"Weston and BITS have been friendly competitors in Bend for many years now," said Brock McFarlane, CEO of Weston. "Both companies have focused on providing the best technology solutions for our clients with friendly and professional support. When Dave and I started to discuss the benefits of our companies working together we realized that our two halves really will make a much stronger whole. This translates into a well-rounded team that can engineer a robust and reliable solution for a client and then monitor and maintain that solution.

Dave Arnold, owner of BITS, stated "I have always thought that there were only two contenders for IT services in Central Oregon, BITS and Weston. Both companies had incredible strengths, but combined, I have no doubt that the improved Weston will stand second to none. I truly believe that this was meant to be as our paths crossed so many times in Alaska and here in Central Oregon, plus we share so many fundamental beliefs. Hang on, the future's looking bright!"

Both Weston and BITS believe in supporting the local Bend community. Both companies have worked with local non-profits and helped them in their efforts in the past. This support will continue and is a core component of Weston.

About Weston Technology Solutions

Weston Technology Solutions has been serving the Pacific Northwest since 1994, providing IT Support such as technical helpdesk support, proactive computer support, and consulting to small and medium-sized businesses. It's always been their goal to provide enterprise-level IT practices and solutions to the small business sector, with small business prices. Their experience has allowed them to build and develop the infrastructure needed to keep their prices affordable and their clients up and running.

Media Contacts:
Andrea Wasilew Larson
541-639-5002, andrea@every-idea.com

Brock McFarlane
541-383-2340, bmcfarlane@weston-tech.com

###

Well, funny enough the answer has stayed the same over the 18 or so years we have been supporting computers:

• If what you have is working well - don't upgrade unless there is a compelling reason to do so. By compelling I mean a software package you use will not run without the upgrade or there is something so beneficial in the new version that you will quickly recover the disruption time from upgrading.
• If you are replacing a computer - get the latest version but understand your applications may not run right with it. The most recent example of this was people moving from Windows XP to Windows 7. Much of the software they had been using did not initially run right with Windows 7.
  

So now that those answers are there let me tell you about breaking the rules. I was lured into upgrading my laptop to Windows 8 while I was on the road and just before a big conference where I needed to present a PowerPoint. I always tell clients to never make changes on the road and never make changes before a critical event such as giving a presentation.

And you know what happened - the upgrade appeared to work but then my machine got stuck in a continuous cycle of restarting but not letting me log in. I had to attend the conference with my tablet and give my presentation from it which was a little rough but worked.

I was able to fix the Windows install but it required a rebuild which wiped out all of my installed software but left my data. This is a new scenario with Windows 8 and another reason to hold off upgrading - the techs that are used to certain troubleshooting methods in Windows XP and Windows 7 will be presented with a new set of tools that takes getting used to which means more dollars spent to fix things. Getting Windows 8 already installed on a machine avoids this issue initially.

Finally, I would recommend holding off as long as possible until the market determines if Windows 8 is another Windows Vista - a version that changed the interface and had lots of resistance from people using it. The new interface of Windows 8 is a big departure from Windows 7 and feels plain weird when you are used to previous versions. It really slowed me down for a good day or two.

Bottom line is that we use business computers as a tool - to allow us to get our work done better, faster and with less hassle than other methods. There is nothing I have seen so far in Windows 8 that accomplishes these items better than Windows 7. This may change as the product matures but for now we recommend staying where you are at unless you have to get a new machine.

If you have made the plunge, what has been your experience? If you have not but just cannot control yourself, please contact us so we can at least run a tool to tell you which applications you have may not work with Windows 8.

