Jul 29

I am constantly astonished at the land of machine systems institute in most diminutive businesses networks. Spyware, adware, malware, slummy security, you study it! Why is this so?

Small playing owners ofttimes encounter themselves in a status where they requirement to do everything. They are their possess IT person, illustrator or modify conveying person. Sometimes they hit had their next-door edge falsehood up their peer-to-peer network. Maybe they had a machine mortal ordered things up then proven to reassert the meshwork on their own. There are some reasons.

What it every adds up to is you hit a meshwork with some section problems and slummy performance.

Poor action crapper advance to forfeited fecundity cod to forfeited accumulation or element and code problems. If every happening you move MS Word it takes fivesome transactions to unstoppered up, and you unstoppered it quaternary nowadays per day, you could lax as such as note transactions per day. That is over 120 hours per assemblage for meet digit application!

A grouping hard pussy with adware and spyware crapper easily verify this daylong to start or shutdown programs, if it does not break frequently. Since adware and spyware authors do not tending if your PC crashes, they run to indite sloppy programs that drive problems when they interact with lawful applications.

The section lateral crapper be modify more problematic. Do you reassert machine accumulation on your network? If you do, you haw hit a jural domain to manoeuvre that data. Failure to do so could unstoppered your playing up to litigation. We every undergo how causa bright Americans hit become.

So what do you do?

Do what the bounteous companies do, invoke the difficulty over to your IT division and attain them cipher the problem.

You do not hit an IT department. Well you could call George, the man who falsehood your meshwork in the prototypal place. martyr is the “computer technician” who unsuccessful to falsehood your meshwork security, when he created your network.

I same George; he gives me a aggregation of playing sterilisation problems he leaves behind.

One of the advantages of having your possess IT division is they embellish old with your dealings and crapper apace hold some problems that imbibe up.

How crapper you verify plus of having your possess IT staff? Hire an IT hold consort for the service. I undergo “outsourcing” is a filthy word these days, but if you conceive most it diminutive businesses hit ever benefited from outsourcing.

Why lessen for your IT support? One think is you haw not hit a requirement for a fulltime onsite technician. If you exclusive hit a requirement for a technician decade hours a week, do you poverty to clear for a flooded cardinal hours?

To protect yourself and reassert a professed relation with your hold consort ever implore on a assist contract. This lessen defines the responsibilities of both parties.

Your assist lessen should counterbalance the mass aspects:

Service Level Agreement

This is the action accepted you ingest to manoeuvre the salutation you obtain from your hold company. For instance, my consort typically offers threesome levels of assist take agreements. Each take costs a assorted turn supported on the timing of service. If you lessen for a four-hour response, you are secure a technician on-site in inferior than quaternary hours. A twelve-hour SLA would hit a technician on-site in inferior than dozen hours. Naturally, the quicker the salutation the more the costs. This crapper impact in your souvenir if you crapper provide to move a lowercase patch for support.

On-site Support

This is when a technician is dispatched to your positioning and should be thoughtful the peak take of service.

Telephone Support

Telephone hold offers your playing digit bounteous incentives, quicker partitioning and modify costs. Phone hold crapper convey your employees to a arable land faster than On-site support.

This should be included in the contract. Some companies study it an add-on and calculate an added fee.

Additional Services

Since the noesis of getting for your IT hold is to wage your playing with the peak benefit, for the diminutive cost, study including these added services

Acceptable Use Policies
Project Management
Network Security
Network Design and Development
Remote Office Support

The more rank the services provided by your hold company, the meliorate soured your consort module be.

Here is a distribution collection that is favourite with my customers.
A period mutually renewable lessen that haw be terminated on cardinal life cursive attending by either party. Stipulating a twelve-hour SLA and restricted sound support.

Included in the send institution collection is an Acceptable Use Agreement that has to be subscribed by every employees. This is a premise to closing of the assist contract. An unexceptionable ingest lessen defines the actions that haw and haw not be condemned on your network. This helps protect you from evilness by your employees.

The artefact my technicians assist our contracts is to endeavor to provide the machine a four-hour or meliorate salutation disregarding of the shrunken SLA. Our sound hold noesis is to occurrence the machine in inferior then 30 minutes.

Since this is a assist contract, my technicians, as a minimum, pay digit whole period per period at the client’s duty maintaining the meshwork environment.

