One of the hottest technology trends we’re seeing lately is the acquisition of tablet computers by business users. But are tablets just a cool trend or are they an important business tool?

A tablet or touch tablet, as it was originally called in the industry, is a computer with a flat, touch sensitive screen. In fact, most of the navigation on a tablet computer is done with your finger or a handheld stylus. Apple’s iPad was not the first tablet, but it was advanced enough to get business users to look at it as a serious tool for salespersons and executives on the go. Apple has always had the “cool factor” nailed down, but even the iPad 2 is hardly a match for a business laptop when you’re looking for mobile business productivity.

The most significant disadvantage that a tablet computer has over a laptop, is it lacks a keyboard. While it’s true that many tablets will allow you to add a keyboard, consider that having to carry around a keyboard for use with the device defeats the purpose of having a tablet instead of more fully functional laptop. In an attempt to address this concern, Dell Computer introduced the Inspiration Duo last year. The Inspiron Duo is at the same time a tablet computer, and a laptop. The Duo’s screen folds up off the base and flips 180° to reveal a full size standard keyboard. It’s a very innovative and effective solution for those that would like some of the benefits of the tablet, but need to have the ability to type on a full-size keyboard as well. Unfortunately, the unit is about three times heavier than the iPad and for the most part lacks the instant on feature that a tablet user would expect. It also lacks a standard VGA output, so forget trying to use the unit as a lightweight laptop for bringing your PowerPoint presentation to a meeting, since it can’t connect to the projector.

So, what are the business uses for a tablet?

1. A tablet computer instantly turns on and is ready for reading, internet surfing, or checking email as soon as you turn it on. It’s basically a computer that’s running all the time and the power button just wakes up the screen, revealing where you were when you last shut it off.
2. A tablet computer is great for frequent references to e-mail, Internet browsing, music, and movies or video. For long sessions or composing complex documents, most users will be frustrated without a keyboard to type on.
3. Tablets enable you to carry a massive amount of digital content (Books, newspapers, reference material)
4. Lightweight is one of the most significant key advantages of a tablet versus even the lightest of notebook computers. Many of the best devices weigh about the same or less than a can of soda. The flat, high-resolution screen makes it easy to hold and see the device while working on it.
5. Extremely long, all-day battery life is expected from the better tablet devices. Even the best laptop batteries under the most perfect conditions will not last the 8 to 12 hours of continuous heavy use that you can get from a tablet.
6. Specialized high quality content is available for automatic delivery on a daily basis right to devices such as the Barnes & Noble Color Nook Tablet. You can download monthly magazines, business newspapers such as the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal all automatically so that when you turn on the device in the morning, the content is there for you. With the content in digital format, it becomes easily searchable which is great for referencing an article later on.

In my opinion and experience, the three best tablets on the market in order of value are the Nook Color Tablet (it’s a steal at $249), the Samsung Galaxy at $499+ the Apple iPad at $499+, and the Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet (which is optimized for business with digital recognition of hand written notes, etc) at $449+. To summarize, a tablet computer can be very handy for casual e-mail correspondence and surfing the Internet but is probably not going to replace the need for fully functional business laptops anytime soon. Many executives that enjoy the benefits of the tablet that I outlined above, will still carry a laptop as I do, for handling more complex tasks while away from the office.

-Paul
***

Paul LaFlamme
President & CEO
Centrend, Inc.
508-347-9550 x115

contact me

There apparently is a fake e-mail message being sent that appears to be from LinkedIn with a subject: “Disabled Account". The message is not from LinkedIn, and it contains a potentially harmful link to an unverified web site. This could be a malicious site harmful to your computer, or it could be a phishing scheme, seeking to pirate your LinkedIn credentials. If you are a LinkedIn subscriber, and you receive this message about your account, do not follow the links in the e-mail, rather, go to the LinkedIn web site directly from your browser and contact them as you normally would.

- Bill

***

Bill Bowman

Senior Technology Advisor
Centrend, Inc.

508-347-9550 x135
Centrend, Inc. is a Massachusetts-based Information Technology firm strongly focused on advanced business planning and agility, providing key strategies and support for today’s important technology choices.

So…..you get to work Monday morning and you turn on your system and instead of it firing right up like always, you get a flashing cursor with the ominous message: “Operating system not found…”…great start to the week, right?  So, now you call your IT support, and they determine that the hard drive is OK, but the operating system needs to be reinstalled. Our first question will be where are the recovery disks?  The typical answers we hear from new customers are usually one of the following:

1. I don’t know.
2. I never got any.
3. Don’t you have recovery disks?

Let’s face it…laptops and PC’s sometimes crash. It is part and parcel of everyday computing reality. Being prepared for that will save us time and will save you money. When Centrend purchases machines for our customers, we always make sure to include recovery disks, along with driver disks. If you order an MS Office suite, you will get disks or a key. If you get a key, you can download the software from Microsoft and then install the key.

At Centrend, unless we have some special pre-arrangement, we will never hold on to your media or license keys. Those are yours and you are responsible to protect both the media and your license keys. That’s why it is so important that we determine a place at your facility in which to keep them. A good place is often near your server (if you have one), but really it can be anywhere that is secure and easy to find should your technical consultant need them.

There are some vendors that do not ship media with their systems at all.  Instead, the user must create a set of recovery media from the machine itself but this will need to be done beforehand; ideally even before the system is put into productive use. Centrend takes care of this for our customers automatically. You can sometimes order the media as well, but you will have to wait until they ship it in order to start the process of rebuilding. Equipment you purchase off the shelf from a “big box store” almost NEVER includes the required recovery media, so be extra careful when making these purchase decisions.

