The title might scare you a little, but in the computer industry, a UPS is an Uninterruptible Power Supply. This is basically a batter backup for when the power goes kaput…

I personally use these at home for my computers and I recommend that my clients have at least 1 in the office for the most important person or computer. The most important person may be the secretary in the office since they effectively run the day to day operations. They’ll still be able to send email (as long as your router is on a UPS as well), still be able to get information off their computer, etc – all while the power is out.

For the most important computer, this is normally the office computer that runs the accounting software or is a server that everyone connects to. If that goes down, it could spell disaster for the entire office if the plug gets kicked. Computers don’t like being kicked off when the power dies, it can do very bad things to servers. Servers are unique due to the way due to how their disks are setup. If you have RAID on a server, you absolutely REQUIRE a UPS. The more expensive RAID enabled servers can survive a shutoff without major issues, but a UPS could mean the difference between a “can” and “will”.

UPS’ generally allow for automatic shut down in case of a power failure. This means your server or workstation can be automatically shut down if the power doesn’t kick back on quickly. If the power is off for 5 minutes, you’re still ok. If it’s off for 2 hours, find something for the staff to do, because a UPS will not handle that long of an outage, you’ll require a generator.

I would love to recomend a UPS online, but we’re still waiting on some paperwork to get back to us from a specific company. If you would like to know more about UPS’ or what type we would recomend, feel free to email us or give us a call.
Justin

I’ve mentioned that Protoco116 does remote monitoring all over our website, but a lot of people think that I’ll be watching what they do – far from the truth.

Remote monitoring is mainly a business offering, although some consumers use it as well as an insurnace policy. Remote monitoring allows Protocol16 to read reports on certain aspects of your computers, workstations, laptops and servers. This means we can see if Windows updated properly, if your anti-virus software is updating like it should, if your hard drive space is getting low or even if you’re having hard drive problems and don’t know it…

Now, some businesses we talked with about this have stated something similar to “we did this with another company, paid more money AND they didn’t do anything to help us…” To that, I’d like to apologize on behalf of the computer support industry – someone didn’t do their job.

Remote monitoring to us means we watch your computers on a daily basis, but without getting in the way. With our support contracts, it also means that we’ll show up at least once a month to ensure that you’re not having issues we’re not seeing. We all know that Susie’s computer does random things once in awhile, but it acts fine when the technician shows up (you thought you were the only place where that happens, right?)…

Even if you don’t have a support contract, but you want your computers monitored, you can be assured that we’ll talk with you and let you know that we’re coming once in awhile as a courtesy to just chat and ensure things are going alright. We know you’re just as busy as we are and your time is valuable. If you start having a lot of problems and it appears that we’re not catching it remotely, we’ll make sure to show up to solve your problem promptly.

Justin

Today’s Post is Brought to You By the Letter V.

We all know there are viruses out there, at least we should. We also know that you should have your anti-virus software updated on a normal basis (you DID renew your anti-virus subscription, right???). Well, we see a lot of virus problems on top of spyware (spyware is a program that watches what you do, sending personal info across the internet, etc. It can also serve advertising up, and generally muck things up.) here in Portland and it’s a curious thing.

The number one call we receive is “My computer is slow, what can I do?” I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: “It depends”. But, I will say that many times it turns out to be viruses and spyware on the computer. The easiest way to get rid of these programs is to use a program like SpyBot Search & Destroy or anti-virus software. While I use to recommend AVG for home users, I’m actually starting to change my mind.

Over the summer, it seems, the AVG Free Edition has been failing to catch many types of viruses. While I don’t like saying that out in the public eye, I see this more as a warning to those using it. Just be careful.

If you read the report on AV-Comparatives, you’ll see several anti-virus (ok, I’ll call them AV’s from here on out) companies that are reviewed. Unfortunately, AVG earned 1 out of 3 stars (there is a zero-star category too..) We’re currently working on yet another partnership with an un-named AV company that I feel is worth the installation. While I would love to talk about it for now, I can’t until we finalize everything. As always, if we partner up, that means we can pass on savings to our customers.

For now, I would renew your licenses for what you currently have installed. If you don’t have anything installed, read the report from the link above and decide for yourself which one you would like to install. If you want to skip through the rough stuff, scroll down to page 8 of the report for the ratings.

If you’ve got an infection that just won’t go away, we can help out with that as well since we have the software to help out. If your AV software is up-to-date and things are still slow, give us a call at 503-524-9047. We’ll be more than happy to help out.
Justin