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Productivity

How To Prolong The Life Of Your Computer

Печатьby Jeremy Miller, Technician
One of the questions we get asked most often is, “What can I do to prolong the life of my computer?” We have been working on computers for years and have found that hardware protection and regular maintenance is the best answer.

What is regular maintenance?
Regular maintenance is the general up keep of your computer over time. There is a number of free software out there that offer this service with a stipulation.

They will partially clean up your system or some malicious software will state it will speed up your computer if you upgrade to the paid-for version. You should not trust this free software because it can damage some applications or even your operating system.

What can I do?
There are many things you can implement to prolong the life of your computer. You first want to think about your hardware because all software can be reloaded, but once your hardware fails your computer can crash like a house of cards.

Cooling is Key
The first thing I recommend is to regularly clean out your computer with compressed air. Nothing kills a computer better or faster than high internal temperatures. On average your computer is about 30 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the room it is in.

You can also increase your cooling by adding more fans. Many desktop cases have space for additional fans.
The better the air flow the longer your computer will last. For laptops, you must always ensure the fan vents are not being blocked, and you can increase cooling by using a cooling pad that has additional fans to increase the air flow around your laptop.

Make sure you have reliable power
You should always have your computer powered by a surge protector. If you live in a dwelling that has power fluctuations, you should consider an uninterruptable power supply (UPS) which are also known as a battery backup. Many also protect against brownouts.

Most UPS come with multiple outlets, some are protected by the battery as well as surge protection and some are just surge protected.

UPS will provide regular power to your computer even if your power fluctuates, and it can shut your computer down properly if you lose power.

Without reliable power you can short out just about any component in your computer.

If you shut your computer down incorrectly or if you just lose power you can damage your data and can cause your operating system to stop functioning.

Regular software maintenance
Your computer will accumulate a lot of temporary files from software that does not clean up after itself.

Your hard disk will become cluttered from constantly moving files around, and most computers have old unused software still running in the background.
All of this takes a toll on your computer hardware over time. The idea is to keep the software foot print as small as needed.

The less items you have launch at startup will lead to a much longer computer life. This is because most software needs your processor, Random Access Memory (RAM), and hard drive to run.

The more you have running at one time the higher the stress level on your hardware.

Virus infections may not cause noticeable issues right away but over time you will start to notice things not running properly.

Virus infections and other malicious software can take most of your hardware resources which makes your computer perform poorly. You can attempt to clean these infections out yourself, but without knowing how your computer works, you may end up doing more damage than good.

Is there an easy way to regularly maintain my computer?
We are constantly cleaning out computers and are very familiar with issues that arise in these processes.

We offer a solution to clean out your computer on a daily basis, so that you can continually use your computer without interruption. Our service runs in the background and will take care of most issues that arise.

We can help increase the longevity while you get the most out of your computer. If you are interested in learning more or have questions please feel free to call us.

(Image Source: iCLIPART)

What Is The Real Cost Of IT Downtime?

hourglass with dollar inside (time is money concept)

People working with technology understand that downtime happens, whether it is planned (as during upgrades and maintenance) or as an unplanned emergency. Unnecessary downtime often costs an organization significant amounts of money.

Not being able to process sales is perhaps the most direct way in which your company will lose revenue during downtime.

If your sales team uses your company’s online resources in their daily tasks, they won’t be ringing up the sales numbers. Add to this the costs of resolving the issues that caused the downtime, including both labor and materials, you’re left with the direct monetary impact to your organization.

There’s no doubt about it – downtime can damage your company’s reputation. Your customers don’t like to be kept waiting. Downtime may cause late deliveries, interfere with your customers’ ability to place an order or even to contact your customer service.

Efficient business owners understand that employee productivity has a direct impact on the company’s bottom line. It’s crucial that everyone has the tools they need in order to remain productive. Downtime causes loss of productivity, and, therefore, profits.

