Exciting Upcoming Changes from PAconnect!

Over the last six months we have will been working very hard in creating better integration of all our administrative systems. If you have received a recent bill from us you'll see that it has changed from a tool system listing to a single system listing so that you are being billed just from our service management product.

The next part of her integration provides automated reporting of all the services that you currently have with us so that with a much quicker turnaround time on audit control of those services being billed to you. By integrating these two parts of our systems reporting, we are insuring a more accurate report to you on what you have been receiving as a service from us.

Another change that you will see is that your service billings will be billed separately from your discounted service contract. These are going to be two separate processes and will come to you as separate invoices. If you have quarterly or annual billings those also come under separate invoices as well. This should provide a much simpler method for you to track what services you are being billed for and when to expect the billings to occur.

We look forward to answering any questions that you might have discussing these changes.  will

Sophos Launches New XG Firewall Version, Adds New Application Visibility And Deployment Options

This is a great article from CRN on the new release of the version 17 SFOS operating system. One of Sophos PAC members had quote in it which is sums up the positive direction that Sophos is taking towards their Synchronized Security capabilities for your network. Good job SAM! It is good to get the word out about one of the best good news stories in the security industry and the major reason for looking at Sophos then any other solution.

If you are not aware of the Sophos Synchronized Security Story you may want to take a look at the video below. Each new version of SFOS and the Sophos Central Products bring your network more security with each new component that you add to it.

See a quick video below to get a better view of what I am talking about:

Mount Pleasant PA Public Library Wiring Project

The people over at the Mount Pleasant PA Public Library posted a series of pictures showing the crew from PAconnect rewiring the library to upgrade the network infrastructure through a grant from the E-Rate. The

Westmoreland County Federated Library System obtained a grant from the Federal E-Rate Program to upgrade all of the library’s wiring infrastructure in Westmoreland County. We have been working our way through the Library System to complete this project for them. Thank you to everyone in the Mt. Pleasant Library who have recognized the hard work our crew is doing for them.

 

TechSmith Partner Renewal

I have always enjoyed TechSmith’s products and we have made another commitment to bringing their products to you. Be sure to let us know your interest in any of these products. We can help get you set up with trial versions and to work up pricing for your organization. Contact us at: sales@paconnect.com

More Info on Camtasia

More Info on Snagit

Just added j5create to our product line

We are happy to announce that we just added j5create products to our product catalog. They are primarily a USB product technology company that provides cables, docking stations, display adapters, android accessories/adapters, ethernet and WiFi adapters, display port adapters and external hard drive enclosures.

It is very important that if you need USB C product that you get one that is certified to work with that technology and j5create has the products in this category for you. And if you need to expand your USB Type-C access they have a 4-Port HUB with power delivery that will provide that for you.

Call us with your needs and we will be more than happy to match the right product to your needs.

http://www.j5create.com/

New Lenovo Phones for anyone interested

Our own Michael Hunter posted two links about the new Lenovo Phone products offerings:

The Modular Moto Z Range Has Arrived

Project Tango Comes to Mobile With The Lenovo Phab 2 Range

I know this isn’t really Technical, but, we are going to have a booth at this weeks Airshow at the Westmoreland Airport.

This is our first year to have a booth at the Westmoreland County AirShow and we are looking forward to seeing all of you there! Hopefully the weatherman is totally off base with their predictions and that we have good weather throughout. Come by our booth to see some of the products and services that we can provide to you and to talk to our staff. If your phone is a little short of a charge plug it into our charging station to give yourself a little boost.

If you are having issues with your phone or tablets let our excellent staff know and we can provide you with a discount coupon to have it serviced at our state of the art cell phone repair center.

We can fix more than just cracked screens. Hope to see you there!

Ingram Micro Cloud Summit (Part II)

The Ingram Micro Cloud Summit used both general meeting sessions and breakout sessions to get its enormous amount of content out to us. While much of the general sessions material discussed the "Why the Cloud", I think that most of us that were there did not need to be convinced that the trend for most software manufacturers is for them to learn how they can leverage "The Cloud" advantageously with their products.

One of the major categories of software/services that I saw here was for offsite storage. From the fire sharing applications like OneDrive and SharePoint from Microsoft and DropBox to Backup and Disaster Recovery from Acronis, Veritas and Azure. There are a lot of options to enhance how you work and how you protect your office's data.

Ingram Micro Cloud MarketPlace is looking to add more and more vertical applications to its portfolio of products as well and providing bundles to make it easier to manage and supply services that these vertical markets can take advantage of. One of the first vertical markets that IMCM is working on is the legal profession. Some of these applications include: Office 365 E3 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook and more), Law Toolbox (Matter Time Management), RPOST (Encrypting), Rmail, Trend (Virus Protection), Dropbox for Business (secure file synchronization and file sharing), and Acronis (Backup and Disaster Recovery).

