Documents to provide further guidance following the Spam seminars

Please also note that you should take a full system backup of your PC and the data you have on it before installing this type of "system level" software. Because of the extent of the Service Packs that Microsoft are delivering as part of Windows Update (which in today's Web world is no longer an optional service) your hardware may also need to be upgraded. 128MB of RAM is a minimum for any Windows system (e.g. 98SE, 2000) and 256MB is now an absolute minimum for Windows XP.

If you only have one physical drive in your PC and it is used for business data and processes that would be disrupted if that PC failed then it is recommended that you add a second hard drive at a cost of less that £60 for the hardware - excluding fitting and formatting. The 2nd drive should be regularly maintained as a set of "Mirrors" of your existing hard drive using a tool such as PartitionMagic.

Additional guidance as follow-up to the Xper Associates 2004 Spam Seminars

• b4-t.co.uk/44SpamSem/NexStep2.pdf Some options for the avoidance and supression of Spam with varying amounts of help from an Xper associate.
• b4-t.co.uk/44SpamSem/TecHand2.pdf Two pages of basic advice about usage and settings for MS Internet Explorer, MS OutLook (Express and some variants), MS Windows, MS Messenger Services.
• b4-t.co.uk/44SpamSem/A4IEMatx.pdf Matrix of suggested settings for the MS Internet zones - use if the item above is not clear.

If you can't find a document or have forgotten the name then try this link b4-t.co.uk/Page/DocRef/NexStep2.pdf which will list all of the current material on that site.

Also note that the use of Aliases is shown on this site (see navigation link to left) for now but this may move to the other site in the next month (June 2004).

Future material as a result of the Xper Associates 2004 Spam Seminars

The above material is a good starting point we hope. However, we realise that there will be more required and that you are the best people to tell us what content, style, level etc. of documents would help you.

Please tell us what you need on our contact form - please suggest the audience and objective as well as the topics that you would want addressed

For example - as a result of requests from the seminar held on 7th April we have increased the detail in the documents above and have produced a guide to creating and managing aliases and the all-important catch-all alias.
It isn't at all difficult but we appreciate that it always feels less of a barrier if you can see in advance what the screens will look like and what the prompts mean.
Note however This guide will only be directly relevant to those people who use the Mail hosting services of our own site-4u.com or of www.unitedhosting.co.uk as the screen shots will be of the services as provided by them. Other users will no doubt have very similar facilities available at whatever Mail hosting company they choose. We trust that you will understand that it would be impossible to create a guide that comprehensively addresses each ISP variant and even if produced it would be unreadable because of the complexity.