My new car

I've had my new Vauxhall Corsa Breeze 1.2 3-door since last month, so I thought it was about time to write about it.

Driving it is good. I’m a large guy, and for a small car the Corsa has lots of interior space especially in the front seat. It has a very comfortable driving position with adjustable seats and steering wheel. The performance is getting better and better. The engine is beginning to really feel more flexible and revs well. The fuel consumption has gone from 26mpg on the first tank of petrol to 40mpg on the second. So that's going in the right direction too.

Very quiet to drive, not much road noise and a good sounding radio/CD player. Nice handling with no surprises. Good quality feel to the controls though the indicators and windscreen wipers/washers take a while to get used to.

I've just taken it on my first reasonable motorway run and it felt like it had enough power even if 5th gear to keep up. In fact with the smoothness and quietness it seemed to want go over 80mph all the time. 70mph is 3,000rpm. It plays my iPod through the radio and the MP3 music CDs show the track names which I didn't expect. Also my TomTom One satnav fits nicely in the cup/cash/card holder in front of the gearstick and still gets a good signal. So it's not in view when I park (easy to cover with a fuel receipt).

Why did the make the numbers on the speedometer and rev counter look exactly the same? Couldn’t they afford to paint a few more zeros on the rev counter to distinguish it a bit?

To begin with the performance was terrible. I expected that as I test drove a brand new 1.2 SXi and it was the same. However now the engine is run in (over 1,000 miles) it is getting better. Power kicks in nicely between 3000 and 4000rpm. Lower than that nothing much happens in higher gears. Is this typical of the Twinport valve technology? I would have liked a Breeze 1.4 which is not available, but remember the 1.2 is in fact 1,229cc and the 1.4 is 1,364cc so the difference isn't as much as it seems at first.

Other benefits are very light steering when manoeuvring, easy gearbox and low insurance group. Overall I’m very happy with it. It does what I want and is a good replacement for my seven year old Fiesta.

Hardy Heron

I last messed about with Linux distributions over five years ago in the days of Red Hat and SUSE, so I thought that it was about time that I had another go with the latest and most popular desktop version of Ubuntu 8 codenamed Hardy Heron. Ubuntu seems to be getting a lot of praise in the press and I wanted to find out what it was all about.

I was disappointed before with the hassle of installing the old versions and expected more of the same with this one. I just downloaded the desktop Ubuntu 8.04 LTS version from the website and burnt it onto one CD. Boy, was I surprised when it installed in about 25 minutes on an old eMachine system that I had lying around. Everything just worked first time from the box so to speak. Access to the network, sound, graphics all configured perfectly. The applications like Openoffice were installed and ready to go. It just worked. And you don't have to mess about with antivirus, firewalls, security suites, etc.

This will be perfect for recycling all those old PCs that I get without a legal version of Windows that can be reloaded onto them. Mostly I just get what spares I need from them, destroy the hard disk drives and take them to the municipal rubbish dump. Now I can find another use for them, especially for people and organisations who already have a broadband Ethernet router and just want an extra PC for the visitors, children, mother, brother, dog, etc.

Three surprises this week

I had three surprises this week:

DELL PowerEdge SC440 server for £117 offer

For just a few days DELL offered a small tower server (18Kg) with Intel Dual Core processor E2160, half a gig of ECC memory, 160Gb HDD and DVD-ROM for only £117 delivered. I ordered one with a upgraded 250Gb HDD for an extra £8. Maybe it was a mistake or DELL wants to get rid of old stock.

Anyway when it gets delivered it will make a great platform for another of my pet projects which is Windows Home Server (WHS). I already have the DELL predecessor the SC430 server with an Intel Celeron 2.5GHz but the new one will offer three times the performance (with dual core CPU responsiveness) and capacity. I can sell the old server to pay for the new one! I also have a 500Gb HDD waiting to go in the new server as well.


I'm really fond of WHS for sharing files and printers plus performing automatic backups of the other desktops and laptops that I have. Plus offering easy remote access on the occasions when I need it.




