Data recovery – rescuing musical memories

There was a time when an old music collection would be consigned to an unobtrusive resting place – the loft, the back of a cupboard, or even the garage. Cassettes, CDs and vinyl would gather dust, until suddenly pulled out with no warning at a friends’ reunion or party.

That tradition is changing, as our musical habits move with the digital era. We are more likely to store music in libraries of MP3s on our computers or portable listening devices. This is great for convenience, and allows us to enjoy years of emotion-evoking music at our fingertips, rather than it being stored away in a dark corner of our home. It does, however, sometimes come at a cost.

With the transition towards digital listening, we leave ourselves at the mercy of our computers. The digital age adage is ‘always back up your files’. But how many of us go to the lengths of backing up all the music files in our possession?

That’s why when a hard drive becomes corrupted, or a PC damaged in an accident, it puts our treasured music collections in danger. A distraught friend experienced the considerable trauma of losing most of his music, when a laptop ceased to work. Believe it or not it was the music, not the work or video files, which meant the most.

The owners whose files are rescued are left with a feeling of gratitude towards the data recovery expert that salvaged the mess, and these specialists are likely to grow in demand as our love affair with digital music continues. Whether it be the failure of an operating system or accidental damage, all is not lost.

Techniques such as table partitioning, master boot record and file system repair are now used to save your 1990s Britpop tracks from extinction. Even when it seems files have been deleted in error, they can in fact be found by the experts through references left in the directory structure.

So here’s to data recovery experts and the sterling job they do in making sure our musical memories can live on through the digital era.

Data recovery - rescuing musical memories

Introducing Microsoft Office 2016 for Mac

Last month, Mac users heard the great news that Microsoft announced about Office 2016 for Mac being available now for Microsoft Office 365 customers. Users of Office 365 already know that it is designed for today’s cloud and mobile technology to make it easier for customers to work productively on multiple devices and between the three main platforms of Mac, Windows and Android. For Mac users today, the new Office 2016 will make switching between them even easier.

Office 2016 takes the Mac version up to the same level as the Windows one. Subscribers to Office 365 will discover that Office 2016 for Mac has a new addition, OneNote for Mac. Mac users recording their ideas into this digital notebook technology can reach them from any device and find things quickly using OneNote’s built-in search engine. OneNote projects can be shared with friends, family or colleagues, for real-time editing.

Microsoft Word for Mac 2016 also now facilitates real-time co-authoring of Word documents that are stored in the cloud on OneDrive, as part of the newest Office 2016 preview releases. To access this new feature, two or more people need to be running the latest preview and must give all co-authors permissions. When these users open the same Word document, they can co-edit it at the same time and will be able to view the cursor locations and edits made by each other as and when they happen, automatically.

In Office 2016 for Mac, Word also features new authoring and review tools, including a new Design tab that enables Mac users to manage layout. When several people are working on the same document, they can use threaded comments to have conversations alongside the relevant text. Microsoft Word 2016 also makes use of the Retina display on the Mac and documents can be explored using familiar touch-pad gestures such as pinch to zoom.

If you are a Mac user who already subscribes to Office 365 and you’d like to know more about getting Microsoft Office 2016 for Mac now, contact Premier Computer Services – it won’t be available mainstream until September.

Introducing Microsoft Office 2016 for Mac

The massive online threat against all business continues to grow

Computer security is a critical IT issue that remains in the news. Every week it seems a different country’s government servers are hacked, or a big business has its credit card or customer data stolen by criminals (http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/aug/10/carphone-warehouse-uk-data-watchdog-investigating-customer-hack).

Many businesses think they’re simply not targets, or that this threat will never happen to them. They’re unaware that all businesses are targets, and it is happening to them. Through a huge range of internet service, web server and browser weaknesses, millions of attacks are automatically launched every day.

At the same time, millions more automated phishing attacks attempt to use social engineering techniques to get passwords from employees or contractors. While only a small percentage of these work, that’s enough to open up thousands of businesses to attack every day. Data may be stolen outright, held for digital ransom or publicly exposed to embarrass and potentially ruin the company.

To combat this, you need network and internet security at every level, from the desktop to the server. We can provide Watchguard Managed Firewalls, and wireless network security and management for your business, to help protect against these threats. We can also offer advice for your workers on how to be aware of suspicious emails, approaches on social media and websites that could allow criminals access to your business data.

Whatever your business, if it relies on PCs and data in the form of databases or spreadsheets, ensuring that information is secure, regularly backed up, and available in case of disaster is key to ensuring the viability of your company in case of an attack. We can help provide services to ensure business continuity and can also help move your business to the cloud to cut your IT costs and improve the likelihood of your business avoiding and surviving any threat.

The ‘it will never happen to us’ attitude is as redundant as the floppy disk, and if there are senior managers in your business who still believe that, we can provide hard evidence to the contrary and help your business fortify itself against the never-ending threats that face all companies today.

The massive online threat against all business continues to grow

The pros and cons of Microsoft’s Windows 10 90-day trial for business

Windows 10 is already being installed across millions of consumer and small business PCs around the world, but the company is encouraging larger businesses to upgrade with the offer of a free 90-day trial of the new operating system.

Unlike previous trials, one of the main advantages is that Windows 10 provides an easy way to downgrade to your old operating system if your company finds that it interferes with business applications or provides no useful new benefits. However, that assumes that the in-place installation works fine, with many users still having trouble getting the OS to update.

Among the advantages of upgrading your business to Windows 10 are the device management features of the OS, making it easier to manage data and apps across employee machines and mobile devices. All sizes of business can benefit from protection against modern security threats, with updating and support.

Counting against Microsoft in this respect is that most businesses prefer to put their enterprise security in the care of third parties. Also, with increasing use of the cloud, the OS on a PC is becoming less important. With so many apps managed from the browser, businesses will be questioning the need to upgrade.

Microsoft is involved in this too, with Office 365, OneDrive and other services all cloud-focused, reducing the importance of the OS. So, if your business is looking to upgrade to Windows 10, or is considering the possibility, check how we can offer network security, cloud computing, BYOD and other services that may save your company the need to upgrade, or to help make it a more beneficial move for your business.

We can also help make sure your business has enough protection, with disaster and business continuity planning to make sure that if you have trouble with Windows 10, or suffer major service interruptions, then your business can continue to work or can get back up to speed with the minimum of delay.

Windows 10 is a great new opportunity to refresh and improve your business’ IT capabilities, but it needs to be done in a managed and controlled way, and we can help find the right mix of services that actually benefits your organisation.

The pros and cons of Microsoft"s Windows 10 90-day trial for business