A customer from Seacliff called me up saying he was having various issues with Outlook 2010 on his PC. I took a look at this problems and was able to resolve most of the issues with a simple control panel / application repair but a few niggling problems persisted. He was using the Office 365 version of Outlook and was due to pay again for another year so I offered the suggestion of Thunderbird to him instead. He also mentioned that he wanted to get his own email address for his business rather than rely on his bigpond account for emails. I registered a new domain and hosting account for him and set up his new email using IMAP in Thunderbirdon his PC. He was very impressed at how fast and responsive Thunderbird is compared to Outlook and he really liked the simple, clean layout. I then undertook the process of copying all of his emails across from Outlook to Thunderbird. Outlook and Thunderbird don’t share email data files nor do they transfer between each other but with the help of some very clever 3rd party tools I had all of his emails exported from Outlook and imported into Thunderbird in the same folder structure he was used to seeing. All up, he’s now on a much faster, more reliable email system and he has his own email address for his business 🙂 

 

Mark JANSEN 

DIGITAL INSITE 

Adelaide Onsite Computers + Support 

Mobile : 0404 110 526 

Office : (08) 8387 9023 

A customer from Corromandel East contacted me saying their modem had died after a lightning storm and a power failure had hit their area. I tested the modem and confirmed it was faulty as it was no longer able to get DSL line sync to their internet service provider. I installed the new modem I supplied which was located in a front room of their house then also installed a  powerline adapter kit with a second wireless access point for the back end of the house where the bedrooms were.  Their daughter was previously getting 1 or no bars for the wireless signal in her bedroom but now with the new powerline kit and wireless access point installed just outside her room she is now getting full 5 bars for wireless. As anyone who has teenagers will know this is “kinda a big deal” 🙂 A bad wireless signal in your home or office isn’t something you have to live with – I can help you get full signal in every corner of your place!

 

 

Mark JANSEN 

DIGITAL INSITE 

Adelaide Onsite Computers + Support 

Mobile : 0404 110 526 

Office : (08) 8387 9023 

One of my business customers said they were having all sorts of problems trying to read and organise their email in Outlook 2013. I’ve been getting quite a lot of customers lately that have also been having similar issues in Outlook and my go to solution for them is most commonly to say goodbye to Outlook and say hello to the awesome and completely free Mozilla Thunderbird. I used to use and love Outlook back in the days of 2003 and 2007 but I have to say I haven’t been very impressed with the performance and usability of the 2010, 2013 and 2016 versions of Outlook. They feel bloated, clunky and it’s hard to justify their existence for basic email functionality when such a great alternative such as Thunderbird exists. So this is exactly what I suggested to my customer and they were more than happy to go ahead. In no time at all they were all setup and ready to go in Thunderbird and their email had never been so fast or reliable before. Did I mention it’s free? 🙂

 

Mark JANSEN 

DIGITAL INSITE 

Adelaide Onsite Computers + Support 

Mobile : 0404 110 526 

Office : (08) 8387 9023 

A customer from McLaren Vale called me up with a problem on their desktop PC that is taking a very long time to boot up in the morning. They also said they were experiencing freezing up randomly throughout the day. I tested the PC and tried to boot it up and found that it was hanging on the first BIOS screen for about 8 minutes before proceeding to load Windows 10. My first port of call with this type of problem is to always remove any USB devices such as flash drives, external hard disks and any other removable devices. Unfortunately in this case, this didn’t help and the same 8 to 10 minute delay persisted. I then went into Windows and checked the motherboard build date in the system information panel  and found out that it was manufactured in 2009 making it almost 10 years old. A motherboard being this old is often the cause for these types of freezing up and boot up errors so I had to break the news to my customer that they’ve had a very good run up until this point but it might be time to consider a new PC. The good news is that one of our Digital Insite systems would absolutely eclipse the performance of this old box more than 5 times over so they can look forward to a much faster and productive PC 🙂   

 

Mark JANSEN 

DIGITAL INSITE 

Adelaide Onsite Computers + Support 

Mobile : 0404 110 526 

Office : (08) 8387 9023 

A customer of from Blackwood that operates a harvest management business contacted me saying his Microsoft Excel application was randomly freezing up when he was viewing and editing XLS spreadsheets. He also needed some help setting up some new Samsung 10 inch tablets that he had recently purchased for his staff members to use for timesheet logging and site plan viewing while on the road. I looked into the Excel problem first and immediately dug into the add-ins section in the settings to see if there was anything suspicious in there. I spotted a strange entry that referenced file locking for Excel and started to research this more. I found out that it was a plugin from another program similar to dropboxthat locked Excel files temporarily before the sync process occurred. I suspected this to be the cause of the freezing up he was seeing so I disabled this addin and tested Excel again and found the freezing up symptons had now stopped. Next up was his Samsung Tablets. I helped him with some software called Mobilockwhich allowed him to allow and disallow applications on the tablet making it safe for staff use without it being used for personal time wasting applications. I also setup gmail accounts for him on each tablet and created a step by step process for his staff to be able to create new timesheets and then easily email them off to him for processing. All up, he’s sorted so I’m happy 🙂

 

Mark JANSEN 

DIGITAL INSITE 

Adelaide Onsite Computers + Support 

Mobile : 0404 110 526 

Office : (08) 8387 9023