By now we have all heard the of the pounding Wall Street is taking, huge investment banks are being devoured by larger commercial banks like Bank of America. Now I have a close friend that works for one of these global investment banks as an analyst, a bank that was about to be on the chopping block waiting to be taken over by yet another commercial bank, and I remember him telling me that after The Great Depression a law was passed that basically said that when a bank opens for business it can either be a commercial bank, the kind that we are all used like Citi, and Chase or an investment bank, like Morgan Stanley, this little piece paper signed into law was called the Glass-Steagall Act. I am no economics expert so I have no idea why the government is allowing these purchases to occur, so “why bring this up you ask?” Simple if these behemoths are suffering like this what hope do the rest of us have?
As a typical IT freak I read a lot of literature, some on new products and technologies to keep myself current and others that deal with the way large enterprises handle their enormous data flow, all this got me thinking about ways for small business to cut back on spending. You may say that as small business owners we don’t have the same headaches or the same spending habits these large institutions do, but I beg to differ. True we may not have a large global supply chain to manage, or large work force numbering in the thousands or even large data farms that span states and countries but just like them we still have to pay the bills at the end of the month. We still have to pay for things like heating and cooling, and electricity, and while our balances may not be in the hundreds of thousands or perhaps millions, when trying to keep a business going often on a wing and prayer every little bit counts!
A few weeks back I posted an article on Virtualization for small business, in there i mentioned how relatively simple it was to run a small business of 50 or less using virtualized servers, what I didn’t think of at the time was how much of a cost saver it would be in the long run. Let’s forget all the tech talk for a moment and think about this as regular business men and women. If you have any sort of IT infrastructure like networked computers it’s a safe bet that they are pretty much never offline and worse if the infrastructure includes servers you are basically watching money fly out the window and into the wallets of your bill collectors and that affects your bottom line.
This is where virtual servers can come to the rescue. Now I won’t go back into the various technologies and vendors again since I already covered that in the last article I wrote about the topic, but since you are basically running a few physical servers and a bunch of virtual servers your electric bill will probably be lower than it’s ever been and also with fewer physical servers to cool you can also save further on electricity and water because less servers equal less heat.
Once you have reduced that IT carbon footprint it’s time to get rid of all of that paper. By moving as much of your management and auditing systems to a centralized location like a server you can keep track of everything that you company does, and that information is available to anyone in the company that you give access to. And if this information is placed on web server users can also view and modify information from the road or any place with an Internet connection.
You may have noticed that while some of these require a small investment to procure the the needed hardware and/or software, the resulting expense savings will pay for them within months compared to years for a large business and you may experience a boost in productivity because everything is centralized and of course save you a few trips to staples to buy printer paper and toner.

More companies are also doing mobile computing via VPN and other remote access technologies. While some Software as a Services (SaaS) solutions come with things like SSL encryption. However more companies like ours are hosting our own applications such as CRM and various other mission critical applications almost all of which can be accessed over the public internet with little or no encryption, even though you can do things like using none standard ports, hackers can still use tools like Nmap or other port scanners to find these open ports in order to hack your network and destroy this precious information or use keyloggers and other exploits to capture confidential customer data such as credit card numbers.

How do you stop or at least give your self a fighting chance to prevent such attacks? Get an enterprise strength firewall with Intrusion Detection (IDS) and Intrusion Prevention(IPS). The trouble with these systems is that up until recently these appliances have cost thousands of dollars, Until now. Because of the growing trend in network based attacks we at KCCS have spent countless hours researching and testing various hardware solutions and are proud to announce that we have built a custom solutions that is specifically designed for small businesses.

When these awkward situations occur I usually use that time to gently educate customers on the value of having a good back up solution. The problem is most of the back up software available has traditionally been a bit difficult for the average user to set up correctly and worse yet the applications that do provide full disk incremental or differential back ups are often very difficult to restore the image, then of course there the issue of managing the back up images, for example how often should you do a full disk back up, or how long should you keep a full disk and or differential backup ? Oddly  enough there are entire books written on the topic but they are pretty much geared towards the IT professional or at the minimum the PC Power User.

The good news? there are lots of great back up solutions, one of our favorite and most highly recommended is Microsoft’s Windows Home Server, this is full blown back up solutions that is perfect for home users, and to a certain limited extent even small businesses can take advantage of it. Its biggest claim to fame? simple it makes backing up all the Windows and Macs in your home a breeze, once connected to the server via a simple client that is installed through a web browser the server automatically performs a full disk back up the first night a computer is connected to it, after that it automatically differential backups, and once a week will do another full disk back up, basically ensuring that you always have the ability to restore a file or a complete system back to it’s previous state as of 12 hours before.

