Update the HDD to an SSD Computers use hard drives to store data. There are a few types of drives, but the most common ones are Hard Disk Drives (HDD) and Solid State Drives (SSD). HDD are the traditional, heavy, mechanical-based drives that we?ve used in computers for over 40 years. SSDs are a little more modern. HDDs and SSDs work in drastically different ways. Traditional hard disk drives work by storing data on tiny, thin magnetic platters. These platters are stacked on top of each other and spin like a record at around 7200 rpm. A magnetic head reads and writes the data sort of like the needle on a record player. It takes a little time for the hard drives to spin up, for the head to find the data, and then read the data. This is why these drives are typically slower than their more modern alternative. Solid state drives have no moving parts. They store the data electronically, and are extremely efficient. In fact, not only do they consume less power, but they are faster, AND will tend to outlive an HDD if used the same way. What?s the Catch? The only downside is that SSDs are slightly more expensive, and they don?t quite support the massive capacity that HDDs can.  I say slightly more expensive, because it was only a few years ago where the price difference was much more significant. A typical SSD that would fit the needs of your average user was once a couple hundred dollars, where at the time an HDD was less than a hundred dollars. If you were buying a dozen computers for your office, that added up pretty quickly. Today though, the difference in price is negligible, and the performance that an SSD brings is well worth it. The only caveat is that the higher capacity SSDs are still more expensive than high capacity HHDs, but that only starts to affect users who need to store a massive amount of data on their PC, like video editors and gamers. How Much of a Difference Do SSD Drives Make? Results are going to vary based on the device and what it?s running, and what the rest of the hardware profile is, but we can give you a real-world example. A PC that was bought 4 years ago with a traditional HDD took about 48 seconds to get to the login screen when booting up. It then took an additional 80 seconds before the user could get to their email. Our technicians migrated all of the data to a new SSD, and the boot time (to the login screen) went down to 12 seconds. After logging in, it took about 20 seconds to get into email.  It?s Time to Upgrade If you are one of those business owners that truly believe that every bit helps, upgrading to SSDs can provide your with faster computers; and, over time, that increased speed will most certainly result in higher degrees of productivity. Call us today at (603) 889-0800 to talk to one of our knowledgeable consultants about upgrading your company?s workstations to solid state drives.

A View Through Windows The first Microsoft Windows OS, Windows 1.0, was released on November 20, 1985. It was a direct response to Macintosh releasing the first PC-based GUI (graphic user interface) in 1984. The rivalry between the two companies has seen them become the two largest companies in the world (as of this writing). If you combined just those two companies? value, you would have the 10th best economy in the world. This fact will give you an idea just how much the world depends on Apple and Microsoft; and, what it means when Microsoft makes big changes to its premier product, their PC OS.  Over the years, Windows has been the most successful single piece of software developed until mobile OSs started to be developed 20 years after the first Windows OS. The Windows 3.1 OS launch in 1992 was the first time Windows had become the most widely used GUI-based OS, but Microsoft didn?t find its true footing until the release of Windows 95 in 1994. After the release of Windows 95, Microsoft had no real competition. After a few years of marginal upgrades, the company?s best-selling OS, Windows XP was released and was a mega hit. More users used Windows XP than any other Windows product. It made strides in both individual usability and business purposes and set the stage for the modern OS. Almost five full years after Microsoft stopped supporting Windows XP, 1.5 percent of computers continue to run the OS. Microsoft whiffed with its follow-up to XP, Windows Vista, but then followed it up with the excellent Windows 7, which they are retiring in a couple of weeks. Windows 7 turned out to be extremely popular, but Windows 8–and the improved version Windows 8.1–were widely panned. Microsoft followed 8.1 up with Windows 10, which has been a popular option for four years now. What?s Next for Windows? After four years and with over 60 percent of PCs now running the OS, Windows 10 is now situated as the #1 PC OS in the world by a large margin; but what will happen to it? Over 20 years, Microsoft rarely goes more than four years between new OS rollouts, but as of this writing there are only rumors suggesting Microsoft?s plan moving forward. From what we could find, Microsoft plans to continue upgrading Windows 10 for the foreseeable future. Prior to Windows 10, organizations suffered from a training burden of having to deploy and learn a new OS every three or four years. It also meant that some of the features and functionality that end-users now expect would take more time to develop. By keeping the Windows 10 OS as a base for future improvements, it can update the software more frequently, maintaining the superior functionality and security that are needed.  