Business Solutions & Software Group Blog

A lot of businesses are choosing to embrace some semblance of remote work. This has made networking your business simpler. If your staff is coming and going from your office, you can, by all practical means, avoid using cabled hardware in the front of your business. Unfortunately, most businesses do need to have some workstations and other IT connected and it can get messy quickly.

Every business faces two crucial IT decisions: selecting the appropriate hardware for its operations and determining when it's time for a hardware upgrade. In today's landscape, there's a plethora of choices available to decision-makers that were previously unavailable. While this provides more options, it also makes hardware decisions both easier and more complex due to the numerous factors to consider. Let's take a look at some of these factors today.

Right to Repair has grown from a simple philosophy to a legitimate movement, with numerous states legislating measures to boost the rights of the consumers and businesses who ultimately pay for and use different pieces of technology every day. Let’s take a few moments to evaluate where the movement stands currently, as well as review what the right to repair would mean for businesses.

Running a business is expensive, no doubt about it, and one way that you can circumvent at least part of these expenses is by implementing a Bring Your Own Device strategy for your business. Not only can it save you money, it can also be more sustainable for the environment and improve productivity. However, you first need to address the elephant in the room: security.

Businesses rely on their hardware in order to maintain their operations. Perhaps obvious, but no less true for it. This makes it critical that you do everything you can to keep your hardware in fighting shape. Computer equipment doesn’t last forever. In turn, this will require you to implement a hardware refresh cycle.

Let’s go over what a hardware refresh cycle is, what it allows you to do, and how to go about planning it.

The big problem with technology is that it develops at such a fast pace that, before you know it, today’s shiny new toy is tomorrow’s dusty old thing. That said, innovation has slowed considerably in the past couple of years, yet the ability to know when your technology starts to hold you back is still a valuable skill to have.  We’re here to help you determine when that point occurs where your technology that used to be the cream of the crop, is now keeping your organization from achieving its full potential.

There will always be an office slob—someone who leaves things lying around, like food, papers, and other things, and despite them being so comfortable with the mess, everyone else is just left wondering, “why?” There are plenty of reasons why you don’t want to be that person, so let’s dive into some of the many benefits of keeping a tidy workplace.

The keyboard is one of the most inconspicuously disgusting tools you have in your office, so you should take care to clean it out every so often. Let’s go over how you can both be more hygienic with your keyboard and clean it up more frequently.

When you think of the rubber ducky, what memories flood your mind? The rubber ducky might be reminiscent of simpler times, but a new threat that is capable of launching malware payloads via USB stands to ruin these fond memories forever.

You sometimes see in movies or television shows situations where someone wants to erase the contents of a computing device through the use of magnets, but how much truth is there really to this kind of thing? Today, we dive into just how much a magnet can damage a device and whether or not you need to worry about them.

When you start to ascertain whether or not a piece of technology needs to be replaced or just eliminated, the first decision you have to make is obviously how does this piece of technology affect your product/service. If you can utilize the piece of technology and it helps fulfill opportunities, promotes productivity and efficiency, or is overall just a benefit for the company, it is pretty easy to ascertain how to proceed.

Printers…we love to hate them, particularly when they start presenting operational issues. I mean, come on…it has one job, and it can hardly do that half the time. But why is that?

Let’s dive into what causes this phenomenon.

We might place the onus on business technology solutions on this blog, but once in a while we like to talk about technology that is just plain cool. Today is one of those days. With this new wearable utilizing artificial intelligence technology, you can monitor your health, making for a very interesting application of the technology.

Everyone has been in a situation when their mobile device’s battery is too low for comfort, but if you know the right tips, you can prolong your battery’s life well beyond what you might expect. Let’s go over some of these methods.

The laptop is one of the most useful innovations in modern computing—not only is it capable of accomplishing most (if not all) modern workplace tasks, it does so while offering the portability that today’s mobile operations require. However, these productivity workhorses don’t last forever…but how do you know when the time has come to upgrade?

Moore’s law has been prophetic, but nothing lasts forever. When Gordon Moore predicted that transistors inside of a dense integrated circuit would double every 18 months in 1965, it seemed like a very aggressive prediction. 57 years later, it has come to pass, with computing speeds doubling every year and a half. Now, it seems like the tried and true prediction is coming to a close, so we thought we’d look at how technology will continue growing when Moore’s law actually becomes obsolete. 

Let’s say you are going about your workday when your computer suddenly crashes. Your first reaction might be to reach out for support, and if so, then you are correct; we can’t let you suffer from downtime for too long! Let’s go over what the acquisition of support might entail, even if the problem you are experiencing cannot be solved through a remote support option.

Despite Microsoft’s comments several years back, Windows 10 is indeed not the final iteration of Windows. Microsoft has officially let the cat out of the bag with Windows 11, the latest in its line of PC operating systems. We urge your business to consider the minimum requirements for upgrading to Windows 11 now while Windows 10 is still supported. Let’s take a look at the system specifications and requirements for Windows 11.

For companies that depend on their computing, the workstation plays an important role. The problem with them is that spending big money on computers that are used for general productivity is not cost effective, but if they don’t have the computing power needed to successfully run the software that your company uses, they won’t do you any good. Today, we will talk a bit about hardware considerations you will need to make when choosing workstation hardware, and the cloud-hosted options that may be a good option for your business. 

Businesses need to make a decision about where they want to host their central infrastructure, and with so many options available to them nowadays, it’s often a matter of the demands on the data and applications required. Really, the decision comes down to two options: host your central hardware onsite or host it in the cloud. Let’s take a look at the debate now.