*    Click this link http://ca.movember.com/mospace/407048/ and donate online using your credit card or PayPal account

We at En Vogue Computers have developed a method for upgrading Windows XP to Windows 7 WITHOUT you having to reinstall all your programs and settings! Think of all the time and hassle you will save doing your upgrade in this painless fashion! This completely takes the hassle and worry out of upgrading Windows XP to Windows 7. Windows 7 also has the capability of running Windows XP mode in the background for programs that require XP to function, so between us making the upgrade painless and the compatibility of having XP in the background, there is no reason not to upgrade to Windows 7! Call us and get the newest technology for your computers; did we mention that Windows 7 runs quite well on older computers, even ones that cannot run Vista properly?

With Windows 7's launch date in four days (October 22, 2009), I thought I would release a review on my two months of using it on my main laptop:

Windows 7 has been impressive for the most part: what I have like most over Vista is that it loads very quickly, runs error free and runs legacy programs that I have tested without issue. Taking a page from Apple, applications can be pinned to the taskbar and called up when needed by right clicking on them and selecting "pin to taskbar". Shadow Copy, which allows you to roll back to earlier versions of a document, is now built in; simply right click on a document and select "Restore Previous Versions". There are also some great applications built in such as a "Post-it" Notes program and a snipping tool for copying information on your screen. I also like that you can control which icons appear in the System Tray area through the Start Menu properties. There is also an easy wizard for connecting to a projector as well as a projector control application.

What I do not like is the loss of a few applications: there is no longer a built-in email client, and Windows Movie Maker has been pulled as well. Microsoft prefers that people use their MSN Live applications but these are no substitute for the built-in programs that were more feature rich.

Through Canada's Economic Action Plan, the federal government is helping businesses in all sectors of the economy by providing a temporary 100-percent capital cost allowance (CCA) rate on new computer hardware and systems software acquired after January 27, 2009, and before February 1, 2011. This initiative will cost an estimated $340 million in 2009-2010 and $355 million in 2010-2011. There has never been a better time to upgrade your computer systems!

About the Initiative:

The CCA system determines how much of the cost of a capital asset, such as a new computer, a business may deduct each year for tax purposes. The temporary 100-percent CCA rate on new computer hardware and systems software will encourage and assist businesses to increase or accelerate investment in computers. This will help boost Canada's productivity through the faster adoption of newer technology. 

How It Works:

The regular CCA rate on computer hardware and systems software is 55 percent, subject to the half-year rule that restricts CCA deductions to one half of the CCA deductions otherwise available in the first year. The new temporary 100-percent CCA rate will allow businesses to fully deduct the cost of eligible computers in just one year because the half-year rule will not apply. 

New general-purpose electronic data processing equipment and systems software that are acquired by a taxpayer for use in a business in Canada are eligible. This includes ancillary data processing equipment and systems software.

The new version of Windows, tentatively (I guess) called Windows 7 is coming! Microsoft Certified Partners (such as us) will be able to download the completed version on August 16th. I cannot wait to install it on my Vista machines as it is supposed to much faster than Vista.

I also really like the XP Mode option, where you can run Windows XP programs in a Virtual Machine mode. I have found that Vista cannot run some programs that ran well in XP so this is a great feature. There is no reason for Microsoft to be embarrassed about this feature; Apple does this as well with their Mac Classic VM for older software.

A review of the completed version of Windows 7 will come here in August .

I have been a pretty loyal Quickbooks user over the years, but a web based service threatens to steal Quickbooks crown; that service is called Freshbooks.

Freshbooks a Toronto (!) based company offers an internet based billing service. Among its best features are:

*Automated monthly billing and automatic payment services

*Click and mail invoices: For a fee, Freshbooks will actually mail invoices to your clients, saving me the hour or so each day that it takes to tackle this chore

*Emailing invoices and estimates: This feature allows you to save paper and immediately email over invoices and estimates to your clients

*Email reminders to late-paying clients: No more needing to call past due accounts, Freshbooks will email them for you!

Now that I have gone Freshbooks, I will never go back.

Symantec has just released a true all in one desktop solution called Symantec Protection Suite! This product does it all: anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-spam and a truly amazing feature: desktop image backups. This component of the program backs up all desktop computers constantly, so in the event of a catastrophic computer failure, you can restore all data and programs to a whole new computer in minutes! Just think of all the downtime prevented by using this tool! The tool can do a backup to either the computer itself or to network attached storage.

