Most of us rely heavily on technology to accomplish our goals, whether it be at work or at home. Computers have made so many things in life more accessible, from learning to banking to downtime (though too much idle scrolling is the antithesis of productivity).

But have you ever stopped to think if you’re really getting the most from the technology you use? Often we get stuck in a rut and don’t really explore what else may be out there.

As a technology provider we’re well versed in supporting the Microsoft suite of products, and Outlook especially is a business staple. Whether you have made a one-time purchase with Office 2019 or are using the subscription model plan with Microsoft 365, both products include Teams, Outlook, OnePoint, SharePoint and Word.

There has been a lot of debate surrounding when things will get back to “normal” and what normal will even look like, but one thing we think is here to stay is the remote workforce.

While many jobs will go back to the office, the benefits of working from home and having a remote work staff cannot be downplayed.

In most situations where a massive hack or breach has occurred, trying to get a handle on what has been compromised or even what is still compromised can be a challenge.

It’s unfortunately been our experience that in most cases things almost end up being worse than they initially look.

When you’re talking about IT for businesses there’s a wide range of normal, for some businesses their normal is having in-house IT staff. For many though their IT operational needs are such that having a dedicated staff devoted to the job just doesn’t make financial sense.

Dell, Lenovo, even Apple brand computer and device repairs might be seeing major repair delays at the moment as a top repair firm they use was hit by a ransomware attack that ground their operations to a complete halt.

This has been seemingly squashed as a news worthy event for the moment but we think customers should be made aware that if they send their desktop or laptop in for a repair at this time they face major delays in getting it back.

Starlink has been a hot button topic this week: Elon Musk’s new satellite internet company is bringing fast internet speeds to many rural communities who have had very few options up until now.

It can seem strange to think about if you reside in an urban area where cable internet has been available since the early 2000s. The fact is many communities are still burdened with DSL connections whose max capabilities may be as low as 0.8 Mbps (a far cry from the 100+ Mbps cable speeds we’re all used to).

On speeds that slow downloading a video can take as long as an hour.

We regularly tout the necessity of data backups, but there’s one kind of backup we really haven’t spent much time on, and that is archival backups.

Backing up your data is an ongoing task or at least it should be. Whether it’s done daily or weekly, regular snap shots of your data make it easy in a data loss event to pull the most recent backup and get back to business as usual.

Business owners have a lot on their shoulders, especially in 2020. Delegating is no easy thing, painstakingly raising a business from the ground up lends itself to naturally being very protective over it.

There can even be a sense of pride in doing things yourself for as long as you can.

By now, most of us have made the jump from mechanical hard drives to solid state drives, and if you haven’t you really should. Faster loading times, less prone to drive failure, and greater bandwidth are just a few of the benefits. Once you switch, you’ll wonder how you ever went so long on mechanical drives.