The operating system is built on Windows Server 2003 server so it has a lot of those features built into it such as the ability to work as a DNS and DHCP server. It uses duplication technology instead of expensive options like RAID, it also automatically manages storage on it’s own and will move files from disk to disk without user intervention, and when you are out of storage?, you simply add another disk, whether internal or external technologies such as eSATA, Firewire, and in a business setting ISCSI, you may also use USB since the drives are very cheap and abundant however I would not recommend USB since the write speeds a extremely slow by comparison to the other technologies and has the effect of increasing the time it takes to complete a back up.

As an added bonus, this product also integrates with your home media system, allowing you to store all of you music pictures and movies in one central location and then stream to any room in your house or office on the network. There is also the ability to access the device remotely over the internet.  You can download the Operating System from Microsoft for a free to use for 120 days. If you are ready to make this leap into securing your important files and managing your media then head on over to our shop page. It features a small case the consumes 75 Watts at full load, 2 1.5 TB hard drives and is pre-configured with with the streaming service and also with Apple Inc.’s Bonjour which allows you to share the music to the iTunes media software as well as allowing for easy file and printer sharing.

Let’s start with the basics. Like all Linux distributions Ubuntu is very customizable, for my taste I used an a package called Macbuntu 10.10 availible for free on Source Forge

It has all the usual windows applications and plug-ins like Flash, Java, and applications like Chrome and Firefox. The reason I can get away with using this Open Source Operating System is because even if there is no native Linux version of your favorite application chances are there is an Open Source alternative that either comes pre-installed  or easily installable.

For an application like Photoshop, there is a Linux version that Adobe makes available if you would like to purchase a copy however if you would prefer to save yourself or your company there is a perfectly capable application called GIMP. As you can see it has a familiar look and most if not all the features, of its more popular cousin.

In fact there is an alternative for just about every application in the Adobe Creative Sweet including InDesign, and Premiere

The biggest criticism that Linux and its cousins usually get is that it is heavily command line driven, and while this is true for the most advanced features this not the case as of late, and especially in this version of Ubuntu. This istyplically the case when trying to install a third party application, however Canonical has created a software store similar to the App Store on IOS but mostly free( I haven’t seen a paid app yet!) like the Android Market Place with one click installation.

What about the everyday software like email? Well you have your choice of Thunderbird which is a simple download and install and the built in client called Evolution. Evolutions is closer to Outlook thank Thunderbird with things like built in calendars and the like. However the biggest benefit to using Linux is the fact that when combined with cloud based software it becomes possible to work with ease since there is no software to install in most cases and occasionally a light weight client.

In our case we rely heavily on Google Apps for things like email and calendar and we use a lot of APp Market place applications for things like CRM and Project planning.

In closing the final benefit of using a solution like this, Linux is free! Meaning that we community supported Distributions like this you never have a pay a licensing fee like you do on Windows and it runs on modest hardware meaning you can spend as little as $250 per computer, sans monitor of course, compared to the average of about $400+ when the price of a Windows license is included, and that is not counting the license for the other apps like Office.

Something that I did not mention is the fact the Linux is very secure, most viruses and other security  issues will not affect Linux since it is completely different than Windows, however there is a built in firewall and a virus scanner is available for download. More on these topics in an upcoming article.

Keep in mind we are not discouraging the use of Windows, far from it, it is still what we use on a daily basis but for a small business trying to expand or a new startup with little capital for technology investments Linux is a very appealing choice.

Windows 7 Review

What a difference a few years makes. When Windows Vista debuted in late 2006, I was full of questions: Windows Vista was a big, messy Windows release, delayed time and again, and suffering from too many features and too little cohesiveness. This time around, things are clearer. Windows 7 is less ambitious than its predecessor, but also a better product. It suffers from none of the aimless feature bloat that plagued Vista upon its release, and none of the aimless uncertainty that followed Vista’s five-plus years of development. That the public reaction to Windows 7 has also been universally positive–another sharp contrast with Vista–is also gratifying. Windows 7 deserves the accolades, and it’s one of the strongest entries in the Windows family of products ever.

And that makes reviewing Windows 7 difficult. This is a near perfect software release, that rarest of upgrades that improves on virtually everything about its predecessor while losing nothing of serious importance. Yes, there are nits. Sure, I’d have liked to have seen a few components of the OS turn out a bit differently. No software is truly perfect. But you don’t have to qualify the successes of Windows 7 as you did with Windows Vista. Windows 7 is just excellent, with no caveats attached. And Windows 7 isn’t excellent within the context of its reduced development cycle and the resultant reduced expectations. It’s just excellent, plain and simple. No ifs, ands, or buts.