This tool is really a no brainer for any business trying to avoid downtime. Contact us for more details.

As any user of Office 2007 is keenly aware of, Office 2007 changed the location of all menu items. Microsoft went for a "logical grouping" approach, which many users have found confusing as they can no longer locate menu items they used to use.

Microsoft has made some amends now by releasing a reference guide that shows you the location of all your favourite menu items. This tool shows you the Office 2003 version of the program, then you hover over the menu item you want to use, and the tool tells you where it is in Office 2007! Genius!

Here are links to the various reference guides:

Word 2003 --> 2007:  http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HA100744321033.aspx

Excel 2003 --> 2007: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/HA101491511033.aspx

Powerpoint 2003 --> 2007: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/powerpoint/HA101490761033.aspx

Access 2003 --> 2007: http://office.microsoft.com/en-ca/access/HA102388991033.aspx

Outlook 2003 --> 2007: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA102221621033.aspx

Microsoft has just released their best priced server offering yet, Windows Server 2008 Foundation! With complete server solutions priced at less than $1500, you get pretty much all the functionality of Windows Server 2008 as well as 15-user licenses. 

Microsoft intends for this server to be used in small businesses where the cost of Windows Server 2008 or Small Business Server 2008 would be prohibitive. As such, Server 2008 Foundation has the following limitations:

• A maximum 15 users can be created in Active Directory
• A maximum of 30 connections can be made to the server
• No Microsoft Exchange installed, unlike SBS 2008

Despite these limitations, this is an excellent product for small businesses on a limited budget. Call us for more information!

Edison by Verdiem is a Green IT software solution that saves energy on your computer, making your IT greener!

After installing the software, you enter your regular working hours and the software agressively saves power during non-work hours, potentially saving a lot of energy. The software informs you how much you will save each year in energy!

On my computer alone, the highest power save setting will save me $72 per year in energy costs, 700 Kilowatt hours and remove 1 ton of carbon from the environment!

Let's all go green and install this software. You can call us to install it, or you can do it yourself here:

http://www.verdiem.com/edison.aspx

We also have other green IT solutions, such as virtualization of your servers and desktops which can save you substantially more energy. Visit our Green IT Solutions section in IT solutions for more information!

There is an unbelievable phone product on the market that gives you phone service for 20 bucks a year including unlimited North America long distance! It is called Magic Jack and it consists of a small USB phone jack you plug into your computer, and with an internet connection, you can start making phone calls.

I purchased a unit to try it out at home so here is a mini review:

Installation is simple; just plug the USB jack into your computer, run through a quick setup and you are ready to start making calls. One issue I did discover through the setup is that there are currently no Canadian area codes available; only US area codes are there for you to choose from. This is not a huge deal for outgoing calls as calls in North America are free, but incoming calls are a bit of an issue.

The Magic Jack comes bundled with PC software that allows you to add contacts for quick calling and it retains a call history; you can also watch the numbers populate in the software as someone dials on the phone (useful for snooping I guess).

All in all, the Magic Jack is incredible value for 20 bucks a year and I cancelled my Rogers phone service shortly after setting up the unit. Bravo Magic Jack!

Parallels is an amazing program that lets you run PC apps on your Mac with the greatest of ease; I just used it for a law firm wanting to run PCLaw on their Apple computers and am very impressed with it.

What the program does is run a virtual machine where you install Windows, and then you can put a shortcut to the PC program on your Mac desktop and run it with a single click!

It hearkens me back to the days of Bits and Bytes, the venerable old computer show on TVO, whenever I hear of a technology TV show. BNN, (channel 57 on Rogers) has a computer technology show called Get Connected. I met one of the hosts, AJ, at a JCI networking meeting last month and he was kind enough to invite my to a Get Connected networking meeting. Solid guy and a really great technology show for business owners seeking to understand technology. Some info on the show is below:

The New Digital Technology Series Helps Small and Medium Businesses Log-In to Technology

Based on the long-running radio show by the same name, GetConnected TV features digital expert, Mike Agerbo, along with co-hosts, AJ Vickery and Yolande Lougheed. Together, the hosts of GetConnected TV.

I just started EVC's first Facebook Ad campaign and am blown away by their system! You can really specifically target your ad; to illustrate, you could target women in Toronto, between the age of 53-55 who are interested in eating peanuts! Now that's specific!

