In a cruel announcement, Microsoft announces that XP will be available for manufacturers for the next two years – but for Home only, not Professional. The thinking is that Vista won’t be suitable for all the ultraportable, low cost PCs that are flooding the channels.
If you haven’t noticed, spammers have gotten trickier over the past few months - most of us have seen an uptick in the amount of spam that’s getting through the filters.
For those interested, here’s a good analysis of how they’re getting past the electronic guards.
A client was nice enough to forward a warning that Quickbooks 2006 must be at the latest patch level before it will work with Microsoft’s updated Internet Explorer 7 browser. This posting mentions that QB2005 users don’t have a patch yet (if ever?)
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Here’s an interesting chart from Consumer Reports regarding laptop reliability. According to their findings, it doesn’t matter what you buy, there’s a good chance it’s going to break.
Even though Vista’s release is just around the corner, you might need a new PC right away. But how much will that jump to the Vista operating system cost you?
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One of my clients recently had an emergency with their email system. Many of their customers’ servers were rejecting their messages, because my client was supposedly sending out spam.
We scoured their computers, but didn’t find any zombie systems that would normally be responsible for such behavior. But the firewall logs were showing emails being delivered directly from the client computers, which made no sense at all as they were using an email server.
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One of the first tasks I have to contend with when I’m brought into a new office is computer cleanup. And the first question on my client’s lips?
“Why is my PC so slow?”
Before you hand over your old Treo to the local eBay shop or brother-in-law, read this article.
It’s important to properly wipe any confidential data. As mentioned, Blackberries make this pretty easy, but others have wipe options that are harder to find.
Check this site for your particular model.
Rumor has it that Cablevision is increasing its upstream speed for Boost customers from 2 to 5 megabits. This adds to its already impressive 30 megabits download speed.
To put this in perspective, a T-1 data circuit is 1.5 megabits whether uploading or downloading.
It’s impressive, but will your business actually use it? Only if youre transferring very large files. 650 megabytes of data (your typical CD) will shoot out this new cable offering in about 20 minutes. Great if you want to implement an offsite backup strategy.
The new speed is being rolled out across the tristate area and there’s no change to your monthly fee. We should have it within the next few weeks.
I’ve mentioned this in our Guerrilla Briefs, but it bears repeating: eBay is a great source for office supply store coupons!