Business Solutions & Software Group Blog

When you first started your company, you may have had a group of close friends who were your original employees. They started off ambitious, like you, but gradually they grew more and more complacent. Now they are a hazard to your company’s future, and you don’t like that. You feel like you need to replace them with someone who cares about the company’s future, or maybe you just found someone who has more skill than them, but what if you don’t get along as well with the new employee? And how do you fire a friend?

It’s fun to find new ways to customize your PC’s desktop to fit your taste and personality. In fact, we bet that your current wallpaper image speaks volumes about who you are. Did you know that you can even adjust your desktop’s icon sizes?

We live in an age where we are trying to get the most out of our employees, but sometimes it can be difficult to keep up the hard work all day. Productivity applications and software can only go so far when your team is exhausted. Sometimes you might wish you could be back in the good old days of elementary school when naptime was a thing. So, why not give it a try in the workplace?

Business is booming, and you are busier than ever. Your company is expanding at a crazy rate. But, what if something were to happen to you? Would your company be able to carry on in your stead, or would it crash to the ground in a blaze of glorious defeat?

Some business owners rely on their iPhone for a lot more than just work-related functions. With so many applications and whatnot consuming your phone’s processing power, your iPhone’s battery can quickly get drained. This, in turn, drains your productivity. If your phone is always dead, you can’t get much done with it. Shouldn’t there be a way to boost your battery’s efficiency?

Sometimes you find yourself in a pinch and you really need a WiFi signal for your laptop in order to complete a task. If you’ve got your smartphone handy, then you can easily turn your device into a WiFi hotspot and give your laptop the wireless Internet signal it needs. Here’s how you can accomplish this from your Android device.

No matter what kind of business you run, you’re likely to gain many friends and allies in the war of entrepreneurship. However, you’ll also gain a lot of enemies (i.e. your competitors) that you’ll need to one-up somehow. Of course, you could always just exploit what they are doing wrong, but what about what they are doing right?

Have you ever been prompted to change your password, then forgotten what the new one was twenty seconds later? Changing passwords consistently is a good practice, but let’s face it; unless you have them put away somewhere, you are probably going to forget about them at least once (unless you use a post-it note on your monitor, which is never a good idea). Additionally, if passwords are short and easily guessable, you risk being targeted by a phishing attack or other hacking attack.

“What kind of computer have you got there?” For a novice computer user who knows very little about this sort of thing, being asked a basic question like this can be baffling. You don’t have to be embarrassed by your lack of technical prowess. Microsoft makes it easy to find out what you’ve “got under the hood.”

Wireless connections like WiFi can be tricky at times. Either they don’t work, the connection isn’t a very good one, or there are too many people using it for it to be effective. Whatever the reason, you can bet that there are people using your WiFi who shouldn’t be can be. This can lead to many problems including security concerns, slow browsing speeds, and more.

When a disaster strikes, you should be able to recover quickly and efficiently with minimal downtime. Unfortunately, for some businesses, things don’t work out quite so smoothly. If your backup doesn’t process correctly, you might be in a bind when it comes time to restore operations from your backed-up data. How does one go about troubleshooting a failed backup?

As a business owner, you know that the key to the path of your success is in the relationships that you forge along the way. These same relationships can be just the boost you need to get the edge on your competitors and knock them out of the game. It all comes down to your communication with the your surrounding community.

One of the best reasons to use Microsoft Outlook is the little-known Quick Steps feature. With Quick Steps, you can apply multiple actions at the same time to your email messages. Users that feel bogged down by their inbox will especially appreciate this email management tool.

It’s always important to know about what you’re investing in before you take the leap of faith. In the world of business and managed IT, we understand that jargon and abbreviations can potentially kill a sale. This is what we call “geekspeak,” and while it’s generally avoided as much as possible, it can cause some business owners’ eyes to glaze over and zone out.

Have you ever been working in Microsoft Word and needed to go back and check an edit you made, but you didn’t remember what you did, or where in the document you did it? Going back and reviewing your edits in Word is easy using the little-known Go Back command.

As the Internet of Things and BYOD make headlines in the technology world, more and more devices are connecting to wireless networks. While this means that technology continues to grow more mobile, it also means that threats are given new avenues to access countless devices, many of which might contain information of a personal nature.

Let’s face it: The Internet is filled with opinions, and several of them are undoubtedly wrong. Generally, most mature people will take these opinions with a grain of salt and move on. The other half of the population absolutely must respond. These responses are often less-than-friendly, and some of them are just trying to anger the original poster. We call these people Internet trolls.

If you feel like you’re having trouble communicating with your team, it’s probably because you are. In fact, it may be because you’re communicating with them the wrong way. By overhauling the way you approach small talk and office chit-chat, you can improve office intercommunication and your own public image.

You’ve got a lot of sensitive information stored on your mobile device. If it were to fall into the wrong hands, you wouldn’t want the new user to have easy access to it. This is why every mobile device should be locked. Here’s how to lock your Android device, as well as how to pick out a lock screen setting that’s right for you.

Humans are self-serving, especially when it comes to the workplace, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In this day and age, people want more out of their workplace than just a decent salary and flexible company policies. Thankfully, it doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive to get everyone to enjoy their workday.