ITWales.com
IT Clinic: Your questions answered by the experts
By Chris Williams
Trainingwales at Neath Port Talbot College Margam hosted the second IT Wales IT Clinic of 2003 on 13 March. Local businesses took advantage of this opportunity to seek expert advice on a range of topics.
Questions were put to Paul Gadd and Lawrence Thomas of Swansea Bay IT Support Centre
Consider both pros and cons:
Pros-
Businesses need to first consider what they use their Internet connection for and how much time is spent online.
Broadband can work out cheaper than a standard dial up connection and is also very much faster.
Budgeting is easier as there is one monthly bill covering all access.
Business can benefit more from the Internet if accessible all day/night.
Easier and quicker to download large documents and images.
Cons-
System open to security attack if connection open all the time- firewalls and other safeguards need to be in place
Speed can be variable and will slow down if there is a lot of traffic.
Satellite broadband is an option if you are not in an area served by an existing provider.
The WDA have a scheme in place offering a subsidy to businesses interested in this option.
The performance of satellite can occasionally be affected by weather conditions.
We think our website looks dated. What should we consider when bringing it up to date?
Many businesses forget about their websites once in place and this can be damaging. It is possible to have a site review conducted by
Opportunity Wales who will send an advisor to assess the existing content and design and offer free advice on how to improve it.
Businesses need to be aware of changes in search criteria of search engines and should also have access to webstats for their site
enabling them to monitor traffic.
Also worth considering whether the site should be bilingual- grants are available.
New legislation regarding sites and accessibility will be in place by 2004.
This would depend on the configuration of the system and could be resolved by changing settings to a static IP address.
Could be worth considering a Virtual Private Network, but exposing this to the world wide web can have serious security implications and
a commercial hardware firewall would need to be installed.
What are the benefits of networking three PCs in an office where each user only occassionally needs to access another person's
information?
If the PCs are not networked then quite possibly the company is not backing up its data. This means that one hard drive failure would
result in a total loss of that systems information.
Swansea Bay IT support could send an advisor to discuss the most appropriate and cost effective options. Networking can benefit access
to internal communications via e-mails and can also enable each user to access the same printer minimising additional expense.
Security should again be considered where individuals choose to keep files that are not to be accessed by other personnel.
Contacts
Swansea Bay IT Support Centre
Tel: 01792 545 068
E-mail: itcentre@swansea.gov.uk
Web: http://www.swansea.gov.uk
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