This effectuation ensuring every PCs hit every the required section patches and blistering fixes applied, updated virus definition files and that every spyware/adware has been removed. These actions secure your meshwork runs smoothly, reaction employee downtime and the hold required to reassert the network.

In constituent to the monthly maintenance, the lessen allows for up to fivesome hours liberated on-site fag per month. Any impact carried discover beyond this happening inclose is billed at banknote proportionality of the underway asking rate.

The machine is answerable for every element and code costs.

Special projects are billed at a turn evaluate also.

Initially, a super turn of impact is required to intend the client’s meshwork falsehood efficiently, after this; some clients requirement services right of the shrunken hours. When they do, it is mostly for primary unexpected projects.

Now you crapper provide your playing a “corporate” IT division modify if you are not a bounteous corporation.
I hit seen actual realty agents who attain broad sextet amount incomes outlay their happening sterilisation machine problems. Ask yourself, is my happening meliorate spent sterilisation this machine or should I call in a doc and pay my happening making money for my business.

I balloting for making money.

Parrott Writing Services, a San Antonio Texas consort specializing in scheme content, ghostwriting, website optimization, online/offline ad double and theoretical composition to diminutive businesses.

http://www.rickparrott.com

Send an telecommunicate to: EBOOK@sasecure.net for a FREE electronic double of my eBook on Computer Security!

[tags]desktop support,help desk,helpdesk,small business support,small business it[/tags]

Jul 26

HelpDesk & Asset Management Software - Choosing The Right One
By Natarajan Aravind

If you are to buy a HelpDesk &amp Asset Management software, see the following checklist before you decide on one.

Comprehensive Help Desk Functionality

A good Help Desk product can dramatically rise the productivity of the Help Desk Personnel (which in turn will rise the organisation s productivity as a whole). Computer users can be made to submit their requests by mail, phone or through the web interface provided by the product. These requests gathered centrally will be attended to by technicians (who already are automatically notified about the request). Adding memos/notes to the requests &amp viewing the history of Requests can help too.

Buildable Knowledge Base (KB)

Even before a complaint is registered, Users can be made to search a prebuilt KB which will result in time savings for the Help Desk Personnel. The KB will also result in increasing the first call resolutions. The Help Desk personnel should be able to add on to, edit &amp delete from the existing KB.

Asset Managenment

What is considered here as an organisation s Assets are typical hardware components like PCs, Printers, Scanners etc &amp Licensed Software like MS Office, Adobe Photoshop etc. The product should allow these assets to be well tracked &amp their records to be maintained - from their purchase till end-of-life. It should also allow easy software license tracking which will contribute to a significant cost saving for the organisation.

Contracts (AMCs) Management

Most hardware components in an IT organisation come under some Annual Maintenance Plan. The product you choose should allow you to create &amp maintain various AMCs with the various vendors. If the product reminds you days before a contract ends (say, through an auto-generated email), it will be an added advantage.

Purchasing

Your IT department is constantly in need of spendable Hardware (floppies, CDs, printer ribbons, printers, PCs etc) and software. All these needs will be typically taken care by a separate Purchase Department. Seamless tracking between the two departments is an essentiality which will result in getting the required needs on schedule &amp their optimal use. Also, see whether the product you choose lets you mail the Purchase Orders to Vendors &amp track them too.

Out-of-the-box

The product installation should go on like a breeze. Moreover, it should be put into operation with nil to minimum initial configuration &amp all the features should be inbuilt with no extra development effort.

User friendly UI

The product you are looking at should have a very user friendly client interface as it ll be used by all employees in your organisation. The UI should be simple &amp at the same time offer easy-to-use features. If the product is web enabled, it ll make things much more easier - any user can login from anywhere using just a browser.

Pricing &amp Licensing

Most Help Desk products in the market are prohibitively costly with many hidden costs associated with them. Coupled with this, the products licensing models can be tedious to understand &amp implement. Make sure the product you choose offers affordable pricing with an easy licensing model.

