Aspire Technology Solutions and Xerox Corp. will be holding “Lunch and Learn” seminars on cost management solutions in IT. These no-cost events will be held downtown in the WNED office in the Horizons Plaza at 140 Lower Terrace Street, Buffalo, NY. The first two sessions will be held at 12:00 on Thursday, June 10 and Wednesday June 16. There will also be an event held at the Bryant & Stratton South towns Campus at 200 Red Tail, in Orchard Park, NY on June 18 at 11:30AM. Lunch will be provided at all events.
The seminars will focus on the hidden costs of information technology faced by all organizations and how businesses can reduce these costs through new management techniques.
For most companies, the hidden costs in Information Technology go unmanaged and unaccounted for, but can drastically affect their bottom line. Aspire will address these concerns and demonstrate proven techniques to cut costs, reduce energy consumption and waste, increase up-time and control and forecast budgets.
RSVP for your seat at one of our three convenient sessions via email to sales@aspiretechnet.com, on our Facebook page located here or by calling our office at 716-200-4479.
I’ve been thinking about the weather lately. Here in Buffalo, our spring so far has been sunny. Almost too sunny – not exactly an ordinary springtime here, but we’ll take it!
Other parts of the country haven’t been as lucky. Right now, many parts of the South and Midwest are battling floodwaters brought upon by violent storms. As these storms have made their way across the country a brief electrical storm passed over our way as well, which got me thinking; what is the one problem I have most frequently seen this time of year?
Power issues.
Spikes, sags, interruptions and cycle or frequency variations threaten the health of electrical components, computers, networks and the data they carry and store. A server or PC lost to a sudden, unexpected power issue can be devastating, and it doesn’t take much. A common static discharge, although harmless to a person, can be lethal to a circuit board.
Lightning generated in storms, which increase in frequency this time of year, can pose a larger problem. Lightning can create an enormous environmental disturbance, threatening any device that can carry electrical currents. Furthermore, it doesn’t take a direct lightning strike to cause damage. The electromagnetic fields created by lightning can be just as damaging. These electromagnetic fields can be strong enough to induce a current into any nearby conductive structure, including electrical infrastructure, telephone and coaxial cables.
A sudden change in voltage can cause a system failure, threatening data storage and consistency.
Protection from these environmental hazards is a must. But what is required?
We see a lot of people, in an attempt to keep costs down and increase the number of outlets available near equipment, purchase very inexpensive surge suppressors or even simple power strips. This is an inadequate solution to protect equipment from power issues and can even create other unexpected issues.
At a minimum, one should consider investing in a good surge suppressor. Our recommendation is nothing lower than a 1500 joule rating. A joule is the amount of energy the suppressor can absorb before it fails. The higher the rating, the better it will protect the equipment attached to it. Of course, nothing is fool-proof and even the best suppressor will fail given a large enough spike. Also, if you’re using traditional phone-line communications with a modem, look for a surge suppressor with a telephone line protection jack.
A good surge suppressor will protect your equipment from over-voltage events, but is not effective for other power events – under-voltage, interruptions, and other out-of-phase occurrences can still cause damage by creating instability in the electrical system your technology depends on. That is why at Aspire we always recommend an Uninterruptable Power Supply, or UPS, for every computer, printer, server and phone system we sell, service and/or install.
There are three basic types of UPS units:
1. Standby UPS – this is the most basic type of UPS. In a standby system, under normal A/C power, the attached equipment will be powered from the A/C source while the UPS unit maintains a constant charge to its battery. When a power event occurs, the UPS will switch to battery power. This switch-over can be as long as 25 milliseconds, but in most cases will keep your electronic equipment running smoothly. They also provide surge suppression against over-voltage situations. The benefits to these UPS units are their relative affordability and surge suppression. The drawback is they provide no line conditioning and even with a fast switchover it might not be fast enough at times to keep your attached equipment powered properly through the event.
The Eaton Powerware 5110-1500VA is a great all-purpose Line-Interactive UPS!
2. Line-Interactive UPS – similar in design to a Standby UPS, but these devices can maintain a consistent energy flow to attached equipment using variable-voltage transformers to balance electrical output through over and under-voltage events. This is becoming a more common technology even in inexpensive UPS options.
3. On-Line UPS – Provides electrical isolation by powering attached equipment from the battery at all times. The battery power provided maintains a consistent cycle and flow regardless of the events on the electrical system. These tend to be larger and more expensive, used more commonly in data-center and enterprise environments
Of course when considering a UPS solution, other factors such as equipment voltage, amperage and desired run-time on battery power must be determined. Aspire Technology Solutions can help you find the UPS solution that will best fit your requirements!
And remember the only sure way to protect your equipment during a storm is to shut it down properly and unplug it from A/C power. And I can’t stress this enough; always make sure you do regular and frequent data backups to guarantee your data will be safe regardless of what Mother Nature surprises us with!
Some Windows optimization techniques are well known – others are not. Here is a short list of five common problems we see on a regular basis and how to avoid or resolve them.
1. Uninstall unnecessary browser tool bars. Having one search engine tool bar on your browser is convenient. Your security software may install another that you will find useful. However, having multiple search engine tool bars and other tool bars is not only redundant but will slow down your browser.
Many applications will insist on installing a tool bar when you install the application. There is usually an option to not install the tool bar, but often the wording of the installer is tricky – pay attention to all install options when installing new software, especially anything downloaded online.
Most tool bars can be uninstalled through the add/remove programs utility in the control panel after the fact or have their own uninstall utility in their program folder.
2. Clear your temporary internet file cache. Frequently we get calls from customers experiencing sudden and unexplained browser issues. Your browser saves temporary files – graphics, HTML code, forms, etc. – from the sites you visit so the next time you load that site, it can call upon those temporary, locally saved files to speed up the page loading time. Unfortunately if this cache is not purged, the file directories become cumbersome for the browser and the browser will start to malfunction. Clearing the cache is as easy as a couple mouse clicks and the controls for this are usually found in the browser’s options menu.
3. The more data you have on your hard drive, the slower it will perform. Keep frequent backups of your data and consider storing infrequently used files (such as family photos) on other media, such as flash drives, secure-digital cards or USB hard drives. Although none of these media alone is the ideal back-up solution for irreplaceable data – secure, remote backup solutions should be considered. But for the sake of keeping your PC running smoothly, less data means quicker read/write times on the hard drive, adequate virtual memory space and quicker disk cleanup and defrag utility run times.
4. Reduce the number of applications that launch on startup. Some programs will run an auto-updater service in the background that can be turned off. These applications will most likely go out to find updates once they are launched, but turning off features that run automatically every time you start the PC will improve boot times and reduce the system resources being used on a regular basis.
5. Registry optimization can help improve system performance in Windows operating systems – customers frequently ask us for our opinion on different optimization programs; most of these costing either an annual maintenance fee or one-time purchase fee. We have found good success with I/Obit Advanced SystemCare Free edition. Running this manually on a regular basis will help keep your registry and other system resources running well.
IOBit Advanced SystemCare
Advanced SystemCare does have a malware removal utility, which we have found to be adequate for removing cookies and not much else. Stick with a quality malware removal tool like Malware Bytes for any heavy duty malware clean-up.
As always, Aspire is here to help. Call us at 716-200-4479 or email service@aspiretechnet.com if you have questions.
