Staying Connected

ConnectWise and USF Welcome Skip Holtz!

ConnectWise has been a long time sponsor of USF and its athletic programs, and now ConnectWise joins the Tampa Bay community in congratulating Skip Holtz for being selected as the new Head Coach of the Bulls’ football team.

Holtz previously coached at East Carolina and accrued 38 wins in 5 seasons. He is excited to be coaching in Tampa, FL.

ConnectWise regularly has a presence at home games and frequently offers a raffle for students in which they have a chance to win a cash prize that is awarded to the student on the football field between quarters. With Skip Holtz and next year’s team, ConnectWise is looking forward to a great new season. Go Bulls!

Adobe Releases Vulnerability Patch on Tuesday 1-12-10

Adobe is releasing a patch tomorrow, 1-12-10, that will secure a vulnerability in Acrobat and Reader that allows a program to hijack a PC.  The fix is simple; just download and install the update as soon as it is available.  The quickest way to check is to open up any PDF document.  When it is open, click on Help > Check for updates.  Adobe will automatically scan your product and version and let you know what is available. 

If it has been a while since you’ve done updates on Adobe, then there may be a few that you need to do, and you may need to do some updates in the first wave, then close and restart and do another round of Adobe updates.  If this is the case, then keep checking for updates until all of them have been installed.

If you have any questions at all, contact your Network Engineer or Account Manager and we can help you out.

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 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.

The Big Easy Offer is Back!

 

This is a great transition from my last post about not waiting until the beginning of the new year to make that purchase you’ve been thinking about.  From November 1 to January 2, Microsoft is running their Big Easy offer again.  For those who are not familiar with this program, it works like this.  You purchase qualifying products from Microsoft such as Server 2008, Pro versions of Vista or Windows 7, Office Small Business or Enterprise edition, or a choice of many, many others.  We send in the purchase information to Microsoft.  Microsoft sends you a credit voucher that you can spend with ConnectWise for services.  The services can be anything labor-based such as installing your new software, regular service calls, help desk support, etc.

At this point, the two most popular questions are, “which products are qualifiers?” and “how much is the credit voucher?”.  There are a lot of products that are qualifiers, but here is a list of some of the most popular ones:

• Windows XP Pro
• Windows Vista Pro
• Windows 7 Pro
• Any edition of Exchange Server
• Office Pro Plus
• Office Small Business
• Office Enterprise
• SharePoint
• Various versions and editions of SQL
• The following editions of Windows Server: Web, Small Business Server, Essentials, Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter (Standard and Premium where applicable)

This is not a comprehensive list.  If you have questions about a particular product, call us and we can look it up.

Regarding the amount of the voucher, it depends on how many products you purchase.  But here is an example.  Let’s say you need a new server and 5 new PC’s.  The server will have Windows 2008 Small Business Server, and the PC’s will have Windows 7 Pro.  In addition to that, each PC will get Microsoft Office 2007 Small Business Edition.  Your credit voucher will be great because you are buying multiple products from multiple categories (Server OS, Desktop OS, and Office System).  In this scenario your credit voucher would be $735.  And you would be able to spend that $735 for any labor-based services that ConnectWise offers.

But again, this offer is only good from Nov. 1 to Jan.2.  So if you are going to purchase equipment and software, now is the time to do it.  Well, wait a couple days…November 1 is the day to do it   :-)

ConnectWise Hosts A Workshop On How To Reduce IT Costs

As part of our ongoing Learning Series, ConnectWise is hosting a FREE workshop that will illustrate various methods on how to reduce IT costs.  This is a great opportunity for business owners and managers.  The information presented will be incredibly valuable and relevant to any business of any size in any industry.  Click here to learn more or register.

September is National Preparedness Month

A disaster can strike at any time yet most businesses are not prepared. In fact, 40% of small businesses do not have a disaster recovery plan according to Contingency Planning & Management. As a result, 25% of all businesses do not reopen after a disaster. It is important to realize that a disaster is any occurrence that creates a serious business interruption. Of course, the obvious natural events such as flood, tornado, and fire are thought of when it comes to Business Continuity Planning and Disaster Recovery. Effective planning however, looks beyond Mother Nature and considers the less obvious threats which include employee sabotage, lawsuits, vandalism, product recalls, epidemics, and much more.

