Happy 13th Birthday to Optima Computers

Happy Birthday to us!!!

It's our 13th Birthday on the 1st of October!! 

The last 13 years have been exciting and filled with lots of fun and challenges. We thank you, our customers, for supporting us throughout the last 13 years. We hope we have lived up to your expectations. 

Now that we are in our teenage years, expect us to be wiser and more knowledgeable than ever! We look forward to providing an even greater service in the future.

We know you only came here for the offers, so without further ado, here you go:

OFFERS: (Only valid for month of October 2014. Only one offer per customer, so choose carefully! Offers only available to Customers on our database).
Our email address:  info@optimacomputers.co.uk

1) Free 8GB USB memory stick to the first 13 people who email us with the Subject "Happy Birthday - Offer 1"

2) Free LiveDrive Unlimited Cloud Backup for 1 year to the first 13 people who email us with the Subject "Happy Birthday - Offer 2"

3) Free Comprehensive Health Check for your Computer. Only 5 on offer - To qualify, send us your funniest joke with the Subject "Happy Birthday". Nick Shah will decide which are the funniest and award the offer accordingly.

4) 50% off Epson Expression 412 Printer Copier Scanner. Normal Price £69.99.
Offer Price £34.99.  Offer only valid whilst stocks last. (This is a very good little all in one wireless printer)

5) Free ream of high quality paper when you buy a full set of ink cartridges for your printer

There you go! Act quick to grab these offers.

All offers are subject to our Terms and Conditions. 

Spam Outbreak Alert

Spam Outbreak

Every so often, we observe certain spam campaigns that catch our interest.

On August 15, we observed a particular spam campaign that caught our attention because it was using “snowshoe” spam techniques combined with PDF exploitation. While neither of these techniques are new, we have seen a growing trend involving snowshoe spam.


Snowshoe spamming is a spamming technique in which the spammer uses a wide array of IP addresses in order to spread out the spam load. The large spread of IP addresses makes it difficult to identify and trap the spam, allowing at least some of it to reach email inboxes. For companies which specialize in trapping spam, snowshoe spamming is particularly noxious because it is difficult to trap it with traditional spam filters

Despite the large number of IP addresses used in this spam campaign, the messages themselves appear suspicious due to the spam-like characteristics in the headers and body of the message. Message in this spam campaign have a subject like “inovice 2921411” where the number in message subject is randomly generated and the word “inovice” is misspelled. Later version have the invoice correctly spelt, which means the spammers are refining their campaigns.

We have noticed that this type of scam is accounting for 10% of all scam.

Here is a snapshot of spam emails with malware attachments sent to my address over the last few day:

Snowshoe spam can be a challenge for some anti-spam detection techniques because it typically uses multiple IP addresses with very low spam volume per IP address. Depending on how an anti-spam technology works, this can cause severe problems with detection.

Fortunately, good anti-spam service providers are updating their databases to combat these types of spam. But due to the nature of the snowshoe method, there will always be some spam that gets through.

If you do not have an anti-spam service, please contact Optima on 020 8445 6700 and we can set one up for you.

Note: users who do not keep their systems up-to-date, do not utilize security technologies, or click on attachments from unknown senders will continue to be affected by these types of attacks.

Eset - Virus and Malware security

Nod32 from ESET is our new recommended virus and malware software

Here at Optima, we are seeing more reports of Norton software causing crashes and error on our customers' computers. In many cases the fix is to re-install the software. The concern we have is that if the Norton software has crashed and the customer accesses a compromised website, there is a real chance of getting infected.

To that effect, we have started looking for an alternative and have decided to recommend ESET Nod32. This is a very good product which we feel is better than Norton in protecting you. In fact better all round.

See below more details on ESET NOD32:

Enjoy your digital life and safer technology, secured by our highly-acclaimed, record-holding Internet security suite. ESET Smart Security offers you an all-in-one security package that combines our unique technology and tools to keep you safe online and offline.

