It’s been a long run.  Windows XP was released to stores in October of 2001, making it the longest running supported product in Microsoft’s history.  In the world of computing, having something stay around that long is a little unusual, but Microsoft was recently faced with a huge problem:  People liked XP.  It was stable and just about everyone who’s touched a computer has at some point interacted with XP.  Most people work with XP for 8 hours in a day, then come home and play on their XP computer for another 2 or 3.  Let’s admit it:  for most of us- it’s a part of our life.  Most of you, however, have upgraded your cars, but not your computers.  In the computing world, this opens you up to problems of stagnation and problems with safety.  Believe it or not, it’s been nearly a year since we introduced you to Windows 7!  It’s time to move forward, and say goodbye to Windows XP.

Microsoft has announced the last availability for Windows XP to be sold as October 22^nd, 2010.  Dell has announced that the last valid purchase date for XP pre-installed will be October 1^st, 2010.  Most OEM’s are following this same model.
Support for XP has been extended to April of 2014- which means the product will be stable and safe up to that point.  But it becomes very important to begin planning an overall upgrade now.

TechSmart Solutions Group in Northern Colorado wants you to know that we are committed to making sure our customers have the best options.  So, what does this mean for our valued customers?

First, it means that if you want to stay with XP in your environment and want to buy any new computers with the “XP Downgrade” option, you have until October 1^st to do so.  In other words, the time to buy is now if you want to stay with XP. Call us at (970) 498-0808, contact us via our website at http://www.onlinepchelp.com, or email one of us to discuss your options.  As a premier Dell Reseller, we have unique pricing and products that are not available in stores and pricing better than Dell’s own website!  We know Dell products inside and out and believe firmly that Dell is going to be your best product partner for your upgrade, and with Dell allowing us to beat their own online pricing – TechSmart is your perfect Dell product provider!

The “XP Downgrade” means that a new system will ship with the Windows 7 license code attached, but will have a non-transferrable XP install from the factory.  This allows you to install Windows 7 when you are ready, knowing the hardware is good for it.  This traditionally has been the best operating model for mid-size offices.  TechSmart has certified Dell technicians that will be able to provide superior support when the time comes to upgrade from XP to Windows 7.

Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate have the ability to run what is called “XP Mode” which allows you to run a virtual PC for applications that work in XP but not in Windows 7.  What this means is that you’ll have the ability to run legacy applications safely until April of 2014.  The downside is that XP Mode is slower and takes up a lot of system resources to run, but it does work very well in most cases- ask DJ about it sometime.  He uses it at home to run a software that is only 32-bit compatible on his 64-bit Windows 7 machine to great success.  With the added memory support of 64-bit, the impact to his system is very minimal.

Second, it means that even though support has been extended, new features may not be available for XP.  Like Windows NT, 95, 98 and 2000 before it, when end-of-life is announced, developers will stop developing new software for XP.   What you will find is software you need for your business may suddenly have updates that require you to use the new version of windows, but it may happen before 2014.

So, Third, the time to look at upgrading your home or office to Windows 7 may be now!

TechSmart can work with you from our offices in Fort Collins to find options for the upgrade and try to estimate the deployment timeframe.  In some cases, for example- some medical clinics, the primary medical software has not yet been certified for Windows 7 even though they’ve been warned my Microsoft about this end of life for over 3 years.  In that case, your best option may be to look at how many computers you’ll need for the next year or so and buy them NOW with the XP downgrade option, and take care of the upgrade later.

For other environments where Windows 7 can be deployed, we will want to evaluate your existing PCs to make sure they will effectively run Windows 7, and whether or not XP Mode can run in your case.

Of course for many others, simply looking at Windows 7 now may be your best bet.  Feedback has been very positive about Windows 7’s overall working and stability.  By and large you’re getting the same speed and stability as XP with a much-upgraded user interface that is easy to learn and will leave you wondering how you ever lived without some features.   Microsoft has a website devoted to software that is known to work or not work within Windows 7.

By and large, the best thing to do is give us a call or contact us via our website at http://www.onlinepchelp.com if you are concerned about meeting this deadline!

As you may know, TechSmart, as a full service technology company, offers recycling of electronic waste.

More than 100 of you took advantage of the opportunity to have your older tech recycled safely, legally and in the most possible environmentally responsible way.  Our direct relationship with the same company many others use as a provider saves money and allows us to recycle your items in bulk.

**UPDATE:  The numbers are in: this recycling drive diverted 5,500 pounds of e-waste from the landfills!**

This recycling drive was our BIGGEST EVER, as you can see here:

A Before and After look

As you probably know, it is illegal to simply throw away tech items – the EPA can and will fine you!

