The Life and Times of Seattle’s Only Small Business Systems Consultant. Articles and advice on small business phone systems, phone and internet services, VoIP, and all things technology related.
Selkowitz Technology | Seattle’s small business network and telecom consultant
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Drives Gone Bad
Turns out hard drives (the part of the computer that stores your stuff) aren’t nearly as reliable as claimed by the manufacturers. Both Google and Carnegie Mellon recently released studies with shocking conclusions - the drive manufacturers say at most .88% should fail each year but real world studies are showing typical failure rates between 2-4% and up to 13% on some systems!
Even more interesting were about half of failures came without any sign or diagnosable warning. Don’t assume your data is safe because of drive age, brand, utilization, current operation, etc - backups are less expensive and easier than data recovery!
Microsoft Taking a Beating
A few highlights in the recent Microsoft related news:
The US Department of Transportation has placed an indefinite moratorium on using Windows Vista due to “no compelling technical or business case for upgrading”
full article…
Microsoft’s OneCare Antivirus recently was rated dead last in a test of effectiveness against 17 other antivirus products, catching just 82.4% of malicious software.
full article…
One of the promises of Windows Vista is tighter security, a major component of Vista security is “User Account Control” (a.k.a. UAC). Turns out Microsoft now admits UAC doesn’t actually make systems more secure! (obviously only the technical department admits this, not marketing)
full article…
I know I’ve said it already, but keep holding off on Vista and don’t depend on Microsoft products when it comes to security!
Top Ten Ways to @#$% Up Your Network
I’ll be speaking at the upcoming Sunrise Solutions breakfast in Seattle on the topic of “Top Ten Ways to @#$% Up Your Network.” This is a great event for anyone who wants to better understand the technology issues you need to protect yourself from! Its March 20th, 7:30am at the Swedish Cultural Center in Seattle. Info and RSVP at winfreeseattle.com
New Phone System
In case you haven’t called us since Friday, next time you call you’ll notice we just put in a new phone system. Figuring out how to solve our phone issues lead me to a product called the TalkSwitch - an insanely powerful and affordable phone system for small businesses. Give us a call sometime to try it out - we liked it so much we’re now Authorized Talkswitch Partners!
The Author: Kevin Selkowitz
About: Kevin Selkowitz is the founder and lead consultant for Selkowitz Technology, a Seattle-area small business systems consulting company. We focus on the four major technology needs of small businesses - phone systems, phone and internet service, servers/network infrastructure, and business applications.
This entry was posted by Kevin Selkowitz, on Friday, March 9th, 2007 at 9:59 am and is filed under Phone Systems. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response on the right, or trackback from your own site.
