TechTidBit - Tips and advice for small business computing - Tech Experts™ - Monroe Michigan

Brought to you by Tech Experts™

Removing Unused Programs Will Speed Up Your Computer

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.

Reality Check: Tape Backup Units Are Dangerous!

Thomas Fox is president of Tech Experts, southeast Michigan’s leading small business computer support company.

Tape backup units are dangerous. We’ve seen far too many business owners put blind faith in their tape backup, only to discover the tapes were never changed by their staff or the drive failed months (or years) ago and no one noticed.

Frankly, tape backups are garbage, too. The technology is 50 years old. The process is nearly all manual and subject to human error. The drives’ innumerable moving parts make it prone to malfunction. And, the media – the tapes themselves – are fragile and unreliable.

So here’s the question: If you don’t store your music on a cassette tape any more, why are you trusting your invaluable business data to one?

The tornados that struck our community earlier this month really have me thinking about backup and disaster recovery solutions.

Having a data backup merely means that you have a copy of your company’s data stored somewhere; it doesn’t mean you have a way to instantly restore your network back to normal.

Tape Backup Risks
The principle behind tape backup is simple, and everyone understands it. When you backup your data, you’re making a copy of it onto removable media (most times, a tape) and putting the tape somewhere safe.

But, there are risks with tape backup. What if your staff doesn’t change the tape? Who is monitoring the backup software to make sure your backup runs successfully each night? How often do you do a test restore to make sure the data on the tapes is actually usable?

In general, before you can use the backup you have stored on tape, you first need to repair or replace your server, reload the operating system, reload your programs, and add in all of your users. This is several days of (expensive) work and (expensive) downtime.

Disaster Recovery
The goal of any disaster recovery solution is to mitigate the risks of the old tape backup solution, and ensure the continuity of your operations after some sort of disaster: Fire, flood, tornado, etc. Our Experts Total Backup solution eliminates human errors (forgetting to change tapes) by backing up automatically to a network based storage system. The backups are completed in real time, as your server runs, without interrupting your work.

We take “snapshots” every 15 minutes of any data that’s changed on your system, and then assemble those snapshots into a comprehensive image of your server that resides on the backup device.

Getting The Data Offsite
The next step in mitigating disaster risks is ensuring your data is stored offsite. Our backup solution encrypts your data and uses the Internet to send it to a secure data facility on the east coast. That data center’s contents are replicated in a data center in the central United States. The net effect: Your data is stored in three locations, automatically.

Notice I said earlier we take “snapshots” of your data to create an image of your server. This is an important distinction between a disaster recovery solution, and a tape backup. The image backup solution in essence takes a photocopy of your server – backing up the operating system, your programs, the data, user settings, and so on.

If you lose a single file (for example, someone deletes a spreadsheet you use every day), we can restore that file in a matter of minutes. If an entire folder is deleted or corrupted, its very simple to recover your files.

Making The Image Live
The real beauty of the image-based backup system is in its ability to “virtualize” your server. If your server failed for some reason – bad hard drives, failed motherboard, fried power supply – our technicians can use the Experts Total Backup device to run the last image.

This makes the backup device appear to your network and users as your server. It is an exact copy in every way, current as of the last snapshot. In a hardwarefailure scenario, we can have your business back up and running in a few hours.

If Disaster Strikes
Since your data images are stored in two secure, off-site data facilities, your data is always safe. If your office, server, and the backup device are all destroyed – again, by fire, flood, tornado or any other myriad of disasters – we have the image that is stored at the data center copied to a new backup device, and sent to us overnight. Your business is back up and running – even with a complete loss of equipment and onsite data storage – in 24 to 48 hours.

The entire solution is monitored and managed – you’ll never have to worry about whether or not a backup completed. If there are any issues with the backup or the backup unit, we’re automatically notified, and a ticket is generated for our technicians to review.

When you consider the risks and costs of data loss and downtime, a complete backup and disaster recovery solution becomes very affordable very quickly. Please give me a call if I can answer any questions, or if you’d like a demo of the Experts Total Backup solution.

Choosing An Email Marketing Service Provider

Once your business has decided to invest in online marketing, the first service you’ll be considering is probably an email marketing service provider (ESP).

Basically, an ESP is a hosting company that runs email marketing services on their servers for you to use. The servers and Internet connections are optimized to send email. You use a web interface to compile and send your email to the ESP.

