Windows 8 Beta Running in Computer Repairs Center, Perth, Scotland

Installed on a test system for first look.

Boot time is very impressive:

There are updates already!!!

Have to stress that this is a BETA copy of Windows 8

Metro Interface

Windows 8 feels fastish based on the hardware that we are using for the Beta version. However you must remember that the system does not have any extra software or drivers installed.

The system has very clearly been designed for touch screen and tablets.

We were very surprised but the fact that there is no option to shutdown or reboot from the interface. The only way we found was the physical power button.

Windows 8 did offer to reboot in 2 days time once it had installed the updates !!

Here is just a quick video of Alex playing with the interface, be kind, this is his first try at it and he gets a little lost sometimes (Apologies for the background noise, this was shot in the workshop):

Funky looking weather app:

Underneath the eye candy, the core is very very Windows 7 like as can been seen from these screen shots:

No real comment at this stage as we need to spend some time with it but at this time, it has not really rung our bell BUT we'll see how we get on once we have a decent play with it.

We have now updated onto the Windows 8 Consumer Preview Edition. We have a system running the latest version of Windows 8 in our computer and laptop repair workshop

A laptop running Windows 8 Consumer Preview is available in our laptop sales area for anybody who wishes to have a look at the new Windows 8 interface

Liquid Spills on Laptops

3 machines brought in today suffering from spills onto the keyboard :(

One wine, one coffee and one milk.

Prompted us to write this article http://www.pcsolutions.co.uk/news/how-to-recover-your-laptop-from-a-coffee-or-liquid-spill.html

In the event that any liquid gets spilt on your laptop or computer, DO NOT SWITCH IT ON but bring it into our computer and laptop repairs facility where we can assess the damage at no charge.

How to Install iTunes: a Step by Step guide

This is a guide to show you step by step how to install iTunes.

Step 1: Download the software from the iTunes site. http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/  <- Click here to go straight to the Apple page where the software is kept. Figure 1 should what the page should look like, click the "Download Now" button that I have highlighted in figure 1

figure 1

Step 2: When you have clicked the "Download Now" button it should prompt you asking if you want to "Run" or "Save" the program. Click on the "Run" button.

Step 3: When iTunes has fully downloaded the first window to appear should be this:

figure 2

Step 4: This is the first of the installation screen, click the "Next" button to continue the installation.

figure 3

This next screen is asking where to install the program, you do not need to change anything here. Hit "Install" to continue, when you click continue it another window will pop up. It effectively is asking "Do you really want to do this" Just click "Yes" to continue.

Step 5: This is the next window that will appear.

figure 4

This window will work away installing your iTunes, it might do it for a couple of minutes. After its done it will pop up with another "Do you really want to do this" Just click yes to continue.

Step 6: This screen will appear when it has finished with the last loading screen.

figure 5

This is the iTunes just finishing, so its not long now until its finished installing. Click "Finish" to continue.

Step 7: The next screen to appear is the Licence agreement screen.

figure 6

 It just tells you what you can and cannot do with iTunes. Apple recommends you read this but its not important. Click "Agree" to continue.

Well done you have not installed iTunes.

figure 7

If you have any problems get in contact with us.You will find all our details here: http://www.pcsolutions.co.uk/contact-us.php

Cheers

Laptop Keyboard Destroyed by 20 Month Baby

This is why very young children and laptops DO NOT mix well:

Laptop Keyboard Destroyed by Baby

Luckily the lad did not swallow any of the parts!

The client brought this laptop into our computer and laptop repair center in Perth on a Monday and collected the laptop after the repair on the Thursday of the same week

Todays challenge 27/1/2012

Today one of our challenges is to find the reason why this desktop us overheating. Its going to be a budget gaming system with a dual core processor and dual graphics.

New AMD box

Got one of AMD's new fm1 processors in. Just noticed the new colourful box.

New Design


Old Box


Agreed this is a APU box compared to a Athlon box yet very different.

Watch this space for a comparison between the old and new chips from AMD.

Successful Haggis Hunt In Perth

As it's Burns Night on the 25th of Jan, where we celebrate the life and works of Robbie Burns, Alex our Special Tech Engineer tried his hand at Haggis Hunting this morning.

Haggis are wily creatures and are very good at hiding in the heather and bracken. Being small and fleet of hoof, Haggis love to roam on the craggy hills of Scotland making them very difficult to see, never mind catch.

Alex has youth on his side and I'm pleased to report that he managed to catch a brace of Haggis in Glenfarg, a well know haggis haunt.

A Brace Of Haggis, Plucked & Prepped 

Here's Alex to tell you how he caught the haggis:

Media firefly

This system would make an ideal media system. Small form factor 320 gb of storage, dual core Pentium and 2 gb memory and windows 7.

