Where technology experts at Endsight share their expertise on IT Management, the issues that arise for clients, and the benefits of technology for medical practices, biotech firms, law firms, financial services and other small businesses in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Feb 20th, 2009
by Bay Area IT Management Filed under: Hardware
Fix Computer Errors With These Quick Tips
By Kaiser R.
When it comes to fixing computers to make them run faster and smoother again. It can become quite a task if you truly don’t know how to. Here are a few things you can do to make your computer fast again.
As you use your computer files and folders become unorganized in your PC’s way of organizing things. This is called fragmentation. After your hard drive has so many fragments it will take longer for your computer to find files in its own filing system thus taking time to run or open programs and files you are trying to use. With Windows and other operating systems they usual provide you with a disk defragmenter tool which will get rid of fragments found on your computer. This will make loading programs and files much faster.
Get rid of any junk files that you may have. People tend to not clear out their internet browser temporary files folder, cookies, history data, etc. Cleaning this at least once a month will help keep the junk to a minimum and help in improving performance.
I’m sure you all know about scanning for viruses, spyware, and even malware. When you do scan for this make sure you are running in safe mode. For windows you simply turn on your computer and press F8 at the boot screen.
When Operating systems are running in safe mode they only load the bare minimum files and programs to run the operating system. This will make sure you are able to get rid of them certainly. Be sure to use more than one scanner some can find certain infections while others can’t.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kaiser_R.
http://EzineArticles.com/?Fix-Computer-Errors-With-These-Quick-Tips&id=2005769
Tags: computer errors, disk defragmenter tool, f8, fix errors, improving performance, internet browser, IT support, quick tips, safe mode, Windows Computer Network
Jun 25th, 2008
by Mike Chaput, President & CEO Filed under: Email
When I first started in the IT services business back in the late 90’s, e-mail was starting to become pretty important to most business. Still the prevailing opinion back then was that when comparing importance of availability, e-mail was a distant second to the company phone system. In fact, people would continual say authoritatively “The phone systems CAN NOT go down!”
Today, pretty much every worker has a cellular phone, and while still very inconvenient, if the corporate phone system does go down, business still functions. E-mail on the other hand has become such a mission critical component of the way we do business, the importance of a reliable, available, and secure system is a huge priority of businesses of all size.
As CEO of a company who acts as the outsourced IT department for dozens of small business, you can imagine we are in a position to make recommendations for e-mail solutions frequently. There are basically two options when it comes to managing e-mail. On one hand you have server based e-mail solutions and on the other you have desktop (POP) e-mail. In the case of the desktop solutions, e-mail is routed from a server on the internet, usually owned by your ISP, to the desktops in your environment where your e-mail will ultimately reside on the PC of the user. A server based solution, all the e-mail for the corporation is funneled to a server on the network and the users access the local server to see their mail.
The desktop solutions are very inexpensive (in many cases free), but are very unadvisable for an organization that values security, reliable, ease of access, or availability to e-mail. A much better idea is to spend the money on an e-mail server. By centrally managing all e-mail boxes in your company, you can now back-up email, control access, and offer a wide range of connectivity options such as remote locations, handheld devices, or web-consol access. Furthermore, since all of the e-mail boxes are centrally located a variety of enhanced collaborative features are available to your team such as shared contacts or the ability to view other workers calendars.
Of the server based e-mail options out there, by far the most popular for small businesses is Microsoft Exchange Server. It is extremely feature rich and because it is so popular, it is much easier to find good IT support than other options such as Novell Groupwise, Lotus Notes, or free software built on Linux. If you haven’t yet moved your business to a server based e-mail platform….there is no time like the present. You won’t regret your decision.
Tags: handheld devices, IT support, Microsoft Exchange Server, outsourced IT department, POP e-mail, remote locations, server based e-mail solutions, web-consol access