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We now accept credit cards (Visa & MasterCard). Download form at http://swiftecit.com/CC_Auth.pdf

We have been nominated as the Best IT Outsourcing company in Worcester - and we need your help to become the MOST nominated company! Please click on the links below, register (it is free), and nominate us!

Please click to nominate us:

• Best IT Outsourcing Company in Worcester!
• Best Web Hosting Company in Westborough!

Additionally, you can add yourself as the "Best of" and have people vote for you. Why do this? The answer is Visibility. Do you want to do business with the company with 1 vote or 100 votes?

Microsoft terminates all holidays
No, it wasn’t a move to make the company more profitable.  It is part of the planned obsolescence built into MICROSOFT OFFICE 2003, the OUTLOOK portion which most of us use. When you open your Outlook calendar for January  2008, you won’t see NEW YEARS DAY as a holiday.  That’s because Microsoft only designed Outlook 2003 to include holidays until December 31, 2007.  Outlook 2002 stopped including holidays in 2005, and Outlook 2008 includes holidays until the end of 2012. 

There is a patch available to reinstate the Holidays where they belong, and we’ll be happy to install it (free) with any scheduled visit to your office. If you want to know when your holidays are, please contact us.

“You have received a postcard" emails
Important reminder: A safe email practice is to DELETE any emails if  you do not recognize the sender, and NEVER open an attachment when you do not recognize the sender.  There are a flood of emails with subjects similar to “You have received a postcard from a friend/high school buddy/admirer/etc ".  Do NOT open this attachment unless the sender is clearly identified and it is someone you know and trust!

Some mean-spirited hackers actually access your OUTLOOK list and pick a name, so that you might be misled into opening the e-mail.  Be sure that it is the SENDER that you recognize, not the SUBJECT LINE name.

Antivirus update
As viruses proliferate, Anti-Virus software improves in efficy.  There are new types of viruses that can destroy your machine without your existing antivirus software knowing that something is amiss.  In January we will announce a new partnership with the leading Anti-Virus company that will allow us to track your subscriptions and make sure you are always protected.

Vista update
Microsoft will be releasing a MAJOR patch to the Vista operating system in January. Only time will tell if this is an improvement.

We recommend that you delay the urge to embrace Vista.  Our office has two machines equipped with Vista with 3 Gigabytes of memory, yet we get “out of memory” messages. Additionally, we have software and printers that are not supported under Vista. Best to stay with things that work,  In the wise words of Ronald Regan, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

XP Pro Still Available
Since being warned of the impending  demise of Windows XP Pro effective December 2007, we have not heard any more chatter about this.  The fact is that many large businesses will wait 1-2 YEARS before adopting Vista. which may keep XP Pro available for a while.

Ever look at a paper document and wonder when it was created?  Excel users can get into the habit of dating documents with the Macro “@NOW()”. This will generate a date (and time, if you like) in the cell you chose.  If this is a schedule that changes over time, the date printed will appear each time you print the document.

Have a written company policy describing in detail the frequency and mechanics of maintaining the security of important data.  Back-up procedures, once developed and committed to writing, are much easier to follow than oral directions.  Depending on the complexity of your system/environment, a checklist might be developed to ascertain the policy is followed.

Feel free to send us comments or requests for future topics.  You may also forward this email or link to someone else who may appreciate the information.  The link for our newsletters is: www.swiftecit.com/news