Solutions
- Small Business Server 2008
- Solve IT opens Limerick Offices
- New Entry to the POS Market
- Windows Vista v's XP
- Top 10 Features of Windows Server 2008
- Guide to Support Options
- Solve IT is Growing
SolveIT Latest News - Autumn 2008
Small
Business Server 2008
Official launch date announced:
November 12, 2008, is the official launch date for
Windows Small Business Server 2008 and Windows Essential Business
Server 2008.
Windows Small
Business Server 2008 is an all-in-one server solution designed to help you keep your data more secure and your
company more productive. It provides many of the features used by larger companies, such as e-mail, Internet
connectivity, internal Web sites, remote access, support for mobile devices, file and printer sharing, backup,
and restore—all at one affordable price.
Click here to learn more about Small Business Server 2008
March 2008
Solve IT
open Limerick Offices
SolveIT are proud to
announce the opening of their new offices in Limerick.
Conveniently
located in Eastlink Business Park on the Ballysimon Road,
we are now providing "Premier IT Services" to the
residents and businesses of Limerick city and county. We opened our
Limerick offices in March and look forward to establishing a
strong customer relationship with our Limerick clients.
Office
hours will be from 9am - 6pm, Monday through Friday.
Contact our Limerick Office
Solve IT Newsletter - Autumn 2007 Edition
New Entry to the POS Market
After several years of research
Solve IT is proud to offer a
new Point of Sales (POS) system. We have finally found a system
able to meet all of the demands of our customers.
This POS system is designed to be simple, fast and easy to
learn. It's compatible with the industries scanners, printers
and cash drawers. Solve IT POS is available in three interface
styles. Each operates with a bar code scanner, keyboard and mouse.
Our Graphical Display interface allows you to use a Touch Screen
monitor or a regular monitor with mouse. The graphical display makes
ringing up sales fast and easy for you and your employees.
Ring up sales by scanning a bar code, a click of the mouse or a touch of your
finger (Touch Screen). Your items are automatically arranged by category.
The Business Style display provides a more traditional and powerful method
of ringing up sales.
Versatile and cost-effective retail POS software for business.
This new Retail Point Of Sale software makes it faster and easier to
perform inventory control management and point of purchase retail.
Our point of sale system turns any PC into a smart inventory management
system that will increase your profits. It will improve your overall
operations, especially in inventory tracking and retail management.
Solve IT POS lets you ring sales, print fully itemised receipts or invoices,
receive and track inventory, track who your customers are and print sales
reports, including reorder reports.
Easy to Learn: Designed for first time users, pull-down menus and touch
screen software make electronic point of sale easy to use. For a transaction,
the operator scans the bar code label or keys in the transaction and, with a
few keystrokes or use of a touch screen, can produce a fully itemised receipt.
As each transaction is completed, the products sold are automatically
deducted from the inventory.
Windows Vista v's XP
Thinking about making a move to Windows Vista? We all
know that Dell and HP both recommend Windows Visa. But we
recommend waiting until the release of Service Pack 1 before
considering the upgrade. Here are some things to think about.
Our experience is that Vista is resource intensive and if your current
computer is 5 or more years old it my not support Vista. Microsoft tells
us that Vista will run on less than 2GB of ram. But as a practical matter
we have found that 2GB of Ram is a requirement for business customers to
be happy.
Additionally Vista requires a faster processor than does Windows XP.
The first shop prior to upgrading should be Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor
which can be found at:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/buyorupgrade/upgradeadvisor.mspx
The Windows Vista advisor will help you determine if your Windows XP based PC
can run Windows Vista. This small software tool will examine your
computer and create an easy-to-understand report of your compatibility
issues.
Top 10 Features of Windows Server 2008
We at Solve IT are currently testing Windows Server 2008 –
Beta. There are a myriad of both subtle and fundamental
differences in the basic architecture of Windows Server 2008,
which could dramatically change not only the way it's used in
the enterprise, but also the logical and physical structure of
networks where it's the dominant OS.
The abilities to consolidate servers, to manage hardware more
effectively, to remotely manage hardware without the graphical
traffic, and to radically alter the system security model,
could present a more compelling argument for customers to plan
their WS2K8 migrations now, than the arguments for moving from
Windows 2000 to Server 2003.
#10: The self-healing NTFS file system: Ever since the days of DOS, an error in the file system meant that a volume had to be taken offline for it to be remedied. In WS2K8, a new system service works in the background that can detect a file system error, and perform a healing process without anyone taking the server down.
#9: Parallel session creation: The new session model in both Vista and WS2K8 can initiate at least four sessions in parallel, or even more if a server has more than four processors. If you've got a Vista machine where this architecture change actually was introduced, and you've got multiple Media Centre extenders, those media centre extenders are going to be able to connect up to the Media Centre in parallel. "So if you have a media centre at home, and you send all their kids to their rooms and they all turn on their media extenders at the same time, they're going to be streaming media faster from their Vista machines then if you had Media Centre on a XP machine."
