Microsoft Office 2010 Suite Breakdown:

• Microsoft Office 2010 Home And Student  (Excel, OneNote, PowerPoint & Word)
• Microsoft Office 2010 Home And Business (Excel, OneNote, PowerPoint, Word & Outlook)
• Microsoft Office 2010 Standard (Excel, OneNote, PowerPoint, Word, Outlook & Publisher. NB Volume & MLK Only)
• Microsoft Office 2010 Professional (Excel, OneNote, PowerPoint, Word, Outlook, Publisher & Access)
• Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus (Excel, OneNote, PowerPoint, Word, Outlook, Publisher, Access, Communicator, Infopath & Sharepoint Workspace. NB Volume & MLK Only)
• Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Academic (Excel, OneNote, PowerPoint, Word, Outlook, Publisher & Access)

What is MLK you might ask? It is also known as the ‘Product Key Card’ or OEM. When a manufacturer puts together a computer for purchase, if they wish too (most do), it will come with Office pre-installed for you to try out for up to 60 Days. You can purchase during this period a product key card which you enter into your computer and your software then becomes a fully licensed activatable copy. This is a very eco friendly route as it cuts down significantly on packaging and it is very easy for the end user to enter that key. The principle drawback is that the key is then attached to that computer and must stay with that computer even if you change PC’s, this is not an issue with Retail editions.

Needless to say there are many changes to Office 2010 since the previous version, but the ribbon interface introduced in Office 2007 has become far more streamlined and easy to use. Most hardened Office users will not find much not to like about the new release. It is fast, stable and most of all very intuitive to use. Some of the biggest changes are intergration with Microsoft Online allowing you to make use of many of the new cloud based features that Microsoft now offer.

If you would like to find out more, please do not hesitate to contact someone here at Leaf Technology.

RDS as we shall now call it allows remote users to log in  remotely from any computer running the RDS Client to a central server(s) and be provided with applications, email and many other functions all through the RDS Client. Bandwidth is less of an issue becuase RDS is basically a picture of what is going on the desktop of the remote session, rather than the heavy transfer of data, the actual bits and bytes been transferred is minimal, this is not to say more bandwidth is not better as is usually the case.

The latest version of RDS on Windows Server 2008 R2 offers some amazing functionality including high security, personal virtual desktops (using Virtualization, very clever) and reasonable licencing costs. We have worked on a number of projects recently that have utilised this technology to good effect allowing remote offices to use inhouse applications and data whilst keeping everything secure in head office.

If you would like to find out more about how Leaf Technology can help you with a project that could benefit from Windows 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Services then please get in touch, we are always happy just to have a chat to bounce ideas around or get our teeth into a project directly.

Snow At The Leaf HQ

Just a quick update to wish everyone a very happy christmas and a prosperous new year. With 2009 on the wane, and 2010 on the rise, it’s been quite an up and down year in all industries with the recession hitting hard for many businesses, we hope now that the worst is over and that 2010 will prove a prosperous year for everybody. This morning we were greeted with a good dumping of snow at the Leaf HQ, see the picture for the lovely view we had this morning. Also we wanted to let you know our opening hours for christmas. Due to the falling of the days this year, the interuption to service is quite minimal.

• Thursday 24th December – 09:00 to 15:00
• Friday 25th December – Closed
• Monday 28th December – Closed
• Tuesday 29th December – 09:00 – 17:30
• Wednesday 30th December – 09:00 – 17:30
• Thursday 31st December – 09:00 – 17:30
• Friday 1st January – Closed

After that business as usual.

I guess thats all for now, again let me wish everyone a very happy christmas, be safe if you’re travelling and have a great time over the holidays!

The move to version 9 has bought with it a whole host of improvements and changes we’ve been clamouring for some time. One of the biggest improvements is speed. AntiVirus products have a habit of being resource intensive, various services running in the background etc (especially consumer class software..e.g norton 360!) and this has a tendancy to make a good PC run very poorly. AVG have made great strides in improving memory usage and the amount of services running whilst still offering best in class virus/malware protection.

If you would like to know more about AVG’s range of business suites which give central management for updates and scans as well as excellent licensing pricing, please get in touch!

Microsoft Internet Explorer contains an invalid pointer vulnerability in its data binding code. The vulnerability can be triggered when Internet Explorer or a program that uses Internet Explorer’s components renders a document that contains more than one reference to the same data source. This flaw can cause an invalid array size and result in the accessing of memory space of a deleted object. Specially-crafted content that performs data binding, such as an XML or HTML document, can cause IE to crash in a way that is exploitable. Limited testing has shown this vulnerability to affect Internet Explorer 6 and later, up to and including Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2. However, all versions of Internet Explorer from 4.0 and on may be at risk. We have confirmed that Outlook Express is also at risk. Exploit code for this vulnerability is publicly available.

