How the mighty fall.

Bitcoins, the on-line currency that was recently worth over $500 per coin has suddenly disappeared - along with all its' investors money. Oooppppssssss.

They've deleted all their Tweets from Twitter and their CEO resigned on Sunday.

It would appear that Bitcoins has 'lost' 744.408 of its' users bitcoins worth almost $360 million. Seems they didn't foresee the way their system could be used for fraud and put a halt on all withdrawals earlier this month but by the time they'd stopped all trading on Monday, the bitcoin value had plummeted to just $130 - ouch.


Full story here.


There are other implications to this as anybody who now gets infected with the Cryptolocker virus might have a problem getting their files back as the villains behind it were using the anonymity bitcoins offered to ply their trade.

So what happens now is anybodies guess as I'm not aware of any other on-line payment system they can hide behind for more than a couple of days without being found out. Long term, that's a good thing but for the short term, many people will be up the creek without a paddle. Don't let it be you.


Don't have nightmares - back-up your data - stay safe.

Starting on the 1st April, we will be lowering our monthly line rental on standard installations from €11.98 to €9.99.

This will apply to all our existing customers currently paying €11.98 monthly rental and for all new standard installations from that date.

What are you waiting for? Our line rental and call charges are lower than just about everyone else on the market so get connected NOW and save!

Our standard pricing beats BT & Virgin in the UK and Telefonica, Direct Telecom, Spantel and Europa and many others in Spain.

Why are you paying more than you need to?

We can even integrate your existing phone line into our voip system with no extra monthly rental allowing you to easily take advantage of our rates. Typical rates are €0.007 per minute to UK and €0.012 per minute to Spain.

Yes, you read that right, less than 1 cent a minute to the UK, that's 1 hour for only 42 cents so work out how much you're overpaying with your current provider or if you'd like us to do the maths, just send a copy of your current bill and we'll do it for you - no problem.

All prices include IVA

It never went away really but it's back again on the Costa Blanca.

I had a call today from one of my customers. She had received a call claiming to be from Microsoft but because she wasn't quite sure about things, she sensibly asked for a number to call them back on.

The person on the other end refused and started to threaten her claiming he was going to revoke her Windows licence and stop it working altogether if she didn't co-operate.

Anyway, long story short, she called me to double check this guys story. Yes, it's a scam!

How do you know it's a scam Clive?

Firstly, and most importantly, Microsoft will NEVER call you, let alone call you to let you know your computer has a virus.
Secondly, how did they get your telephone number? Did you give it to them? I don't think so. If you bought a new computer, you might have given your details to the manufacturer but that wasn't Microsoft.
Thirdly, if you bought a computer with Windows already on it, it's the computer manufacturer that is responsible for your copy of Windows, not Microsoft.

Microsoft are only responsible for RETAIL copies of Windows purchased by you and installed by you (or your friendly PC guy) and NOT the OEM versions that manufacturers and system builders use.

So, the bottom line is:
If you get a call claiming to be from Microsoft, it isn't! End of story.

There are a number of things you can do if you get this call but the easiest is to tell the caller you're just going to turn the computer on, lay the phone on the table (don't hang up) and carry on with your day (after all, it's his bill, not yours).

Surf safe everybody.


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It has been announced by Microsoft that Windows 8 has reached the 200 million licence milestone. This figure includes licences for all new PCs & tablets shipped with Windows 8 on them as well as upgrades to 8.1.

Whilst this sounds all hunky dory for the worst operating system ever released by Microsoft, in my mind it's distorting the reality.

Why?

OK, isn't Windows 8.1 just an update on Windows 8. If I bought a PC with Windows 8 on it, that's 1 licence. If I then upgrade to 8.1, that's another licence being claimed but in reality, it isn't because I already bought it and the upgrade is a service pack.

Apply the same method of Enron calculating to XP and you'd have multi-billion licences issued as it went through SP1, 2 & 3.

Even taking that into account, if you then consider how many people have dumped Windows 8 because it's so counter-productive and the figures are even less rosey.

Windows 8 is sixteen months old and, without admitting it, Microsoft are already talking about dumping it themselves. This being the case, why should they expect us to keep buying it - because they know we will.

No, I'll re-phrase that. Because they know that YOU will. I won't install it on any of my machines. I'll stick with XP, 7 and Linux for the time being as, in my opinion, they're all far superior to 8.

Let's add something else to the mix. The life window of Win8 was to be 3 years, as it's sixteen months old now, it still has a further twenty months to go before being replaced with Win9. Our good friends at MS are now suggesting that the next 'upgrade' to Win8 will be Win9.

Reading between the lines, this confirms that Win8 is not worth wasting any further money for development effort on their part unless the 80 million users out there create a huge stink!

Hold on! Didn't you say 200 million earlier?

Yes I did. What you need to do is forget the SP1 upgrade and then factor in all those millions who downgraded from 8 to 7. 80% of my clients asked me to downgrade from 8 because it was so awful to work with.

Lets add another condemning figure into the mix. Win7 reached 240 million licences in just twelve months - Win8 hasn't got there yet after sixteen months even though its' release was carefully timed to take advantage of traditionally high volume sales periods.

I believe the figures speak for themselves, even after the careful massaging by Microsoft. My opinion is forget about Win8 and wait to see what Win9 brings us.

In the meantime, you could try Linux which is totally free. Download Linux here.

Consider this! The vast majority of Servers out there delivering all those pages you visit on the internet and the worlds super computers, all run on Linux. Why? Not because it's free but because it's a lot more stable, it's faster and uses far less resources than Windows.

In short, it works better! It'll breathe new life into that old laptop/tower lurking in the cupboard and allow you to stream the internet to your TV. That way you don't have to spend money on these over-priced IPTV boxes being bandied around all over the place.


Opinions in this article are those of the writer. All brand names and trade marks acknowledged.