LANcom Technology Blog

According to ComputerWorld, Microsoft has announce that from now on anyone  who buys a PC running Vista Home Premium, Business, or Ultimate from a participating retailer/manufacturer will receive an upgrade to Windows 7 “at little or no cost”.

This upgrade will be received once Windows 7 has been released on October 22nd. Whether the upgrade will be free or cost a small shipping fee will depend on the PC manufacturer and retailer.

To see the original ComputerWorld article click here.

LANcom is happy to announce we are now a MessageLabs Certified Partner. This partnership means that we can now provide an even better email and web security service to our customers.

The MessageLabs technology protects your business from all internet threats such as viruses, spam, spyware and other inappropriate content, more effectively than any other vendor in the world.

MessageLabs services are delivered to over 20,000 businesses around the world across a global network of data centres. This means that spam and all new and emerging malware threats can be stopped at the internet layer before they reach your network.

So what else is great about MessageLabs services?

• They guarantee unrivalled accuracy via industry leading Service Level Agreements
• No hardware or software is required which means no installation or maintenance costs
  
• They promote productivity and business continuity by eliminating downtime and disruption caused by email and web borne threats
• They ensure the integrity of internet content and defend against inappropriate material and your company’s brand reputation

LANcom is one of only two MessageLabs Certified Partners in New Zealand. If you would like to take advantage of an exclusive 14 day trial of the MessageLabs service please contact Owen Redmond at owner@lancom.co.nz

If you would like to learn more about MessageLabs click here to visit their website.

Need to convert a file from one format to another? Here are three free sites that could help you do it.

1. CometDocs – The CometDoc site offers over 50 different conversions online, but mainly focuses on converting files to and from the PDF format. To use this site all you have to do is browse to your file, choose a conversion method, enter you email address and click Send. CometDocs will then email you a link to you converted file.
   To visit the CometDocs site click here (Note: you need to register to this site if you would like to convert a document that is more than three pages long).
2. Convert.Files - The Convert.files site includes conversions for archive, document, presentation, image, audio, and video files. To use Convert.Files all you have to do is upload you file, select the input and out put formats, enter your email, and then click Convert. Convert.files then emails you a link to download your file.
   To visit Convert.files click here.
3. PDFtoWord – There are a lot of free online tools available which can convert PDF documents to Word, but the PDFtoWord site seems to produce the best results. When you use PDFtoWord your document will retain it’s text formatting, hyperlinks, justification & alignment, headers & footers, images, backgrounds etc. To use PDFtoWord you just need to browse to your file, enter your email address and click Convert. PDFtoWord will then email you your converted file.
   To visit PDFtoWord click here.

Webslug is a free online tool that allows you to quickly test the loading time of your website. You can also compare the loading time of your site against another.

All you have to use this tool is enter the website you would like to test and click Run test, if you would like to compare sites just enter both and click Compare.

In general you probably want you homepage to load in less than 10 seconds. To visit the Webslug site and find out if your homepage loads fast enough click here.

Last month on this blog we mentioned that Waruna Kirimetiyawa, LANcom’s Chief Technical Officer, was participating in Shave 09 for the Leukaemia & Blood Foundation.

We are happy to announce that Waruna managed to raise $635, so as promised here is the picture of Waruna’s new do.

Do you sometimes lose track of time and spend way too long on certain websites? MinutesPlease a free online tool which allows you impose a time limit on how long you can spend on a particular site.

All you have to do you use this tool is go to the MinutesPlease website, enter the site you want to visit and how long you want to spend on it, and click the Please button. No registration required!

MinutesPlease will then open your site in a new browser Window. When you only have a minute of your time left Minutesplease will send you a warning, and then when your time is up MinutesPlease will simply close the window.

To visit the MinutesPlease website and try it out for yourself click here.

A while ago on this blog we looked at KeepMeOut, a similar tool which can stop you from visiting a website too often (click here to see this post)

Hat tip to MakeUseOf for the idea for this post

As you may have already heard, Microsoft recently released a new search tool called Bing. Bing is a search engine designed to do more than just provide you with a list of links, it aims to organise search results and help you overcome information overload.

Here’s a quick look at some of Bing’s key features.

Quick preview
In Bing when you hover your mouse over the right hand side of a search result a pop up box displays a preview of text from the site. This feature is great for helping you decide which link you want to click through to.

Improved image search
Bing’s new image search has an infinite scroll feature, which means you don’t have to keep clicking ‘Next” at the bottom of the page to see the next page of results, you can just keep scrolling. You can also filter images by things like size and colour.

Video search
One of the great features of Bing’s video search is the ability to preview videos. All you have to do is hover your mouse over a video in the search results and the video thumbnail will play for a few seconds, helping you to decide if you want to click through and see the whole video.

The explorer pane
The explorer pane acts like a table of contents for your search results, allowing you go straight to what you are really looking for. The explorer pane sits to the left of your search results and displays Quick Tabs, Related Searches, and Search History. Quick tabs allow you to quickly refine your search e.g. when searching for New Zealand you are given the option to refine the search to images, maps, weather, real estate, facts, or culture.

Bing is currently in Beta, so there may still be a few glitches to work out. If you would like to try out Bing for yourself you may want to set the country (top right) to United States, as I noticed that the video search option was not available when this was set to New Zealand.

To visit Bing click here. To learn more about Bing click here .

According to ComputerWorld, Microsoft plans to release its next operating system around three months earlier than first expected. Windows 7, which was originally scheduled for release in January 2010, will now be available on new computers and store shelves from October 22^nd.

Microsoft is also planning to offer discounted or free upgrades to Windows 7 to those that purchase PCs in the month leading up to the release. This will be through a program call the ‘Windows upgrade option’.

To learn more about the new features coming in Windows 7 click here.

To read more about the release of Windows 7 from ComputerWorld click here.