Then, the ESP’s servers and Internet connections do the hard work. If you tried to send bulk emails through your regular Internet provider, your campaign could be blocked, as most regular Internet providers prohibit bulk mailings.

Good reporting helps you measure the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns, and your ESP should also provide very detailed reports. You should even be able to see which of your subscribersopened your email and clicked on your links.

An ESP will also automatically include an unsubscribe link in every email sent through their service – and automatically remove these addresses from your lists – to make sure you comply with federal SPAM laws.

What should you look for in an ESP to make sure you choose the right one? Here are some criteria to consider:

IP Addressing
The IP address from which an email is sent is like a phone number – it tells the world where the email came from.

Just like you’d not want to share a phone number with a large group of strangers, you do not want to share an IP address with other customers at your ESP.

If your ESP uses shared IP addresses, too many spam complaints against another customer could get your shared IP address blacklisted by a major ISP. This would prevent your emails from being delivered, and it can take time for your ESP to get the IP off the blacklist.

Heavy Duty Systems
Make sure your ESP has multiple, high-speed connections to the Internet through more than one source, and that they have redundant hardware and servers.

This ensures reliability if one ofthe Internet connections fails or there is a hardware failure. This is important because the ESP’s click-tracking tools require that the links go to the ESP first, and then it is redirected to your website (that’s how it can track the click).

There would be nothing worse than sending an email to your prospects and customers and having the ESPs servers go down. The people reading your emails won’t be able to click through!

Support and Training
Your ESP should offer both online and phone customer support and training.

Good reporting
The ESP should offer a variety of user-friendly reports: deliverability success, open-rates, and click-through rates.

CAN SPAM compliance
Your ESP should require customers to comply with the CAN SPAM Act and make it very easy to do so. The last thing you want isa fine from the federal government for not complying with the law.

Free trial
Most ESPs offer a free trial. Do a test drive to see if the service meets your needs.

Tech Experts uses iContact for all of our outbound email marketing. The company is reliable, and the services are priced very
inexpensively. For a free trial, browse to http://www.icontact.com/?cobrand=310189.

What Is The CAN-SPAM Act?

The CAN-SPAM Act is a law that sets rules for commercial email, gives recipients the right to have you stop emailing them, and spells out tough penalties for violations.

Despite its name, the CAN-SPAM Act doesn’t apply just to bulk email. It covers all commercial messages. The law makes no exception for business-to-business email. That means all email – for example, a message to former customers announcing a new product line – must comply with the law.

Each separate email in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act is subject to penalties of up to $16,000, so non-compliance can be  costly. But following the law isn’t complicated. Here’s a rundown of CAN-SPAM’s main requirements:

Don’t use false or misleading header information. Your “From,” “To,” “Reply-To,” must be accurate and identify the person or business who initiated the message.

Don’t use deceptive subject lines. The subject line must accurately reflect the content of the message and identify the message as an ad.

Tell recipients where you’re located. Your message must include your valid physical postal address.

Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future email from you. Your message must include a clear and conspicuous explanation of how the  recipient can opt out of getting email from you in the future.

Honor opt-out requests promptly. Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30  days after you send your message.

What is a Trojan Virus and How Does It Affect You?

We have all experienced the unfortunate virus infection on our computer; it’s not fun and most times it causes down time on the computer, cost to have it  fixed, loss of data, and possible identity theft.

A trojan horse or trojan is a program that presents itself as one  thing (anti-virus or a game) butactually works in the background to gain unauthorized access to information in a computer.

A trojan virus can steal all sorts of information on your computer such as credit card information, passwords, bank information and then sends the information to the virus creators who can use this information for malicious gains and identity theft.

When you are infected with a trojan infection you will also notice a substantial difference in the speed of your computer and you may even experience several pop-ups related to adult content, casinos, etc.

Don’t click on any of those pop-ups as those will only make the infection harder to remove.

The trojan infection can spread from one PC to another very quickly from e-mails and attachments sent from the infected computer.

It can even corrupt data on a hard drive which will lead to system crashes and deletions of computer files.

Trojan Win32
One of the most dangerous of all trojans is the Trojan.Win32, which is also referred to as the Win32 Trojan. This dangerous infection masquerades on your computer asa legal program, hides from the user and allows remote third parties to take partial or full control of your computer and can record keystrokes.

It can also alter the security settings of your computer to allow more malware to be delivered and installed onto the computer.

