[Zsd-news] ZSD News May 2003

[I. Forbes]

Hello All

Things have been busy at ZSD. It is time to get back to our customers 
and bring you up to date with some of the goings on.


ADSL

The hottest thing around now is "ADSL". This is a new type of internet 
connectivity which is finally becoming available from Telkom. It 
promises to be quicker and cheaper than the currently available 
alternatives. There is a lot of hype out there about ADSL some good 
and some bad. We have been supplying ADSL accounts and solutions 
to our customers for nearly 6 months and, quite frankly, it works.

If you are spending more than R1000 per month on telephone calls for 
internet access, it may be worth your while to convert to ADSL. To 
check if it is available in your area please go to 
http://www.telkom.co.za/adsl/requirements1a.jsp and click on the link 
near the top of the page and insert your phone number into the form.

If ADSL is available in your exchange area contact ZSD and we can 
advise you further.


WHEN YOUR HARD DRIVE FAILS ...

As is the trend with computer technology, every year hard drives are 
faster, bigger capacity and smaller in size. While the prices stay the 
same or even fall.

Unfortunately, they are not getting more reliable. Virtually every week 
we hear of somebody who has suffered a hard drive failure. When this 
happens, at best you will suffer considerable cost and inconvenience 
while the drive is replaced and data restored from back-ups. At worst, 
well did you say backups, what backups ... ??!!

At ZSD we have taken to installing mirror drives on every machine that 
is critical to our business. We also have installed mirror drives on 
many of our customers' servers. This is a effective way of protecting 
against hard drive failure. If one drive fails the computer carries on 
operating using the other one. The failed drive can be replaced at a 
convenient time and the drives then "re-synchronized". Mirror drives 
are easily installed on "Linux" servers, "Windows" servers may require 
special hardware.  

While hard drive failure is one of the most common causes of data 
loss, there are still many other causes, such as inadvertent deletion 
and physical theft of the computer. There is no single easy way to 
protect against them all, but if you have not stopped to think about it 
recently, perhaps you should think about it now, what happens when 
your hard drive fails ....


BEWARE THE TEDDY BEAR HOAX

Computer virus hoax's are almost as bad as the viruses themselves. 
So I thought to try and combat one of them by starting an anti-hoax 
hoax.

If you receive an e-mail advising you that you may have a virus on 
your computer and that you should delete a file that has a "teddy bear" 
icon, well don't. The e-mail is a hoax, the file is part of the operating 
system. If you delete it some things will stop working (although you 
probably won't notice immediately).

Now I am not suggesting that you forward this newsletter to everybody 
in your address list to save them the embarrassment of being caught 
by this hoax but ...


Till next time, good surfing.

Ian Forbes



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Ian Forbes ZSD
http://www.zsd.co.za
Office: +27 21 683-1388  Fax: +27 21 674-1106
Snail Mail: P.O. Box 46827, Glosderry, 7702, South Africa
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