John Watson Computer Services

Serving for six years in the Royal Air Force in Air Traffic Control and working for five years in Sun Alliances' computer division gave me an excellent technical grounding in computers, support and training. After setting up a company in the early 90's I wrote and sold management software to the entertainment world for the next ten years.

Don't tell anyone personal things about yourself - like where you live, your surname, phone number, email or the name of your school. Instead of posting photos of yourself online, use a cartoon or a picture of your favourite band. Remember that once something is online it can be copied and posted in other places where you can't get rid of it.

The Internet is central to so many things in our daily life that when it stops working it can be very frustrating and you will want it fixing fast. Sometimes the Internet is working but there is a wireless problem and it's not always easy to understand what's going on. Very often wireless does not always reach all the corners of the house that you want it to.

One of the biggest complaints I receive is about slow computers. Most people have or know someone that is suffering from a slow down in speed. This can be one of the most frustrating problems of using a computer. Computers become slow over a period of time by using the Internet. They can also slow down by having old programs that no longer work very well or software corruption.

The reason viruses exist has changed. A few years ago viruses were sent to infect our computers by bright but morally "challenged" individuals who liked to "do it because they could". They fall into the same category as yobs who spray graffiti on walls. Nowadays however it's very different. Most modern day viruses are sent by organised criminals in order to extort whatever they can from us.