Wednesday, September 20, 2017

HTC U11 A Review and a toast!

The HTC U11 is a great phone! Fast, sexy, and easy to use are some of the first thoughts. The look of this thing is so nice. The Solar Red glistens and changes to lighter and darker shades of red in the different lights. It is a great size and not too heavy when you add a good case and a screen protector. INVEST in a good screen protector! More on that in a bit. The size of the phone is a good size and very easy to use with one hand. The layout and swipe directions are designed for a one handed user. It is very fast and the battery lasts all day unless you live on the phone. And the audio.... Holy.....crap! The audio is so awesome. Lets get into it
Even the packaging is cool. Its a fully recyclable package and laid out well. You get the charger and the usb C cable as well as a clear bumper to protect the back of the phone and the paperwork. The thing is a work of art. I am told all the colors are beautiful to behold and all shimmer in the light to make a great looking phone. The screen is very bright and the auto brightness works very well. You can see the screen in the direct sunlight and still read everything well with the default fonts. A note here: the screen is EXTREMELY FRAGILE. Get a screen protector with the phone. Get one that is shatter proof even if its just for the front of the screen. You can buy a full clear case from Spigen that covers the sides and protects the rest of the phone. You want a clear case so that the colors of the phone shine through and catch everyone's eyes. Even with this case and the screen protector the phone is much lighter than my Samsung s7 edge with the Commuter Case and no screen protector. When you hold the phone in one hand, its very easy to see why they thought of the "Squeeze Sides" idea. The way you hold the phone naturally puts your fingers in the perfect spot to squeeze and its able to be done without feeling like you will drop the phone. It makes taking pictures very easy. I am thinking about how program this feature how to do something else for me other than just take pictures. It can be annoying though some times when you take your phone out of the car the way you hold it can activate the squeeze. I've had to delete 3 different pictures of my front yard that snapped as I got out of the car!
Here is a photo I took with the phone using the squeeze sides. It came out nice and clear and was very fast to snap the picture. The phone has a lot of filters and adjustments you can make to the photos when you take them and after the picture is taken. I am not going to snap a lot of photos and compare them to other phones. There are other sites to view that sort of comparison this is not one of them.

Switching to the USB C plug has been enjoyable its much easier to plug your phone in while in the dark, not having to worry about which way the plug is facing to plug it in. (I have come from the land of the micro usb and I do have to replace some accessories but its not a huge deal.
Another thing to get used to coming from the Samsung world is that they are reversed with their onscreen buttons. The Back button on the Samsung is on the right and the app switch button is on the left. Every other manufactuer like the HTC has them reversed, and that is how it should be as it makes it so much easier to use with one hand. The back button is used more than the app switch button and after inital adjustments, it works great for me.
The new Nougat OS is quick smooth and has great battery power management. The phone has seen none of the weird software glitches I used to see on the Samsung. Multitasking is very easy with the app button and it ran multiple apps without breaking a sweat. ON any given day I have a google maps open along with Soundcloud as well as company email and other time wasting, battery draining apps! But I get through a full day with at least 30 to 40 percent left on the battery. I pushed the Samsung that hard and I was at 10 to 20 percent at the end of a day. The battery is good and I am glad, I would hate to invest on a premium device and not be able to get a good battery life out of it. I have had many tablets and phones do that. You only found out they were empty or dying at the most inopportune time like Right when you need them the most!
This new HTC U11 is lightweight, easy to use, and has a long lasting battery. I really hope that it will continue to be a great phone for a long time and that I will continue to enjoy it as they update to Oreo and beyond. This phone has been wonderful for the first 2 weeks I have used it and I look forward to writing a bigger review after some real time used on this phone. Im sure there are many different options I have yet to try out and as I learn the phone more I will find ways for it to help make life easier for me when it comes to my digital life.

Saturday, July 22, 2017

Samsung smart switch makes moving to a new Samsung very easy

So I have had the pink line for about a few months now and it is getting worse on my s7edge. It has started causing the top right corner of the screen to not respond to touch . So i decided to get an s7 to use so Samsung can fix the pink line if possible. I have not heard back from Samsung yet about fixing the pink line but that is a story for another day. I dread having to switch phones as the process has not been as easy as Apple makes it. Their iCloud works well and makes moving to a different device very easy. Well Samsung has a program that is very similar called the smart switch. It works with any device and will make switching very easy to get to a new Samsung device.


The transfer can happen 3 ways, via Wireless from one device to the other, with a usb transfer cable, or connecting the devices to a pc or mac.


