This part of the review is based on the Windows 7 Professional boot. For my review of the Android OS part, check out my article here.

I have created a couple of users and added a password on one and no password on the other. Below you will see my feelings on typing in the password, just know for now I am using the passwordless user.

I also attempted to install a couple of business programs (Dentrix dental software and Microsoft’s RMS). Both software packages failed, due to resolution (1280×600 is the only choice). Attempting to install MS Office 2010 I ran out of storage space, this really has not been a fun adventure.

Next I spent time surfing the web, you know since it is an internet media device I figured, why not. Yeah! Just try to enter usernames and passwords with the onscreen keypad that takes up 1/5 of the screen. It covers the area you want to type into. If you move the on screen keyboard to where you can see to log on to say, Juno, Yahoo, LogMeIn, Remote Desktop Connection, then the keyboard is partially off the screen. As Charlie Brown would say “oh brother”.

So using it for business programs is out, installing Office is out, trying to log onto web sites with passwords is a pain. What about once you get logged on? Well I asked my 12 year old to go to KahnAcademy.com and do some math training and testing. The videos worked just great, but when she was trying to solve the math problems, the screen was just too small, she was just getting frustrated scrolling left then right then up and back down again.

The final issue is that Windows 7 SP-1 won’t install. Microsoft has a way to tell if you are on wall power or battery and won’t allow such a big file to install. Alright, just plug into the wall, correct? NOT! Same message. Well, I’s the Geek so you don’t have to be, right!? So I go in and blow out the update and try again, no such luck. Again I go in and try our standard tweaks and fixes that “always” solve a Windows update problem, again the only thing I accomplished was wasting another hour and a half of my life.

Well, next I hope to review the hardware on this device, and maybe its ability to handle shock, say from a tall building or from a moving automobile off a bridge, until then, have a virus free week!

So financially let’s see what we have, Intune cost $132 per year per computer. If you don’t pay you cannot access your computer(s), when you replace your computer, the old one will no longer have an operating system so any resell or trade in value is gone. Three years of Intune would be $396 and the common five years would be $660.

If you purchase a new computer with Windows 7 Professional it cost about $179, one time. You would need an anti-virus, as explained earlier and in the article on Office 365, three years of ESET would be about $85 for a combined cost of $264 out of pocket. This is equivalent to only 2 years of Intune service. The difference of $132 per year per computer could be divided out by the cost of a server such as SBS 2011 or a WHS, however if you already need a server, you should not figure that in.

If you use the free version of LogMeIn (LMI) for some remote management, then that does not add to your computer cost. Let’s say you want to use the LMI Central control panel, it cost is $200 per year for unlimited computers, if you only had 2 computers, in your office you are still ahead. If you added the LMI Pro version on each computer and purchased in bulk 10 licenses it would cost as little as $500 for all of them or just $50 per computer, you are still ahead by not using Intune.

Based on 10 computers you would pay $1,320 per year for Windows Intune and based on a 3 year life that would be $3,960.00. If you purchased the PC outright with Windows 7, used ESET for your antivirus and LMI Central and Pro your cost would be $3,340, a savings of $620 by not using Intune.

Why would you install LMI Pro if your computers are new?  Good question. The storage server, real server and “main” computers need it for the remote monitoring features not available in the free version. Other computers might not need it.

If you use the free version of LMI on 9 computers and get 1 license of Pro for your data server, your cost would be about $70 (no discount for bulk) per year for one LMI Pro license for a total of $2,710 (no need to use LMI Central).  By not using Intune you win by saving $1,250 over the course of three years. Bonus, you have the operating systems (OS) and anti-virus on working computers when you dispose of them.

If instead of LMI Central you purchased a Windows Home Server (WHS), which would be a one time cost (excluding setup) of about $1,200 you could save more. Each WHS can run up to 10 PC’s and laptops. So if you had 10 computers, you would break even in less than 1 year with years 2 and 3 as “extra money” compared to using Intune.

Knowing that Intune would cost $3,960, a Windows Home Server with 10 computers would run about $3,840, a savings of $120 over three years. Bonus, you have the operating systems (OS) and anti-virus on working computers when you dispose of them as compared to Intune leaving you with the need to purchase or reinstall the original OS.

In conclusion, the negatives are the cost as compared to using other programs, the positives are all software is in one package. I will let you decide.

Until we meet again, have a virus free week.

I have been using Google Docs, voice and Gmail for a number of years now and have recently been using Microsoft’s Office 365. Both have benefits and both have downfalls, in this article I wish to cover what I consider the pitfalls of Office 365.

