We have been using Microsoft Response Point as our primary phone system for 4 months and feel it is ready for prime time!  It is the easiest phone system I have ever seen to setup; it has wizards for everything to guide you from start to finish. It is a voice activated system and it really works, unlike the voice systems at some Internet providers :( . You can use regular phone lines, VOIP lines or a new technology called SIP Trunking where you can add as many virtual lines as you need with the greatest of ease! If you are in the Toronto area, call us at (416)413-9146 and give it a test drive or visit www.microsoft.com/responsepoint for more information!

We are now Microsoft Response Point Certified providers so if you need a new up-to-date phone system, give us a call!

We are starting to notice an uptick in the amount of spyware present on PCs.. it seems as though the spyware makers have lulled us to sleep and are ready for the next wave of attack. The timing is good, as the old version of Ad Aware does not update any more, Windows Defender does not pick up all spywares and the new version of Ad Aware (Ad Aware 2007) is not very good. Spybot 1.5 is the best defence against spyware these days; it scans for over 100,000 infections. Keep your PC safe!

Our organization has moved up to Microsoft CRM 4.0 and here is an early review:

• The software runs much quicker; no more going for coffee when clicking on a new section!
• CRM 4 runs very well in Outlook; previous versions were a bit buggy
• Option to export to Excel works well and is very useful
• CRM 4.0 has a much more attractive looking user interface than CRM 3.0

My early conclusion is that this upgrade is very worth it and is going to be great for our company. I recommend this software to manage your clients.

The Joomla User Group Toronto meeting held at En Vogue Computers headquarters went well; details of the meeting can be found here: http://toronto.joomla.ca.

En Vogue Computers is proud to announce that we are the host of the inaugural Toronto Joomla! User Group Meeting. The meeting will take place at our offices on Monday the 25th of February. We love Joomla! and can't wait to meet other Joomla! evangelists.

What is Yahoo thinking? Yahoo decided (for fun I guess) to change the way one sends mail through Rogers Internet Service with a non-Rogers account. You now have to go to mail.yahoo.com and add any non-Rogers addresses into your Control Panel, or Yahoo! will block all your mail you send out with this address! You will receive the following cryptic message:

There was a SMTP communication problem with the recipient's email server. Please contact your system administrator. #5.5.0 smtp;553 From: address not verified; see http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/edit/alternate_email/index.html

The link leads you to a place, that if you dig hard enough, you may understand why your email is blocked. You are also trapped, as you cannot send through other outgoing mail servers with Rogers Home High Speed Internet.

Maybe they should change their name from Yahoo! to Duh!? It's one thing to make an annoying change like this; it's another to not tell inform your users about it! Shame, Yahoo; you have caused a ton of confusion. If you want to see how much, try typing the above error message into Google.

Blackberry has recently announced Blackberry Enterprise Server Small Business edition. The software is for 5 users and costs $1199; this is staggeringly cheaper than the $3599 they want for the full edition. At $1199, it seems pointless to have it hosted elsewhere as the cost will hit that amount within the first year!

Right now at Future Shop you can get a Tablet PC for the unheard of cost of $1099! That is about $500 cheaper than any I have ever seen! The model is from Hewlett Packard (TX 1000) and as I have bought one for myself, they are awesome!

A Tablet PC is a smallish laptop that converts into a book shape, allowing you to write directly on the screen. It is an incredible technology, to be sure.

En Vogue Computers has partnered with a Toronto-based Managed IP phone company that provides easy to manage phone systems. The systems are cheaper than traditional phone systems, and are much more flexible. They have exciting features such as cell phone twinning, where your cell phone as well as your desk phone ring when someone calls you. And they are paired with T1 Internet at a fraction of the usual cost for a T1! Contact us to find out how you can make your phone system more efficient with Managed IP!

The stable release of Joomla! 1.5 is now out, and it looks great! It is much easier to update your site, and the interface looks amazing! Also the language support is vastly improved.