Our partner in recycling is EPA certified and absolutely 0 (zero) of the items recycled are burned, shipped to other countries or buried in landfills.

We will resume our recycling service in mid-July- as you can see we must get our storage space ready for what we anticipate being another record-breaking quarter for our recycling!

2009 may very well be the year of the Netbook.  Before we get into this phenomenon perhaps explaining the differences between portable computers is a good idea…

History of the Laptop

First a bit of history for fun:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_laptops

IBM 5100, the first portable computer

The first portable computer was a monster- the IBM 5100, first appeared in 1975 and weighed in at a hefty 55 lbs, with a blazing 1.9 Mhz processor.  Today most cell phones have well over 100 times the processing power!  The unit cost $19,975 w/ 64K RAM ($79,000 in today’s dollars!)

Epson HX-20

In 1981, Epson introduced the HX-20 portable computer, which was little more than a word processor, but it was portable!

The Compaq Portable

The Osborne 1

Flash forward to the ‘luggable computer’ – the first being the  Osborne 1 http://oldcomputers.net/osborne.html with a 5” screen displaying 52 characters with text.  It originally sold for $1795 ($4199 in today’s dollars).  The 28-lb Compaq Portable  also debuted about the same time for $3590 ($8398 today).

IBM introduced a portable computer near to the size of what could be considered a laptop in 1986 (the first to use 3.5” floppy disks, actually).

IBM convertable

The first laptops

The First Laptop - Toshiba T1000

were introduced by Toshiba (not that we’d recommend buying a Toshiba these days…).  It featured an Intel 80C88 processor running at 4.77 MHz.  Ironically Toshiba now makes laptops for dogs

Toshiba Petbook

so if you really feel like throwing $400 at your dog… there’s a laptop for that too.

Of course who could forget the massively marketed (as somehow original, I suppose) Apple Portable (1989)

Apple Macintosh Portable

which sold for $6500 (a whopping $11,148 today) and PowerBook 100

Apple PowerBook 100

(1991) which sold for $2300 ($3592 today).  Ironically despite the cost, Apple was one of the most successful in the portable computer market, matched perhaps only by IBM’s famously durable ThinkPad series (I actually have a ThinkPad from 1995 that still runs today).

So, why not have a lightweight portable PC?  Ever since Sony successfully introduced the C1 subnotebook the industry has been trying to balance size with power and usability.  Most small notebooks had an unusable screen and keyboard, and the mouse or touchpad interfaces were frustrating.  Enter Asus with their ultra-successful Eee PC netbooks- arguably the most-sold netbook in existence.
You can learn much more by visiting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laptop

Read more…

Announcing a Great PC Deal for the Home Exclusively from TechSmart

Around this time of year we usually get the question:

“I’m looking for a cheap PC- should I buy a computer at _______ (insert retail outlet)?”

We’d have to say… no!

While we don’t mind seeing people come in a year (or sometimes less) after they bought a PC or laptop ‘because it was a good deal’ at a local retailer…  we only seem to see you when you’re bringing in a broken  PC that should have lasted a lot longer!  This is all too common with ‘hook’ deals at these retailers- it’s easy to practically give away something that will break in a year!

That $299 computer may end up costing you $500 to replace in a year and probably has the bottom-rung processor, memory and hard drive.  Just enough to barely run Windows!  So, you’ll end up in our shop needing to upgrade anyway!

With all the options out there, why not ask the people you trust to put together a system you’ll love that doesn’t skimp on quality?  As a top-tier Dell reseller in Northern Colorado, it would only make sense that people ask us these questions!

So this year we thought we’d offer something we’ve never done before- Buy a Dell PC for your home, pre-built to our recommended specifications… for a limited time starting at $499!

Dell Inspiron 537s

The base system is a Dell 537 Slim Tower PC, black

Here’s the specifications we have put together for this awesome PC:

• Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
• Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 (2.93Ghz), Intel GMA x4500 Graphics
• 4 GB DDR RAM on 2 DIMMs
• 320 GB  7200 RPM Hard Drive
• DVD Burner and 19 in 1 Media Card Reader
• Microsoft Works 9 (or upgrade to and Office Package below)
• Keyboard, Mouse
• 1 year IN HOME warranty service

Add any of these exciting options**:

-          In shop setup with common software updates and Open Office setup $42.50*

• Add:  In-Home setup $85*
• Add: Transfer documents from your old PC and recycle the old PC $47.50*
• Add:  Microsoft Office:   Please call for current prices

-          White, Purple, Blue, Red, Orange, Pink or Green Color accents   $20**

-          Upgraded Processor (Core 2 E8400 $60**, Core 2 Quad Q8200 $40**)

-          Upgraded Warranty (2 year $80**, 3 year $99**, 4 year $150**)

-          21.5” HD Monitor with webcam/microphones $280**

-          22” HD Monitor $199**

-          23” HD Monitor $229**

-          24” HD Monitor $299**

-          BluRay/DVD combo drive $91**

-          Gaming graphics card (ATI Radeon HD 4350) $60**

-          Wireless networking, Speakers, Wireless Mice/Keyboard, Backup Drives, Printers – call us for pricing

The systems ship fast- once ordered we can typically have them in just a few business days- plenty of time before the holidays!

