Entries by Ruairi Fullam

Without even realising, you and the companies you work for are benefitting directly from free software. Free software is often misunderstood, as it is more than just receiving software without monetary cost.

Free software, by definition is software that grants you rights to modify and redistribute the software as long as you publish your modifications in kind. This method of distribution is behind the majority of infrastructure that powers the entire internet, and can be found in anything from Set Top boxes used to record television programs, to your wireless router at home sharing your internet bandwidth.

The Free Software Foundation works on protecting these freedoms granted to software developers. Often there are legal issues that entangle free software developers, ranging from Intellectual Property claims (often predatory and false!) and also targetting legal proceedings at people who try to modify free software without releasing their changes. They also sponsor some key projects, and provide online information on free software practices and also advise on predatory software practises like consumer-hostile digital rights management and anti-competitive measures taken by some proprietary software vendors.

Learn more about free software here, read the Free Software Definition:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

Join the Free Software Foundation: https://www.fsf.org/associate/support_freedom/join_fsf?referrer=6008

Some of you may have had D-Link routers in the past, known for their clunky silver / grey boxes, the aquamarine logo and awful looking administration interfaces. Luckily, they've had a visit from the taste brigade and managed to update all the shortcomings in their market approach. The boxes are now cheaper, smaller, and much better presented. I bought a DIR-100 Ethernet Broadband Router to see what it was about and I'm quite impressed! The new firmware has had its control panel redesigned in an attractive black and green theme, more facilities including Game Mode and QoS (Quality of Service) prioritising. It's much much better and snappier than its existing incarnations. Shipping versions currently have the 1.00 firmware - a 1.01 firmware has been released which addresses issues with Application Rules amongst other minor things. The box itself is a small black and silver number, well presented considering the cost (under £20 from ebuyer). For cable modems, this may potentially be the router to shift me from my favourite, the Netgear 624.

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Anti-Virus and Network Security are important to any computer user; but unfortunately the right choice in software can be a challenge. Today I had to endure a severe problem with Norton Internet Security 2007, which had rendered core Windows Networking software components laid to ruin - which was very frustrating for my customer. Luckily, Windows System Restore went some way to saving the day. 

System Restore lets you roll back your computer settings without affecting your documents, but it doesn't always run successfully. Periodic snapshots are taken and stored on a part of your hard drive. On the first three attempts, my customer was unsuccessful restoring the computer to recent snapshots, but by chance I tried an earlier snapshot from two weeks previous which had restored the networking components into a working state.

I then promptly uninstalled Norton Internet Security 2007 and replaced it with a trial version of AVG for the time being. I'm growing ever more sour of my experience with Norton, for one it is very heavy on any system, and secondly, it has an overly visible presence, distracting users only to inform them that it is there (example, a toolbar in Internet Explorer saying that YOU ARE SECURED, and periodic pop-ups saying STATUS GOOD).

So, credit still due to AVG, who write a great suite of products, all be it not the best looking - I've never had any trouble with it yet.

I'm Ruairi Fullam (call me "Rory", my name is Irish), and I've been an Exeter-based IT Consultant for over five years specialising in roughly the same areas as Kris does. I'm currently now based at the Switch Systems offices working alongside Kris as I anticipate in the near future to merge with Switch Systems to mutually increase the quality of service we both offer, which of course is of great benefit to both of our existing customer bases.

Well, Kris has taught me a number of interesting things that weren't immediately obvious to me, like realtime graphical network monitoring using TheDude, and learning the basics of physical network cabling.

Seeing the potential of this, I advised Kris that it would be great if we wall-mounted his new Thin Client terminal display on the wall between our two desks, so at a glance we can see the status of all our client networks and websites, and also see the identity of incoming callers (thanks to Kris' fantastic CRM integrated caller ID software).

So - for now I'm working through my current workload, but we have some great ideas for the future on how we push Switch Systems further and increase the brand value and market presence. Exciting times to come for sure!