The Smart switch will let you choose your items you want to sync like your contacts, photos, and text messages. It even keeps most of your settings the same. I cannot speak if that works across platforms but switching from one Samsung to the other kept all the settings. I had my icons right where I liked them and all the apps opened and worked with no issues. You do need to sign back into each app and reauthorize if you have a 2 factor authentication setup. But all your data comes right over and its very easy to get back up and running in no time with very little hassle. I did have to readjust my sound settings so I figured it was time to pick some different ring tones for messages and alerts and calls. The program works well it is very easy to download and install and very easy to follow the steps. It was pretty fast too as it flew over the wifi and I have a good amount of photos on the device's storage. It took less than an hour to get everything moved over. It may have even been about 30 minutes.
It is a great app to use and if your going to move to a Samsung I highly recommend getting this app. I will probably have to use it one more time once I get my s7edge fixed. I will update about that later on once I find out what the status of getting it fixed is. I hope to just be able to get it swapped out but I am not looking forward to getting a refurb if that is what they offer me. I know I will not pay for the repair as it is not caused by use its a defect in the phone. I really hope Samsung does a better job with their s8 line than the issues that plagued the s7 line as well as the Note 7 debacle. If you are getting a new Samsung just make sure to use the Smart Switch app to move to the new device seamlessly.

Wednesday, July 12, 2017

Its time to start thinking about 10GB Ethernet

10GB Ethernet. It is here, it is blazing fast and it is probably expensive right now. But its going to get more popular in use and its adoption will drive the price down. I don't know how many homes might decide to move to it but it would be a huge upgrade cost to do so. But if you are running something like a Home studio for video production then it may be something that is needed. Even the hardware is starting to be forward thinking. The Buffalo TeraStation TS5410DN has a built in 10GB port on the back. Lots of NAS drives are starting to put them in. In this Video review by David Gewirtz just a month ago there was 6 of them and each one talked about 10GB Ethernet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MArqG6Aouw

Data Centers have have been using this standard since 2007. Of course if you have Gigabit Ethernet and want to upgrade you are going to have to buy new switches and hardware that can support 10GB Ethernet. Plus you need to have Cat 6 Ethernet cable or Fiber cable to run it through your network. You can run it up to 100m (330ft) After that signal loss will occur. 10GB is the only standard that has come out that does not offer the option of Half duplex communication. The standard reads Full Duplex only. Would a home user ever use this standard? Sure they would, if they were in video or music production you will take all the speed you can get! Plus having 10GB to stream from your NAS box to your internet to upload, things are going to get done pretty quick! If you are a cloud provider for customers or Run a small data backup company you will want to have your backbone at 10GB speeds if at all possible to make sure that data will get to where it needs to be.
10GB Ethernet is almost here and its time to start thinking about putting budgets against it to make sure you have the speeds you need to transfer the ever increasing amount of data coming out of your network. This is a developing topic and I will discuss it more as it starts to make a larger headway into Mainstream networking. As always feel free to leave me feed back about my topics.

Sunday, July 9, 2017

This age of instant response can make for missing a moment alone.

Your getting out of bed trying to remember what important things you have to do today and you get "Bling" "Blong" Your cell phone chirps that someone has sent you a text. You respond then start to think again, I need to make sure I go to... "Bling Blong" Again the response comes in what feels like milliseconds and you couldn't even finish your small thought about going to the market! Later in the day you have been dealing with 5 emergencies from every department and then you found out you need to leave early to go to your house on your lunch break to deal with something and you just want to close your eyes and gather your thoughts for a second...Ahh..."Bling Blong" . It never ends. This instant response with technology has made us lose some of our razor sharp focus we once had. They say multitasking is bad and does not work. Well it used to before you had this instant response device working. You could start a project and finish it without an instant interruption that started and had five responses or further questions before you even got to pick up the phone to look at it! It has caused people to have less patience as well when it comes to waiting for answers. Everyone thinks you should be able to text the response back no matter where you are or what you are doing. This is not the case and you may need to let people know in advance. You have to block off time where you may even turn your phone to airplane mode or off to not hear those messages. Tell all you important friends and family you are doing this to focus on something important. Even if its for a work out and meditation. Does not matter. That is your time to get things done that need to be done. Those texts will have to wait. And for business, set the same ground rules. Let your co workers know, If you have something quick fire off a text but if it requires more than 3 responses, send an email or call about it so the message is clear. Let your clients and customers know, I do not do business by text message. You can give me a text to ask if Im in the office or can I call you? But anything else must be in written or verbal form via an email or phone call. Set the precedence right from the beginning and you can gently remind them if they forget later and do it. And if you get coupons or offers via text message think about them do you really need them? If you do, you just have to hope they are not at 2 in the morning!
It really is hard to try to focus for a long time when you keep getting some kind of alert from an electronic device. Even as I write this now, I had 5 text messages come through and my tablet had 3 alerts from apps come through. So my train of thought stopped a few times and I had to try to pick up where I left off. So if you have tablets you may have to put them in airport mode or at least disable all alerts that are not needed or are duplicated by your cell phone. Try to start small, start with 20 minutes maybe in the early morning. Put your devices to airplane then just close your eyes breath deep and think about something that relaxes you. Don't think about work or anything else you have to do, just think of something relaxing like an image of the sunrise at your favorite beach, or the feel of the breeze as you sit in your screened porch. Just make sure to take some time to your self for your thoughts. The more you do this the more you will be able to focus better and you will feel sharper and sometimes feel less overwhelmed at larger projects. Put on some of your favorite music and just listen to it for some time to your self. If your phone goes off while your in the middle of juggling three tasks at work that are small, don't answer or look at it until you get at least 2 of them done. Then take a quick moment to look at the text. Or if you feel better not worrying about it then don't look at it until you got all three tasks done.
They say we reached the age of instant communication. Well I would like to go back 3 steps where I don't have to respond in an instant and I can get things done without hearing sounds in my head, "BLING BLONG" .

