Should I upgrade to iOS 7?

Should I upgrade to iOS7?

Well, that depends on how you use your device, and to some extent how you “feel” about your device. There is no current *need* to update. iOS 6 is just fine for now, and there is some wisdom in letting other people jump first, to see if there is actually water in the pool. iOS 6 does what it does very well, though, and so you should be in no hurry, unless you want to be! iOS 7 is a nice, if a bit underwhelming, upgrade. If you like new stuff there is no compelling reason *not* to upgrade. We have upgraded our devices without incident. A few clients have reported slight problems with the upgrade – easily overcome.

Then there are these:

http://www.eweek.com/mobile/slideshows/ios-7-10-apps-that-make-the-mobile-os-a-worthwhile-upgrade.html

http://reviews.cnet.com/apple-ios-7/

Enjoy!

Exchange Hosting outage

Yesterday at noon our original preferred Exchange provider encountered a storage problem that adversely affected a segment of their hosted Exchange mailboxes, including those of several Interconnected Technologies clients.

This issue has been resolved and email has returned to normal function.

This provider has been very reliable over the years, but no service provider is perfect, and outages will occasionally happen. Their Administrators worked diligently to recover service.

At Interconnected Technologies we constantly evaluate service providers for value and reliability. 123Together remains a high quality service provider delivering excellent service at a good value. That said, we have been adding new clients to the hosted Exchange service provided by Rackspace, and any Interconnected Technologies clients interested in a switch should contact us to discuss it further.

The Computer Isn’t Dead!

People often ask if they *should* be using a tablet or smartphone or something more “modern”than a computer to get their work done. It’s true that tablets and smartphones have taken on a good number of the roles that only computers could fulfill just a few years ago. We have held, though, and our clients’ experience bears out, that these devices aren’t as productive for much of what business users use computers for and a good old-fashioned computer, keyboard and mouse.

OK, a good old touchscreen Windows 8 computer with a wireless keyboard and mouse. Not that old fashioned, I guess!

Here are a couple of articles that address this topic:

http://allthingsd.com/20130814/intel-the-pc-market-isnt-a-train-wreck-no-really/

http://appledailyreport.com/2013/04/17/no-no-no-the-personal-computer-isnt-dead-its-just-changing/

And, as always, Interconnected Technologies stands ready to help our clients get and use the right tools for the job – whether desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone, paired with the right services and support to make it all work together.

Hosted Exchange maintenance windows

Many Interconnected Technologies clients enjoy the hosted Exchange service we offer from 123Together, a premium provider of this service (at a good value, of course!). 123Together conducts regular maintenance during scheduled windows of time each month. This does not apply to our clients who use the Exchange and Email services provided by Rackspace.

Here is the schedule for the remainder of the year, into next year:

• September 13th
• October 11th
• November 15th
• December 13th
• January 17th
• February 14th

Here is additional information about the outages:

Dear Customer, 

This is an important downtime notice for customers using our shared Exchange, SharePoint and CRM hosting services. Please notify appropriate contacts of this maintenance period. 

The servers will be taken offline intermittently for regular maintenance and upgrades from 11:00 pm to 7:00 am, EDT (GMT -5 hours).

You may lose connectivity depending upon which part of the system is being worked on. This maintenance work will help make the servers more secure by installing the latest software patches and other upgrades to help the system run better. We will also be performing system maintenance to improve the reliability and stability of the system.

During this maintenance window, you may NOT be able to connect to the Exchange servers via your MS Outlook or via WebMail (Outlook Web Access) or via any other devices.

Depending on which servers are being worked upon, you will lose access for all or part of this downtime window. We will also be performing additional maintenance on our provisioning server. As a result of this work, the Control Panel and the ability to make provisioning requests through customized API calls will NOT be available for most or all of this maintenance window.

NOTE:

Any e-mails sent to you during this time will be captured and queued by our backup server so that you will not lose any incoming e-mails. If you want to have access to your Outlook mailbox data during this entire window of time, you must setup Outlook to operate in Cached or Offline mode. Any changes you make inside Outlook while in offline mode can be synchronized when you re-connect to the Exchange servers in online mode. Instructions on setting up Outlook for Cached or Offline mode can be found at the answer center of the Control Panel.  

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your understanding as we take the necessary measures to ensure the quality of our service. 

This is why we don’t recommend storing passwords in your browser

We’ve had discussions with many clients about this over the years. “Should I let Internet Explorer, or Firefox, or Chrome, store my passwords for me so it’s easier to get to web pages that require passwords?” Our answer has always been, and continues to be: “No!”.

Here’s an excellent – if a bit more detailed than most people need – discussion that generally supports our answer.

http://www.howtogeek.com/169986/how-to-prevent-people-from-viewing-your-browsers-saved-passwords/

This article offers ways to mitigate the exposure of storing passwords in the browser. There is a line from the original Star Trek. Dr. McCoy said “I’ve found that Evil usually triumphs . . . unless Good is very, very careful.”

There are several popular password management programs – Roboform, Lastpass, and others – that people use to secure passwords in a convenient way. Symantec offers a free password vault program that used to be part of the Norton security products, but is now available for free as a standalone product. Users of OneNote can also create a password-protected (read: encrypted) section in which passwords and other confidential information can be stored securely. There are lots of alternatives, each with its own strengths and weaknesses.

As always, we stand ready to help!