Staying Connected

Windows 7 Gets Great Early Business Reviews

Windows 7 has only been out for a few months and it is already garnering great support from the business world.  ChangeWave surveyed corporate IT buyers to see how businesses were reacting to Windows 7.  The results were overwhelming.  37% were very satisfied and another 56% were somewhat satisfied (Golub, & Carton, 2009).  That means that 93% were on the satisfied side of the fence.  This is a vast difference from Vista’s challenged beginnings.

Many previous survey respondents said their companies were holding off on purchases in anticipation of Windows 7.  Now that it is here, nearly one-fifth of over 1,700 survey respondents say that their companies are not only making those replacement purchases, but are also accelerating their upgrade cycle meaning that even though newly purchased XP machines are running fine, they are upgrading them to match the Windows 7 operating systems of new purchases.

All in all, this is good news for Microsoft and for consumers.  Microsoft earns back a little respect, and consumers can feel more confident about making the switch to Windows 7.

 

Golub, A, & Carton, P. (2009, December 22). Windows 7 and corp pc buying. Retrieved from http://www.changewave.com/freecontent/viewalliance.html?source=/freecontent/2009/12/windows-7-corporate-pc-purchasing-12-22-09.html

Microsoft is Ordered to Stop Selling Word, but MS Finds a Workaround

This all started when a Canadian software company i4i took Microsoft to court alleging that Microsoft was using code in its Word program that i4i held the patent for.  The code allows users to more efficiently edit XML (Extensible Markup Language) which determines how the program interprets content.  Ultimately, the court found in favor of i4i and ordered Microsoft to stop selling the code in question by January 11, 2010 and to pay restitution to i4i in the amount of $290 Million.

Microsoft of course appealed the decision, but the appellate court upheld the lower court’s decision.  On the surface, one may think that Microsoft may have to stop selling Word, but it is only that one specific piece of code that deals with XML that is infringing on i4i’s patent.  Microsoft has had a contingency plan in the works since August and they are poised to remove that code from the Word program so that all copies of Word sold after January 11 are free of the patent-infringing code.  Furthermore, that code will not be anywhere in Office 2010.

So what does this mean to consumers?  Not too much.  No recall was ordered for current versions of Word, so no one is required to remove Word from their PC’s or destroy their disks.  If you need to purchase a copy of Office after January 11, go ahead; the offending code will be removed by that point.  If you have been looking forward to purchasing Office 2010, nothing is holding you back.  Microsoft is considering appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court, but until that decision has been made, it will comply with the court’s orders.

ConnectWise Has New Videos Uploaded On YouTube

Go to www.youtube.com/user/ConnectWiseIT to check it out.

You'll find Product Demos, Tutorials, client Testimonials, and Workshop Highlights.  Enjoy!

Want to request a video? Want to see how something works, product information, tips and tricks? Put in a request and we'll post it.

New Computer not as fast as you like?

The ConnectWise Engineers are finding ways to tweak out all the performance on new computers where they can. Most of the business class machines we install today just come with the standard integrated on board graphics card, and they work pretty good in a business environment. But, users that like to have lots of windows open may notice that the screen seems to drag at times, which is typically a result of having Aero Glass turned on (by default in most cases). Scott on our help desk makes this great recommendation to tweak your graphics settings on a Vista or Windows 7 computer for optimum business performance by turning off the full Aero Glass effect. 

How do you do this? Pretty Simple, these settings can be found in the control panel under System > Advanced System Settings

New SQL Injection attack means more malware attacks

A large scale SQL injection attack is surfacing today that can infect your computer with the Backdoor.Win32.Buzus.croo (a Trojan virus) as a drive by attack. Over 132,000 pages are showing signs of the malicious code according to Help Net Security So far, this attack is looking for many exploits to attack from:

• Integer overflow vulnerability in Adobe Flash Player, described in CVE-2007-0071.
• MDAC ADODB.Connection ActiveX vulnerability described in MS07-009.
• Microsoft Office Web Components vulnerabilities described in MS09-043.
• Microsoft video ActiveX vulnerability described in MS09-032.
• Internet Explorer Uninitialized Memory Corruption Vulnerability – MS09-002.

None of these patches are recent (the newest was published August 11th, 2009), so be sure to patch your computers. Managed IT Clients for ConnectWise, these patches have been pushed to your computers already, but if you have any questions, please contact the Help Desk.