The only way to maximize uptime is to monitor your systems on an ongoing basis. This will provide you with specific details regarding any issues affecting your organization. If you are experiencing anything less than 99.9 percent uptime, you need to start looking into solutions to resolve the problem. Give us a call today.

(Image Source: iCLIPART)

How To Beat Job Burnout

If you are finding it more and more difficult to cope with the demands of your job in addition to the rest of your life, you are definitely not alone. More and more people are putting in additional hours at work or being on call even when they should be at home relaxing.

The good news is there are ways to make your daily routine a little more balanced. One of the best is to actually build downtime into your schedule. As you plan your week you should make a point of including time with friends and family as well as activities that will allow you to recharge such as a sport of some kind.

Being proactive about scheduling can be very helpful and also prevent free time from being wasted. Another good idea is to drop activities that are sapping your energy or time, including online activities. Making time for exercise can also assist you with becoming more alert and boosting your concentration and overall energy level.

Why Third-Party Monitoring And Managed Services?

As technology advance and organizations face increasing demands for efficiency in their business, their IT infrastructures have become increasingly complex. Applications are far more interdependent than ever before, and their business tools, whether hardware or software, are making up a diverse web of systems from a wide range of vendors.

The challenges of dealing with this complexity are something that businesses have to deal with on a daily basis. In a recent study, nearly 50% of global business leaders have called “increased reliance on technology” the No. 1 risk to their organizations. Another 37% said the “business complexity of the organization” is their top risk.

All the same, businesses need to deliver high performance and high availability, typically without accompanying increase in budgets
to accomplish these goals.

So how can companies cope with the dual challenges of managing an increasingly complex infrastructure, while remaining focused on achieving business goals and delivering high quality products and services to their clients?

Organizations are increasingly turning to third party providers that delivers advanced monitoring and resolution services for your IT assets.

If you work with a knowledgeable vendor —one that is familiar with your infrastructure — there are big advantages to taking this approach, including:

  • Lower total cost of ownership
  • Higher availability of applications
  • Reduced downtime, (planned or unplanned)
  • Reduced workload on your own people to deal with IT issues
  • Improved application performance
  • Ability to proactively monitor and thereby mitigating issues as they arise, as opposed to after it’s too late

An advanced monitoring and resolution service should consist of 24/7 secure remote monitoring and resolution delivered by skilled engineers using proven practices.

The service should offer rigorous security certifications to ensure remote experts safely deliver proactive monitoring and administration of internal applications and hardware systems.

Don’t think of it simply as an outsourcing solution. Rather, think of it as a team of experts supplementing your own team, providing a number of products and solutions that it would be next to impossible to maintain in-house.

Because of the complexity of today’s systems, it is often difficult to identify exactly where and why systems fail. This can result in dissatisfied customers and less productive workers.

These problems can be severe enough to put the organization at risk. With proactive monitoring and advanced support, however, the organization will be made aware when (and why) vulnerabilities occur.

An advanced monitoring service means looking after performance or availability of all your critical systems and applications. This monitoring can extend through your entire infrastructure — applications, databases, servers, storage, networks and backup. Problems, can be addressed using best practices for incident, change and problem management.

As a client, you can choose to deploy the services according to your own needs, from full remote services to full onsite solutions or some combination.

The process of monitoring and remediating problems within your IT, you will learn a lot about your risks and vulnerabilities. Are there peak usage times that are impacting application slowing down the performance of mission-critical applications? The key is to continuously improve performance and availability.

You should meet regularly with your professional services team to review processes and set strategies for continual performance improvement. You should also have a plan that includes regular hardware and software health checks.

Your company gets the revenue as well as interacts with your customers through your applications. When performance slows down, the entire business suffers and is put at risk for lost revenues, lost profits, lost customers and general damage to your brand.

Advanced monitoring and resolution services lets you keep track of application performance at all times. Monitoring agents create alerts when systems or applications are under-performing, so you can fix issues before they impact the company further.