Saturday, May 20, 2017

Sonos Play Review

I was looking into some new speakers for my home and I did not want some big monster speaker or have a mess of wires to play with. I was looking into the Bose system as well as the Sonos Play series. After reading about each in depth I decided to get the Sonos Play speakers.
I picked up the Sonos Play 5 which is their largest speaker.
I also picked up a sonos play 1 which is the smallest speaker. The smaller Play 1 speaker will be perfect for upstairs to have a surround sound effect while the Play 5 will be down stairs in the living room. You can connect the speakers together to play the same stream or you can set them up to be different and play different music. Everything is done with an app loaded onto an iOS device or Android device. These speakers are very loud! The sound quality is top notch. Setup is very easy to connect the devices to your wireless network. The option to put the speakers together in sync or separate is an easy option in the software. The devices update with any new software needed when they first connect to the network. And it is setup to auto update as needed later on for any new software updated. The other great feature that Sonos has is the True play configuration. You can select the room you will put the speaker in and turn on true play and it will adjust the settings to get you the best sound for that room. I have not even used that feature yet on either speaker but they still both sound excellent.
The app once downloaded is how to control the Sonos System as well as play media to the speakers. The app connects to your local storage of music on the device as well as many common apps such as Spotify and Tunein. All in all there is about 30 different services you can connect the Play to.
The very cool feature about the Sonos systems is that they do not connect by bluetooth. They connect through your wireless network. This keeps your phone free to continue to be used as a phone, or to make sure notifications do not get missed. The music does not stop if you get a call on your phone. The music is streaming through your wireless network. This makes a world of difference. Bluetooth is ok for a small speaker to stream with. But for multi Room sound the Sonos is the way to go.
The Sonos Play one is a smaller model but it fills a room with big sound. All the bass and treble is there along with a rich depth to the music your listening to. When you turn up the sound to max it does not get distorted either. The bass notes stay crisp and thumping and the highs get high without any distortion. The Play one is also designed to resist humidity so you can take it outside for some BBQ music or even in the bathroom to play while showering. (Who needs an LED bulb that can stream music?). This will probably be the way the Play one will be used at my house as my wife likes to play music while getting ready in the morning. The design of the play one is also very bold without being flashy. It was designed to be put in small places like on a shelf or a book case to be out of the way but to give you great sound so your music is always a joy to hear. There is a choice of black or white. I choose the Black for both units as it will go more with the decor we have through out the house. Once I did setup the Play units in their place they did look like they belonged and matched well. If you didn’t know they were there you might mistake them for just some kind of decor!
The Sonos Play 5 is the big bad Boss of a speaker from them and it has some large sounds to come from it. It has 3 large subwoofers and the sound from it is really impressive. It is designed in such a way that you can stand it horizontal or Vertical and the music sounds good either way. I have set my Horizontal and it sits in my living room at the far end. I have an open floor plan and when I crank it up the music flows right into the kitchen and even upstairs and sounds dynamic. If you sit upstairs and close a door it sounds like you live above a dance club. Before I got the Play 1 I went in the back yard and turned the volume up full blast and when opened the screen door, the neighbors wanted to know if they could borrow my system for a party! They said with sound like that you don't even need to bring it over, just open your door and face it outside and let us send you songs to play! Yes this thing can PUMP! I have set up both units so they play together and for the moment the Play 1 is in the office which is around the corner from the kitchen. This makes for a very wonderful sounding setup which you don't need to turn up loud to make sure you can hear it while your doing things in the kitchen. You can also purchase a 2nd Play 5 to put with the first one and then they automatically play in stereo mode with a right and left channel. I listen to a lot of Electronic dance music and rock and both sound so great. All the little sounds that are in a song can be heard clearly even while the bass is thumping along.
If you want to get a speaker that can give you great sound and is easy to setup and doesn't look out of place with your decor the Sonos is the way to go. People asked me why I did not look at Bose for a speaker but I did and I liked the support of more apps and options that came along with the Sonos. Plus the support is top notch. I think if your in the market for a new speaker for your home you cannot go wrong with any of the 3 options from Sonos.

