XFER Blog

We live in a world where technology is central to everyday life, yet unfortunately it does not last forever. Eventually, your smartphone, laptop, smartwatch, or other device will reach its end of life, or EOL. This is when the manufacturer stops supplying critical updates—including security.

Nobody likes the thought of the device they rely on daily suddenly dying, leaving them without a phone, a laptop, a smartwatch, or whatever the case may be. This is why it is important to stay conscious of when these devices are due to reach their end-of-life date, or EOL, when the manufacturer will no longer support them or provide crucial updates.

Fortunately, there’s a resource that makes this monitoring far easier to manage.

We live in an era of constant upgrades. How often do you upgrade your smartphone? Do you give the same attention to your business’ technology? Many users ignore clear signs that it’s time for an upgrade, telling themselves, “I’ll manage just fine.” This mindset can be a problem. Knowing when old devices are slowing you down and upgrading to newer, stronger ones is very important.

Common knowledge states that the more you put into something, the more you get out of it. Therefore, it stands to reason that you should put as much funding as possible into your most essential resources—such as your IT.

This, however, can be a hard sell to yourself or anyone invested in your company… partners and staff included. 

Everyone should soon have access to a very handy feature in Google Sheets that helps close the gap between Sheets and its rival software, Microsoft Excel.

This feature? Simple table conversions, complete with advanced organization features.

If you are trying to add new tools to your infrastructure, you might quickly find that technology can be a serious challenge for your budget… that is, unless you make some smart investments and decisions about how you implement it. We can help you make the best technology decisions for your business. In fact, here are three strategies you can try to optimize your technology spending.

Technology can get costly, especially if you are looking to integrate new tools into your business’ existing infrastructure. Since this technology is going to play a major role in how your business performs, you need to be vigilant about making the right investments. This week, we thought we’d help by providing three strategies that you should consider when spending on technology. 

Has your business implemented the next iteration of the Windows operating system yet, Windows 11? If not, you’re not alone; adoption has been progressing at a snail’s pace, and according to industry professionals, it’s not going to ramp up for quite some time. Still, recent surveys and polls indicate that Windows 11 adoption is far lower than expected, and there is even some discrepancy between reports.

Google search is synonymous with searching the internet, but that hasn’t stopped them from constantly innovating the service. One of the most recent updates is to give users more context for the content that returns on search results. This works to protect users from potentially clicking on websites that could contain threats. Today, we discuss this innovation and how it will look to the end-user.

Information technology is a critical tool for many businesses today, which means \\it is crucial that your IT is compliant to a few key best practices. Let’s go over these practices so that you have a roadmap to ensure that your operations can remain secure and productive.

When a child asks their parents if they can get a dog (or a cat, a hamster, etc.) the typical reply from the parents is usually “you know, owning a pet is a LOT of responsibility…” It might be cliche, but it’s true, and there is a valuable lesson for a kid to learn when adopting a 4-legged friend. Computing technology might not be as cute, but it certainly comes with responsibility and plenty of lessons to learn.

It won’t be long before Microsoft retires two of its most popular operating systems - but hopefully, you already knew that. Microsoft has made a point of reminding Windows 7 users that they need to upgrade before January 14 - and yet, many users haven’t done so.

January 14 marks the end of two Microsoft operating systems: Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 R2. After these titles are retired, using them could quickly result in a major problem for your business’ IT security. If you haven’t made the switch to other solutions by now, you are running out of options. Let’s quickly go over what you can do.

There is no question that today’s business operations require technology, but even that doesn’t tell the whole story. Not only do businesses need technology, they need to maintain this technology as well. Below, we’ll review the three basic steps to technology maintenance… and how we can help simplify these steps for you.

Are the computers in your office beginning to show their age? Do you even know how old they are? For the sake of your productivity, it may be time to replace them for a newer model. We’ll go over some warning signs that your computers may be nearing their retirement age.

Windows might be the most popular operating system out there, but it’s not perfect. This is why your systems receive patches and security updates as they are released. The problem, however, is that these updates don’t last forever, and one of the most popular Windows systems out there will lose access to support on January 14th, 2020. Are you going to update now, or are you going to risk your systems going without critical updates?

Software solutions don’t last forever. While patches and security updates can stave off the inevitable for quite some time, it’s impossible to maintain a specific solution forever. Support is eventually cut off, and businesses are left exposed if they haven’t taken the time to prepare. In the case of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2, you are running out of time.

It is interesting to see how different businesses deal with legacy computing systems. On one hand, these systems have been critical in getting your company to where they are today. On the other, they are getting old, and newer technology will almost assuredly improve aspects of your business, including security, software functionality, and computing efficiency. For this reason, companies that have a dedicated strategy in place to routinely upgrade their core technologies tend to run into fewer technology-related problems.

There are one of two reactions every person gets when they get a save-the-date card in the mail. They either are excited for an event or they realize that the event is going to cost them money. For today’s blog, we give you our version of save the date as some of the most widely used Microsoft products in recent memory are coming up on their end of support date, and for some businesses, this save-the-date might be bad news.

Regardless of your feelings on the matter, the 2016 United States presidential election was an extremely divisive one--in no small part, due to the suspicion that the outcome of the election may have been significantly influenced by hacked voting machines. This uncertainty has led to some states making strides to ensure that their technology will no longer be responsible for such doubts.