runPCrun have worked alongside with GPMD for years, one of our original number left us and joined GPMD. We regularly share knowledge from our respective spheres. We use them for our hosting and email of our systems and our customers. We wouldn't trust anyone else.

Extremely talented individuals make up this company, you can't go wrong.
They produce Content Managed Websites, with Ecommerce, Search Engine Optimisation and perform your Adwords Management.

Here are runPCrun we use a lot of equipment - servers, routers, switches, workstations, if it has a plug then chances are we've opened the box, took a good sniff and installed it.

Since we have a large amount of clients it is good sense for us to standardise on what we use to make our life easier. One of the most important thing to standardise is the firewall. Our choice of firewall needs to have the following features:-

Affordable - it would be hard for us to recommend our SOHO clients to spend £1000's on expensive kit - they'd simply refuse. Also, we have seen firewalls that come with features locked unless you pay extra license fees. One firewall we replaced for a new client actually only had room for 3 port forwarding rules!

Flexible - Every client is different. Some clients have multiple internal machines on non standard RDP ports, some have FTP servers with strict IP lists. Once client wanted to block port 25 from all machines except one. The firewall we choose can do all of these and if not, chances are somebody has written an open source module that can be installed.

Easy to Manage - We have seen some firewalls that can require you to go on a course just to add a simple port forwarding rule. Of course, you do need to know what you're doing when working on any firewall but a easy to understand user-interface goes a long way to help. Our firewall has a simple GUI and if you want to get your hands dirty, a full command line interface.

Stable - You need a firewall that measures it's uptime in months and years not hours and minutes. Our choice has been running in some installations for over 5 years without a single problem. Now that is staying power.

The firewall of our choice is IPCOP  It's free and it's fantastic!!

We use old P3 based Dell's but for our clients we like to use small mini-ITX based units for increased reliability. These cost approx. £300 + VAT which for our clients is reasonable. We have lost track of the number of times we have taken on a new client and found a complex, over specced firewall in place. Firebrick, Watchguard all good products but a nightmare to manage so they quickly find a new life on ebay or we simply chuck them.

We at runPCrun have always been objective about the hardware and software we recommend to customers. We simply pick the best products for quality, value for money and Total Cost of Ownership - and this is why our customers love us. Bringing this philosophy to our website is a natural progression to us, but unless you - the reader - are familiar with us or the website then how do you know we aren't just saying these things to line our own pockets?

Quite simply, you don't. However we provide this information below to allow you to make an informed judgement.

We are fans of the MoneySavingExpert website, and Martin Lewis's method of journalistic research and writing is very popular in the UK. To us it seems the correct way of running a website honestly, while still allowing some money to be made by us doing what we do best in an open fashion - just as we have done in our offline dealings with our existing customers.

We find the best services and products and we recommend them, then afterward we may become resellers, or attempt to get referral revenue via links to the relevant service. But not the other way around. If there is a link to a service or product that we have a vested interest in - in the form of a referral (or as a reseller), we will declare it with a big * (asterisk), and note it as such at the bottom of the page with a link to this page. _{(please note there may be the odd old article that is missing this, if you notice one please don't hesitate to let me know in the comment section of the relevant page)}

So articles are written from a "what is the truth as we see it?" standpoint, this doesn't compromise our values, and we simply do what we would have done anyway in recommending a service or product. If you wish - you can even ignore the link and Google it yourself and go directly there. We do simply this so you know the situation and can avoid it if you wish, we aren't attempting to just get clicks.

Google adverts and adwords are of course the exception to this (at the moment), but we are attempting to keeping this to a minimum. These people have paid to have adverts on this website via Google. But everybody knows what these adverts are and what they look like - and of course you are you free to ignore (or block them) as you see fit. They simply show adverts using the context of the information written on the page.

Lastly, as an added incentive to register - if someone signs up to the website and comments (rather than remaining anonymous) then we will assign their account as "Ad-free" and these few Google adverts will be removed forever anyway.

This website is aimed at consumers and is a big hit in the UK for people wanting to save money.

This section of the website is extremely useful for businesses as well as residential as it gives the cheapest dialler numbers for dialing either Internationally or UK numbers - whether geographic numbers or not.

A lot of these services are actually cheaper than Skype and a lot of other VoIP services, so you can save lots of money when used regularly. If your telephone is programmable (or you use a mobile) it's even easier to save.

From what I gather from some of my customers, making choices about what CCTV system you want to install to protect your premises and the after-service you expect to receive can be quite a minefield.

Now having been part of the IT side of installing CCTV in various of my customers locations (installing the CCTV software, configuring web interfaces for use internally and externally etc) I've found a couple of names keep cropping up and recommendations for their use.

I've disguised the names of the customers for their protection. Please note that the words in bold are quoted directly from my customers (with their permission) and are in no way affiliated to runPCrun. The links are direct links to their website and runPCrun gains nothing from these recommendations and they are not affiliated to us in any way, they are for information only.
As always it's always a good idea to get personal advice and recommendations from local people you trust and that have had experience with the kind of products or services you are interested in, and don't just trust some random website you're reading.

Update: Please note the new OSIM UK store, run by Francis Leow of FK Marketing (Company Registration No. 05697926) can be found at http://www.osim.com/UK/ and is not related to this store at Bluewater or the company "Indigo Retail Ltd" (Company Registration No. 04254170 - formerly OSIM (UK) Ltd) - which this article concerns.
_______________________________________________________________________

I walked into an OSIM UK store in Bluewater on 4th June 2006.(their website - www.osim-health.co.uk went down shortly before this article was written) I'd saved up long and hard to buy one of their OSIM iSymphonic Massage chairs. I fell in love with these chairs in Singapore 5 years ago and I've been saving up for one over the last year to get one. This chair is -in my opinion- the best massage chair available. It measures you then massages your neck, back and legs and simply turns you into a floppy mess 15 minutes later!