What to Do until a fix is available:

1. Common sense, do not allow your users to visit Warez (Piracy/BitTorrent) or Smut Sites, these are potentially hijacked with the exploit code. Some Taiwanese sites have also been hijacked. Just be mindful of the sites your users are visiting and always check that any security certificates are valid. Also be wary of social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, these kind of exploits spread very quickly through these kind of sites. I am not saying that these sites are hijacked with the particular code, but they are potential targets for hackers.

2. Use an alternative browsers such as Google Chrome (http://www.google.co.uk/chrome ) or Mozilla Firefox (http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/firefox/ ) for the time being. Both of these browsers are very good, but they do not have the ActiveX functionality or tight windows integration of Internet Explorer which may be important to you.

3. There are some technical changes which can mitigate the risk of falling foul of the exploit. If you are confident to do these, have a look here http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/493881 . These are not fixes, they merely reduce the potential, but they do also limit some functionality which may be important to you.

4. Make sure your systems are automatically updating, most networks we deal with will have this already configured. If there are updates waiting to be installed on your systems, please do them. You can tell this by the Yellow Shield in the bottom right on Windows XP and the Windows Update Icon on Windows Vista which will show the status of updates available (if there are none available, it will probably not be there). To check automatic updating, go to control panel, then to windows update.

I hope this helps explain what’s going on and what you can do to prevent your users being exploited by this vulnerability. Hopefully we’ll see a fix issued soon. If you have any questions, please contact Leaf Technology.

1. The most important thing is to hold fire on new purchases – unless completely necessary – and maintain what you already have.  Question whether you are really making the most of your current investment.  An independent, trained IT services company will be able to help you see the full potential of your existing computers, printers, laptops and software – the good ones offer free, unbiased advice on upgrades and free downloads to add extra features to your IT solutions with minimal or no expenditure.

2. Take advantage of free IT health checks offered by small IT companies.  These companies aren’t tied to any suppliers and will give you a full and thorough breakdown showing the performance of your current set-up.  The reports will give you information on likely problems or challenges in the future, areas at risk and advice on how to overcome potentially catastrophic situations regarding loss of memory, data and operations.

3. The number one rule:  back up regularly and, if you can, store those back-ups off site or in another server.  Dealing with data loss AFTER it has happened costs many times more than the cost of preventative measures, and in many cases, that data cannot be retrieved – the results can seriously damage your organisation, sometimes beyond recovery.  Prevent serious, costly problems happening.  Make sure your antivirus is up-to-date and covers the vital areas of your system.

4. Keep your IT support costs predictable.  It keeps your spend manageable. A common misconception regarding computer services is that you only need to contact an expert when it goes wrong.  Research shows that, over a year, the escalating costs of using an IT company adhoc, add up to a lot more than setting up a retainer or maintenance contract.  The trick is to negotiate or look for flexible deals – only go for a package you are likely to need. To do this, firstly, look back over your support usage.  Secondly, assess and analyse the age of your current equipment – as it gets older, it will, like a car, need more attention.  Thirdly, equate the costs of those problems you’ve had in the past…and those you could suffer, and consider the ramifications of that in your budget.

5. Evaluate your current supplier.  Do they charge for every minute you spend on the phone to them?  Are they local or do they add expenses for travel to their invoices?  Are they easily accessible because of their locality?  Do they get back to you quickly; is there always someone there to deal with your issue?  Do they confuse you with IT nerd speak; do you really know what you’re paying for…or what they’ve actually done while they’ve been tinkering with your computers and servers?  How well do they know what you need?  Do they offer free, independent advice when you need it?  Ask them these questions and if they can’t answer, change supplier.

6. Providing you’re getting a good deal from your current supplier, take advantage of any loyalty incentives they can give you.  They want to keep your business and could be persuaded to offer special deals to their best clients on maintenance packages and support contracts.

7. Before you spend, call an independent IT expert for free advice or advice on the best deals.  They can save you £hundreds.  A good IT company will investigate and use the products in the marketplace – they can tell you what your business really needs to solve a problem and remove the hype.  They can decipher the jargon, point you in the direction of the most cost effective options saving you hours in research

As a highly regarded computer services provider based between Milton Keynes, Luton and Aylesbury, Leaf Technology has set the benchmark in IT support and has built up a loyal following of clients because of it.  If you want free advice on your current and planned IT spend, please contact us at www.leaftechnology.co.uk.