Office 365 comes in a variety of flavors (a link below will take you to their site and offerings); however it boils down to you “renting” Microsoft Office. You don’t own it, so if you stop paying you lose access to all its services and your cloud based documents and email. To me that is a major negative point.

A “feature” provided is that when a new version of Microsoft Office comes out, you get it automatically, whether it is compatible with your documents, database, email, and other people you share those with or not, you get the new version force fed to you. This is not a plus in my book. I have run onto many customers who have had issues when their new computers came with Office 2007 and their old computers had Office 2003. Microsoft did eventually produce a patch so documents could be read both ways, however that took time and business runs at the speed of light, not the speed of Microsoft patches.

Another “feature” is that Microsoft Office is not physically on your computer. Unless you pay for the $24 per month version, you only get Office online. This means that you are required to have internet access in order to open YOUR files or email. Since I just recently visited family in Texas, I was reminded that not everyone has high speed internet, those that do don’t necessarily have a router, let alone a wireless router. This makes accessing your information troublesome at best and more costly and time consuming in the least. A lack of internet connection and the cost of Office 365 does not include your visits to Las Vegas, Seattle et al where hotels want $15 a day for internet access.

You might have heard there are less costly versions, so here is a quick breakdown. For $6 a month, PER USER, you get Office online (NOT on your computer), Email with 25GB of space via an online Exchange email, with 25 MB file size limits (over the internet I would not open a file that big). SharePoint online, Lync online (an instant messaging program), Anti-Virus by Microsoft Forefront FOR THE EMAIL ONLY.

There are $10, $16, $24 and $27 per month, per user solutions available too. You can see them here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/buy-midsize-enterprise.aspx#fbid=f8HMdt-Uq99

Remember, this is for Microsoft Office and an Email Anti-Virus program only, not your operating system, other needed programs or the hardware.

Intel, Microsoft, and the big manufacturers want you (and me) to replace your computer every 36 months. They feel that you should keep the money flowing to them. In many cases they only keep parts in stock for less than 18 months in order to force the end user to replace rather than repair a computer. Microsoft has repeatedly published that their goal is to come out with a new version of their program (whichever that program happens to be) every two years. Think of Vista to Windows 7, now it will be Windows 8, just two short years after 7 was released, the same is true for Microsoft Office.

Let’s go to the math of what is going on, $24 per month per user for Office 365 times 36 months (if you replace your computer every three years) = $864 just for Office 365. Microsoft Office Professional was only $499.99 retail (IFix Computers charged $469) and Microsoft Office 2010 Home and Business (Which meets the needs of 90% or more of our customers) is only $299.
We sell ESET for $59.99 for a two year subscription and renewals for additional two years are $49.99 each. This covers the entire computer, not just email.

Lync online can be replaced by a number if instant message programs that are free (Yahoo!) or more private and secure such as MessagePal and even Skype, so there is no or minimal cost there.

Purchasing the OEM versions from a company such as IFix Computers for 3 years would be $299 for Office and roughly $85 for the antivirus (broken down from a 4 year cost). OEM versions must come installed on a new computer, retail versions cost more and are available.

Let’s See, $864 or $384, the math seems simple to me. Even if you use the full version of Office $469 plus the anti-virus you are still way ahead of the game.

A new computer from IFix with Office is under $999 with Office Home and Business, ESET, Windows 7 Professional and a three year manufacturer defect warranty.

Take into consideration the number of businesses that wait 5 years before replacing a computer (which is a very bad idea due to the cost of maintaining) and you will see a bigger financial difference.

Another issue I have run into is opening large files over the internet. This is time consuming and bandwidth eating. If you have hiccups in the internet you will lose connection and most of the time your changes and maybe the entire document you had open and if you had multiple documents open, like most end users, the mess can be astounding.

Other issues such as people in your office using Pandora, will slow your internet connection and your productivity. IFix Computers can overcome some if that with a SonicWall router that blocks or limits some programs access or speed to the internet such as Pandora and YouTube but there are consequences to this too.

As a Microsoft Small Business Partner, you might ask why I am writing such an article, exposing something that will offend Microsoft, well the answer is simple, I am in this business for the customer, not for any other reason, I want to support the end user to the best of my ability plain and simple. If that offends some, then I apologize but my drive is “service” and at my company (IFix Computers Inc) that is the way we will operate as long as I am an owner.

In my next article I will review the Microsoft Intune program, a program that uses Windows 7, cloud services (there is that word again), Cloud PC management, and we will learn just how it benefits Microsoft but not you or your business.

Until we meet again, have a virus free week!

Within the next 15 minutes I arrive at the customer’s site, power had come on about 10 minutes before I had arrived. I fired up the SBS server and found and installed the ESET removal tool. Unfortunately that still did not allow the computers to connect to the server.