Now we just have to wait until more extensions are developed, the major one being VirtueMart. The programming of extensions for Joomla! 1.5 is supposed to be easier, but only time will tell. Let's get behind this release, developers!

I have setup 2 Slingboxes for our business clients, and it definitely delivers on the promise of watching your TV remotely. I can't believe how easy they are to set up and how well they work! If you are thinking about buying one, don't hesitate; the setup is simple and it works great!

Recent price drops for hardware have caused the price for a very good server running SBS 2003 to plummet. For less than $2000 you can get a Quad Core Server with 250Gb Hard Drive and 2Gb RAM; this is a pretty nice server for the price!

At this price I feel there is no excuse for companies with 10 or more users or with complex IT needs not to have one. Think about it, less than $2000! Call us for a consulting visit to find out what SBS 2003 can do for you.

I cannot count the amount of times my clients have received bum advice from big box technology stores. Most of these people are salespersons only and have no understanding of computers. It would be fine if they would admit this to customers, but they bluff and sell customers the wrong thing or give the wrong advice at every turn!

For example, I sent a client to a certain Futuristic Shop to get a wireless USB network card. The salesperson gave him an internal wired network card and assured him this was the product he needed. He could not have been more wrong! People, you have to ask yourself "if this guy is really a good IT consultant, would he be working here??"

And whatever you do, don't get one of these people to assist you with your business IT needs, unless you like bad advice.

I have just finished the tutorial on Mac OS X Leopard, and have come away from it very impressed! There are so many amazing features that I wish would exist in Windows Vista, such as:

• Time Machine: This new app lets you rollback a document, or your whole Mac to an earlier date. While Vista does have System Restore, it will not allow you to rollback a document or a folder to an earlier time. Plus Time Machine looks incredibly cool; it has a space theme that look reminiscent of the beginning of Star Wars.
• Spaces: This app allows you to have up to 4 separate desktops, each with its own set of apps running! WOW!
• Quicklook: This app is a previewer that allows you to fully preview documents or presentations without having to open them. Looks beautiful and works great!
• New Email features: The Email program now can detect dates withing emails and make them into an iCalendar appointment. You can also create to-do items straight from an email and easily send yourself notes.
• New iChat features: Now you can use iChat to directly connect to other Macs and either fix problems or collaborate on documents. Also, you can change your iChat background to a picture or to a video so you can appear underwater, in the clouds or wherever you like!

I am very impressed with Mac OS X Leopard and at this point, like it better than Windows Vista (sorry Microsoft!)

A problem I have run into a fair bit lately is how to transfer songs from an iPod back to a computer. At long last I have found the solution; Senuti is a FREE Mac OS X application that will transfer your iPod songs back to iTunes! I am thrilled to have found this as this has been a real problem for us and our clients.

We have had quite a few clients lately purchase equipment without consulting us, and what we have been finding is invariably the wrong hardware gets purchased for their situation. Please let us assist you in finding the right solution to ensure your solution does what you want it to do. This is what we do; in these cases we know best!

We have been recognized as a Green IT company by Green Enterprise Toronto! See our listing here: http://www.greenenterprise.net/web/memberslist.php?findid=1260. We are proud to have been recognized as a green IT company.

Green Enterprise Toronto is a network to help locally-owned businesses and customers to "vote with your dollars" for people, planet, and profit.

What Joomla! Can do for you is make it easy to update all areas of your website without having to call your web specialist. This is good for a few reasons:

• No more having to pay your web specialist each and every time you want to make even a minor change. You are free to make changes anytime you wish, even at 2AM!
• No more waiting for your web specialist to actually make the change. You are empowered!
• The more you update your website, the higher your Google ranking becomes; Google ranks websites higher that make frequent updates.
• Updates are done in a easy to use, Microsoft Word type screen.

Also, extensions such as a shopping cart can be added at very little cost as they are open source and your inventory can be updated yourself. Get empowered and get Joomla!