Saturday, May 6, 2017

Greatness is achievable.

Think about greatness, it is attainable. But it means showing up everyday ready to work and not slacking off. It means going the extra mile and making sure your work is done correctly and efficiently. You can not slow down, you can not take it easy. You must work diligently and be as detail oriented as possible. You must be able to anticipate problems before they arise and be able to come up with a quick solution when needed. You must be able to keep your temper in check and respond without prejudice when a client is upset or angry. You must be able to be like a mentor and help those working alongside you. You must learn new skills and be able to implement them and show that you are a resource of knowledge and expertise.

Start with your body. Go to bed early Rise early, work out and get in shape! Eat well avoid the crap, for it will kill you eventually and take away from your greatness

Your mind, stay focused, keep calm and carry on as they say. Do not get riled up at the small bumps in the road. Take detailed notes if you must to remember things. Think of how you speak to others and how you respond to criticism.

Don't be nervous around Upper managers. They are just people just like you are. They may have a title in their name, but they are just people and were once on your side of the fence so to speak. They need you to assist them with technology. That is why you started down this path right? You know technology and you want to be able to help people learn it, master it, become one with it. You want them to be able to use technology and all its tools to get work done faster and more efficiently. People will look to you to help make it simple for them to understand. They need your help cutting through the garbage that is thrown at them when it comes to technological terms and megabyte this and gigawatt that. You need to be able to explain to them in a way they can follow and understand the point you are getting across.
Some people are just nervous around technology. Understand that and help them to remove a little of that fear when using technology. Show them “Hey, You got this!” Now they can do something that helps them get their job done.

Man can do anything he wants. You can go anywhere you want on this journey. Just work hard, and don't slack off, and keep an open mind. You can be great, at this and at anything you want. Just do it. You can sleep when you're dead!

What is the best thing to learn in the IT field to advance your career?

I have been working in the IT field now for 20 years. I have learned a lot of new technologies and seen a lot of changes in the way we use computers every day. One thing that I was trying to figure out is what to someone with my skill set should try to learn next. I have a lot of experience with Servers and cloud as well as experience with network infrastructure and and now VOIP and telephone configuration and support. If your at this level you may need to learn something new that will make you valuable if you were to branch out. I thought maybe someone should go about a certification in one technology but those are easily outdated and tend to be hard to obtain. Plus if you land in a new company that does not use that technology now you have spent all that money and time and get no benefit from it. Perhaps doing a combo of things is worth time such as the theory of support like the ITIL certification. This certification covers the codes of practice when it comes to supporting computers in large environments. According to many online sites, Comptia's group of certs can give you a very well rounded foundation. You can do A+ which says computer hardware and software are a specialty of yours and this certification is one of the first ones that IT people go for. It is relatively inexpensive to go after and does not take a large amount of time to study for and pass. Also with this cert you can go for the network version which is network+ which gives you a well rounded view of networking and how it all connects and works. This is a little more challenging to get and there is more studying you have to do to get the understanding down. If you can get hands on for this and the A+ it makes it that much easier to get the certs. Comptia also has the Security+ which proves you are knowledgeable about security and how to keep an enterprise secure on their network and the internet. The other one they have is the Cloud+ and Cloud essentials. The cloud essentials is an overview of using a cloud computing and isn't a very technical certification to get. This is a good one for anyone to get once they work in a cloud connected office to show they have the knowledge of how the cloud works and how it brings value to the company they work for. Then you can go for Cloud+ after that. This one is a little more challenging. This cert validated the skills of IT practitioners in the ability to implement and maintain cloud technologies.
These are some certifications that can help you get to the next level in your career and make sure to tell potential companies that you know your stuff and can bring them value right from the start of your employment with them. Now if your in a company and you find out they are going to start implementing Cisco networking gear then by all means start hitting up the Cisco training to get the Certs from them. Or if you know you will be supporting Microsoft servers with your current or future companies then try to go after the Microsoft certs like MCSE. These tests are all expensive and if your taking multiple tests to pass a certification like MCSE then you have to pay for each test you take and this will add up. One perk some companies have is they will pay to have you take the test or reimburse you the cost of the exam. If your with a company that will do that then you should go for as many as you can handle. With this benefit the retests down the road cost less so you can get a retest cheaper and do not have to pay out so much to re certify. There are a lot of free sites out there that share some information about the exams you are looking into. Some of them offer free study guides or low cost guides that you can purchase. Again, if your company offers to reimburse you for training then get the study guides. They are a valuable tool in preparing for the exams as most guides have great summary pages alerting you to the most important things to concentrate your study on. Its also best to check out where you can get the best deal for the books you will need to read. (I hope you have room on your book shelf and it can hold heavy books!) You can find deals on the exam books and some places you can find deals on slightly used copies of the book so your cost is lower to prepare.
There is some great certifications out there that can prove to companies that you keep current and have a high set of skills when it comes to IT. There is many ways to tackle the exams and great study guides to help you pass and become certified. It just takes time and dedication and to remember that it will only help you to achieve the next step in your Career.