You can compare this to similar systems at vendors in town…  we’ve already shopped them, and they all use low-end processors to keep the cost down.  If you want a system that we know will be great for you- this is your best bet and the time is NOW!

*Pricing may be subject to hourly rates of $85/hr billed in increments of .1 hours
**Pricing of components was current in November- please be aware that prices may fluctuate and are only valid when purchased with this system.  Please call for exact pricing of add-on components.

Please also note that this system CANNOT be used in a business environment because it is only sold with Windows 7 Home Premium.  However, if you need a new PC for your office, don’t despair!  We now have pre-configured/recommended Dell PCs and Laptops for the office too!

Interested?

Give us a call at 970-498-0808 today!

{This text was sent to all of our TechAlert subscribers.  To get these messages from us automatically, subscribe to the list here}

Good Morning,

We thought we would let you know that Microsoft has released updates marked as critical:

According to Computerworld – ” Microsoft today patched 15 vulnerabilities in Windows, Windows Server, Excel and Word, including one that will probably be exploited quickly by hackers. None affect Windows 7, the company’s newest operating system.”

Of primary importance is MS Security Bulletin MS09-065 which addresses a vulnerability in the core when using Internet Explorer.

This update is very important because it has the potential to bypass some anti-virus scanning mechanisms, and because it is a ‘drive-by’ download.  A ‘drive-by’ download is when a web server is compromised, typically without the website’s knowledge.  When you access a website a component can be downloaded automatically without your knowledge or consent, which can then be used thru this security hole to install other programs.  Typically we’ve seen this in our shop as ‘spyware defender’ or ‘anti-virus’ products that will ask you to ‘update your subscription’ or guide you to a phony page to attempt to get you to buy a product that doesn’t really exist.

Defending against these attacks:

1. Always run Microsoft updates, if possible automatically.  You can run updates manually right now by going to your Start Menu and finding “Microsoft Update” or “Windows Update” under Programs.
2. Always run an up-to date anti-malware program.  We recommend and use AVG (free for home use) or the more complete and powerful Norton from Symantec.  Other programs such as McAfee, TrendMicro and Kapersky work as well, but be very careful about antivirus products that look too good to be true, or are very pushy about sales.  If you are in doubt- give us a call at 970-498-0808
3. Consider using an alternate web browser if possible such as Mozilla Firefox or Google’s Chrome browser.  DJ has been using Firefox for 7 years without issues.
4. Stay away from websites with higher incidents of malware- this includes Porn, Cracker sites, ‘free’ music download sites and just about any site that asks you to install a ‘codec’ or other viewer.  Steer clear of Facebook applications and sites like Plaxo that will trick you into sharing your personal information.  Also, we do not recommend toolbars for Internet Explorer or Google other than MSN, Google or Yahoo.  Others have been known to be a portal for spyware and other things that can slow down your PC and leave it more vulnerable to attack.

As always, if you have any questions- please feel free to call or email us for help.

-TechSmart Solutions Group

Windows 7!

The name alone indicates a huge shift for Microsoft, not only in giving up on fancy names or years- going back to the old-school versioning system- but that this may just be lucky number seven for them as well.

And being one of Microsoft’s harshest critics over the years… I have to agree.

I’ve used every popular OS out there, from Windows 3.0 up to Windows 7, Mac from about 6 all the way up to the latest “____”-tiger/leopard/scary cat (whatever they want to call it these days) and even popular open source interface offerings such as KDE, Gnome, xfce and the like.  There are elements I like in each, for sure- but I have to say as far as day to day use for me, Windows 7 is a HUGE win.

Those of you already using Vista will be familiar with the Aero interface- it was a big leap forward for Microsoft to finally get in line with the likes of high-end KDE and Mac OS’s that were rendering windows on the graphics card (go figure).

Microsoft added some features that I absolutely love, such as one click search for everything (try it- Windows key and start typing the name of a program- it’ll usually be there within the first three letters.  Very nice feature).  That and, well- it looked pretty.

The problem was that Vista was essentially grafting the Aero interface onto a very tired NT core, most of the components held over from the last major overhaul in 1999- Windows 2000.

