My interests of computers & new technology has always led me to try and find employment and greater knowledge within these areas. This interest was probably kick-started when I was at school in the 1980's after being given a Commodore 64 computer one Christmas. When I left school after the sixth form, I quickly found employment working for a small family run computer company called "Tendring Business Centre" This company specialised in general computer training and accountancy. I was involved with dealing with customers computer problems and demonstrating new products as well as general shop duties like sending faxes, photocopying and operating the till.

I was fortunate to be able to spend some time learning a little about desktop publishing and Accounts software in this full time job and I also continued to study GCSE's in Law, Accountancy and Computer Studies part time at evening classes to increase this knowledge. Unfortunately employment came to an end after several months which was caused by the economic recession of the country at the time. This job did provide me with however - useful work experience, a good reference and a vital foot in the door for other related careers.

Shortly after this setback I secured another full time job, working in the Clacton-on-Sea branch of the countries largest electrical retailer Dixons Stores Group. The DSG group also owns many other companies including Currys and PC World Superstores and I was often fortunate enough to work in some of these at busy times of the year. Working in a branch retail environment I was responsible for meeting sales targets and having responsibility for the branch administration and with stock deliveries. This gave me much more experience of working with people in a team and getting a little hands on knowledge with the latest technology products.

Working for Dixons full time for nearly three years, I then reduced my hoursto part time which made me flexibleenough to be able to balance this employment against day release at university studying a National Certificate in Computer Studies and a Higher National Diploma in Business Information Technology on a day release basis the University College of Suffolk

When my university courses finished and I was only working part time at Dixons I started working occasional days for another company called TA Computer Consultants. Gaining good experience of networking computers together, upgrading and building computers and also teaching.

Working for TA Computer Consultants often involves working at the customers premises anywhwere in East Anglia region, so my car is vital. With company growth this led to a full time position of employment which started March 1998. The company also specialises in computer networking, databases and web page publishing and this is a keen interest for me.

I have obtained a good working knowledge of computer components and operating systems over many years via learning privately, university and employment. Starting from the basic Commodore 64 and Acorn BBC home computers in the early 1980's to personal computers including 386's, 486's and the current Pentium & Pentium II/III range. My operating systems experience ranges from text based MS-DOS v3 to graphical environments of Microsoft Windows 3.0 through to Windows 98 & ME, plus Windows NT and Small Business Server (SBS).

I have previously carried out the following varied range of computing tasks for clients:

		Perform a processor, memory or motherboard upgrade or building a basic system from all new components
		Adding and testing graphics cards, scanners, sound cards, modems and zip drives etc in an existing computer.
		Adding and configuring additional computers to an existing network using either BNC or RJ45 network cabling.
		Setting up of Microsft Schedule+ files for user diarys an internal email via Microsoft Inbox.
		Adding a modem to a com port and setting up of a Internet connection with dial up networking using TCP/IP protocols.
		Installing a new hard disk to an existing computer and transferring all of the existing customers data to the new drive.
		Replacing parts of a system that are causing the system to behave incorrectly or at slow speeds.
		Installing Microsoft NT SBS from scratch with a SCSI controller including the setting up a disk mirror for reliability
		Install and configure NT Mail software on an NT Server and configure client terminals
		Configure Proxy Server for clients on an NT Network
		Install and evaluate beta software and demonstrate a range of new features to non-computer users
		Design a relational database from scratch and design a range of reports from a given set of data
		Setup a web page from basic informartion using Microsoft Frontpage including animation and upload via FTP software.
		Update a Payroll run for a company using SAGE and print wage slips and tax information
		Design software to be used by the general public in a shop environment for looking up product information
		Remove viruses from an infected computer using antivirus software, and installing security patches.

I have also gained a good experience of using a large range of software applications and program languages including :

		Microsoft Office 95,97 & 2000								Microsoft Publisher
		Microsoft Frontpage & Frontpage Express								NT Mail By Gordano
		Microsoft Internet Explorer & Outlook Express								Microsoft Netmeeting
		Microsoft Project								Microsoft Works
		Microfocus Cobol								Borland Pascal
		Sage Financial Controller								Sage Payroll
		Corel Draw								Paintshop Pro
		Macromedia Authorware Star								Visio
		Micrografx Webtricity								Winzip & Arj compression
		Mcafee VirusScan, F-Prot & AVP Antivirus Packages								ICQ
		Adobe Acrobat & Acrobat Reader								Winamp

I am currently hoping to learn more about Windows NT and I would also like to learn more about the configuration of NT Server and Java and Javascript.

It is easy to see that there is more to a business of just having a computer system running. It is how the company uses the functions of a computer system to maximise stability and growth of the company that also interests me. In my part time studies at the University College Suffolk I have learnt many aspects to this. One of which includes computer acceptance from non users and how this can be overcome by adopting a soft systems methodology approach to software design.

I have also learnt that the information required from a computer system varies from the different levels of the company structure. For example Information at an operational level which might include transactions in a shop would vary from information used by management to develop a long term strategic company advantage from market trends.

I have learnt about different ways that different types of information within management must be presented to gain maximum effectiveness.

I have gained a lot of knowledge from University and have managed to pass all of my exams reasonably easily. I have intended therefor to try to continue to take my education further to complete my degree on a part time basis. Hoping that this will open new doors in the future. You can see full details of my University courses that I have completed at my qualifications page.

I meanwhile intend to gain more hands-on experience of IT by working with other people in the industry as much as possible, as it is often more important to have practical experience than exam history.