What many businesses don’t consider are the risks involved when an employee leaves their company.

No matter how loyal a member of staff has been, you not only need to protect the confidential corporate and customer data held in your organisation; you need to keep hold of your clients and prevent them from leaving with your employees.

Sales heavy environments and consultancy companies are the ones most vulnerable.  Sales people and consultants frequently take their contacts with them to their next company, not out of malice, but because prospective employers expect it.

Competitors can gain access to valuable strategic plans, research and trade secrets through employee knowledge and offer reward or money for such important and difficult-to-get information.

Boeing, Morgan Stanley, Shell Oil and Intel are amongst many of the worlds largest, most high profile companies who have been affected by data theft from ex-employees.

So, how do you stop it from happening in your business?

Setting clear clauses in a watertight contract is clearly the first step, but this is only a deterrent; it can’t physically stop the fraud.

Fortunately, IT has come to the rescue in form of an award-winning suite of products under the Spectorsoft brand.

Spectorsoft is, quite simply, ‘the eyes and ears of your organisation’. It enables you to observe those who are abusing company time but also helps you protect your client base and personal property when an employee leaves.

Amongst its many features, Spectorsoft allows you to monitor who’s working the hardest and equally, who’s spending their time surfing un-work-related websites, e-mailing inappropriately or sending/downloading/copying company or client information without permission.

The reporting function within Spectorsoft’s 360 product is outstanding.  It enables Managers, HR departments and business owners to quickly see, instantly, who is illegally accessing or stealing files they shouldn’t. Simple filtering options within its easy reading, up-to-the minute reports makes monitoring incredibly easy and gives control back to the organisation.

According to research, insiders are 4 times more likely to be the perpetrators of corporate theft, than outsiders.  Having personally reviewed and observed this software in the financial and recruitment industries, education and healthcare, I have to conclude that it is, without doubt, worth the investment.

One of the key features of these new CPU’s is inclusion of the memory controller on the actual CPU, this removes one of the remaining bottlenecks in the formidable Intel Core 2 line of processors. Initial testing by some of the online hardware review sites has shown that this move (something AMD did long ago) has increased memory bandwidth and speed considerably. Other improvements are in the power department, the high end Intel Core 2’s were power hungry and with the release the i7, Intel hopes to change that. They are very efficient even at load, and the clever power control unit  attempts to more intelligently decide what power/performance states it will instruct the CPU to go into, regardless of what the OS thinks it wants.

Initially, three processors are to be released are the i920 (2.66Ghz), i940 (2.93Ghz) and the i965 Extreme Edition (3.2Ghz). The new Intel X58 chipset is going to be the only chipset to support the new processors initially, which apart from supporting all the new features of the Core i7, also now supports Nvidia’s SLI configuration for multiple graphics cards as well as the AMD Crossfire equivalent, this is especially good news for gaming PC’s as Intel boards have a reputation of excellent reliability.

What does this mean for Business customers I hear you ask? Well at the moment, very little unless you are involved with heavy graphics based work and multi threaded 3D applications. This is where the new processor makes the most gains and for the average office PC there is little need to move away from the cost effective Core 2 processors.  At Leaf Technology we always use Intel processors and Boards, therefore, to keep an eye on what’s coming over the next 6 months is very important, as it might not affect our customers now, but it most definitely will in the future.

If you would like to read some in depth reviews on the new Core i7, please have a look at the following sites:

• PC Perspective
• Anandtech
• HotHardware
• Bit-Tech
• The Tech Report
• Hexus
• Toms Hardware

As a VAR in the Small/Medium sized business sector we will still be able to provide PCs with Windows XP Professional SP3 pre-installed. Larger organisations like Dell and HP for example are no longer able to ship PCs with XP, that is for whom it has been withdrawn. Retail versions of XP are pretty much non-existent at suppliers, so it is only with the purchase of a new PC that XP can still be provided legally.

I know this will be a relief for some people as with bitter experience, we’ve learned that an large amount of applications (specially in the financial sector) still have problems with PC. That’s not to say its not a vast improvement over last year.

As to when XP will finally be completely withdrawn, sources indicate that this will be later in Q3 2008.

Over the past few weeks we have been busy putting the finishing touches to this site and now that it is live we hope you like it.

Check out our pages. They are full of the information you may require for IT support, computer repair, wireless networking, IT security, anti virus software broadband, servers and much more.

If you require further information please do not hesitate to call us on 0845 094 2199 or contact us through our contact page.