Technology Tips and Tricks

Dave's Corner Column - July 2010

SuperUser Account — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 08:00:00 GMT

Summer is here and the economy is picking up. While I cannot claim to be an economic Nostradamus, I will share my anecdotal feeling that business owners are less frightened and business is picking up for a number of them. We are seeing companies break their holding patterns and are actually hiring. I am pleased to say that we are one of those companies, having added Shane Heltzel, a new Network Engineer to our staff to support our Managed Services clients.

This addition is a direct result of our refocusing our efforts to shift the IT support burden from our clients to ourselves, which has allowed our clients to refocus on their business and not worry about their systems.

In this issue, you will find some great information on the cost of downtime (and how to avoid it), as well as a review of Office 2010, and my first review of the Apple iPad, and its suitability in the corporate world.

As always, I am available for any IT questions that you may have.

Have a great summer! Δ

To Pad, or Not to Pad?

SuperUser Account — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 08:00:00 GMT

I promised in the last issue to review the Apple iPad. I am not an Apple "fanboy" who waits with baited breath for the latest Apple contraption, so when I heard that the iPad was coming out, my reaction was one of ambivalence. My undoing was walking into the Apple store to kill some time while my wife shopped. Within minutes, I saw the potential of the device (more than just posting on FaceBook—an activity that I do not have any time for).

I will skip the details of the product in particular, as they can be found on the Apple website easily enough. What intrigued me about the device was its size, long battery life, and the potential for custom business applications that could provide bottom line business benefits at a reasonable cost and shallow learning curve. In particular, I was interested in finding out if the iPad could replace a traditional laptop while delivering additional value not found in current laptops. Faithful readers will remember that I gave gentle thumbs down to a 10 inch netbook as a laptop replacement some time ago, so the iPad would need to bring a lot to the table for me to be impressed with it.

The biggest drawbacks that I thought might be an issue was the lack of a keyboard and the inability to run traditional Microsoft Office applications. The keyboard issue was solved by the excellent integration of a virtual keyboard - that is, one that shows up on the touch screen whenever you need to type, and the optional traditional keyboard that doubles as a charging docking station that is available from Apple. I can report that with a couple of hours practice, you can touch type on the onscreen keyboard pretty well - I give it an 8.5 out of 10, which is excellent, and the best implementation of a nontraditional keyboard that I have found to date.

The lack of common Microsoft desktop applications is solved in two novel ways. First is the most powerful - the ability to run complete Microsoft Terminal Server Remote Desktop sessions from the iPad. This functionality is a 10 out of 10. I was concerned I would not be able to run some legacy and other business applications (MS Access and QuickBooks for example), but being able to run Terminal Services client eliminates that problem beautifully.

The other solution (although an imperfect one) is some of the MS Office-like applications that are available from the Apple App Store. Right now, I am writing this article using an App called Quickoffice Connect that allows me to create and edit Word and Excel spreadsheet documents in MS Office 2007 format. Not only does this application work well, it also helps to bridge a gap that Apple created when they created the iPad.

Natively, the iPad cannot see other devices on the network, so saving files to other network locations cannot be done. Left uncorrected, this is a big show stopper when considering the iPad for corporate use. Quickoffice Connect allows the iPad to be seen on the network as a file share, as well as has seamless integration with a number of cloud-based file storage solutions including Google Docs and one that I had heard of and never had the time to try, DropBox. These "cloud" based solutions allow you to create documents and files using whatever systems you want and then quickly and easily store them "in the cloud" where they can be retrieved and edited from any system that has access to the Internet. This is the ideal solution for me. I can write this review on the iPad, save it to DropBox, and then edit it later from my home or work computer if I want to.

The final checkbox on my list of qualifications is custom applications that are both easy to use and deliver lots of business value. But I will leave that to a follow-up article. I have a secret project my developers are working on that will make me and several thousand computer users very happy if it works the way we want it to. Stay tuned and I will let you know how it turns out.

Is the iPad perfect? No. Is it going to change the way that we collect, interact, and display data? Yes. Will other companies scramble to keep up with it? Absolutely.

If you would like to see how the iPad might be able to help your business, or just want to talk about your business challenges, give me a call at 503-241-3499 and I will be happy to chat. Δ

Dave's Corner Column - June 2010

SuperUser Account — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 08:00:00 GMT

I have said this before, I will say it again —we are in the midst of a computing revolution right now. For those who have been in the IT space, or have been responsible for IT for their companies, things have been done the same way for years. PCs were PCs, servers were like big PCs but more expensive, and notebook computers just changed size and price over time.

Now comes technology like virtualization, that allows you to run multiple servers on one box, failover systems that can restore a crashed server in minutes instead of hours or days, and then, there is the iPad.

I am not an Apple “fanboy” by a long shot. I do not have an iPhone, but I do own a Mac notebook and an iPod. When I heard about the iPad, I thought that it was a beefed-up Amazon Kindle, or a bigger iPhone, but I was wrong—it is much more than that.

In this issue, we have an intro article on the iPad, and I have made the supreme sacrifice of purchasing one for R&D purposes to see how well the iPad can work in a business environment. After playing with one at the Apple store, my mind reeled with the possibilities of how this could change the way that people compute in the medical, manufacturing, legal, and other fields.

Keep an eye out for next month’s issue for a full report. Δ

Dave's Corner Column - April 2010

SuperUser Account — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 08:00:00 GMT

Windows Home Server—What good is it?

When I first heard of Windows Home Server, I thought that it would be just another network appliance with limited appeal to business. Being inquisitive, I decided to install it at home and see what value it might have to consumers. I assumed (wrongly it turns out) that it would not have any business value at all.

Have a look at the article that I wrote on page 2 that outlines the good and the bad of Windows Home Server, and some surprising ways that I see it working in businesses, both large and small.

