Posts Tagged ‘PC’
Description of ‘PC’ Tag:
PC
Thursday, November 4th, 2010
 Hello and welcome to Chesapeake Digital Technology´s blog. We’re an information technology firm in Maryland. We provide two primary services, Internet Marketing / SEO and Technical Support for business.
For anyone experienced in IT or experienced in dealing with IT knows that updates to the network can be a huge hassle. Either it gets done during the workday on one machine at a time, or it gets done overnight. Neither one of these options is especially attractive to either side. Well, there may be a solution to this problem: Virtual Desktops
Centralizing IT has been an important focal point for years. You need central management to prevent mistakes and keep everything organized. Well, a step further is virtualization of PCs. A lot of companies already do this for servers, and desktops are just the next step.
In this case, a user would log in to a terminal or with another PC and have full access to their machine anywhere. All of their preferences, etc., would be applied as a template to an existing image, therefore allowing for them to pick up work where they left off.
Now, in case you’re wondering, users can also work in an offline mode temporarily. When they reconnect to the Internet, any changes made by IT would take effect. This allows the users to do their job, while IT does what IT needs to do. Service calls would be easier to solve, and the amount of overtime/extra hours would be far smaller.
Just consider the idea of a virtual network for now. As time goes on, they’ll only get cheaper. However, as with most technology, some companies will adopt them and reap the benefits before others will. So does your business want to be on the cutting edge…or just keeping the status quo?
-Josh
CDTeK.com
Tags: Desktop, network, PC, stability, virtualization
Posted in Networking, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Friday, October 22nd, 2010
 Hello and welcome to Chesapeake Digital Technology´s blog. We’re an information technology firm in Maryland. We provide two primary services, Internet Marketing / SEOand Technical Support for business.
Recently, Microsoft admitted that the open source, freely available productivity suite, OpenOffice, was a real threat to their software, Microsoft Office. This comes as something of a shock, since Microsoft, and most major companies, will rarely admit to an outside threat. Open Office is designed to provide users with a quality business productivity suite for the low price of free. While Open Office is free, does the old adage “You get what you pay for” hold true here? Let’s take a look at your two options.
Open Office
Pros
- Free to use
- Community support
- Includes Word Processing, Presentation, and Spreadsheet software
- Can save in multiple formats
- Microsoft Office
- Apple
- Other open formats
- Can read and edit other formats
- Available on PC, Mac, and Linux
Cons
- User Interface takes a little getting used to
- Not as tightly integrated as Microsoft Office
- Some formatting issues when importing documents from other programs
- No direct support
Microsoft Office
Pros
- De facto standard for office productivity.
- Tight Operating System integration
- Quality support
- Very stable
Cons
- Costly up front
- Only available on PC and Mac
- Uses different iterations
-Josh
CDtek
Tags: business, Linux, mac, office, open office, PC, Productivity, software, support
Posted in Business Tools | No Comments »
Friday, September 10th, 2010
 Hello and welcome to Chesapeake Digital Technology´s blog. We’re an information technology firm in Maryland. We provide 2 services, Internet Marketing / SEO and Technical Support to small and medium business. Okay, so you know how shipping ports work, right? Ships come into certain ones, while others are reserved for other types of traffic. This is analogous to how ports work when talking about exchanging data via the Web or your local network. Now, a good firewall will block the superfluous ones for you, but you might find you need to fine-tune it a bit. There’s also a great chance you’ll never have to deal with any of this. That’s what IT people are for right? Well, in the likely chance you’re going to be making decisions affecting those people, and the rest of the company, here are a few ports to know.
Port 110/25: POP/SMTP (E-Mail)
These ports are designed to have e-mail exchanges funneled through it. I won’t get into how traffic is sorted, but suffice it to say that this is the port universally agreed upon to get email. Make sure it is left open. POP and SMTP are two different ways to fetch email, and either one might be in use for your email client.