How Does it Get Into My Computer?
We have clients ask all the time, “How did my computer get infected?” Most times these infections come from freeware applications that they downloaded, free online games that were downloaded, anti-virus not being updated, firewall settings, computer security settings set too lenient, or from not performing regular updates on the operating system.

The trojan infection wraps itself inside legitimate software such as games, videos, virus and spyware programs, or any commonly downloaded file. In the end, the user ends up with a malicious piece of software that does something entirely different than what it was supposed to do.

Now that you have a general idea of what a trojan is and the most common ways that they get into your computer, what do you do if you are infected?

The first thing that you should do once you notice the infection is to shut down the computer and do not use it for anything.

If you have never dealt with virus removals before then you’ll probably want to work with a professional IT company to do the virus removal, since if not done correctly, the removal process can cause more damage than the trojan.

If you do need to get on the computer to pull some files off, disconnect it from the Internet. That way, no personal information can be sent out from thecomputer such as your credit card or banking information.

Then, you’ll want to work with your IT provider to have a virus clean-up done on the computer. The goal is to get you back online and using your computer safely.

At Technology Experts, we work with clients on virus infections on a day to day basis. Our technicians have several tools and processes to remove virus infections without damaging your system or data.

Should Your Company Consider Telecommuting To Trim Costs?

Every small business is looking for ways to cut costs. With advances in technology, telecommuting is another option to save. According to a report from the human resources association, WorldatWork, 17.2 million U.S. employees telecommuted at least one day a month in 2009.

That’s slightly more than 10 percent of the U.S. workforce and an increase of almost 40 percent from 2006.” Workers are speaking out. What they’re saying is that they want to telecommute. Should your office listen?

Here are some issues to consider before implementing a telecommuting policy in your workplace.

Productivity: Studies have found that telecommuting increases overall employee productivity by 10 to 45%.

Here’s what a few companies are doing:American Express telecommuters handled 26% more calls and produced 43% more business than their office-based counterparts.

Cisco saved over $277 million in productivity in one year by letting employees work from home using the company’s own virtual office technology. In addition, employees garnered fuel cost savings exceeding $10 million per year.

Real Estate/Office Cost: Roughly 25% of IBM employees work from home worldwide. IBM estimates that they save nearly $700 million in real estate costs as a direct result.

Relocation Costs: Don’t pay the moving guys. Telecommuting lets you move the employee’s work, instead of the employee’s life.

Work/Life Balance and Morale:  According to the Telework America National Telework Survey, “72% of employers say telework has a high impact on employee morale and retention.”

Today’s employees work to live, not live to work. Allowing them to balance their work and home lives heightens morale and ends a clear message that you appreciate them.

The bottom line? Telecommuting may or may not be for your company. You don’t have to allow your employees to telecommute, but you may be missing out on many benefits if you don’t.

Everyone owns a laptop or smart phone, and Internet access is everywhere. By allowing employees to telecommute, employers can cut expenses, increase productivity and raise company morale.

Why not try telecommuting 1 or 2 days a week?

How Does Google’s Personal Search Affect Your Business?

Thomas Fox is president of Tech Experts, southeast Michigan’s leading small business computer support company.

Consider this statement: “On Friday afternoon, Google made the biggest change that has ever happened in search engines, and the world largely yawned.” That quote is from a December 7, 2009, post on Search Engine Land, a website that covers Google, Bing and the other Internet search engines.

Don’t worry if you didn’t read the post. Since it was early December when Google announced that it would start personalizing all search results, we were getting ready for the holidays.

It isn’t clear at first glance just how significant this change will be. A closer look, though, reveals nothing short of a revolution in the making.

Here is what Google did, according to Google: “Today we’re helping people get better search results by extending Personalized Search to signed-out users worldwide, and in more than forty languages. Now when you search using Google, we will be able to better provide you with the most relevant results possible.”

A real world example: I do a lot of searches for recipes, and often click on results from epicurious.com. Knowing this, Google might rank epicurious.com higher on the results page the next time I look for recipes.

Other times, when I’m looking for news about the University of Michigan’s football team, I search for “Michigan wolverines.”

Because I frequently click on http://www.mgoblue.com/, Google might show me this result first, instead of search results about the animal.

Google is able to do this because they are now cataloging all of your searches for over 180 days. It then uses your search history to customize your results.

If you’re not signed in to your Google account, a cookie on your browser keeps a record of your queries.

