I have been a Microsoft partner for years, and have spent a huge amount of time and money gaining Microsoft qualifications. But right right now, I hope someone will step into the breach left by Windows 8 and the latest incarnations of Internet Explorer, both of which are absolute dogs.

I was a supporter of Vista, which I thought was unfairly maligned and actually worked very well after some early driver issues. Many people who claimed not to like Vista really had trouble understanding the changes to Office 2007, which came out at the same time, and did not have issues with Vista at all.

I have also been a supporter of Internet Explorer. I have explained to people that while the rendering engine is slightly slower, for most people this is not a limiting factor, and that IE has other advantages; it is easy to set up the way you want, and you need it if you ever do manual Windows updates.

Not any more. The last two versions of IE really have been markedly slower than Chrome, sometimes painfully slower. Gone to Tahiti for a holiday slower. Sent to a gulag in Siberia slower. Not to mention lock-ups, issues with Flash Player, etc. Until these are fixed, I am sticking with Chrome, which seems to me the most mature and stable of the alternatives, and amongst the fastest.

And as for Windows 8, good lord!

I watched a business training video from Microsoft a few weeks ago – two Microsoft “business experts” talking with each other about how great Windows 8 was for business. The only problem was, they never got around to explaining why or how. They spent a bit of time mocking people – yes mocking their own clients – who wanted a start button and menu.

“Ha, ha,” they laughed. “These are the same people who don’t need a start button on their Kindle or iPad, but want one on their PC.”

Good one, Microsoft evangelists! Not content with belittling your own clients, you completely miss the point.

The Kindle and iPad are about consuming content, and usually, doing only one thing at a time.

What made Windows so successful was that it is supposed to enable users to create as well as consume content, to do both efficiently, and to do more than one thing at a time.

I don’t understand why Microsoft find it so hard to acknowledge that people want a clear, simple list of available programmes that they can see while other windows are still open.

Microsoft’s refusal to provide this facility (and the failure to include it in Windows 8.1 means they have not addressed one of the main concerns consumers have) is sheer arrogance.

Until Microsoft are willing to listen to consumers and respond to the needs of the market, sod them.

Stick with Windows 7, and use Libre Office.

Two scams I have seen in the last couple of days.

First, a random caller claiming to be from Microsoft convinced my client his computer was about to crash and urgently needed to be upgraded from XP to Windows 7. Client allowed the caller to take control of his computer. Caller installed a skin to make XP look like Windows 7, and a ‘state of the art security system’ – in fact Microsoft Security Essentials, which is free. Total cost charged to my client’s credit card – just over $500.

Second, a pop-up telling a client her computer was infected with viruses and her data would be deleted if she did not take action immediately. This purported to be from Kaspersky Anti-virus support, but was not. It was from a group calling themselves iresolve247. Client rang the number given and allowed iresolve247 to take control of her computer. They did absolutely nothing, except for installing remote login software on her computer, and charged her $325.

iresolve247 (not giving them a link!) claim to be a legitimate computer support company. But any company that tells a pensioner she has a critical problem with her pc and will lose her data if she does not act immediately, then charges her $325 to do nothing, is not a legitimate computer support company. justechsupport is the same group. There may be other front pages for these same scam operators.

Do not fall for these scams! No reputable pc, software, or computer company cold calls people to offer to fix urgent problems on their pc. And anything that pops up warning you of disaster if you don’t act right this minute is also a scam. If in doubt, turn off your pc, restart and run a full virus scan. If you are still worried, take it to a reputable local technician.

Don’t be ripped off by some hairy dude in a shed in his back yard in Bombay!

I use PayPal frequently; at least once per day on average. About ten pecent of my business payments are made through PayPal.

On Saturday my account was restricted. Without any notice whatever, I could not make payments.

PayPal sent me an email saying they had some security concerns and asking me follow a procedure to regain access to my account.

I logged in and entered a new password and two security questions. Up to this point the process was inconvenient, but nothing more.

