Tech Experts Keeps The Network Running For Stewart Road Christian Ministries Center

Stewart Road Christian Ministries Center, originally known as the Monroe Church of God, has been in Monroe since 1940. As the church has grown, it has embraced technology as a way to expand its ministry.

In 1996, the church added on to its  facility at 1199 Stewart Road with a new sanctuary, nursery and offices. The church offers a weekly food closet, counseling services as well as many other ministries.

Tech Experts has worked with Stewart Road CMC to enhance and maintain the Microsoft Windows network that is used to run the business operations of the church.

“All of our accounting and church management records are maintained on our network,” explained Administrative Pastor Dawn Bosworth. “Our chuch service song lyrics are kept on the computer and interact with the slide projectors.”

Pastor Sam Luke ministers to thousands of people weekly in the church and on television, radio and computer broadcasts.

Stewart Road CMC uses a mix of Windows-based computers, as well as a Microsoft Windows 2003 server for file and data storage. A unique application at the church is an combination of hardware and software called “Phone Tree” which allows Pastor Sam Luke to record inspirational messages to the congregation and call congregants on the telephone to deliver the message or worship reminder. Phone Tree runs on the church’s server.

“We minister to thousands of people weekly,” Pastor Dawn continued, “including those who enter our sanctuary on Sundays and Wednesdays, or who watch and listen on television or over the Internet.”
When asked what she liked most about working with the Tech Experts service team, Pastor Dawn said response time and reliability were most important. “The staff at Tech Experts is easy to work with, and very friendly. The service technicians are reliable, and the response time is quick. When an issue is a crisis to me, the team at Tech Experts takes it seriously.”

She concluded: “I could not keep my computer network up and running without your team!”

Your Computer Needs A Spring Cleaning, Too!

Corey Bogedain is a network technician and web developer with Tech Experts.

Now that it is spring time, I thought this would be a good idea to remind everyone of how important it is to clean out your dirty PCs.

Your computer should be cleaned every three to four months, and more if your office environment is very dusty or dirty. Keep in mind, it’s not just for sanitation purposes, either.

The electromagnetic field put off by your computer attracts dirt, dust, debris, animal hair, and lint - just take a look at the back of your PC near the fan vent. Pretty gross, huh?

It’s Not Just Dirty...It’s Dangerous!
The dust clogging those case openings will cause the processor inside your computer to heat up—and heat is the biggest cause of component failure in computers. That dirt and dust can end up shutting down your PC and costing you real money!

So how do you keep your computer clean and free from dust? The best way I’ve found is to use a can of compressed air. You should also use some eye protection like safety goggles or eye glasses along with a dust mask. I’ve found that the dust that settles on computers is often a very fine type of dust and it easily gets into your eyes and nose if you aren’t wearing any protection.

First and foremost, take the computer outside! Blowing the dust off the computer and onto your desk or office carpet really won’t do much long term good.

When blowing the dust out of the ports, it’s best to use short quick bursts. Also, don’t aim the air directly into the port. Blow the dust out at an angle.

Be careful that you don’t hold that plastic straw nozzle too close to any part of the computer - the freezing cold could damage the components. For best results, hold the nozzle about 3 - 6 inches away from the area that you are trying to clean. Sometimes people think using a vacuum cleaner is better than the compressed air, but I don’t recommend it. A lot of vacuum cleaners come with crevice attachments or other brush heads and the problem is that the plastic can cause a large build up of static electricity which can damage delicate electronic components.

Never spray or squirt any type of liquid onto ANY part of your computer. If a spray is needed, spray the liquid onto a cloth and then use that cloth to rub down the component.  

When cleaning the monitor, use a lint-free cloth (like the one you use to clean your eyeglasses). Paper towels, dryer sheets, and other cloths may scratch the monitor. Also, never use Windex or a commercial cleaning product, and never spray anything directly onto the screen. Instead, lightly spray a mixture of rubbing alcohol and water onto your cloth and wipe it down.

We’ll Clean Your  Computer For You!
Want us to do the dirty work? Then just give us a call and ask for our spring computer clean-up service. For just $39 per computer, we’ll clean your system, remove any dust and debris, make sure all of your security updates are installed, and perform an additional 23 essential system checkup steps.

No more grime, germs, or dust bunnies—we’ll get rid of them all as part of our Spring-cleaning special! Just call the office at (734) 457-5000, or e-mail us at info@expertsmi.com, and we’ll make sure your computers shine!

Conficker And Other IT Security Issues Got You Worried? Here Are Some Tips To Keep You Out of Trouble!

