The Blog from Mercian Labels & Security Labels International

I am a huge fan of the firefox update scanner as previously blogged, in that it saves me a lot of time (and hurts when its not there!).  Recently I’ve discovered that you can backup and restore or transfer the websites you are monitoring with ease in a remarkably simple way that I coudnt find anywhere on the web.

All your websites being scanned are stored in your bookmarks, so if you backup all your bookmarks using the bookmark manager in firefox, it will save them all.  you can then import them onto the new machine (in my case my new netbook) once you have installed the plugin on the new machine.  And hey presto, you are monitoring the same websites on the new machine.  If you really want mobility, email the exported bookmarks file to your web email account, and you can install it on any machine anywhere at any time that has firefox.

We recently recruited a dedicated website designer to develop our websites, and he has done a cracking job with our main user website www.selfadhesivelabels.com .

www.selfadhesivelabels.com

The site has improved navigation, aesthetics, images, content and overall is a lot cleaner than our previous site, and we are really pleased with it. There has been a lot of clever work involved in this site, but as this is an open forum and I know our competitors watch this blog, I cannt cover them here! However, if any customers have comments on it, please feel free to leave your feedback below.

dell mini 9 running ubuntu netbook remix

I have recently taken delivery of a Dell Mini 9 that came preinstalled with Ubuntu 8.04 LTS.  I’ve upgraded the operating system to the latest Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook remix to make it boot faster and so its consistent with my laptop.  Pictured above is it with the charger and the bag I also bought from Dell.

Overall I’m really pleased with it, it small, light, the battery lasts for hours (like 4 hours+) and ideal as a netbook.  The downside is the keyboard can be difficult to type on as the keys are just so close together and I must have fat fingers!

It boots in 42 seconds from cold, and come out of suspend by opening the lid in 5 seconds flat (I kid you not). I have connected it as a 3G modem over bluetooth to my Nokia E90 by using the hack previoulsy published for my laptop so I can use it on wifi and 3G anywhere where there is a signal.

And it was only £199 inc vat -  a bargain.  I would recommend this as a really goog value netbook solution, and as always with Ubuntu, it just works.

I was contacted by the publishers of this new book recently and offered a copy for review of a new book written to support users of Trixbox such as us. Well I’ve read through it, and this is my opinion.

I have never really gone looking for a book such as this, as in most circumstances when we need support I look on google or call our IT support company.  In this respect I dont know what the competition is for a Trixbox support book, but I get the impression that this is a ‘first’.

Overall, I really liked the book, as it uses plain language that a non sys admin can understand to explain what Trixbox is, what it isnt , and how to install, configure and trouble shoot it.  There are simple explanation of lots of functions that I have learnt about the hard way in here, and having read the book, I wish that I had done so before configuring it myself, as it would have saved lots of time, probably about 10 hours of iterative learning.  In this respect, for £28 its very good value. When you put this in the context of the cost of a traditional small business phone system at £5K-£20K – its amazing value as trixbox is of course free and open source.

There are some problems that you just wont solve by using this book and non experienced sys admin.  The major IP network range problem we had that nearly destroyed our migration is not even mentioned in the book .

So, my advice is to buy this book to learn if Trixbox is for you, or if you want to learn how to configure a working system.  Its not going to solve all your installation problems like that mentoned above or instaling ISDN cards, but its a start. It will be a very useful reference for us moving forward – I’m now off to try the direct fax to PDF feature I didnt even know existed now that I’ve read the book!

Its available from here.

Disclosure: I’ve been given a free copy of the book to review and keep, but am under no other pressure or commercial interest in respect of this book.

Gor anyone that didnt know about this new development, there is a great post on the new Microsoft Office SP2 supporting open document formats here.