Tag Archives: access

FREE Microsoft Office for UK university students!

If you’re a current university student in the UK, you could well have access to full free desktop versions of Microsoft Office through Office 365.

Microsoft says over 99% of UK universities are signed up to the subscription plan so for the length of your studies you can get free access to the entire suite of Microsoft Office suite.

Simply click here to go to Microsoft’s site and enter your university email address. Check your email for a confirmation link, and voila free Office!

You can use the software on up to 5 PCs and/or Macs and the subscription is valid until your studies end. There are also a certain number of colleges that are signed up for the service, so it’s worth checking with your academic email address.

Drop us a comment if you grabbed free Office!

BT accused of throttling speeds on iPlayer and YouTube

According to a range of news sites, BT has been accused of throttling speeds to sites such as BBC iPlayer and YouTube during peak hours, on their option 1 internet package, without placing a clear warning to users.

Many customers have recently complained that speed limits have been put in place for sites that use video streaming during peak times. According to BBC News, users of the Option 1 BT Internet package will find video streaming site speeds limited from 5pm right through to midnight.

I personally don’t like it when internet companies throttle speeds, but BT certainly isn’t the only company that does this. I use Tiscali as my ISP and I am most certainly throttled for high demand websites between peak hours. BT definitely is not the only company to be blamed for speed throttling.

I do think that ISPs need to do something about speed throttling – I really hate it and think it is very unfair. Most ISPs claim that they only throttle to make sure that everyone gets a fair share of the available internet bandwidth during peak time, but if ISPs can claim 8MB broadband and make you pay for it, then 8MB is what you should get all the time. If ISPs can’t provide 8MB broadband during peak time, then they should either upgrade the stone-age copper cabling we have now or just not advertise 8MB broadband in the first place. Instead, they just rip us off, advertising features they simply cant provide.

BBC demonstrates how much damage Trojans can do

The BBC has posted a short video on its website that demonstrates what a hacker could do with a trojan horse at his disposal.

The video demonstrates how complex and sophisticated trojan horses are, and how easily somebody could get access to any private information on a victim’s computer.

The videos talks about how a hacker could see the victim’s screen and whatever is on it, read his keystrokes (for displaying hidden keystrokes) and even see the victim’s webcam (scary).

The video is only two and a half minutes long but if you aren’t aware of how clever hackers are, I suggest you take a look at this video.