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It has been pretty hectic over the last couple of weeks here at ComTech HQ. From Cyber Essentials audits to server installs to network redesigns, we have been kept very busy and at times been run ragged but the team has pulled together and we have got through.

So, what exactly have we been up to then?

Chris has been back on the networking scene after a forced break due to the sheer volume of work we had on.  Boy was he happy to get his hot chocolate fix!  He attended the second session of the Business Academy with The Tannahill Partnership, learning about new approaches to taking the company forward.  If that wasn’t enough, he has also been delving into the world of Office365 sorting out issues for clients.

Kenneth, our worthy apprentice, has been running around visiting clients installing new PCs, resetting existing ones, sorting out a couple of Linux issues and everything in between. To top it off, he is also getting ready to start the next chapter...

The numbers are in and we did 105 support tickets last month - almost a record: second only to January when it was 116! With Kenneth sunning himself somewhere in Europe for 3 weeks it was down to John, myself and the bears to hold the fort and glad to say we muddled through.

Chris and the bears had a lovely visit to Inverness with Herbie a couple of weeks back and decided to take the mountain bike up the Drummochter Hills on the way home. Answering calls from clients when carrying a 14kg bike up the mountains is definitely "interesting”.

John also had his own adventure when he headed up dirt tracks to a client's north of Aberfeldy earlier this week to install a co...

So what have we been upto in the last couple of weeks? As it turns out quite a bit!!!

Our new apprentice Kenneth is currently sunning himself for 3 weeks on holidays but before he left he managed to finish his SQA level 6 in half the time expected. This is quite an achievement and shows his dedication.

For the record when you have been working as a team of 3 and then go down to 2 it does come as quite a shock to the system!!

We have also had 2 server fails which resulted in new hard drives and restoring from backups (we love backups!!). Never had any servers fail in 9 years and then two go down in 6 days.

On t...

I was having a meeting with someone (lets call him Jeff) over coffee last week when the topic got onto where we actually do our work. Jeff is your typical office worker who has an office with 2 PCs, 2 printers and is in the office at 9am on the dot and does not leave until 6pm at the earliest. For 90% of his time he is bound to his desk as he thinks he is more productive that way. If that works for him I am not going to knock it but then we got talking about me.

My style of working is completely different to Jeff’s. I have set up ComTech to be a mobile business (just look at the top picture), which means I am not tied to a desk all day unless I choose to be. ...

Should broadband now be classed as a right? This is something I have been asked by quite a few people recently and to be honest I am still undecided. You see the problem is when I think of rights I think of shelter, food, water and that kind of stuff. People wanting to access their Facebook page and access to the internet in general doesn’t come in to it.

There is a problem here though, and it is a BIG problem, everything these days revolves around the internet in some shape or form. Everything that effects our daily life – food, money, transport etc is affected by the internet in some way so even if you aren’t online yourself you can guarantee that the things you use will have been influenced by it. Perhaps I am being narrow minded thinking people only want to use the internet ...

I used to work for an IT department at a well-known UK-based global insurance company.

One of the most important pieces of software was our network management system or NMS. This system monitored the network and alerted us when something went wrong. But because the network was designed to be fault tolerant, the users (usually!) did not notice when part of the system failed. So, the senior managers at the company were always bemoaning the cost of the network management system and any time we wanted to implement improvements the reaction was “but nothing ever goes wrong so why are we paying all this money for software that draws pretty graphs but adds nothing to the...

Fake news is highly topical just now, least of all due to President Trump’s infamous speeches and prolific tweets. It is easy to think that he is talking mince but maybe, once in a while, he is not wrong – who knows?

I was at a networking meeting last week when I was reminded by one of the attendees of the story of the guy who successfully sued the manufacturers of his motorhome because he crashed when, having set the cruise control to 70mph, he left the driving seat to make a cup of coffee. The motorhome, of course, according to the story, went off the road and overturned. He was subsequently awarded a humungus amount of cash by the court.

Despite the very low probability t...

It’s a well-worn phrase that is used, perhaps overused, as an excuse for procrastination. Sometimes it is because business managers have other priorities and only think about their IT systems when something has already gone wrong or when they get an inkling that something is not quite right.

The cost of fixing a problem after it has already happened can often be much higher than preventing it in the first place. To quote Benjamin Franklin, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

The longer a problem is allowed to continue or a risk is not addressed, the more difficult (and expensive) it becomes to resolve. Like the untreated stone chip in ...

A few weeks ago I went to an evening networking event about 50 minutes drive from home. Not long after I got onto the motorway, I noticed that the car was running a bit “rough”. It felt like a faint vibration from the engine. It wasn’t terrible, but knowing the car so well, I could feel it.

As I got near the venue, it got worse and soon I heard a loud rubbing and banging noise coming from the back end. Now I was worried.

I parked and as I suspected the rear tyre was flat. The event was due to start soon so I went into the hotel and found the conference room. I met some friends (and made some) had some coffee and did all the networky things.

By the ti...