Techsmart Consulting Solutions

On January 30th, Microsoft's latest operating system, Windows Vista, became generally available to the public. Overall I like Vista and what it offers in the way of features and technology. However, there are certain factors you need to consider before upgrading your business computers over to Windows Vista.

1) Substantial Hardware Requirements -
To run the visual and graphical user improvements that is inherent in Vista (called Aero), your PC needs some pretty good CPU, GPU and memory requirements. I would suggest at least a 2-3GHz CPU with a modern graphics card (NVidia, ATI or comparable, made in the last 1-2 years), at least 128MB of Video RAM (256 better) and at least 1GB of RAM (Again, more the better, with 2-4GB being preferred). Many of my existing PCs running XP Professional will not be able to run the Aero interface, with all the bells & whistles on (3D effects, shading, etc.). Your average business targeted PC, from Dell, HP, etc., will more than likely not be Aero capable so if you are upgrading for this feature, take assessment of your current platform hardware before making the plunge.

2) Upgrading Fairly Costly -
While upgrading to Vista Home Basic is fairly inexpensive ($99), you don't get a whole lot of bang-for-the-buck (No Aero or other advanced Vista features). The Vista Business upgrade costs $159 while the Vista Ultimate costs $299 for an upgrade to $399 for a full version. I would not suggest anything less than Vista Home Premium (though even with Home Premium, if your business uses Domain logins, that functionality is not present)

3) Lack of Driver Support -
Windows Vista has a revamped view of 3rd party driver support. Microsoft wants tighter controls on what software will be interfacing with Vista and how that software interacts. While this is a great thing for long-term stability of the OS, in the short-term, expect issues with hardware interfacing with Vista, especially legacy hardware. Case in point, I have a legacy Creative Soundblaster Live 5.1 sound card in one of my workstations. About 3 years ago, this was an excellent soundcard but in today's market it is consdered basic. When I loaded Windows Vista RC1 on my PC, I found the soundcard was not supported. After visiting the Creative website, I found they have no plans on supporting the card for Vista. While this is a minor example of a hardware issue, imagine other users, like me, who have decent workstations with the proper CPU, memory and graphic card requirements, yet one or two hardware issues like a sound card or more seriously a printer or other higher priced piece of hardware would then have to be replaced because of the lack of driver support. Again, the potential upgrader to Vista has to look at their hardware platform, meaning all pieces, to ensure there is proper support either within Vista or from the hardware vendor.

4) Existing Software May Not Work Right -
Don't automatically assume that all your software will be Vista compatible. While a great many titles will be compatible or at least have the ability to run in "XP Compatible" mode, some software vendors will not support Vista for sometime. AutoDesk seems to be one of them. Apple Computers, with regards to their iTunes software, had a major glitch with people trying to convert their iTunes libraries to Vista. Users of older version of Quicken and Quickbooks (2005 or earlier, some cases of 2006 reported) may also find issues. Again, investigation is needed because you do not want to be without mission critical software for your business.

5) Don’t Underestimate Downtime Involved -
Upgrading your main PC or workstation is not a plug-and-play type of process. Yes, the initial upgrade should go smoothly, but tweaking the system to get it working to a state you had the previous OS running will take a great deal of time, I would estimate at least 4 to 8 hours to get the system properly tested and tweak/tuned. Be sure to factor this tailoring time into your estimates when upgrading.

6) Being an Early Adopter May Not Be a Good Thing -
With any new version of anything, there are bound to be bugs. A new automobile model from one of the big manufacturers always has some sort of issue or bug when they are first sold to the public. Same thing with a new version of an operating system like Vista. Yes you will be able to use the latest and greatest right away, but then you will also be one of the ones who will have to find workarounds for bugs/issues and/or wait for Microsoft to issue patches and workarounds. If your business needs PCs for mission critical applications, waiting for at least the first service pack for Vista may not be a bad strategy.

