Don't let heat defeat your computer

Hot weather is here and as we start finding ways to cool off so our computers. The way our computers lower temperatures is by increasing the fan speed kind of like turning up the air conditioner. If the airways are clogged though fan can beat itself up but no fresh air will come through. There is a good picture to demonstrate this problem on the left, one of our technicians pulled this out of a over heating laptop. Heat sink was so clogged no air could penetrate through and get to the internal components. Most folks by air cans and spray through the bottom of the computer which offers some help but in most cases it simply forces the dust and dirt further inside.

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End users and how they can drive us nuts

I recently read this article on one of my favorite tech sites and loved it. 10 Things that some of our clients do that drives us, the tech people absolutely crazy. Over the last 15+ years I have been in this field, I have experienced every one of these over and over again. As much as my reaction matured to date, time to time I still find myself pulling my hair out.

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How do we listen to music at home nowadays ?

I can start by saying: once upon a time we had cassette tapes but guess what that's not where I'm going to begin since that would be a very long way back from where we are today. I might start from CDs but wait that's old news too, so how about iTunes and music downloads?

Ever growing technology frequently out-dates how we do things in general and music is definitely a good example of its tornado effect. I have clients with shelves full of nicely organized CD libraries and when I ask them the last time they listen to a CD, they can't remember. I also run into people who have their iTunes connected to their music system but unless people are coming over most get lazy going through the process of turning it all on, making sure everything is on the right setting then looking for music to pick.

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Since when we’re on the clouds ?

Welcome to the world of technology where there is always something new and confusing. We, the IT people are puzzled at times with new things like USB coffee cup warmers or iPad apps to create a graph of your daily mood (God knows for what reason this can be handy). Not too long ago one more thing poped up out of thin air, "cloud computing". Some people ignored it thinking, "oh, it's another thing they're trying to sell me", some people dived in thinking they should be ahead, and there are those who did a little bit of both.

I believe few people really understand what cloud computing really is and what it's really good for. I hope to make you, the reader more aware of what cloud computing is by talking a bit about its evolution then going over to the real world examples of how we migrated our systems to it.

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One remote is all we want

When it comes to controlling our A/V equipment we want ease and efficency. Nobody wants to have 7 remotes controls to watch some TV after a long day at work or deal with one of them being lost. How about figuring out what to do when you can't get the sound to work while TV has picture or vice versa. Today we also have many devices that connects to our TVs, in the good old days TVs were all there was, now we deal with A/V receivers, cable boxes, DVRs, Satellite Boxes, Blu-ray Players, iPod Docks, XM Receivers, Home Theatre Computers and so on. Nowadays we have to deal with all this technology connected together with spider web of cables and configured individualy to work in harmony (if that's even possible). When I found myself in the position of stressing out just to watch TV or help my wife over the phone to get Food Network working again I looked for an easy and affordable way  out and Logitech's Harmony One was it! Before I go any further I should mention that there are many other universal remotes in the market and I have only worked with a few of them. There are those more expensive kinds with more bells and whistles requiring a technician to setup and then there are those that offer less. Among the universal remotes that are out there Harmony One is the one I decided on and have used for over 2 years at home. I have also sold and configured a few of them and so far each and every time Harmony One well exceeded my customer's exceptions.

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