How Apple’s iPad Is Changing Business
Thomas Fox is president of Tech Experts, southeast Michigan’s leading small business computer support company. |
In the first 80 days, Apple has sold over three million iPads.
I was one of the people who preordered, and picked mine up the day they were released. You might be thinking this is just the latest trend in gadgets, but hear me out.
I really believe that the iPad and other tablets on the horizon will forever change the way we conduct business. Are you prepared for the change?
The iPad is fun and extremely easy to use. Reports of vision impaired and young children using the tablet have steadily popped up on social media sites ever since the release of the iPad.
What Are People Using It For?
Everything! eBooks, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, note-taking, navigating the web, email and countless other tasks with applications that can be downloaded to the tablet. There are thousands of free applications, and thousands more that sell for just a few dollars.
How does this affect your business?
Connectivity! Three million of your current and potential clients may have this handy, allday battery powered system within their reach and they might use it to research your business. Make sure you can be found, and when you are, capture your audience’s attention.
You can do this by updating your blog, creating captivating Google ads, and creating a social community by responding to tweets and Facebook postings about your company, services and brand.
A ChadWick Martin Bailey study found consumers were up to 67% more likely to recommend or buy products from a company after following it on social networking sites.
What if your company owns an iPad?
Show your consumers that your company is on the cutting edge of today’s technology. Use it to demonstrate your product or show videos about your service. Download apps that make your iPad into a translator or inventory management system. Take notes on it. Update your calendar. The functionalities are endless and quite a deal starting at only $499.
Number One Security Risk For Small Business: Poor Patching
Ryan Seymour is a PC hardware specialist and the Tech Experts Service Manager. |
Symantec, one of the leading antivirus software companies, released their 2009 security review, and according to the report, the largest single threat to small business’ computer security is the failure to apply new security patches as they’re eeleased by the manufacturers.
A “security patch” is simply a software fix to a security problem in a software application.
Once a security vulnerability is discovered, software companies rush to develop a security patch to prevent hackers from using the security breach to access PCs or servers, obtain confidential information, or erase files.
When the fix is released, cyber criminals often look at that as the best time to write a virus or trojan to exploit computer users who haven’t kept their systems up to date. That’s why regular server maintenance is so important.
With the national economy teetering on recession, more and more hackers are trying to take advantage of unsuspecting computer users. Economies of scale often come into play with cyber attacks - a well written trojan or virus can spread like wildfire in just a few hours.
Even if hackers are only successful in compromising a few hundred machines, that’s more than enough to obtain information that’s useful to steal someone’s identity or hold their electronic data hostage.
The real problem - most of the time, you can’t tell you’ve been hacked until it’s too late.
Since the majority of small business owners use their computers for everything from banking to client management, anything a hacker obtains will be useful.
PDF’s Can Be Dangerous
Adobe’s PDF application is the most hacked and exploited software program in use by small businesses. PDF-based security exploits rose to account for 49 percent of online attacks. Coming in second was Internet Explorer, accounting for 18 percent of webbased attacks.
Here’s an interesting fact: The Internet Explorer vulnerability that makes up the majority of the 18% is the Microsoft Internet Explorer ADODB> Stream Object File Installation Weakness that first came to the world’s attention in August 2003. Microsoft released a patch the following July.
Nearly six years later, this Internet Explorer exploit is still being used by hackers, which means an incredible amount of businesses simply aren’t patching their systems on a regular basis.
Regular Maintenance Is A Must
It seems strange to think of your computer this way, but it helps to think of your PC as an automobile. You know that to keep it in top running condition, you have to change the oil, rotate the tires, and flush the radiator once in a while.
Your computers and servers aren’t any different: To maintain optimal running condition, you have to perform regular, scheduled maintenance.
Downtime is expensive. When you consider the cost of lost employee productivity, the expense of the IT services to repair your network, and the amount of time it would take to recover your data by hand, the investment in regular maintenance seems a wise choice.
We perform regular, scheduled maintenance for the majority of our service contract clients - but if you’re not on one of our service plans, we should definitely talk about a comprehensive maintenance and update schedule for your business. If you’re not patching regularly, it’s only a matter of time before your system is compromised.
