Traditionally, January is one of our busiest months, when time is spent resolving the computer problems that have accumulated over the Christmas holidays and plans are created for business customers wanting an update or change to systems.

This January though, we've seen an explosion in business. A huge thanks to everybody who have recommended us to friends, relatives and business collegues.

BT have included Stonehaven and Portlethen in the list of 34 Scottish phone exchanges to receive superfast fibre optic broadband. The 2011 average broadband speed is 6.2Mbps. After completion next year, we should be looking forward to speeds approaching 100Mbps. I'm so excited!

There have been a few false starts, but it's now definite. The week commencing 21st November 2011, will see our local BT phone exchange getting its 21CN (21st Century Network) equipment upgrade.

Lines will be disconnected from the current equipment and re-connected to new equipment. During this time, phone service will be unavailable for 15 minutes or so. Broadband services may be unavailable for a longer time whilst new equipment tests are completed. To minimise disruption, the majority of work will take place during the early hours of the morning.

If you are currently experiencing slow broadband speeds and interruptions to downloads, this is possibly due to work going on at the Stonehaven phone exchange. These problems will last for another 10 days whilst each broadband connections profile goes through a 'rebuild'. The problem affects BT broadband, Eclipse broadband and other broadband providers.

It's been years since I've seen anything like it! Following HP's decision to bail from the tablet market, prices of the HP TouchPad have been slashed by UK and other retailers worldwide... bringing with it website failures worldwide.

Big news! After 8 years working from the computer room and lately the kitchen table, I'm thrilled to say we've built and have moved into our fantastic new office.

It's a pretty exciting time for us, and an important step in the growth of our business. The new space gives the team a more collaborative work environment allowing us to more easily carry out repairs, installations and project work. We look forward to creating many great things here.

We're now on Twitter... making us just about the last technology company to make the jump. Follow us to get the word on good product buys, security alerts and news from Resourceful - instantly.

At 7.05pm Fri 29th Oct, BT suffered a serious incident causing the majority of Scotland, Northern England & Northern Ireland to lose Internet connectivity. BT confirmed the broadband problem at 9pm which affects all lines going through Edinburgh's Broadband Remote Access Servers (BRAS). As at 8am Sat, BT claimed to have restored service to all customers, yet disruption still continues for the majority of broadband providers.

Please beware of a phone scam doing the rounds at present.

Today, a number of people living in Stonehaven have been in touch, having received phone calls from a fast-talking computer technician claiming a virus is on their home computer which needs to be removed.

The route the phonecall takes is roughly as follows :

1. The caller asks whether there is a computer in the house.
2. If a "yes" is received, the caller explains (s)he works for Microsoft, ClickClick, NerdSoft or some other technical sounding company.

BT have notified broadband providers of a localised service impacting failure. Engineers have been despatched to site and BT are working with hardware vendors to investigate the fault.

Dialing codes affected include :

01202 01206 01269 01294 01323 01405 01453 01555 01569 01628 01873 01952
0286632 0286634 13234 01873 01952 0286632 0286634

Resourceful customers in Stonehaven and West Kilbride are potentially affected by the problem.

Update: This BT problem has now been resolved.