At home, I have a above-average PC- Intel Core 7 (overclocked to over 3Ghz) with a nice ATI Graphics card, 6 GB of DDR3 RAM, three hard drives (the main drive being a 15K SAS monster).  The PC should have been screaming fast…  But it wasn’t.  Vista sucked the life out of this PC, to the point where I was ready to go back to XP.  5-8 minute boot times, crashes and overall slow performance (especially playing games!).

That was bad- but nowhere near as bad as the PC at work.  That PC was an aging but not out of date AMD Athlon X2 system which I knew better than to shut off like… ever.  Boot times were DISMAL- Andrew and I once observed a 30 minute boot time!

But you’re waiting for me to get to the good news, so here goes.

Install

Windows 7′s install is the easiest yet.  I know, we say that every time- but this was an experience that shocked us all.  As my PC was first in the office to get the upgrade, we watched with bated breath… as Windows 7 INSTALLED FASTER THAN VISTA WAS BOOTING!  No joke, no lie.  With a few quick clicks of the mouse, Windows 7 was installed from fresh in under 15 minutes.  Amazing!

We’ll get to overall performance soon enough; let’s talk about the upgrade experience.

Upgrade

Upgrading an Operating System is never as simple as it’s made out to be for the novice.  However, I decided at home that rather than a fresh install, I would ‘risk’ an upgrade.  The upgrade advisor was kind enough to show me that though most drivers I had loaded would already work in Windows 7, I should probably upgrade a few before my big Upgrade!  Nice!  So, new drivers installed I went for it.  Unfortunately I have to report that the upgrade took a good amount of time- probably because I don’t have a small amount of data on my PC at home, and it’s all parsed during the upgrade.

So, about two hours later it was finally done. (If you are thinking of upgrading, I HIGHLY advise you have us do it for you at our shop- we make a complete ‘go-back’ copy of your hard drive in shop, and can much better recover from upgrade errors than you normally could at home!  Plus, we keep the copy of your hard drive secured for up to 1 month in the event something was missed or you want to go back- at no additional charge)

How is the computer running now?

Windows 7 Performance

I’ll get the suspense out of the way right now- Windows 7 unlocks the potential of your PC’s hardware in a big way.  Booting in less than 2 minutes, my PCs at work and home are running faster than ever.  I’m fairly certain, though I haven’t done any practical testing, that the performance is actually better than XP in certain areas.

This is likely because Windows 7 is at it’s core designed for use with multiple processor cores, unlike XP that was deployed in the middle of the “Ghz race”.  Nowadays, CPUs have multiple ‘cores’ instead of running faster and producing more heat.  These multiple cores allow more tasks to be run simultaneously, making the computer ‘feel’ more responsive.

In the month I’ve been running Windows 7 I have yet to have a single failure or blue screen.  Issues I had at home have vanished and the response is crisp.  Video rendering (something that has been important for me since getting an HDD-based camcorder) is slick and MUCH faster than Vista, even though I’m using a program designed for XP.  I look forward to the next version with better ‘multi-core’ programming!

The reason is the way Windows 7 (and Server 2008 R2) was built (which we’ll save that for another article), in summary:  Basically they began with a concept Kernel called MinWin and made a compromise based on application compatibility.  Windows 7 is fast, but I look forward to the day we’ll see MinWin really show it’s colors.  But I believe what makes Windows 7 worth the upgrade is the user experience…

Windows 7 Productivity

Here’s where the rubber meets the road.  Windows 7 allows me to multi-task like never before.  And I’m a huge multi-tasker.  I’ll often have remote sessions with several PCs/Servers, two email clients, multiple web browsers, our billing system, music and who knows what else going all at once.

Windows 7 has a lot of new features that are actually making a difference in my productivity.

For the past several years, I’ve operated with more than one monitor.  For the first time with Windows 7- I now have 4 monitors at my desk at work, and 2 at home.  I’ve just gone from multi-tasking to mega-tasking.  But even with all these monitors, there’s still a need for keeping track of windows in the background and foreground.  Windows 7 has three methods I like, and several more available.

Like Vista, you can hold down the Alt Key and press Tab to display the windows currently running.  This has actually been a feature for years, but Windows 7 puts a whole new spin on it.

Alt + Tab

While holding the Alt key, pressing tab (or using the mouse scroll) will scroll one by one thru the programs running, with a small thumbnail (as seen above).  Windows 7 adds the new feature of actually dimming temporarily everything but the application highlighted, so you can not only switch applications on the fly, but in my case, you’ll know which monitor to look at as well.  For those of you Vista users who dig the shuffle look, Windows+Tab will still show you the running applications in that way.

