Technology Advisor Blog

One of the computer support questions we get asked a lot is "If I have Antivirus software installed on my computer, how did I still get a virus?" 

Its been a few years since notebook sales surpassed desktop sales, but a weekend visit to the local Staples store shows how far this trend has gone:  On display were 15 laptops, 3 netbooks, 1 tablet, and off to the side, on a lower shelf, were 3 desktop PCs. 

Many of our clients have expressed concern after receiving intimidating emails they thought were from the IRS.  Phishing scams seem to come in waves, and the most recent wave we're seeing involves fake messages such as "your federal tax payment has been rejected".  If you look closely at the message, the emails are typically from a random address with a name that doesn't even match the email address. Identity theft is the typical goal of these messages as they try to entice you to go to a web site to enter personal and financial information.

Microsoft has a great gem of a product for small business that's basically "under the radar" - Windows Home Server. 

Every once in a while, we get a panicked call from a small business owner - "Help, my email and website stopped working - we can't get any e-mail and I'm missing important orders!".  After the usual first steps in trouble shooting - such as can they get out to the Internet at all - one of the first things we check is the domain name registration status.  Often what we'll catch is an expired domain name. 

A question we get asked a lot is "What's the best backup solution for my small business?".  The good news and bad news is that there are a lot of choices.  So many choices that it can be overwhelming.  Here are a few considerations to think about:

We are excited to announce that Jim Buccieri has joined the Ekaru team. Jim was previously the Director of Physician Services in the IT Department at Emerson Hospital where he was responsible for providing IT leadership and technical consulting assistance to physician's offices with connectivity to the hospital's technology infrastructure including the electronic medical record system. He contributed to large-scale enterprise migration projects, systems conversions and performance tuning and monitoring of applications/systems and helped set long-range technical direction and capacity plans. Jim has a long term track record in IT and he adds strength to Ekaru's healthcare focus and to our overall technology support services. Welcome Jim!

I waited way too long to upgrade! My new system with Windows 7 and Outlook 2010 is working out great. So much of my time is spent in eMail and it was a bit tough to get used to the "ribbons" in Outlook, but so far so good. I ended up loading my "old" mail as archives so my new inbox would be completely free of clutter. All of my legacy emails are available when I need them, just not in my "inbox". One thing to look out for is that the latest version of Outook places the "pst" file in your Documents folder. This is a good place for it to be (people won't miss backing it up anymore), but if you were used to the old way of doing things where the pst was in some hidden folder, it takes a bit of getting used to.

Every month I send out an e-newsletter to our clients updating them technology tips and strategies for small business. Recently, we posted news on the Microsoft Office 2010 release - whats new, whats the same.... A few minutes later I got the following response from one of our long term customers: "I hate Office 2007 and wish I could go back to 2003!!!! A new version?? NO WAY!!"