Replace your laptop screen without spending a fortune

When Ella Pearman's laptop fell and cracked its screen, someone wanted to charge her £500 for the repair. She asked Optima about cheaper alternatives.

Unless it was a new laptop and the fall destroyed pretty much everything, you can consider that price a rip-off.
Replacing a laptop screen, including parts and labor, shouldn't cost you more than £200. In fact, it will probably come in closer to £120.


The first question you should ask yourself: Do you want to pay someone to do the repair, or make it a do-it-yourself-project?

Unless you have experience repairing laptops or want to acquire that experience, I strongly recommend taking it to Optima Computers. Yes, it will add about £30 to the price, but if you make a serious mistake, the final repair could cost you a lot more. Climbing inside a laptop is a lot trickier than repairing a desktop computer.

Unless the damage is covered by a warranty (and it almost certainly isn't), I strongly recommend against going to the manufacturer. You could easily end up waiting weeks while boxes are shipped back and forth, only to get low-quality work, have your hard drive reformatted for no reason, or be overcharged for the experience. Or, perhaps, all three.

Optima offer same day repairs on most laptop screens replacements, unless it is a very specific and bespoke screen, in which case they will order it in as it won't be a stock item. 

Prices for screen repair start from £99+VAT which will cover most 15 inch laptops. Larger screens and specialised screens will cost a little more, but Optima will confirm all prices with you so there are no nasty surprises.

Optima Computers - your one stop laptop repair centre
Call 020 8445 6700.

Website of the Day

Devour

Most YouTube videos aren't worth watching. And that’s where the curated YouTube site Devour comes in.

The Devour team handpicks the best YouTube videos and posts them to the site daily.

Surf videos randomly or check out popular clips. We can’t wait for our next meal. 

Click here to visit:  Devour.com

Beware free and open wi-fi access points

In this wonderfully connected world, we are all constantly on the internet in one form or another. PC's, Laptops, tablets, mobile phones, and other gizmos, all connected up. 

And nowadays we are all using wi-fi as our primary means to connect. At home, office, hotel, out in the city, our devices are constantly searching for a wi-fi signal so we can connect up to the internet. 

But what happens when we travel to foreign climes. We switch our 3G or cellular data off so as not to incur astronomical bills on our phones and tablets. So we need wi-fi more than ever to connect. Most hotels now provide wi-fi, free or paid, and we connect to that. But often we are in cafes, in the town square and we need wi-fi. The urge to check into Facebook or send an email is overwhelming. 

So what do we do? Search for an open wi-fi signal. If you are lucky, you find a random wifi network which is unsecured. You connect to it, thanking the universe for free wi-fi.

You phone/laptop/tablet goes into internet mode. facebook updates, emails whizzing in and out,  application updates etc all happen within seconds.

All great, right? Well in short the answer is NO.

You have no idea who is managing the wi-fi access point you just connected to. This can be a very bad thing. Let me explain:

One of our clients recently came back from a trip to India, and since then has been getting bouncebacks from random email addresses. On checking her laptop, all was OK. Further checking at the email provider showed that a connection from India was using her details to log in and send out spam. 

So it seems that she connected to a free wifi hotspot somewhere. All her web traffic got logged by that hotspot provider. They then used her details to hack into her accounts. Luckily in this case it was only emails, but it could have been her banking credentials that were siphoned off.
We changed her password at the email provider and the problem was resolved.

So, a word of warning. Connecting to a free open wi-fi is not as safe as you would think so.
Remember on mobile devices, you have all these applications running in the background and they will connect and send login details without you realising. 

Be careful out there.

Official Guide to Facebook Security

Facebook has released a free handbook – A Guide to Facebook Security – aiming to educate parents, teachers, and young adults on how to keep their Facebook accounts safe.

The 20-page guide was written by former Symantec Internet safety expert Linda McCarthy, Purdue University security researcher Keith Watson, and teacher/editor Denise Weldon-Siviy.

The guide explains how you can:

Protect your Facebook account

Avoid the scammers

Use advanced security settings

Recover a hacked Facebook account

Stop imposters

Download: A Guide to Facebook Security

Optima Computers

Sky buys out O2/BE broadband business

British Sky Broadcasting is acquiring the O2 broadband and fixed line telephony business for up to £200 million, to become the UK's number two broadband provider, ahead of Virgin. BSkyB has done the deal with O2 owner Telefónica and the transfer of business also covers the BE consumer broadband brand. Telefónica UK’s consumer broadband and fixed-line telephony customers total around 500,000. Post completion, O2 and BE customers will be migrated onto Sky’s fully unbundled network, supported by a nationwide all-fibre core, which reaches 84 percent of all UK homes, claims BSkyB. BSkyB says it has around 4.2 million broadband customers and 4 million telephony customers. O2 and BE customers will be migrated onto the Sky Core network once the sale has gone through. Please call us on 020 8445 6700 if you are worried that this will affect you. Optima Computers

Introducing Microsoft Office 2013

Microsoft Office 2013 is the latest version of the Microsoft Office productivity suite for Microsoft Windows and the successor to Microsoft Office 2010. Office 2013 includes extended file format support, user interface updates, and support for touch.

Office 2013 requires Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 or later version of either. A version of Office 2013 comes included on Windows Surface tablets.

Anyone who purchased Office 2010 between October 19, 2012 to April 30, 2013 is eligible for a free upgrade to Office 2013

A full review of Office 2013 can be found at the ITPro Website:

Office 2013 Review

Contact Optima Computers on 020 8445 6700 to find out more, order your copy or to find out if you are eligible for a free upgrade to Office 2013.