I targeted our business IT help service ad to people in Toronto, between the ages of 35-60, who are interested in business. Anyone have an idea of what else might be effective? I want to target individuals who run companies.

We have been using Microsoft Response Point as our primary phone system for 4 months and feel it is ready for prime time!  It is the easiest phone system I have ever seen to setup; it has wizards for everything to guide you from start to finish. It is a voice activated system and it really works, unlike the voice systems at some Internet providers :( . You can use regular phone lines, VOIP lines or a new technology called SIP Trunking where you can add as many virtual lines as you need with the greatest of ease! If you are in the Toronto area, call us at (416)413-9146 and give it a test drive or visit www.microsoft.com/responsepoint for more information!

We are now Microsoft Response Point Certified providers so if you need a new up-to-date phone system, give us a call!

We are starting to notice an uptick in the amount of spyware present on PCs.. it seems as though the spyware makers have lulled us to sleep and are ready for the next wave of attack. The timing is good, as the old version of Ad Aware does not update any more, Windows Defender does not pick up all spywares and the new version of Ad Aware (Ad Aware 2007) is not very good. Spybot 1.5 is the best defence against spyware these days; it scans for over 100,000 infections. Keep your PC safe!

Our organization has moved up to Microsoft CRM 4.0 and here is an early review:

• The software runs much quicker; no more going for coffee when clicking on a new section!
• CRM 4 runs very well in Outlook; previous versions were a bit buggy
• Option to export to Excel works well and is very useful
• CRM 4.0 has a much more attractive looking user interface than CRM 3.0

My early conclusion is that this upgrade is very worth it and is going to be great for our company. I recommend this software to manage your clients.

The Joomla User Group Toronto meeting held at En Vogue Computers headquarters went well; details of the meeting can be found here: http://toronto.joomla.ca.

En Vogue Computers is proud to announce that we are the host of the inaugural Toronto Joomla! User Group Meeting. The meeting will take place at our offices on Monday the 25th of February. We love Joomla! and can't wait to meet other Joomla! evangelists.

What is Yahoo thinking? Yahoo decided (for fun I guess) to change the way one sends mail through Rogers Internet Service with a non-Rogers account. You now have to go to mail.yahoo.com and add any non-Rogers addresses into your Control Panel, or Yahoo! will block all your mail you send out with this address! You will receive the following cryptic message:

There was a SMTP communication problem with the recipient's email server. Please contact your system administrator. #5.5.0 smtp;553 From: address not verified; see http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/edit/alternate_email/index.html

The link leads you to a place, that if you dig hard enough, you may understand why your email is blocked. You are also trapped, as you cannot send through other outgoing mail servers with Rogers Home High Speed Internet.

Maybe they should change their name from Yahoo! to Duh!? It's one thing to make an annoying change like this; it's another to not tell inform your users about it! Shame, Yahoo; you have caused a ton of confusion. If you want to see how much, try typing the above error message into Google.

Blackberry has recently announced Blackberry Enterprise Server Small Business edition. The software is for 5 users and costs $1199; this is staggeringly cheaper than the $3599 they want for the full edition. At $1199, it seems pointless to have it hosted elsewhere as the cost will hit that amount within the first year!

Right now at Future Shop you can get a Tablet PC for the unheard of cost of $1099! That is about $500 cheaper than any I have ever seen! The model is from Hewlett Packard (TX 1000) and as I have bought one for myself, they are awesome!

A Tablet PC is a smallish laptop that converts into a book shape, allowing you to write directly on the screen. It is an incredible technology, to be sure.

En Vogue Computers has partnered with a Toronto-based Managed IP phone company that provides easy to manage phone systems. The systems are cheaper than traditional phone systems, and are much more flexible. They have exciting features such as cell phone twinning, where your cell phone as well as your desk phone ring when someone calls you. And they are paired with T1 Internet at a fraction of the usual cost for a T1! Contact us to find out how you can make your phone system more efficient with Managed IP!

The stable release of Joomla! 1.5 is now out, and it looks great! It is much easier to update your site, and the interface looks amazing! Also the language support is vastly improved.

Now we just have to wait until more extensions are developed, the major one being VirtueMart. The programming of extensions for Joomla! 1.5 is supposed to be easier, but only time will tell. Let's get behind this release, developers!