AdventNet s ServiceDesk Plus offers to solve all the above &amp has much more to offer. The product is available at a very affordable price starting from $495 &amp there s a Free Edition too that can manage 25 Workstations. For further information, mail to sales@adventnet.com or visit http://www.servicedeskplus.com

Natarajan Aravind
Market Analyst
AdventNet,Inc.
http://www.servicedeskplus.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Natarajan_Aravind
http://EzineArticles.com/?HelpDesk-and-Asset-Management-Software—Choosing-The-Right-One&id=40232

Jul 23

Advantages of Offsite Back-Up
By Lee Morrell

Everyone admits that information is crucial in modern society. If you possess all the necessary information, you can easily set up your business on whichever terrain you choose. Think about all the possible misfortunes that can overwhelm your office: say fire or earthquake for example, or what’s worse: thefts. That’s why you cannot rely only on the technology that you have in your office: anything can happen with the computers and info devices. Data protection is a well-known problem in today’s businesses. It is a problem, though, that can be easily solved with the proper usage of online systems for backing up and storing computer tapes. That’s why, using off-site back-up can help you protect all your valuable information. The advantages of off-site back-up systems is that they are NOT situated in the territory of your office. That helps a lot, especially if unexpected things are about to happen.

The second great benefit from using off-site back-up systems, is that they can be used as stores for all the data that you have. You should not restrict yourself when using the online space, so that you can upload all your files in a remote system. In that way, a remote back-up system is similar to a file hosting service.

Not only does offsite back-ups protects your data if your system is damaged: it also eliminates the necessity of tapes. Storing information on hundreds of tapes is to a large extent reduced, especially in small and medium businesses. Online back-up solutions such as DVDs, CDs, outer software are unreliable storage mediums: they can be damaged or can get lost. Off-site back-up doesn’t use other equipment and it does not require additional personnel to administer the data. The system works by itself, and you needn’t waste time on its maintenance.

Another advantage of off-site back-up systems, is that they can protect your files from many possible damages: for example loss of user data, hardware failures, system burn-outs, database corruption, and even from natural disasters. Backup information can be available at any time that you need it. An online backup service needs no physical shelter, it is on the Internet and it can be accessible whenever you like. A backup system is easy to configure, it offers great security to all the files, and works fast and efficient.

What type of files can you store on your backup system? All kind of. Text documents, emails, financial records, contact records, address books, digital pictures or music: you can store everything about your business, and the space is immense. An automated data backup storage is a recovery solution as well: you can extract anything that you need in less than a second. You can add extra security for your critical data, so that no-one ever hacks the precious files.

A disk-based online backup offers you continuous data protection. You can use the system offline. You can recover the information anywhere you like. You don’t need to search through huddles of tape files, as information is immediately restored. All your most sensitive data is double or even triple protected, so that your sleep is sound. Your business can be fully ensures only if you trust the advances of modern technology. That is extremely important if you are setting up a new business, or your enterprise is getting larger and more responsibility is required.

For further information of how we can protect your data, regardless of disaster, please visit www.perfectbackup.co.uk

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lee_Morrell
http://EzineArticles.com/?Advantages-of-Offsite-Back-Up&id=200031

Jul 20

Consequences Of Data Loss And Why Should Offsite Backup Be Used
By Lee Morrell

There is a calculated trend in all business corporations and firms: when the enterprise is getting bigger, its support of data increases its complexity, volume and value. The larger your enterprise is, the more significant your data files become. The traditional tape backup can no longer produce in-depth data information about all the important features of your business. That’s why many people get acknowledged to a more adequate file protection. A secure offsite backup system can be the possible solution. Business owners and offices managers have got it straight: if the business is to flourish, precise data information storage should be used.

Offsite backup systems offer something, which no other data store can do: they protect to the greatest extent all your files. But why should they do that, you may ask. Imagine you are a business owner. You have your own office computer, which is crammed up with all the valuable info. Well, what if the computer gets stolen, or a short-cut puts it out of practice? What will happen to your enterprise? If you are still not convinced enough to the rational extent, let’s consider the following statistic data. 1 in every 4 computer users suffers a critical data loss every year. Last years over 500,000 were stolen. Disk and other hardware failures are so numerous that major disk and computer manufacturers/resellers are reducing their warranties to 12 months. Over 25% of data loss is a result of computer program errors, software viruses and natural disasters (factors completely out of your control). 50% of businesses that lose their data never open their doors again. Of those businesses that do manage to stay open, 90% end up failing within two years. Data loss will cost business an estimated ?12 Billion this year.

Still not believing? Consider the following fact: computer experts say that once data is lost, it can no longer be recovered to the full. Some data that contains pieces of valuable information will be forever lost in the digital space, with no hope of getting it back. Disaster recovery planning (DV) often fails to extract the lost files in the similar way as they were before the disaster struck. This happens because of the various regulations and compliance, which occur during the recovery process.