Another very awesome feature is the re-designed Aero Taskbar.  Gone are the endless arrays of stacked rectangles at the bottom of the screen.  The new taskbar merges a few concepts that have been around since Stardock

introduced Object Dock (which some claim Apple copied with their interface as well) and the Windows 2000/XP QuickLaunch bar.

Very customizable, the new Taskbar has several cool options.  Launch a program, and the icon will appear on the bar with an icon only (by default).  Right click on that icon and you can ‘pin’ it to the taskbar, meaning that you can launch the program from the taskbar directly.

But it doesn’t end there- when a program icon is pinned to the taskbar, whenever it is launched a ‘glass box’ will appear around the icon indicating the program is active.  Mouse over the icon, and directly above it a preview of the active window(s) will appear (Aero Peek).  Move your mouse up to the preview and the screen will dim everything except for that window, letting you know where the window is.  Then click the preview to bring that window into focus!

As far as multi-tasking, this has been a HUGE improvement for me, because I switch in between programs and windows a great deal.  This allows me to always be able to focus my eyes in the same spot to get the information I need- no more taking 5 seconds to read text in the taskbar to find the window I’m looking for- now I’m to where I need in about 1 second.  That may not seem like a big deal, but I know I’m not the only one out there with 8 windows open at once, am I?

Another area that I’m enjoying a good deal in Windows 7 is that the very annoying Red shield icon when windows wants to tell you something is amiss is gone, replaced with a gentle black and white flag.  Click the flag to be reminded of the various things you need to look at (or ignore).

New Taskbar notification options

Speaking of the right hand of the taskbar, a new feature in Windows 7 makes it easier to do something that required a ‘power tool’ in XP- choose which notification icons are hidden.  This is huge for me, because my eyes naturally monitor that area of the screen to notice any issues, etc.  Being able to choose which notifications are ‘sticky’ and which ones are not is a big deal for me.

There are several more improvements to productivity I’ve only recently discovered- for example, drag a window to the side, top or bottom of your monitor and you’ll have a queue to be able to maximize or stack the window automatically.  Very cool (but hard to describe- you’ll have to see it to truly appreciate it).

Several other nice features exist, for example, it is very easy to turn off what I call the ‘are you sure you want to be sure about being sure?’ notifications that annoyed people so much in Vista (UAC is what Microsoft calls it).  The system will gently remind you with a shield icon any time you are doing anything that could be used by an attacker to compromise your system.

Hundreds of other improvements including color depth beyond imagination (48 bit), support for ultra-fast solid state drives, and an exciting feature called Compatibility Mode, which we are already making use of at the office.

It’s Windows XP… inside Windows 7!

XP mode is a virtual PC running Windows XP, right inside your Windows 7 desktop.  So any application that can’t run properly on Windows 7, you’ll have the option to install in this virtual PC.  This capability has been around in some respects for about 6 years, however, this is the first time Microsoft has integrated a fully-licensed copy of XP into the product.  That’s right- it’s two PCs in one, but you only pay for the one license.  Further improvements in virtualization technology (developed right here in Fort Collins by AMD, thank you very much) allow for near-seamless performance, which is nice for me because I run the 64 bit Windows 7 which cannot run several old programs.  With XP mode, I just install it and launch from the taskbar- everything just works!  It’s great!  This also makes Windows 7 a good value and a buy in for companies running software that hasn’t yet been certified for running on Windows 7.

But it doesn’t end there- several programs and games that wouldn’t run under Vista will now run under Windows 7!

The bottom line is that you talked, Microsoft Listened.

Is Windows 7 good for me?

This is where it gets awesome- the hardware requirements for Windows 7 are about what they were for Vista, only the difference now is that you can actually USE your computer if you only have the minimum requirements

Odds are very good that if your PC was made in the past 3-4 years, you’ll have no trouble with Windows 7, though I have to say that my first load of the Windows 7 release candidate was actually on a 6 year old Athlon 64 3200 with 1.5GB RAM, and it ran great!

The big question is whether to upgrade or install fresh, and my advice here is to call us at TechSmart for direct advice on your situation- 970-498-0808

We have all had a month or more with Windows 7 so we definitely know it well enough to be honest with you.

An example (DJ's home PC) of the updated Windows 7 Experience Index

The Windows Experience Index has been expanded in Windows 7 to give an even better indicator of how your computer will do with various tasks.  Your lowest score is the index, in my case, to my surprise- is the hard drive.  This tells me that I have some work to do discovering why this is, but it also tells me that my system is well suited for my favorite games, one of which has a required index of 3.3 and a recommended index of 4.1  (I can actually boost my processor and graphics scores up to 7.9 by a process called overclocking, but I haven’t gotten to that part of testing quite yet).

