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About Adam and Proactive Services

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• Personal background

  The proprietor and currently sole conscript of Proactive Services is myself, Adam Piggott. I was born in 1980 and have been a computer enthusiast since childhood, an interest which went from amateur to professional in May 2000 when part of my work was tending to the workstations and server of a small company in Alton, Hampshire. With a change of employment I moved to a purely computer support role for three years where I was responsible for a nationwide customer base of around 100, providing assistance with the software we produced and general computer issues. I also gained a lot of valuable hands-on experience with equipment itself such as building computers and hardware troubleshooting. My day-to-day work would involve a polite, friendly and patient telephone manner and the ability to juggle my own timetable and work under constant pressure. I was primarily responsible for dealing with most of the technical support problems, which ranged from word processing help to solving major network or server problems and similar critical issues.

  Along the way through work and play with computers I was picking up an invaluable "toolkit" of useful programs and methods, fixes for common problems and better still - ways to stop them from step one. I was realising how many areas could be initially set-up to prevent many problems or alert the relevant people if they did.

• Foundation and values

  In early 2004 I decided that it was time to start a business that would aim at doing things right first time so that they didn't have to be fixed secondly. I have a passion to make things work for people, especially by starting on the right track and watching for any problems to respond as quickly as possible.

  After much persuasion from friends and family, I decided to go for it: an evening's brainstorming later with my girlfriend, the name "Proactive Services" came to light.

  Now I do my best to bullet-proof the computers and networks of my customers. Viruses, hacking attempts, spyware, spam, annoyances and errors bounce off the work that is put in place to start with. I show people how they can properly use their computers - small things like organising their desktop and Start menus so things are easy to find and setting out a proper filing system to keep documents and other files in a place they won't get lost.

  For those that want a backup procedure, as much automation is put in place as is possible and safe, so the bulk of the work and time is done by the computer. Backups are tested to ensure they have the right information and anything that needs to be known to restore it is documented. Potentially dangerous programs and Windows itself are set to resist damage and unwanted alteration, or safer alternatives that work at least as well are put into place.

• Technology and methods used

  • Hardware

    I currently have two computers, a custom-built Intel Core2 Quad 2.8GHz Windows Vista Ultimate desktop computer for daily use and a Panasonic Toughbook rugged laptop for taking with me when I'm working away from home. I have a fast broadband Internet connection with Andrews and Arnold who have always served myself and my customers brilliantly.

  • Software

    For correspondence and other documents, spreadsheet/book keeping etc. I use the open-standard office suite "OpenOffice.org". With its open-standards document format I know that my information is not being locked into one vendor. Being able to save in Microsoft® Office format as well as PDF means its not difficult to exchange files with users of other office suites.

    Web browsing is done primarily with Mozilla's Firefox. A fast, open-source and so far secure browser, I find it more friendly than Internet Explorer which I now only use for Windows Update. Yes, that's right - one single web site that doesn't work with Firefox.

    My email is handled by Mozilla's Thunderbird which again is user friendly and keeps my email in a human-readable format, as opposed to closed standards set by other email programs like Outlook Express. All of my outgoing email is digitally signed so that a recipient can verify it came from me, and confidential email correspondence is protected using strong encryption.

    The anti-virus software product "NOD32" from Eset (of which Proactive Services is an authorised reseller) is employed to keep a watchful eye on all files that come and go, as well as a firewall to ensure no unauthorised programs try to use the Internet. I also use a similar program to ensure that spyware cannot even start in the first place, which stops one having to remove it later!

    To test potentially dangerous or badly-written programs I use Microsoft® Virtual PC which allows me to run a "virtual" computer as a program inside my computer. This is invaluable for testing program updates, troubleshooting programs and testing new proactive methods. I also use it for disaster recovery testing to ensure my backups are doing what they should be.