AVG Free 8 AntiVirus

Grisoft released their latest AVG Free 8 AntiVirus this week with a revised prettier user interface that looks really good and much more modern. It also integrated their antispyware software package as well, which is a real bonus. And on testing the memory footprint is not much larger than the previous version. Well done Grisoft!

I've been recommending and installing AVG Free as the antivirus software of choice for my customers for years now with very few problems. My previous choice for antispyware was AdAware SE Personal and more recently free Spyware Doctor downloaded as part of the Google Pack. Now I can install just one piece of software and know that I'm covering both bases and also make it easier for my customers.


DELL Inspiron 1525 laptop

I bought a couple of these laptops for clients recently and was surprised by the design, quality, speed and value that this model offers. Previously I'd supplied the DELL Vostro 1000 and 1500 models, but seeing this new Inspiron I thought I'd try it.

Nice wedge shape, solid looking silver keyboard, 8 in 1 card reader, Firewire, and HDMI port. Also the more usual USB ports (4), Express Card slot and inbuilt wireless networking. Bluetooth is an option.

Even with the basic Intel Pentium T2370 dual core processor, a £10 upgrade to 1.5Gb and 120Gb HDD it performs admirably on the simple tasks that my customers want them for. And when installing them, I load them up with a number of concurrent tasks it seems to handle everything well and remain responsive. All for under £350. Nice one DELL! DELL needs to get Vista SP1 quicker though.

More background...

The philosophy of my company PC-fix-IT was when I started, to offer friendly, experienced, yet affordable services to the local community in an increasingly technology advanced market (broadband, security, Windows, etc.) taking advantages of good quality free software and well priced hardware products. This has been successful, as in the four years I've been trading I have over 800 customers in the Basingstoke area and revenues that force me to be VAT registered.

I quickly realised that building cheap PCs from components was not part of the business model. You have to investigate and source the components, assemble them in two hours (something always goes wrong), load software (including a bootleg copy of Windows) and then essentially offer a lifetime warranty on the computer. I quickly switched to selling DELL computers which offer brand recognition, easy configuration, legal Windows, and a backup warranty from DELL. The profits were better and it was a lot less hassle. I make my money on the resultant services. In fact I offer the first hour free in the price.

The majority (90%) of my customers just want a simple, modern computer to surf the Internet, email, manage digital photos, create the occasional letter and spreadsheet. For the rest they are games players, video editors and run specialist applications. All require help in configuring a suitable computer, ordering and installing it, connecting printers, broadband, networking etc. Then transferring data, files and settings from their old systems, reinstalling applications. i offer these services at a reasonable rate that most people whether individuals or running a small business can afford. Plus after business hours in the evening and weekends to make it convenient to them.

I rely on information from Microsoft, evaluation software, free software from reliable vendors, DELL computers, broadband suppliers (and their poor offshore support call centres) and the Internet to tie it all together. Plus my wife to run the accounts, answer the phone, wait in for deliveries and remind me often.

I've frequently been asked why I don't have premises but the extra overheads of lease, insurance, security, stock and salary costs over a potentially slight increase in passing trade and carry in business do not seem to be worth the risk. In fact a number of such local establishments have closed recently, so my views seem to be correct.

In the next post I'll be more specific on experiences, products, etc...

Introduction

OK my first post. I will start with a short introduction. I live in Basingstoke, England, married and run a one man company for fixing PCs (www.pcfixit.co.uk). This blog is to document some of my experiences, my successes and failures, and my thoughts about life in the IT industry, albeit at the lowest level.

I've spent well over 30 years in the IT business from programming, project mangement, development department manager, product manager and finally in marketing hardware mainly workstations and servers. After being made redundant three times in seven years, it was obvious that it was increasingly difficult to get and keep an job as you got older and anyway I wanted to decide when I retire not for a company to do it for me.

So four years ago I turned my hobby of building, fixing and using PCs into my trade by setting myself up as a PC repair man, mainly for residential customers and small businesses.

That's the background, let's see where this takes us...