What happened to the Windows Sidebar? Users of Windows Vista will know all about Windows Sidebar, a small application that lets you display ‘useful' gadgets on your desktop in a semi-transparent bar positioned to the side of your display. Many people argued that the sidebar was a waste of valuable memory resources and most users ended up closing it permanently. The tool was dropped from Windows 7  and replaced with a much better solution.

Gadgets still exist in Windows 7, but you are no longer restricted to placing them in a sidebar, instead you can place them anywhere on your desktop by simply dragging and dropping.

How do I add gadgets?

1. Right click anywhere on your Windows Desktop and select ‘gadgets'.

2. The following gadgets Window below will appear. This window contains a set of standard gadgets that are included with Windows 7.

3. Simply use your mouse to drag and drop the gadget(s) from the gadget window onto your desktop;

4. Hover your mouse over a gadget to reveal three action buttons in the top right hand corner as shown on the calendar gadget below;

5. The top button will close the gadget and remove it from your desktop. If you wish to add the gadget at another time, simply navigate back to the gadgets window as shown in step 1.

6 The middle button is the options button. Clicking on this button will expand the gadget and show you various configuration options. Take the clock gadget for example, clicking on the options button will reveal a range of clock face designs to choose from.

7. The bottom button will simply allow you to drag and drop the gadget, not that you really need a button to do that anyway!!!

Downloading new gadgets.

You can download more gadgets by simply clicking on the ‘get more gadgets online' link at the bottom of the Gadgets window. This will open up a webpage Microsoft's website which contains a range of useful Gadgets available for download.

We hope you find the above information helpful. Visit our blog to find more helpful hints and tips for Windows and Mac users.

About Our IT Department Ltd.

Our IT Department are a London based IT Support Company. We provide Network Support, Consultation and Project Management services to SME's and large organisations across the Greater London area. If your business is based in or around the M25 and you require Professional IT Support then contact us to find out more.

Problem Steps Recorder (PSR) is one of many new helpful features found in Windows 7. It is a small application that lets you record any actions on your pc, from mouse clicks to key presses. Whatever you do on your pc, this application will record it, generate various screenshots of your actions and record additional information that may be helpful when trying to find a solution to a windows or application related problem.

How do I use Problem Steps Recorder?

1. Click start

2. Type PSR in the search field and press enter

3. The following window will appear;

When you are ready to record your actions, click on the ‘start record' button to the left. When you are finished, click ‘stop', you will then be prompted to save a record of your actions in a zipped HTML file.

4. To view your steps, open the zip file double click on the HTML file. A document containing information about your recorded steps will now open in your web browser.

Things to remember - PSR does not record anything you type in detail, it only records the fact that user keyboard input has occurred.  If you wish to record a more accurate description of anything you have typed then I would suggest using the ‘Add Comment' option found on the PSR interface.

We hope you find the above information helpful. Visit our blog to find more helpful hints and tips for Windows and Mac users.

About Our IT Department Ltd.

Our IT Department are a London based IT Support Company. We provide Network Support, Consultation and Project Management services to SME's and large organisations across the Greater London area. If your business is based in or around the M25 and you require Professional IT Support then contact us to find out more.

As always thank you again for everyone that took part in our latest online poll which asked the question ‘Out of ten, what score would you give windows 7?'

So what do most of you think about Microsoft's latest operating system?  Here are the top five results below;

1.       8 out of 10 (26% of the vote)

2.       10 out of 10 (17% of the vote)

3.       9 out of ten (16% of the vote)

4.       3 out of ten (9% of the vote)

5.       1 out of ten (8% of the vote)

The top three results indicate that the majority of you out there are very happy with Windows latest Operating System. What is interesting is the fact that there seems to be no ‘Happy Medium' and Windows 7 seems to be a bit of a Marmite OS, you either love it or you hate it, although most clients and colleagues I speak with are big fans of Windows 7.

So what for Windows 8?