Microsoft has once again put together an assessment tool which will tell you if your computer will handle Windows 7 -learn more here.

So- there you have it, a shining endorsement from a harsh OS critic.  Stay tuned for more articles about Windows 7 and it’s partner Server system, 2008 R2!

Windows 7 is officially available on October 22nd, but can be added for free to select Dell laptops now!  Call us for details.

Remember, call us at TechSmart if you have any questions or want to talk about your upgrade!

Of course you should always have a good backup at work, with a fully comprehensive disaster recovery plan- if you don’t, call us and we can certainly help you with that.

But what about at home?

We’re here to bring you some tips about easy (and even FREE) ways to keep your data backed up in case of emergency or accidental deletion!

Concept 1:  It’s not IF it fails, it’s WHEN!

You see a shiny new PC.  We see a complex system of elecronics and moving parts with a rapidly increasing rate of failure with every day that passes.

If you don’t get anything else out of this article- get this.

EVERY HARD DRIVE THAT HAS EVER BEEN MADE HAS OR WILL FAIL EVENTUALLY!

It’s the nature of their existance.  It’s not their fault, and certainly they are more reliable and bigger than ever before.  But with the advent of electronic storage for everything from documents and especially photos; preparedness is the mark of the successful!

The hard drive is a series of highly sensitive metal plates that store data while turning anywhere from 4000-15000 RPM- in some cases as long as your computer is on!  That’s a lot of turning and a lot that can go wrong pretty easily.  It’s a wonder we can store anything on these devices at all!  But one-way membranes keep the platters dust and moisture free and they are manufactured with extremely rigorous clean room standards.
But all of that will not save them from years of heat, jolts and just wear from data being written and deleted millions of times.

So, at some point that you don’t ever know- your hard drive is going to fail.  So what do you do?

One way to combat this is to have redundant drives in your computer- that way if one fails the other immediately picks up the slack.  Ask us at TechSmart how this can be set up for you.  But this still isn’t enough to truly protect you!

Concept 2:  Life Happens

Fires, Floods, Theft- these are all things that happen to people that never dreamed of it happening to them.  It may not happen to you, but then again fires don’t exactly tell you when they’re coming.  Nor do thieves.  You simply don’t know.  There’s no way around it.  The solution is to have an off-site backup of your data.  We’ll discuss this more in a bit, but first you must understand concept 3…

Concept 3:  CYA (or B)

Cover Your Butt is the nice way of saying it.  It’s incredibly important to have a backup copy of your hard drive for when it fails.  But you may be amazed to find that a shocking number of people that come into our office either have no plan at all or have a plan they aren’t following!

You need a backup solution that actually works with the way you do things.

For example, DJ will keep in his desk at work an external hard drive with a secured copy of his documents, photos and MP3 files.  Securing these is a discussion for another time, but needless to say storing a hard drive at the office it wouldn’t be impossible for someone to walk away with it- so having a security solution on the device is important.
But here’s the problem; DJ’s recently been spending his evenings scanning all of his paper documents into secured PDF files and shredding the documents.  To keep an up to date copy he would have to either carry the hard drive back and forth each night (which negates the purpose of having it offsite and causes wear and tear, not to mention an increased theft liability), or put it on a flash drive to sync at work ( a pain!).

Many customers have come in with bad hard drives and I ask them about their backup and they sigh and tell me that they haven’t updated their backup drive in months and need documents they created last week!  This is the second problem with these solutions- they aren’t automatic, or aren’t automatic enough to be practical.

Concept 4:  The Flash drive is for moving data, not storing it!

That brings us to the next concept- a wonder of technology called the flash drive.  The flash drive is a small memory chip that attaches to your USB port and shows up as a drive in Windows.  Many people use this as a backup solution…  BUT THEY SHOULDN’T!!!

Studies show that the majority of flash drives will fail more rapidly than hard drives, and are much more likely to have memory corruption and loose files.  In other words, their great for moving data from point A to point B, but NOT FOR BACKUPS!

The solution seems hopeless but we assure you it is not.

enter…

The Online Backup Solution

DJ has been using DropBox for several months now and loves it.

This solution is free for 2GB of storage and has a small application on your desktop that automatically keeps itself up to date with files you put in your ‘dropbox’ to syncronize online.

But it doesn’t end there- DropBox lets you access files thru a web browser from wherever you are (securely, of course) and even syncronize laptops or every PC in your house automatically (up to your storage limit).

DropBox also has a really cool undo function that keeps versions of your backup for 30 days (unlimited with the paid version).  It’s also expandable with a paid subscription so that you can store more of your photos, whatever- without having to worry about keeping things up to date on an external hard drive.

