Years ago the ideal salesman would wear a long button up coat with a hat that often had a feather to the side of it. So what happened to this fashion? I haven't seen anyone wearing a professional hat when traveling to or from our Indianapolis computer consulting clients. Granted, we can't really wear a professional hat with a feather in it when we are doing computer network consulting work but the hat should return again. The hat is what completes the business professional image. Next time you are out shopping for new clothes, consider picking up a business hat.

For now all handheld users have the luxury of downloading any app or program to their phone with complete freedom. They don't have to worry about what files they are adding to their phone's operating system or who the developer even is. All of this will change very soon.

Since we work as an Indianapolis computer consulting company, we need to stay on top of all threats that can manipulate our network support clients' technology; this relates to their desktops, servers, firewalls, and now includes handhelds. Already the iPhone has viruses that makes the device controllable by botnets and there are antivirus apps for several phone systems.

Our days of browsing the web and downloading applications through our handhelds without any tension in security are soon coming to an end. We are beginning a new era where cell phone viruses will become an epidemic.

Over the years engineers have put tons of time into making the smartphone more powerful and efficient. These phones have evolved into pocket sized computers that can do nearly everything a standard desktop can do. There is one aspect of these phones that still needs major improvement: the virtual keyboard.

I have an android phone with a virtual keyboard and that means I will have to suffer through pain of typing texts and replying to emails from my Indianapolis computer consulting customers through miniature sized keys displayed on the screen. On physical keyboards you have a feel for what key you are on and can develop muscle memory to increase the typing speed on the phone; on a virtual keyboard you have to look at every key that you press and since the keyboard is on a smooth surface, there is no way to develop muscle memory.

There are several plans to increase the smartphone both for better performance and software support. Hopefully the engineers behind these ideas have a good plan to make the virtual keyboard easier to use and less irritating.

Nobody enjoys the process of cleaning up but once it is finished you feel better about everything. Just like your home and office, computers need to be cleaned up too. There are several locations on your computer where files can sit for years without being removed and over time these files can take up space or slow down your computer. There are also addons running in your browser that can slow your browsing experience down and software that you may not have even known you had that is running when your computer boots up. All of these combined will decrease your performance and can make you aggrivated at the speed.

We are an Indianapolis IT consulting company that wants to make everything run as smooth as possible for our network support customers. One of the frequent things we do is clean out their computers. We clean out these files and programs on routinely and are working toward making the process automated so your computer never slows down. Tired of your slow computer at the office? We can get it running like new again.

Part of being with IT support companies is getting to know new technology. This technology may be new devices, phones, software or, in this case, an operating system. A few of us at Port-to-Port Consulting have been running Windows 7 on our systems for months now to get a full understanding of how it works and to figure out the shortcuts.

Windows 7 is much faster than Vista. The average startup time for my Windows 7 computer is twice as fast as the average startup time for my Vista computer. It is also much more stable than Vista was before service pack one was released. In the five months that we have been running Windows 7 at 9+ hours a day we have not received one error or stumbled across a bug.

Up until now we have been implementing Windows XP Professional on all of our networks and bypassing Vista. When Windows 7 is released our computer consulting services will be issuing the new operating system with the new computers. Windows 7 appears to be stable enough for our networks and also holds a speed that won't slow our clients down.

So corporate America has a thing for Blackberries. They were the epitome of business professionals years ago and today people want one so they can seem more professional. Working in a computer consulting service has forced me to ponder why these phones still exist.

Unlike a majority of today's smartphones and handhelds, Blackberries can't even work on a Microsoft network by itself. Blackberries require software to be installed on a server to act as a nexus between the phone and the network. What's even better is that this is not even free. Each phone that connects with the software has to have a license to do so and that costs money. Not only is the software taking up more space and resources, but it's another piece of technology that IT support companies have to figure out and fix since there always seems to be something not working right.

Blackberries are also lagging in application support. Although they do have several applications, there are not many developers constantly designing apps for the Blackberry. The current number of applications for a Blackberry don't tally up to what Windows Mobile, Google Android or Apple's iPhone can offer. Many computer consulting services could tell you that the Blackberry craze is over and it's time for everyone to move past these phones.

