IT Issues

Jun

2009

Review: Dells Warranty

So, I have a friend who bought a Dell, I told her to buy a Mac, she said she was going to buy a Mac, then someone at the last minute convinced her into getting a Dell.

No Problem, Dells aren’t *too* bad I figured (despite having 3 friends with other random issues with their Dell laptops).

The problem is, her Escape key broke. Not only did the key break off, but it broke IN HALF. Even with 30 kids in a computer lab for upto 5 hours a day banging away at keyboards, I have never seen a key actually break in half. Thing is, she didn’t really put any stress on the key anyway, so it appears that either Dell is making their keyboards out of crap, or it’s a fluke that it broke.

She lodged a call with Dell to get it replaced. My first thoughts were that they would either send her a new key to click on, or tell her to take it to an authorised repairer where they will conduct the repair. This wasn’t the case however. She indicated to the person arranging the warranty that she was an intermediate computer user.

Time Line:
12th – Submitted support request via Email
15th – Reply from Dell asking for a photo of the Key – Reply with photo sent off on this day
16th – Email back from Dell saying they will replace the part
17th – Replacement Part Sent
18th – Replacement Part arrived
19th – Taken to me to install for her

Total time: 6 days. Not too bad really.

They sent her a replacement keyboard and an addressed package to mail the return part back in. No instructions on how to install the keyboard either. With no clue on how to install the keyboard, she brought it to me. I had a quick poke at it to see if it was one of the easy types of keyboard to get it (the pull it back a bit and it just pops out type). But no, it was screwed in somewhere. I turned to the service manual. (took me a few minutes to find that too…)

Following the instructions I was able to work most of it out, however there was one unclear step:

Disconnect the keyboard cable from the keyboard connector on the system board by rotating the keyboard connector latch towards the front of the computer.

After scratching my head and looking at the unclear diagram I worked out that the step was wrong. You have to flick the latch to the BACK of the computer (white bit is lifted upwards and swings back). There’s no way that that is an “Intermediate Computer User” repair job.

Thankfully everything worked fine.

In Summary – How good is Dell Warranty?
Speed: 8/10
Quality of Service: 3/10
Overall: 5/10

Jun

2009

“HELP MY MSN GOT HACKED” – What you can do!

Update: 27/1/17 – MSN Messenger is gone now. This page is no longer relevant.

Quite often I will see a friend of mine has had their MSN account hacked, the hacked account will then send out spam to all their contacts that will look something like this:

2:46:51 AM ***Name Removed***: phewww +o( unbelivable, is that you??? who ever is it…is really similar to you lol …

http://***Link Removed***.com/pic_gallery.html

There are a few ways that your password can be stolen:

Through a Key Logger on your computer – A program that is designed to record everything you type on the keyboard and sends it off to a computer somewhere else in the world. (Unlikely, but possible)
A virus on your computer that is sending out the spam or stealing your password (also unlikely, but still common)
An exploit that gains your password if you’ve got the “Remember Password” option ticked in MSN Messenger, this one most people don’t see coming and I’ve heard it is common on websites that have flash games on them. (Sorry, no source for this one, if you do find a source please leave a comment and let me know and I’ll update the post)
Through a Phishing attack. This occurs when you come across a page asking for your MSN Account details, it could look exactly like the MSN Website. To check if you’re on the official MSN Webpage, it should have something like: http://something.live.com/, if it’s not that, don’t enter your password.
By clicking the link sent to you by someone from a hacked account. The link will be either a download, a phishing page or a malware infested page that does one of the things from above to get into your account.

The question is: What can I do about it? Well here’s your answer:

First up, change your password!
You can do this by going to https://account.live.com this is the official MSN account management page.
This method usually stops most types of spam right away.

What if you have forgotten your password or it has changed?
On the Live Account management page, there is an option for forgotten password, click the link and follow the instructions there to reset your password. If you can’t remember your security question then there is nothing else you can do.

What Next?

There are some other extra things you can to do help protect yourself. If you don’t have any antivirus installed, I suggest you go get some ASAP. I recommend AVG, it’s free and seems to do the job quite well.

If you already have antivirus installed but you’re not quite sure if you can trust it, it helps to get a second opinion, the Panda Security Active Scan is a good free scanner that does a good job at removing anything major. Best of all, it doesn’t need to install itself to run, it runs entirely in your web browser.

Next, if you’re still using Internet Explorer, I suggest you get Firefox, it’s way more secure than Internet Explorer and acts as another layer of protection from certain Internet Explorer only exploits.

