SwiftecIT: Corporate Quality IT for growing businesses SwiftecIT: Corporate Quality IT for growing businesses SwiftecIT: Corporate Quality IT for growing businesses

What's New

STOP THE PRESSES! SWIFTEC IT, INC AND CORPORATE TECHNOLOGY INC HAVE JOINED FORCES!

We want to share with you some exciting news. Effective June 1, 2008 Swiftec IT, Inc and Corporate Technology, Inc (CTI) have partnered to jointly provide IT services to their combined client base under the Swiftec IT, Inc name, with computer forensic services being offered under the Corporate Technology, Inc name. The technical support you have been receiving from Swiftec and CTI will continue as before, but will be enhanced by additional staff and locations.

Click here for full announcement

Beyond Big Brother

The next time you need directions and would like to actually see where you are going, go to http://maps.google.com and click on Street View. Goggle has incorporated a street- level view into its map feature. This is beyond eerie. Try it out - type in 292 Main St, 01532. Our office is on the southwest corner.

Improved ticket system

In order to track your needs better we have implemented an improved ticket system whereby you can log in a service request or advise us of an IT-related problem you are experiencing.. You can either send an email to support@swiftecit.com, or goto http://swiftecit.com and click on HELP DESK. You will receive an email confirmation that your ticket has been opened, and you will be able to check the status of all of your tickets at any point in time.

News & Views

Genuine Windows Vista® Business Bonus

Vista Business Bonus - what is that? You may have heard about Vista Home (primarily for home use), Vista Business (primarily for business applications) and Vista Ultimate (for multi-media)- but Vista Business Bonus? Believe it or not, this is WINDOWS XP PRO.

You might have thought Windows XP Pro was going away; Well it did, sort of.

Microsoft's ultimatum of getting rid of Windows XP Pro is being short-circuited by Dell, which is putting Windows XP Pro on the machine, and shipping an upgrade to Vista. The catch is that Windows XP Pro will not be supported, and no drivers will be offered. Will it work? In next month's newsletter we will explore our findings.

Security

Firewalls 101

A firewall protects your computer or network from unwanted intrusion by others, whether for malicious or mischievous reasons. It can also restrict what WEB sites people visit.

Hardware firewalls (i.e., Linksys, Cisco, Netgear, SonicWall) can prevent someone from "hacking" into your network. Some models can restrict WEB browsing as well, enabling access to certain sites at only prescribed times. For instance, you might not want employees shopping on ebay.com during working hours, but would allow them to do so after 5pm.

Software firewalls (which exist in Windows) and almost all anti-virus packages should NOT be used. They are redundant if you have a hardware firewall like Linksys or Netgear and frequently cause problems with file sharing, or even printing to a network printer.

Timely Tips

QuickBooks

Did you know that you can customize all the forms and reports within QuickBooks? You can easily add your company's logo and create an invoice that matches the image you want to portray.

To change a form - go to the form you want to change - click on "Customize" on the menu bar. Then turn off or add any feature or item you wish.

If you like, we can design a form to closely match your existing corporate image - just send us an email.

GMP: Good Maintenance Practices

Anti-virus

Not all anti-virus programs perform equally well. Recently we tried to salvage data from a hard drive physically damaged by a virus. We successfully recovered 90% of the data, but the last 10% was not, causing data loss (and further expense to reconstruct such data) for the client.

It is important that the virus program not be more than two years old and that the virus definitions (instructions for the computer as to how to identify new viruses) not be more than thirty days old. Your computer should be set to run a weekly scan, checking all documents to ascertain nothing was introduced from an outside source.

These best practices will protect you against the common virus, and malware (malicious software that is not technically a virus but just as harmful).

Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to send us an email, or open a help desk ticket.