So now that I’ve completely blown the premise of this review, which will be published over the time leading up to Windows 7′s general availability in October, let me at least frame the conversation that will conclude, inevitably, with discussions of unparalleled greatness. Because even though I may have just provided you with a peek at the end of this epic review, there’s still a lot to discover.

here, in Part 1, I’d like to put Windows 7 in perspective. How has the world changed since XP first appeared eight long years ago? Windows 7 is being born into a sharply different environment than its most popular predecessor. But the parallels between XP and Windows 7 are many.

In Part 2, I will examine the all-important task of picking the proper Windows 7product edition. This is again an issue because Microsoft has saddled its users with too many choices, though there are certainly fewer valid possibilities than before. I’ve already provided the most thorough and comprehensive Windows 7 product edition comparison available anywhere, but in this review I’ll make the decision process simpler than ever, especially for those who don’t want to wade through giant charts.

In Part 3, I will explain the various ways in which you can acquire and, if need be,install Windows 7. This includes PC bundles, retail copies, and Windows Anytime Upgrade, but it also includes various installation, upgrading, and migration tasks. I will take the mystery out of moving from your current version of Windows to Windows 7.

Over the next several parts of this review, I will divide up all of the new features in Windows 7 in digestible chunks so you can quickly hop around and find exactly what you need. I’ve divided up the feature list similarly to how I did so for my Windows Vista review, with subjects like user interface, security, performance, Internet, digital media, and many others.

In the penultimate part of this review, I will examine compatibility–both hardware and software–and explore how Windows 7 sets the stage for a coming generation of Windows products that breaks, finally, with the technological deadwood of the past in ways that are both elegant and seamless.

And then I will attempt to bring it all together with some sort of sweeping conclusion that, again, I assume I’m telegraphing pretty obviously already. As you’ll see over the course of this review, there are plenty of small things to complain about. But the big picture with Windows 7 is universally positive. You’d have to be completely clueless–or a deluded Mac fanatic–to think otherwise.

8 years later…

If you’re looking for an obvious spiritual predecessor to Windows 7, look no further than Windows XP. That release was basically a more compelling version of its own predecessor, Windows 2000, and featured a new UI, much better compatibility with devices and software, Windows XP also marked the death of the old-fashioned, DOS-based Windows products that had previously dominated the consumer landscape and offered up a number of end-to-end experiences that significantly simplified how users completed certain multi-step tasks (like acquiring digital photos) that we now take for granted. It arrived at the dawn of a new era of wireless home networking.

By comparison, Windows 7 is also a more compelling version of its predecessor, Windows Vista, offering enhanced usability, dramatically better performance, and new seamless compatibility options that were unavailable just a few short years ago. Windows 7 will also mark the death of an increasingly obsolete predecessor, in this case Windows XP, which has been granted an unusually long life cycle because of customer indifference to Vista. It will also usher in an era of pervasive 64-bit computing in a way that was only hinted at with Windows Vista. And like XP, Windows 7 expands on the themes of simplification and experiences, providing users with a finely-tuned UI that simplifies common activities. Windows 7, too, arrives at the dawn of an era of pervasive, anywhere/anytime wireless Internet access via 3G and Wi-Fi networks.

Taken as a slice in time, the October 2001 release of Windows XP was a watershed event. But it didn’t take long for hackers to uncover an endemic security hole in the product, and Microsoft spent 2002 and 2003 retrenching and then, finally, halting Windows development so that it could rearchitect both the software and its development process to account for the highly-connected, potentially dangerous world in which XP was really being used. The result of this effort, called Trustworthy Computing, has had enormously positive ramifications across subsequent Windows versions and other Microsoft products. (Including Windows 7.)

[ Read my original review of Windows XP for some historical perspective. ]

On a more positive note, Microsoft used the time between XP and Vista to ship a bewildering number of platform improvements to Windows, most notably through several versions of Windows XP Media Center Edition–which added home theatre capabilities–and Windows XP Tablet PC Edition–which provided pervasive handwriting recognition and pen computing capabilities. Microsoft also innovated with touch computing during this time and with software for so-called ultra-mobile computers, small PCs that pre-dated the current netbook craze by some years. Not all of these efforts were necessarily successful from a commercial standpoint, but each left an indelible mark on the underlying platform.

By the time Vista finally arrived, Windows had undergone seismic changes. Vista brought with it a number of next-generation technologies that, sadly, remain little used today, though they do at least form the basis for further improvements in Windows 7. And many of t
he original “Longhorn” technologies that were designed to make Windows Vista such a stunning upgrade were dropped or changed over time, or back-ported to Windows XP.

The changes Microsoft made to Windows Vista meant that Windows, again, was ahead of the hardware curve. The system wouldn’t run well on many existing PCs of the day, and its vaunted Aero UI required a class of graphics accelerator that some users–especially those with low-end laptops–simply didn’t have. Worse, early compatibility issues, though solved within a year, continued to adversely affect public opinion of the product. Many people who had never even used the product assumed it was a dog thanks to clueless pundits and reviewers who had never bothered to correct their wrong-headed early impressions.