No hands on review from us yet, it's a bit too early for that. As expected, Windows 8 will be a combined desktop, tablet and laptop OS designed for all types of platform, from touch screens to the Led screen in your living room. If you have seen windows phone 7 running then Windows 8 will look familiar as it uses the same ‘Tile effect' user interface which all looks very modern. We will look at Windows 8 in further detail in our next blog entry.

Thank you again to everyone that voted in our online poll. Keep an eye out for the next one!!!

Research poll results for July 2011.

The results are in for our latest online poll. Thank you once again to everyone that participated and as always we will put the data to good use!!

We asked which feature of your laptop was most important to you. The results are below;

1^st Performance – 33%

2^nd Battery life – 20%

3^rd Reliability – 13 %

4^th Weight – 9%

5^th Design/colour – 9%

6^th Build quality – 4%

7^th Other – 4%

The results above indicate that performance is the most important factor to users that voted when it comes to purchasing a laptop, followed by battery life and reliability.

One thing we found very interesting about this poll is the fact that no votes were cast for either Screen size/resolution or Warranty. Screen size in particular surprised us, especially as there is such a variation of screen sizes now available on the market.

Warranty often gets overlooked so this wasn’t so much of a surprise; although we would always advise our clients to take the warranty into account, as well as the level of after sales service you should expect from the vendor. In our experience Dell is one of the better suppliers when it comes to after sales, and extended warranty options from dell are quite cost effective.

Overall the results were not too far away from what we expected. I was a little surprised that the ‘weight’ of the laptop didn’t get more votes as many of our customers always ask this to be taken into consideration when we purchase a laptop on their behalf, especially customers that have to commute into London every day!

Once again thank you to everyone that participated and we really appreciate the contributions. Our next online poll will be taking votes on Windows 7 and your opinions on the operating system.

Until next time!!!

Google has yet again made some changes to its search engine in order to ramp up the search speeds.  According to reports online, the new ‘Instant Pages' system will potentially reduce page loading times by up to five seconds. 

Google instant pages will be made available over the next couple of weeks to users of the Google Chrome web browser.

Google recently used the washington post website to demonstrate the technology.With instant search off the website took 3.2 seconds to load, with instant turned on it was pretty much ' instant'.

Google is also planning voice activated searching which is interesting. Developers seem to be going ‘voice activated' mad at the moment, with many new games demonstrated at E3 by Microsoft using voice activation and control.  Maybe this is a glimpse of the future?

This month's online research poll was interesting, if a little predictable. We asked you what your favourite brand of smartphone was, here are the results....

1. Apple - 38%

2. Blackberry - 28%

3. HTC - 17%

4. Nokia - 7%

5. Motorola - 1%

6. Others - 3%

7. LG - 0%

The results finished as we expected them to as it seems that just about everyone we know owns an iPhone. It is amazing just how popular they are and even some of the most ‘anti-apple' techies in the office are starting to turn to the dark side. Even I have a white iPhone 4 on back order J

Again second place was no surprise, obviously a lot of our clients visit the website and cast their vote and we know that a lot of them have Blackberry's for business use. Their popularity has definitely increased in the past two years, although weather they will ever be as popular as the iPhone is debatable.

Most of us predicted the top three in this order before any votes were cast. With the Android OS going from strength to strength and gaining popularity, it will be interesting to see how much more popular handsets that use the OS like HTC become over the next 12 months.

As always, thank you to everyone that took the time to cast their votes. Our next online poll is titled ‘ Which feature is most important for laptop owners?'. We look forward to your opinions!!

February’s online research poll was conducted in order to find out a little bit more about our clients (and random website visitors!) preferred brand of laptop.  

If you ask everyone in the office what their preferred laptop brand is then you will get a mixed range of answers. The ‘Pro-apple’ among us (including me) will always sway towards the MacBook Pro, as they are extremely well-constructed and reliable, the Operating system is fantastic and they are very aesthetically pleasing (although rather expensive).