Saturday, April 8, 2017

Samsung S7 Edge One day something Pink appeared

I was fortunate enough to be given a samsung Galaxy S7 Edge by my company to test drive. My motorola was older and had old software that was not being updated, and the battery started to really go downhill. So I swapped my SIM card and started using the Samsung. What a wonderful phone! Bright beautiful screen as Samsung is known for the best displays. My battery life lasted a day and a half almost (a little less if I was really hitting the phone hard) and the phone never hesitated or got stuck. The phone worked as a phone should work and I finally thought I found THE perfect phone. All the apps ran great and did not eat up a bunch of memory, the camera took some of the best pictures just as nice as my Motorola Droid Turbo pictures used to come out. The phone came with a Commuter Otter case and was in perfect condition. That was 6 months ago, then one day something showed up on the display. An uninvited pink line showed up on the right side and ran down the entire length of the display. I was horrified, I did not drop the phone, it ran in a case all the time, how could this happen what did I do?
I locked my phone and placed it on my desk next to me where it sat unused for a few hours as I was at work and busy with help desk issues. Lunch time came around, I had to run some errands so i grabbed the phone and went to the car. I took the phone out and unlocked it ready to connect the AUX cable to steam some music while driving, wait a minute... where is that pink line? Its gone! What the heck??? I locked the phone a few times and unlocked it wondering what was going on. Then put it out of my mind and went about the rest of my day. The phone was used more the rest of the day and the pink line was gone. I started to chalk it up to maybe it needed a reboot and so I rebooted it that evening back at home. The next day I woke up and unplugged my phone from the charger. I had to check for some emails and so I unlocked the phone and HELLO!! "Hello my name is pinky mcliney and Ill be your riding shot gun on the right side of your phone..." So there it is again. I was mystified I figured I must have done something to cause this and I wasn't sure what, I became convinced that I just had to go through the company warranty and get the phone repaired or replaced and I had a feeling that I may have a denied claim if they said well you dropped it and caused that. I was not looking forward to switching back to my old phone as it now felt outdated and slow. And I was really looking forward to getting the Android 7.0 Nougat on this Samsung to see what it would do.
Fast forward a week goes by and Pinky (the pink line) shows up a few times on and off, I found if I touched the upper right part of the screen it sometimes went away and stayed away for a long time. I did not go to warranty yet, I decided to live with it and I would go to support if it got worse. But then I was looking up stories for my blog and came across a post that said the same issue with the pink line. It was a story about people having the pink lines,
http://wccftech.com/galaxy-s7-edge-display-pink-line/

I was elated sort of, I didn't cause this? Is it a manufacture defect? Apparently so. I read more and more looking at people's comments waiting to see a long list of people who sent the phone back and got a replacement with no hassle. I did not find that. Instead there were a couple like that, but then others who said they were charged for the repair or told a high cost to replace. Then there were more reports of the pink line, ON THE REPLACEMENT DEVICES PEOPLE RECEIVED! So this is a bigger issue than I first thought. Guess what, my phone is still with me. I'm waiting on doing anything about pinky. The rest of the phone works still just as good as it first did 6 months ago. Even the battery is still holding up. My co worker who heads our mobile administration asked me the other day about the phone and if I wanted to get a warranty claim going, I told him no, and told him the stories and the news I found through my research. He agreed that was the best course of action, keep a wait and see stance to find out if Samsung was going to officially acknowledge the defect. So far they have not said anything and there is still an issue and people are not getting answers when they speak to Samsung outside the normal canned tech support responses.
I am a fan of Samsung, I have some of their televisions, I have the washer and dryer (yes it was the washer that had the off balance defect) I have almost all Samsung monitors for all of my computers as well as some of my family's computers. I tell everyone the best screens for a computer are from Samsung. But the company is starting to become a worry to me and my ability to recommend them to everyone is becoming less and less. They did fix the washer quickly, I had a warranty visit from a tech and a new bigger S screw was installed to keep the unit from breaking apart. But that issue along with the pink line issue, along with the Note 7 Battery issue and even some reports about bad TV software glitches has made it harder to trust that Samsung is doing QA well enough and will be able to make great products again that don't have defects. I watched the Galaxy S8 unboxed event. I heard the vow made by the Samsung Executive to get better at this and learn from the Note 7. I watched the video about how they are testing batteries and saw the stress test they run. It makes me feel a little better about Samsung. But this issue with the pink line needs to be addressed. Tell your customers if you can fix it. Tell us you at least have an engineer looking at it. Work with customers on a case by case basis if needed and try to fix or replace the phone. If you cannot fix the issue then at least have some kind of upgrade for the customers. Even if not a full replace to a new device if the customers device is a little older, then just provide the customers with some kind of better discount on a new phone. The Note 7 was a safety issue, the washing machine was a safety issue. This does not appear to cause the phone to become unsafe to use but it is a huge defect and makes the using of the phone more cumbersome it aggravates the user when it should not have to.
In a way it IS a safety issue...to the Safety of Samsung and their future sales and loyal customers. Samsung if you do not acknowledge this or look into it for your customers, they are going to turn away in droves. It will make your customers pause before they buy that beautiful new S8 and S8+ you came out with. Even corporate customers who love the Samsung devices, will edit their policies and tell their sales reps, "Show me all the Android devices but take Samsung out of the search" I think if this pink line is at least discussed by Samsung and acknowledged it will help. if you tell us it will take time to fix but you are looking at it, it will help us feel like you really care. Don't be a company that just bets on your name and won't take the time to listen to your customers. Help us get rid of the pink line AKA"Pinky Mcliney"