Tablet devices are very similar to modern day smart phones. In fact, in most cases, the apps you run on the phone usually translate to the apps ran on the tablet. You get the basics; email, web surfing, streaming video, calendar, note taking, and more, but the difference is you get all that on a larger device. Ask yourself if you would like that basic functionality that your smart phone gets with a larger playing field, and you'll have a pretty good inclination of you want to jump on the tablet bandwagon. However, the future of tablets is looking even more robust; Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system is being built for both desktops and laptops and also tablets. This means you'll get the same OS you would run on a desktop PC on your handheld tablet. Although the hardware in a tablet isn't quite as beefy as what you'd find in a desktop, dual and quad-core CPUs and integrated graphics and generous amounts of memory are found in the cutting-edge devices, so expect tablets in the not-too-distant future to be major contenders to laptops as far as mobility and compatibility.

As for the tablets on the market now, there are plenty to choose from. Let's take a short look at a few of the leading contenders.

iPad 2

The Apple iPad established itself as the gold standard for tablets. The device is sleek, well designed, easy-to-use, and boasts a great set of features and capabilities. With it being the most popular tablet device, it also has the most apps developed for it. Remember, you can't just take software that works on your desktop and put in on a tablet; so you are limited to the apps available. Fortunately the Apple App market place is very extensive, and often enough when a developer makes software for tablets, they start with the iPad. The iPad2 starts at $499.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1

The Galaxy Tab is essentially the iPad's closest rival. Instead of using Apple's iOS, the Galaxy Tab is powered by Google's Android 3.0 Honeycomb OS. If you own and like your Android smart phone, you'll feel right at home with this tablet. Android's App marketplace is continually growing, and while it isn't as massive as Apple's, it's getting very close. The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10,1 is also $499, although some carriers offer a 4G mobile version for a little bit more.

Amazon Kindle Fire

Amazon's foray into the tablet world is a little smaller than the 10 inch tablets mentioned so far. The 7-inch tablet is also cheaper at $199, and packs quite a bit of functionality using Amazon's multimedia ecosystem. The Kindle Fire lets you surf the web, read books, watch streaming videos, and more. Since the Kindle Fire has just come out, it's a little too early to decide if it has what it takes for business use, but the low price makes it very attractive for multimedia and ebooks.

Nook Tablet

Much like the Kindle Fire, the Nook isn't really built to perform. At $250, the tablet is more geared towards handling ebooks, email and other basic multimedia.

Toshiba Thrive

Not the prettiest tablet of the bunch, the 10 inch Thrive is thick and heavy. However, it supports a full USB port, HDMI and SD card slot, making it easier to connect with other devices. The Thrive runs Android, so email, web surfing, and basic productivity tools are easy to come by. The Thrive runs at about $379.

There are dozens of other great tablets out there; many of which are provided by mobile carriers such as Sprint, AT&T and Verizon. Be careful when shopping around; most of the time carriers want you to commit to the device for two years - a long time in an emerging market. Not sure what tablet would be a good fit for your business? Give us a call at 855.222.4331.

Email is (and has been) a prime method of communication for businesses of all sizes. With email comes a whole slew of issues that are essentially synonymous with the technology; spam, information overload, phishing, and information privacy. Even  small businesses that only do business locally are at risk of these issues. Personal email accounts are equally at risk. Employing proper precautions and practices whenever communicating via email is very important to prevent the risk of security compromises, monetary loss, and even legality issues.

Spam Inundation

If you've been using email for a while either professionally or personally you have almost certainly gotten email from people you don't know. Most of these emails are blatantly unwanted while others can look 'almost' legit, as if a real person is trying to contact you. Often (and unfortunately) spammers can get your email address when you put it online or use it to register for accounts on sites on the internet. The good news is standard spam protection is getting better these days, and more advanced spam protection is cost effective for businesses that need the extra layer of protection. Spam can cause a lot of harm for a business network if it isn't kept under control - spam can bog down email servers and eat up network bandwidth and plus it drastically slows down employee productivity because they need to sift through it all just to find their real email. If you and your staff are getting more than a few spam emails a day, contact us at 855.222.4331 and ask about our anti-spam solutions.

