Computerware Blog

Have you ever been prompted to change your password, then forgotten what the new one was twenty seconds later? Changing passwords consistently is a good practice, but let’s face it; unless you have them put away somewhere, you are probably going to forget about them at least once (unless you use a post-it note on your monitor, which is never a good idea). Additionally, if passwords are short and easily guessable, you risk being targeted by a phishing attack or other hacking attack.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is one of the most widely used web browsers, despite the fact that it has a tendency to crash from time to time. In order to improve the product and prevent future bugs, glitches, and crashes, IE creates an error report after every crash. Most of these reports go unsent, or so Microsoft thought.

A quick scan of the past year’s headlines will show that a data-loss scenario resulting from a hack can unexpectedly hit any business, big or small. Your company needs to have a data backup solution in place, and it’s imperative that backups are taken regularly. Has it been awhile since you last backed up your data?

Your IT staff deals with your technology on a daily basis, and that same technology is necessary for your company’s survival. In a sense, your IT staff holds the future of your business in their hands. This tremendous responsibility demands a certain level of trust from the business owner, but sometimes they might have other ulterior motives in mind. How can you tell if you’re being fooled by your IT staff?

We all need a little magic in our lives now and again. For some, this means card tricks, or optical illusions that are designed to trick the eye into seeing something that isn’t there. For German magician Simon Pierro, dubbed the “Wizard of iOS,” it means taking a piece of consumer technology and turning it into a catalyst for his magic acts.

“What kind of computer have you got there?” For a novice computer user who knows very little about this sort of thing, being asked a basic question like this can be baffling. You don’t have to be embarrassed by your lack of technical prowess. Microsoft makes it easy to find out what you’ve “got under the hood.”

Regardless of how much interaction you get on your company’s social media pages, you want more. You want to be like one of those big corporations that get a ton of hits and likes. But did you know that not even major corporations get a lot of views?

When you hire a new employee, you make it clear what the job’s expectations are. You expect them to be productive, and you provide them with an environment that’s conducive to getting the job done. This leads us to ask a fundamental question about workplace productivity: How much responsibility do you have in aiding your employees’ productivity?

Wireless connections like WiFi can be tricky at times. Either they don’t work, the connection isn’t a very good one, or there are too many people using it for it to be effective. Whatever the reason, you can bet that there are people using your WiFi who shouldn’t be can be. This can lead to many problems including security concerns, slow browsing speeds, and more.

When a disaster strikes, you should be able to recover quickly and efficiently with minimal downtime. Unfortunately, for some businesses, things don’t work out quite so smoothly. If your backup doesn’t process correctly, you might be in a bind when it comes time to restore operations from your backed-up data. How does one go about troubleshooting a failed backup?

“It’s as if a thousand stores cried out in terror.” This was the case February when RadioShack filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and announced plans to sell between 1,500 and 2,400 of its stores. For anybody with an affinity for technology, this announcement is sad news. Let’s honor the passing of an American institution by taking a look back at the Shack.

What’s the point of archiving company emails? After all, it takes up a significant amount of storage space that might be used for other, more important information. Maybe it’s because you’re forced to do so by some regulation, but there are other reasons that archiving your email is a good thing. Whatever the reason, you’ve made the right choice by archiving your email.

As a business owner, you know that the key to the path of your success is in the relationships that you forge along the way. These same relationships can be just the boost you need to get the edge on your competitors and knock them out of the game. It all comes down to your communication with the your surrounding community.

Designed to meet the changing needs of computer users is Sway, a new addition to the family of Microsoft Office apps. Sway is a cross-platform content aggregation tool allowing users to easily develop and share web-based presentations that are rich in both pictures and text. How can a tool like Sway help your business?

Are you a master of making brilliant Microsoft PowerPoint slideshows to augment your presentations? You’re not the only one; it’s widely known as one of the best mediums to create a compelling, professional slideshow. It’s used in classrooms, training sessions, and much more. However, there’s one profession where PowerPoint’s effectiveness is questionable: A prosecutor in a court case.

Twelve years after its release, Microsoft has scheduled to end mainstream support for Windows Server 2003 on July 14, 2015. This move essentially pulls the plug on the popular operating system, leaving any business using the server OS after its end-of-support date vulnerable. If your organization is still running this outdated OS, you need to update ASAP.

Normally, you can trust the software that comes preinstalled on a new computer. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case with the shopping-search app Superfish, which came installed on every Lenovo device sold between September and December 2014. If you’ve got the Superfish app on your computer, then you need to remove it before it does some superbad damages. Here’s how you do it.

One of the best reasons to use Microsoft Outlook is the little-known Quick Steps feature. With Quick Steps, you can apply multiple actions at the same time to your email messages. Users that feel bogged down by their inbox will especially appreciate this email management tool.

This month saw one of the largest recorded data breaches ever, when healthcare-provider Anthem experienced a hack causing data belonging to more than 80 million of its patients to be exposed. This includes sensitive information like Social Security numbers, dates of birth, email addresses, and more. How can you protect yourself from a hack like this?

Humans are always striving to create the next big security measure against the massive wave of online threats. One topic consistently in discussion is biometrics as a security measure, which take advantage of unique biological aspects of users in order to maximize security. Now, the US military is seeing the value of this kind of technology, and they’re funding a campaign to make it available to users.