Sounds pretty innocuous, doesn’t it? Better search results? Tailored to exactly what I need? I like this change! Others, however, might squirm at the Orwellian aspect of an omniscient Google knowing exactly what you want. Whether the change is good or bad is debatable, but it’s certainly going to be big.

Until now, search engines have largely delivered the same results to everyone. Two different people could search for Barack Obama and get back the same set of results.

The days of “normal” search results that everyone sees are now over. Personalized results are the “new normal,” and the change is going to shift the search world and society in general in unpredictable ways.

How might this change shift the world? Here are a few scenarios:

Narrowing your Internet experience
This change could curtail what we’ll call “search-engine serendipity.” Search-engine serendipity happens when you search Google with a preconceived notion of what you’ll find, but instead you end up exploring new ideas and virgin territory. Personalized results may repeatedly channel you through the same grooves, limiting your exposure to things outside your experience.

Confirm your personal biases
Search Engine Land’s Dan Sullivan picks up on this possibility in his post: “Is a search for Michelle Obama showing a racist image? Maybe for one person, but not for another.”

For the xenophobic Googler, every search may reinforce his xenophobic worldview because personalization filters sites that don’t jibe with his tastes. Another example: Once Google has you pegged as a bleeding heart liberal, it may serve up Huffington Post for every query.

Polarize our political system
You can see where we’re going with this. If personalized results reinforce our beliefs, we’ll soon have Google red and Google blue. The folks in Mountain View have tried to comfort people by saying that it wants “diversity of results.” But that poses another troubling question: Who will define diversity? Google?

It could reduce the visibility of your website
Since no one but Google knows how its personalization algorithm works, it’s hard to know how far-reaching the change will be. But it’s plausible that a business’ website would no longer rank for certain keywords among certain prospects. If, for example, a person went on an Amazon.com book-buying spree, Google might take note and start displaying Amazon.com for a majority of product-related queries, which is great … if you’re Amazon.com.

It could skew your SEO efforts
Since there is no longer a ‘normal’ set of results, it becomes more difficult to optimize your website. There isn’t one bull’s eye to aim for anymore: there are millions of them and they’re moving all the time as Google refreshes its 180-day cache of your search terms.

Personalized Search for Everyone

Google’s Personalized Results: The “New Normal” That Deserves Extraordinary Attention


http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/personalized-search-for-everyone.html

Windows 7: A Pain-Free Upgrade

Most small business owners feel software upgrades are about as fun as having a tooth pulled: Not really that much fun at all. But an upgrade to Windows 7 can actually be pain-free. Here’s why:

XP mode
Windows Vista had plenty of compatibility issues. That’s not the case with Windows 7, due to a new feature called XP compatibility Mode. XP Mode allows you to run older programs in Windows XP and simultaneously run every-thing else in Windows 7.

If your main business software runs well now in Windows XP it should run just fine in XP Mode in Windows 7.

For even more peace of mind, as part of the upgrade process, we will contact your business software vendor and get their approval before beginning an upgrade. You can also try this on a “test” PC before rolling it out on your network.

Installation time
The Windows 7 set-up process is significantly faster than Vista or XP installation, which saves your business money on the upgrade project. Windows 7 also offers some automated setup options that weren’t previously available – again, reducing your investment in an upgrade project. Start up time is significantly – and noticably – faster, which gets your staff to work that much faster at the start of the day.

More drivers and easier setup
When you plug in a new scanner, camera or other device into your computer, you don’t want to fight with pop-up messages that tell you to search for drivers.

You just want it to work the way it’s supposed to. With Windows 7 that’s what you get. No hassle. No fear.

Online Banking: Five Steps To Protect Yourself

I was reading the Wall Street Journal website recently, and came across an interesting article about online bank fraud. The article was about a small business owner in California had over $100,000 stolen from his bank account.

He only recovered about $50,000 of it back. The other $50,000 went to a bank in Europe, where mules (someone who receives the stolen money) started to withdraw the money from the bank account.

How did this happen? The business owner had spyware on his computer that transferred his banking username and password to the hackers. I always shake my head when I read an article like this, because I know it could have been easily avoided.

Anti-virus and anti-spyware
The first step in protecting yourself is to make sure your computer has anti-virus and anti-spyware installed.

If you’re doing online banking, make sure that you’re using commercial quality protection – not something you download from the Internet for free.