Saturday, March 18, 2017

When buying networking equipment cheap is not always the way to go

There is an old saying "Cheap is not always good, and good is not always cheap" This holds very true when looking at networking products. A lot of these products send your data through your network and get it to the computers for the users to see and use. If you purchase a product that turns out to be poorly designed, you will find your self with a lot of angry calls at the help desk and wonder why. I have seen cases where the users do not consult their help desk and they go out and buy a piece of equipment and buy the cheapest one they can find. Then they hook it up and have problems with connectivity and call the help desk to find out why. Those routers that are 39.99, there is a reason they are that price. They are not good. They will not last, or they have limited features, or they break down every other day. I had a case where a company who I worked for did this very thing. We had provided them with a medium grade business router. It had a dual WAN connection so you could have 2 internet providers for redundancy and it had some decent features on it to manage the device even from a remote location. It was a major name brand and was about 4 years old. It had come time to replace the device but before we were able to it stopped working leaving the users unable to connect to the internet or their cloud to do work. So rather than call the help desk and let us work with them to try to resolve the issue they went to the store and bought a 39 dollar consumer grade router. I don't even remember what the name was, it was a brand I had never even heard of. So they brought it back to the office and plugged it in and put the old one off to the side. Now not only did they run it without changing any configuration leaving it vulnerable to be hacked into, they did not have any idea that we had special settings in the old device telling it how to send data to specific devices that needed to be configured in a special way. Now keep in mind, at this location we have a monitor tool connected remotely that pings their internet connection and reports if the ping stops working. So in the morning I was alerted the site went down and saw it drop out. I reached out to the office to inquire if they were having issues and offer support but the person had already left to go to the store to buy the device. It was a small office with 3 people and 2 of them were out that day. So about an hour goes by and I see the monitor tell me they are back online, so I figure ok they had an internet issue from their provider and the provider fixed it. Great! Nothing to worry about....
What followed was half a day troubleshooting and trying to get things working with that junk device the users purchased! I almost immediately found out that they had switched out the device and because the IP scheme was different, printers that went by IP address could not find the network. The old setup had 192.168.0.X and the new device had the way too popular 192.168.1.X So I had to go in and change that setting to fix that problem. Then I had to adjust the DHCP to go from 100 to 200 not 2 to 150.... Those were easy fixes and after changing the WiFi built in to match what they used to have with the same password (which was pretty secure with numbers and symbols) things were looking up. Then I came to the part to add in firewall rules to forward ports to their respective devices... If you never did this basically you tell the router, if you see traffic coming from a port named 1088 for example: send that data to this address, xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx. That tells the router to take the traffic and send it to a specific device that needs data from the specific port address. This would have maybe worked if the developer working on the software for this router was not a complete bone head, who never worked with computers before... The interface to do this was mind boggling and even after I figured out what the hell they were trying to convey on the menus, the programming I put in to allow this did not work. So now the remote IP phones that were at worker's homes would not work. They had an IP based phone system and needed the workers to be able to work from home so we had implemented a PBX that would allow this. Sadly this would never work due to the poorly designed router, and we needed it sooner rather than later, as it was December in the North east and this area was prone to 20 inch snow storms... Now at this point, 3 hours into the call your ready to ask the user, why the **** did you go and buy this piece of **** without consulting me first???? But you cannot do that it is frowned upon and will cause tension on the other side of the phone call. Instead you must mute your phone take 3 deep breaths and then explain to them that they must hobble along today until you can overnight them the correct router they need to have their network run at optimal performance. You must also pray that there is a unit in stock in your storage and hope you can configure it and get it out the door to shipping by 3 pm... Luckily for this office, I did have a new unit in stock and was able to put all the settings in they needed, and was able to apply the latest firmware to give the device all the best security and feature patches the device manufacturer had. The only downside was the device was just a firewall/router without WiFi so they would have no WiFi as the WiFi units that tie together were not in stock and back ordered. The users were fine with this and said WiFi is not a huge deal and they could work without it for a few days. The silver lining on this was that when they got the new router that I sent over, we found a huge wiring issue that was causing network drops and the old router was not smart enough to tell them about it, but the new one did detect it in a rather off the wall way and thanks to its error logs I was able to find out this wire issue and have a tech go out and fix it. Now you might ask, "OK they spent 39.99 on the crap consumer grade router, how much did yours cost, 500 dollars? 750 dollars? 1000 dollars? Is it a large brand name that is huge and popular? "
No, the router we sent out is a Mid grade enterprise device and costs roughly 300 bucks with a 2 year warranty, that also includes a cloud log in to manage the device and there is no additional cost for that feature. So we didn't go top of the line for this new device but we did not go cheap either. Our idea has always been to get the users good hardware that will last, and suite the needs of the office without being too expensive and try to be future proof at the same time. The device we gave them fits that bill to a T and the company that makes it has been updating its firmware to add more features to give them more usability. These devices have been put into 95 percent of our locations we help manage and we don't have too many break down. We always try to make sure the locations know to contact us before they go and buy something so we can get them the right equipment. Spending money for a good product even if it is more money is always better in the long run when it comes to IT and hardware. You will improve the reliability of the network for users, and cut down on user frustration and wasted time calling the Help desk to fix an issue. So remember, Cheap is not always good and good is not always cheap.

