Earthblog

Hello again! And welcome to this months Byteman Blog. I hope you enjoyed the last Blog and I would like to continue the theme where big companies are frightening users into paying hundreds of pounds over copyright issues.

It’s bad enough when big conglomerates are trying this on, but lately some law firms have jumped onto this money bandwagon. The first law firm to try this out was Davenport Lyons of London. They sent out demand letters to users for alleged file sharing of music, films and in some cases pornographic material. The letter demands up to £700 or else court action will be taken which - they state - could result in court costs of around £75,000! Many are frightened by this threat and pay even if they are not sure they have done anything wrong. Several users have complained to the consumer group `Which’ saying they have never done any such thing and ‘Which’, acting on their behalf, is trying to amend the Digital Economy Bill… which in turn allows these letters to be sent. `Which’ have admitted though, that it is a slow and uphill battle. Two other firms have also joined the affray – ACS Law; and Tilly, Bailey and Irvine solicitors. Between them, HUNDREDS of demand letters have been sent out. One user from Hull, who was accused of downloading a pornographic film, was so incensed that he hired a solicitor to fight the case - and has heard nothing since.

These so called ‘experts’ in legal matters are seemingly making thousands of pounds by using the law for their own greed. Let’s say, for instance, they send out 1000 threatening letters demanding £500 or face court costs of £75,000. Say one hundred people pay up because they are frightened, or just for peace of mind, that’s a nice cool £50,000 in the bank for very little work! And the 900 that didn’t pay? Well, you could send out even more threatening letters which will probably bring more funds in. And the ones that never budge? Forget them, not worth taking the chance and taking them to court, much better and cheaper to send out another 1000 letters to more unsuspecting users. Nice little earner eh? Makes you want to weep though, doesn’t it?

So, as I stated in the last Blog, if you get a threatening letter of any copyright infringement DO NOT PANIC, it is never as bad as it seems. Secondly, do some research of your own. Google is a must, and I can heartily recommend it, as it can turn a major problem in to a minor one very quickly.

Yes, I think Google is amazing. It has helped me out on numerous occasions and saved me a heap of money time and time again. How Byteman? Glad you asked, read on friends!

Case in point 1 – My Citroen airbag light came on all of a sudden. Annoying, but nothing major. Unless, of course, you are a little paranoid and can imagine yourself driving down the M6 at eighty plus …. when all of a sudden the airbag decides to inflate, causing a major incident. No, I am not THAT paranoid but obviously it needed looking in to. The irritating thing was that the 3 year warranty ran out the month before, so a trip the dealership could be guaranteed to be expensive. It would, no doubt, take more than an hour to fix. They would then charge two hours labour, of course, at about £60 an hour plus- whatever part they said it would need. To hell with it, let’s Google it! “Airbag light stays on citroen berlingo” in the search and bingo! The first one up has an answer!  A cable connector underneath the drivers’ seat develops a bad connection and just needs cleaning up, and a dash of WD40. Hey presto! It’s fixed and a saving of £120 plus! Good old Google.

Case in point 2 – My 5 year old Baxi combi boiler needed servicing as it had not been looked at since new. It wasn’t performing at its best. It also had an annoying fault of not coming on when you wanted it to, and then going off for no apparent reason. The engineer did a service on it but stated that the intermittent problem was nearly always caused by the main circuit board on this model of Baxi. He stated that the bill on the last one he replaced came to around £300 as the circuit boards cost a fortune. As he was showing me the board I noticed a part number and jotted it down. He asked why I did and I said I would look around to see if I could get a cheap one. He wished me the best of luck and said would ring when he located the part. Computer on - and Google up and running! I just put the long part number in and, lo and behold! I located one not 5 miles away at a heating supply company at £75 plus VAT. I rang the engineer and told him - which seemed to take him aback a little - but he agreed to pick one up (said he knew the place!) which he did, and fitted it charging me £25 labour. Now you might say I was doing a tradesman out of a job as it were - but what the hell! I just saved £200! Good old Google.

I could quote other examples, but space is limited. What I am trying to get over is that your computer combined with Google is a very powerful tool and can be used to save you lots of money. Read the last column? I could have paid nearly a thousand pounds because of a threatening letter to sue me but after some research on Google realised the threat was, well, just that, a threat, nothing more and nothing less. In the past I have also solved many a computer user’s problem too with Google. Everything from homepage hijacking to many weird and wonderful faults that can appear because of some nasty code or file that has leeched on to the computer. There are millions of people out there on the Internet and someone, somewhere, has probably had the same problem as you. Use it to your advantage and don’t let the baddies win, or in other words - illegitimis non caborundum! Don’t understand that? Then Google it!

I did state last month that I would go into my favourite subject which is Freeware/Open Source software and recommend several programs. Unfortunately what with me rambling on somewhat I will now go into this in detail in the next Blog. But I can give a couple of programs which I think are well worth downloading before I go. The first is the anti-virus program Avast. I will go into the various anti-virus programs next time but this free program, in my humble opinion, beats them all. This is not just my opinion. Many so called ‘geeks’ and ‘experts’ out there rate this as the top dog for 2010. I have used this for several months now, and it is the best I have used for a long time. Better than the free AVG and even better than many of the commercial programs like Norton and McAfee which do tend to hog the PC somewhat. You do have to initially register Avast on-line to use it, but that is a minor quibble for such a great program. You can check it out through this link -
http://download.cnet.com/Avast-Free-Antivirus/3000-2239_4-10019223.html?tag=mncol

The other free security program I can recommend is SuperAntiSpyware . There is actually a professional version at a cost but ignore that as the free one works just as well. Check it out at - http://www.superantispyware.com/

Speaking of spyware… do you want my biggest tip for stopping your PC getting spyware, malware and other nasties? Stop using Internet Explorer (IE)! Use anything but and you’ll find your computer cleaner than ever before. I use Mozilla Firefox but there are several out that are more secure than the pitiful IE. You can try Google Chrome, Opera or even Apple’s Safari, in fact anything is better than Internet Explorer because it’s like a digital colander full of holes letting all sorts of garbage through.

The next Blog will be completely devoted to freeware and my recommendations for the best programs available which I guarantee will save you money. See you next time and may the bytes be with you!