Both Bell and Rogers now offer a Portable Internet service. This service gives you internet basically anywhere there is a cell phone signal, no wires required; just plug the box in, plug it into your computer and you have internet! I prefer the Rogers box to the Bell one, as the Bell unit requires a username and password to connect to the 'net (what's with Bell and their love of passwords???). I have used this service where internet is unavailable with excellent results. I also keep one available in case any of my clients have a sustained period of internet outage.

I have discovered that the Blackberry Desktop Manager 4.2.2 that ships in the box with the Blackberry Curve is not compatible with the Blackberry Curve!! You know, I think you shouldn't put it in the box with the Curve if it doesn't work with the Curve, but maybe that's just me.

I was entering a Bell contest (as I am known to do) online and discovered that Bell is now offering a 16Mb download internet service! This is twice as fast as the highest speed offering Rogers has, and would provide unbelievable internet speeds. It costs $100 per month, but when you have a need for speed only the fastest internet will do!

While my feelings on Windows Vista's readiness are mixed, I think Microsoft has done a fantastic job with Office 2007. Outlook is vastly improved the area of reliablilty; a mailbox that we were trying to repair would not open in Outlook 2002 at all, but in Outlook 2007 it opened immediately.

The search function in Outlook operates so quickly that your search results start appearing even before you finish typing! Buckle your seatbelt!

Microsoft Word is also improved in a few areas. You can preview font style and size changes on the fly, and the letter mailing section is vastly improved.

Way to go on this one Microsoft!

I have been using Vista since January and have assembled a list of what I like and don't like about it.

First let's look at the positives:

• Searching is very quick. A search for a file on your PC will usually take less than 10 seconds
• Good Product Support: Windows Vista recognizes more hardware than XP as soon as you plug it in.
• Nicer looking interface: Mac users will be happy to see that Microsoft has changed the look and feel of Vista over to a Mac-like look.
• I also like that there is a "favorites" bar in the file window that gives you shortcut access to various file locations.
• Windows Update is built right into Control Panel, which is convenient.

And now the negatives:

• User Account Control is a feature that drives me batty. It asks you for confirmation after every potential security related action you take. It is too annoying and I disable it ASAP when working on a new vista PC.Older programs do not work that well (or at all). Outlook 2002 (XP) will no longer store your passwords as one example.I find myself with butterflies in my stomach when running any application on Vista for the first time.
• Some software tech support teams are simply saying "we do not support Vista" which I find very frustrating. HP has not released updates for quite a few of their printers for Vista so be aware of that.
• You need a very strong computer to run Vista as well. The specs for systems that run Vista are pretty gaudy.
• Also because of the many different flavors of Vista you may or may not get all the features you need. I discovered at a client's site that his version of Vista did not have Windows Scan and Fax which would have been useful to the client.
• The Power Off button does not power off the PC. I find this extremely annoying, as I have to remember to select Shut down or restart from a side menu. Power off should mean power off!
• Wireless network support seems to have lost a step. I am finding wireless connections sporadically disconnect.

All in all, I do not feel Vista is ready for prime time yet. Will keep you posted.

With so many options to choose from, there is no excuse to not backup your data. There are even no-cost solutions such as Mozybackup which backs up your data to an internet-based server. The free size limit is 2gb, which is enough for all your documents and, most likely, your pictures. Best of all, the more friends you refer, the more size Mozy gives you for your backup. Be a good friend and tell your friends about Mozy!

Another low cost option is a removable drive, which will set you back less than $200 in most cases. These drives are large enough to backup everything on your pc, and you can use Windows Backup to schedule a weekly backup onto them.

As you can see there is no longer an excuse not to backup. Please save yourself the stress of lost data and get a backup solution right away!

Lately I have had a client or two buy these mini PCs for their office. I do not like them because they are overpriced (you pay around $1000 for a computer that should cost around $600), some parts are extremely difficult to replace as they are made only for that particular PC and opening them for service is akin to opening a Sony Playstation for repair; not very easy! Standard sized PCs are definitely the way to go, particularly for a business.