7) Other Options To Get Vista Like Features -
Options such as Internet Explorer 7 (which has it's own share if issues), advanced desktop search and other features are available via 3rd party software already. Advanced desktop search from Google or Yahoo! works great and for registered users, IE7 is available for download. You can also consider something "completely different" by going the way of Mac OS X or even Linux with Compiz or Beryl windows managers. Both operating systems offer Aero-like look and feel features.

8) Laptop Users May Get Shorter Battery Life -
With the new enhancements that Vista offers, undoubtedly those enhancements will take more CPU and GPU usage. With more usage comes greater power requirements, with greater power requirements come shortened battery life for laptop users. There has been no official word yet on batter life in real-world use, but my estimate is that you will get shorter batterly life on laptops.

9) Doing a Fresh Installation Possible, But Not Easy with an Upgrade DVD -
Anytime you want to move to a new operating system, you ideally want to wipe the hard disk clean and start with a fresh install of the operating system. However, doing a fresh install with an Upgrade DVD, while not imposible, is pretty difficult for the average user. You can get more information on the process here.

10) Finally…Does Your Business Really Need it? -
I did a talk with a local business network group I belong to, and while there were jokes around the room that said I definitely wasn't a plant from Microsoft, my intention is for my clients to do a realistic assessment of how they use their computers currently and how Vista will benefit them. Techsmart can help make that assessment of course but the bottom line still is: Does your business really benefit from the upgrade? If you find that your current hardware is not up to specs or if your business software is not compatible with Vista, the decsion may be easy. However, if you are buying a new PC, you may get Vista as the standard. This isn't necessarily a bad thing but you again, need to assess the impact of the new PCs in you current network environment. Techsmart Consulting would be pleased to help your business perform an impact analysis of how Vista will affect your business. Call 773-276-3417 today to discuss this information further.

Every business has a need for distributing documents on-line or via email. The trick is to give the recipient a format that they can view without the need of a fee based program. The universal format (other than text files) has always been PDF or Portable Document Format. To read the file, you only need Adobe Reader, which is available on a multitude of operating systems (or workalikes (Mac OS X Preview, Xpdf, Kpdf; etc)). However creating PDF files has always been the stumbling block. Many users thought you needed to buy Adobe's PDF Professional to create PDFs. Not really.

I have been using PDF Creator, found on SourceForge.net for over a year now. With the application, a PDF "printer" appears in your Printer/Faxes section in Windows and you select PDF Creator as you would any printer. Very simple to use. You can also use advanced features such as password protection, compression and encryption as options within the program. Along with PDF Creator you need to install ghostscript, a Postscript interpreter that runs on a variety of platforms. Windows installation binaries are available that already have ghostscript integrated so the installation is painless. PDF Creator is open source software which means it's free to use with no license fees.

If you need help loading PDF Creator or have any questions regarding our services, don't hesitate to contact us at 773-276-3417 or email us at info@techsmartcs.com

Preston Gralla, the noted tech writer, his written a good article on Asterisk and why it is making a buzz in the PBX telecom business. You can find the article here.

As Mr. Gralla indicates, you are able to do many things you find only on high-end PBX systems (sophistcated call routing based on logical rules being one. Others include routing based on time conditions, voicemail, "follow-me" hunt groups to different telephone numbers, inbound fax, call queues, mp3 and streaming music on hold and DISA being a few). Many VOIP IP providers use Asterisk as the main system for their business because of the features and flexibility you have wih the system.

Mr. Gralla also fairly states some of the potential drawbacks of Asterisk. It is open source and if you have don't have confidence in the open source development model then you may not be comfortable with the software. (If you use Mozilla Firefox then you should have confidence in this model, Firefox is an open source project. Google, the quintisential search engine on the net, runs on open source software). Other potential issues are technical support (Techsmart will fully support any Asterisk system we install plus others installed by a 3rd party after an intial assessment) and the actual skillset necessary to build the Asterisk system (many small and mid-sized business do not have this in-house. Again, Techsmart can help). Even with these drawbacks and the need for outside assistance, your investment will be nowhere near the cost of getting a proprietary PBX system.

