Home & Small Office Computer Guide

… Microsoft to small business - too bad … it’s gone from the beginning of the year.

Well it seems that sales of Windows Vista haven’t been quite as stellar as the hype from Microsoft would have us believe. In fact in some markets, such as the small office/home office market, sales of Vista have been rather dismal as small businesses prefer to stick with an operating system that works with all their software.

Microsoft’s solution? Make sure there’s no other operating system the small office/home office people can buy. Windows XP in the OEM version will be withdrawn from sale by the end of the year.

There’s nothing quite like bludgeoning your clients into submission.

You can read the full story here

Here’s an interesting little problem that appears from time to time. You will notice that the screen has a decidely pink tinge to it

Now if you saw that on your monitor you might be excused for thinking that your monitor was about die and that you needed to buy a new monitor asap.

Fortunately this problem is usually not down to your monitor. In this instance it was caused by a fault inside the cable that runs from the monitor to the computer and it’s simple to test to see if it is the cable that’s at fault.

All you have to do is squeeze and roll the cable between your thumb and forefinger somewhere along it’s length. At the same time watch the monitor to see if it returns to it’s normal color display. If it does all you have to replace is the faulty cable.

If it doesn’t return to it’s normal color then make sure that the plugs at either end of the cable are firmly attached to the monitor and the computer. The other major cause of the pink screen monitor is a loose connection.

If neither of those remedies work then perhaps it is time to seek help from your friendly computer shop.

Microsoft expects small businesses to ‘deploy’ Vista more quickly than they did Windows XP.

Here in the town where I live one medium sized retailer advised a small business that needed a new laptop to buy the one the retailer had for sale and take it round to a computer shop to have Vista wiped and XP installed - you see, the small business had a payroll system that wouldn’t run with Vista.

I wonder how many others around the world are being told something similar?