While many of the products in the Cloud MarketPlace are considered to be horizontal in nature, covering a wide variety of business types and needs, having a distinct set of applications that fit together well for a specific industry helps to us to bring our customers a good offering to choose from for their business processes.

Welcome Brett Smith as a new contributor to this site

Many of you that have visited our storefront have met Brett out in our showroom. He is one of our newer members of our staff and like most of us here, is very excited about all sorts of technology. I am looking forward to reading about some of his interests and he has plands on producing some how-to articles and videos.

Thinking about backing up your data? I have a few thoughts about that…

I try to put together a new overview discussing the why’s and howto’s of backing up your data. In this white paper I have listed a few of the methods to consider to use for backup and some of the services that we provide to help fit your needs and budget numbers. If you are interested, and we all should be, take a few minutes to download this paper. I think you will find it interesting and very informative. If you have any questions about the information I have listed or you want to pursue a personal design session please let us know and we will be happy to discuss your requirements and suggest the best backup design to fit your needs.

Citrix OnLine Products

Here are the products that have now been added to our portfolio. Click on the product name to download a product sheet on each one. Be sure to contact me to sign you up for a comprehensive overview of the product and it’s capabilities. Hope to hear from you soon!

GoToMeeting provides simple online meetings with high-definition group video conferencing, creating a natural, face-to-face collaboration experience that brings people together like never before, within and outside your organization. Meeting is believing!

Podio offers a collaborative work platform that enables people and teams to work the way they want to work in a social setting.

GoToWebinar makes it possible for anyone to host their own do-it-yourself webinars, allowing them to reach larger audiences, expand their marketing reach and communicate with groups more effectively.

GoToTraining enables trainers to conduct interactive online training with up to 200 participants in any location. Reduce costs and increase training capacity by moving your training program online.

OpenVoice Our audio services team provides integrated toll-free audio services that work with GoToMeeting, GoToTraining and GoToWebinar, plus a standalone service for businesses needing high quality conference calling at affordable rates.

GoToMyPC gives you the ability to access and work remotely on your PC or Mac from any web browser – including from your iPad, iPhone or Android device– so you can be productive wherever you go.

ShareFile is a secure, file and content sharing solution specifically built for business professionals who need to manage and share data and files.

GoToAssist remote support, service desk and monitoring tools empower IT professionals and support teams to provide technical assistance and easily manage everything IT from anywhere.

We have updated our website…

If you haven’t been to our website this week you will be in for a treat the next time you visit. Paul has totally revamped the site to include more information about the products and solutions that we offer and we will be adding even more depth over the next couple of weeks.

We have also been doing a major renovation on our showroom and our support people. We are trying to use our facilities more effectively for ourselves as well as bringing to life some of the products that we want to highlight each month. Look for our upcoming open house that we will announce shortly to invite you all in to see the changes for yourselves.

We are now a Carbonite Partner

I don’t know what took us so long but we are now able to setup and help you manage your cloud backup for home and business. Carbonite has five different plans to choose from. You should be able to find one of them that meets your needs. If you don’t need the more robust Gemini Backup Solution that we offer for your servers, this product should have the right plan at the right price for you to pick from.

The following is an overview of your choices:

Carbonite Home is $59 per year (per computer) with unlimited backup.

Carbonite HomePlus is $99 per year and provides unlimited backup for a single computer and USB attached external hard drive.

Carbonite HomePremier is $149 per year and provides unlimited backup for a single computer, USB attached external hard drive backup and courier recovery. Premium, feature-rich online backup for your computer and external hard drive.

Carbonite Business is $229 per year and comes with a base package of 250 GB of storage. This solution is intended to backup a distributed environment composed of multiple workstations, desktops or laptops. Carbonite Business is priced by the total storage need of the organization not the number of users/machines. Put another way the 250 GB could come from 5 workstations or 50 workstations and the price would not change. Carbonite Business does not support server operating systems.

Carbonite Business Premier is $599 per year for 500 GB of storage and is optimized for server backup. This is the solution you will deploy if you’re installing Carbonite on an actual server operating system. Carbonite Business is priced by the total storage need of the organization not the number of users/machines. Put another way the 500 GB could come from 1 server, 5 servers or 1 server/20 computers and the price would not change.

So there is no excuse now to get yourself setup with the right backup solution now!

Slow Opening Excel files or Word Files over the Network

Jessy just sent this tip over to me this morning:

This is an old issue from about 6 months ago that I encountered this morning. If a user complains about slow opening or Excel or Word files check in Add/Remove Programs (Win7 or XP) for the Office File Validation Add-In update. If its there remove it and reboot. The issue will be resolved. This update causes those files to get stuck over the network when opening.