Survivability Index: Are you a Survivor or Statistic?
Did you know that the actions taken in the first four hours after a serious business interruption will determine if your organization will survive the incident or become a statistic? In recognition of National Preparedness Month we are providing you with our Survivability Index. By answering a few questions, you will receive immediate feedback on how your organization would weather a serious business interruption.

Click here to learn if you are a Survivor or Statistic!

ConnectWise Hosts a FREE Windows 7 Preview

Connectwise will be hosting another workshop in September.  This workshop will cover what’s new in Windows 7 and how it compares to XP and Vista.  There will be some time at the end for attendees to explore the Windows 7 laptops that will be available. The workshop is free to all attendees, but you need to register beforehand. 

Thursday, Sep 24
Networking and Continental breakfast:  8:30 – 9:00am
Workshop: 9:00 – 10:30am
Click here to register or learn more.

Join ConnectWise for a Full Day Business Continuity Workshop

Windows Vista to 7 upgrade program details announced

 

Microsoft has unveiled it's Technology Guarantee program, reportedly to begin on July 1st.  A memo leaked from electronics distributor Best Buy provides detail that it may actually begin sooner. Details below:

"A Decision to make? Wait! Just Bing it" or so Microsoft hopes

In Microsoft's attempt to re-brand their Live Search engine, the former "Kumo" has now been dubbed "Bing".  Whether this name conjures images of an American pop singer from 1930's, one Chandler Bing from Friend's or a little badda-boom badda-bing, Microsoft hopes you soon equate the term with Internet Web Searches.

According to the Live Search blog, Bing goes 'beyond the traditional search engines to help you make faster, more informed decisions' by combining a 'great search engine' with organized results. It also adds unique tools to help the user make important decisions. It is being touted as a 'decision engine.'

The new search tool will be reachable at bing.com, but will not be fully available worldwide until Wednesday, June 3, according to Microsoft. On the Bing.com site you first notice the biggest change is that the different categories for searching, typically at the top of the search bar, have been removed (Images, Video, News, Maps) and placed in a More drop down menu: Health, Local, Products, and xRank. However, the categories: Images, Videos, Shopping, News, Maps, and Travel are under an Explore section on the left-hand side. The left hand bar is the vital component to Bing and will be used to navigate most search result pages.

The biggest outward change users will notice with Bing is how it tries to guess what sections are relevant to your search (see below).

Can Microsoft's new product compell user's to switch from Google?  Only time will tell.  From what I can tell so far, Bing is a very good product and picks up with the strengths of Live Search and evolves the product to its next logical point.

Join ConnectWise for a FREE Business Continuity Lunch and Learn

Windows XP Heading to the retirement home April 14th...

Hundreds of millions of Windows XP users on the 14th will officially be using a retired operating system. Yup, Windows XP has finished mainstream support, so till April 8th, 2014, all you will get is security related updates. Does that mean Windows XP is finished? (more after the link)

Microsoft Releases Service Pack 2 RC for Vista and Windows 2008

As promised by Microsoft this week, they have released a public release candidate of the Service Pack 2 for Vista and Windows 2008. You can download it here. You can also check out the list of changes from the Windows Vista team blog - I'm looking forward to the improvements in Wireless networking after waking up from sleep mode.

Word of caution, this is pretty much close to the final version of the service pack we should expect in May, but it's still considered Beta. This service pack will expire by May 2010, so you would have to re-install Service Pack 2 before that deadline. Be sure to already have Service Pack 1 installed, it's required before testing. Otherwise, feel free to check it out, and remember, this should be for testing only! Test, Test, Test!

ConnectWise Backup & Disaster Recovery service supports 2008

This month, ConnectWise technicians rolled out an update to our Backup & Disaster Recovery NAS devices that will allow them to support backing up Windows 2008 servers as well as 64-bit servers.

The update also included better support for virtualization of servers, and if you are on one of the 2008 models, support to virtualize a 64-bit server. With this update ConnectWise will be able to support a wider range of server OS's and applications.