Web Conferencing Services Let You Collaborate With People Around The World Without Ever Leaving Your Desk
Corey Bogedain is a network technician and web developer with Tech Experts. |
If you have a far flung work force - or clients all over the country - a web conferencing service will save you time and money.
Let’s take a look at a few of the most popular web based conferencing tools.
They’re all the best at what they can do for the price, and all are simple and easy to use.I’ve tested all of them - you can’t go wrong choosing any one of these services.
The interesting thing is, if you’ve ever taken online training, or had a support technician connect up to your computer, you’ve probably used one of these services without even knowing it!
WebEx - $49 month
WebEx is the most well known of the three here. WebEx was created by Cisco, who is known for their high end security solutions.
This application is the best that I have tested. You are able to share screens, files, schedule video conferences in Outlook, and you can even pass the (presenter) title from one person to the next so each participant can focus on the person making the presentation.
WebEx supports multiple video streams, so you can view up to six people in a single meeting. WebEx also has mobile capability so you can join the meeting while using your iPad or even on your smartphone.
GoToMeeting - $49 month
GoToMeeting is focused just on desktop sharing, and does not support video sharing via webcam.
The presenter has several presentation tools available, from the ability to draw on the screen to highlighting text. The presenter can only show his desktop, but has the ability to hand over control to their desktop to any of the guests in the conference.
This gives the guests the ability to highlight something they think is important to the others users in the room.
The best feature is the ability to record the conference and store it for a later use.
Adobe ConnectNow – Free Basic version - enhanced version is $15 month
Adobe ConnectNow is a web based tool with document sharing. You can share your screen, share documents, convert documents to PDF files, and also create workspaces to share documents in.
ConnectNow supports the ability to have a private chat and also leave the chat open to the public.
Like all the other tools Adobe ConnectNow does have the ability to allow others to take over and share audio and video. This tool is the newest out of the three, but runs with the best of them.
These are only a few web conferencing solutions that are available. Each one will install with ease so even the novice user can get this software up and running quickly and easily.
Removing Unused Programs Will Speed Up Your Computer
Will Alston is a PC hardware technician with Tech Experts. |
If you’re wondering how you can make your computer run a little faster, removing old and unused programs might be the best place to start. It’s simple to do, low risk, free, and doesn’t involve much time.
When you have programs on your computer that you don’t use anymore, they are taking up your hard drive space and they could also be running in the background.
This consumes memory and resources. Removing the programs frees up resources and memory, making the PC run faster.
Before you start removing programs from your computer, make sure that you really don’t need them. Double checking everything before you start will prevent you having to reload something you thought you didn’t need.
You don’t want to remove a critical system program, or some other application, and find yourself in a bind.
Uninstalling programs is easy - but you want to make sure and use the system option in Windows to clear them out.
Deleting the programs directly, instead of using the Add/Remove Programs function, can damage your Windows installation and cause a lot of problems.
Windows XP
If you are running Windows XP, click on start, click on control panel, then click on the Add/Remove Programs icon and wait a brief second for the list to be generated.
If you have a large number of programs installed, it might take a few minutes - just be patient.
Now all that you have to do is to click on the program that you no longer need and select Change/Remove and follow through with the removal process.
Windows Vista
Windows Vista users will click on start, Control Panel and make sure that at the top of the window that you have “Classic View” selected.
Double click on to the Programs and Features button (wait a brief second for your list of programs to come up) and select the programs that you do not need anymore and select Uninstall to remove them from your computer.
Remember: Only remove applications that you’re absolutely certain you don’t need.
After you’ve removed all of the programs that you don’t need, it would be best to restart the computer. After the machine is restarted, you should notice an increase in speed. It probably won’t be dramatic - but it should be a marked and noticeable improvement.
If you’re still not satisfied with the speed of your computer, we offer a System Tune-Up service. We’ll go in an clean out any programs you don’t need, and fine-tune Windows to give you the best performance possible.
For a limited time, the system tune up is priced at just $69. Give our office a call at 734-457-5000 to schedule your appointment. Or, email support@expertsmi.com.