Leggo My Bandwidth!

AT&T, the exclusive carrier for the iPhone, is complaining about those darn bottleneckers.  Representatives of AT&T claim that network usage of iPhone owners has been increasing.  The primary culprit – streaming.  Streaming is when a user plays media from the Internet instead of having the media stored locally on their device and playing it from there.  If you play songs from your iTunes library, that’s local audio.  If you play songs from Pandora.com, that’s streaming audio.

AT&T now cites streaming audio and video as the top bandwidth usage of their network.  Furthermore, they say not everyone is streaming, but some users stream a lot.  And because streaming takes up so much bandwidth, it appears that 3% of users are utilizing 40% of the bandwidth (Associated Press, 2009).

As a result, AT&T wants to change the way bandwidth is managed.  There has been speculation about intentional bandwidth choking, or charging based on the amount of bandwidth being used.  AT&T has not made any official statement about what they are going to do aside from saying that they will “give high-bandwidth users incentives to reduce or modify their usage.”

What AT&T does not state is exactly how much bandwidth is currently being used.  Granted, a small percentage of users are consuming a majority of the pipe, but if the overall bandwidth usage is only 60% of what is available, then it isn’t a problem.  That does not mean that we shouldn’t plan for the future, but hopefully AT&T considers all the unintended consequences before implementing a plan that wasn’t well thought out.  The worst thing AT&T could do is use this as an excuse to oppose Net Neutrality.  If you are not familiar with Net Neutraility, you can read my article on it here.

Until AT&T decides what to do, it will be business as usual.  But keep in mind, consumers have some control in the matter as well.  If you want to listen to music on your iPhone and you don’t have the songs stored locally, then by all means, listen to streaming audio…that’s what it’s there for.  But if you do have the songs or playlists stored locally, then play them locally instead of streaming.  It will take some of the burden off the network and maybe AT&T won’t have to do anything.  So help a brother out,  think of it as e-conserving.

Associated Press, . (2009). At&t: tighter control of cell data usage ahead. New York Times, Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/12/09/technology/AP-US-TEC-ATT-Data-Usage.html?_r=1&ref=technology

Google Goggles Goes Global

Say that three times fast!  And no, it isn’t a typo.  Goggles is a new tool released by Google intended to make visual searching easy and quickly accessible.  The idea is that you take a picture with your cell phone, run it through Google Goggles and you get search results and background information on what you just took a picture of.  You can watch the two minute video below to get an overview of how it works.

Click for Video

Imagine being able to take a picture of a restaurant and get search results such as local reviews, menu items and prices, operating hours, and the number to call for reservations.  Some people have concerns about how far this technology can go.  Imagine version 3.0 being able to do face recognition.  You could take a picture of someone and find out all about them from their facebook, linked in, myspace, twitter, and any other social media accounts that have a picture profile.  Some may think this would be a great feature, while others caution against an Orwellian invasion of privacy.  This is not currently a feature of Goggles, just something the blogosphere has begun to talk about.

Right now, the app is only available on Android-based mobile phones.  There is no word yet as to when it will be available for iPhone, Windows Mobile, or BlackBerry.

So I have two questions for all you readers.  Please post a comment with your answers…

1.  Do you think Google Goggles would be useful for you?  In other words, if it were available for your phone right now, would you download it and use it?

2.  Do you think that Google Goggles should ever be advanced to do facial recognition?

Is the Cloud all Hype?

If you're in the IT industry, one of the loudest buzz words this year has been the Cloud. I personally have attended several events this year on what the cloud is and how to best migrate into the cloud. Google has clouds, Amazon has clouds, Microsoft has clouds, and even ConnectWise has clouds. You can get your cloud private, public, internally, externally, and even a hybrid of all of the above. So, is this cloud thing all hype, reminiscent of the great dot com bubble of 1999? 

How Many People are Still Using Office 2003?

Office 2010 is on the horizon. But I know there are some people who historically trail technology by 1 or 2 versions. So my 4--part question is,

 

1. How many of you are still using Office 2003?
2. Once Office 2010 gets released will you move up to 2010?
3. Or...do you consider yourself NOT an early adopter, and will you just upgrade to Office 2007?
4. Or will you not upgrade at all? (not recommended)

 

When you respond, include your reasons why. Thanks!