Windows Updates – If you have updates turned off on your computer, I suggest you at least go and update it once a month or so. The Windows Updates include patches that block a lot of the exploits that viruses use to get into your computer.
You can get to this by going: Start -> Control Panel -> Security -> Windows Update

These methods have helped keep my MSN account hack free and have worked for friends of mine to help them get their MSN accounts back in their control.

Ducky

May

2009

iPods in Schools – Part 2: Uses

The first thing we’ve been looking at, is replacing the library of CD’s we have in the library with the iPods.

A full CD can be ripped in MP3 format down to around 60mb (that’s at 160kbit VBR) (or, about 133 CD’s on an 8gig iPod).

The advantage of using these over using the listening post is that the kids can work along at their own pace, they can rewind and listen to the same bit again and you don’t have to have all the kids starting the book at the same time.

Another thing some of the year 6 classes have been using them for is for listening to educational pod casts. They’re currently doing Rainforests at the moment so we found a set of podcasts about rainforests, downloaded them and put them on the iPods. Here is the set of Podcasts.

Most important of all, the kids love using them.

As I come across more resources, I’ll post them on this blog.

Ducky

May

2009

iPods in Schools – Part 1: Configuration

This is part one of a few parts, Part 1 is explaining the configuration of the iPods and issues that may arise when setting them up.

We have 30 iPod Nano 8gb. These have a little screen, enough space to fit more than we would ever need (we hope) and they’re small.

I arranged the deal to get these with Apple over the phone, on the back of every iPod we got Apple to Laser engrave (at no extra cost) the school name and an Asset Number.

As for finding content for the iPods, I had to tread carefully around copyright, this means asking for permission to use the music/audio, finding free music, pod casts or other sorts of stuff to put on there.

For converting CD’s to put on an iPod, there’s 2 ways you can do it. iTunes is great for when it’s a music CD, however in some cases we’ve got books that are on CD. In some cases they’re split across 30-40 tracks and putting them on the iPods is going to be a nightmare. For the Audiobooks like this, I used a free program called Exact Audio Copy (I’ve been told it’s used by the pirates to create very good rips of Music CD’s). This program lets me rip the entire CD into a .mp3 and a .cue file. The .cue file can be used to expand the CD out to its original form with all the tracks if needed.

Issues I’ve faced

One of the issues I’ve faced in implementing these iPods is a combination of the current network setup, Windows and iTunes. When I plug the iPods (or any USB Storage) in, Windows assigns it a drive letter. Letters AB are reserved, C is for the local drive, D is for the CD drive, the plugged in iPod chooses the letter E and then for F we have one of our network drives. So, plugging in one iPod isn’t an issue, it’s just when I try to plug in 2 at once. The second iPod will try to take the drive letter F, but it’s already taken by the network share. iTunes comes up with an error saying “iTunes has detected an iPod in Recovery mode. Use iTunes to restore”. Here is Apples page on the issue.

The solution: We need to tell the iPod to mount on a drive *after* F. To do this you:

Go to Control Panels -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management
Click on Disk Management
Locate the iPod that isn’t working
Right Click and select “Change Drive Letter and Paths”
Change the Drive letter to something that isn’t taken.
Use the “Safely Eject Hardware” button on the task bar to eject the iPod.
Unplug then plug the iPod back in. iTunes will recognise it and everything will work 🙂

Charging the iPods

For charging the iPods, I’ve requested quotes from a few different places to obtain some Powered USB Hubs. The idea of this is that they won’t need a computer to charge, but I can plug a computer in to the hub to sync 5 iPods at once.

I looked at getting a proper iPod Docking station, however they’re around $1000 each. A powered USB hub is somewhere closer to $10-$20.

Headphones

The problem with the headphones that come with the iPods is that they sit in your ear. This would help ear infections to spread so we decided against using them. Instead we’re still awaiting replies from a few different suppliers to see about getting some nice sturdy headphones that don’t actually touch the ear and instead they cup over the ear. Our aim is to spend no more than $20 per set.

Security

iPods are small, small enough to be easily stolen. We’ve distributed the iPods as 5 per teacher in Yr 6 and made them responsible for locking them up every night after school and keeping track of them. Hopefully this way none of them will go missing.

Part 2 of this guide will be about what we’re using the iPods for, a few educational resource links and other issues that have arisen with the iPods.

Apr

2009

32 Laptops, 32 000 Fingerprints

Update: 27/1/17 – This cleaning stuff is good, but I personally use now a mixture of ~10% isopropol alcohol and 90% water with a Microfibre cloth.

Part of my job at my school involves making sure the computers are clean.