ESET technology is trusted by millions around the world and lets you enjoy safer online browsing and offline activities to the fullest. It eliminates all types of threats, including viruses, rootkits, worms, spyware and phishing attacks. Your passwords and banking details stay secure with Anti-Phishing. The built-in antivirus keeps you a safe distance from threats that evade detection – our exploit blocker technology detects and stops such attacks.

Stay a Safe Distance from Internet threats

·         Full parental control

·         Antivirus and Antispyware

·         Exploit Blocker

·         Advanced Memory Scanner

·         Cloud-powered Scanning

·          Scan while Downloading Files

·         Idle-state Scanning

·         Host-based Intrusion Prevention

·         System (HIPS)

Keep personal profiled safe with ESET Social Media Scanner

·         Protects you and your friends’ facebook accounts including timeline and newsfeed

·         Protects Twitter profile

Anti-theft

·         Location Tracking

·         Laptop Activity Watch

·         Anti-Theft Optimization

·         One-way Messaging

Keep Your Private Data Safe from Identity theft

·         Personal Firewall

·         Vulnerability Shield

·         Anti-Phishing

·         Out-of-Home Network

·         Device Control

·         Antispam

Enjoy the Full Power of Your Computer

·         Small System Footprint

·         Gamer Mode

·         Portable Computer Support

Install and Forget or Tweak Away

·         One-click Solution

·         Settings for Advanced Users

·         After-scan Actions

25 Things You Can Do on iOS 8 That You Couldn't Do on iOS 7

Load up iOS 8 and you might not notice the difference straight away, but there are plenty of little tweaks and changes behind the scenes. Here are 25 different things you can do on your device that you couldn't do in iOS 7. 

1.) Install another keyboard
It's finally possible to install third-party keyboards on iOS once you've made the jump to 8.0. You can pick up Swype for £0.69, Fleksy for £0.69, or SwiftKey for free, and more alternatives will appear in the months ahead.

2.) See what's using your battery
Apple is promising better battery life on the iPhone 6 models, but it's useful to stay on top of it. Delve into the Settings app and select General then Usage. Tap on the Battery Usage entry and you can see exactly which apps are taking up all of your precious battery power.

3.) Shoot timelapse video
iOS 7 had slow-motion, iOS 8 has timelapse. You'll find the new option in your Camera app and it captures one frame of video every second. Timelapse videos can be identified in your photo stream by the small timer icon in the lower left corner.
4.) Get out of group chats
If you're in a Messages conversation that has more than two participants, you can now give it a name, mute it, share your location, or get out of it with a couple of taps. Select the Details option from the conversation screen to bring up the new options.

5.) Send out your phone's last location
Find My iPhone isn't new, but there is a new option in iOS — head to the iCloud section of Settings, tap Find My iPhone and enable Send Last Location. When the battery in your device gets critically low, it will ping out a location report before it dies, giving you a better chance of finding a dead device.

6.) Search the Web from Spotlight

Swipe down on the home screen to access Spotlight, type out a few words and you'll notice that Web links now appear alongside results from apps. Results from Maps may also be included. The Spotlight section in the Settings app lets you change this behavior.

7.) Send voice messages
Actually typing out your iMessages is so September 16 — now you can speak them in a kind of instant voicemail fashion. Press and hold the record button in the bottom right corner to speak. To listen to a message, press play or hold your device up to your ear with the conversation in view.

8.) Trash and flag emails more easily
There are some handy extra features added to the native Mail app in iOS 8. One of them is the ability to left swipe to bring up options for trashing and flagging messages. Swiping right reveals the option to mark as unread, unchanged from iOS 7.

9.) Use Siri like Shazam

There aren't many changes to Siri this time around (the digital assistant often gets minor upgrades between iOS releases) but there is now music recognition built, powered by Shazam. Activate Siri with a hold of the Home button and ask "What song is playing?" to run the query.

