Windows 8.1 may feature the comeback of the start button

One of the biggest requests that I hear from all the guys in our office is that they want the start button back in Windows 8 and they want to be able to select the desktop view as the default view in their installation of Windows 8. The latest rumors indicate that Microsoft may be moving to squash these apps, by enabling 8.1 to boot directly to the desktop and reinstating the start button. Discussions around code recently dug up in a DLL, buried within the bowels of a leaked version of Windows Blue suggests that this new minor revision of the desktop and tablet OS could offer users a way to skip the live tiles and go right to the familiar user interface that many long for.

Look at engadget for more information on the Windows Blue screenshot tour. There are also some interesting videos showing an installation of Windows Blue running on a virtual desktop. The videos are interesting with some of the changes in personalizing your Widows 8 experience to a much greater degree. This will be interesting to get our hands on once the beta version is released.

SonicWALL announces end of support for Gen 4 Firewalls

Press Release from DELL SonicWall announcing the end of support for Gen4 Firewalls on July 1, 2013.

End of Support for Gen4 (and older) Dell SonicWALL firewalls will commence on July 1, 2013. All Gen4 firewalls, regardless of whether they are covered under a stand-alone support contract or through a Comprehensive GMS support contract, are subject to the same End of Support date.  Our records indicate that your customers rely on one or more of these appliances:

Call us to discuss your options.

Sophos UTM Connected: What's new in UTM 9.1

Published on Feb 18, 2013

A 3 minute overview of the new features and benefits of Sophos UTM Connected (UTM 9.1) The video explains how this release delivers faster wired and wireless connectivity in a secure and reliable way.

Our latest release, Sophos UTM Connected, lets you protect your users on the move against web-based threats and strengthen your wireless connectivity. At its heart is the software version 9.1 which is engineered to make our proven protection faster and even easier to use. Why Sophos UTM Connected? It’s all about creating ultra-fast wired and wireless connectivity in a secure, reliable way.

Access Sophos Whitepapers and Videos

Sophos is one of most trusted security vendors that we use in our professional installations. In a good marketing decision they are now providing free videos and whitepapers to you for giving them your contact information. So this is a great place to pick up a little more information to help keep your systems safe.

A video series from SophosLabs

Ransomware: hijacking your data
Our experts at SophosLabs look in depth at ransomware variants and delivery mechanisms, and show how you can protect your data with a complete security strategy.

Read the whitepaper

Microsoft Outlook Configuration Analyzer Tool 2.0

The Outlook Configuration Analyzer Tool 2.0 (OCAT ) has been replaced by the Office Configuration Analyzer Tool (OffCAT). The OffCAT tool provides all of the same functionality as the OCAT tool, but it also allows you to scan more Office programs (Access, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Word).

 

OffCAT download

Download Documentation

Digital Textbooks might be able to tell if you did your work.

CourseSmart offers an education package to schools that allows professors to monitor what their students read in their textbooks as well as the passages they highlight according to a report from the New York Times.

CourseSmart acts as a provider of digital textbooks working with publishers like McGraw-Hill, Pearson, and John Wiley and Sons. The NY Times describes books in use at Texas A&M University, which present an “engagement index” to professors that can be used to evaluate students’ performance in class.

This will be another method the University and Instructors will be able to gauge why a student might be having problems in the course. It will tell them whether they have opened the digital textbook and what pages they have viewed, when they viewed them and how much time they spent reading the textbook.

So the question is going to be is how accurate this information will be in reporting back the students’ “engagement index”. Can the system be gamed and what assumptions does the software make in determining the index. Also, how does the software determine between someone studying really hard from one that is just plain clueless and in a panic trying to catch up on things they either don’t understand

Either way this is going into full gear next fall and it will interesting to see what the results will be. I think that if handled right it could be an effective tool learning more about the quality of the class content, instructor lectures and how much work is actually done by the student. All of these factors contribute to learning process.

For more info on CourseSmart click here…

Local News Station Reports warning about ‘Microsoft’ protection plan scam

This newscast discusses one of the new ways that people are being tricked into sharing their personal information with scammers and tricksters. In this case the individual was called by someone claiming that they were from Microsoft and that he wanted to sell her a protection plan for her computer.

Rule #1: You are not going to get unsolicited calls from a real company. They may send you an email as advertising but nothing so in your face.

Rule #2: Anything having to do with connecting to your computer, again unsolicited by you should automatically flag an alert to you. Don’t trust this call.

Rule #3: Anything having to do with credit cards, banks or any other financial payment system that is again unsolicited by you should be flag as well. Tell the people thank you and hang up. Call your financial institution using a number that you know is right and ask them about whatever was proposed to you.

The key here is, if you haven’t noticed, don’t trust anyone that is trying to get information from your or access anything that you own that you have not asked specifically for them to do so.

Dropbox Upgrade includes Photo Albums Now!

So if you have allowing Dropbox to upload your pictures from your devices to your storage area then you are probably accumulating a lot of pictures there now. If you want to find a group of images around a theme you can now associate them with an Album. This will help facilitate showing them off when you want family or friends to see just a specific group of images. It would appear that each image can only be associated with one album at a time. Which is too bad.

This is a good start but hopefully they will keep working on it to give us some more capabilities.

VMware Horizon Mirage

Here’s a quick video on VMware’s Mirage product. Really looks interesting from an IT perspective in managing a large group of PC’s that have mostly the same setups on them. It allows you to separate the PC into logical layers and to keep backups of desktop images to enable quick recovery or rollback in case of failure.

Priced at $1,815/10 pack this is a relatively elegant method of ensuring uptime for your office workers on their machines.When you compare this cost to the downtime for your users and the support costs to bring them back up you can easily see the cost savings.

How can this product help you? Use it to speed up Window 7 Migrations, or to Simplify PC Backup and Desktop Recovery and easily Manage Remote and Branch Office PCs. If you have 10 or more machines then this product can be a big benefit for you.

• Download Datasheet
• Download FAQ
• Windows 7 Migration Solution Brief
• Horizon Mirage Reviewer's Guide
• VMware Horizon Mirage FAQ document