Today I figure I’ll cover something that I get a lot of people asking me about: How do I clean LCD screens?

Now, I’ve heard people in the industry say “Use watered down Windex!”…. Don’t do this.

Windex contains Ammonia, Ammonia degrades the plastic coating on your screen.
(I also heard somewhere that it can also make your screen get a yellowy tint).

Of course, if you’re one of those people who has always been cleaning with Windex, it does take a while of cleaning before you’ve ruined the screen.

For cleaning LCD screens, I use a microfiber cloth, it won’t leave any bits of cloth on your screen like your standard rag would and as for the cleaning agent I use some special LCD/Plasma Screen Cleaning Spray.

LCD Cleaner

This stuff is great, it’s cheap, you can pick something similar up from BigW. Getting one that has a dispenser for the cloths is also good and with tricky folding you can clean up to 16 screens with one cloth. It leaves no streak marks and requires no hard rubbing and fingerprints just disappear.

Long as you get a decent size bottle of it (the one in the picture I would call a decent size bottle), it will last you for ages. I clean the 32 laptops here every 1-2 months and the bottle is still about 2/3 full.

Good Luck Cleaning 🙂

Ducky

Mar

2009

Thanks for Attempting to Rip us Off – Laptop Storage

Laptop Storage

Revolution 8 Bay Wall Cage

What’s the difference? $900 and a padlock.

Because there isn’t many suppliers of products like this, a few companies have a monopoly on these laptop cages. Of course, the padlock is a good idea, though we keep all ours locked away anyway.

Here’s a link to the Revolution website

What about iPods then?

On the note of storage units like this, I’ve been looking at ones for iPods (I’ll explain about the iPods later). I found one that looked pretty nice, it’s a 15 iPod Charge/Sync Machine. I liked the look of it and contacted the seller of the item (They’re based in the US). They sent me a quote that said:
SC15A Sync/Charge/Organize Desktop Station
List Price – $899
Discount Price – $699 (I guess he’s giving me a bit of a discount.. for no reason..)
Here’s the catch: Shipping/Handling & Insurance: $175

… That’s a lot of postage for a very expensive product.

So, the total price, $874USD… That’s $1327 AUD….. for a device that lets me charge 15 iPods at once…. My planned solution: A $10 Powered USB Hub… with lots of flashing lights inside it (it seems, the more tacky it is, the cheaper it is).

15 Slot iPod Charge Station

Here’s a link to the Tribeam website with the iPod Charging Stations

Leave a comment if you know of any cheaper ways to do these things and I’ll check them out.

Ducky.

Mar

2009

Kindy Manager – Asking Nicely Gets You Places

This post should be aptly subtitled “How to get applications to do what you want.”

There’s a program called Kindy Manager, it’s used for tracking child enrolments in After School Care stuff. This program also syncronises itself with the government CCMS, which is where we were having problems.
See, this program required use of the internet and offered no support for proxy servers.

I’ve heard the “horror” stories from the other schools, some schools paid for another phone line so they could get an extra internet connection that didn’t run through the proxy server (also, the other connection could not be linked up to the school network at all due to security reasons). Other schools had to move their Kindy Manager Database onto a laptop (that is, taking the database off the server and putting it on a workstation), taking that laptop home and running the connection through their home internet connection. The other way was to use one of those NextG cards for it (and sign up to a 12/24 month contract too).

So anyway, I figured I’d do something about it.

I sent off a friendly (but firm) email to the Kindy Manager guys explaining the situation and asked them what to do about it. Sure enough, I get a call later that day (awesome service) which started the ball rolling.

It’s less than 2 weeks since I started talking to them about the proxy issue (the first email was sent on the 5th Mar 09 and it’s now the 17th Mar 09) and the updated version will be available tomorrow from the Kindy Manager website.

Obviously, this method wouldn’t quite work with Microsoft, but when it comes to smaller software development companies, you could just trying asking nicely.

Here’s a few hints: When asking them about adding in a new feature, make sure you explain who you are and your role. Then explain what you (or other people) are doing to get around the problem and how much of a waste of time/pain it is to have to do the work around.
Don’t forget correct contact details and to be quite polite, software companies don’t want to have to deal with angry users.

Remember that software companies build their software for you, the user. Make sure you let them know exactly what would make their software a better thing to work with.

Ducky.

EDIT (18th March): So, we got the new beta copy to test out.. Looks like proxies are sort of working, but there’s a few more bugs to work out… Won’t be long now 😛

EDIT2 (20th March): Waiting on the bugs to be fixed 😛