10.) Share with the family
One of the biggest iOS 8 upgrades that you may already be aware of is Family Sharing. It lets you spread purchases of apps, music, movies, photos and so on between other users running iOS 8 devices. Head into the Settings app then tap iCloud and Set Up Family Sharing to get it up and running.

11.) Go grey
We're not sure exactly how useful this one is for most people, but we wouldn't want the Accessibility options to go overlooked when it comes to new features. Tap Accessibility on the General page in Settings and there's a new Greyscale option you can activate. It's very Casablanca.

12.) Search with DuckDuckGo

If you've had just about all you can take from Google and its over-zealous tracking, Safari lets you change the default search provider for the first time. DuckDuckGo, Yahoo and Bing are the new options, which you can find in the Safari section of the Settings app.

13.) Track your health
Well... eventually. Due to some teething problems Apple has had to pull third-party app updates that try and tap into its new HealthKit platform. The standalone Health app is still available though, as long as you're using an iPhone 4s (or above) or the latest iPod touch.

14.) Set timed photos
Most third-party iOS camera apps have a self-timer mode, and now Apple has added the functionality into the native app too. Tap the timer icon that appears by the on-screen shutter button to choose between a three-second and a ten-second delay.

15.) Customise sharing

With iOS 8, Apple devices now have a far more flexible sharing system for getting your content out into different apps. As with Android, though, this can lead to the Share menu getting a little overwhelming — tap the More button next to the sharing options to change their order or to prevent some of them from appearing at all.

16.) Answer calls on an iPad
You'll need to wait for OS X Yosemite to officially arrive before you can pass calls between computers and mobile devices, but if your iPhone and iPad are both updated to iOS 8 and on the same Wi-Fi network then you can take calls from your iPhone on your tablet. The same Apple ID and associated number need to be set on both devices too.

17.) Scan credit cards
The digital money revolution continues apace: not only does iOS 8 bring Apple Pay to the table, it also lets you scan in credit cards rather than wasting time typing out all of the details. Look for the Scan Credit Card option in Safari when you're entering payment details.

18.) Upgrade to iCloud Drive

iCloud Drive is iCloud 2.0 and all of Apple's apps and services will be upgrading to it eventually. It's currently only compatible with iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, so don't upgrade until all of your devices and computers are running the latest software. When you're ready to take the plunge, the option is rather predictably on the iCloud screen in the Settings app.

19.) Hide photos
If you work in online publishing or similar trades you probably have several thousand screenshots taking up room in your photo stream that you don't necessarily want to see day after day. Any image can be hidden from the Moments, Collections, and Years views by long-pressing on it; the actual file isn't deleted from your device, however.

20.) Find recent contacts
The multi-tasking screen (two taps on the Home button) now features a list of recent contacts as well as recent apps. Tap on any friend, relative, colleague or random acquaintance to see the different ways in which you can interact with the person in question.

21.) Edit the Today page

Swipe down from the top of the screen and you'll notice there's a new Edit button on the Today page. Tap on this to control which 'widgets' are allowed to show up and in what order; there's also the option to prevent specific apps from appearing on this page.

22. Respond to notifications
The iOS 8 Notification Center is smarter than the one in iOS 7. You can now reply to messages directly from the pull-down menu, for example: swipe right-to-left to bring up the new options for a notification.

23.) Change photo exposure
As in iOS 7, you can tap on a part of the picture in the Camera app to change the focus point. In iOS 8, a sunlight icon appears next to the focus frame — slide this up or down with your finger to change the exposure level and the amount of light let into your shot.

24.) Show the desktop site

In iOS 8 you can force the browser to bring up the full desktop version of any site by tapping on the address bar (to get to the grid of favourite sites), then swiping down and tapping Request Desktop Site.

25.) Paste GIFs into Notes

Good news, animated GIF fans — you can copy and paste these magical moving images into your Notes app or select them from your photo library. Now your off-hand scribblings can be brought to life like never before.