And restoring files is easy- just install the application and put in your password and the application automatically restores your files to your DropBox.

DropBox does have one limitation in that in Vista, the file structure is different; photos and documents are kept in seperate folders (finally) but the DropBox has photos under documents.

What DJ does is uses a free utility from Microsoft called SyncToy that can automatically syncronize a set of folders to another.  For DJ, this solves two problems- 1)  His documents are about 1.4GB but at 12 MP, photos climb up to 3 GB a month (16 GB as of this writing).  Obviously online backup would be expensive for this so a combination of solutions is used (SyncToy to both an internal and external drive one every week).  2)  Only documents in certain folders change frequently enough that there’s concern about having an immediate backup, so this free solution works very well!

If you’d like some help setting up DropBox or any other online backup solution- give us a call- we can even use our remote support tool to be at your computer without having to visit your home!

Sooner or later, your hard drive is going to fail.

And now you’re out of excuses to have a reliable backup for when it does!  Call us at 970-498-0808 to discuss the right option for you and to have us set it up right from your desktop!

Though nothing new specifically, here at TechSmart we’ve notice a pretty drastic increase in spam messages that appear to come from ourselves!

First off, no.  Your computer isn’t somehow sending spam messages to yourself (we assume, if you have current malware (virus/spyware) protection).  The way these spam messages appear to be from you is a process called ‘spoofing‘.

Understanding this fully is difficult, but the short explanation is that when the current email standards we use were developed, the thought of someone using email for marketing or malicious intent was just not conceivable.  Networks were generally very closed and frankly- operating was expensive.  So, the protocol used for sending mail, called SMTP, has no method of authenticating a message (or in other words, proving that mail from you actually came from you).  Everything in email (including attachments, by the way) is sent in basic text- there’s no built in security or method of ‘tagging’ messages to prove that they were absolutely sent by you.  The sender’s name and email are just more text that is in the stream.
So, given the right methods of writing software, it is not only possible but somewhat easy to send message that appear to come from someone else.  In fact, this is something that you can do even with most email programs- all you would have to do is give another person’s name and email address instead of your own when setting up the account.

Now, most everyone has (or at least should have) a method of spam filtering- a service or program that automatically scans each incoming message with something called a Learning Bayesian Filter.  This learns what you consider UCE (Unsolicited Email or ‘spam’) and legit messages, or ‘ham’ and applies a mathematical formula to predict when messages are intended for you or not.
Normally, this method works pretty well once you have the filter ‘trained’ as to what you consider spam or ham.  However, there are a few basic issues that cause all of this learning to go right out the window.  First, a good number of spam filters bypass messages that look to be from you because many users are in the habit of CC’ing themselves on messages.  A default behavior is often to either bypass the filter completely or to assign a much lower ‘spam score’ to messages appearing to come from you.  Second, Bayesian analysis works on text, but doesn’t work so well with attached images.  The majority of this new breed of spam contains words in the subject that are usually things you’d want to see, such as “Re:  Your Order” and “Account Update”; things to that effect.  The rest of the message is just an attachment.
In the age of people sending pictures back and forth, even to themselves in some cases, you can see how this becomes a nightmare for spam filters!
The final and possibly biggest problem facing email filtering is that, despite proposed methods of getting around the SMTP downfalls, such as SPF, PGP Signing and countless other proposals… have all been poorly implemented.  So, sadly, there’s still no reliable way to be sure mail is actually from who it claims to be from!

All that being said-  we have a few suggestions that may help:

1)  Use a paid external email filtering service.
TechSmart uses Privacy Networks filtering for our needs, and we even host a dedicated set of servers that are available for a small monthly fee.  We have found that for us and our customers, mail getting thru to the inbox has been cut substantially and at a much lower cost than the competition.  Therefore we highly suggest the service if you are operating your own business or have your own domain name for email.
The gotcha with these paid external services is they only work if you have control over your email domain- for example, if you use Comcast, Qwest or even free webmail providers such as AOL, Hotmail, Gmail and the like- the service doesn’t work.  However, if you are interested in getting off of those services and hosting your own email- we have dedicated servers that allow that as well- just give us a call to discuss your needs.  In addition, we highly recommend servers that require specific authentication for you to send thru them.  This is an unfortunate downfall with some services like Comcast and Qwest, etc.  If you aren’t required to login to send a message, a program you don’t know about could be sending mail out completely unknown to you.  Virus filtering is always important as well.

