THREE HOSPITAL MYTOB WORM INFECTION DUBBED ‘SUBSTANTIVE FAILURE’

Entirely avoidable

A worm attack that forced three London hospitals to shut down their computer networks late last year was entirely avoidable and represented a major failing by the organizations’ IT staff, according to an independent review of the incident.

In mid-November, the Mytob worm wiggled its way into 4,700 PCs used by St Bartholomew’s (Barts), the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, and The London Chest Hospital in Bethnal Green, and this forced the hospitals to reroute ambulances and scale back some “non-essential activities” while the infection was being contained. In some cases, doctors had to resort to pen and paper backup systems.

Keep reading “Three hospital worm infection dubbed ’substantive failure’” »

Popularity: 1% [?]

Love your Laptop (Or Else)

Laptops are one of the most popular computers being sold now days. Although they are small, laptops are a lot more delicate than their desktop counterpart.

We often get laptops in for repair where I work, so you may find the following laptop tips useful.

Do not use your laptop in bed: A lot of people will hate this but the majority of laptops I get in for repair are ones that people use in bed. It’s always one of these problems:

1: The laptop is sitting on the bedspread or on the users lap and it has no airflow so it over heats.

2. The user falls asleep and the laptop falls off the bed.

Number two is the most common problem I see. Laptops don’t like hard drops which will either damage your hard drive or DVD Drive.

Speaking of hard drive, BACK UP YOUR LAPTOP FILES REGUALLY. I cannot emphasize this enough. Laptop hard drives are notoriously unreliable. They can die on you just like that and it can be difficult to rescue data off a faulty laptop hard drive. I recommend using Norton Save and Restore to do your backups.

My next big tip is don’t drink around a laptop. If you spill something on it, you are damaging the entire laptop, not just the keyboard. Should you spill something on your laptop, DO NOT TURN IT BACK ON. You could fry your machine. Bring it in to a computer repair shop. They will clean it up, see if it can be fixed and save any important documents.

Laptop DVD drives are problematic as well. If you have a CD/DVD that other computers read perfectly but your laptop struggles with, replace the laptop DVD Drive. The same applies if your laptop reads CD’s perfectly but has trouble reading DVD’s. There’s no quick fix to this. You will have to replace it.

After reading all this, a thought may have occurred to you. Extended Warranty. Get it. Laptops usually start developing natural faults after a year so an extended warranty could save you money in the long run.

Treat your laptops with care and it will serve you well. Abuse it and they will hit you right back.

Popularity: 3% [?]