By this time another tech showed up to lend a hand, praise the Lord! Since the customer had the new router I quickly swapped to it and made sure the router settings allowed DHCP. This prevented me from trying to change the Cisco ASA 5500 settings and it also allowed the customers computers to get on the internet for their cloud based program.

This however did not allow access to email, which was setup to go through Exchange on the SBS machine, they also could not access to their local programs. It turns out that the inexpensive Cisco / Linksys had installed Pure Networks, Network Magic, a program I used to see with AOL (AO Hell for most of us). This program of course would not uninstall in normal or safe mode, possibly because it is junk or maybe due to the canceled install by the previous technician. Revo uninstaller saved the day!

BUT… (Don’t you just hate that word) the network became really instable, machines dropping off the network, locking up all kinds of mischief. Fortunately I just happened to look at the gigabit switch and boy-oh-boy were the lights blinking in a frenzy. One by one I unplugged LAN cables at the switch until the lights went back to the normal blinking pattern. Ok, it was LAN plug 38, now to trace that throughout the building. As luck would have it in the next room was a Ricoh copier / printer / FAX and it was connected to port 38. The yellow NIC light was blinking at a billion and one miles per second and the green NIC light was off. Hmmm, ok, the NIC is upset with all that has been going on. Turn off the copier, wait 3 minutes, turn it back on, SOP (Standard Operating Procedure). No luck, the NIC immediately went back into its conniption fit. Fine, be that way, I just won’t connect it to the network.

Well, the network was stable again, that was good news. The SBS server was still not allowing access, that was the bad news. After delving into the settings John found that the NIC and some network settings were screwy and that was the ugly. After some research it was concluded that the ESET security software had “manipulated” some settings and not released them. Then apparently Network Magic had “manipulated” some other settings and “adjusted” the NIC. He had to manually delete both sets of those settings, remove the NIC from the hardware list, reboot the server and then reconfigure the NIC and some network settings, reboot the server again and presto, it was back on the network and internet.

So we are back to where the customer was 30 hours ago, no anti-virus security on the server but the network was up and running, programs and email could be accessed and work could be performed.

Since the customer had been using POP email, the inability to use Exchange was a problem but not critical.
After 2 months of ESET not being able to solve the issue we ramped up our complaints asking for higher level techs, our (my business) was never responded to and the customer rarely heard from ESET. The growing problem was instability on the network. Finally ESET plainly stated “not our problem”. This was exceptionally frustrating for us, a company that is an authorized dealer, and that ESET had been so good for so long in the past with service…

We luckily found an ESET removal tool (yes, like the Norton removal tool) on their site, yet their tech support apparently did not know about it. Once we used it the server and network became stable and Exchange started working (with some configuration changes). Our concern was that this was an active Exchange server, and that viruses Trojans et al could, and would, infect the system.

Since the customer had bought a 2 year license for ESET and with security a concern the customer wanted to reinstall ESET. The problem was now ESET tech support was responding with junk answers and questions and only responding once a week. Another 2 plus months later, with everything stable and much fussing at ESET the customer’s in house computer person convinced ESET to help out. ESET employees remoted in to the SBS 2008 server and installed their software.

While on the phone with the customer, the ESET technician claimed that they had not been quick to respond because they knew of a SBS 2008 issue, yet they never told us or our customer, who had been constantly attempting to contact them, about a known issue. Why not? More crappy service from ESET tech support?

That evening, after ESET installed their “new” version of the software, the customer installed the two latest Microsoft updates and rebooted the server. This was done remotely since it was late at night and some people actually want to go home.

The next morning all heck broke loose, no computers could get to the internet or the server. Since ESET was installed the customer called ESET and they recommended removing it again. The customer’s in house person did uninstall ESET but it did not solve the issue. Once again, ESET tech support did not tell the customer that they needed to run a removal tool. With the network down ESET had only one recommendation, “it must be your router”, a call to our tech support and the customer’s failure to tell of the ESET reinstall let to the same conclusion. This is why complete information is so necessary. The customer went off to Staples to buy a $70 Linksys router, can you say “oh crud!” After returning, the customer installs the new routers included disk into the server (double- oh crud!!).

By then one of our techs gets there and cancels the Cisco/Linksys software installation. Again, without knowing ESET had been reinstalled and removed, the tech spends about an hour trying to configure the SBS server to connect via Microsoft’s tools when “bam” there is a loud “pop” and all power goes out. After about 10 minutes of no power the tech updates the customer and leaves. Once out the front door, he connects with me where we spend about 45 minutes going over the status of the job. As I query him about ESET he lets me know he was not informed about the install and or uninstall.