bruceb news

I am pleased to announced a new service for my loyal clients: real-time server and networking monitoring.

This is the culmination of months of evaluation and testing. It represents a higher level of service that I’ll be delivering to my clients, at the same time that I’m helping reduce technology costs by handling problems before they turn into crises.

SERVER MONITORING

For less than $1 per day, I will set up 24×7 Round-the-Clock Monitoring that will check your server’s critical systems every fifteen minutes. Whenever it sniffs a problem, I’ll get an email showing the exact nature of […] continued

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Previously:
LogMeIn Pro: Remote Access
LogMeIn Pro: Sending Large Files
LogMeIn Pro: Desktop Shortcut

Here’s a tip for LogMeIn users to fix a glitch that turns up in the File Manager used to transfer files between two computers.

LogMeIn is best known for its products aimed at consumers that provide remote access to computers over the Internet. LogMeIn Free and Pro are the programs I suggest to anyone looking for remote access to a computer at a different location. They work completely reliably, they’re very fast, and they’re designed securely.

LogMeIn Free takes seconds […] continued

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Previously:
Windows 7 Searches – Small Business
Windows 7 Searches – Libraries

You’ve got a Windows 7 workstation in a small business or law firm. The network server is running Windows Search 4 and you’ve added the network locations with shared files to your Documents library. All the pieces are in place!

SEARCH ALL DOCUMENTS FROM WINDOWS EXPLORER

When you click on Documents on the Start menu, you will open your Documents library, which includes both your individual files and all of the shared company documents.

Do a search from the upper right corner of […] continued

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Previously: Windows 7 Searches – Small Business

When you click on Documents in the Start menu in Windows 7, your cursor arrives blinking in Libraries. I’ve been annoyed by that for months, but I finally had an “ah-ha!” moment when I discovered what libraries can do for searches. Let me give you some background about libraries, from the perspective of a small business or law firm user.

Libraries are collections gathered together from different places and presented in a single view. There’s no folder on your C: drive named “Libraries.” A library is a special view of files […] continued

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If the right elements are in place, Windows 7 can be used for lightning-fast searches through shared folders in small businesses and law firms. There are a couple of tricks to that process; it will take a couple of days to give you the background and show you some search techniques.

When Windows Search 4.0 was released in the summer of 2008, one of its important features was “remote query” or “remote index discovery.” A computer with Windows Search 4 responds to a search query from a remote computer by consulting its own index and sending the […] continued

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Here’s a procedure for people working in a very small business that don’t want to call me for every routine task.

Very small businesses frequently have a single folder for all company or firm files. It’s almost always mapped to a drive letter, so everyone stores all work files in the “N:\” drive or the “P:\” drive. Everyone has full permission to add, edit, and delete files and folders in the COMPANY or FIRMDOCS folder. There are subfolders for each client or project, so things get a little cluttered and messy after a while, but it works well […] continued

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Ace consultant Brian Dent of CompuDent Systems points out an interesting corollary to the speed increases from Comcast:

Just one caveat I’ve run into.  A lot of the existing routers can’t handle a 50Mbps incoming signal.  I have a 50Mbps account with a SonicWALL TZ 180e 25U.  The ports are 100Mbps but the throughput is limited to 20Mbps.  So you can get all this speed but it doesn’t do you any good if the equipment in-between can’t accept it.

And another little gotcha that some people might not be aware of regarding network speeds.  My Dell notebook has

[…] continued

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Backups – Introduction
Backups – Data Backups vs. Drive Images
Backups – External Hard Drives
Backups – Software for Data Backups
Backups – Online Backups
Backups – Image-Based Backups
Backups – Seagate Replica
Backups – Windows Home Server
Backups – Small Business Server
Backups – Recommendations

We’ve talked extensively about different ways to back up individual computers, but even the smallest businesses (and many homes) are likely to have multiple computers that should be backed up. Let’s talk about a little-known way to accomplish that.

Microsoft released an interesting operating system under the name Windows Home Server late in 2007. Here are the notes I […] continued

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I have shared a bit of wisdom with many of you when we’ve talked about setting up 802.11 wireless networks:

People who depend on wireless networks call me about connection problems.

People with wires don’t.

Wireless technology is just swell. Millions of people use it every day.

But if you’re making a decision about how to set up your home or office network, think long and hard about hiring someone to run network cables between the locations where desktop computers are located. You’ll plug in the computer and bang! everything will work without a hitch.

You can […] continued

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Outlook Web Access can be used to view or open any file in a shared folder on the servers in an office run by Small Business Server 2008.

Small Business Server 2008 improves many things about remote access to an office network. The main screen for Remote Web Workplace makes it easy to use Outlook Web Access or connect to an office computer, with nothing extraneous to confuse anyone.

Outlook Web Access in Exchange 2007 is so much improved that some people will use it instead of installing Outlook to access their Exchange mailbox. I just discovered another feature […] continued

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