Robert Saylors is a senior network technician and hardware specialist with Tech Experts.

If you watch television or read the news on the web, you no doubt heard about the April fool’s virus, also known as the conficker worm. I have been asked by numerous people “What about Conficker?” This worm is designed to have all the compromised computers “phone home” at a certain time and launch a denial of service, or DoS, attack on an unsuspecting website.

A DoS attack is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users. It generally consists of the concerted efforts of a person or persons to prevent an Internet site or service from functioning efficiently or at all, temporarily or indefinitely.

One common method of attack involves saturating the target machine with external communications requests, so that it cannot respond to legitimate traffic, or responds so slowly as to be rendered effectively unavailable. That was the goal of the Conficker worm - to make sites unavailable on the Internet.

So, what should you do to prevent this from happening to you? Here are a few simple rules to follow to protect your system from these worms.

Disable the autorun feature 
Although this is a nice feature to have cds auto start, this risk is not worth the few extra seconds it takes to launch a cd on your own.

Update your protection
Do not just rely on the automatic update features of your virus and malware protection software. It is smart to visit these update centers and make sure you have the latest software, particularly when you’re doing a lot of sensitive work on your computer.

Check your Windows updates
It should go without saying that in addition to your virus definitions, you should regularly check windows updates and do not rely on the automatic update feature. In the case of the Conficker C worm, Microsoft has had this patch available since October of last year. Still, as you heard on the news, thousands of computers still got infected.

Get a second opinion
Have a trained, certified technician  review your computer to determine if you have the latest updates and security patches in place, along with removing  any malware infections you might already have.

Back up your data
I can’t stress enough the importance of maintaining a backup schedule. All your important data needs to be protected. And, you should always take a copy of this critical data off site, so that if a natural disaster strikes, you have an undamaged copy of your data available.
You never know when tragedy will strike, or some brand new virus or worm will attack your system before anti-virus software can be updated.
Contact Tech Experts and we can help you select the perfect backup solution for your office.

We’ve seen our fair share of worms and viruses come and go, and have an arsenal of tools and years of experience to keep your systems in top condition.

If you currently have a server and you have not been taking advantage of the Tech Experts server monitoring and maintenance plans, I would urge you to contact us as soon as possible to discuss the various options for your firm.

Technicians are always available to review your current network configuration and give you expert advice on security.

If you perform these few simple things I’ve listed above, you will be protected from the vast majority of malware and worms that are currently circling the Internet. With diligence in the future, you will be protected from most of the variants of these worms as they are released.

Microsoft Teams With Nasa On World Wide Telescope

Ryan Seymour is a service technician and PC hardware specialist with Tech Experts.

In an effort to catch up with Google, Microsoft has signed an agreement to make planetary images and other data available to the public.  This will all be made possible thanks to the World Wide Telescope.  Also known as WWT, the computer software program allows end users to view high detailed satellite imagery, photography, and interactive 3-D models outer space. 

Microsoft is getting the bulk of its images from The Hubble Space Telescope, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, (MRO) NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, (LRO) as well as ten other earth bound telescopes.

World Wide Telescope is currently offering five main modes.  The modes are sky, earth, planets, panoramas, and solar system.  The planets mode actually allows users to view 3-D models of celestial bodies like our moon, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and four of Jupiter’s larger moons; bringing a virtual observatory directly to your desktop or laptop computers.

Microsoft and NASA will be working toward providing tools for real-time weather visualizations and forecasting.  The space shuttle launch pad, and other facilities at Kennedy Space Center in Florida will be available along with high resolution 3-D maps of the moon, sun, stars, Earth, Mars, and more to come. 
Real time tracking of the International Space Station (ISS) and space shuttles will be available later this year.

Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California will be responsible for the processing and hosting of more than 100 terabytes (TB) of data.  That’s enough to fill over 20,000 DVDs!  

NASA intends to deliver a huge amount of upgrades to the WWT project in the Fall of 2009, as surface data of our solar systems become more and more popular, while Earth bound data is losing its excitement.

World Wide Telescope is a free download available to all users at www.worldwidetelescope.org.
 
The home page provides links to interactive tours that walk you through the software, and show you the ins and outs of navigating your way around the program.
 
There are also video/audio guided tours made by astrophysicists such as Dr. Alyssa Goodman of the Harvard/Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. WWT allows users to create their own tours containing music, voice overs, and much more. 

A web based version is available for those who don’t want to download and install the software on your local system, but the web client version does not have the full functionality of the software, but it sure is a great way to take a test drive across the universe.