The stronger your first layer of protection, the safer you are online.

We see computers every day that don’t have this simplest of protection installed; or, worse, the business owner has installed protection software, but then fails to keep it updated or renewed.

Unified threat management
The next step is to invest in a unified threat management (UTM) firewall. A UTM firewall is miles ahead of the simple DSL or cable routers you’d pick up at the office supply store.

They offer solid protection against viruses, hackers, spyware, and the host of other Internet dangers.

The device scans all Internet traffic in real time, and can protect you even before the anti-virus and antispyware vendors have updated their software for new attacks.

UTM firewalls can also implement web filtering and prevent the computer from reaching the intended attacker.

Web filtering can block access to websites that contain malware and spyware; it can also protect employees from going places they shouldn’t be.

Fortinet is our preferred vendor that makes firewall appliances that do what I describe above. A dedicated firewall and UTM appliance is very effective in helping prevent an attack such as this.

Block SPAM at the source
One of the sneakiest ways hackers can compromise your computer is through email, so you’ll want to look for a rock-solid spam filtering solution. Numerous cloud based (hosted) solutions exist that are very inexpensive. A good spam filter will keep viruses, phishing and other attacks from hitting your email. Reflexion is our favorite cloud based email filtering solution. The product is easy to use, well supported and extremely effective.

With online banking, phishing attacks are very common. Someone creates an email that looks like your bank in an attempt to collect information, you click on the link, and next thing you know, the hackers have your login and password.

Personally, I never open emails from my bank. Most banks will not contact you for important account information with email.

Perform regular maintenance
The fourth step to keeping your computers safe is patch management. Microsoft releases security updates for Windows nearly very week. Having a trained IT professional ensure patches are applied correctly – and quickly – will protect you from any security holes in the software that you’re running.

Most small businesses should look at one of our managed service plans, which provides you with “whatever it takes” service at a low fixed monthly cost.

Pay attention
The final step is a matter of common sense. Most people will go to potentially hazardous websites or click on something they shouldn’t have. My suggestion is if you are doing Internet banking, it should be on a computer that is used the least.

If you are going to go to questionable websites, don’t do it on the computer where you do your banking.

Analyzing And Cleaning Out Your Computer’s Hard Drive

These days, hard drive space is incredibly inexpensive. If you’re running out of space, installing a new hard drive could be an easy option to free up storage.

Many times, though, hard drives can become cluttered with old and uncessary information, that, when removed, will give you plenty of free space.

There are a few tips that that will help you find where your storage is being consumed, and potentially save you the investment in a new hard drive.

Disk Space Fan
The first utility to examine is a little application called Disk Space Fan. The standard version of the program is free, and there is also a professional (paid) version. The free version will work for freeing up some space.

Disk Space Fan will show you what folder or folders are using up all of your hard drive space.

When you open the program it will show you all the current hard drives on the computer. Most users will be just working from the C drive. On the C drive there will be a “Windows” folder and a “Program Files” folder.

Next to those folders you will see the size of the files in the folder. This will help you by seeing which folder has more files in it. By clicking on whatever folder you want to analyze you can keep clicking on the folder to find where the most hard drive space is taken up.

This will give you a better idea of where your space has disappeared to. Be extremely careful when deleting files and folders.

If you’re not sure if the folder can be deleted, the best practice would be to leave it in place and talk with your computer professional.

The above method works if you are really looking to cleanup space on a hard drive. For other people maybe just cleaning out temporary files or some old program files is enough.

CCleaner
A great application for cleaning up temporary files and folders is a tool called CCleaner. This tool is an all in one tool to help clean up a computer that might have a lot of old and unused files on it. The software is free for everyone to use.

CCleaner will clean extra program files, Internet explorer temporary files, disable startup items, remove programs that you do not want installed and even cleanup unwanted registry entries.

I am not a person to ever recommend a user to play with the registry but CCleaner does a great job in analyzing the registry and only removing the unwanted registry entries.

The only setback with CCleaner is that it does not have any scheduling feature to allow you to run it regularly without manually running the program every time you want to make a change on the computer.

ATF Cleaner
Finally, if you are a Windows XP user there is a very simple application that I recommend you run every week or so.

ATF cleaner is a freeware application that the user does not even have to install. This application cleans out only temporary files from programs and also the Windows cache.

These are just a few nice little programs that every user can use to help keep their computer running fast and free up disk space.