American Tech Support » 2007

Tech Support - How To Choose A Good One

Wednesday, June 6th, 2007

Ethics is first and foremost when choosing a Computer Service Company. This company will have complete access to ALL of your company’s secrets/data.

Choose a company that has excellent referrals and is insured. If you can find a bonded company, with the first two qualifications you’ve found a great start. Personal meetings with the Business Manager and/or Tech is important. This meeting/interview can occur casually during a common event that allows the service company to view and estimate the needs of a company’s network and computers, a network analysis. These are free most of the time but for larger networks and multiple servers, the benefits of the analysis alone are worth their charges. Discuss needs, schedules, availability and responsiveness. Receive credentials during this meeting (IT credentials, Liability Insurance, Bonding and Background checks/Drug Tests). Remember, this is the most important service company trust issue you will make a decision for. Do not be afraid to ask for these but give the company some time, current drug test reports will take longer.

After you have a good relationship, you can make a qualified decision for your company.

Posted in Colorado IT Services | Comments Off

iPhone (take the next train)

Wednesday, June 6th, 2007

June 23rd….

Will there be people in line overnight at the Cingular (The new AT&T)? YOU BET!

From all the hype and advertising going on about this product, you can bet that we will see some yahoo doing something real stupid just because the frenzy s getting all weird.

The fact is this device is a first generation piece of hardware (and software). Even though it is VERY COOL, that major fact of it being 1st gen alone is the only reason you need not to buy it. Wait until it has had its beta in the wild with millions of people swearing at their iPhones’ little “nuances”. It most likely will cost a couple hundred dollars less by then anyway.

Other FACTS and comments to be concerned about:

1. Price - $500 to $600 (no one knows yet). Consider the RAZOR was $500 initially
2. No 3G! - Why did they skimp?
3. Touchscreen performance - Big fingers will be frustrated
4. No corporate exchange push email - All the Ubersuits might not want to toss their crackberries just yet
5. Battery performance, especially with a non removable battery - 5 hour battery life and no replacement? Better plan on two chargers for home and office
6. No GPS - stupid (I hope GEN2 gets this)

Thank me later

Posted in Hardware | No Comments »

What is Ubuntu?

Monday, June 4th, 2007

OK, I get the message. Ubuntu has finally bubbled to the surface. Noobs are talking about it but me being a starched Windows/MAC user I ask myself… “Do I really need to learn an new OS when all of my apps are content living in their own worlds?”. Maybe I should be more open minded. I could slice my harddrive into three pieces and boot into Ubuntu when desired… But I really have to ask WHY????

For yours and my education I copied this from their official site:

Ubuntu is a community developed operating system that is perfect for laptops, desktops and servers. Whether you use it at home, at school or at work Ubuntu contains all the applications you’ll ever need, from word processing and email applications, to web server software and programming tools.

Ubuntu is and always will be free of charge. You do not pay any licensing fees. You can download, use and share Ubuntu with your friends, family, school or business for absolutely nothing.

We issue a new desktop and server release every six months. That means you’ll always have the the latest and greatest applications that the open source world has to offer.

Ubuntu is designed with security in mind. You get free security updates for at least 18 months on the desktop and server. With the Long Term Support (LTS) version you get three years support on the desktop, and five years on the server. There is no extra fee for the LTS version, we make our very best work available to everyone on the same free terms. Upgrades to new versions of Ubuntu are and always will be free of charge.

OK, enough with the commercial. What I got from that was the word: *FREE*.

But, now I wonder, will my mother be able to use it? OK, will she be able to run her Hoyle Poker CD on it? TO me that is where the rubber meets the road because I take care of dozens of mothers who rely on me… Until an OS is omnipresent and intuitive, which only happens when a cottage community organizes around a resource, it doesn’t match the MS or Apple solution.

BTW if you care what Ubuntu means: Ubuntu is an African word meaning ‘Humanity to others’, or ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. The Ubuntu distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world.

Final thoughts: I think this OS will catch on but through foreign contries first and then through non profits and about the same time the nerd populace eventually the small businesses and up from there… MS and Apple are going to fight hard enough to make it hard for any consolations.

