Author Archives: Stuart
The Cobbler’s Children…
… always have the worst shoes, so the saying goes. In other words, even the most dedicated professional sometimes fails to apply their skills to their own needs closest to home. I’m a web and IT freelancer who makes an increasingly large part of his living from blogging and social networking, yet I haven’t updated [...]
Posted in Freelancing Leave a comment
HP Officejet 6300 series drivers
One of my clients has a couple of HP Officejet 6300 Series all-in-one printer/scanner/fax units (model 6310 in particular). These units come with a comprehensive set of software for scanning and image manipulation, in addition to the basic drivers. I’ve always found the Windows XP software installation rather tricky. It seems to take far longer [...]
Posted in IT, Software, Windows XP Leave a comment
Mac OS X Leopard, AirPort and wireless channels
Stephen Fry famously freaked out on Twitter a couple of months ago when trying to get a Windows Vista PC to join a wireless network (a couple of those links aren’t for the faint-hearted). I had exactly the opposite problem yesterday: an Apple MacBook that steadfastly refused to even acknowledge the presence of a specific [...]
Posted in IT 3 Comments
When enough is enough
I recently helped someone with two PCs to reorganise her home working environment. She was sharing a printer between an old Windows 95 desktop and a new Windows Vista laptop. When she needed to print, she would carry the laptop upstairs to where the printer and desktop PC were based and switch the USB cable [...]
Posted in Freelancing, Service Leave a comment
Keeping customers informed
I’ve recently been working with a couple of service providers that take a very different attitude to keeping customers informed. The first is embarrassed by problems and is very defensive when they are reported. It doesn’t update its own “service status” page on its website for anything other than the most major outages lasting several [...]
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ADSL fault reporting in the UK
I recently had a few problems with my home broadband connection, provided by Demon Internet. Working with Demon to resolve these, I learnt some useful stuff applicable to anyone whose underlying connection uses BT’s ADSL Max service.
Many British ADSL providers use this BT Wholesale service to connect their customers to their own network. The exceptions [...]
Creating free PDFs using PDFCreator
PDF files have become a de facto standard for information publishing over the past decade or so. There are lots of good reasons why you might want to create a PDF version of a file. Here are a few of the most common:
You’re sending a document to someone – or publishing it on your website [...]
E-mail Virus Hoaxes
“Hi all, I checked with Norton Anti-Virus, and they are gearing up for this virus! This is the worst virus announced by CNN. I checked Snopes (URL above), and it is for real !! Get this E-mail message sent around to your contacts ASAP. PLEASE FORWARD THIS WARNING AMONG FRIENDS, FAMILY AND CONTACTS!”
I usually receive [...]
Laptop Outgoing SMTP Server Settings
I’ve recently moved onto much better tariff for my mobile phone and now have unlimited mobile broadband (HSDPA) access for a minimal fixed monthly cost. The fact that my phone can operate as an internet gateway for my laptop (when connected via Bluetooth or a cable) makes it even better. Having previously not [...]
Posted in IT, Mobile Leave a comment
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