On our panel of experts this month are: Simon Halberstam, head of e-commerce law at law firm Sprecher Grier Halberstam LLP & Weblaw; Philip Parsons, an adviser for UK online for business in Nottinghamshire; Richard Althorp, managing director of consultancy Sol-Tec; and Lance Spencer, portfolio director of Kingston inbusinesss.

If you have a problem you would like to see answered, email it to online.feedback@theguardian.com, or post it to Online, The Guardian, 119 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3ER.

Mobile costs

Our mobile costs are spiralling out of control. How can we get maximum efficiency at a reasonable cost?

LS: Top tips to cut the cost of company mobile phones:

1) Get all your mobiles from one supplier. Keeping track of your company mobiles can be simplified by using one network provider. This reduces the administrative headache and gives you preferential call rates, instantly reducing your costs.

2) If the mobiles are for work use only, implement an official mobile usage policy, but make sure this is communicated clearly and regularly to your staff. 3) Monitor mobile call patterns.

4) Don't put temptation in the way of your employees. Use call barring so their mobiles cannot be used for calls that are not work-related.

Unexpected attachments

My emails keep going out with unexpected attachments - usually something called winmail.dat. What is this and how can I stop it?

PP: When you use Microsoft Outlook 98 to send email containing attachments through the internet, some recipients using email clients other than Outlook report that the mail message includes an additional file called winmail.dat. The file is usually very small but cannot be opened in the mail message. The winmail.dat file is used to preserve the formatting the sending client includes in the message but is not recognised by the receiving client. In the case of Outlook, the winmail.dat file includes rich text formatting instructions, which are also used when using Microsoft Word as an email editor. To avoid including winmail.dat, use the plain text mail format. To select plain text for all messages, follow these steps: on the tools menu, click "options" and then "mail format". In "send in this message format", click to select plain text.

Domain name dilemma

Someone has registered an internet domain I think could only refer to my company. What can I do?

SH: Without more precise information this is a difficult question. However, I can give you some general information. Unless you have registered a trademark corresponding exactly to the domain name in question, you will probably have difficulties in forcing transfer of ownership of the domain name to you. Having said that, even if you do not own a registered trademark, if you can establish that you have built up goodwill in the name in question, you may be able to force transfer by way of an action based on the concept of "passing off". This is where someone else trades on your goodwill. One of the other important factors will be what domain we are talking about and whom you approach with your complaint.

The most common avenue is by way of arbitration by the registry governing the domain name. If, for example, it is ".com", the body responsible for determining the issue and the relevant rules will almost certainly be different from those that apply to a ".co.uk" or a ".biz".

e-Marketing

I have a small business and have to watch carefully the productivity of any marketing exercise. Direct response advertising and direct mail are too wasteful and expensive; emailshots I can do myself but are only as good as the list one rents, and no one guarantees email list accuracy or individual "relevance". The only real option - eBulletin services - are priced so high that they make emailshots just as expensive as posted direct mail. I thought IT solutions were supposed to reduce business costs and level the cost-competitiveness field between SMEs and big business competitors.

RA: You can create eBulletin services yourself by building an e-community. Make your web work - get customers to visit it. Send emails to your registered customer base with product news, promos and update reminders. Collect information from your customers and use login forms to build the community, setting up a brief newsletter with hyperlinks to relevant information to your site. Make sure information and news are up to date to keep the customer at your website. If you have a good database-driven infrastructure to track and monitor visitors, this will also aid you in building an accurate e-community. New technologies like the internet can greatly widen our communications reach and help those messages get to the right people, which is the basis of good marketing.

Cutting copyright

I have a new website and would like to put some of the press cuttings about my company on it. They have been published, but where do I stand on copyright?

SH: The fact that the press cuttings have already been published and are, hence, in the public domain is largely irrelevant to the question of copyright. Ownership of the copyright in the cuttings will, almost certainly, reside with the authors of the articles or the newspaper that published them. Their reproduction in whole or part on your website will be an infringement of that copyright and will expose you to being sued by the owner. If, on the other hand, the articles clearly indicate that they may be reproduced, which I doubt, there would probably not be a problem. But even then it is possible there would be difficulty, as the newspaper might be authorising reproduction of an article, the copyright in which has been retained by the author. In short, if you want to reproduce the articles without fear of getting into legal difficulties, you should approach the newspaper for permission to do so.

Error numbers?

I keep getting Windows crashes that don't state what's wrong; they just give me an "error number". How do I find out what's happening and do something about it?

PP: It is very difficult to say what may be causing this problem without further information. However, it would be a good idea to check the PC has the latest service packs and hot fixes applied. These can be obtained from Microsoft at windowsupdate.microsoft.com