Are our friends at Microsoft trying to alienate everyone? It seems like it sometimes.

Their latest escapade involves pulling support for Asterisk. Never heard of it? Don't worry, you're not on your own.

Asterisk is the platform that the majority of voip servers run on. What does this mean for Skype users?

Well, you will still be able to Skype people, you will still be able to call telephones at over-inflated pay-as-you-go rates (substantially dearer than mine), you will still be able to send instant messages to each other. In fact, most of you will still be able to do all the stuff you've always done with Skye - even though you've never actually needed it because you've always had software on your PC that can do all that anyway. Skype simply jumped the lead by telling lies, by convincing people they were making free telephone calls that weren't actually telephone calls - they never actually used a telephone!. It is simply a messenger program just like Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger (and a multitude of others).

So how does the lack of Asterisk support affect you?

Well, there are many thousands of people out there who have been using VoIP for many years alongside their Skype setup then all of a sudden, Skype is VoIP compatible. Wahayyy, lets run everything through Skype says many of these. Lets keep everything under one umbrella and make things easy. And why not indeed. Making things easy saves money - of course it does.

Wrong! What these people forgot to remember is that we're dealing with Microsoft here. A little history lesson for newcomers to computing. Once upon a time, there was a little person called Xerox. Now Xerox designed an ingenious little gadget that we now call a mouse. Around the same time as Xerox designed this wonderful little gadget, there was another little man we now call Apple that "borrowed" Xeroxs' mouse for their equally ingenious device called a computer that had a Graphical User Interface (GUI). Then there was another little man called Microsoft who saw this GUI and "borrowed" it, called it Windows. He then paid computer manufacturers to put it on their computers. The rest is history.

So back to our little story. The nice man called Mr Microsoft decided, one day, to buy an idea called Skype, probably with the intention of creating something else because he didn't really need Skype. He only bought it because they got the jump on Mr Microsoft making his "wonderful" messenger program next to redundant and that really peed him off.

Mr Microsoft, now having taken away one source of competition, decides to go for the next; VoIP. How better to do this than make his offering compatible, entice all the VoIP/Skype users to buy in to his idea, get them to make all the investment in going Skype, then pull the plug on VoIP. Voila, a whole new captive audience.

I hadn't intended this to be a Microsoft bashing item but try as I might, I find it difficult for it not to be. If we look at the Microsoft track record in their wonderful operating system, we find a string of rubbish. Bring back DOS, nothing fancy, and it works for computers. Come to think of it, so does Unix. Which leads me into Linux (but that's a subject for another article).


All comments in this article are those of the writer and may contain unintentional errors. Some areas may be over-simplified for ease of reading. All registered names and trademarks acknowledged.

Please forgive the repetition of this article but it seems people read it then ignore it because I'm still getting calls from people who should know better.

The Microsoft scam is where you receive an unsolicited call from someone claiming to be from Microsoft, or some firm or other and they may even say they're Microsoft certified or working with Microsoft. THIS IS A LIE! They will go on to say something like your pc is sending them error reports and is about to have a major breakdown and they need to sort it out for you (for your credit card details). Check they're talking about a Windows pc.

One line of defence is to ask them which pc they're referring to as you have 3 running, ask them for the IP address of the one they want to inspect.. Even if they give you an IP address (they generally fall within a certain range but can vary by brand) tell them none of yours has that address. After you've got them tied up with that line you could then tell them that your pc is running Linux Ubuntu, not Windows so they must be wrong.

They are only calling because most people run Windows. 

They might even say they got your phone number from your pc registration but if you brought it from the UK, they didn't - did they!?!?!?!?!?

The best advice I can give anyone getting one f these calls is to tell them your phone isn't near the pc and can they call back on your mobile. Once they've called you on your mobile, just tell them you're going to your pc now and put the phone down somewhere but don't hang up. Leave them hanging on the line clocking up a nice bill.

Please use your intelligence, who is going to ring you up to tell you your pc is about to break down? I don't know of anyone because nobody really knows when your pc is going to break but if you want to pay me €180, I'll sort it out for you just like they will!

Microsoft will never ring you so don't be taken in by Kevin calling from India - he's a liar.

Remember, do not give your details to anyone who cold calls you for ANYTHING, it's probably a scam.

All brand names and registered trade marks mentioned in this article are the property of their respective owners.

It appears a new piece of malware has surfaced that steals passwords from computers running MAC OSX and Linux called Wirenet. 1. Read the full article here.

Article courtesy of PC Advisor magazine.

Well, my honest opinion is a resounding NO! I'm not suggesting there's anything wrong with Windows 8 but how much longer do we have to put up with the customer paying through the nose to do research and development for microsoft.

Where am I coming from? I'm coming from putting right problems caused by Microsoft updates, the fact that after more than ten years we still have a product that is riddled with security flaws - Windows XP.

Don't get me wrong, I think XP is pretty good, it's more stable than Windows 7 in my experience so why do we need yet another operating system that doesn't work properly. Why don't they get one right so there's a base to start the next version from, or do I see things in too simple a light. I'm sure there must be a reason for all this faulty software being thrust upon us!

OK, you could argue that Win8 is a totally new way of working, that it's geared towards touch screen devices of the future, so what is Win9 going to do in three years time? Give us another WinME or Vista, and we have to pay for all this experimentation by Microsoft, leaving me and my colleagues to pick up the pieces.

Most of my call-outs are related to Windows corruptions rather than hardware faults with Win7 coming a close second to XP. I run machines with XP, Vista and 7 on and the one that gives me the least trouble is Vista - it just works yet nobody wants it. Go figure!?!?

I find 7 gives me the most problems, you can never guarantee that things will be the same next time you turn it on, windows settings change, program settings change and it will constantly turn off the wifi even though everything is set to leave it alone.

Personally, the only thing I can see happening with the release of win8 is an increase in call-outs to sort out yet another poorly developed system. Bear in mind that win7 was heralded as the best, most secure windows ever, yet it was hacked to bits showing it to be one of the most insecure versions of windows ever on release - but many choose to gloss over this issue.

Personally, I can't wait for people to wake up to Linux Ubuntu, it's forever free, and there are thousands of applications that are free also, and it would work better than windows for most of my clients but .......... people don't like change (ha) - so why do they keep supporting microsoft by buying their new models that they don't know how to use. Get Linux, once you've got the hang of it, it hardly changes, and if it does, you don't have to pay for the privilege.

Linux is based on Unix, a computer language that has been around since the dark ages of computing. Guess what, the Apple Mac operating system is also based on Unix but with one big difference. Ubuntu will run on just about any old tower or laptop, unlike the Apple Mac system.