Business Continuity
We are please to announce that after rigorous testing we have now launched our latest Business Continuity Solution, to find out more information about this advanced solutions please click here.
Serious security flaw found in IE
It has been announced today that due to a serious flaw in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer users are being advised to use an alternate browser, such as Firefox, until a security fix becomes available from Microsoft.
It is believed that the identified flaw could allow criminals to take control of people’s computers and steal their password.
We recommend that any users who are concerned about this issue should download and use Firefox until such time as an update has been release by Microsoft.
See also: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7784908.stm
UPDATE: Microsoft have now release an update to resolve this issue, please see here.
Keep it clean
We are all guilty of doing it but do we really understand what the implications are? So what am I talking about? Cluttered desktops. In over 15 years of field support I have yet to find a workstation which does not have at least some files saved on it. At the time it makes sense to save the files there and this can be for a number of reasons; convenience, just temporary and I’ll move it later. All of these seem like good legitimate reasons at the time however they invariably are now temporary things they are left on the desktop and we just continue to work from there. Cluttered desktops can cause a number of issues both in the short term as well as in the long term.
The first issue is one of performance; that is as more and more files and shortcuts are added to a users desktop then in time this will inevitably slow the PC down. The reason for this is as that as the user minimises and maximises applications the screen must be re-drawn, now the fact is that the more information stored on the desktop the more memory will be used which in turn will steal that memory from genuine applications. It will also slow down the process of re-drawing the screen as there is much more information to render to the screen. The second issue is one of security; simply put the data on the desktop will stay on the desktop. Unless the user specifically copies the data from the desktop to the server then this information is only contained in one location and is not backed up with the rest of the server data. Now the question should be asked at this point ”Is this information important?”. The simple answer is “Of course it is” otherwise why would you have the information in the first place. In that case get it off the desktop and onto the server, once there leave it there and just work on it from the server.
Alternatively, if you are using Microsoft Small Business Server and have your “My Documents” folder redirected to the server then could move this information to the “My Documents” folder and it will be copied to the server during the “Log Off” process. This is a simple practise that could save you hours or even days of work in the event of a failed workstation. If you are still not sure how to do this then contact our team and they will be happy to help you.
Business Continuity
There is a great deal of talk about business continuity whether it be from the insurers of the business or from other members of the business community. The ethos behind business continuity is about working out how to stay in business in the event of a disaster. Incidents such as building fires, flooding, equipment failure etc all of these events should be planned for and the risks mitigated by putting in place documentation and processes which will ensure that such events do not permanently damage the business. Many small businesses owners do not look at business continuity as it appears to be the reserve of much larger companies and does not apply to them, wrong. The fact is that for your business was to suffer a complete disaster then how would you recover from this and indeed could you currently recover from this situation? Chances are the answer is no. Is this something that you can afford? Yes
The fact is that you cannot afford not to put this in plan. So what does the plan consist of; well it should contain the contact names and numbers of all individuals involved in the recovery
process (i.e. Telephone company, IT vendor, software suppliers etc). It also needs to contain all relevant passwords relating to your computer systems, details relating to the setup of the network and software. It should detail the recovery process for data relating to the network this should include how the backups are performed and what software is required to perform the recovery. The plan needs to contain absolutely everything that is required to run the business and with the recent floods and other adverse weather conditions it has never been more important to plan for the worst. So take some time and think about how your business will be affected should the worst happen and start and plan how you will recover from such and event before it happens.
Excel 2007 slow opening Excel 2003 Spreadsheets
We recently came across a problem which we thought we would share with all of you. We recently commissioned a new workstation for a client running Windows XP Pro and Office 2007 Basic. However, after a little time we were contacted by the client to say that it was very slow opening workbooks in Excel. They were able demonstrate the problem, if you open a workbook from a folder without Excel 2007 being open already it would take anywhere upto 2 minutes before the workbook would be displayed. However, if Excel 2007 was open already they would open fine. After doing some tests on it we were able to locate the issue which was due the way in which Windows explorer was configured to open “XLS” files. A simple change resolved the issue and here is what you do to resolve the issue:
- First open “My Computer”
- The select the “Tools” menu and select “Options”
- Now go to the “File Types” tab
- Go down the list and select “XLS (Microsoft Office Excel 97-2003 Worksheet)” and then click on “Advanced”. Now select “Open” from the list and click on “Edit”. Now in the box titled “Application used to perform action:” add a “%1″ at the end of the line. Also take the tick out of the box titled “Use DDE”.
- Now click on “OK” and select “OK” on all of the subsequent windows and thats it! Excel 2007 will now open Excel 2003 workbooks without any problems.
