 Welcome
To begin, I want to sincerely thank you for your interest in itSynergy's latest initiative and extend our warmest Welcome! I am extremely excited about our monthly newsletter, and to share with you our premier issue. In addition to the newsletter, we also have a newly launched website, which has been updated and designed to better represent our goals and support our continuing mission to help our customers create a strategic advantage in their business by leveraging technology. As I am sure you will agree, these most recent enhancements will better enable us to communicate with our customers, colleagues, partners, and associates on a regular basis, and share with them the latest updates and insights in the IT industry. It is our intent to deliver relevant information on a regular basis that will contribute directly to this goal in the following areas:
- Happenings at itSynergy
- Relevant information for Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) from the technology world (but in plain English!)
- Something to make you smile
- Updates on trends we see across our entire customer base
- Contributions from our team members
We hope you enjoy our first issue, and as with everything we do, we are eager to hear your feedback, which is the primary driver for change. It is our goal to continue to improve in all areas specific to technology, business efficiency, and customer service, and through your feedback we can best accomplish this with a personal touch specific to your needs.
Lastly, the entire team here at itSynergy would like to express our gratitude and appreciation for being able to work with such a wonderful group of individuals and companies. We often have internal discussions about our good fortune in how we are able to provide our strategic advice and manage the technology for a client base which genuinely understands and appreciates our contribution to fundamentally enhance their business through IT services. Consequently, we work to reinforce the great trust you, our client, extend to us at every interaction. We sincerely thank you for allowing us to advise you in such critical capacities, and to keep your technology running smoothly and efficiently. |
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Clean the Hard Drive Before Dumping Your PC
By Kim Komando
Reprinted with permission from the Microsoft Small Business Center at http://www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness. If you're getting rid of your old computer, or even if you aren't just yet, there are some things you should know about it.
Chances are great there's sensitive data on it. If you're like me, that PC's hard drive contains a compilation of your personal and business life. If the wrong people were to grab it, they could hurt you and your business very seriously. Here's the problem: An index of files is maintained for the hard drive, telling it where things are stored. When you install a file, especially a big one, it is scattered around the hard drive in bits and pieces. On your command to open the file, the hard drive checks the index, then gathers the pieces and reconstructs them.
Read on....
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The Importance of Disk-Based Backup
Summary: Learn about the importance of disk-based backup and how you can protect your business' information.
 Chances are, a majority of your small business' vital information is maintained in an electronic format; stored, delivered, and managed entirely by information technologies. Because so much of this data is mission critical to a business' success, can you afford not to have a backup solution in place?
Considering today's volatile Internet security threat landscape, you can never be too careful when it comes to protecting your business data. Without a backup of that data, you could lose valuable time and profit, if not your entire business. Many times, it is difficult for small businesses to recover from data loss. In fact, a statistic revealed by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that 93% of all companies that experience "significant data loss" are out of business within five years.
Read on.... |
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| System Engineering Corner
 Notes
from the Network Engineering Department:
Note to readers: As our network engineers work with all of you across our entire customer base, they observe trends and issues that many people have in common, or that many customers will find helpful to know about. This section is designed to give them a mechanism to communicate those issues to you, with the hope that YOU might benefit from.
Blue Screen of Death
Ever seen one? Ever heard of it? When a Microsoft Windows® Operating System encounters an error so severe that it cannot continue to operate, its last dying breath is to dump the contents of memory to the screen and to a file on your computer. This results in a blue screen covered with cryptic white characters that can be as useful as trying to read The Matrix. In technical circles, this screen is referred as the "Blue Screen of Death" or BSOD because once you see this screen you can rest assured that your computing session is dead.
So what happens when you see this screen? Most people cross their fingers, say a little prayer, and hit the reset key and hope their computer comes back and continues to operate normally. But what if the BSOD comes back? Most consultants are mystified by repeated blue screens and handle it by either giving up altogether and reinstalling everything, or by launching into an hours long treasure hunting expedition that may or may not ultimately result in useful information.
itSynergy uses a different technique, however, and it has proven quite useful in a number of cases. Microsoft makes a number of tools available to help analyze the cryptic information that comes from your computer's last breath. By using these tools, itSynergy can analyze the cause of your BSOD, and approach the problem intelligently by resolving the root cause of the issue. Often times, our analysis of the data points to a specific application, and a simple update from the manufacturer can resolve the issue in a very short time.
If you have ever experienced a BSOD, or simply want to be proactive and make sure you are collecting the data for us to analyze, contact itSynergy today. There is a setting that has to be 'checked' to tell the computer to save the information which we can later analyze. For our itSynergize customers, we can capture this automatically if you just ask. For others, we can send you simple instructions, or reconfigure your computers for you.
Monitoring and Installing Patches
Many of our customers have us monitor and install Microsoft patches on a regular basis. Some customers even have us automate that process with our itSynergize platform so that Microsoft patches are handled automatically. But what about patches put out by other manufacturers? Almost every manufacturer puts out patches, and the usefulness of those patches varies widely from one application to another. Recently, our engineers have noticed an emerging trend across a number of customers related to patches from Dell. Specifically, Dell has recently released a number of 'critical' updates affecting the hard drive controller systems inside Dell servers and workstations. We have installed these patches for many customers and seen significant performance and stability increases as a direct result.
Scanning your servers and workstations takes only a few minutes, and offers some great potential performance increases once installed. For those customers that are on the itSynergize platform, we can scan and deploy patches even faster.
Please contact itSynergy today at (602) 297-2400 x1000 if you would like for us to scan and install these Dell updates on your systems. |
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November 2006
In this issue....
□ Welcome
□ Clean the Hard Drive before
Dumping Your PC
□ Disc-Based Backup
□ System Engineering Corner
□ Shortcuts in Word
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Shortcuts in Word
Use these character formatting shortcuts to save retyping in Word.
Take the shortcut! Whether you need to change the case or switch formats, it's easy with these Word shortcuts.
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When preparing a Word document for publication, you want to spend as little time retyping as possible. Here are some shortcuts for reducing time spent editing text.
As you edit your document, you notice that all your headers are lowercase, when they should be initial caps. To make that change, follow these steps:
* Hold down [Ctrl] while selecting the headers to be changed.
* Press [Shift][F3].
Pressing [Shift][F3] twice converts the headers to all uppercase; pressing [F3] again brings it back to lowercase. Alternatively, you can press [Ctrl][Shift]A to convert a block of text to all caps, or press [Ctrl][Shift]K to convert it to small caps.
Then, you spot that the author has used the Underline button to underline selected text. While the Underline button is convenient to use, it underlines an entire selection, including the spaces between the words. If you don't want the spaces underlined, follow these steps:
* Select the underlined text to be changed.
* Press [Ctrl][Shift]W.
Anytime you want to return characters to the default formats for the document template, you don't need to go back and reformat the font. For example, suppose you notice that reviewers have changed the font size and you want to return it back to the style format. Follow these steps:
* Select the text to be changed.
* Press [Ctrl][spacebar).
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7310 North 16th Street,
Suite 130
Phoenix, AZ 85020-8203
Telephone: 602.297.2400
Fax: 602.297.8703
Email:
info@itsynergy.com
www.itsynergy.com
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