#8: Clean service shutdown: One of Windows' historical problems concerns its system shutdown procedure. In XP, once shutdown begins, the system starts a 20-second timer. After that time is up, it signals the user whether she wants to terminate the application herself, perhaps prematurely. For Windows Server, that same 20-second timer may be the lifeclock for an application, even one that's busy spooling ever-larger blocks of data to the disk.
#7: Kernel Transaction Manager: This is a feature which developers can take advantage of, which could greatly reduce, if not eliminate, one of the most frequent causes of System Registry and file system corruption: multiple threads seeking access to the same resource.
#6: SMB2 network file system: With media files having attained astronomical sizes, servers need to be able to deal with them expeditiously. Microsoft claims that in internal tests, SMB2 on media servers delivers thirty to forty times faster file system performance than Windows Server 2003. Yes, Microsoft is really claiming a 4000% boost.
#5: Address Space Load Randomization (ASLR): Perhaps one of the most controversial added features already, especially since its debut in Vista, ASLR makes certain that no two subsequent instances of an operating system load the same system drivers in the same place in memory each time.
#4: Windows Hardware Error Architecture (WHEA): That's right, Microsoft has actually standardized the error - more accurately, the protocol by which applications report to the system what errors they have uncovered.
#3: Windows Server Virtualization: Even pared down a bit, the Viridian project will still provide enterprises with the single most effective tool to date for reducing total cost of ownership...to emerge from Microsoft. Many will argue virtualization is still an open market, thanks to VMware; and for perhaps the next few years, VMware may continue to be the feature leader in this market.
#2: PowerShell: At last. For two years, we've been told it'll be part of Longhorn, then not really part of Longhorn, then a separate free download that'll support Longhorn, then the underpinning for Exchange Server 2007. Now we know it's a part of the shipping operating system: the radically new command line tool that can either supplement or completely replace GUI-based administration.
#1: Server Core: Here is where the world could really change for Microsoft going forward: Imagine a cluster of low-overhead, virtualized, GUI-free server OSes running core roles like DHCP and DNS in protected environments, all to themselves, managed by way of a single terminal.
Guide to Support Options
Everyone needs help with their computer at some point. There
are many free resources available on the Web, as well as
many computer experts who volunteer their time to help people.
You may have a friend who works with computers who can help
you with your problem, or you may be eligible to receive free
professional support from your computer manufacturer or from
Microsoft. Lots of options are available for common Microsoft
Windows XP support issues, and the list below provides a
recommended order for finding the answers you need.
Start at the top of this list and work your way down until your problem is fixed:
1. Help and Support Centre: The Help and Support
Centre is your first stop for troubleshooting problems with Windows
XP or programs built into Windows XP, such as Microsoft Internet
Explorer and Microsoft Outlook Express.
2. Microsoft online help and support:
The definitive source for help on Microsoft operating systems and
programs, this Microsoft Web site includes information for solving
almost any software-related problem.
3. Friends: If you have friends who are computer
savvy, they can connect to your computer across the Internet to fix
a problem or show you how to do something. Sometimes the quickest
way to solve a problem is to ask friends for help. But if your
friends aren't nearby, it can be difficult for them to walk you
through the problem over the phone. In this case, you might want to
use Remote Assistance.
Tip: If your friend says that your problem cannot be fixed,
or suggests you buy additional hardware or software, seek a
second opinion. People often have different ideas about how
to solve a problem.
Remote Assistance allows a friend to
connect to your computer across the Internet, with your permission,
of course. Once connected, your friend can see your desktop and
applications as if your friend were sitting next to you. You can
then demonstrate the problem, and your friend can control your
keyboard and mouse to help you solve it. Remote Assistance is also
great for online computer tutorials.
4. Support newsgroups: Other people have probably
experienced the same problem you are having. Free support newsgroups
let you search for similar problems and post questions that can be
answered by knowledgeable volunteers.
5. Computer manufacturer support: Most computer
manufacturers offer online chat and phone support.
6. Microsoft support: While your computer
manufacturer should always be your first line of support, you can
contact Microsoft for pay-per-incident support.
Tip: Many problems can be solved by restarting your computer and
installing updates from Microsoft Update. If you're experiencing
a hardware problem, try troubleshooting the problem.
Solve IT is Growing
We have two new service engineers, Chris and Joanne, and a
newly formed marketing department. We all wish Chris and
Joanne a very special welcome. Both of these individuals
have extensive IT experience.
We plan to publish this newsletter quarterly in order to keep
you, our customer, up to date on what is new in the
information technology world and more specifically what is
new in the Solve IT world.
As always we welcome your comments and questions. Please feel
very free to contact us at 052 82535 or by email at
info@solveit.ie.