By now you have probably picked up a virus on your computer or know someone who has had a virus. Years ago virus avoidance was a nearly simple task; all you had to do was stay away from the bad websites and scan everything you download. Today virus authors have made the process of picking up a virus so simple and discreet that you will be windows deep in virus notifications before you know what is happening.

Working in computer consulting services offers loads of virus interaction. Almost every day we have an Indianapolis computer services client calling us because they have virus messages all over their screen and a new antivirus on their computer. This is the new breed of viruses known as scareware. These viruses, such as Windows Antivirus 2008 and Antivirus 2010, will imitate an antivirus and will tell you that viruses are found on your system. After this they will recommend that you download a pay version of an antivirus to clean out your computer. Most of our computer outsourcing clients have no idea where they came from or when they got them.

Picking up these viruses are as simple as going to your daily news website. If the website happens to have been hacked recently the code to download the virus could be injected into the web page and when you visit the site you will automatically download the virus. The actual download only takes a few seconds and when it is finished you will be loaded with virus messages in less than a minute. If you happen to pick up one of these viruses call your IT support company so it can be properly removed.

During these times there are a lot of companies that are looking for ways to cut back their budget. Most will look at marketing, supplies or even employee salaries; they would never think to let go of their technical support department. Well the truth is that companies can save a lot of money in this area.

IT support does not necessarily have to be an in-house job; there are several computer consulting services that can do the same job of the internal IT technician but can do it for much cheaper. Consider this - if an internal IT technician is getting paid $60,000 a year to support 10 computers, an outsourced IT company could support each of those computers for something like $100 a month; this would be saving $500 each month. Also with computer outsourcing you have access to an entire team of IT technicians instead of just one which gives more areas of professionalism and experience.

We have several Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing clients that save lots of money each year just by using our services. Computer consulting services work great for small companies that have only four or five people and can also benefit larger companies that have several servers and programs that require a lot of maintenace. The next time your company is looking to cut back on costs, consider an Indianapolis small business computer support company like us that can handle all your IT needs.

The iPhone has been dominating the phone industry for years now. Everybody has one and the numbers continue to grow. Many of our Indianapolis small business computer support customers are migrating to this new trend due to the abilities and the applications that are available on this phone. With new phones mocking this technology the iPhone has shifted its advertising to their applications, which is actually nothing unique.

Many of the new smartphones and handhelds have application support. Windows Mobile has hundreds of websites that host both free and paid apps for their phones. Google has released their Android Cupcake source to developers so there are already applications being made for a phone that hasn't even exploded yet. The new Palm Pre source code has already been figured out and homebrew applications are starting to surface. This makes the iPhone just another phone; even the accelerometer is something that is coming standard in many new phones.

Some of our Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing clients  are always looking for the most useful handheld device and some turn to the iPhone. When their one or two year cell phone agreement is up the chances of them getting another iPhone is going to be slim. The new line of phones coming out have all the abilities of the iPhone and will have apps just like the iPhone. For now the iPhone may reign supreme in the phone market but their current method of marketing, "There's an app for that", will not gain customers when Google, Palm and Microsoft can produce a similar app store with a phone that comes with twice the battery life as the iPhone.

One thing that our Indianapolis small business computer support clients always ask about is how secure their computers are. Everyone always seems to worry about their security and whether or not they are vulnerable to attacks. The truth is, there is nothing completely secure.

Whenever an encryption method or a secure program is compiled the creators will take into account all the possible vulnerabilities and attempts to break through their protection. When they feel it is secure enough they will release it out to the world. Once it is open to everyone, hackers will have their hands on it as well. By taking cracks and trying different methods to break the encryption they eventually find a loophole through the defense. This is how all computer security works today; even the Department of Defense is hit with tons of unauthorized access alerts each year.

By purchasing the top of the line in computer security and taking extra precautions you are only guaranteeing security from the everyday public that aren't computer saavvy. If there is something you have that hackers want bad enough, they will get it. There is no complete security, although by taking extra precautions you will make your data a strong challenge to those who have a keen interest in it.

A lot of our Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers use proprietary software. They all need Windows, Office, and all the Adobe products. All of this software, just like a majority of the other software out there, costs money. People will pay over $1000 to have a good program that they can make images in. This leads me to one question. . . why not get it for free?

