IT Support Technician from NSI - review of Microsoft Office 365 / MS365: Working with Small and Medium Businesses as a Network Support Specialist, I'm asked about new advances in technology almost every day. Most recently, I received an inquiry about Microsoft 365 / Office 365. *NOTE: This post is from 2011, updated information is on its way! Subscribe to this blog and get the latest on Office 365. We will have a series of posts regarding Microsoft 365! Our "What needs work" section, below, will be addressed, along with other awesome improvements to this great product.
RescueCom has released their quarterly report outlining the top 5 Laptop brands based on quality. Lenovo laptops ranked highest with a score of 254, followed by Asus with 242. Toshiba took third with 164, followed by Apple with 149 and HP with 122.
RescueCom is a computer repair center and has been recording their data since 2006. They determine each brand’s reliability rating by looking at 3 different factors:
- Looking at each brands market share in that given time period compare to the percentage of repair calls for that specific brand
- Component Quality used within the laptops; the better the quality of the components the less likely they are going to fail
- Likelihood the customer will need a third party support on their PC; a lack of manufacturer support sends more customers to third party vendors for support
NSI's own Irene Caldwell was recently featured in the Weston-Redding-Easton Patch, a local paper for the Redding community. Irene has lived in Redding for 4 years and has been working in IT for over 15 years. She just recently returned to NSI a month ago, but is already pushing new business and helping her clients with her extensive knowledge of business and her experence working for companies such as IBM. Irene is helping her clients by offering free educational workshops at Uconn Stamford as outlined in her article,
“One of the other things I do for NSI is run several university classes. Over the next few months I’ll be running free summer educational workshops at UConn Stamford. They are business classes open to all business owners and anyone considering starting a business. The first one is “Enhancing your Business Plan."
Xerox eConcierge is giving extended warranties to users of their eConcierge program. If you haven’t heard of eConcierge we covered it in our previous blog post. It’s a great client for SMB’s who wish to save time and money by using Xerox’s software to monitor all their printers from one location. Xerox makes it simple by informing you whenever your ink is getting low from Xerox and other branded printers. But what makes it truly time saving is the fact that they provide you with a link to the exact ink cartridge you need to replace, no need to search for the model number of the printer or the specific ink cartridge number.
To make this offering even more tempting Xerox is giving its users the ability to extend their printers warranty, for all Xerox printers and multifunction printers. To qualify you only have to download the free eConcierge client for a minimum of 30 days and order 2 ink supplies through the program. After doing this you get a free extended warranty on the device that is good for as long as you continue using eConcierge. Being that you will have to order ink no matter how you look at it and Xerox has made sure to have competitive pricing for their ink, it makes sense for any SMB to get a free extended warranty on their expensive hardware, while at the same time saving time and money utilizing Xerox’s free software. Of course there are no obligations to continue using eConcierge program and you can uninstall it at any point. So check out eConcierge powered by Xerox and see how you can get a free $300 extended warranty for buying products that you use every day.
Electronics are an integral part of every business’s life and as we all know they have a habit of breaking from time to time. Many of the components needed in business carry a high price tag and having them break unexpectedly can leave any SMB scrambling to find the funds to replace their equipment. Having them under a warranty program gives owners peace of mind that they won’t be receiving any unexpected costs and can ensure that they can utilize the device until they are ready to upgrade down the road. What many SMB’s choose to use is the manufacture’s warranty program, without realizing the hidden benefits of utilizing a third-party maintenance contract.