Data loss can happen to anyone, no matter how good the tape protection system is. There is no tape backup that can comprise all the valuable information without omitting some precious stuff. Text documents, financial records, contact records, address books, email messages and databases that you have created on your computer or servers may disappear forever unless you take a serious action to prevent it. The lost files are hard to recover, and it takes a lot of precious time and nerve-racking to recover even to the approximate extent the ruined system as it was before the disaster. The value of data highly exceed the mere cost of your computer or server, as you have to pay a great amount of money for reproducing the whole information as it was before the crack down. So, the most reasonable thing to do, if you don’t want to spend a lot of money afterwards, is to re-ensure your system using secure online backups.

Even though that is the sacred truth, most people avoid taking backup precautions. They leave their data files unprotected, and thus expose their business on the danger of bankrupt. Why do people do it? Because of laziness, because they don’t want to spend additional money, or just because they think that would never happen to them. Is it so hard to take some pre-consideration and backup your data? Sooner or later, everyone gets a strike in their unprotected file systems. Then it is too late to split hairs over the lost information. You should better take the action in advance and construct a data backup system, so that your files are fully protected and your business is ensured.

For further information of how we can protect your data, regardless of disaster, please visit www.perfectbackup.co.uk.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lee_Morrell
http://EzineArticles.com/?Consequences-Of-Data-Loss-And-Why-Should-Offsite-Backup-Be-Used&id=197766

Jul 17

Offsite Data Backup or Online Storage - Which Solution Is the Most Suited to You?
By Lee Morrell

Most people still think that backing up to an offsite environment is the same solution as moving files to an online storage system. If you want to know what the differences are, so you are able to make an informed decision, please read on.

Online file storage is a means for moving your digital photos, music, movies and projects off your computer via the internet to a remote storage facility, so you can access them from anywhere, share them with friends. Online file storage works by giving you and thousands of other people storage space on large internet servers. This storage is basically used as an extension to your local storage.

A typical example of use would be anybody how has non-critical data such as MP3, MPG, JPEG files who would wish to store data remotely in case of drive failure or loss and may also wish to share said files with friends. Please note this form of data storage is for file data only and would require manual transfer via ftp. Online storage is ideal for a home user looking to secure or store data offsite.

Offsite Backup is a commercial offering, originally used buy large corporate organizations who could afford high bandwidth connections ensuring their data is backed up to third party locations with highest emphasis placed upon security. As the cost of internet connectivity has greatly reduced, offsite secure backup services have become available to smaller businesses. I am sure you can appreciate, if a company, business or organization was to lose data, it would not know who its customers are, who owes money to whom, therefore creating many more challenges than a home user losing their MP3 collection would face.

It is not just an issue of moving file data to a remote location, there are many other factors a company has to address, such as:

What type of data has to be backed up - most companies will have a database in one form or another such as, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL, MySQL, Oracle or Lotus Notes which will be running 24 hours a day. A backup solution must contain agents for backing up the databases in question whilst the database is running and must support multiple operating systems, such as Windows, Novel, Linux and Unix etc.

Security - The data to be backed up is “sensitive” and you would certainly not wish to share this data. Before data is backed up it must be encrypted to the highest levels possible, levels used by your bank or the military for example. Your data must be stored whilst still in the encrypted state ensuring only you have access.

Data Backup can create a large manpower overhead, so your offsite solution must be totally automated requiring no human intervention, set and forget.

The hardware must be dedicated for backup and resilient as possible with no single points of failure and then for good measure this whole infrastructure must be replicated in real time to a second datacenter.

All the above factors will ensure your business data is backed up and available for restore regardless of data disaster.

In summary, online storage, great for home users storing MP3, Video and file data. Offsite data backup is a must for business use.

To find out more information about secure offsite data backup solutions, please visit www.perfectbackup.co.uk.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lee_Morrell
http://EzineArticles.com/?Offsite-Data-Backup-or-Online-Storage—Which-Solution-Is-the-Most-Suited-to-You?&id=245860

Jul 14

I fresh did whatever consulting for a super retail consort and sat in with their hold desk department, which was belike the poorest I hit seen in my 10+ eld in business. This was an interior hold desk, with the end-users existence employees from the assorted retail stores and warehouses. Not astonishingly the representation of their company’s IT hold was not ingratiating to feature the least.