Since there are more demands on today?s OSs it makes more sense to keep updating the features, security updates, and deploy dedicated patches. You could see a scenario where after the company retires Windows 8.1 in 2023, you could see Windows 10 rebranded as just Windows, where it would effectively become Windows as a Service. As it seems at this time, Windows 10 will be the base of a constantly updating system that is more agile than any one product that Microsoft has ever […]

First Option – Purchase Upgraded Hardware and Migrate Your Data Frankly, we?re starting out with the least desirable option, as it is the most expensive (even before considering how much the price will be increased due to the time constraints). While our professional IT consultants could work at speeds fast enough to get all your data migrated to the appropriately updated servers and workstations, the slow nature of IT projects makes all potential consequences of waiting much more likely. It is important that we clarify something: it isn?t as though your unsupported technology will no longer work, per se. However, it will become remarkably more difficult to find the hardware, software, and operating systems that will operate properly, leaving your business more vulnerable to the many problems that unsupported software creates. If upgrading is your chosen approach, there is the chance that your existing hardware is capable of supporting Windows 10. Here are the minimum specifications required to do so: Processor – 1 GHZ or faster RAM – 1 GB for 32-bit or 2 GB for 64-bit Hard disk space – 16 GB for 32-bit or 20 GB for 64-bit Graphics card – DirectX 9 or later with WDDM 1.0 driver Display – 800 x 600 resolution Remember, this is the bare-bones minimum, so operating at these specs isn?t going to be super-efficient. Our recommendation is that you have at least a 2 GHz dual-core processor, supported by between 4-to-8 GB of RAM, and a hard drive with at least 160 GBs of space. Second Option – Virtualization Another option you have is to leverage the flexibility of the cloud, and migrate your data over to a virtualized environment. Nowadays, doing so can be far more cost-effective than purchasing new hardware, and you have a lot more options. Businesses now use virtual machines in AWS and Microsoft Azure to deliver Windows 10 and other software titles in a powerful and cost-effective way. Furthermore, by eliminating the need for large purchases of infrastructure, virtualization can bring a business some considerable cost reductions. A monthly billing structure allows a virtualized solution to become an operational expense as compared to a capital one, and the typically included maintenance adds another way that costs are kept more efficient as compared to investing in hardware to be kept on site. You will need to look into an inexpensive thin client, but this would give you the option of using your existing hardware. Third Option – Microsoft 365 Admittedly, Microsoft 365 won?t do much to resolve any problems you have with Server 2008 R2, it is a good option if you are really crunched for time to upgrade. With Microsoft 365, you get Windows 10, as well as a comprehensive Microsoft Office 365 productivity suite (including Microsoft Teams, Outlook email, and OneDrive storage space) and security tools that allow you to retain control of your organization?s data. If you would like more control over your productivity software than other cloud-based systems provide, Microsoft 365 Business is a good option. With affordable and easily scaled licensing, this is most likely your fasted upgrade option. While both Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 were helpful and useful Microsoft solutions during their time, their time has passed and are no longer viable options without the necessary support. If […]

It had been a rough quarter at Thatcher-Jenkins. Sales were down as two of the company?s largest clients ceased doing business after they found suppliers that would offer the same services for less. In an attempt to stop the figurative bleeding, Parker had initiated a major overhaul to the management system the company would use. Much of the production staff, who is made up of a lot of people that had been working at the company for several years, found the new technology intrusive to production. Then there were problems with deployment which cost the company some time and a fair amount of capital. The IT staff that was in place at the time simply didn?t have the resources to cover a rushed end-to-end software implementation and their typical workload, leading to production interruptions and other inefficiencies. So, as Parker stood with his hand on the glass of the window in his office, his thoughts weren?t of the impending holiday, his family, or how fortunate he was; they were firmly focused on the latest bought of downtime that took down production for half a day. Who knows how