Monday, March 6, 2017

Lenovo T460s Ultra book review

I was able to get my hands on one of Lenovo's newer ultrabooks to check out and test drive, the T460S. At 3 pounds with a nice clear 14 inch screen it is a perfect weight and size to take on trips and not be a heavy shoulder partner while standing in most lines during travel.
This model sports an i7 Cor Vpro running 2.6 GHZ and has 12 gigs of ram. It also has a 500GB ssd drive which helps keep things running very quick. This mix of hardware makes for a fast booting and fast running PC. The average boot time is about 14 seconds from a cold start! So shutting this unit down is not an issue you will be up and running in seconds when you start back up. The SSD drive is fast and roomy. I ran some antivirus scans and told it to do a full scan and it was done in a matter of minutes. File tranfers through a network drive were rapid and easy and the amount of storage is great to hold just about anything you would need without having to rely on much cloud storage for space saving.
This model also has a fingerprint scanner next to the track pad that works very well. In Windows 10 just program some fingers through the wizard and you can just press a finger to log in. The pad is very accurate and its not hard to line up your finger to log in like other models. The track pad is the standard lenovo track pad with the buttons at the top and they have their unique red tracker ball that can really make you a speed demon if you take the time to learn how to use that plus the top buttons. The track pad is very responsive and a double tap is accurate and does not make you over click when moving files and doing point and click applications. The track pad also does not suffer from the "palm touch" like others that move your cursor around as your trying to type and you lazily rest your palms near the track pad. The keyboard is a very comfortable keyboard to use for long periods of time and should be acceptable to fast touch typists. The layout and spacing is good enough to allow for some speed typing when needed for crunch time when projects are due.

The laptop comes with plenty of ports, not like those other brands that try to force you to use one port for everything in the name of space saving!
There is 3 USB 3.0 ports, a gigabit Ethernet port, an HDMI port as well as a memory card slot. The power connector is Lenovos Square design which seems to be a little more sturdy than the typical round power ports. There is also a headphone jack and a display port adapter. The laptop also has a dock port on the bottom so it can be docked to Lenovo's docking station. This makes for a true desktop replacement for a travelling user and gives them an easier time using a larger display with the laptop.
There is also a 720P Hd webcam for better conferencing. I have not used this as I do not do web cam meetings so I cannot comment on how this works. Battery life is very good, they claim up to 18 hours of battery life but the milage may vary depending on how you use the notebook. I average a full day of battery roughly about 8 hours before I need a charge. Less if I am travelling and using more of my power hungry applications. The battery life and the weight were the 2 biggest factors that made me select this unit has my every day laptop. I was tired of a 4 to 6 pound monster on my shoulders and I wanted to have more battery life to be able to charge less than I was. The only drawback I have is some cloud applications when you log into their interface they have tenancy to run small so if you have issues seeing small fonts this could hinder your using some cloud applications on the unit. I mostly work on the local side when travelling so it is not a big deal to me. All in all this is a really great laptop for any road warrior and Lenovo designed an ultra book that is durable and lightweight but can get you through a whole day of work without needing a recharge.