Others, in fact quite a good few of us are Dell fans. Dell does knock out a fantastic laptop and they have really up’d their game over the past couple of years. The XPS series is a very popular choice, the screen quality is good, as is the keyboard layout. Dell aftersales in my experience has been exceptional in recent years and they really take the pain out of getting something fixed under warranty, the onsite warranty is especially recommended.

Because of the above, the results that came from the online poll came as no surprise.

February online poll results – What is your favourite brand of laptop?

1.       Apple – 27%

2.       Dell – 27%

3.       Hewlett Packard – 14%

4.       Sony – 13%

5.       Acer – 8%

6.       Other  - 8%

7.       Toshiba – 3%

8.       Samsung – 0% (no votes cast)

As I said, the top two results are of no surprise, but I was surprised that Toshiba only managed to gather only 3% of the votes cast. They are not the most popular brand of laptop, but in my experience they are pretty hardy machines that are ideal for a business environment. Samsung receiving no votes whatsoever was also a bit of a surprise as they are by no means the worst brand of laptop on the market.

Thank you again to everyone that participated in our online research, it helps us gain a real idea as to what our clients like and what people want. Please be kind enough to participate in our next March online poll ‘what is your favourite Smart Phone brand?’

Who is Our IT Department Ltd?

Our It Department Ltd is an IT support company dedicated to providing our clients in London with unrivalled and unlimited onsite and remote IT services. We specialise in supporting small business networks between 5-250 users. Founded over twenty years ago, Our IT Department is recognised as one of the capitals leading IT outsourcing companies. We can provide full time and ad-hoc contracts, 24 hour support and complimentary support for in-house professionals. Our website provides a detailed summary of all our products and services.

Not the most exciting poll we have ever conducted I grant you, but as a supplier of IT hardware we were interested to find out what size monitors people typically use out there, particularly in a business environment.

What did we think would be the most popular? Well my money was on either 19 or 22", as most offices I seem to walk into have this sort of size range as standard issue. But not for the first time, I was wrong...

The results.

• 1. 24"+ - 28% of the vote
• 2. 19" - 22% of the vote
• 3. 17" - 15% of the vote
• 4. 22" - 12% of the vote
• 5. 15" - 10% of the vote
• 6. Other - 8% of the vote
• 7. 20" - 5% of the vote

24" and higher coming first was a big surprise for me. I know a lot of guys in the IT Support office use this size screen at home as they are all gaming mad and for them it is a case of ‘the bigger the better' but I was surprised that this screen dimension came in first for use at work, although that said, many of our clients in the design industry use a minimal size of 24" for obvious reasons.

19% coming in second place doesn't surprise me at all. 19" is a nice size screen for everyday use no matter what industry you work in, it is one of those screen sizes that is just right, not too big, but not too small'.

Other notes. 10% of voters still using 15" screen surprised me. I thought this screen size had long gone from many a desk and I must admit that personally I struggle to use a screen size below 17 inches now.

Thank you to everyone that participated in the online survey for January. Our next survey is titled ‘what is your preferred laptop brand' will be live on the site soon. Please take the time to vote as we appreciate the feedback very much.

About Our IT Department.

Our IT Department are a London based IT Support Company specialising in remote and onsite network support for small to medium enterprises. We have been established in the capital now for over 20 years and our client base varies from small operations to blue chip organisations.

If you need reliable pro-active IT support then we are the company to work with. Please take the time to look around our website and find out more about us and our services.

• Does your in-house IT Manager need a bit of a helping hand?
• Has your company expanded and you need a bit of extra help, but don't want to commit to the expense of another staff member?
• Does your organisation require an additional skill set for an upcoming IT project such as a server install or moving over to the cloud?
• Is your IT guy going on holiday and you need cover?
• Are you looking for temporary support between IT Managers?