2)  Learn to use your sent items folder
Most email clients will keep records of email you have sent, so CCing yourself on messages is not only redundant, it will confuse your spam filter!  So, instead of sending messages to yourself, look in your sent items folder to verify your message was sent, or request a ‘read reciept’ from your recipients.
This will also help you not panic if you see a bunch of mail that appears to be from you.

3)  Use White/Grey/Black lists appropriately
A method of making things easier for the spam filters is to allow you to create lists of email addresses that you will always want, sometimes want or never want- these are commonly called white, grey, and black lists (accordingly).  These allow you to say “mail from this person is okay” but unfortunately, this allows for only one check of the message for content- the ‘from’ address.  This is usually why spam addressed as from you or from people you know will get thru.  Another very common whitelist to be aware of is ‘entire domain’ whitelists- in other words, X@y.com and Z@y.com all come thru automatically because they assume you know everyone in y.com’s domain.
A method I have been using lately to combat the ‘spoofed’ mail problem is to use my ‘greylist’- this keeps everything in a kind of spam quarantine- I log into my filter server and examine the greybox, and select any messages from myself and train those messages as spam (see the next suggestion).
Another similar method if you never send messages to yourself, is to simply blacklist yourself; but please be aware that blacklisting causes a message to be immediately deleted.  There are a host of ways this can cause issues, so I suggest doing a lot of testing of your email as soon as you blacklist yourself to be sure you’re getting the messages you need to be getting.

4)  Train your email filters
This is a very often over-looked thing but any spam filter worth paying for also has a plugin for Outlook, or some easy method of training messages as spam.  I mentioned before I was having trouble with spam coming in looking like it was from me.  Here’s how I solved this issue.  I made an entry in the ‘Grey List’ for my own email address, that way, any messages coming in claiming to be from my own account were automatically caught in the greybox.  So today I logged in and selected all of these messages (there’s a handy ‘select all’ button), made sure there were no legit messages in the list, and with the click of one button, trained them all as spam.  Then I removed my email address from the greylist so they would go thru normal spam processing.  Now messages appearing to be sent from me that match that profile will be tagged as spam (and I just checked- it’s working!) and never seen by me again.

5)  Adjust your spam score settings
Once you have trained your filter as to what you consider spam, if you’re still getting mail coming thru, try adjusting your filter to be more aggressive in what it moves to your Greybox or quarantine.  This will very from filter to filter, but typically higher numbers indicate more likelihood of being spam.  So, if you want more messages to be in the quarantine instead of your inbox, increase the number (SLOWLY!) of your greybox and trashcan.
IMPORTANT NOTE:  When you increase your spam score settings it becomes very important to monitor your greybox/quarantine for messages that are legit.  If your filter offers it, I suggest using a ‘ham training’ button for good messages, that way the filter can learn good and bad.  Most will offer an option to “forward and whitelist” which will send the message to your inbox and add a whitelist entry, always assuring that mail claiming to be from that sender should be sent thru.  If you don’t watch this list when you increase your score- you could start loosing legit emails, which is also why I highly recommend setting no more than 1 point score difference each week.

6)  Choose a longer email address.
I’m guilty of this, I like having a simple email address (dj@domain.com, for example) to give out to people, but often that is an easy guess for spammers and spoofers.  Often it’s better to choose a longer username (djthepcmaster@domain.com, for example) so that it’s much harder for these programs to guess.

I would guess that spam is always going to be an issue and there is always some new trick up their sleeves.  As always, if you weren’t expecting a mail, even if it looks completely legit, don’t click on links or open attachments unless you’re 100% sure the mail is safe.

If you have more questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us!

A host of information on this issue is available-  One authority in this area is CERT.  Keep in mind that the majority of spam actually comes from overseas sources or from people failing to have virus protection on their PCs.

Before you bring your TV, Monitor, Computer or other electronic component to the dump, or simply drop it off at a ‘free recycling’ place- we encourage you to view the following:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10092317-54.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=GreenTech

For almost a year now, TechSmart has committed to helping to solve this global crisis.  We partner with an EPA Certified recycler that ships 0% of it’s components overseas and recycles every component it receives.  No, this isn’t a cheap process, and we do charge $5-$10 per component; but we believe it to be a small price to pay when you see what is at stake.

We believe that as leaders in the field of technology, it is our duty to lead by example and not wait for government mandates on this issue.  Technology is an investment, and that investment doesn’t end with the initial purchase.  We believe it is our responsibility as technology users to assure that what we use isn’t destructive to the world around us after we are done with it, as well as think forward of what investments will leave the smallest footprints for the next generation.

We don’t offer gimmicks or tricks.  Just the truth- if you are concerned about what will soon be a global crisis and want to do something about it- start at your company, at your home.  We’ll be there to help.

If you have questions, don’t hesitate to call us at 498-0808