Then it asked me upload or fax a utility account or government ID showing my registered PayPal address.

That’s when it became a major problem.

As far as I can gather, this happened because I had logged in to my account and made a payment from a computer I do not normally use. Either that or PayPal has a programme which randomly takes a wrecking ball to its customers’ acccounts.

Think about when a client make might make a payment from a computer he does not normally use. When he’s on holiday, perhaps. Or on a business trip. Or away from home for some other reason. Just the sort of circumstances when obtaining, scanning and emailing utility accounts is going to be impossible. That’s when PayPal demands you produce them, and won’t let you use your account until you do. Good thinking, PayPal!

However, my problem was different. Like thousands of other businesses, my registered PayPal address is a delivery address; my physical location. No normal mail, utility accounts or anything else, comes to that address, it all goes to our PO box. So what am I meant to do?

After I had logged in to my account, I used the ‘contact us’ link on the PayPal website to send a message describing the problem and asking that it be fixed. No response.

Twenty-four hours later I hit the ‘contact us’ link again and sent another message. No response.

Another twenty-four hours later, and I still have not heard from them.

This is extremely poor customer service.

Apart from that, I cannot understand how a business like PayPal could have so little understanding of its clients’ needs. We are encouraged to rely on PayPal as a safe, reliable, always available payment method. But if your account can simply be stopped without warning, then PayPal cannot be relied on.

I understand the need for security measures.

But surely, if PayPal thinks an unauthorised transaction might have been made, the easiest thing for both PayPal and client would be to send the client an email asking him or her to check. If the situation is so dire that an account must be closed down immediately (using a different computer from usual certainly does not come into this category), wouldn’t a responsible business do everything possible to help a client get her account back as soon as possible?

Apparently not.

PayPal problems update:

Fours days later, four messages to PayPal, still no response. Still can’t use my account. This is a mixture of monumental dumbness (see above) and an appalling disinterest in customer service.

If there were any other realistic option I would dump Paypal in a second.

I have many years experience using partition management software. I have four MCTS qualifications, am an MCITP and an A+Certified IT Technician.

I frequently have clients who want disk partitions copied, extended, etc.

I have used Paragon software before with good results. Or at least, without major disasters.

I recently upgraded to the latest version of Paragon Hard Disk Manager. The disasters began immediately.

Moving partitions is always risky. I always save or image user data before any partition operations. About one out every four times the operation will fail, because of file errors, or a full moon, or the day of the week having a ‘y’ in it, or whatever. It is never a problem, because I always make a complete back up of target disks beforehand.

The first time I used the new Paragon Hard Disk Manager the operation failed. No problem, I thought. A minor inconvenience at most.

Until I tried to restart my computer. I got a message saying there were interrupted operations, and I should insert my recovery CD.

Paragon Hard Disk Manager had no business making any changes to my C: drive at all – that was not one of the drives I was operating on – let alone making changes to critical boot files or records.

No recovery CD would let me restart Windows, nor could the repair utility on the Windows CD get the system working.

Now I had a problem, because the user’s data was no longer accessible from his drive, and my C: drive, where I had saved his disk image, was also inaccessible.

I recovered my and my user’s data from the disk, reinstalled Windows, and tried again. Same problem – the partition operation failed. Windows would not start. Same error message.

I had just upgraded to Windows 7, and thought perhaps there might be an incompatibility, though there was nothing to suggest this on Paragon’s website.

I wiped the disk, went back to Vista Business, and tried again, ths time with a different partition operation on a different disk. Exactly the same result. The operation failed, and Windows would not restart, even though there was no reason for Partition Manager to have made any changes to my primary drive at all.

This is a dog’s breakfast of a programme. There is no excuse for releasing to market a piece of software that repeatedly causes such disastrous disk and sytem errors.

Until Paragon fix this, anyone who uses Hard Disk Manager is at serious risk, not only of wasting several hours of time, as I did, but of losing any or all information from their hard disks.