Here are a selection of products and services that Alpes Info recommends.

Avast Antivirus

This is, in my opinion, the best antivirus to use for normal small office and home office set ups. You just have to install it and let it get on with its work, there are no settings that you need to make at all. It works straight out of the box. For business use you are legally obliged to buy a copy but it is not expensive and worth every penny. You can get it here www.avast.com.

Windows Defender

Windows Defender protects your computer from malware and spyware. This is free from Microsoft and you should use it in addition to Avast. You can get it from microsoft.com.

Power Surge Protection

You should protect all of your important electrical equipment from the effects of power surges. Particularly in the French alps where electrical storms are common and do damage equipment. For your computers you should also have some battery backup so that they don't get turned off abruptly when there is a power cut, as this can damage them. I highly recommend this product - MGE Protection Center - to protect your computers. Four of the sockets are battery backup and the other four are just surge protection.

For your other electrical equipment, adsl boxes, printers, audio and visual equipment I recommend that you use a 6 socket surgemaster or an 8 socket surgemaster.

Telephones

The Seimens Gigaset range are very good, and in general are interoperable, and have great features like door intercom integration. In particular the Gigaset E490 is robust and durable

ADSL Modem Router

The Netgear DG834G is the most reliable and best option for connecting to your ADSL line here in France

Printers

If you want a good, semi professional, multifunction printer for small office use then the Brother MFC-8890DW is ideal. For lower usage the Canon Pixma MP640 is a good choice. For fast, efficient, black and white laser printing then the Brother HL-2140 is the machine for you.

Backup and Data

A lot of people are currently putting their data onto external USB hard drives thinking that it is safely backed up. These USB drives can fail and I know of a few instances where people have lost all their digital photos, ever taken. There is a better type of external USB hard drive available that has two disks inside that mirror each other, so when one fails you don't lose all of your data. The Western Digital My Book Studio Edition II hard disk is a good choice, from a reliable manufacturer. For home office and small business setup the Western Digital WD ShareSpace does the same thing but is available over the network so a number of users can backup to it at the same time.

For a standard 1Tb USB hard drive the Western Digital Elements is a good choice

Audio and Video

To watch media from your computer or the internet on your TV or via your projector the Popcorn hour is the device to have. If you equip it with a decent LG Blue-ray drive then it will also serve as your DVD and Blue-ray player.

ASP Web Hosting

AlpesInfo.com have their own Apache web server based in London for hosting sites built by AlpesInfo.com. However if you have a site that runs on ASP and are looking for a good UK based host then we recommend Storm Internet