Apparently a letter has gone out to affected users, and you can make contact on their special number - 0800 587 1984.

If you’re happy with BT and unlikely to do anything major to your comms estate you’ve not really got anything to worry about. Generally speaking, when cancelling contracts early with BT, so long as you’re about to commit to a financial value greater than 20% of the remaining term of the contract you’re quiting they shouldn’t charge you. This obviously plays a part if you’re moving building or if you can demonstrate you’re installing new services in other locations but ceasing in another.

More information over at the register.

This is a 6 month sim only contract… (note sim only - no phone) with 200 minutes and 200 texts per month for 15 pounds. Nothing too special there, except that by claiming cash back throughout the contract you recover your entire 6 x 15 pound payments via three claims.

By the looks of it it’s 200 minutes to Landlines and Virgin Mobiles only and of course it’s a hassle to remember to complete the paperwork, but still free is free!

Have you got one, or found a similar deal?

Enter The Elonex One, it’s not as high spec’d as the Asus eeepc (the 4Gb one has a 4gb solid state disk & 512mb RAM), the One has just 1gb of disk. However it has a detachable screen (not really sure what the benefit there is) and it’s only £99 !! The eeepc is around £220 (if you can find one!). Both ship with open source software rather than Windows XP for example.

Take a look article on the Times web site…!

Have you got a Asus eeepc? What do you think about the new range of budget laptops?

CAT5e can support 1gb and CAT6 can support 1gb and beyond. If you have no immediate requirements for >1gb take into consideration how long you’ll be in the building - if it’s a relatively short period of time you probably don’t need to worry about CAT6.

CAT6 costs roughly speaking, about 30% more than 5e so if you’re in the building for a long period of time you can safeguard your investment by spending the additional 30% but on the other hand if you’re unlikely to need the additional throughput that’s potentially 30% you could have saved!

When considering the costs of CAT6, don’t forget that to run at full CAT6 speeds you need to use CAT6 patch leads, which cost about double a standard CAT5e lead.

Finally, the last consideration with installing a CAT6 is the bend radius - the cable is about 1.5 x the thickness of a CAT5e cable, and since neither CAT5e or CAT6 cables should be bent at 90 degrees it means that you can’t put as many cables in the trunking if the route involves a 90 degree bend (i.e. a trunking drop from the ceiling to skirting trunking around the room). This in practice means you would need to install more ceiling drops, hardly a major implication but necessary.

What cabling systems are you installing? Do you have a decision making process as to what you’ll install?

I’ve just priced up replacement servers for an electronic document management system for a client (both primary environment and DR), now I know times have changed and prices come down but nevertheless I’m still always surprised how cheap Dell equipment is at the moment. Even when I compare to HP equipment only 6 months ago, this Dell kit is a bargain. I know I’m being looked after by a team in Dell with an aggressive pricing strategy but still.

The thing that I really like with Dell is the after-sales support service, I generally specify servers with 3 years 4 hour response on site (their Gold service),… when you compare the price of the system (with the 3 years on site service) to say an HP and then add the upgraded carepaks, the choice of vendor is a no brainer to me.

Don’t get me wrong, there are problems with the Dell route - for a start unless you’re buying what someone happens to have in stock you’re waiting for the system to be built to order and delivered… and in the UK delivery takes 48 hours to come from Ireland. When you add a typical build time of 3 days you’ve got a week’s lead-time for your shiny new servers to arrive…. it’s actually a similar story for laptops and desktops.

This can obviously causes problems with that new starter that’s due to start next Monday or that solution you need to go live yesterday. HP obviously has an advantage there - the equipment is sitting in reseller warehouses and can be with you next day no trouble.

This is why it’s important to educate the business if you make a change to Dell, ensure they’re aware you can no longer get a desktop, laptop or server next day. Of course in an ideal world this obviously wouldn’t be a problem - you’d have plenty of notice of a new starter or a new solution!

What are your experiences with the server manufacturers, their pricing, after sales support and delivery lead-times?

I think my first awareness of blogging was around 2001 / 2002, someone I worked with at the time used to post about sites of interest he’d come across during the day.

Anyway, moving on, blogging is well and truely here everyone seems to have at least one blog, and seeing some bloggers earnings reports makes you understand why!

If you’re looking to make money from blogging, there’s plenty of blogs about the subject such as full time blogger, pro blogger in addition to connected internet.

Do you blog for cash? What are your top tips?

In the past I have taken a look at Blogger, it works well, and does seem to get you listed in google within seconds!…. but hosted wordpress just feels more like it! Especially since a couple of clicks in my hosting provider’s control panel and there’s a wordpress installation ready to go!