Since there’s a holiday or month for just about every cause imaginable, it should come as no surprise that cleaning your PC now has its own official month, awarded by none other than “The Vinegar Institute.” But before you dismiss this one, consider this little factoid:

ABC news reported that a study in England revealed that the average office keyboard had bacteria and germ levels up to five times higher than those commonly found on a toilet seat.

The study, headed up by Dr. James Francis, a British microbiologist, took culture samples from 33 office keyboards in London, and compared these samples to swabs taken from toilet seats in the same office buildings, containing nasty germs such as e-coli and staph bacteria. Kinda gives new meaning to the term, “computer virus!” So how do you not only disinfect your keyboard but also get those annoying smudges and fingerprints off your monitor? Here are a few tips:

 Turn off the monitor. It’s not required, but it makes smudges and smears easier to see.

 Use a compressed air to get rid of light dust buildup in your keyboard and screen. Never use a dish rag or paper towel to clean your monitor since they can scratch the screen; and you never want to use water on your keyboard!

 Don’t use products with ethyl alcohol or ammonia based products to clean your monitor. Products like Windex can yellow flat-screen or laptop monitors. Instead, use a cleaning product designed for monitors and use a lint-free cloth designed for the job. Note: Each monitor manufacturer has its own special instructions for cleaning so make sure you read what those are before attempting to clean up anything.

 Lightly moisten your cloth with rubbing alcohol or cleaning solution to wipe off your mouse or keyboard areas. Never apply the liquid directly to the screen, keyboard or other electronic parts.

 A Q-tip dipped in alcohol will quickly clean your keyboard. Just make sure you don’t drip the liquid down between the keys.

Happy Computing!

So how can you do it? By looking at the seemingly innocent, time-sucking activities you are spending time on ever day and either automating them or speeding them to completion using technology. Can it really be that simple? It can, but you need to understand one critical factor first…

The “Latte” Factor

Best-selling author David Bach coined this phrase in his book “The Automatic Millionaire.” The latte factor is based on the simple idea that all you need to do to become wealthy is take a hard look at the small things you spend your money on every day and see whether you could redirect that spending into savings.

For example, a little $2 purchase made every day on common things like Starbucks (a latte), bottled water, fast food snacks, cigarettes, etc. REDIRECTED into an investment account earning 6% will become $10,199.30 in 10 years. If that’s true, why don’t MORE people do it? Because saving $2 a day seems so insignificant that people spend ALL their money on these things and then have nothing left over to invest.

5 Time-Saving Techie Tips That Will Add An Hour Or MORE To Your Day

So the question is, what are some small, time-saving technologies we can use to automate or speed up what we get done to save us that precious hour? Here are our 5 favorites:

1. Use an aggressive spam filter. Over 80% of the e-mails being sent daily are not-so-delicious spam. And if you’re like me, you’re getting dozens of these every day, which can easily add up to 5-10 minutes per day sifting, sorting through and deleting the spam from the e-mails you want. We recommend, of course, our own IT EZ Spam filter program because it is updated 2,000 to 4,000 times per day to ensure protection from even the newest spammer tricks! Plus, eliminating spam temptations from your STAFF will not only cut down on the time they waste on it, but will also drastically reduce your chances of getting viruses and spyware on your network.

2. Replace Old PCs. While it’s hard to truly estimate how much total time is wasted waiting on an old, slow computer to process tasks, start up, etc., I can tell ya, it adds up. Let’s say your old PC takes 10 seconds longer to process a task than a fresh, new one. Might not seem like a lot, but with users averaging 100-150 tasks a day conservatively are wasting 16-25 minutes a day. Add in the crashes and other problems old PCs cause and you’re probably closer to 30-35 minutes a day.

3. Maintain Your Network. Another tip that will save you a lot of time is patching, updating and optimizing your server and workstations. You’d be surprised how much slower even a new machine will start to run if not maintained properly.

4. Document management. This is a HUGE time-saver if you are a paper-heavy office (like attorneys, doctors, contractors, etc.). But even if you aren’t, scanning and storing paper documents so they can be searched on and located in seconds rather than minutes or hours is a HUGE time saver. Plus, it’s a greener solution, improves document security, enables users to access critical documents remotely AND (if that’s not enough) prevents important paper from loss or damage.

5. Implement SharePoint or Other Business Collaboration Software. Be honest: how much time is wasted in your office because people are duplicating efforts, can’t find information and documents they need or backtracking to FIX mistakes made? This, like time wasted on old PCs and downtime, may be hard to calculate, but I would conservatively guess that folks are wasting at least 30 minutes a day or MORE because of disorganization. That’s why we recommend growing companies implement software to organize projects and documents into a SINGLE location, making it easier for everyone to get on the same page.

Want To Implement Any Of These In Your Office?

Give us a call and we can show you how these technologies (and dozens of others we offer) can streamline your operations, saving you LOT of time!

“We were really surprised at how our email volume decreased after implementing BSSI’s IT EZ Spam filter program”, states Keith Lewis, CIO Partner of Jones, Cochenour & Co. “We found that 90% of all our emails were spam related. That means 90 out of every 100 emails received daily by each of our employees, were spam. We are really impressed with this service. It saves us a lot of productive time!”