Speaking about learning things, join us for our upcoming Lunch and Learn. The topic is “Cloud Computing— What you don’t know will hurt you, and the 7 ways to make it work for you today.” This workshop will be held at the University Club of Portland downtown and is co-hosted with Comcast Business Solutions.

Businesses are already using cloud computing in some surprising ways. If you want to stay ahead of the curve and cut costs, this is a must-attend event.

Register today on our website or call Cathy at 503-241-3499 to reserve your place. This event is free and is sure to sell out. See you there! Δ

Dave's Corner Column - February 2010

SuperUser Account — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 08:00:00 GMT

Are your employees stealing from you?

Kind of an uncomfortable question, isn’t it? In light of the current economy, our clients are interested in saving money and being as efficient as they can. From an IT perspective, that means making sure that employees are using their IT resources for work rather than play. Each business has standards on what is acceptable use of network resources, but many do not have any way of auditing those policies to make sure that their employees are not spending too much of their day on FaceBook, eBay, or other time-sucking websites that may or may not be a good use of their time.

Have a look at the article that I wrote on Page 2 and after that, if you would like to have a FREE resource audit to see how your hard-earned dollars are being spent by your employees, give me a call at 503-241-3499 and I will get you some visibility into what is going on both when you are in the office and not. The results are guaranteed to either make you happy or shock you. Δ

Questions? Give me a call!

Dave's Corner Column - January 2010

SuperUser Account — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 08:00:00 GMT

Clients large and small have been telling me that “this is the year of doing more with less.” Well, the timing is right for just that in the IT space and we are a living example of it.

This month completes the server consolidation project in our office. Using the miracle of virtualization, we have dropped our power-hungry, heat generating server count from 18 to 9 without losing any functionality. Less servers means that our utility bill will go down, the HVAC will not have to work so hard, and we have given a big boost to our disaster recovery and business continuation strategy.

For those not familiar with virtualization, it is the ability to run more than one server operating system on a single piece of hardware. It eliminates the old ratio of 1 OS =1 physical server, and makes it anywhere from 1:2 to 1:4 or more.

The disaster recovery benefit comes from being able to make lightning-fast backups of virtual images, and deploy them (literally drag and drop) on whatever hardware we want without having to reload from scratch and restore.

If you are interested in knowing more about server virtualization and doing more with less in 2010, give me a call at 503-241-3499 and I will be happy to stop by and see if we can save your company money on IT this year.

Thanks for reading!

DJ Δ

Dave's Corner Column - December 2009

SuperUser Account — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 08:00:00 GMT

(Re)solution for 2010

2010 is soon upon us and I want to wish all of our readers the very best in the New Year. As I meet with business owners and principals I keep hearing the same sentiment – that things are tough in the business world, especially for Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs). What strikes me most is that the margin for error for SMBs is always smaller than for our larger clients. It goes without saying that larger clients can weather unfortunate circumstances better than smaller ones, and right now, every penny saved or generated is more valuable than it was before.

With this in mind, we are offering our readers a one time, no-charge backup audit for their network servers.

If you are not 100% certain (and preferably have it in writing) that you would be able to get your servers back up and running quickly, with all of your data intact, call us at 503-241-3499 and ask for the audit. We will come out and review how you are backing up, review your backup logs, and perform a test restore. You will get a health report that will tell you how long it would take to recover from a computer disaster, and share with you what other clients are doing to reduce or eliminate their downtime window.

Make no mistake, computer downtime can and does cause businesses to go out of business even in the best of times, so don’t roll the dice on this—give us a call before December 24th and we will get you scheduled. Please share this offer with anyone who you think would benefit.

Best wishes to all of our readers in 2010...

Dave's Corner Column - October 2009

SuperUser Account — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 08:00:00 GMT

Free Hardware!
Sounds too good to be true, doesn't it? One of our clients asked me what I thought the next 5 years would bring to corporate computing. My response was just that—free hardware. I predict that the major PC manufacturers will be giving servers and desktop systems to businesses who contract with them for value-added services (remote support, etc.) for free as long as they continue to consume and pay for those services.

We are leading the charge in that direction thanks to a new licensing program from Microsoft. Now, we are able to pay for our client’s licensing fees on a month to month basis for only the applications that they are using. This program allows clients to adopt current technology today, without a large out of pocket capital expense, and to sweeten the deal, we are providing technology refreshes of all new equipment at no additional cost to clients who participate in this program.

This means that for a fixed monthly cost, our clients get the latest Microsoft technology, automatic upgrades, and new hardware as needed, with all of their costs coming from operating expense rather than capital expense.

Welcome to the future. Want to know more? Give me a call at 503-241-3499 and we can see if this is a fit for your business.

Dave's Corner Column - November 2009

SuperUser Account — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 08:00:00 GMT

The first step in solving a problem is admitting that you have one – at least that is what I have heard.

I admit that I am addicted, and have an unnatural obsession with notebook computers. This “problem” has been turned up a notch in the past year with the incredibly low prices for notebooks, and the advent of the “NetBook.”

In this issue, I write about my experiences with the latest in notebook and NetBook technology, the good, the bad, and why one recent acquisition is being donated to charity.

Additionally, you will find an article on always-on connectivity. I took it upon myself to explore the offering of Clear Wireless to see what the world would be like not having to always be on the look-out for a free WiFi hotspot.

Last but not least, keep an eye out for two New Year’s promotions that we have for our readers. One of my personal goals is to get our data protection and business continuation solution into the hands of as many small and medium business as we can by the 1st of the year. My other goal is to help clients and prospects start the New Year as securely as possible, so I have come up with a program where I will pay you if you pass a Network Security audit before the end of the year.

Thanks, as always, for reading. ∆