All this holds true for your other software as well. Any software or license keys or special information that you deem important that will affect the business should be kept in this same area as the recovery disks. Going back to the MS Office reference, a lot of companies are going to a straight download model…offering no media at all. Centrend can work with you here and keep copies of your software keys in our CRM software so that they are always available when needed.

Because of the nature of computer hardware, it is usually not a matter of if it will crash; it’s a matter of when. Ultimately, you are responsible for your recovery disks and software.

By working with us and putting a sound plan together to keep your recovery disks and software in a safe and smart place, we can get you back up and running a lot faster.

- Hank



***

Hank Lockwood

Technical Consultant
Centrend, Inc.

508-347-9550 x145

Centrend, Inc. is a Massachusetts-based Information Technology firm strongly focused on advanced business planning and agility, providing key strategies and support for today’s important technology choices.

Computer systems are a significant investment, and an integral component to your business processes. What kind of maintenance is required to keep your information safe and your systems running in optimal condition?  Upon reviewing the different maintenance strategies listed below, consider what your business is currently doing.  Every organization utilizes one or more of these strategies.

Corrective Maintenance: This is the “default” strategy for Information System maintenance. Many business leaders will wait until they have a problem with a computer system before they will take any action to correct the issue. Corrective maintenance is only performed after a system or component has failed. This behavior is most common, and whether intentional or not, it is a strategy. Just as, when you choose to do nothing, you still have made a choice. This strategy is used in an effort to achieve economical efficiency – in theory, spending is only required when corrective action is required (but, this is not necessarily true in every case).  While this method may fit for some systems or components, it is not recommended as an overall strategy for your critical business systems.

Predictive Maintenance: When we are given signs that something might fail soon, we replace the item. In this case, we have performed predictive maintenance. For example, if a hard drive in a 4-year-old PC begins to make an odd noise or speeds up and slows down while running, we replace the drive before it has a chance to fail.

Preventative Maintenance:  Updating or replacing a system, component or application before any signs of failure appear.  Information systems are routinely evaluated and updated for security, productivity and effectiveness to your business plan.  Preventative maintenance is most commonly performed on software and data applications, but is also done for hardware. Let’s say the PC in the above hard drive failure example has a practical life of 3 years.  So, we replace the PC as it becomes 3 years old, even before it shows any signs of component failure, also mitigating downtime and preventing productivity loss due to aging hardware.  A much more common example is when we update your security software with the latest releases from the developer in an effort to prevent a harmful attack on your system.  Some preventative maintenance is required under Massachusetts information protection laws.

Scheduled Maintenance: Scheduled maintenance is simply planned preventative maintenance.

Operational Maintenance: Operational Maintenance involves tasks that can be performed by the users of the computer systems. This helps keep the system running properly in between scheduled or preventative maintenance. An example of this might be when a Microsoft Outlook user routinely runs the archive function of this e-mail application. It doesn’t require any special skills to do this, and it helps to conserve file space and improve the application’s performance.

Choosing Your Strategy

Many businesses are operating mostly in the Corrective Maintenance mode, simply because this is the default strategy and requires no effort to plan. The business leaders utilizing this strategy are usually relying on their past history of not experiencing many problems, or perhaps not evaluating the cost of the problems they have encountered. The upside to adopting this strategy is that, in most cases, it requires little maintenance spending in the short term. However, the downside to this strategy is the fact that all hardware will fail at some point, and systems will lag behind productivity requirements, develop security risks or become compromised by malware. This strategy does not enable the business to effectively plan for the associated costs, productivity and potential opportunity losses.

A good maintenance plan will usually involve each of the above strategies. Carefully choosing the correct combination of strategic maintenance fitted to the various systems in use will provide your business with the most optimal performance and cost effectiveness. Your maintenance strategy should compliment your business plan and open up opportunities to gain productivity, increase profits and enhance your competitive advantage in the marketplace. If you have any questions about your strategic maintenance, consult an IT expert (such as Centrend!) when developing your plan.

- Bill

 

***



 Bill Bowman

 

Senior Technology Advisor

Centrend, Inc.

 

508-347-9550 x135

 

Centrend, Inc. is a Massachusetts-based Information Technology firm strongly focused on advanced business planning and agility, providing key strategies and support for today’s important technology choices.

 

For your Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows 7 PC operating system, there is a built-in and highly configurable core security technology called the User Account Control (UAC). The UAC settings allow you to tell your system what types of application activities you want to allow, which ones you’ll need to be prompted to allow, and which system or program requests are flat out denied. There are also controls within some individual applications, and because of the prevalence of web-based attacks, browsers now include a slew of web application permissions settings that let you limit what can automatically happen when you visit a web site.

It is very easy to allow applications to run on most systems, and it is easy to allow those applications to access all sorts of data. After all, that’s why we invested in the computer. The downside to this freedom and ease of use comes in the form of vulnerability. Always be aware of what permission you are giving, and know what information you may be exposing. If you are not sure about any access permission, then ask an expert before you proceed. It is better to be safe, than it is to be impatient and give permission that you may regret later. Permissions can be revoked, but once your data has been exposed, in many cases the damage is done and irreversible.

- Bill

***

Bill Bowman

Senior Technology Advisor
Centrend, Inc.

508-347-9550 x135

Centrend, Inc. is a Massachusetts-based Information Technology firm strongly focused on advanced business planning and agility, providing key strategies and support for today’s important technology choices.