End-user monitoring takes the service a step further, whereby you can collect, process and present details — even going so far as to track user requests and follow them through to resolutions.

You can collect information on the length of time it takes to complete a business transaction and the length of time it takes to search, select and pay for a specific product. You can easily see how you can improve revenue and profits.

Predictive incident management diagnostics lets your vendor partner identify issues with configurations and performance before they become full-scale problems.

For example, advanced monitoring lets a service provider leverage complex algorithmic models and thereby identify potential issues with individual transactions within the database.

Advanced monitoring and resolution delivers significant improvements in IT support. You can measure the performance in meeting service requests, including trends on how long it takes for repairs to be performed, response by incident type, and reporting and measure performance against standards on all systems, including backup, emergency storage and system uptime.

A third-party supplier will have access to tools, methodologies and best practices your organization may not even be aware of.

Advanced monitoring and resolution is what they do every day, so your organization is always taking advantage of the experience the vendor has gained from working with other businesses, as well as the latest in diagnostic and recovery tools.

They often employ thorough diagnostic tool sets that cover all your systems. By using these tools, they are able to identify and qualify new incidents, automatically compare new incidents with a knowledge base of past incidents, and use the past experiences as the basis to quickly and effectively resolve issues.

Clearly you will want advanced monitoring and resolution to deliver 24/7 support for all your systems, databases and mission-critical applications. But some vendors can also offer more specialized services, such as end-user monitoring; firewall and VPN management; continuous risk assessment application management; and intrusion detection systems to mention but a few.

Because IT has grown in complexity, it is difficult and costly to hire and retain all the in-house expertise required to manage everything.

The other problem comes with internal politics, often resulting in finger-pointing than actual problem solving. An outside vendor gives you not only access to a team of service professionals with deep expertise. They are focused on fixing your problems, and not assigning blame.

Get Ahead By Practicing These ‘Top Employee’ Habits

Maybe you’ll win the lottery. Or a wealthy relative will leave you a fortune.

But if neither possibility turns into reality, you’ll have to go to work tomorrow, where your best chance of getting ahead is to be the best employee you can.

Here’s some advice for making an impact at work:

Be positive
Managers and co-workers like working with people who are upbeat and enthusiastic.

You don’t have to force a fake smile on your face every minute of the day, but refrain from complaints, cynicism, and sarcasm at work. Support what’s working, and fix what needs to work better.

Communicate
The ability to express your ideas clearly is one of the most important skills you can master.

Concentrate on getting your messages across in concrete, concise language that everyone can understand without confusion.

Compliment people
Tell people sincerely when you appreciate their work, their assistance, or their support.

Highlight their tangible achievements, connect your praise to your organization’s goals, and don’t overdo it. Everyone, including your supervisor, likes to hear, “Thank you,” or, “Good work.”

Be honest
Admit your mistakes, and ask openly about things you don’t understand.

“Fake it till you make it,” has a place in your career strategy, but in the long run you’ll do better by being up front with your supervisors and colleagues.

Keep learning
Don’t rely too long on what’s worked for you in the past. A commitment to your own development shows that you’re serious about your career, and gets the attention of managers looking for tomorrow’s leaders.

The Advantages Of Managed Services Over Traditional IT Services

By Tech Experts Staff
Of all the important aspects to a successful business, your company’s IT systems are arguably the most important since these systems can impact all aspects of a business.

Many companies handle their IT resources in different ways, from having an in-house IT employee, to not having anyone, to managed services.

What exactly are all of these ways of taking care of your IT systems? With all the different approaches to taking care of your business what’s the best option?

Some businesses choose not to have in-house IT staff as it’s too expensive and instead go without IT support and try to fix problems on their own or ignore the issues all together.

The biggest problem with this approach, also known as a “Break Fix” approach, is that you generally always have downtime and issues with your IT systems since they are not properly cared for.

In addition to the high costs of downtime, when businesses finally break down and call for help the support can be very expensive since they are not on a support contract.

While many larger companies choose to have an in-house IT employee, or several for very large companies, this is not always the best option either.

One of the biggest problems with in-house IT staff is that they tend to have a knowledge base that is centered on one business’s network so when problems arise it can be difficult for them to figure out what the issue is.

When you use a service provider like Tech Experts, you are getting an IT tech that has a broad base of knowledge and can very quickly adapt to your network and use knowledge of similar issues other organizations have had to correct your problem much faster.

For small to medium size businesses the cost of having an in-house IT employee is simply too expensive so they tend to go with the first option.

It is possible for small to medium sized businesses to get the same level of service or higher than having one in-house IT employee at a fraction of the cost as well.

The third option and the best option is called Managed Services. Managed Services give the IT provider the ability to proactively monitor the important aspects of your business’s workstations and servers to prevent major issues before they cause costly downtime.

With our Managed Services platform, we offer a large number of software and hardware checks to keep your servers and workstations secure from hackers and running great for years.

We also offer several other benefits when combined in an all-inclusive, unlimited support, service contract. Our Managed Services platform offers the ability for us to connect to your computer and work with you remotely.

In most cases, we can solve your problem quickly so you don’t have to wait for a tech to travel to your location.

We also offer offsite backups as an option to protect your business from a catastrophic data loss that can cause a company to go under in a few months after such an event.

Managed services are simply the best option for small to medium sized businesses due to the flexibility they offer and the high amount of protection offered.

If you would like to see what Managed Services can do for your company give us a call and we can setup a meeting to take a look at your current systems and get you a quote on what this would cost your business today!

Plan Your Workday’s Start For Maximum Efficiency

Your first few minutes at work can set the tone for the entire day, so don’t waste them. Here are some tips for launching a productive day from the very start:

• Arrive on time. Nothing throws you off your game like having to catch up with everyone else. Get the rest you need, and give yourself plenty of time to show up when you need to be there.

• Settle in smoothly. Don’t take too much time for this. Spend just a few minutes reviewing your to-do list (updated the night before!) and checking in with your boss and employees. Plan your day, but be ready for interruptions as they arise.

• Check messages—briefly. Don’t bother answering every email and phone message you’ve received since yesterday. Review them quickly, deal with any that require immediate attention, and then move on.
• Think. Your brain is fresh in the morning, so use it to make plans. Review your long-term goals as well as your most urgent tasks for the day, and spend a little time analyzing your priorities so you can put your energy where it will do the most good.

• Choose your most important task first. This may be the task you least want to do, but putting it off will only distract you and drain your energy. Look over your to-do list and pick the job that will have the biggest impact, and take it on while you’ve got maximum energy and the fewest interruptions.

• Plan a break. Don’t push yourself to stay at peak energy all day. Schedule a quick break at some point in the morning so you can double-check your priorities, revise your plans, and get a little rest to prepare for the rest of the day. Enjoy a “brain snack” such as trail mix, peanut butter and toast, or hummus and vegetables.

Four Simple Things To Help You Get More Done In 2013

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

Making New Year’s resolutions is a cliché these days, but that doesn’t mean they’re not worthwhile. Whether we’re successful or not, I think it’s healthy to take some time each year to look at where we’re at, and what improvements make sense.

One of the biggest resolutions, of course, is to be more productive. Toward that end, here are four simple things you can do to get more done in your day.

Block non-work related websites
This one won’t be popular, but if you want to get more done, then get rid of the distractions.

Of course if part of your job is to manage the social media for your company, this doesn’t apply; for all the other workers in your office who don’t need to be on Facebook and Twitter all day, this will remove the temptation to pop on social media sites “for just a minute.” This adds up to hours of wasted company time, and zero productivity.

A content filtering firewall, or even special filtering software, can easily manage which sites you can visit. Other things to block include gambling sites, employees searching for a new job on company time, and bandwidth wasters like Youtube.

There are also many distraction-blocking apps you can use to help you disconnect. AntiSocial and Freedom will make time-sucking sites unavailable for however long you choose.

Set up remote access
With the ubiquity of fast residential Internet, it’s easy to set up a VPN to your office to access files, e-mail and programs from home (or while on the road) using remote access applications or cloud technologies.

This lets you work when forced to stay home with sick kids or to wait for the repairman to show up.

Studies show that employees generally put in several more hours of work on their own initiative if they can easily jump on their home PC to finish up a report or check their work email.

Use dual monitors
According to a University of Utah study, you can increase your efficiency by 25% just by adding a second monitor.

A second monitor increases effectiveness and usability, decreases errors from switching between applications, and makes task tracking easier. All of these factors combined show vastly improved productivity.

Put your storage in the cloud
Cloud storage began as a way to backup data, but now you can use it for file storage just like a network drive.

Cloud storage can boost productivity by giving you access to your data anytime, anywhere. Get even more done when you pair cloud services with mobile devices like iPads and smartphones.

Each of these is an easy update for us to implement. If you want more details on improving productivity in your office, just give me a call at (734) 457-5000, or send us an e-mail at support@MyTechExperts.com.

 

Increase Network Security And Productivity

By Tech Experts Staff
As a managed services provider, we regularly consult with companies about issues they would like addressed. We find that many times, a simple solution can correct their issues in one fell swoop.

What are some of the biggest concerns businesses have? The top three we hear most often are security, productivity, and network speed.

These three main issues encompass many other common issues businesses have to deal with on a daily basis and are easily resolved.

In these days with high profile businesses such as Sony, GoDaddy, Verisign, etc. being hacked this past year it’s easy to see why security is of utmost importance.

Many businesses store confidential data such as credit card numbers, social security numbers, or other personal information on their servers, and because of this, must protect that information at all costs.

So, what’s the solution to this? Having good security policies in place is a start, but a giant leap in the right direction is having a business class firewall in place.

We offer Fortinet firewalls which, when properly implemented, can stop unauthorized network access in its tracks.

Fortinet firewalls offer many different security features to keep your network safe.

Network protection features include an Intrusion Prevention System (IPS), built-in antivirus solutions, and Data Loss Prevention (DLP) services. Fortinet firewalls protect your company’s, and more importantly, your client’s, private information.

Fortinet firewalls also offer the possibility of huge boosts in productivity.

In a recent study conducted by Salary.com it was found that employees waste on average 1.86 hours of work per day. That’s almost 25% of the work day!

So if this rings true to your company, you’re paying each employee for three months of work each year that they are not even doing!

What are your employees doing that is wasting so much time? Studies show that 52% of the two hours per day that employees waste were spent on non-work related websites like Facebook and Twitter.

While many companies don’t think this goes on in their business, the moment we put in one of our Fortinet firewalls, we almost always find someone on websites they were not supposed to be on during the work day.

Keeping these figures in mind, the costs associated with not having measures in place to stop these kinds of activities far out weighs the actual costs of having one of these units installed.

Once the unit is installed, we can implement web content filtering so employees cannot access time wasting websites.

Users that need access to these types of websites, like the owner of the company for instance, can have credentials to be able to override any filtering in place.

The final item that businesses strive for is a faster network. While this can be dependent entirely on the Internet connection speed your business has, it is entirely possible to have a high speed connection and still feel like your Internet is terribly slow.

So, this again goes back to web filtering. Users should not be able to download from unauthorized sites or do any activities on the network that take a large amount of bandwidth.

Also, if you have a couple of separate Internet connections, it is possible on some of our higher end Fortinet firewalls to have load balancing in place to help better distribute the load of connections out to the Internet if need be.

Whether you’re in a small business with a handful of employees or in a medium to large size company with potentially hundreds of employees, we have a firewall solution for your business.

Fortinet firewalls allow you to better manage your company and increase security, productivity, and network speed significantly.