My personal opinion: OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications is more of a relevant issue. More on that later.

Posted in Colorado IT Services | No Comments »

Sharp increase in Mac OS X flaws

Friday, June 1st, 2007

A sharp increase in the number of flaws being discovered in Mac OS X suggests that the Apple operating system may soon be every bit as prone to malicious attacks as Windows systems, according to a report from the SANS Institute, a Bethesda, Md.-based security training and research firm.

Mac OS X still remains safer than Windows because its relatively small installed base is a less attractive target for malicious hackers than Windows systems. But the number of flaws being discovered in the operating system is leaving its reputation as a secure alternative to Windows “in tatters,” according to the semiannual update to the SANS Top 20 list of Internet vulnerabilities.

“Users often feel invincible when they have their shiny silver-colored Apple and they are surfing the Web with it,” said Ed Skodis, a director at SANS. That may be a mistake, he said, because “there’s a significant amount of research going on for security vulnerabilities in the Mac OS.”

About 52 vulnerabilities were discovered in Mac OS X in 2005; 17 have been uncovered so far this year, said Amol Sarwate, manager of the vulnerability management lab at Qualys Inc., a Redwood Shores, Calif.-based security service provider.

The number of vulnerabilities reported last year was more than twice the number from 2004, when 24 flaws were discovered, Sarwate said. Out the flaws uncovered last year and so far in 2006, at least a third were considered critical, Sarwate said. During the past few months, users of Apple’s Safari Web browser also faced their first zero-day attack, which is an attack targeted at unpatched vulnerabilities.

Apple’s increasing market share and the company’s recent decision to build its systems around Intel Corp. chips have drawn increased hacker attention to its system, Skodis said. Similarly, Apple’s recent introduction of Boot Camp, which allows Intel-based Macs to run Windows XP, has also raised its risk profile, Skodis said. Though Windows XP runs in a separate partition on the Mac hard drive, it’s only a matter of time before malicious code becomes available that is capable of jumping over the two partitions on the hard drive, Skodis said. “It wouldn’t be hard to do,” he said.

At the same time, there appears to be a significant decline in vulnerabilities being reported in Windows services such as Internet Information Server, mail services and NetBIOS, Sarwate said. But that decline has been offset by a sharp increase in client-side flaws, including the Windows Metafile flaw (WMF) and Internet Explorer (IE) vulnerabilities, Sarwate said.

In fact, the emergence of several zero-days flaws in IE — including one that is currently unpatched — poses a major security risk for Windows users, said Rohit Dhamankar, manager of security research at the TippingPoint division of 3Com Corp.

Increasingly, zero-day flaws on Microsoft Corp. client systems are being used to install adware, spyware and other kinds of malicious code on end-user systems, he said. As a result, he said it may be time to rename IE “to ‘Internet Exploiter,’ because the chances of you being exploited using IE are much higher” these days, said Dhamanker, who is also the editor of the SANS Top 20 report.

The SANS study also showed that while Firefox continues to be a somewhat safer Web browser than IE, it is no panacea. According to SANS, users of Firefox and Mozilla have had to patch 11 vulnerabilities that can be exploited by a malicious Web page to run code over the past six months, in addition to several other critical vulnerabilities.

The SANS report also found an increase in vulnerabilities allowing direct access to databases, data warehouses and backup data, especially software from Oracle Corp. And SANS found a continuing increase in file-based attacks, particularly those using media and image files, such as the WMF. “In addition, we have seen a major upsurge in attacks using flaws in programs that process media files, such as Apple QuickTime/iTunes, Windows Media Player, RealNetworks RealPlayer, Macromedia Flash Player and Nullsoft Winamp,” the report said.

By Jaikumar Vijayan, Computerworld

Posted in Computers | No Comments »

Archive for June, 2007

Tech Support - How To Choose A Good One

iPhone (take the next train)

What is Ubuntu?

Sharp increase in Mac OS X flaws

Pages

Categories

Archives

Blogroll

Meta