Don't Open Attachments from Unsolicited Emails

This has been a golden rule for general email usage for a very long time. If you received an email from a stranger and there is an attachment, don't touch it. If you receive an email from a contact and there is an attachment, but anything is suspicious, don't touch it. This goes the same for links - if the email was unexpected and just seems fishy, it is possible your contact's email may have been compromised. Use your judgment on this, but remember it isn't your contact trying to trick you, they are merely the victim of a similar hoax from one of their contacts. If you have any doubt, simply reply or pick up the phone and ask them about it before continuing.

Keep your Computer Safe

Be sure to keep antivirus definitions up to date, and run scans regularly. Running adware and spyware removal software at regular intervals is important too. Be sure your Windows Updates are up to date as well. For businesses, you'll want to invest in network protection to keep external threats from leaking in. Even for small businesses, security and threat management is important to keep operations running smoothly and to prevent expensive downtime and data theft.

Don't Rely on Email for Storage

Everyone has done this at least once; you are working on a report or document on one computer and you email it to yourself in order to pull it up on another computer. That's fine as long as you mind your inbox capacity, but you shouldn't rely on email for storing files, not even as a reliable backup. Imagine having to painstakingly pick through all of your email to restore your most important files. It doesn't sound like a good idea now, does it? On top of that, email isn't any less prone to data corruption or loss than any typical storage solution, and unless the server hosting your email is backed up with a reliable solution, it could be here today and gone the next.

Encrypt Sensitive Data

If you send sensitive data to other recipients, you will want to consider email encryption. Some industries require this. Email encryption simply scrambles the message while it is being sent, and depending on what type of encryption, will descramble itself or allow your recipient to log in to a secure location to view the data. Although email encryption services vary, most of them are very cost effective especially when put beside the risks of sensitive data getting leaked and stolen. Give us a call at 855.222.4331 to learn more about email encryption and what solution is right for your business needs.

There are several factors that contribute to the speed of a PC. Let's very briefly break these down:

CPU/Processor

The CPU handles all of the calculations a computer performs. These days consumer-class CPUs handle billions and even trillions of instructions per second. While dated processors can greatly influence the actual speed of a computer, it's likely not bottlenecking your performance. Today, CPUs are equipped with two, four, or even more cores, which means the CPU can handle more calculations exponentially and consume less electricity.

RAM/Memory

Random Access Memory is basically the short-term memory of your computer. While your computer is loading and running applications, they get stored in the RAM. The RAM is much faster than the hard drive, so your computer doesn't need to spin its wheels looking for specific files and parts of applications. The more RAM you have, the more "stuff" that can be stored in it. The faster your RAM, the faster your computer can sift through the data that gets temporarily pushed into it. Once your RAM is full, your computer will depend on the hard drive to retrieve information, and that's where things get sluggish. Once you stop running a program, it will remove itself from the RAM to free up some space for everything else running.

Hard Drive

The hard drive is the storage device of a computer. For extremely high-end PCs, the hard drive is the bottleneck. Hard drives, when compared to RAM, are very slow to access and write information. Once your computer needs to rely on your hard drive heavily for RAM, things are going to start getting bogged down. While it's great that your PC can rely on your hard drive in this way for those times it needs some extra memory, it is likely this is the slowdown. Unfortunately, because hard drives are mechanical and have moving parts, there are limitations to how fast science can make them perform. There are costly solid-state drives, but as a performance-improving factor on a standard workstation, typically solid state drives aren't the cost-effective answer.

Of course, there are software factors as well. Malware and Spyware can bog down your system, and after a lot of use, temporary files can bog things down. Before upgrading hardware, you'll want to have a technician run a quick evaluation on your PC - it's possible a little cleanup can make all the difference in the world.

Otherwise, the next step is upgrading the RAM. RAM is usually relatively cheap, even to double or triple your existing RAM with faster, higher performance memory. Often the cost of the new RAM itself will be between $50 and $100, and more than likely less than that, and that's for a substantial increase, but it depends on your PC.

Is your computer running slow? Does it get bogged down by the time you have all of your day-to-day applications open? Contact us at 855.222.4331 for a quick evaluation to see if a simple, cost-effective upgrade will help you perform your job more effectively.