That Microsoft built Windows 7 on top of Windows Vista is a tribute to Vista’s true worth, because the underpinnings are solid. It’s funny to me that those who damned Vista over the past two years are now praising the very similar Windows 7. Yes, Windows 7 has a tweaked UI. And yes, Windows 7 does offer better performance than its predecessor. But in reality, there’s not much of a fundamental difference between the two. Windows Vista and 7 share the same hardware requirements, for example, which I believe to be telling. And Windows Vista and 7 share identical hardware and software compatibility models, though Windows 7 does improve on Vista with an interesting virtualization feature that we’ll discuss later in the review.

So is Windows 7 just Vista with a bit of eye candy added and some performance tweaks? The cynical might believe so, but let’s not get silly. Windows 7 is the sum of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of tiny tweaks, none of which would be particularly interesting in isolation. But taken as a whole, the result is astonishing. Where Vista felt incomplete and scattered, Windows 7 seems polished. Like an Apple product, it appears to be the result of a singular vision, though I’d be surprised if that were really the case.

This kind of refinement is hard to point to in any general way because it’s all over the place. Every nook and cranny in Windows 7 has been given the once-over, and where changes needed to be made, they were made. There are big changes, like the new taskbar and the yet-another-version-of-Windows Explorer. But there are also many, many tiny changes. Nothing was overlooked. Nothing major. And nothing minor.

Asking customers to pay for something that is essentially a Windows Vista mulligan sounds ridiculous on the surface. But time and again, people who see and use Windows 7 are enchanted, and for good reason. Windows 7 is special, and that fact is obvious to anyone who comes in contact with it. In fact, Windows 7 has been so good for so much of its relatively short development cycle that it’s become somewhat boring from my perspective as a reviewer. That should be taken as a good sign, however. It means that Microsoft has exorcised the excesses of the past. It is delivering on its promises.

Put simply, yeah, you want Windows 7. The question then, becomes which Windows 7? Which product edition should you pick? I’ll help you figure it out in Part 2 of this review.

Continue to Part 2: Picking a Product Edition…

–Paul Thurrott
July 28 – August 8, 2009

better and while it’s not pretty either is very good at organizing the information by either the manufacturer or operating system in a tree. In my opinion what makes this program so good is the vast amount of information that it displays from just the dashboard view, for example nodes with problems, physical information such as CPU usage, RAM usage and hard drive usage, even what is currently stored in RAM by the amount of memory it is utilizing and
with optional modules you can also monitor application performance and log errors as they happen. Of source it have it’s own statistical engine build it so it captures information such as usage over time and displays them on a graph for you to review. The information includes things like bandwidth usage and CPU usage to get a good idea as to how much your systems, especially your servers. There is so much that I couldn’t list them all without writing an article only about this program. If you want to find out more information about this management suite I would suggest you go to their website and check it out for your self. You can also use the online Demo( which is where I got the screenshots from) and take it for a spin.
Spice Works. Now after looking at the price for the previous product, some where around $3000 for the basic software, there is an alternative out there, no it’s not Linux-based, called SpiceWorks. Now this program probably isn’t as detailed as Orion but it does have one advantage over it, IT’S FREE!! The standard version is fully functional as the paid version the only difference as far as I know is that this is add supported so you will have tons of website ads being displayed, but this is a small price to pay for such a great product and a plus to people like is it’s pretty. It’s very light weight for what it does.It can be run on a 700MHz processor ( 933 in my case) and even though it is recommend that you have at least 512MB RAM I have been using it with 256MB. This product not only does the network monitoring and management that typical programs do it also incorporates a help desk ticketing system and also does invetory and categorizes them. one of my favorite things about SpiceWorks is the fact that although it does needs a computer/server to run on you do not have to dedicate anymore hardware to the job, so if space is tight, as it often is in a datacenter, the dashboard is accessed through a web browser, and for those of that run a webserver the default port can be changed, in my case I used port 8080. The dashboard has all the typical stuff as you can see but what I like is the way the information is displayed for example for the inventory you see everything broken down by what the are,
for example here you see a basic inventory of my home network. It shows things like a pie chart of the manufacturers being
used and can also be used to do things like create purchasing tickets. This is a very useful tool, it will let you keep track of who needs what and allow you to assign it to who ever does you IT purchasing.
There are tons of other products out there such as Tivoli, Uni-Center, Nagios, and many others, these two are probably my favorite and are probably the easiest to get up and running. In addition I think these are capable of running in a small business and they won’t break the bank and will allow a small IT staff of one or two people to keep track of what is going on.