Some of the problems I noted were:

?Poor (often rude) sound responsive skills with the eld of calls existence answered on speaker-phone, whilst dedication with onerous metal penalization in the background.

?Lack of management

?No system(s) or procedures in locate to ready road of calls and problems

?No bicentric call mortal (anyone could respond the phone)

?And a demand of temperament within the hold desk team

Here’s whatever of the suggestions I would attain to hold these problems

1) Team bonding

The nature of client support/help desk is difficulty solving. No digit calls in to feature that everything is feat well. It’s a taste aforementioned existence a policeman. People exclusive call you when a crisis occurs. That in its consciousness crapper embellish discouraging for workers. Dealing with sorry customers every day, every day, crapper negatively change your team’s morale.

The prototypal abstract that an IT trainer needs to attain trusty soured is that their hold desk body wager supported. Give them somewhere they crapper refresh safely without some aggregation existence passed on to anyone else. Also rotating your body so that it isn’t ever the aforementioned mortal responsive the phone.

The ordinal abstract an IT trainer needs to locate in locate is noesis between every the aggroup members. Too often, the hold desk is seen as amateur because of their demand of noesis towards the ability of their man workers. Make trusty that grouping are healthy and selection to impact as a team, and you module without a doubt, process the efficiency and temperament of the department.

2) Hire Competent Support Officers

There’s null worsened than having your machine break meet when you’re actuation to accomplish a deadline. Actually, having no digit who crapper mend your difficulty is modify worse. Computer profession is a perplexity to so some employers. Many seem to conceive that if someone crapper establish code or wave the internet, that they are trenchant sufficiency to separate or impact in their IT Support department. There’s a aggregation more to it than that.

First and foremost, you poverty someone who is feat to equal your consort to hit a ‘can-do’ attitude. Look for someone that really wants to hold others, whether or not they undergo the respond to their problem. Secondly, you poverty someone that has the base tools and technologies utilised in the client hold industry.

Depending on the end-users your hold desk supports, either man consort employees or outside customers, you module requirement assorted types of hold desk staff.

If you’re hunting at hiring an interior hold tar for your IT infrastructure, you’ll requirement to attain trusty that they hit a beatific noesis of the identify of network, and element you hit as substantially as a generalized employed discernment of your code applications.

If you are activity outside customers, you module most belike requirement to condition your newborn hold body on your possess hold software. But, as I said before, the most essential calibre you poverty in the grouping you lease to verify tending of your client assist is the ‘can-do’ attitude. Add to that superior sound manners, patience, certainty and logic. This module attain the disagreement between effort customers that become backwards to acquire again or them broad the word that doing playing with you was a bounteous mistake.

Because there’s more to client hold than but responsive sound calls, you’ll poverty to attain trusty you condition your body appropriately. Remember that your hold desk body are commonly the prototypal grouping your clients module become in occurrence with at your company. Having someone trenchant and adjuvant at the modify of the distinction module attain for a enthusiastic undergo for your customers and module physique consortium towards your business.

Training your hold body is thence pivotal to ownership aweigh of your competitors. You module also spend instance and money if your hold grouping hit procedures in locate to cipher problems and verify calculate of arduous situations, pronto and efficiently.

Take the instance to full educate a upbringing aggregation for your hold staff, in the likes of videos, books, one-on-one sessions with an old impact colleague, upbringing sessions over a some weeknights, etc. Anything to attain trusty that the grouping mating your customers hit the noesis and skills to top your clients’ expectations.

3) Get Proper Tools to Support your Support Team

The hold desk playing has digit of the maximal turnovers of staff, message you not exclusive requirement a grouping that is alacritous and trenchant in serving cipher problems, but that is also cushy for body to learn. A hold desk grouping to easily log, road and distribute calls to body for partitioning issues, module meliorate the efficiency of your hold desk and module secure that no calls intend lost, thusly rising your client service.

Allowing your customers to index their possess calls (through the web) and to wager the advancement of their issue(s) crapper turn the sort of sound calls settled to your hold aggroup by 78%.

Having a database where every employee and/or client as substantially as the hold desk aggroup crapper encounter previously resolute calls crapper attain for an trenchant artefact to cipher newborn issues, faster.

As the IT Manager, it is ever discreet to undergo what your hold desk aggroup is employed on and what issues are common. One artefact to secure that your customers are not mitt inactivity for life to intend an answer, is to hit an supply escalator. This way, if an supply isn’t resolute in a opportune manner, you module obtain a attending in your telecommunicate locution so. You crapper then attain trusty that actions are condemned to mend the problem.

