Since the launch of IT/365 at the beginning of September, we have had over 350 node installations. Our team of Virtual System Administrators monitor all alerts that are raised by the system and decide what action should be taken. With the historical data gathered by the IT/365 system in hand, our team can effectively manage all problems that arise. We constantly check our monitoring sets, procedures, and alerting functions to ensure that we stay at the forefront of issues and errors that occur on our clients' computers.

We have all seen the classic yellow shield and exclamation point (now a notification flag in Windows 7) that indicates there are Windows Updates available for installation, but do you know how these updates actually affect your computer? With Microsoft set to patch a record 49 vulnerabilities on October 12th, we believe it is critical to our clients' security that they understand a little about these patches and how you can keep your systems protected. (Don't have time to read? Call us for the solution: Patch Management with IT/365)

In this short article we look at five very important and often-misunderstood facts about Antivirus programs.

Computers, by their very nature, generate heat. Wheather you're looking at the processor, the Northbridge/Southbridge, the graphics card or the hard-drive, you're seeing heat sources.  In this article we briefly cover some popular methods for keeping your computer cool.

We often get asked about various free software products on the market and how they compare to their paid competitors. While we won't dig into reviewing individual products here, I thought it would be beneficial to our clients that they understand the pros and cons to using their favorite free products.

Come October 22nd, 2010, one of Microsoft's most venerable operating systems, Windows XP, will no longer be sold to consumers. There is often a lot of confusion surrounding the phase out of a major OS, and Windows XP is no exception. Let's look at a few aspects of Microsoft's life cycle program and how it will affect your business.

Junk e-mail, like its paper counterpart, is a staple of the messaging systems in place today. In fact, it's estimated that 90% of all incoming mail traffic in North America is spam. That's a lot of trash!

Lucky for us, some very intelligent applications called spam filters, or more generally e-mail filters, are able to detect and purge a majority of this from most inboxes. However, spam filters, like any other heuristics-based scanner, are never 100% effective at detecting unwanted e-mails. On top of that, spammers are constantly developing new tactics for getting you to open that e-mail.

So how can the average computer user hope to defend themselves? Like anything else in the computer world: with knowledge! Here are some of the top guidelines for avoiding spam: