1: No Anti-virus or outdated antivirus. If I could fix one thing in the computer industry I would eliminate viruses completely from the planet. But since I can’t do that, I absolutely believe that every PC and Server should have an up-to-date antivirus program.

2: Many companies install a firewall but never update it! So the second biggest technology mistake I see is failure to keep firewalls updated. Just like antivirus programs need updates of virus signatures to catch new viruses, firewalls need updated signature files to catch new threats.

3: Failure to Patch. Microsoft releases patches every week to help protect your pc and server from being compromised. If I checked your office computers would they have all the security patches? Hint…. Some patches necessary to keep your system running properly are Optional patches, so if you’re only using Microsoft auto update and not downloading and installing appropriate optional updates, then the answer is no.

4: Nobody is checking the backup, let alone having a disaster recovery plan. Not only are 30% of businesses not getting good backups, but 60% of companies never check the backups by doing a test restore until they need that data.

5: Weak passwords. Yes we all are guilty of this one. Many offices have poor passwords; in fact some offices use a single number for their company-wide password.

6: Do it yourself tech support. Most business owners are smart people, but is it really the best use of their (or their employee’s) time, and does it have the highest probability of success for them to do their own tech support instead of hiring an IT company to do it for them? Why not concentrate on growing the business and allow professionals who deal with these issues every day and are trained in the latest challenges and their resolutions handle the computer support?

7: Buying the cheapest technology. If a $40.00 Belkin wireless router designed for home use could really protect your server and critical data from the dangers of the Internet, why would that and every other etworking equipment manufacturer offer units with vastly greater capabilities? Also, your largest expense is likely that of paying for your employee’s time. If you could increase each employee’s productivity by 10% by eliminating the time they sit and wait for a slow computer or a slow broadband connection to catch up with them, how much money could you save? If you have 10 employees making $30,000 per year, that’s $30,000 a year you’d save.  To realize those saving all you have to do is spend an extra few hundred dollars per person for a better computer, or spend a few hundred dollars for a high throughput firewall. 1000% ROI is good in anybody’s books.

Coupling all these items with the lack of a disaster recovery plan is a disaster ready to happen. Don’t let your company go down that path, call us to help plug all the holes and fix your infrastructure.

Written
by Mark Richmond, Micro Doctor Inc.

AVG 2012 first look
Micro Doctor, Inc. has recommended, supported, and utilized many antivirus programs over the years. Initially Norton Antivirus was our favorite, however viruses started getting through fully updated and functional installations of this software, and its processes started taking over the CPU cycles of the installed PC, which made the machine run significantly slower. The worst version release was Norton 360, wow what a hog. It took over the PC, firewall and basically made you re-open ports and program exceptions to get mail and Internet to work properly again. Anyway, over the years we have worked with McAfee, Kaspersky, Trend Micro, Sunbelt Vipre and AVG.

While no Antivirus program is perfect, AVG is what you will find on my personal and work PCs. I have installed the AVG 2012 version and have some pros and cons for you to consider. First, AVG is keenly aware of and attempts to minimize its “footprint”. The “footprint” is the amount of resources the antivirus program consumes while it is protecting your PC. AVG 2012 has improved its performance and startup speed since version 2011. The program is good at protection and when I click on a suspected virus download it pops up and asks me what I want to do; Move to Vault, Ignore or Delete infected files. Of course, many virus attacks now are known as “drive by” viruses. You are on a website and a pop-up says, “Some items on this page cannot be displayed, would you like to display blocked content?” The “blocked content” turns out to be a virus and you install it by clicking Yes where indicated. Another way viruses get invited in is by looking like an Internet Explorer add-on. Some say “The pictures on this website require a picture viewer add-on to view: Please click OK to install this Internet Explorer Add-on.” Once you do that virus pop ups aren’t far behind. The rule of thumb is… don’t download or install add-ons that you are not specifically requesting yourself. Also, make sure they are signed by Microsoft, Adobe, Macromedia or Sun Microsystems.

What are the problems with AVG? Main problems are the installer and installer defaults. I never let AVG just install everything by clicking next, next, next. If you do, it will install a toolbar, change your default search provider and install a desktop gadget, all of which slow your computer. These things are known as bloatware, or extra unnecessary installed programs that you do not need to run the software you originally wanted. Bloatware was invented by Dell with all the extra programs they started installing on their PCs. You prevent the AVG bloatware by choosing the “Custom” installation instead of simply accepting the default settings and letting AVG choose which components to install. Software manufacturers actually pay hardware manufacturers like Dell to install their programs on the PC. How many toolbars does one want or need on internet explorer? I recently was training a technician and was following up after a virus removal, he did a great job at removal of the virus but when I opened internet explorer it had 5 toolbars! Google Toolbar, Yahoo Toolbar, AVG Toolbar, Bing Toolbar, Favorites Toolbar and the normal menu toolbars. We finished cleaning those up before the PC left our shop.

Always when asked, choose custom install on all programs. It is not really too intimidating and, in fact, sometimes is just a couple of questions along with un-checking a box to install another toolbar. When I install AVG I choose Antivirus, Safe Search, Link Scanner, Email Scanner and Anti Rootkit. I do not install Identity Protection or any other modules. My status screen looks like this.

Pricing for AVG Antivirus starts at around $39.99 per PC per Year. However there are discounts for multiple years and multiple PCs that make it one of the most reasonable full featured antivirus programs available.

We include AVG antivirus software for free on all of our Proactive Service Plans at Micro Doctor. We currently monitor almost 1000 business customers with the help our AVG antivirus and we have several hundred on enforced antivirus from Sonicwall powered by McAfee Antivirus.

The key to success with any antivirus application, is to keep it up to date, apply anti-virus upgrades, and Windows Update patches when available. Some of these Windows patches must be applied manually as they are not included in the Critical updates that can be automatically applied. Most machines we find with a virus infection do not have up-to-date Antivirus or Microsoft Windows Patches.

If you would like a free security assessment, contact Micro Doctor, Inc. on our website form.

Written by Mark Richmond, MCSE, CSSA Microsoft Certified Small Business Specialist at Micro Doctor Inc. 11/21/2011

I am usually an early adopter of technology. My profession and position make it necessary to be on the bleeding edge of many new technology services and products to gain the expertise to implement them for our clients. One exception to this trend has been Windows 7 64 bit. I have been on Windows 7 32 bit for over 2 years and have resisted the move to Windows 7 64 bit. Even though most of the Windows Servers we have installed are 64bit most of the desktops have been 32 bit installations. There is nothing wrong with staying on Windows 7 32bit for most users. But for me the early adopter, gadget freak, technology geek, I needed more. Typically I have 8 to 10 internet explorer windows open on not 2, but 3 desktop screens. I use Outlook, Word, Quickbooks, and many additional programs all at the same time. It was amazing to see how much of my resources Iexplore (internet explorer) had allocated for itself on my old PC.

The biggest limitation for me on Windows 7 32bit was the amount of memory you can use with it. It is limited to 4 GB. While 4 GB is not bad I needed more than 4 GB to run my programs efficiently, and that is why I just upgraded to the new Intel  I7 Quad core processor with 16 Gb of ram. The conversion wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be because I used the built in Windows 7 Easy Transfer program. All of my shortcuts, favorites, documents and IE tweaks came across with ease. I still had to reinstall most programs but now I am running Windows 7 64 bit computer with 16 GB of RAM and programs are popping up much more quickly.

So if you are one of those people that need your PC to be amazingly fast, check out Window 7 64 bit for additional resources needed to
run todays applications, multitask and even run multimedia applications at explosive speeds.

There is however one problem I wanted to report to you. It did not have to do with Windows 7 64 bit, it had to do with Office 2010 64 bit. I figured I had Windows 64 bit and I should run Office 2010 64 bit, but to my surprise my link to scan to email from my printer no longer would work with Outlook 2010 64 bit. So I unistalled Office 2010 64 bit and went back to Office 2010 32 bit and I am much happier with my overall set-up.

I have had several GPS units over the years. Unfortunately the cost of annual map updates makes the price of an updated GPS unreasonable. I could update my GPS for $100.00 or buy a new GPS for $129.99, but it hardly
seems worth it. So I just kept my GPS, ignored the nag screens from Garmin and hoped I still would get to my destination. I even tried using my iPhone for a GPS but this has its drawbacks because when you get a call, your directions disappear.

So when I saw an ad for a new Garmin with lifetime maps I was in. I ordered it and everything seemed great….. until, the ads started
showing up. Much like Facebook, AOL and Pandora the service is free but you must endure the ads popping up at inopportune moments. Isn’t that why we buy DVRs and TIVOs? So we don’t have to watch commercials? Well, it was like that for a while on those services, but now the ads are embedded inside the shows. If someone drives up in a BMW or drinks a Coca Cola in a sitcom, then that is part of the advertising package sold to support that show or network.

While so far the ads on the GPS are small and you can switch screens to get rid of them, it remains unknown how far they will take this. So
if you are looking for a GPS with free lifetime maps make sure you are ready for free lifetime ads on your GPS screen.

The kind of email system you use makes a difference. Full access and full control of your email account – even when on the go – can be essential tools for people who work in the field. But just the same, you might need a few tweaks to a less fully featured system to keep operations efficient and cost-effective.

Whether you work from an office or are productive while on the go, email most likely plays a big factor in the way you go about your business. Unbeknownst to many, some types of email systems have certain limitations that by extension can also limit the level of productivity of your business, and especially for people in the organization who must also work while out in the field.

One major issue for many people is synchronicity. Many people need their emails to be accessible on their mobile phones, PDAs, or other mobile devices, and they need them to be properly synchronized with their desktop workstations. The need to constantly update conversations and email threads from mobile devices to desktops with certain types of email can prove to be tedious and unproductive– and some email system types don’t include this ability at all.

Depending on the way you use your email, especially when on the go, having full access and full control of your account can define how productive you and others in your organization can be. Besides providing a much better degree of synchronization and integration with mobile devices, certain types of email systems also have features for sharing and collaboration features that allow you to set schedules and share files from your mailbox, as well as central storage for emails that allows you to access your account seamlessly with any mobile device, regardless of where you are located.

Of course, having a full-featured email system might not be best for everyone. The key is to know whether adapting a more bare-bones system is cost-effective for your business (especially in the long run). Sometimes the top of the line may be needed, and sometimes all you need is a bit of tweaking on your less fully featured system. Not sure which is best? Call us and we’ll be glad to sit down with you and assess what kind of email system is best suited for you and your business.

Your reputation and your company’s reputation are important. When people talk about you or your company, depending on what’s being said, it can have either a helpful or a damaging effect. In the online world this can be even more challenging, as the proliferation of websites and social media tools make monitoring these comments more difficult to do. Here are some tools to help you make sense out of the sea of information—so you can keep track of and manage what’s being said about you or your business.

Besides your own eyes and ears, there are plenty of tools—for free or for a price—available to help you monitor your presence online. The simplest of these is your familiar search engines such as Google or Bing. By simply searching online, you can find where your name or your company’s name appears in various websites. With Google in particular, you can set up “alerts” which will email you when a specific word or term appears in their website index.

What words or terms should you use? Start with your name, or your company name, then try the name of your products and/or services, and maybe even the names of your employees, directors, and other stakeholders. It might also be helpful to search for the competition as well. As results come in you can refine your search by expanding or narrowing the scope of terms you would like to search or be alerted on. If you want to be able to search across all different search engines and not just one or two, you can use Monitor This.

Next you can use specialized website or social media monitoring tools to search only specific sites or services as opposed to the entire Internet. One example is Greplin, which allows you to search all of your accounts or accounts that you own. This is very helpful to be able to execute highly filtered searches on specific information in your Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn accounts, or your blog. Another option is Rollyo, which allows you to set up your own specialized search engines that cull content from public or open websites of your choosing.

Other more generalized tools include RSS feed readers—which allow you to consume news or information feeds from news sites or blogs. Examples include Newsgator.com, Bloglines.com, Google Reader or Pluck.com. Other generalized tools include those that monitor specific newsgroups or message boards like BoardReader.com, ForumFind.com, Big-Boards.com, BoardTracker.com, iVillage, Yahoo Message Boards, and MSN Money. Still others track changes to content of specific sites (Copernic Tracker, Website Watcher and WatchThatPage.com), as well as their domain information (DomainTools.com and BetterWhois.com).

The really interesting new services actually give you an explicit idea of the status of your reputation—especially if you are a relatively well known name or your business has an established brand. In this category are sites like Amplicate, which monitors general feelings or impressions about brands, businesses, or services; Klout, which tries to measure the influence of individuals based on their social interactions; and SendLove.to, which focuses on celebrities and media personalities.

There are literally dozens more tools you can use to monitor and manage your reputation online. To find out more, a great resource is here at the Duct Tape Marketing blog. If you have any additional suggestions, feel free to let us know!

While the decision to have some of your IT resources “in the cloud” can be a complex one, one area we get asked about often is email and productivity applications. Below is a summary from two industry giants: one from Google and the other from Microsoft, and see how they compare:

Google Apps
Google Apps is a service from Google that started in 2006, with the introduction of Gmail—a hosted email service, and which later incorporated other apps such as Google Calendar, Groups, Talk, Docs and Sites. Google Apps allow customers an independently customizable version of these Google products under their own domain name. The entry level option is free, but the package offered for Businesses is a paid service with an annual fee per user and additional storage space.

1. Storage. Gmail, Google Apps’ email service starts with a sizable 7GB of free storage. Business users get 25GB. Bear in mind however that this storage space is shared with any data you have in other Google properties such as Picasa Web Album and Google Docs. Extra space can be bought however starting with USD $5 per year for an extra 20GB of storage. E-mail attachment sizes are limited to 25MB.
2. Calendaring and Task Management. Gmail can be integrated with the overall excellent Google Calendar application. Google Calendar allows you to easily share personal calendars with colleagues, or create shared calendars used by groups of people (such as a calendar to track meeting room reservations, marketing events and others). Google Calendar also offers a built-in, but somewhat underpowered task management tool. Tasks can readily be added with due dates, but not readily shared or cannot be nested or linked with other tasks.
3. Spam filtering, security and reliability. Gmail’s spam filtering features a community-driven system. Email tagged as spam by users help identifies similar messages as Spam for all other Gmail users. Generally the system works well, although some have complained that it can get over aggressive in its filters. In terms of security and reliability—Gmail has been criticized in the past with showing ads in its free Gmail service that display based on key words in the user’s messages—potentially violating their privacy. Its paid service offers however the option of disable these ads. Reliability is generally good with very few, but widely publicized disruptions in service.
4. Usability. Gmail offers a host of unique usability enhancements that make it different from most other mail services. For one for a web app it loads really fast, as Google has been known to studiously optimize web page loading performance for their products. Another is that it offers a threaded view of messages by default. It also uses a starring/labeling system to tag and segregate messages instead of using folders. Another interesting enhancement done recently is the ability to sort messages by “importance” where it learns based on your usage over time what email messages it thinks you think are important.
5. Mobile access. Gmail offers a version optimized for mobile devices, as well as support for a variety of devices for their native mail applications such as iOS and Android.

Overall Gmail is a solid mature choice if you are thinking of moving email to the cloud and are not afraid of being on the bleeding edge of cloud services and technology.

Microsoft Office 365
Microsoft Office 365, like Google Apps, offers a host of applications such as online versions of productivity tools which we all already know and use such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Most however work best when they are used in conjunction with your desktop-installed Office applications. Focusing on email, Office 365 offers a Hosted Exchange service, which transforms the mature, business-proven on-premise application to an on-demand service. Compared to Google Apps, it is quite new—being introduced only last June this year, although its suite of products in an alternate form has been around for much earlier.

1. Storage. Microsoft’s Hosted Exchange email service gives users 25GB of storage. Attachment file sizes are limited to 35MB. Additional storage can be purchased for $2.5 per GB per user per month.
2. Calendaring and Task Management. Exchange integrates a mature feature set for personal productivity including calendaring, resource management, and task management. As an example tasks can be grouped, color coded and easily sorted. Emails can be converted as tasks and so on.
3. Spam filtering, security and reliability. This is an area where perhaps Microsoft easily outshines Google with Exchange’s roots as an enterprise-class application. It offers spam protection, antivirus and others via Microsoft’s Forefore Online Protection for Exchange technology. It offers other features such as more full features user management, identity access management, mail archiving, etc. If you are in a highly regulated industry like financial services or healthcare these features may be essential for your business.
4. Usability. While the web apps of Office 365 is not as fast loading or as slick as Google, it does offer familiarity. Modeled after their desktop brethren, or directly integrating with them—they offer a smoother migration experience for users specially if they have been weaned on Outlook.
5. Mobile access. Like Gmail Microsoft made sure to support a variety of devices on launch, as well as integration with a variety of devices—specially enterprise stalwarts like Blackberry mobile phones.

Overall Office 365 is a solid choice if you are thinking of moving email to the cloud but may be hesitant with changing the apps your users already know and use. Also if you are a business with strict policies related to security and compliance—this service may be something your auditors and IT people may be more comfortable with.

Interested in learning more? Can’t decide which to try? Let us know and find out how we can help get you the right balance between your existing IT systems and infrastructure and the cloud.

The advent of social networking these days gives smaller businesses a bigger voice in the market, allowing them to rise to a level nearly at par with their larger competitors – and elevating the playing field to a battle of efficiency, cost effectiveness, and quality service rather than advertising and marketing budgets.

One of the most difficult challenges smaller businesses face is having a bigger presence in the market. While many of these companies offer good, quality services at much more affordable rates, they are many times overshadowed by larger firms that have bigger budgets to spend on marketing, advertising, and the like.

Things have changed, though, with the advent of social networking. What was once a simple, social, get-to-know-each-other tool between people on the internet has now evolved into a tool that small businesses can take advantage of in order to get their voices heard.

The gist of social networking for business is the simple concept of reaching potentially millions of people at a mere fraction of what is normally spent on advertising and traditional marketing. The wide reach of social media allows businesses to find their voices and showcase what they can do. The playing field then moves from an unfair balance of advertising budgets to a battle of service quality and value for money, as it should be – and many smaller firms can compete effectively in this arena.

There are many ways to tap into the social networking phenomenon to boost your online presence and aid in your marketing. If you are interested in knowing more about this, please contact us and we’ll be glad to assist you in developing strategies that fit your specific requirements and needs.

It is a misconception among many businesses that using a cheap, basic router/firewall is sufficient for day-to-day operations. But it is important to realize that there is more to it than just price – especially since more often than not, going cheap will only get you what you pay for (or maybe even less).

In business, protecting important information and data is paramount. This is why it is recommended for any sort of business to invest in a security system that will prevent any cyber-attacks that might be launched against you.

Unfortunately, though, it’s lost on many that a security system is not just made up of one single thing – software, better staff, better hardware, et cetera. A good and solid security system is composed of several factors working together to create a virtual chain that envelops your business and keeps it safe.

And one of the most underestimated links in this chain is the router/firewall. Many businesses are content using the most basic and cheapest option available on the market, without realizing that their security chain is only as strong as its weakest link. And if you make do with a cheap router/firewall, odds are you’ll get what you pay for – not much.

While basic routers might work fine for homes or individual users, it is a much different scenario when it comes to business operations where basic just doesn’t cut it. Plus, there’s more at stake with business data, so why take the risk with cheap routers that lack the proper security features?

With viruses, malware, and the cyber thieves behind them continuing to grow and evolve, it is important that you understand what it takes to protect your system and your data – and invest in the best solution. Remember that it can take only one incident, one infiltration, to bring your whole business down.

We realize that every system is different and every business has its own specific needs, so if you want to know more about getting the right router/firewall for you, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

With the mobile phone trend evolving into an all-around multimedia device, many people have seen the need to have a smartphone – for different reasons. That is why there are so many different smartphones that cater to different kinds of people with different needs and uses. It’s important to know what you need, and think things through before buying so you can get the smartphone that works best for your purposes.

For many people these days, smartphones have become more of a necessity than a luxury. Being able to stay in touch through constant access to the internet and the thousands of mobile smartphone applications available has made smartphones an indispensable tool.

But with the boom in smartphone use, there also comes a conundrum for many: Which smartphone should I get? With so many choices out there, it’s becoming difficult and confusing to pick the right one. Here are a few quick and simple tips that you might find useful when canvassing the market:

1. Know what you want.
What do you need a smartphone for? Each handset has its own strengths and weaknesses. There are smartphones that integrate email and web browsing and put more focus on multimedia such as audio and video – while there are other no-frills, no-nonsense models that trim features down to those that are the most basic and essential.

2. Consider your carrier.
Carriers are important because there are some smartphones that are only available with certain carriers, or carriers that limit certain features of a particular smartphone. You do have the option of getting an unlocked phone (meaning the device does not come with carrier requirements), but this has its own set of pros and cons that you have to weigh as well.

3. Get a feel for your choices.
Nothing beats actual experience, so visit local stores to get the physical feel of each phone. Is the keypad big (or small) enough for you? Is the device too thick or too thin? Do you like the user interface or is it too complicated for you? These are just some of the questions that you can answer once you get an idea of how it actually feels to use them yourself.

4. User feedback is important.
Talk not only to sales people but also to other people you know. Your friends and acquaintances have actual experience with various smartphones, so ask them what concerns and issues they have with their particular models.

If you have additional inquiries about how you can better use your smartphone for your business, please give us a call and we’ll be happy to assist you.