Jessy Marker

Supporting our Client Network Systems

This is the service model that Computer Connections has always focused on and is continually providing the support your company needs every day. Many of you have already taken advantage of our Managed Services Products that provides 24 x7 support for you networked servers but in the last six months we have added a new product line that we think is a great solution for your workstations as well. Our CCI Desktop Plus Security Suite is a great addition to our product line that provides around the clock support for your workstation with Virus Protection (Vipre Enterprise), Malware Protection (Malwarebytes), Remote Access/Management (LogMeIn Pro) and Patch Management for just $5/month per PC.

VIPRE Enterprise combines antivirus, antispyware, anti-rootkit and other technologies into a seamless, tightly-integrated product. Starting with a blank slate, Sunbelt architected VIPRE to incorporate the best ideas for dealing with malware in the most comprehensive, highly efficient manner. The result is a clean, fast, and powerful anti-malware solution designed "by admins for admins".

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware software provides an essential layer of protection that works alongside antivirus programs and is renowned in the industry for its unparalleled ability to detect the behaviors of today's malware and effectively stop it at its source. Malware, also known as malicious software, is one of the fastest-growing and most disruptive threats on the Internet today. Malwarebytes Anti-Malware uses advanced heuristic and behavioral scanning to monitor every process in order to detect, destroy, and prevent malicious processes before they start injecting viruses, spyware, trojans, keyloggers, password stealers, dialers and more. Malwarebytes Anti-Malware is available as part of Continuum’s RMM platform and free of charge to Continuum partners.

LogMeIn provides us with a quick method of accessing your system for support and training. It can also be setup for your use to access your machine from home or out of the office as well. This has been a great tool that allows us to quickly connect and perform simple diagnostics and fixes to systems from our offices. This cuts down on the cost of travel, and actual support time that is charged to you for these services.

Patch Management provides security updates that have been tested and approved before they are implemented on your computer. This service along with all of the other updates are done behind the scenes without your intervention. Because these are all script based functions they can be performed in the off-peak hours when you are not using your machines. You have little to no interruption to keep you computer healthy and functioning at its best capability.

Accessing our Client Portal

I have put together a short video demonstrating how you access your client portal screen. This portal provides you with access to your service tickets, both past and present, the ability to add comments and provide additional information to our service department on open service tickets and to create new service tickets. Please feel free to use this to help us better server you.

If you haven’t received your login and password to access your system please contact us to set this up for you.

Intel AppUp Small Business Service Video

Intel AppUp Small Business Service Video
Grow your business with the Intel Hybrid Cloud Services

Intel AppUp SmallBusiness Service-Top10 Reasons

Intel AppUp SmallBusiness Service-Top10 Reasons to jump on board

Flip the Switch Sales Video

Intel provided video describing how you can leverage the Intel Hybrid Cloud service and the Intel AppUp Small Business Service subscription model.

Intel Hybrid Cloud Technology–A new way to do networking in your business…

Cost has always been an issue when trying to implement the right technology into your business. Intel has developed a solution that will help you keep your equipment and software up to date as well as affordable. This solution will allow us as a Technology Support Company to provide you, our clients, with reliable equipment that is easy to maintain and support both on a hardware basis as well as the applications that let you run your business well.

This new equipment is a support tech’s dream with built-in management features that allow us to perform quick reliable remote assistance on your equipment. As your needs change, or as you add new users and equipment the licensing is simple and straight forward. This solution provides a 3 year refresh cycle that helps us provide you with up to date hardware and software and the right tools on a monthly subscription basis. You will have less worries about having the most current tools to allow you to be competitive in your business marketplace.

Intel is working with many of the leading software manufacturers to provide applications that fit in with the pay-as-you-go subscription model. This small business solution scales with your business growth so you only pay for the services that you use. You won’t have a high up front cost to purchase the software and if the usefulness of the application comes to an end all we have to do is turn it off and you will no longer be billed for it.

Intel describes the benefits of the AppUp Small Business Service as follows:

• Cloud-like flexibility. Customers consume IT software on a monthly basis without a high upfront fee. Cost scales with number of users, offering a predictable, manageable way to pay for software. You can adjust your monthly software costs as business conditions and the number of users change.
• Remotely manageable. With an MSP managing the server, you get focus on managing your business rather your customers’ servers.
• Data control. With an on-premises server, you can keep data on-site and within your control.
• Lower solutions cost. Run multiple applications and add new applications while paying only for what you use.

Application Categories include:

• Business Applications (intuit, Tally
• Healthcare Applications (gloStream
• Server O/S (Microsoft, SUSE Linux, Clear Center, Pragma Systems)
• Email/Collaboration/Instant Messaging (Workspace)
• Database (Apani)
• Firewall/Unified Threat Management (UTM) (Astaro, Asigra, GFI, SIOS)
• Back-up (StorageCraft, kineticROBOBAK, Vembu)
• Remote Management (Level Platforms, Lumension)
• Disaster Recovery
• VOIP-PBX (Fonality)

With all of the products and more becoming available weekly we are very excited about the affordability of this approach. Be sure to keep an eye on this blog to see more as we begin implementing this exciting new business solution!

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