Our Reliable OfficeJet Pro K5400

We speak to people a lot about the merits of paying up front for a better printer in order to benefit from more cost effective ink costs going forward. So now it’s time for me to put my money where my mouth is and see how I’ve done on my last printer choice.

We’ve had a HP OfficeJet Pro K5400 Inkjet Printer in the office now for over two years. I must say that it has performed flawlessly for that time. It’s used mainly to letter-headed invoices and customer letters – we use a black laser printer for internal office materials, manuals etc. I noticed this morning that it was needing a new cartridge which prompted me to check on our usage over the two years.

Since we started using the printer, we’ve printed 4,824 sheets of paper of which  4155 were colour. With the OfficeJet Pro being designed for much higher use, we’ve only had to buy a handful of cartridges which has been very convenient. We always buy the extra large (XL) cartridges to save having to order frequently – too many of our customers mention their non-stop trips to buy small ink cartridges. Our cost per page calculation looks like this.

So the headline number is under 6 cents per page. I think that’s not bad for colour pages given that large office colour laser printers are often quoted at nearly double that – for example, take a look at https://www.office.xerox.com/latest/OPBFS-13.PDF

These prices are based on retail prices of ink. Of course, if you shop around you’ll be able to find a much better price and thereby lower your cost per print.

Another way of looking at this is in terms of cost of ownership, ie how much should the printer cost you over its lifetime. We’ve sold a number of low cost HP All-in-One printers recently, primarily to homes with low use requirements. These printers use the HP 364 cartridge which gives around 250 pages per cartridge or the HP 364XL cartridge which will run for around 800 pages. I took some time to plug the performance numbers for these printers into the same table above and the result was interesting.

Despite the much higher original price of our Inkjet Pro, these numbers say that for our relatively low office use, we’re still €70 better off having paid for the more expensive printer. Given that we’ve benefitted from the much higher performance and more advanced features we well, it seems like a no brainer. The benefit will keep climbing with every page we print.

It’s nice to see that even small businesses can get cost effective printing, as long as they choose their printer carefully.

Ask any iPhone, Android Phone or Mac user and they’ll tell you – there’s instant gratification from going into their App Store and downloading the latest Facebook, Pacman or Sky News App. What’s more it’s often free or cleverly priced low so you don’t even think about it….

Well, now Intel has taken this idea and brought it to Windows. It’s called AppUp. You can find it at www.appup.com.

Thought your PC was safe from Angry Birds, the entertaining, addictive, number one iPhone game? – Not any more, you can get it for your PC now on AppUp, along with countless others such as “Pacman”, “My Little Artist” – a drawing package for kids, and, especially in January “I Need a Budget”.

Once you’ve installed AppUp itself, App installation is a breeze – just click on the App you want and it will download and install automatically. It makes you wonder if all software will soon go this way. It makes it so easy for everyone.

So give it a try, all you have to loose is your disk space 🙂

If you have any problems with these steps or any other problems please don’t hesitate to call one of our qualified engineers and technicians and we will be delighted to perform the required steps to deal with your problem.

| Lo-Call 1890 219 219 (Ireland) | Freefone 0808-CALHELP (UK) |

| Business Hours: Monday – Friday 9:45 to 6:30 & Saturday 9:00 to 12:00

A new survey by iSuppli last week showed that memory prices have dropped to new lows in December. So if your machine has been running a bit slow over the past while or you’d just like to give it a shot in the arm, now might be the right time to invest in more memory.  If your computer is running Windows XP, we would recommend that you have at least 1 GB (Gigabyte) of memory installed. For Windows Vista and Windows 7, 2GB is a more appropriate lower limit. Many modern computers are able to take up to 4GB and some will take much more. However, certain versions of Windows including most installations of Windows XP cannot make full use of 4GB, so it’s not always a case that more is better.

If you want to find out how much memory your machine currently has, click on the Start button, right click on “Computer” or “My Computer” and then click “Properties”. You should get a window that looks something like this (the exact format varies depending on which version of Windows you have).

Installing memory is normally very straight-forward, even on a laptop. So it may well be something you’d be willing to try yourself. If not, we at Home Helptech are happy to install it for you. Installation can cost  as little as €20 so don’t be afraid to give us a call for a quote.

If you have any problems with these steps or any other problems please don’t hesitate to call one of our qualified engineers and technicians and we will be delighted to perform the required steps to deal with your problem.

| Lo-Call 1890 219 219 (Ireland) | Freefone 0808-CALHELP (UK) |

| Business Hours: Monday – Friday 9:45 to 6:30 & Saturday 9:00 to 12:00