Continue reading »]]> If you’ve been following my tweets lately, you’ll know that I recently moved GEEK! to a brand new VPS server. I did this for many reasons – but primarily because I felt that I was ready to move on from shared hosting and onto something where I’ll learn a little more about how webservers work. GEEK!’s been running well over three years now – and I’ve been through many web hosting providers during that time. I was beginning to get tired of hoping other people on shared servers wouldn’t jeopardize your uptime stats – there always seemed to be some kind of resource hog!

Nonetheless, I went on the hunt for a cheap-ish yet good quality VPS provider (I might have stayed with my old provider HostParcel as, in fairness, they were pretty good – but sadly they don’t offer VPS services) and was pointed to South West Broadband. They seem to be pretty new in VPS services, but I was interested in their good value and seemingly honest services.

So I signed up to their lowest price package to see what was what. For £8 a month, I was given a VPS with 256MB RAM (although I’m told this will soon become 512MB), 10GB storage, 300GB bandwidth and a Linux flavour of my choice (I was recommended to Debian). Pretty neat, I thought – and very good value nonetheless! They also offer a 12 month prepayment discount – giving you 12 months for the price of 10, if you’re happy to commit.

And to be totally honest, so far I’m really impressed. The customer support is superb – better than I’ve ever seen in a hosting provider. You get access to online support via Skype or a ticketing system – as well as an emergency telephone number which isn’t premium rate (this is something I really like to see).

The server they assigned me seems to work very well. You get full SSH access (which you’d expect) and you are allowed access to all the controls and commands that you’ll ever need. Response times from the server are incredible – from my college in Oxford I can get a response from the server just outside London in just 4ms – pretty darn good!

As for value for money – I’ve never seen such value. I’d always considered VPS services very expensive – but £8 a month is hardly expensive for the system you get.

So really I haven’t got many (if any) complaints. For decent value, high performance VPS servers with decent customer support, I couldn’t think of anywhere else to recommend you!

Oh, by the way – SWB aren’t actually offering their VPS packages on their website yet. However, if you contact them via twitter they seem to be happy to sort you out with a package. They also offer a decent range of shared and reseller packages, so if a VPS isn’t your thing, they’re bound to have something that is.

Continue reading »]]> Microsoft is already handing out the release candidate to a select group of testers.

Microsoft has given a select group of testers access to the latest build of the Microsoft Office 2010 suite – the release candidate.

Sadly, at present, the release candidate isn’t available for public download. However, I would think that Microsoft will probably give it to TechNet customers in a few days (or weeks), and then once that’s done everyone else will probably get it shortly after.

This new release candidate would show that Microsoft is really trying hard to reach it’s target of RTM (release to manufacturer) by June 2010. It’s only February and they would appear to be reaching their final stages.

I have to say that I think the beta was very successful – I am yet to find any bugs or hold-backs. I’ve been using the beta since launch day and haven’t had a problem with it yet.

Update: Thanks to Sebastian (see comments) who has informed me that the RC will not go out on public release. It’s a shame, but many thanks for that information.

Continue reading »]]> eBay has recently agreed to sell Skype, which marks the end of its near 4 year ownership. The company has been sold to a group of private investors.

eBay has complained many times in the past that Skype wasn’t as profitable as they’d hoped. Ever since eBay bought Skype for $2.6 billion in 2005 they have admitted a few times that they have regretted buying Skype. Although Skype offers brilliant value calls to landline and mobile phones across the globe, the free Skype-to-Skype calling dominates the service which makes it very difficult for anyone to make a distinctive profit.

How much eBay have sold Skype for isn’t totally clear – but predictions would outline that eBay is expecting to make about $2 billion from the sale.

There is also little news as to whether anything will change under the new ownership of Skype. I’m hoping that very little will change, as I have recently subscribed to an unlimited landline service from Skype together with my own landline number. It would be a shame if the new owners either upped the prices or removed some of the services.

So, with any luck, there will be no changes to Skype in the near future as it would be a shame to see a change in service. However, you just can’t predict will happen, and if anything we might the service improve.