English troubles

Looks like this laptop might have some trouble with its English.

Computer Gaming Pedigree

Alex, our Engineer, shares his enthusiasm for custom building gaming rigs by sharing his own personal gaming system.

As one of the main gaming enthusiasts in the workshop I take great pride and pleasure in creating gaming specifications to a wide variety of budgets and gaming needs. I also enjoy physically building the computers and testing them.

So I thought I would share with you all my own gaming system that I have built up over the years to illustrate that I am very passionate about what I do and take pride in every system I build, big or small.

System Specs

Processor:- AMD Phenom II x6 1090t Black Edition.

Memory:- Corsair 16GB 1600Mhz.

Graphics:- 2x AMD HD 5870 (In Crossfire).

Motherboard:- Asus Crosshair V Republic of Gamers.

Hard Drive 1:- 240GB Patriot Pyro 6Gbit Sata SSD.

Hard Drive 2:- 2TB Hard Drive.

Power Supply:- Thermaltake 650Watt Modular. 

Cooling:- Phobia 280mm Radiator, XSPC Reservoir and pump combo and XSPC waterblock.

Case:- Antec Dark Fleet 85 (3x120mm fans on the front, 120mm fan rear mounted and 2x140mm fans mounted on radiator.).

If you have any questions don't hesitate to give us a call or pop onto the website http://www.pcsolutions.co.uk

Small Foot Print Windows 7 Desktops only £224.99

Advent Firefly Dual Core Pentium, 2 GB RAM, Windows 7 Professional

Excluding monitor, keyboard & mouse.

Ideal for children, family desktop of a media streaming machine.

All Windows updates done, iTunes, Java, Flash & Open Office all installed, ready to use straight out of the box.

The larger case to the right is a standard computer case to illustrate the very compact & sweet design of the Firefly

Very limited availability @ £224.99 INC VAT

Weekend Computer Virus Infections

The computer workshop in Perth, is busy this morning dealing with laptops that have picked up viruses over the weekend.

From what we can see, there seems to be link between an infection picked up from FaceBook and it targeting Norton users.

In one case, I have removed 18 primary infections, and 34 secondary infections and that is just in the first pass!!

No anti virus will nor will it ever be able to give you or promise 100% security. It is vital that you keep your Windows up to date as well as your anti virus software.

If you do suffer a virus infection then we do offer a virus removal service in our computer repair center in Perth.

Please contact us if you have any questions about computer viruses or malware

Preparing Some New Laptops

The workshop is running at full tilt today getting some new & nearly new laptops ready for sale in our shop and on the web site

All of the machines are fully rebuilt and we install all the things you need to browse the web etc so the laptops are ready to use straight out of the box.

We are also experimenting with a Laptop Deal of The Day concept so folk can see the actual laptop:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-JPn4LmR7o

Antec 300 Case Review

This is a quick review of the Ante 300 case.

This is a nice non flamboyant case that has the gamer in mind. I personally am a fan of this case, I used to have one, because of the sleek look of the case and the good cooling capacity. 

The 300 is made from heavy duty perforated steel panels which gives the case a sturdy build, yet not the lightest. It has three 5.25" bays for CD/DVD drives and it has six 3.5" bays for hard drives and a bottom mounted 2.5" mount for your SSD. 

The case has two front fans, one top mounted fan and one rear mounted fan. Thus giving the case sufficient cooling for gaming components.

The inside of the case is not finished with the black like its younger sibling the Antec 100 yet it has the same cable management solutions that you would find in the Antec 100. It has the cut out so that the motherboard processor mount can be changed easily. It also has the bottom mounted PSU helping in the cable management.

Overall the Antec 300 case is a very good case for gaming and high end use. I would say it is not suitable for water-cooling or dual graphics card set up as it does not have enough room and cooling for this. It would have been nice to see the black interior like the Antec 100 but that is just personal opinion. I would also have been nice to have dual 120mm fan mounts on the roof and back but this is approaching on its main gaming cases the Dark Fleet series.

For a few more specs on this case visit the Antec site (Antec 300 Case) 

Images where used from the antec site.

Gaming Computer for Microsoft FS X

Just finished a very interesting computer gaming build as part of our custom gaming computer design and build service.

The requirement was for a high spec PC to be able to play the very very demanding Microsoft Flight Sim X at as high a frame rate with as good resolution as possible.


It also had to look good, run quiet and not be monster foot print AND with expansion for the future.

Not an off the shelf solution.

So after a bit of research and some pretty extensive testing and tweaking we decided on an Antec 300 case, 750 watt power supply and a 120 GB SSD

Windows 7 64 Bit stripped down to absolute minimum with 8 GB DDR3 booting from an SSD is so fast that if you are a serious Gamer, you really should consider it.

