Kent PCs

19/12/2025

To any small business owners out there.
I just had a call from a nice young lady who said she was from the 118 online directory. Gave a little spiel and asked if I was the business owner. I said "I am" she then asked several questions each of which could be answered with "Yes". I did not say "yes" to any of them. After about the fifth question I explained that scammers now often ask questions that require a "yes" answer and they record it and use the "Yes" as your agreement to whatever they want and that I will not answer in the affirmative to any of her questions. She said "I understand" and hung up! So it turns out she was a scammer! So other small business owners beware.

20/08/2024

Recycling.
I have found a company that recycles IT equipment. I always found it a bit awkward with recycling. There is the transport and time involved but now it’s just collect it together and when there is enough they just come and collect. It’s so painless. So if you are a resident of Challock or Molash and have IT equipment that you want recycled I can dispose of it for you.

This is a free service for our community. Of course you can still take it down to the tip if you would prefer. But please let me know in advance before just turning up with a shed load of knackered computers. 🙂 If you would like to know more details of the service just give me a ring.

15/08/2024

PC Warranty
If you have a reasonably new computer or Laptop that develops a fault check as it might still be under warranty. You will need the serial number off the machine. I have found (given my failing eyesight) that the best method is to take a photograph of the relevant area of the PC or Laptop then zoom in. Most manufacturers have an area of their website where you can check the warranty of your device. But as I say you will need your serial number.

15/08/2024

Extended Warranty
One other note about warranties, remember to register your machine. It is becoming common practice that the 5 year warranty is only activated if the machine is registered. Otherwise it reverts back to just one year.

01/05/2024

Printers
We all print things but what if your printer develops a fault? Well I am afraid the prognosis is not good. Virtually all faults on a printer fall into one of two categories, either you can fix it by fiddling with it or switching it off and back on again or it’s fatal. The reason for this is the manufacturers deliberately making printer repair uneconomical. The price of spares is very expensive therefore it’s not cost effective to repair a printer. Therefore nobody repairs them. Therefore even if you decide you love this printer so much cost does not matter, you still can’t get the spares anyway as nobody stocks them.

Even the cost of the printer does not really make any difference as the parts are priced accordingly.
If it’s an inkjet you are restricted to the cartridges anything else and you may as well get a new printer, it will be cheaper. If it’s a laser then the situation may be slightly better. Depending on the make and model you can replace the toner and the fuser assembly then there may be other spare possibilities. A lot depends on whether a third party has decided to make spares or there is a good second-hand market.

Consumables
Now the reason they make printers impossible to repair is because they want to sell you ink. The ink cartridges are extremely expensive and that is where the printer manufacturers make their money. Then your printer develops a fault and you have to buy a new printer and guess what? None of your existing cartridges will fit the new printer!

So my advice is, as we know the printer has a limited life and you will need to replace it when it goes wrong let’s not play the manufacturers game. Do not buy their expensive ink lets buy compatibles. Compatible ink cartridges are a fraction of the price of “real” recommended inks. For example these pictures are of a set of HP 903 inkjet inks. I picked these at random they could just have easily been Epson or Canon. Now by comparison we have the HP official 903 cartridges and the eJet compatible equivalent. Now the Ejet is the XL size cartridges and they have 2,700 comments on Amazon and scored 4 out of five. The cost? £21.24 whereas the cost of the recommended HP cartridges £97.49! That is a huge saving of £76.25, as you can see it does not take very long at these prices before you have saved more than the cost of replacing the printer when it develops a fault.

26/02/2024

11/02/2024

Its interest how over the years we were told to speed up your computer add more memory or a bigger processor. Yet it turns out that the biggest bottleneck in your computer is the hard drive! If you have an older computer and want to see a huge improvement in its performance just replace its standard mechanical hard drive with one of the new SSD hard drives.
The speed improvement is astounding. Everything can be moved from your old hard drive straight onto the new drive and Ping! in one move the computer is transformed. Obviously its not quite as simple as that, the old drive must be prepared for the transfer and the new drive configured correctly. You also need to be running a minimum of Windows 7.