There are tons of software that exists that does the exact same job as other software except they are free (freeware). Do you have a computer at home that has no operating system and you don't want to pay the hundreds of dollars for Windows? Try Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com). This is an entire operating system that even comes with features that Microsoft does not include in Windows. If you have an operating system installed but need something to open and edit word documents you don't have to fork out money for Office; you can try something like OpenOffice.org which gives you all the abilities of Office without the price. Finally, if you want to create graphics but don't want to spend the money on Adobe Photoshop you can always try Gimp (http://www.gimp.org) which has the same capabilities as Photoshop without the price tag.

For every application that requires a large amount of money there is more than likely an equal program that costs nothing. Since I work in computer consulting services, there are many people that ask me if there is any way to do a task on their computer without having to purchase the software. Freeware is always a great alternative for those who are looking to save money.

I have been working for an Indianapolis small business computer support firm for a while and it seems that we are only the heroes whenever your computer is broken and we are there to fix it. Even then, we are the enemy until we are able to get it fixed. There is a lot more going on behind the scenes when everything is running smooth and the typical computer network services technician is not just hanging out playing games until your computer breaks.

There are several things that can bring your network to its knees if they go unattended. Consider your email for instance; all the email in your inbox along with all the other employees who want to keep a huge folder full of the daily joke emails can take up a lot of disk space on your server. If the server gets full of space then everything will stop working. The business computer support technicians will have to ask you to clean out all your emails so there is enough space on the server for everything to operate. Fortunately, however, at my Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing office we are monitoring and managing the disk space on the servers so this problem is addressed even before the company knows it.  Without network technicians your server would fill up on disk space and your network would be down for good.

The IT support technicians are always on top of things and when the network is down they are always there to get it back up and running as fast as possible. When it seems things are quiet on your network the technicians are not hiding out playing games on the computer; they are busy keeping your network functional for all the users. The IT technician is not just some computer geek; they are an unsung hero.

I work in an Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing office that requires communication to our customers to stay alive. One morning we experienced phone issues and had to work with our phone service provider to get everything back up. During their series of visits I saw what a customer does not want to see when we go to visit them.

First, there was no communication about what was going on. The technicians came in and went straight to the basement to start working. They did not say what they were going to do and they continued to come in and out all day long with no status updates. We were still without phones and could not provide our Indianapolis small business computer support while we had no clue what was going on.

The second thing that seemed unprofessional was that they were taking frequent trips back to our office for the same issue. The technicians had several continued visits but could not fix the issue either due to lack of understanding the problem or lack of equipment preparation. To be completely prepared they should have brought equipment for all the possible resolutions.

In the end the phones were fixed and we were able to provide IT support to our customers but we keep this experience in mind when determining what our customers want to see.  As an Indianapolis small business computer support company, we need to provide absolute professionalism and preparation; anything less would be unacceptable.

There have been a lot of advances in technology over the past decade; computers can act as phones, phones can act as computers and they are starting to use the same operating systems. This has started a progressive movement into what is called unified communications.

Unified communications is giving everyone the ability to stay connected no matter where they are in the world. A user could be out of the office but still have a connection with everyone at the office by using chat software, VoIP phone calls, checking their voicemail and email as well as checking the company websites. This is enabling faster communication between businesses which in turn produces increased productivity.

Being in the Indianapolis small business computer support industry, this is something that we have to watch very closely since it ties into a computer network services role. Unified communications is still young but is rapidly expanding and the capabilities will go beyond our current expectations. With unified communications our Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing office have excelled our internal communication even with employees who are out of the office most of the day. This is the technology that will keep every employee connected to the office.

I have worked for an IT support company in Indianapolis for a while now and have found that the role of computer tech support keeps getting bigger. Back in the 90's tech support consisted of keeping the computers running, keeping the internet up and making sure everyone could print. The technology was not as advanced as it was today and it is ever-growing.

Today network support seems to take on a bigger role. Not only do IT technicians have to stay faithful to keeping their computers online and running fast, but they also have to deal with new technology. Handheld devices are turning into unified communications devices and will require IT support. Also there are manufacturing machines that connect to the network so you can upload/download CAD drawings from any computer in the network. These are only the tip of new jobs for network technicians; there are many other jobs such as wireless VoIP phones, alarms, and timeclocks.