The cost/performance ration for Asterisk far exceeds these caveats. Read the article and then call Techsmart for assistance in scoping and planning your PBX system.

There was a story on ZDNET and other outlets that today is the official EOL (End-of-Life) of the Windows 9x Operating System. This means that Windows 95, 98, 98SE and 98ME will no longer be supported by Microsoft. Support in the sense that security updates will no longer be available for these operating systems. Many business owners have already upgraded to a newer operating system but many others, not-for profits, schools and other smaller businesses, still use Windows 9x as their main computer operating system.

What does this mean for the business owner/user? If you are currently still using Windows 9x, in any form, it means a great deal. Using an operating system wih known security holes and having no support to get the holes patched is a receipe for trouble and data loss. As a automobile driver, you would not drive knowing there was a problem with your door latch/locks or brakes...would you? If you continue to use Windows 9x, you are opening yourself and your business up to unecessary security issues.

Techsmart suggests you use this as an opportunity to purchase a new desktop or laptop for your business and upgrade to the latest supported Windows business class operating system, Windows XP Professional. Even with Windows Vista on the horizon, buying a PC with a 3000+ Mhz processor, a large hard drive (200+ GB) and at least 1GB or more of RAM will give you growing room for Vista when it comes out sometime in 2007. Also, use this opportunity to evaluate all your client PCs and your Network application and file server for updates and improvements . An alternative would be to keep your current PC (Only if it's 800 Mhz or faster), upgrade the RAM to the maximum and purchase an upgrade version of Windows XP Professional. You can also try a version of Linux: Fedora, Ubuntu or Knoppix if you want to keep expenses down but still have a well supported operating system.

Contact Techsmart at 773-276-3417 (phone) or info@techsmartcs.com (email) for more assistance regarding this topic and other IT assistance and advice.

Asterisk at Home, a full-featured open source PBX system is now Trixbox PBX. Trixbox is the preferred PBX installed and used by Techsmart Consulting. Some of the features include

* Asterisk 1.2.7.1
* Flash Operator Panel 0.25
* Festival Speech Engine version 1.96
* weather agi scripts
* wakeup calls
* Integrated WebMeetMe GUI
* FreePBX 2.1.1 GUI
* CentOS 4.3 - Open source version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux
* SugarCRM with Cisco XML Services interface + Click to Dial
* Native Music On Hold with streaming mp3 capabilities
* Fax support (spanDSP)
* xPL support
* Digium card auto-config
* Open A2Billing

Contact Techsmart Consulting at 866.868.6606 or email us for more information.

According to the Slashdot post, Jim Allchin, Windows Product Manager has stated Windows Vista will not be available until Q1 of 2007 (Jan/Feb target). This is because of the need for further tweaking and security changes to Vista before the full launch. You can read about it here.

What does this mean for your business? Well considering the MS Vista minimum requirements have yet to be published (here's an educated guess), most businesses will more than likely not migrate over until a) They go through their normal PC replacement cycle and b) After the initial shake out of bugs, service packs, etc. And even then, as much fun as it is to run the latest and greates operating system, your mission critical applications (CRM, Office Suites, Accounting; etc.) have to run on the new operating system right away. Many times, there are issues with applications running on the new OS.

Techsmart Consulting can help you decide if a move to Vista make sense for your business. Contact us for assistance.

The open source office suite, OpenOffice recently released 2.0 of the software. The software suite is based on Sun Microsystems office suite called . StarOffice. StarOffice has been around for a number of years, very popular in Europe and with the Unix/Linux segment. Why should you consider OpenOffice? Read on.

Features - For the average business user, the suite of programs, Writer (word processor), Calc (spreadsheet), and Impress (presentation software) provide all the functionality that a business user would want or need. The user interface, while not on a direct MS Word relationship, is easy to follow and to use. One of the best features of OpenOffice is the creation of PDF documents on the fly. Just click the PDF button on the menubar. Calc and Impress menus, while again not direct one-to-one relationship with their Microsoft Office, are easy enough to follow and to use. Calc's formula entry has a very similar command structure as MS Excel. Color bars, shading and other formatting of spreadsheets and reports is also present and very easy to use. Impress has very similar features as MS PowerPoint and making professional looking presentations is quick and easy. (Note: OpenOffice 2.0 also comes with a vector drawing tool and a powerful database program (similar to Access but also with connectivity tools to easily connect to other high-mid range database systems based on Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL and others).

