Welcome to Coastal Computers & Design, Shoalhaven Heads. I am the only  professional computer support specialist and web designer who lives here and whose business is based here at the ‘Heads. My aim is to provide the best possible service to the village of Shoalhaven Heads primarily but also to provide an onsite service to the surrounding area - including Berry, Kangaroo Valley, Bomaderry, Nowra and most coastal villages to the south and Gerringong, Gerroa, Kiama and Jamberoo in the north.

The safe removal of virus and spyware infections is one of my specialities. I believe in doing all I can to safeguard your personal files by offering a backup facility as part of the disinfection process. Many companies try to avoid this extra work, telling you that it is your responsibility to backup your important data. While this is true, it doesn’t help you if, like most of us, you have put off this task!

I will treat you and your problems with respect and not try to baffle you with ‘geek speak’ or overly technical jargon. I will endeavour to explain your problems and the possible resolutions to them in plain english and work with you to find the most cost-effective solution.

Please browse around this site and if you have any questions either use the chat window to the left  if I am at my desk or send me a message from the contact page. You can also give me a call during business hours only please. Phone numbers are on the contact page.

Based on the South Coast of N.S.W Australia and providing
Computer systems * Notebooks * Networking * Upgrades
Onsite Service & Support * Virus & Spyware removal * Broadband setup

New computers from $695

* Featured article *

Buying a budget computer

Last modified on 2008-11-13 01:40:18 GMT. 2 comments. Top.

by Andy Turner
Coastal Computers & Design

More families these days are deciding to buy a budget end computer to replace an aging system rather than spending more to get a higher spec model. In itself this is a good idea as the lower end models these days are more than capable of performing the majority of tasks expected of a modern PC - with the exception of high end gaming and video editing work.

Unfortunately, the options commonly available are limited at the moment due to the fact that the vast majority of ‘PCs’ - as opposed to Apples - come with one of the Vista versions. In my opinion, I have yet to see a budget PC running Vista Home Basic (which is all these systems can be expected to run) that performs nearly as well as a similar spec system running Windows XP. I have serviced some Vista computers over the past year that run so slowly as to be virtually unusable.  Many customers tell me that they are so sick of waiting for something to happen on their new shiny PC - that promised so much in the showroom - that the whole computing experience is just so frustrating that they don’t know why they bother using it at all. A memory upgrade, a new video card and removing the ’security suites’ and other junk that comes preinstalled on them provides some improvement but on the whole Vista is a major disappointment.

Netbooks are becoming very popular but you won’t see Vista on one of these - it’s one area that manufacturers have managed to get Microsoft to agree to continue providing XP - it was either that or leave the market wide open to Linux to exploit.

Now, hope is on the horizon for PC users in the form of the upcoming ‘Windows 7′ which looks to be a very impressive operating system. Seems that Microsoft has listened to the criticism and finally seen that the speed of Vista on lower spec systems is not satisfactory and the crippling security features just aren’t impressing end users at all.

* Windows 7 Preview running on a netbook *

Unfortunately though, late 2009 or sometime in 2010 is the expected release date of the new system - so what to do until then if you need a new PC but can’t afford a higher end model? Buy a computer with Windows XP! There are still some retailers (like me) that have access to XP and a modern Celeron computer with 2Gb RAM and a decent sized hard drive won’t break the bank and they run beautifully with XP - Home or Professional versions (I prefer the Pro myself but Home is satisfactory for most users).