Wednesday 11th May 2016

Q & A
Internet Speed
Linda has a continuing problem with slow Internet speed in her area. It seems that 'fibre' is not available. The old 'copper wire' system suffers from running more slowly as the length of copper wire increases. So customers further from the telephone exchange get slower speeds.The 'fibre' system helps to overcome this. Known as 'Fibre To The Cabinet' (FTTC), this system runs fibre optic cable from the telephone exchange to the green cabinet.  There is virtually no loss in speed caused by the fibre cable, so the very high speed connection is available at the green box. The relatively short run of copper wire from the cabinet to your house will slow the signal a little, but this results in a much faster broadband at your house than when it was copper all the way. You have to subscribe to a FTTC tariff with your Internet Service Provider, which costs more than the old copper system.

It is easy to switch between ISPs, so it is always worth shopping around at the end of your contract to see if you can get a  better deal.

Email Clients
Ray asked for some explanation of email clients, particularly on PCs. Most versions of Windows had some form of email client built in.  In Windows XP, the built-in client was Outlook Express, in Windows Vista the client was Windows Mail which was an updated version of Outlook Express. The next version of Windows was Windows 7, which did not include any built-in email client. However, Microsoft offer a free download of an email client called Windows Live Mail (not to be confused with Windows Mail in Vista!) which will run on W7 and W8 and probably W10 although this isn't listed in the system requirements. Windows Live Mail is an element of a suite of programs called Windows Essentials which includes Photo Gallery, Movie Maker and Windows Live Writer, but you can chose just to install Windows Live Mail (see http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/essentials)

Windows 8 and 10 include an email client in the form of a modern app called Mail. Other free third-party email clients are also available including the well-established Thunderbird from the Mozilla Foundation who produce the Firefox web browser (see https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/thunderbird/). A more recently introduced product is Mailbird (see https://www.getmailbird.com/).

Email clients can essentially use one of two protocols. The oldest of these is POP3 (Post Office Protocol). This was mainly designed back in the day when you only had a single device (i.e. a PC) to access your mail and it stores mail locally on the PC. In the modern era of users having multiple devices, it is generally best to set up email clients using IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol), as this does not store the mail locally, but places it all on the server so that it can be accessed from other devices which you may have (e.g. PC, Phone, Tablet, etc). There is a third protocol for Microsoft-compatible accounts called Exchange which works in a similar way to IMAP and some email clients will use this as the default for a Microsoft email account.

For users with a single email account, I usually recommend that they don't bother with email client apps, but use the web - often called webmail. For example, if you have a Gmail account, you can use any browser on any device and go to gmail.com and sign in with your username and password. This does not require any client software to be installed or set up - just go to the web page and log in. And it works the same on any operating system and any browser. On your own PC, you can choose to stay signed in to your webmail and have the browser remember your username and password - this means the browser can go straight to your mail without logging in each time.

Outlook Confusion
Microsoft seem intent on confusing their users by using the same name for different things and also using different names for the same thing! Outlook is a software product that is part of the Microsoft Office suite, although you can purchase it separately. Outlook (currently version Outlook 2016) is an email client, calendar, to-do list and address book. Outlook is a paid-for product. As mentioned above, there was also an email client called Outlook Express which was built into Windows XP. Outlook.com is Microsoft's email service, similar to Google's email service, Gmail. Again, rather confusingly, Microsoft have changed the name of their email service over the years. It used to be known as Hotmail (with addresses normally ending in hotmail.com), this was then changed to Live.com and eventually to Outlook.com. Many people still call Microsoft's email service "Hotmail", irrespective of what the email address ends in. Using any browser, you can enter either "outlook.com", "live.com" or "hotmail.com" - all of which will re-direct you to the Microsoft logon page.

Email Security
Email should not be seen as a secure method of communication. Email messages may pass through a number of servers on their way to the destination - any of these servers may retain a copy of the emails passing through. Corporate organisations may have their own internal mail server which could store mail before passing it along to specific users within the organisation.

Banking Security
We had some discussion on the security of accessing your bank account online. In general, provided you follow the normal principles of keeping your device up to date, etc, online banking should be secure. You usually require 2 Factor Authentication (2FA) to sign into your bank account. This may be a small device into which you insert your Debit Card and use your PIN to generate a number which you enter into the web page. Alternatively, the bank might send a code to your mobile phone. Obviously, you should sign out when you have finished, although you will be signed out automatically after a period of time.

Bits and Bytes
Bits (binary digits) are the ones and zeros that comprise the binary numbering system which computers use. A string of 8 bits is known as a byte. "b" is used to represent "bit", and "B" is used to represent "byte". A data speed may be measured in "bits per second" which would be abbreviated to "bps" or "bytes per second" which is shown as "Bps". 1Bps is eight times faster than 1bps. A capital "M" is used to mean "mega" which means a million, so 1Mb means one million bits, and 1MB means one million bytes. It's confusing and sometimes these symbols are not used correctly.

Virus Scanning
Ray asked about the value of virus scanning. While it is important to have an anti-virus (AV) program on your PC, there is, in my opinion, little value in running virus scans. The AV program will be checking all files and data as it arrives on your system, so any viruses should be detected at that time. Obviously, if you have any suspicion that there may be a virus on your computer - perhaps because it is running very slowly or erratically - then it would be a good idea to run a scan at that time.

The main protection against hackers and malware is to keep your system and software up to date. Windows 10 updates regularly and automatically, as do most browsers such as Chrome. Another important factor in staying safe is down to user behaviour - for example, don't click on links in emails or open attachments unless you are 100% sure of their validity.

Standard Users on Windows
A further safety feature which you can employ on a Windows system is to operate most of the time as a Standard User. Windows has 2 types of users, Administrators and Standard. If you have set up your PC with just a single user, this will be an Administrator. An Administrator can do anything on the system, and so, if you got hacked, so could the hacker. So, if your Windows 10 system is currently set up with just one Administrator User, here is how you can change that.

Before attempting these changes, it would be wise to perform a System Image Backup. Ensure that you always have at least one Administrator User. First, create a new account which will become the sole Administrator. To this by clicking on Start, Settings, Accounts, Family & Other People. If you want to add a child account or an adult that can control a child account, you would use Add a family member, otherwise click on Add someone else to this PC. Having clicked on the latter option, assuming you want the new user (who will become the Administrator) to sign in with a Local Account (i.e. not a Microsoft Account), click on I don't have this person's sign-in information. The next box will prompt you to create a Microsoft Account, but you can proceed with a Local Account by clicking on Add user without a Microsoft account. All you then need to do on the next screen, is add a Username and a Password for the new user. The new user will now have been created, but will be a Standard User. To change them to an Administrator, Right-click on Start and select Control Panel. Click on (User Accounts), User Accounts, Manage another account. Select the newly created User  and click on Change account type.  Select Administrator for this account and click on Change Account Type. Now you have the new Local User with an Administrator Account - view the accounts to verify this. You can now use the above procedure to select your own account and change that to Standard. Reboot and sign in again to your account and you will now have more secure, limited user privileges. If anything you do requires Administrator rights, you will be prompted to enter the password for the Administrator User.

While this adds extra security, the trade-off is a little inconvenience in having to enter an Administrator password whenever you want to make system changes.

Keyboards For Partially-Sighted Users
I demonstrated a high-contrast keyboard with yellow keys with black legends. Other keyboard designs are available. There is more information in my document on Accessibility Options which you can access via the link to Computer Club Documents on the right.

Next Meeting
Wednesday 8th June 1:30 to 3:30 pm.