Compatibility - I have yet run into a MS Office document that did not open in OpenOffice. Granted the formatting may change as it's translated to OpenOffice, but for the most part you can read and write to MS Office file formats. For your average MS Word, Excel or PowerPoint document, OpenOffice will work great. If you work in a highly specialized industry, such as a law office, OpenOffice will probably not be a good fit because of the possibility of formatting issues. However for the rest of us, OpenOffice would be a great replacement.

Cost - I haven't mentioned the cost up to this point. The cost for OpenOffice is $0. The software is absolutely free. No catches, no gimmicks, no hidden spyware. It's free. Upgrades are free and patches are issued promptly by the OpenOffice.org development community. With a single copy of Microsoft Office hovering around $350-$400, getting your company trained and using OpenOffice would be a great short and long-term cost savings.

My suggestion would be to download OpenOffice at (click here) and give it a test run for about 1 month. Try and do your normal business tasks within OpenOffice and jot down notes on your impressions. As I mentioned earlier, I think for the average business user, OpenOffice would be an excellent replacement and would save your business money and upgrade headaches.

Follow-up Note: As a follow-up, Here's a story on Sun Microsystems and their push of the ODF (Open Document Format) standard. It's interesting how much traction this is getting, especially since the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is demanding it.

I read a recent article in PC World regarding adware and the loss in time and money it causes. It's no surprise how invasive this particular type of software has become. It is surprising who actually backs these adware companies. It's a good read.

Here are some keys to avoiding adware pitfalls:

- Use firewall and antivirus software: Antivirus tools may be able to prevent an accidental installation. A firewall, such as ZoneAlarm, that watches applications can notify you if an adware program decides to phone home--and can put a stop to it.

- Use Internet Explorer only when absolutely necessary: ActiveX makes IE vulnerable to some drive-by installations. Alternative browsers, such as Firefox (Highly Recommended) or Opera, don't use it.

- Avoid sketchy sites: Certain kinds of Web sites--particularly some that offer hacking tools, free spyware scans, porn, and the like--tend to attempt drive-by installations.

- Check the EULA (End User License Agreements) on each download: Beware of EULA references to "third-party applications" that download advertising or their own updates.

- Spurn "warning" pop-ups: Ads that look like a Windows dialog box and warn that you have spyware installed are just slick come-ons designed to lead you to sites that actually install spyware. Instead, use a known spyware remover. I recommend Spybot - Search & Destroy, Ad-Aware and Microsoft Anti-spyware (currently in beta).

In a NewsFactor article, a majority of home PC users still do not use or do not regularly update one of the three basic PC security tools (anti-virus, software firewall or anti-spyware tools). There are plenty of choices out there, both commercial and freeware. Granted this article is addressing the home PC users but small/mid-sized business users, especially laptop users, can learn alot from this study. If you use outside network connections often (hotels, business clients, wifi at Starbucks or Panera Bread,etc.) you are strongly urged (better yet, just do it...no arguments) to run a software firewall (ZoneAlarm, Tiny Personal Firewall, the list goes on). Antivirus and Antispyware are must haves for the portable user (and desktop user) too. You're computer will run smoother and your data will be safer.

Techsmart Consulting Solutions is an IT consultancy serving the needs of the small and mid-sized businesses. We offer IT strategy, business sytems planning and implementation, project management, network design and hardware procurement services. Call us at 773.276.3417, Toll Free 866.868.6606 or email us for more information.

Some of the services we provide:

- Accounting Systems
- PBX using Asterisk PBX
- CRM using SugarCRM
- Business Analysis and Systems Design
- Network Planning, Design and Implementation
- PC diagnosis and upgrades