The graphics is provided by an Nvidia GeForce 560ti. Despite having 8 GB RAM, there are still 2 spare RAM slots and a secondary PCI Expres slot for a second graphics card.

Internals BEFORE Cable Management

Donald, had the pleasure of 'demonstrating' the finished product to the client:

All in all a VERY nice gaming system

The finished product can be purchased via our website and of course we would be happy to discuss any additional features or mods that you would like added to personalise your gaming PC

A quick video of the finished product in action:

The PC Solutions Football Team

Did you know that we are the proud sponsors and supporters of the PC Solutions Perth Fire Brigade Football Team??

Managed by Bruce Robertson, all of the players are Firemen (including Bruce) who serve at Perth Fire Station. As a result of commitments to the Fire Service and shift work, it can be difficult to field a regular team but Bruce and the lads are very committed and go to great lengths to turn out each Sunday night for the matches.

We publish a Match Report each week as to the team's progress and we are so very proud of their 8 victories in a row!!

If you Like this, please give the lads a boost by Liking it via FaceBook and Plus 1 on Google!

Breathe Some Life and Choice into your Television.

In this day and age of everything being gadgetised, miniaturised, computerised and everything else 'ised’, a lot of household appliances are becoming smarter and tech-ier. One of my personal favourites, being a self proclaimed tech-geek, is my media PC.

Ok, so let me explain what my media PC is and what it does. My media PC is a small, quiet computer which is connected to my TV. It allows me to access the internet to stream movies to my TV, check my emails, check the news and weather from my sofa, play my music on the surround sound in my front room (which is especially great for parties!), and I also have a blu-ray drive so I can watch my blu-ray movies on it too. I can control it either with a smart little wireless keyboard and mouse I have which tuck away tidily into a newspaper rack, or under the coffee table, or being the tech geek I am, I have an infra-red receiver configured with my TV remote. You can even get TV tuners for your media PC, so everything on your TV is controlled by one single machine, but I havn’t got one of them... yet!

It's All About Choice

You might be thinking by now, “Well, that’s all well and good, but I don’t want a sodding computer sat next to my TV, my partner would kill me!”. Fear not! Media PCs are relatively small, and you can get some extremely stylish cases for them too. One of the preferred styles are ‘shuttle’ PC’s because they are small and fairly discrete. If you want to go an extra step further you can get specialised cases from various manufacturers, like Lian-lee, which look very sleek. Feel free to ask the guys in the shop to take a look at what they can offer.

Editors Note: James is spot on and I have such a device based on this unit It 'fits' into our decor, it's small footprint, low noise and very green running makes it a hit with my wife.

There is also some great free software available to integrate your media PC into your front room, three of the most popular ones being Windows Media Center, Xbmc and Boxee, which provide you with a nice interface to access your media. If you didn’t believe me before about aesthetics of a PC in your front room, then I believe the Xbmc has a gallery of users media PC setups, some of which make me drool, so take a look!

An advantage of the media PC is actually the fact it is a PC and as you may or may not know, PC’s are fairly modular. By this I mean, when you want a media PC, you add hardware to it based upon what you want to use it for and this will determine the price. If you simply want a media PC to watch movies and browse the internet then you don’t require a supercomputer and so will be relatively cheap. If you want to watch high-definition movies, you’ll need a better graphics card, if you want to play blu-rays you will obviously need a blueray player drive, and if you want surround sound you will need to get a sound card and the speakers, etc. If you want any advise or want to discuss anything about the hardware, please feel free to quiz the guys in the shop.

With the growth of media streaming services, such as BBC iPlayer, 4OD, ITV Player, Spotify, LoveFilms’ movies on demand and now Netflixs, there are hundreds of television programs, movies and music which you can access whenever you want right from your Television!

If you’re interested in setting up a media PC, or have any queries, please feel free to pop into the shop and talk to one of the guys; and if you decide to get a media PC then I hope you enjoy your new entertainment system as much as I do.

There is a tremendous amount of terrific content out there and the whole world is moving towards digital distribution. I firmly believe that the days of physical film rental is over. If you want to watch a film, you'll set it to download onto your media machine, watch it at your leisure and it will auto-delete. No more late fees!!

Have a look at this new article on How to connect your laptop or media friendly computer to your wide screen TV  

A Very Rare Sight

An off duty computer engineer with STYLE!

How To Tell If Your Laptop Optical Drive Needs To Be Replaced

Clue: Left One Not So Healthy, Right One Normal

Missing Computer Shop Banner Update

Was on the roof of our computer shop in Perth checking for storm damage from last week and found some of the bits of our missing 15 foot banner.

New Year Diet Resolution

Its the the 7th of Jan 2012 and Donald our Chief Computer Engineer has managed to find some Mince Pies!!