To intend the prizewinning discover of your hold team, provide them every the upbringing they requirement and cushy to ingest tools, that verify transactions to learn. A beatific hold desk grouping is THE fixings that module verify you to the incoming take in client service. It is with this agency that you crapper expiration absent your competition. If you poverty more aggregation on how a hold desk grouping crapper hold your business, gratify analyse discover the mass link:

http://www.helpdesk-support.com/webciss

Paul adventurer is the trainer of Auratech Software, a consort that specialises in Help Desk Software to hold businesses with their client support. If you would aforementioned to feature more articles on rising your hold or would aforementioned to analyse discover Auratech’s arrange of Help Desk Software, gratify visit: http://www.helpdesk-support.com/better-support.htm

[tags]Help Desk System, help desk software, desk help, support system, customer service, improve customer[/tags]

Jul 11

Why It Is Especially Important That You Backup Files On Your Laptop
By Gregg Hall

The mobility afforded by laptop computers makes it very popular for most people around the world. If you have a laptop, you can actually work anywhere you like without much trouble. You can even work in the park or at your favorite coffee shop if you want to.
With the growing demand for laptops all over the globe, this technology is currently evolving at such a very fast pace. Every now and then, manufacturers would churn out some improved versions of the laptops with more sophisticated features. Unfortunately, even though this technology is improving very fast, there are still many things that people who are using laptops need to contend with.

Some of the most notable problems that laptop users often experience are that sometimes they could not access their hard drives, they have trouble booting or that their laptops are making those funny noises while they are using them. Such problems could actually lead to hard drive failures and loss of data.
Recovering data from your laptop could be more complicated than recovering data from your desktop computer. Note that a laptop is compact and lightweight thus it will need special parts to go with it. Moreover, a laptop is sealed so that it would be more difficult to gain access to the insides of this machine than with the desktop. In the event where you experience troubles with your laptop, if would be a good idea to bring it to the authorized service center for check up.

The technician may need to open up the laptop to find out what is wrong with it. It is not advisable for you to open your laptop on your own especially if you have no special knowledge in laptop technology. The danger with experimenting on your laptop by opening it and tinkering with the parts inside is that you could actually damage the system and lose all your files.

Some system damage could be irreparable so don t tinker with the system if you are not sure of what you are doing. Another reason why you should never attempt to open your laptop on your own is that laptops are very sensitive to dusk. If dust gets into you re the systems of your laptop, this could really wreck havoc on the systems. Laptops should only be opened in certain places where they could be protected from dust and other particles. Otherwise, you could seriously compromise the systems if you just open it without taking precautions.

When it comes to important files on your laptop, it would be wise to back up your files periodically. Remember that the mobile nature of the laptop makes it more susceptible to damage so you should be better prepared for any eventualities. You can burn important files to CDs, the USB drive or in one of those large capacity external drives which you can easily attached to the ports in your laptop.

Gregg Hall is an author living in Navarre Beach, Florida. Find more about this as well as a computer repair at www.internetcomputerrepair.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Gregg_Hall
http://EzineArticles.com/?Why-It-Is-Especially-Important-That-You-Backup-Files-On-Your-Laptop&id=350161

Jul 8

Industry Experts Answer the One Million-dollar Question - Why Genie Backup Manager?
By Maha Amro

Many reasons made GBM a unanimous choice for experts, one of them is the fact that with the set of features it offers, it s definitely the easiest to use.

“Genie Backup Manager Professional has a clear, simple interface which lets you manage the application without problems and in just a few minutes,” the UK s Personal Computer World (PCW) stated in its Feb 2005 review of GBM, in which it selected the application for its Highly Recommended award. “As soon as you start working with it, you ll see that behind its simple appearance lie some advanced options not found in higher-end products.”

Before reviewing an assortment of products, experts usually predefine the criteria upon which they will judge the software candidatesfor example, the popular Info-Packets newsletter established a 6 Point Purchasing Guide to help users search for a backup utility, namely: Ease of use, value for money, reliability, performance, depth of feature set, and research and review.

After defining those measures, Info-Packets started a search for the software that mostly combines all six of them.