The duties of network support technicians have pushed their way into anything that can take an IP address. With technology always advancing and constant migrations toward IP based products, IT support comanies have to keep up with their end of the responsibilities and know what is coming next. Our computer consulting service is always ready for the next step and researching the step after that. All the other computer outsourcing companies that can only handle computers, printing and internet will simply be left behind.

I've been working for a computer consulting service in Indianapolis for years now and it seems the most common computer problem we get is viruses and slow computers. For all of these issues we do pretty much the same thing. To keep your computer running at a fast speed I have listed the best steps to perform.

First, empty out your temp files. You can do this by clicking Start > Run and typing in %temp%. This shows all the files in your temp directory and 80% of the time this is where a virus will hide. Deleting all these files will keep your computer from bogging down. Also you can configure all your temporary internet files to delete automatically when you close Internet Explorer by clicking Tools > Internet Options > Advanced and selecting the 'Empty Temporary Internet Files on close'.

The second thing to do is to check your Internet Explorer add-ins. Malware is starting to hit the IE add-ins pretty heavy which will bring up those popups and make your browsing experience seem a little odd. To do this click on Tools > Programs > Manage Add-ins > Enable or Disable Add-ins and sort through those that you don't recognize. This will keep your internet from running slow.

The third thing you can do is check your startup folders. Most of the time you have some programs in the startup that don't really need to startup. You can click Start > All Programs > Startup and see those programs but it's best if you have a computer consulting company look into the startup programs in the registry and ms configuration to clean out those programs. A majority of viruses show themselves in the registry.

You should also run a full virus scan every now and then as well as disk cleanup and disk defrag. By doing these programs you are keeping your computer healthy. There are certain malware programs and viruses that are immune from these techniques and when these fail it is time to call in an IT support company to take care of the virus or slow computer. We have the special tools and know where the viruses hide so cleaning them out usually isn't too difficult. If you suspect you have a virus call our computer consulting service today so we can take care of it for you.

By now you've probably heard this term passed around a time or two in technical conversations. Although many people have heard of it, most people don't have a clear idea on what it is or what it can do. Today I will give a quick rundown on how this can make your life a lot easier.

VoIP stands for Voice-over Internet Protocol. Basically this means that instead of having a phone conversation over an analog phone system you are talking over an internet connection. The benefits of this is a crystal clear conversation and decreased long distance charges. Consider this - you have an office in Seattle and an office in New York. To call between each office through a telephone service provider, such as AT&T, would rack up fees in long distance charges. If you have a VoIP phone system, however, the calls would go over the internet where long distance charges don't exist. You could even connect the Seattle office to the New York office as if they were in the same internal phone network.

Another benefit of VoIP is the fact that it is portable. If you are on a business trip in Spain and want to call into your office all you would need to do is get your laptop connected to the internet and run a softphone (software phone) that will connect you to your office's internal phone network. This will let you call your employees by extension, check your voicemail and even attend the company meeting live through a video conference without having to pay long distance fees.

There are several other benefits of VoIP and businesses are switching over to it every day. As a VoIP technician for a computer consulting service in Indianapolis, I have seen companies add VoIP systems into their computer network services plan and have seen a growing demand for this technology. Interested in knowing more? Check out http://www.voip-info.org/ or contact us.

While working for an Indianapolis IT Outsourcing company I see a lot of trends come and go and watch technology advance at rapid speeds. One of the biggest crazes today is the Apple iPhone. With the ability to play music and movies along with surfing the web with dual touch technology, this device has moved handhelds and smartphones into a new era of computer and phone integration; we even cover this device under our computer network services as an Indianapolis computer consulting firm. Even though the iPhone is head of the pack right now, it's reign will soon be over.

Technology comes with a trend. Consider the Nintendo 64; this gaming system was the first ever to deliver 64-bit graphics to produce a three dimensional gaming experience. Everyone on the block either had this system or made friends with those who did have it just so they could play Golden Eye. This gaming system was supreme until the Sony Playstation came out and presented better graphics and quicker speed along with more functionality. Soon after the Playstation came out Microsoft delivered the Xbox which dominated most of the market. 

Today the iPhone is just the Nintendo 64 of this new computer based phone technology. Soon another handheld will come out that will give the public all the functionality of the iPhone but will be based more on computer and network technology than before. The successor will be more of a unified communications device than a phone, opening it's way to businessmen, teens, busy moms, and of course, hackers.