Friday 20 August 2010

TechnoLady

I've acquired a new desktop PC.  A smart looking  'AllinOne'  that takes up less space. With  the bonus of  less cabling. No tangle of wires  to acquire and trap dust in inaccessible places. Bliss.

I'm in the middle of setting it up. Transferring files; documents; Family history research; various address books; login details and passwords; Favorite web pages and Bookmarks; not to mention zillions of photos. All moved from the old machine to the new.

It will be interesting to see, once it's all complete, just how much of the 1TB hard drive has swallowed up all my computing history from 1994 to date. Not to mention whether some of the old documents will still open with the new operating system. Fingers crossed.

Sunday 1 August 2010

BT WiFi Hotspots - Are You Providing One of BT's Free Links??

Is everybody aware that 'BT Fon' the exciting community of WiFi hotspots means sharing your home router with anyone who wants to sit or park outside your house to surf the web on their laptop?

I can see that in a large town or city this may be perfectly acceptable. However, in a small rural community where the only cars that park outside your house are visiting you then I feel this is an invasion of privacy. I am annoyed that I and many of my local friends were unaware of our location being entered on to the BT WiFi Hotspots map.

Rather than entering our Routers on this map as WiFi access points I feel it would have been more POLITE to ask us if we wanted to opt in. Rather than automatically setting it up, not making it clear and leaving it up to us to have to find out how to opt out.

Having opted out then to  be advised to leave our router on for 48 hours for them to remove the Hotspot Facility. Surely it is 'my router' and I should have been invited to have this download only after I had agreed to it.

If this is idea new to you as well then you may like to click on this link to check whether you are providing a community HotSpot WiFi access point. You may not mind. But I think you should at least know about it. If you decide to opt out check carefully by clicking on the 'Check Status' link. I think the 'opt out choice' is inclined to make it look as if you already are - so do doubly check.

I may well decide to opt in at a later date.  But will do so only once I have had chance to read all about it. I'll weigh up all the pros and cons and then make a decision. For myself.