Thanks for replys. I phoned Telewest to arrange appointment to install Broadband and while I was on asked a young fella what he thought. He recommended a Netgear router, best place PC World, 25-30. When engineers come to install Broadband ask if they would kindly help with implementation. He thinks they will.
Leaving PC, printer, hard drive etc., where it is now but will then let me use laptop anywhere else in my flat. For a non-technical mind like mine, this is a good start to wireless stuff without disturbing anyone else in the flat.

Can anyone recommend a way to get your website picked up by the search engines. I listed a website a few weeks ago and still it does not appear if you search for it, only if you actually type the address into the address bar.
Thanks for any tips.
Alan

http://www.uk-cheapest.co.uk/submissions2.php?ref=goo-crn-s

Alan,this is a good company to use,also it could well be a idea to add a counter on your website.

Mega...

Cheers Mega.
Got a counter and it stays still for days, then shoots up by about 200 in an hour or so. Don't know whats causing this or if it is significant.
Will try that link.
Thanks.
Alan

And thanks for the visit!!
Every little helps. ;-)
Alan

Ten Steps to Ensure PC Security

and also

Safety on the Internet

This latter site thoroughly discusses

Viruses and worms
Trojan horses and crackers
Spyware and adware
Email problems
Read email safely- Dealing with Attachments and Web Bugs
Phishing
Spam
Slide show- Tutorial on Making Outlook Express Safer
Cookies- Function and Management
Advanced cookie management in IE6
Cookie management in Firefox
Making Internet Explorer Safer
Table of default settings for all security zones
Figures showing all possible settings of security zones
The hidden "My Computer" zone
Comparison of the "Internet" zone in different versions of IE6
"Internet zone" settings in Windows XP SP2
Recommended settings for increased security
How to add sites to the "Trusted" zone
What ActiveX is
Pop-up blocker and Add-on manager in Windows XP SP2
Slide show- Tutorial on Making Internet Explorer Safer
Internet Explorer vs. Other Browsers
Which is Safer, IE or Firefox?

The most important search engines to be ranked with are Google, Yahoo and MSN. You can register with them easily yourself without the need to pay anyone.

The most important thing though is to ensure that your site is optimised for search engine ranking. This means making sure that your meta-tags are done properly and in the right places. Keywords aren't as important now as they used to be because everyone latched onto it and it got abused. Title and Description are the two most important tags.

It's also useful to have a link(s) to and from other site(s) as this helps your ranking too.

I did read somewhere that Google are currently taking between 5 and 12 months to get sites ranked, so no surprise if yours isn't there.

Thanks, Hilary.
I did register it with Google about 3 weeks ago, and I am currently looking for sites that will allow reciprocal links, but which we will be allowed to have on our website, as the rules on this are very stringent indeed.
I'll keep trying. Its a good job the web is just a very samll part of our business at the moment.
Alan

Just bought my 3rd monitor ;-)

Viewsonic 19" 1912W DVI/VGA connection

Got a AGP ASUS ATI Radeon 9600xt which has 2 monitors already connected to it ;-)

1) can I split one of the monitors connections with a 2 vga connector

2) Recommed a good PCI graphics card with 2 DVI/VGA between 30-100

3) Recommend a motherboard with 2 AGP slots

Please forgive this software question.

I'm trying to make a mailing list more 'intelligent'. For example, I want to make sure that if 5 different names are living at the same address, only one gets all the enclosures. (All five have to stay on the list because each is a member in their own right, so removing the other four isn't an option!)

Currently the list is in MS Word/Exel and I'm running XP Home.

Is there someone out there who could kindly offer help? I'm happy to buy a little bit of extra software if there's a sophisticated programme I could use that could make the mailing more flexible, and therefore efficient and cost-effective.

Thanks

P,

What you are looking for is called database de-duplication software or de-dupe for short.

It's unusual, however, to keep your records in a spreadsheet (Excel). Normal practise is to keep them in a database (Access). You might find that you first need to export your records into database software before being able to de-dupe them.

Some specialist mailing list databases such as Cardbox have add-ons which de-dupe so, if you haven't got database software already, it might be worth looking at Cardbox and other software like it.

Otherwise you need to do a Google search for de-dupe software and find out which databases they work with.

Thanks, Hilary. I just inherited the list but I'm sure I can improve my predicament now I know where to look. Appreciated.

In any dedpuping process, it is very important to have the list accurately and fully postcoded. If the list is not too big it will be worthwhile to manually look at it and try and standardise the format for the various fields, particularly the first line of the address.

Thanks, Haystack.

Priscilla, if it's not too huge a list it might well be easier to change it manually to a list of member households, including in each entry a list of the people who are members within that household. That would then enable you to print letters by household or by member without the complexity introduced by a deduping step.

Another good idea. Thanks, Kayak. The list is about 600-700 names and addresses. A daunting re-typing task but I have ensured they all have full postcodes.

P,

I hadn't realised that your list was relatively small and so de-dupe software is therefore pretty pointless (unless it's free or a trial version). I've worked with databases of around 40k names and de-dupe software comes into its own in that instance.

If I were you, I think that I'd order (sort) the list alpha numerically by postcode and then scroll through it manually to spot the dupes. Ordering should put the identical addresses next to each other within the list making them easy to spot. You could easily create a fresh field within the list to distinguish between the primary and secondary members of a household and then just mail the primary members.

Thanks again, Hilary. Half the solution is knowing what information is relevant to give you. But everybody's help and suggestions have been very helpful and saved me loads of time, effort and money.

Try putting the list into a database with the key set up as Postcode, Surname, First line of address (If you have the surname as a separate field, Ifnottrhen itmight be useful to create a new field with just surname). You could then allocate a household number to each household. Yo couldthen reorder the list again with the key now set as Postcode, First line of address, surname and see if there is any difference.

I used to have a direct marketing database company. We built and ran as a bureau, individual data bases holding 25 million names and address plus 150 million transactions. I wrote the deduping software. Some databases will let you create a 'soundex' version of a field. This is useful for names that have beem badly spelt in some cases and variations of Mac, Mc, O'Brien, Obrien etc. It can also be used to soundex the first line of the address.

It is also worth checking that the Postcodes have been entered in a consistent format.

Grouping just by Postcodewill give you an accuracy of between 8 and say 30 addresses depending on whether it is a country or metropolitan area.

I've just checked this machine and it's loaded with MS Access 2000 and I'm pretty sure there must be a more current version. Before I start twiddling with the data, perhaps I should be using something more up-to-date. Can I just download MS Access 2005 or similar from somewhere on the net?

Haystack, your points are well made. I've got umpteen dozen varieties of Mc, Mac and O's. 99% of the database is from Scotland. Do you recommend any particular database software, or is Access good enough - if I can get a current version?