Some people get very annoyed about these things because the answer to issues like this are not obvious. You Google for answers and get all kinds of advice including one well known blogger’s suggestion to stop even trying to fix it, just uninstall all your Java bits, restart and download it all again.

The easy and quick way to fix Java update issues is to go here to the java update test center, check for out of date Java applications, and install the latest version.

You don’t need to wait for a power blackout or a thunderstorm to damage your computer, power fluctuations and unseen surges through the mains power or through ADSL /Phone lines can do incremental damage or catastrophic damage to delicate computer electronics, hard drives and network cards.

One of the issues with power boards is that in a surge event they will shut off the power to the board, causing the computer to shutdown.  In technical circles this is known as “unexpected shutdown” and is a common causes of disk failure or data loss. The event is logged in the systems error reporting  and is an important area of risk management for data.

Surge boards are not cheap and the high cost can give you a false sense of security. If it costs this much it must work, right? Wrong. Surge boards that suddenly interrupt power to your computer often cause problems rather than the intended purpose of protecting sensitive computer electronics.

The solution for the office and home.

An uninterruptable power supply that offers true sine wave technology was something that only large enterprise could afford, but units have now become smaller and affordable. The most important part of good UPS technology is the line interactive capability. This straightens out the sine wave to deliver clean power, along with the ability to switch to backup battery when the power fails. If the power is not restored within a specified time you can shut down your computer gracefully.

Protect Computer & ADSL Line to 750VA

There are many brands of UPS for the office or home available through technology outlets such as computer stores but few with capable and reliable Line Interactive Technology.

You can protect your PC equipment and ADSL line with a good quality UPS for around the same cost as a premium priced power board. We can install a UPS with Line Interactive Technology  (for $171 at the time of writing) during a standard service call.

Book an onsite computer service today and ask for a Upsonic Line Interactive UPS installation. It takes around 10 minutes and could save you from unnecessary power related data loss or component failure.

Solid state drive and data safety

We see the failure of electro-mechanical hard drives on an almost daily basis. These clumsy but delicate devices are nearing the end of their technology life and SSD (solid state drives) with large capacity and mainstream pricing will take their place. The end-of-life for these troublesome drives is welcomed, though I must point out that while everyone moans about the unreliability of IDE and SATA drives, they are built to a price and you got what you asked for. Some drives seem to be a little more reliable than others, while the WD Velociraptor is very reliable, at a price.

We would expect to see data retained when the flash drive has reached its write cycle and this presents its own security issues for enterprise, medical, and all other users where critical data is stored.  Researchers at the non-volatile-systems -laboratory found that commercial erasing programs were not entirely affective with data remnants still available to testers.

A SSD drive that is unmountable or no longer appears to be working may be mistakenly discarded with accessible data on it.

If you run Java based applications you may see this error message at times.

Try Googling this error and you see any number of complex answers that otherwise hint at one of the most likely reasons for seeing this error.

Java apps require an amount of volatile memory to run. If you have recently ran a Java app or saved data in the app and then try to re-run the app at a later stage, days or weeks afterwards, you may see this error which relates to volatile RAM cache not being available to the virtual machine. There may also be times when your system memory is incorrectly configured and is unable to negotiate with the drive space.

Try restarting the computer to release RAM cache and see if you can now run your Java app.

The Outlook 2007 email password login dialog box keeps appearing. You can check the box for save password but it keeps popping up.

We have been getting email requests on this issue, and there seems to be volumes of  forum posts with all kinds of whacky answers including creating new mail profiles or reinstalling Office. The answer is usually a lot simpler (remember Occams Razor).

Go to accounts under the tools menu, double click your accounts name, wipe your password and re-enter it. Click on test email settings, then click ok and exit the snap-in.

The new Google search algorithm is called Caffeine. It follows the trend towards local based search and while this is helpful if you are looking for a computer shop in Kalamunda, Google Places fails a good percentage of small businesses whose services are not tied to a location, but service the greater metro areas.

Thanks for the thought Google.  But will we ever see a revision of Places for businesses that are not location specific?

You can see the full Google thank you here.

Every year we see emails with xmas messages that have dozens of CC recipients.

The problem with this is that (a) everyone can see everyone elses email address (b) not everyone appreciates this, and (c) anyone who replies to your email will be read by everyone else on the CC list.

To hide all CC’d recipients follow these steps.

1. From the Outlook toolbar, click New and select Mail Message.

2. A new message window will appear.

3. Go to the Ribbon and select the Options.

4. In the Fields section, choose Show Bcc.

5. The Bcc field will appear. Place the address(es) you wish to send a blind carbon copy.

Send Large Attachments with Outlook 2007

Programs for sending attachments at http and ftp have been around for a long time, such as usendit and others. Acrobat now offer a free program for sending large attachments that integrates nicely into Office Outlook 2007. Once installed you have the options for sending attachments like you normally would, or via the Acrobat plugin. What we like about this offering from Acrobat is it’s free, and the brand name is familiar to most internet users.

There seems to be a lot of confusion, both in retail stores and in the forums, about what Dual Link is and when you need to know about it.

Single link connections are most common, though many video cards now support dual link. A DVI single link computer monitor can display a resolution of 1920 x 1200. My Panasonic 42″ Plasma television is HD and has a screen resolution of 1024 X 720. Some much larger TV’s have screen resolutions of 2560 x 1600. If you’re using a HTPC (connecting your computer to your TV as a media center TV) you should check your user guides to see what resolution your TV is and whether it supports Dual Link. If there is no mention of Dual Link then it most likely doesn’t support Dual Link.

Dual Link requires the correct cable and, while not being directly related to screen image quality, you can have high resolution capability and higher (faster) refresh rates.

We have found Jemmell Cables in Australia to be a good source of online cables and advice.