LANcom Technology Blog

Want to speed things up when you’re working in Outlook? Here are a few shortcut keystrokes that could save you some time.

A while ago for this blog we created ‘The LANcom Technology guide to shortcut keystrokes’ that covered the hot keys you could use to speed up working with Word, Excel, Internet Explorer, and Windows (Click here to download this 1 page PDF).

The Auckland City Council is currently trailing the SmartPark prepaid parking system.

SmartPark is a small devise that that you can sit on your dashboard or hang from revision mirror in place of a parking receipt. Payment is made by turning the Smartpark on and inserting a prepaid card. Once to return to your car you simply press the red stop button and the smartpark will deduct the appropriate amount for your parking from the card.

The obvious advantages of such a devise are that it saves you time in walking to the parking meter and means that you are never charged for time that you don’t actually use.

SmartParks are currently already available in Wellington and if the trial goes well Aucklanders will also have the opportunity to pay for their parking this way.

Smartparks are leased for $8 a month plus GST and prepaid cards can be purchased for $50, $100, or $200 worth of parking. Click here to visit the SmartPark website for more information.

According to Computerworld, an investigation carried out on behalf of BT has found that of those sampled 37% drives sold online had traces of personal information on them. The sample consisted of 350 drives purchased in online auctions from Australia, the UK, and the US.

Among the data retrieved from these drives were salary details and financial data of specific companies, credit card numbers, medical data, and visa applications.

If you are considering selling or giving away your old computer simply deleting your files is not enough to ensure the safety of your data. If you would like to read more about what you can do to protect your data click here.

To see the original Computerworld article click here.

In case you haven’t already heard the new daylight savings time, which starts on the 30^th of this month, has the potential to cause a number of IT problems. The three main areas this change will affect are operating systems, scheduling and calendaring, and any time dependant applications.

To cater for this change we here at LANcom have had to update a number of applications and operating systems. Those we have updated include: Windows, Windows Mobile and BlackBerry devices, Exchange, Outlook, SharePoint, SQL notifications services, VMWare ESX servers, and IronPort appliances.

For more information and links to Microsoft updates click here

A while ago on this blog we discussed what you could do to improve the performance of your XP computer such as adding ram, doing a disk clean up, and getting your computer tuned up. However something else you may want to consider, especially if your computer is on the older side, is to disable visual effects.

Windows XP has a number of visual effects such as shadows to make things look three dimensional. To see this in action look closely at your mouse arrow and you will see a faint shadow behind it. If you have an older computer these visual effects may be slowing your computer down.

To turn off your computers visual effects:

1. Click on the Start button, then right click My Computer and click Properties
2. Now in the system properties box that appears click on the Advanced tab.
3. In the Performance area, click Settings
4. Now select Adjust for best performance and click OK, then OK again.

If once you have turned off your visual effects, if you decide you would like to turn then on again then simple repeat steps 1-3 and then select Let Windows choose what is best for my computer. This will take you back to the default settings.

To see instructions on this including pictures from Microsoft Click here.

If you are finding that your internet browser is running particularly slow you may also like to look at this article about removing spyware.

We here at LANcom are considering establishing a LANcom congress. This would be a group of people, who regularly experience LANcom’s services, which had the chance to directly influence how things are done at LANcom.

We would like to establish an online forum for members to discuss any issues or suggestion they have. We would post any changes we were considering making to our services, as well as any new services we were considering offering so members could voice their opinions.

A monthly prize would be drawn for those that participated and every so often we would invite the members together for an event of some type.

This is something that some of our clients have expressed an interest in, in the past, but we would like to hear more of your opinions on this idea. Do you believe this is something people would like to be involved in? Do you have any suggestions on what would make the LANcom congress better?

To leave a comment click on the heading of this post.

Shortcut keystrokes are great for helping you to get work done faster. We’ve written a few blog posts about the keystrokes for individual programmes in the past, but here’s a more complete guide to all the keystrokes you might find useful.

Microsoft Word

(Many on these will also work in other Office programmes such as Excel and PowerPoint)

Microsoft Excel

Internet Explorer

Windows

(The Windows Key is located between Ctrl and Alt, and has a picture of a Window on it)

If you would like to download copy of these tables in a handy PDF format click here.

Previously on this blog we discussed what the signs are that you need a new server, but if you’ve never had a server before how do you know when it’s time for one?

Having a server can benefit an organisation is a number of ways. If any of the following situations apply to you it could mean that it is time to start looking at buying a server.

1. You can not always track down the things you want quickly and easily. A server allows you to centralise all the files and data that are required for use by more than one person. This means that any PC on the network with the correct permission can have access to those files and data quickly and easily.
   
2. You want to share certain hardware among multiple PCs, for example printers. Having a server means that everyone can have convenient access to a limited hardware resource. For example a company that has several employees that require printing services only needs one printer. There are other ways of doing this but it involves having a lot of cords and wires.
   
3. You have employees who work off-site. With a server authorised employees can have remote access to the company’s network, which makes the data and file resources they have available to them within the office available to them anywhere.
   
4. Your PCs are not running as well as they could because of the amount stored on them. Maybe your computers are old but you would still like to keep them or perhaps you have high storages needs. Either way a server could help solve this problem by relieving your PCs from having to store a lot of information.
   
5. Your business requires employees to collaborate on projects. By centralising files on a server any number of users can gain quick access to the most up to date version of file and make changes to it. Additionally line of business software can be used on more than one PC.
   

Spyware is software that is secretly installed on your computer, without your consent. Spyware may collect your personal information, install additional software on your computer, or redirect your internet browsing activity e.g. change your browsers home page.

Some anti-virus software help prevent this, but even if you have anti-virus software you may still have spyware on your computer.

Warning signs can include:

1. Unwanted CPU activity, disk usage, and network traffic, which ultimately result in your computer slowing down.
2. Your computer or applications you are running on your computer frequently crash.
3. Difficulty connecting to the internet.

If you suspect that your personal computer may be infected with spyware you may want to download a free spyware removal program such as Spybot Search and Destroy.

I recently ran Spybot Search and Destroy on my home computer, after my internet browsing became slower, and found 12 spyware programs despite the fact that that I have anti-virus software.

Click here to visit the Spybot Search and destroy website.

VMware is virtualisation software. Virtualisation software makes it possible to run multiple operating systems and multiple applications on the same machine at the same time. With VMware ESX it is possible to create virtual servers. That is, you can have one physical server doing the job of multiple servers.

VMware ESX allows for much more efficient use of your physical resources. Processors in a server don’t get used to there full capacity. Using VMware ESX to create virtual servers allows you to use resources that would otherwise seldom be used.

There are many other advantages to using VMware ESX server such as:

1. It decreases the storage space required, as only one server needs to be stored
2. It reduces the running costs and cooling costs you would normally incur with multiple servers.
3. It reduces the cost of maintaining or upgrading your equipment, as only one server needs to be maintained/upgraded.
4. It improves disaster recovery.

Recently here at LANcom we used VMware ESX to replace four servers with one new server. The four older servers can now be used by LANcom’s engineers for testing and training in an environment that is isolated from the live network.

Click here for more information on VMware ESX