And at reduced price :)

Donald, we really appreciate your kind thoughts but our waist lines might not!! 

Ah well time to sample them :)

Skint after Christmas? Try Indie games!

Well, I hope everyone has had a very merry Christmas, and thoroughly enjoyed their New Years celebrations!

I hope Santa brought you plenty of gadget-gifts to keep you suitably informed and entertained over the coming year; however if you're anything like me and dreading to check how many digits are missing from the bank balance, but still can't resist the urge to get some new games to play on your new toys, then you should take a look into Indie games.

Indie games are games which are created by small groups of people, or even single-handedly by an individual! This means that they have usually created the game as a hobby, and without any financial support of a large publisher, such as EA Games, Bethesta, Blizzard etc. Because indie games don't have the overheads of these large businesses, such as marketing, staffing, blah and blah, they normally only charge a few quid for them!

Now, you must be thinking "a game, made by some guy in his mothers basement charging me £2... sounds rubbish.". This may have been true a few years ago, and maybe even now, but the indie gaming market has developed massively in the last year. This is primarily due to more and more people having access, and faster access, to the internet. Ultimately the indie market success has come down to two words: "Digital Distribution", which has allowed easy and quick market access for the indie developers.

I personally love indie games, the nature of them being developed by a team or individual with an idea, without a publisher ball and chain around their ankles demanding they make billions of dollars from it. I find that this allows indie games to be more creative and I'll tell you now there are a lot of abstract indie games out there which are a lot of fun!

I think that's about enough of me waffling about the games and show you some!

One of the major indie game developers which have seen leaps and bounds of success over the year are Mojang. Mojang are the creators of the hugely popular Minecraft, which when started by a single developer, Markus Persson, is Sweden has grown into one of the largest indie development teams. You can find their website here: http://mojang.com/

Another great source of indie games is on the popular gaming platform Steam; a list of indie games on Steam can be found at: http://store.steampowered.com/genre/Indie/

And finally one of my personal favourites, http://www.humblebundle.com/ . The humble bundles are 'packs' of games which you are free to choose how much you pay for them, and a percentage of what you spend goes to charity! Isn't that great? You get a bunch of games, for whatever price you want, and you're helping a charity!

These are just a few places to get indie games, but there are hundreds, if not thousands, out there which are a lot of fun to play for very reasonable prices.

I hope you go forth into the indie gaming world and enjoy all the games as much as I have, and in doing so you are helping grow the developers and community, which will only lead to expanding it more!

More Hours Means More Free Coffee

With the computer repair workshop being open until 6.30pm on Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday evenings, it means that we'll be able to get more of the longer more complex repairs done in one working day rather than having to split them over 2 working days.

It also means that The Boss will have to supply more free coffee!!!

http://www.pcsolutions.co.uk/news/laptop-and-computer-repair-facilities-perth-extended.html

Computer Engineer's Delight

There were nearly fisty-cuffs in the workshop when a long standing customer asked if our engineers could have a look at fixing her grandson's Christmas present:

A quick check revealed that the aerial for the remote control unit had become detached so the problem was very quickly solved.

However, as I'm sure you will appreciate, the testing took a bit more time to complete :)

I would confirm that present has been returned to owner! 

Over Clocking Mother Board in the Extreme

Just been told that we are going to get our hand on the latest mother board for Gamers from MSi to build a totally awesome gaming PC

http://www.pcsolutions.co.uk/news/msi-releases-over-clocking-dream-mother-board.html

Please let me be the Engineer who gets this 'task'!

FACT: Hard Drives Fail!

Over the Festive Season the computer repair workshop in Perth dealt with a higher than normal work load of computer hard drives that had failed or where about to fail as in this case:

Notice the continuous blocks of RED. In this case we were able to clone the entire drive onto a new one and the client's data is safe - for the moment.

The are some things in life that are fairly easy to guarantee:

1. Tax & VAT will increase
2. Same for fuel
3. All hard drives WILL fail at some point!!

So just because you have a copy of your data on your computer's hard drive, and some of you will have backups on external hard drives so Bonus Points for you.

BUT your computer and external hard drive both share communal power and the same room so the one disaster can wipe out BOTH

The more copies of your vital data that you have the more changes you have of recovering your data. On site and off site copies are essential. 

Leave a protected copy of your data with a distant friend or member of the family.

For really important stuff also email a copy to yourself and leave in on your web mail!!

So please, please take care of your precious irreplaceable photos, documents, music etc etc 

'Normal' Computer Repair Service Resuming Tomorrow

Our Computer and Laptop Repair Center In Perth will be open from 9am tomorrow to assist those who have suffered computer problems over the Festive Period or if you just fancy popping in for a fresh brew of coffee and a chat with one of our Computer Engineers :)