Look forward to

• Long term Kindle Test
• Sirius Stiletto  2 Review/ Long term test
• Intense School CISSP boot camp review

Look for updates in the next few days!

-The IT Guy.

“Cost shouldn’t ever be used as an excuse to have poor security and it won’t help you in court when you’re getting sued.”

Source: ComputerWorld UK

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As any logical thinking person should, I tend to invest some of my savings in the stock market. Usually I use a full service brokerage firm like Schwab, but for some reason I decided to test out the highly hyped Zecco Trading. Zecco apparently offers “free trading”, which interested me so I filled out all the paper work, waited a week, and presto it’s all setup. I transferred in a hundred bucks or so just to get the feeling of the trading interface. I wanted to buy a few shares of my favorite stock and test out the fill times, etc. Thus, I setup a trade, execute it, and Zecco spits back an error. It’s not very descriptive it just says “Only trades that liquidate positions are allowed.” Since I didn’t even own any stocks through Zecco I thought that kind of odd . I e-mailed support and waited 3 days for them to tell me I have pending account paper work, which I then filled out and e-mailed back. I waited a week, tried again and the same thing happened, no go. Once again I e-mailed support and they said the same thing, so once again I filled out paper work, this time I chose to mail it in. I waited another week, same thing. At this point I’m tired of playing games with these guys and I just want my hundred bucks back, so I try to transfer it out. Of course that didn’t work and they e-mail me a message saying they wont allow me to transfer the money out since I haven’t finished all of my paper work. Now I can’t even get my little test money back. I’ve been trying to get them to close the account and mail me a check for over a month. I may have to file a lawsuit if I ever want to see my money again. This is the most ridiculous brokerage firm I’ve ever seen. Anybody who considers using Zecco Trading beware!

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• Age of your data center - If it was built recently than you will probably have to find reasons rather than money to upgrade. I.E. Moral Obligations, Company Image, etc.
• Size of the data center. - If your data center is only a few servers you wont see a huge decrease in cost by going green.
• A/C is the number one cost in data centers these days but that doesn’t necessarily mean that replacing your HVAC system with an energy efficient model will fix all your energy troubles. A lot of times the issue is with the design of the data center itself. Re-designing the layout of your data center usually costs more than just replacing an old HVAC unit. You’ll want to consult a company familiar with data center design to help identify the trouble spots.
• New Equipment isn’t always greener. - Blades and other high density products are terrible to cool. Often companies will stuff two or more blade centers in a single rack which creates an HVAC nightmare. Believe it or not traditional servers actually are the best bet to stay green, not packing a rack full helps too.
• New Equipment - You should absolutely consider energy concerns when purchasing new equipment not only is it better for the environment it’s better for business. Energy costs have a tendency to fluctuate. The new racks of servers you are purchasing that cost $600 a month in power might be $1200 a month in a year.
• If you can’t find a better reason to do it. Remember green is the new black. It’s in style to conserve energy and resources. It makes your company look good and your employees feel like they are doing their part by working at a compnay that recognizes environmental issues.

• Small office electronics (Personal Printers, Calculators, Lamps, iPods or other home electronics) - It’s not their job to look at why your iPod doesn’t work right with your work computer. It could also land you in trouble with your boss.
• Home Computer Questions - This has to be the number one complaint amongst IT Guys. Just because somebody is an IT Guy doesn’t mean they enjoy answering your home computer questions. If your IT Guy over hears you discussing something and chimes in that’s one thing, but don’t bring in your laundry list of questions and problems. It is not your company’s job to bank roll your IT mishaps- go pay the Geek Squad like everybody else.
• Pressuring your IT Guy into “doing work on the side.” First off it may violate his or her contract of employment and could wind up getting them in trouble or fired. Secondly, this ones a secret, IT Guys don’t like dealing with home computer BS. We’re very sorry your five year old computer you bought at Sam’s club doesn’t work right and “things keep popping up.” -Again take it to a computer repair shop or find somebody who fixes home computers for a living. We choose to work at a nice big company so we don’t have to go house to house and fix personal computer issues, deal with it.
• While your IT Guy at work may seem like the god of all things digital, IT Guy’s actually have job descriptions. If your company has an official help desk, take your problem to them first. Just because you know Mark in tier 5 server support knows how to fix your problem don’t bypass the system. Don’t ask the programmer to help with your e-mail issue or the network guy why your program doesn’t work. If you have a doubt about who to go to and you have a serious issue take it up with the higher ups. They get paid enough to deal with your lack of tech savvy and they can help you get in touch with the right person.
• Don’t be a nuisance. Unless the building is on fire don’t call your IT Guy repeatedly and e-mail him snotty e-mails. Contrary to popular opinion your IT Guy isn’t avoiding you, he’s prioritizing. That’s what IT Guy’s do. Your little e-mail issue is not a big deal when a server is down and thousands of people are without a resource. Personally I put my phone on DND(do not disturb) if I start getting an influx of calls. You can’t solve issues if you can’t get off the phone.
• Don’t tell your IT Guy a twenty minute long story. Tell him what you think is most pertinent to the issue at hand and nothing more. If your IT Guy wants more info he’ll inquire with you through call backs or e-mail.
• Don’t forget to get your IT Guy or Girl an awesome gift for the holidays. - If it wasn’t for the IT Guys of the world you wouldn’t have a job.

Although there are a lot of bells and whistles the average user can live with out these days, a good antivirus isn’t one of them. I’m not going to pick favorites here, but make sure whatever you are using it isn’t some no name knock off brand. When I was a consultant we had a home division and we would offer a terrible knock off antivirus to customers who didn’t want to pay for name brand stuff. It worked pretty well at actually detecting viruses, but an update came out for it one year and it started blue screening computers. I never worked in the home division, but I can remember them taking in about fifty or so computers over the course of only a few days, all due to this antivirus update.

Keep in mind that once your computer is actually infected by a virus or trojan  removing it becomes extremely difficult. It’s a very bad plan to wait until you have problems to buy an antivirus, because you might also wind up paying to have your hard drive re-formatted and re-loaded to get rid of it.

Source Sunnet Beskerming

Source: Physorg Science and Technology News.