Port 443: SSL (Secure Web Connection)
We’re all seen the little lock, castle, whatever at the bottom of our browser when we go to check our bank account info. This means that the connection is secure, because the data being sent back and forth is encrypted. Port 443 is reserved for this, so make sure it is open, or you won’t be able to go anywhere that requires a name and password.
Port 80: HTTP (Web Browsing)
Straightforward web browsing is relegated to Port 80. All of your connections, usually just Internet surfing, that use HTTP go through here. If this port is closed, you won’t be able to get outside of your network for Web access. Good for tight lockdowns, bad for just about everything else.
-Josh
CDtek
Tags: blog, firewall, internet, mac, networking, PC, port, Security, TCP ports, web
Posted in Internet | No Comments »
Wednesday, August 18th, 2010
 Hello and welcome to Chesapeake Digital Technology´s blog. We’re an information technology firm in Maryland. We provide several services, like Internet Marketing and Technical Support to small and medium business.
Congratulations! Your small business is expanding. You might even have an IT guy/gal working for you now. This is a big step. He/She has told you that since the company is growing, you’ll likely need a server to help out soon. However, you don’t know where to start. We can help. Here is a list of reasons why you might need a server. Take a close look and see if any match your organization.
Hosting Software
Some software requires that you host (install and run) it from a server. This is usually true of database software or some other records keeping programs. For example, Champion’s Way’s MAS software, designed to help martial arts studios track vital statistics, will only run from a server. Take note of software you might need in the future and what it requires to run.
Storing Data
Along the lines of running software, storing data in a central location, not tied to any one user is often a good idea. This is good as servers have redundant drives where workstations usually do not and keeps one person from having too much control, though you will still need to trust some people to keep the server up and running (usually your IT employee). This ties into another important consideration for servers.
Security
Keeping PCs secure from viruses and malware is one thing. However, you need to start putting protections in place to prevent people from just sitting down and accessing your network. Security settings on servers (for example, those running Windows Server 2008 R2), can give you the control you need to make sure that you are meeting the “prudent man” standards. That is to say, doing what is reasonable to protect yourself.
Internal Email Hosting
This is sort of a hassle, but setting up your email system internally can be a great benefit to a growing organization. Using a Microsoft environment (Windows Server 2008 R2, Exchange 2010) for example, allows you to integrate your various pieces of software. Interoffice emails won’t depend on an external connection, leading to faster send/receive times and occasionally sustained productivity in the event of an Internet outage.
-Josh
Chesapeake Digital Technologies
Tags: Exchange, internet, PC, Server, Tips, windows
Posted in Computers, Hardware, Small Business Tips | No Comments »
Thursday, May 6th, 2010
 Hello and welcome to Chesapeake Digital Technology´s blog. We’re an information technology firm in Finksburg, MD. We provide several services, like SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Technical Support to small and medium businesses.
Virtualization is a growing trend in today’s IT industry. The concept is simple, though it may appear more complicated than it looks. Virtualization takes one, powerful system, and allows the user to simulate multiple systems. This can be a great tool for medium sized businesses. Small businesses may see some of the benefits, but it may be a little too costly. This week we will focus on some of the benefits of Virtualization.
One of the biggest benefits of virtualization is the savings on hardware. If your business requires multiple servers to accomplish business goals, i.e. an email server, an Active Directory Server, etc, then virtualization is the right option for you. You won’t have to purchase separate machines to accomplish this.
Another benefit of Virtualization is saving space. In the past, server rooms took up a lot of space. Often, they would require their own rooms. However, with virtualization, you can consolidate all those machines into one server rack. This means a whole room of computers might be stored in a single tower.
There are many more benefits to virtualization, but including them all here would turn this into a research paper. Next week, we’ll go over some of the cautions of using virtualization.
-Josh
Chesapeake Digital Technologies
Tags: Business Tips, PC, Servers, Virtual Machine
Posted in Hardware, Productivity, Small Business Tips | 1 Comment »
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