XFER Blog

Techies get pretty excited over neat new gadgets and integrating them into day-to-day life, so when we heard about Sony's new SmartWatch, it caught our attention. Will smart watches become the next thing in the not-so-distant future or will they become flops like New Coke and Betamax?

Most people might not realize this, but a Microsoft Word Doc can retain a lot of information pertaining to the history of the document, your personal information, annotations, and other invisible elements. This can be a huge security risk! Read on to learn how to remove that extra information.

When traveling with your trusty laptop or tablet, it's pretty common to find publicly accessible Wi-Fi networks that you can connect to, enabling you to surf the web. Where ever you are, whether it's a coffee shop, hotel, airport, or anywhere else, it's important to be safe about public surfing.

Nobody likes thinking or talking about this (except maybe if you are in the insurance business), but businesses are fragile entities. Enough hardship and loss will greatly weaken the foundation that keeps the business running smoothly. What if your business suffered from a fire, devastating flood, or even a misfortunate bolt of lightning that destroys your server? Would you be able to pick up the pieces and start over?

Technology today makes it easy for businesses to let employees work from home. Offering secure remote access gives employees the flexibility to work on the road, at events, or from home as if they were at their desks in the office. Is this good for small businesses?

Voice over IP phone systems revolutionize voice communications for small businesses by providing plenty of big benefits. VoIP uses the Internet to send signals as opposed to standard telco phone lines. Let's go over a few major benefits that businesses see when they switch to VoIP.

"As a business owner, when should I worry about implementing data backup for my company?"

The answer comes in the form of another question, "How much do you value your business?"

Does your Wi-Fi require a secure password to allow users to access your network with their mobile devices? And no, the word "password" is not a suitable password. If your wireless network is easy to gain access to, you are opening up your sensitive data to anyone within range.

Server Virtualization has been around for a while but has quickly become more popular for small businesses due to the long-term costs saved when your servers are virtualized. What exactly is server virtualization and how can it benefit Michigan businesses?

We can't stress how important data backup is for businesses. Backup is so important that March 31st is World Backup Day, a day for people and businesses to observe the importance of backing up data regularly.

Read on for World Backup Day's excellent Infographic.

Internet privacy is no new issue. Between malicious hackers trying to breach private information, governments trying to regulate it, and organizations trying to track as many metrics as they can, the Internet continues to chug along for the most part just fine. Are YOU concerned about Internet privacy?

We've seen a pattern over the years as Microsoft releases operating systems where every other operating system is great, while the releases in between are somewhat lacking. Windows 98 was pretty solid, as was XP, however the middle-child Windows ME? Not so much. This kind of progression is usually reserved for Star Trek films. What does this mean for Windows 8, the successor of the great Windows 7?

Fans of Microsoft's note taking application can now use OneNote on iOS devices, Windows Phone 7 Smartphones, and at long last, Android devices. Up until now, Android users have been left in the dark for synchronizing and managing their notes through an official OneNote app.

Sometimes when your workstation feels bogged down, a relatively cheap and simply hardware update can make a huge difference in performance. Adding more RAM (Random Access Memory, often just referred to as memory) can be a game changer for your bogged down PC.

Is staying in business important to your company?

We don't want to be sensationalistic here, but there is a serious real-world link between data loss and staying in business. Let's look at some statistics.

Tablets are definitely becoming a staple in the consumer electronics world. For the longest time, the tablet PC was an expensive, clunky device that just didn't wow consumers. Some businesses had adopted tablets back in the day, but they were difficult to use, hard to support, and they simply didn't perform for the price tag. However, like many consumer electronics, Apple reinvigorated the tablet market with the original iPad, and now it would seem tablets are here to stay. The question is, are they right for businesses?

If you've been using computers for a while, then there has probably been at least one point in your life that you've lost data. Maybe it was something you were working on when your computer crashed, or maybe a disk failure wiped out some data. Does this bring back memories of frustration and angst?

We're asked all time, both by existing clients and during dialog while on boarding new prospects to our XFER IT Support Services.  'What exactly is the point of running Windows updates, especially when my workstation or server is running fine?'

We'll cover why updates are so important, discuss a couple ways you can make sure they are always done as well as how we test and prevent "bad updates".

We'd really like to gear this conversation towards the other Michigan business owners out there who might not have a solid plan when it comes to IT & Computer Support.  At XFER, we deal with a lot of the same business-related issues that our clients do.  Marketing, driving the business forward, taxes, internal policies, you name it.  Believe it or not, we also have our own IT infrastructure that needs to be kept up and maintained.  We see the same kinds of expenses (after all, working on our OWN technology internally is time our techs could be doing their jobs).  We've put together a few big mistakes that we've seen businesses make that take much less effort to prevent than they do to fix later on when it is too late.

Cloud computing is one of the largest growing areas in the IT industry. The concept of “Cloud Computing” refers to the hosting of a server or an application by a third party in an offsite location accessed via the Internet. The premise is that the vendor will not only provide the client with a reliable experience, but one that will be resistant to downtime and data loss.

Personally, I know that the Insurance industry has been enjoying the benefits of cloud computing for many years. But what are the caveats and recent concerns garnered by those enrolled in these online services?