If the above sounds familiar then you might want to consider hiring the services of an external IT Support company to provide cover as opposed to hiring a temporary member of staff.

A lot of people feel companies like ours are just an alternative to an in-house IT Manager. Also, some IT Managers can be frightened to involve an external IT Support company in the day to day running of their network because they see it as a threat to their position.

But the two above statements couldn't be further from the truth...

We cannot speak for other IT companies out there, but Our IT Department has years of experience working alongside existing in-house IT Staff. There are many examples we could give you, recently we helped a company migrate their entire network to a new hardware platform, as their IT Manager was fantastic at supporting the staff with day to day problems, but was a little concerned about undertaking what was quite a complex project without an additional skillset to be on-hand.

Another example is one of our central London based clients that lost the services of their IT Manager for three weeks through illness.  We have helped the company in the past with various one-off projects, and it was only by chance that we found out they were short-handed through a general conversation between the two business owners. We offered them a short term contract that provided onsite and remote IT Support with no catches whatsoever and we supported them on a full time basis until their IT Manager was well enough to work again.

In the past we have also provided holiday cover for clients. Holiday cover can be provided in the form of onsite or remote thanks to the resources we have available. We can participate in a handover period and you can book our engineers up in advance if you know when your staff will be on leave.

We have also helped companies that have lost their in-house expertise unexpectedly. Change happens and recruiting the right personal for your business isn't something that can be rushed, so instead of making a rushed appointment, why not use an IT company as a virtual ‘temp' while you take the time to find the right person.

So, if you need a helping hand with an upcoming project or you are just short handed in terms of IT expertise, consider an IT outsourcing company to give you a helping hand!!

There are many IT Support companies that offer IT Outsourcing services in London. Every day there seems to be another new network support company appearing on Google, offering what appears to be an ‘Unrivalled' IT support service that cannot be bettered. It's amazing how many IT companies out there state that they offer the ultimate IT Support service, but if this were true then we wouldn't have so many customers contacting us because they are so fed up with their existing IT company!!

With so many IT companies out there, it can be difficult to know who to work with. Here are a few reasons why you might want to consider Our IT Department as your It Department;

A London based company established for over 20 years.

Many IT companies come and go. London is a competitive marketplace where only the strongest survive and only companies that offer a consistently high level of service can continue to grow. Our IT Department has been an established IT company in London since 1990. In this time we have grown from a small business into an organisation with three offices located the capital, including offices in Regent Street, Highams park and Queen Street. Multiple locations throughout London ensure fast engineer response times, wherever you are located in the capital.

No gimmicks, just unlimited IT Support.

There many gimmicks out there such as ‘try us free forever' or ‘a better level of service or your money back', but usually these type of offers come with nasty hidden clauses that you won't know about until you have signed on the dotted line.

Our IT Department offer no silly marketing gimmicks, just pure and simple, unlimited IT Support services. We are one of very few IT companies in the country that have the resources to offer an unlimited onsite and remote IT support service. Call our sales team to find out more about the services we can offer or visit them at our Queen Street office for a coffee and a chat.

Knowledge base.

Work with Our IT Department and obtain instant access to a vast pool of resources. Our team of professional engineers and Project Managers know all there is to know about IT Support and Network Management. All of our Engineers are Microsoft certified and we also have many other qualifications such as Cisco and Apple mac certifications to name a few. Training is always on-going and our qualifications are current. Our area of expertise isn't just IT Support, we can also advise on other services such as virtualisation, backup, disaster recovery, web design and search engine optimisation.

Long term relationships.

Many (in fact the majority) of our customers are long term clients. Long term relationships with our client base are built on trust and the ability to do our job properly and more importantly, effectively. We are the type of company with a reputation for going that extra mile to get the job done. References are always available upon request.

Take a look around our website today and find out more about us. Many businesses out there have taken the decision to make Our IT Department, THEIR IT Department. We can offer you the best IT Support London has to offer, contact us today and find out more.