We will be tweeting news articles and posts from this website along with the occasional special offer for new and existing clients.

All tweets will contain a link back to this site so that you will be able to read items in full, so by following us on twitter you will be the first to know of any new content posted to our website.

You can also use twitter as another way contact us should you need to make an engineer booking or just ask a question.

In the video above Joe Belfiore, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft’s’ Operating Systems Group, shows how Windows 10 will reintroduce the ‘Start Menu’ that was so sorely missed in Windows 8 and expand it to include ‘Live Tiles’ from Windows 8’s Metro/Modern UI start screen. He also shows how ‘Store Apps’ will no longer be forced to run in full screen mode within the Modern UI screen, but will simply run windowed on your normal desktop, and can be resized to suit your requirements.

Also demonstrated is the improved ‘Window Snap’ feature which will allow four windows to be snapped into position, rather than the current two. The ‘Task View’ button is also shown which will allow easy switching between running windows. This isn’t actually a new innovation: the ability to quickly switch between running windows has been available since Windows 98, and personally I would like to see ‘Flip 3D’ from Windows 7 returned.

Finally, we are shown how Windows 10 will support multiple desktops. In the example in the video Joe explains how this would be useful for switching between a work and home layout. This makes different arrangements of tasks more manageable by having each group of running windows in their own space.

Windows 10 will be available to retail customers at some point mid to late 2015. However, for those who are more adventurous, the Technical Preview version is available to download from today. Details on how and where to get it are in the video.

One item that drew a lot of attention was our recently refurbished BBC Model B Microcomputer, arguably the start of mainstream home computing in the U.K. The differences in reaction to the BBC Micro were very wide, from adults who remembered owning one themselves or simply using one at school, to shock and surprise from children and teenagers who were amazed to think that this piece of equipment was once the pinnacle of home computing.

Based on the reaction and feedback that we received we are planning further events, and will strive to increase the size of the exhibition to see what other surprises we can find from computing history.

At today’s cabinet meeting the Council agreed to a contribution of £5.5 million, an amount which will be matched by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. There is an expectation of an additional amount of £9.5 million from an as yet unnamed supplier who will be contracted to carry out the installation work.

This is great news for those of us who live in rural areas of the county and are being ignored by BT when it comes to basic broadband services, never mind superfast fibre connections. These additional funds will help to increase the proportion of residential and business properties that have access to fibre broadband services from the initially planned 87.4%, to 95% by 2016.

The full press release from Superfast Essex can be found on their website: Superfast Essex Broadband Extension Programme approved

The website also contains lots of information about the whole program, including events where you can meet the team and ask questions, as well as a postcode checker to let you know when superfast broadband will be installed in your area.

This is a scam!

Firstly Microsoft do not offer this kind of service to any of it’s customers be they individual home users or multi-national companies.  They do not monitor the performance of individual computers aside from the error reporting system that is built into Windows and occasionally asks you to make a report.  The information contained in this report, should you choose to submit it, does not include any information that could personally identify you or your computer and does not include any contact details. The group that are calling you are doing so solely to gain access to your computer so that they can introduce malware which they will then charge you to remove.

Because of the amount of unwanted malware that is already introduced to computers by way of Spam, Trojans and other nefarious methods these telephone calls often coincide with warning messages or slow performance problems and this lends credence to the claims that the caller is making.  To further validate their claims of legitimacy callers have also offered to inform clients of the Security Identification Number of their computer,  computers have no such unique identification.  Some manufacturers will add a Service Tag or other Serial Number but that if for the use of a particular manufacturer only and is in no way guaranteed to be globally unique across all computers from all manufacturers.

The best course of action is to inform the caller that you are already aware of the problem and that you have arranged for someone to inspect the machine and that their help is not required.  Under no circumstances should you allow anyone you do not know or trust, access to your computer, either remotely or directly.

If you have concerns about receiving these telephone calls, are aware of any issues with your computer or would just like to have it inspected for your own peace of mind, we are always happy to discuss these types of issues with our clients.

The most obvious way of avoiding advertising that you are away from home is to not post Facebook messages or Tweets stating that you are on holiday.  However there are other ways in which technology can betray our location.  For example photographs taken with digital cameras, smartphones or tablet devices often include location data embedded within the photo itself.  Along with information like, the make and model of the camera, shutter speed, aperture and ISO settings, often GPS data is included.  So even if the subject of the photo you have taken does not immediately indicate where in the world you are, uploading the photo to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or any other publicly accessible online service or social media site can still reveal where you are.

There are a myriad of other Apps that make use of location data to provide you with an enhanced experience but again these can all betray your location.  In many cases a quick review of the settings for either the Apps themselves or, even better, the mobile device you are using will often reveal an option to prevent the sharing of location data.  Using these options to deny apps access to your device’s location is a good way to hide that you are not at home.

The best way to avoid publicising that you are on holiday is simply to not post or share your photos until you return home.

Everyone at Avatar UK would like to wish all of our clients a safe and Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

If it isn’t bad enough that visiting webpages to read your email results in the a large portion of the page being filled by adverts it appears that Google are snooping on your email in order to deliver specific adverts based on private conversations you are having.  Microsoft have published a few examples; in one a user emailing a friend discussing having to have their cat put down is then targeted with adverts from Google for catteries and pet products.  In a second published example an email discussing a pending divorce generates adverts for divorce lawyers.

In the build up to this campaign Microsoft surveyed members of the public asking for their views and found that 83% were unhappy about having their emails scanned, and viewed it as an invasion of  their privacy.  93% of the people asked in the survey felt that users should be able to “opt out” of this practice which is not currently possible with the Google email system.

There is a very simple way to “opt out” of this barrage of advertising, be it targeted or not and it works for all email service providers whether it’s Google, BT Yahoo, Outlook.com or any of the others.  The solution is to have an email client installed on your personal PC which will connect to the email service on a regular basis and download your email direct to your PC.  This is not a new solution, in fact it’s one of the oldest methods of reading email, but it does mean that you don’t have to put up with all the adverts on the email service websites, and it means that your data is safe in your hands (well on your PC) rather than in the hands of companies that would like to snoop on your personal correspondence.

There are several email clients available for free and all are reasonably easy to set up and all will provide exactly the same functionality that website based mail clients do, in some cases more.

If you would like more information about this or to discuss which options might be right for you please contact us either by telephone or by using the Contact Us page on this site.

In addition we wanted to be able to have this blog area where we can offer advice and bring issues of concern to the attention of our clients from an easily accessible site that avoids the need to pester you with bulk emails.  This area also gives our clients to opportunity to feedback and discuss the issues we bring to your attention and highlight to us any area that you may require additional help with.

We would also like to take this opportunity to thank Ian Vale from www.icefire.eu with his invaluable help in the design of the site and to all those clients who very kindly offered Testimonials to be included on the site and for the very kind things they said about us.

In the coming weeks and months we hope to be adding new useful functionality and integration with social media services like Twitter in order to offer our clients even more ways to get in contact should you need to.

Meanwhile please browse around the new site and feel free to feedback any comments or suggestions that you may have.