Saturday, February 25, 2017

Distractions and Information Technology


A friend of mine who is in accounting told me he read a lot of articles on being more productive and avoiding distraction. So he said he is going to try a bunch and tell me the best ones then send them over if they seemed to help. I am of a skeptical nature so I figured he would come back and tell me none of them worked. I read some of those same articles and lots of times I think they are just not practical for real world working conditions. Well he came back and said some of them really helped him and he sent me some links to read.

One of them was how to avoid distractions and stay focused… Ok sure. Some great tips in there, keep your office clean and well lit and post a quiet Mantra that you can look at and try to calm yourself with. But the rest of them are not ideal for anyone in the Information Technology world. One tip was to turn off the internet… that is where all the links are that I need to do my job! All my monitoring tools and all my remote connections to different locations all come from some links in the interwebs. Next tip: Turn off your cell phone. Not possible. Sadly if you have 4 ways for someone to reach you when you are in a support role in IT they will find a fifth way and reach you there! Facebook and tweeting, no that’s out, I do not use them and I try to avoid them I know they are worthless and time drains when working. But texts I do get occasionally. However I make sure to tell them to call the help line or send an email. You cannot track a text or store it for future reference and that is important. So I make sure to manage the person and help them understand that yes text is fast but we don’t do text for support.

Now lots of studies are coming out and saying now that Multi tasking really doesn’t work and it sometimes hurts productivity rather than help. I can agree with that and I can understand that but when it comes to support for IT multitasking is a must and it happens. Trying to concentrate on one task at a time is the best way but does not always work in the IT world. As you’re focusing on trying to clean up an active directory list, a server might go down that you cannot wait on, so you have to become good at marking where you left off and be able to pivot really quickly to that server problem to fix it. Or a phone system might stop working at a location you manage while you’re trying to write up some technical reference guides for your team, save that document, you need to fix that phone system and figure out what the issue is. So yes is multitasking bad? Maybe but when it comes to support work in IT you don’t have a choice. Many things happen at once and you have to be able to stop and jump into whatever event has arisen and resolve the crisis.

I started reading the other article that he sent over and it was something about the habits of productive people. I read the first 2 bullets and stopped right there. The article says email is a big time waster. Don’t do it in the morning. This is also not possible in a support role, tickets come by email. Important vendor related issues come by email, Internet providers send new install contracts by email. Email is a vital function for IT. Maybe for a journalist or someone else it’s just junk and you can dictate that email is done later, but not in IT. I do however agree with one thing: If the email goes more than 2 replies, pick up the phone to resolve, emails will get things confused and can be a lazy way out. The last thing I read on that article made me laugh and it sounds completely made up like the author is trying to scare people. It said: Changing tasks more than 10 times a day drops your I.Q. 10 points. If that is the case than after 20 years of IT work, I should have no memory left and not be able to remember my own phone number… Wrong! I remember lots of stuff, and to keep myself sharp I challenge myself to use my brain. I do not use a password manager. I use different passwords and force myself to remember them without writing them down if possible. I strive to remember phone numbers and account numbers, and even how the boss takes his coffee! That is a soft skill of critical thinking that I like to make sure is always sharp and ready. So I do not think that statement is true and that article was deleted without being fully read through.

One thing that I did read, I found on my own and I sent it over to my buddy. He really liked what is said and was going to try to live it. I was going to work on living it too; I felt it was a powerful message. That is even if you’re doing a task that to you seems trivial and meaningless in your job, do it 110 percent. Strive to do everything at 110 percent no matter what it is, do not take shortcuts. This was advice given by a very successful CEO, who started his career as a waiter and was struggling to break into his field. He had an epiphany while jogging one day and realized he was taking lots of shortcuts and wondered if that held him back. He stopped taking shortcuts and became very successful. He said to this day that same restaurant where he was a waiter; he still holds the record for most steak sales in one night! He worked there almost 20 years ago! This article was wakeup call to me. I know I took shortcuts and on some tasks I did not enjoy I did just enough to get it done and did not give them much thought. I stopped and reevaluated how I did things and even posted the quote on my wall above my monitors so I could see it and make sure to always remember it. Even the trivial tasks might get you recognized for hard work and put you on a successful path if you strive to do them the best way you can.
So is multitasking bad for you? Do you take shortcuts? How can you just improve your overall career in small ways that help you strive to be greater? These are just some of the things to think about, as you grumble to yourself about having to go through that stack of bills that need to be paid. 110%...