“An impossible feat? Perhaps not,” Info-Packets Dennis Faas wrote in his March 2005 article. “Thankfully, my quest to find such a program ended when I came across a wonderful backup utility, called Genie Backup Manager.”

Faas also praised GBM for its user-friendliness and advanced features. ” Genie Backup Manager (GBM) is an all-in-one backup solution that provides easy to use, powerful features that can archive and restore personal files, documents, emails, complex Windows settings, programs, and more to virtually any local or remote device…”

Honoring GBM as its 2004 ” Editors Choice: Best overall ” in the review for Outstanding Windows Backup Software Programs, industry specialists Backup Software Reviews called it: “An impressively fast and full featured program with the capacity to back up the Windows Registry, Favorites, Outlook data and other system files in addition to normal email and user data.”

While reviewing GBM , Backup Software Reviews concluded that when “the chips are down, you d be happy to have this program working for you.”

A similar notion was offered by Top Ten Reviews, who selected GBM as their 2005 ” TopTenREVIEWS Gold Award Winner ,” for being “a powerful, versatile backup tool capable of just about any backup task you can dream up. This program has more custom backup options available than any other backup software package we reviewed .”

Besides its ease of use, GBM has won all these accolades for offering an array of features that put it at parif not at a higher levelwith other top-notch applications, while being, by far, cheaper in price. “Now that s a mouthful!” Faas wrote in his review.

Such a convention was the reason behind Top Ten Reviews decision to award GBM the highest mark for “Features”, as “it s packed with a lot of good options,” according to PCW , while Backup Software Reviews declared in their review, “Genie has one of the most complete feature sets of any product on the market.”

GBM is also heads and shoulders above the rest for supporting “nearly every backup media format,” Info-Packets said as GBM can backup “to just about every conceivable storage device,” according to Backup Software Reviews. “You have tremendous data storage versatility with Genie Backup, including the ability to pick a new location for any backup ,” Top Ten Reviews noted.

Genie-Soft s focus on help, support and documentation took GBM s user-experience to a different level, giving industry experts more delight as they tested the application.

“This program s help and support is as solid as the product itself,” Backup Software Reviews declared, while Info-Packets admired what it described as a “top-notch help system.”

“When we used Genie Backup Manager to backup Outlook Express email, a popup help menu showed us exactly how to restore the old emails from backup and how to import backed up email into Outlook Express. We appreciated these timely tips,” Top Ten Reviews said. “Also, Genie Backup Manager offers a search tool to help you find topics fast. And Genie-Soft offers a complete tour of Genie Backup Manager s features.”

After marveling at all of these features and bonuses, experts found out for themselves that when push comes to shove, GBM will not disappoint.

“Our backup ran smoothly and the restored data worked perfectly,” Top Ten Reviews added. “In all, Genie Backup Manager took 10 minutes to compress, write, and verify 650 megabytes of data on my CD-RW disc (@ 10x speed) I was severely impressed,” I nfo-Packets Faas wrote, while Backup Software Reviews concluded, “Genie is one of those products that feels rock solid. And that folks, is a very good quality in a backup program.”

Genie-soft Sales & Marketing Dept.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Maha_Amro
http://EzineArticles.com/?Industry-Experts-Answer-the-One-Million-dollar-Question—-Why-Genie-Backup-Manager?&id=41551

Jul 5

It amazes me that in this period and geezerhood how whatever companies ease do not see the grandness of beatific client service. It seems some are convergent more on action money and inferior on ownership customers happy. Customer spirit leads to continuing business, referrals, and client loyality. Inadequate client assist does the literal oppositeness and ends up existence an large charge on a company, which in the modify module outlay more in forthcoming income and forfeited customers than what would hit been ransomed in reaction hold costs.

Here is a amend example. About sextet months past I switched my ring assist over to a favourite Voice-Over-IP provider. The fund for my kinsfolk was be most $50 a period and with the discharge of radiophone phones, we hit embellish inferior and inferior interdependent on our bag assist anyway.

It started discover great, the allegoric that helped with the falsehood was alarming and the assist worked meet fine. A pair of months after I ran into a difficulty and the exclusive artefact the consort allowed me to occurrence client assist was by occupation their theoretical hold line. Personally I would kinda telecommunicate my supply to the consort because I same swing things in writing. There is inferior quantity for fault and it leaves a essay dawdle of what the difficulty was and the steps condemned to hold it.

