Bespoke Computing Ltd, Cut & Paste - our weblog for Information Technology in the real world

More and more businesses are turning to the Internet to do business, and this makes sense considering how much people are spending online. For the 2009 Christmas just gone, the Centre for Retail Research forecast retail sales of £44,700m in the UK and 20% of that done via the Internet.

If you run a business and want to get online, which is very different to selling online, the easiest way is through an ADSL broadband service. This is a simple to use Internet service that can cost from nearly nothing to more than £100 per month if you want bells and whistles.

What business owners don’t realise when buying a broadband service, is that there is no guaranteed fix time if something serious breaks. It is nearly always taken for granted that your broadband will always work, 24 hours a day, rain or shine.

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The exact risk of losing any particular bit of computer information depends on the exact nature of the information in question. Securing your computer used to be about scanning floppy disks for viruses and checking the odd email.

Enter the Internet, lower prices for laptops and an explosion in mobile and remote working – in the last census, 60% of homes had a computer. If you store data then you’re at risk, at risk of being named and shamed for losing potentially important or embarrassing electronic information.

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Got our mailer and looking for the article about "putting a Google rocket up your website"?

Last week the country was battered by the heaviest snowfall in 10 years, 6000 schools have been closed and transport links severely disrupted.  Forecasters have predicted more heavy snow to be on the way.  The estimated cost to business according to the Federation of Small Business is several billion, with 20% of the working population not making it to work at the peak of the poor weather.

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