1. Free Up Disk Space.

If you are running Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7, the tool is called “Disk Cleanup”. These utilities find files taking up space on your hard drive that you can safely delete to free up space and improve performance.

Some of the files it will search for are:
 Temporary Internet files
 Files in the recycle bin
 Microsoft Active X controls and Java applets that were downloaded
 Windows temporary files
 Optional Windows components that you don’t use
 Programs you no longer use

In most cases, temporary Internet files are the biggest disk space bandits because your browser caches (stores) each page you visit for faster access the next time you go to that site. These files are not necessary and can safely be deleted.

How to use Disk Clean Up:
1. Click Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup.
2. Scroll through the dialog box that pops up and select the files you want to delete or compress.
3. When prompted to confirm that you want to perform those actions chose “yes”.

2. Defragment your drive.

When Windows stores a document, it starts to save the document in the first area of free space on your hard drive. When it runs out of room in this initial space, it fragments the file and stores the rest of it on the next space available, and so on, until the entire document is stored. When you try to open that file again, your computer has to find all of the fragments and piece them together before it will display the document. This takes longer and results in slower performance.
The Disk Defragmenter utility consolidates fragmented files and folders on your computer’s hard disk so that each file is stored on a single, adjacent space on the hard drive. This enables your system to find and access to files and folders much faster. Disk Defragmenter also consolidates your hard drive’s free space making it less likely that new files will be fragmented.
How to defragment your hard drive:
Click Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter.

3. Clean up the spyware on your machine.

Spyware is Internet jargon for hidden programs advertisers install on your PC without your permission to “spy” on you, gather information, and report this information about you and your online activities to some outside person.

Spyware works in the background sucking up system resources and considerably slowing down your PC’s performance. But that’s not the worst of it. In addition to slowing down your computer, it can be responsible for delivering a boatload of spam, altering your web browser, and serving up a bounty of pop up ads. In some of the more extreme cases, spyware can also steal your identify, passwords, e-mail address book, and even use your PC for illegal activities.

There are a number of programs available to keep your computer spyware free. These include Ad-aware, (http://www.lavasoftusa.com), Spybot-Search & Destroy (http://www.safer-networking.org), Microsoft Security Essentials (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads), and Spy Sweeper (http://www.webroot.com). All but Ad-aware can be used to block further infections, and they are all free except for Spy Sweeper, which is $30.

4. Add memory.

This can be a relatively cheap way to speed things up. If you have 512 megabytes or 1 gigabyte of memory in a Windows XP, you can raise that to 2 gigabytes for a real boost.

You could also upgrade the motherboard, hard drive, chip, and video card, but then you are getting into more money. If your machine is that old, you would be better off purchasing a new computer. But before you do that, try these 4 tips and see if that won’t get you a little more life out of your computer.

Happy & safe computing!!

~~~~~~~~~~
The iPad is a device that can be related to as an oversized iPod Touch. It is now more of a media consumption device, meaning that it can play media such as videos, music, picture slideshows, and run many apps. The iPad has the potential to become more of a media creation device, once there are more Apps that are tailored for media creation. There are Apps that are developed specifically for the iPad, and it can also run the Apps that were developed for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The Apps that are designed for the iPod Touch and iPhone run smaller in the middle of the screen, this is because the Apps were designed on the smaller screen. The iPad does give the option to magnify the App to full screen, but the graphics in most of the iPhone Apps that I have ran on the iPad have been degraded when I launch them in Full Screen Mode.
The iPad has a great user interface, if you have used an iPhone or and iPod Touch you know what I am talking about. The screen is a capacitive touch screen that is made out of glass with an LCD Display behind it, but this means the device will not respond to objects such as pens and styluses. The interface allows you to use your fingers to maneuver around inside the Operating System. After a few weeks of use it becomes natural. Ask someone you know that uses an iPhone.
The iPad is not a tablet pc replacement. I see the iPad as a device that represents what a “netbook” should be. Keep in mind that the “netbooks” do have more inputs than the iPad. The iPad only has the 30 pin iPod connector as an input. The iPad also limits its users to Apps that are found in the App Store. These Apps have all gone through proper testing by Apple to check compatibility and allows Apple to control what applications can be used on the device. I feel this is a good feature this makes it so that the user cannot install an App that the iPad cannot handle. This is unlike the netbooks; I see too often when people buy a netbook and see it as a computer replacement. Then they install applications that require better hardware to run properly, such as Adobe Photoshop.
I have found one flaw in my testing of the iPad & that flaw has to do with re-joining wireless networks. When you are using the iPad on a wireless network and then put the device to sleep, I notice from time to time the device asks you to re-authenticate with the network (type in the wireless password again). This can be pretty annoying. Also keep in mind that some college universities are banning the iPad as it is interfering with their networks. I have not experienced this personally but I have read about it.
In conclusion, the iPad is a nice media device. I would not recommend using this device as a computer or tablet PC replacement.
By: Anthony DiMichele, MCTS
~~~~~~~~~~