"But I just want to send an email!"
A word from SCIP CEO Rob Gentles over a spot of email bother and how SCIP can equip you for your journey on the ‘information superhighway.’
“But I just want to send an email!”
How often have you shouted this at your screen when things don’t go according to plan? It’s frustrating when you can't send a simple email to a colleague because some part of the system, somewhere isn’t playing nice. Email has become so every-day that we only think about how it works when it goes wrong.
So lets take a quick look at your email
As long as your recipient is one of the 25% of the world’s population using the Internet and is logged on to any one of the several billion Internet enabled devices, your email should be with them in a matter of seconds.
Your email is
likely to be more important than the majority of the 250 billion that will be
sent today. Mainly because 80% of the emails sent globally are spam! Of these
spam messages 80% are sent by PCs that have been taken over by malware (malicious software), which steals
your data and turns your PC into a 'zombie' for the spammer’s network. Some of
these zombie networks have contaminated over a million machines with viruses, trojans,
worms and so forth.
We are a far cry from the first email that was sent in 1971, from one computer
the size of a wardrobe to another a couple of metres away, containing the
illuminating message QWERTYUIOP. The frantic pace of IT development means we
can instantly communicate with billions of people across the globe. This is at
once exhilarating, daunting, complicated, expensive, and potentially
threatening.
‘Information Superhighway’
A few years ago ‘information superhighway’ was the in vogue phrase for describing the Internet. Although this has
fallen out of use it can still be useful to use a ‘road’ analogy. If we want to travel to another city it
isn't as simple as buying a new car and setting off. In the same way choosing
the right car by ensuring it is taxed, MOT’d and insured, supplied with fuel
and so on is important, we need to ensure that our PC is also equipped for the
road ahead. PCs are, by far, more complex than the cars of two decades ago. We cannot
just buy a PC off the shelf and off we go.
As with our car, the days when an enthusiastic amateur greasemonkey could do
all this in their garage on a Sunday are over. You need support from reliable
sources and SCIP exists precisely to provide this help in a cost-effective way.
Even if you don’t use our services we are always happy to give you advice for
free. We have a variety of services that you can access from training to
bespoke IT support.
You need to have the right hardware for the software and the software needs to support our your organisation. SCIP have the technical expertise and can offer training to hep you get the best from the software. We can physically clean machines and spring clean operating system, clear out chunks off old software and defrag hardrives. We can ensure you have consumables for the printer and back ups of your data. You can call on us to troubleshoot if it breaks down.
How can you stay protected from viruses or malware? We help you to plan for all eventualities so that you can meet what accountants call the ‘total cost of ownership.’ The next couple of years are going to be tough but with the right set-up you can be the success story. So put on your driving gloves, rev up your back up system, check the map, the oil and the RAM and get going.
Feel free to pick up the phone and call 01273 234049 or email admin@scip.org.uk to see how we can help you.