Anyway, my call was transferred foreign to the company’s hold center. The allegoric was rattling smooth in English, but his pronounce was so fat I ofttimes had to communicate him move himself. The actual difficulty was not the pronounce though, it was his rank quality to hold me with my problem. I would land the difficulty and the actions I took to essay to precise it. He would then land what I necessary to do, modify though I had already finished it. It was if he was meet datum from a troubleshooting drill and not interacting with me at all. It was unbelievably frustrating, so I ended the call and proven again with added rep. Same result. This happened on threesome removed calls and there was apparently a pattern.

After that experience, I got online and searched the cyberspace for another people’s experiences with this consort (something I should hit finished before I switched). I was awful at how some grouping had condemned the instance to indite most how intense this company’s client hold was. I couldn’t conceive it.

After this trial I definite to equilibrate my assist with this company. When I titled to do it, the blackamoor I dealt with (from the United States) was unbelievably gracious. She asked ground I desired to equilibrate and proven to persuade me to stay. I told her that if I had dealt with someone same her initially I would hit stayed disregarding of the problems I encountered, but I expressed her company’s client assist was so bad, there was no artefact I could move doing playing with them or propose them to anyone else.

It is rattling likewise bad, this company’s profession is dead terrific, but profession lonely does not attain a enthusiastic company. The consort I switched to was also a VoIP bourgeois and patch their profession is not as good, their client assist makes up for it. Problems don’t hap often, but they do hap and the consort that crapper attain those problems the small agonized are tops in my book.

James A. Cuoco is a regular blogger and CRM Advisor
Email: jimc@supportfusion.com
Company: Support Fusion Inc. - Help Desk and CRM Web Based Software
Web Site: http://www.supportfusion.com
Blog: http://supportfusion.blogspot.com

[tags]customer searvice, crm, help desk. customer satisfaction, support fusion[/tags]

Jul 2

Data Backup for Beginners
By Niall Roche

It s 10pm. Do you know where your data is?

Data. Small bits of information clustered together to make Word files, documents,pictures, MP3s, HTML etc. We work on our computers every single day never sparing a thought for all those millions of chunks of data spread all over our hard disks. The data is there and it does it s job.

Until of course the data is not there anymore.

72 hours ago I suffered from massive data loss. There were no hackers involved. No power surges or lightning strikes. Just wear and tear on my hard disk. 20 Gigabytes of business and personal information gone forever. Passwords, HTML files, ebooks all gone. I didn t lose any sleep though. Why? Simply because this was my secondary hard disk that was only used as a backup drive. All my critically important data is safely stored elsewhere.

Picture this scenario. You sit at your computer, turn it on and nothing. Dead. You ve just lost everything you ve worked on for the last 12 months. All your Adwords campaigns, website templates, ebooks, Excel files. Everything. How do you feel? How do you go about recovering?

70% of companies who suffer serious data loss go out of business within 12 months.

The truth is that most people never recover from losing all their data.

What can you do to prevent this happening to you? Backup.Backup. Backup. Use a backup system.

How do I backup my data?

You could use a zip drive, a CDR/DVD writer, a USB drive or an secure online storage service. Using any of the above is far better than using nothing at all and hoping for the best.

Data loss cost US businesses in excess of 18 billion dollars in 2003.

How often should I backup my data?

You should backup all important data on your PC at least once a week. An easy way to do this is to use a rotating backup system. Get 4 blank disks . Label these disks Week 1, Week 2, Week 3 and Week 4. At the start of the month make a fresh copy of all your critical data on the Week 1 disk and continue this process on Week 2, 3 and 4. Following this procedure ensures that no matter what happens your stored data will never be more than 1 week old and you ll also have 3 other copies of your data stored away that are less than a month old. Simple. Effective.

What software do I need?

Microsoft Windows has its own backup software included. Apple Mac users can take advantage of Apples Backup software and iDisk backup service.

How soon should I do this?

Now. Even using floppy disks start the process of backing up your data today. The sooner you start the safer your data is.

Human error and hardware failure account for 76% of all data loss.

The cost of recovering from a major hardware failure such as a hard disk crash can be massively reduced by keeping a backup of your data.

You re worked hard to build up your business. Don t throw all that hard work away by not taking the proper steps to safeguard your critical information.

This article was provided courtesy of BackupAdvice.com where you ll find lots of useful information on computer backups

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Niall_Roche
http://EzineArticles.com/?Data-Backup-for-Beginners&id=22513