much money it had cost the company? The phone rang. He walked back over to his desk, tripping over the exposed wire to his new VoIP phone that nobody bothered to hide. He snatched at the phone. ?Hello,? he answered, angered. On the other end of the phone was his wife. Mrs. Parker was wondering when Parker would be home. After all, it was Christmas Eve. ?I?m just wrapping up here…Love you too.? He hung up the phone, glanced aimlessly around his office, and slumped down into his desk chair. He sat for a few minutes before he got up, remotely started his car, put his coat on, shut down his computer, turned the lights off, grabbed his bag, and walked out the door. As he slowly shuffled to his car, the snow was falling lightly, but it might have been just the ice in the air as it was a little too cold for snow. His car was the last car in the parking lot. This made him feel very alone. He got in the car and slowly drove away. As he drove past all the houses lit up for Christmas, he started to cheer up. He stopped off at the liquor store to get some brandy and as he was walking out of the store he ran into one of his clients. ?Hey there Parker, Merry Christmas,? the stout man in a black pea coat said. ?Oh, hi there Jack, same to you,? Parker answered as he almost dropped the bottle of brandy he had just bought. ?Whatcha got there?? Jack asked inquisitively. ?We do Brandy Alexanders on Christmas Eve. Family Tradition,? Parker answered. ?Well that?s nice. Look, have a Merry Christmas. Give my best to your family. We?ll talk next week,? Jack said before he scurried away inside the liquor store. Parker walked back to his car, wondering what Jack meant by the ?we?ll talk next week? remark. He sat behind the wheel for a minute, before driving away. The uneasy feeling he had in his office was more like panic as he drove down the street toward his house. Parker started talking to himself in his car, ?What […]

Before we get into how businesses are changing the way they analyze data, we should talk a little bit about the data. You?ve probably heard about the ?big data? trend. This is the active collection of all types of data once reserved for large companies. Recently, as technology has been implemented, and its price has dropped, small businesses are now beginning to use these systems to improve their businesses.  When we refer to data services, we are referring to business intelligence, business analytics, and backup and disaster recovery. These three play varying roles for a business, but can, if leveraged correctly, really bring a lot of value. Let?s look at them individually. Backup and Disaster Recovery For the business that wants to use big data initiatives, protecting that data has to be a priority. In fact, protecting your data should be no matter how you choose to use data. The backup and disaster recovery (BDR) platform works to back up assigned data regularly to ensure that if there is a need for recovery–from a disaster, a malware attack, or human error–that the files that are recovered are relatively up to date.  The BDR is a network-attached device that takes incremental backups of your data and pushes a copy to a secure offsite data center. This ensures that if your hardware were to fail or your business was inundated with a disaster of some kind, that you still have the data available for recovery. The good news is that a comprehensive backup and disaster recovery system is a core part of a managed IT services agreement, but still can be purchased outright.  Business Intelligence Using data to maintain, optimize and streamline a business? operations is called business intelligence (BI). BI supports data-centric decision making. With the plan that it will increase overall productivity and improve efficiency, BI is delivered through reports and data visualization. By organizing data into summaries in order to decipher how different areas of a business are functioning, BI gives answers to how the business is functioning, and has functioned.  BI also can give an analysis of the financial and operational statistics that work to identify weak and strong areas of a business. This can help a business? decision makers make better-informed decisions backed up by empirical data that is easy to decipher. With the ability to see a whole business, and decipher how the current operations can be more effective, decision makers can set goals and strategy.  Business Analytics A business analytics (BA) platform also collects and analyzes data and employs predictive analysis with the core aim of addressing a business? weak points, but that is the only similarities it has with BI. BA software is used to analyze historical and current data to identify the trends in a business. While BI and BA seem relatively similar on the surface–both feature visual representations as well as customizable queries–the main difference is that BI is crunching data that will help businesses structure operations to meet the demands of today, while BA has a clear intention of helping analysts plan for the future. If you would like to learn more about using your data to improve your business, while also protecting that data, call the IT professionals at White Mountain IT Services today at (603) 889-0800.