I have setup 2 Slingboxes for our business clients, and it definitely delivers on the promise of watching your TV remotely. I can't believe how easy they are to set up and how well they work! If you are thinking about buying one, don't hesitate; the setup is simple and it works great!

Recent price drops for hardware have caused the price for a very good server running SBS 2003 to plummet. For less than $2000 you can get a Quad Core Server with 250Gb Hard Drive and 2Gb RAM; this is a pretty nice server for the price!

At this price I feel there is no excuse for companies with 10 or more users or with complex IT needs not to have one. Think about it, less than $2000! Call us for a consulting visit to find out what SBS 2003 can do for you.

I cannot count the amount of times my clients have received bum advice from big box technology stores. Most of these people are salespersons only and have no understanding of computers. It would be fine if they would admit this to customers, but they bluff and sell customers the wrong thing or give the wrong advice at every turn!

For example, I sent a client to a certain Futuristic Shop to get a wireless USB network card. The salesperson gave him an internal wired network card and assured him this was the product he needed. He could not have been more wrong! People, you have to ask yourself "if this guy is really a good IT consultant, would he be working here??"

And whatever you do, don't get one of these people to assist you with your business IT needs, unless you like bad advice.

I have just finished the tutorial on Mac OS X Leopard, and have come away from it very impressed! There are so many amazing features that I wish would exist in Windows Vista, such as:

• Time Machine: This new app lets you rollback a document, or your whole Mac to an earlier date. While Vista does have System Restore, it will not allow you to rollback a document or a folder to an earlier time. Plus Time Machine looks incredibly cool; it has a space theme that look reminiscent of the beginning of Star Wars.
• Spaces: This app allows you to have up to 4 separate desktops, each with its own set of apps running! WOW!
• Quicklook: This app is a previewer that allows you to fully preview documents or presentations without having to open them. Looks beautiful and works great!
• New Email features: The Email program now can detect dates withing emails and make them into an iCalendar appointment. You can also create to-do items straight from an email and easily send yourself notes.
• New iChat features: Now you can use iChat to directly connect to other Macs and either fix problems or collaborate on documents. Also, you can change your iChat background to a picture or to a video so you can appear underwater, in the clouds or wherever you like!

I am very impressed with Mac OS X Leopard and at this point, like it better than Windows Vista (sorry Microsoft!)

A problem I have run into a fair bit lately is how to transfer songs from an iPod back to a computer. At long last I have found the solution; Senuti is a FREE Mac OS X application that will transfer your iPod songs back to iTunes! I am thrilled to have found this as this has been a real problem for us and our clients.

We have had quite a few clients lately purchase equipment without consulting us, and what we have been finding is invariably the wrong hardware gets purchased for their situation. Please let us assist you in finding the right solution to ensure your solution does what you want it to do. This is what we do; in these cases we know best!

We have been recognized as a Green IT company by Green Enterprise Toronto! See our listing here: http://www.greenenterprise.net/web/memberslist.php?findid=1260. We are proud to have been recognized as a green IT company.

Green Enterprise Toronto is a network to help locally-owned businesses and customers to "vote with your dollars" for people, planet, and profit.

What Joomla! Can do for you is make it easy to update all areas of your website without having to call your web specialist. This is good for a few reasons:

• No more having to pay your web specialist each and every time you want to make even a minor change. You are free to make changes anytime you wish, even at 2AM!
• No more waiting for your web specialist to actually make the change. You are empowered!
• The more you update your website, the higher your Google ranking becomes; Google ranks websites higher that make frequent updates.
• Updates are done in a easy to use, Microsoft Word type screen.

Also, extensions such as a shopping cart can be added at very little cost as they are open source and your inventory can be updated yourself. Get empowered and get Joomla!

Both Bell and Rogers now offer a Portable Internet service. This service gives you internet basically anywhere there is a cell phone signal, no wires required; just plug the box in, plug it into your computer and you have internet! I prefer the Rogers box to the Bell one, as the Bell unit requires a username and password to connect to the 'net (what's with Bell and their love of passwords???). I have used this service where internet is unavailable with excellent results. I also keep one available in case any of my clients have a sustained period of internet outage.

I have discovered that the Blackberry Desktop Manager 4.2.2 that ships in the box with the Blackberry Curve is not compatible with the Blackberry Curve!! You know, I think you shouldn't put it in the box with the Curve if it doesn't work with the Curve, but maybe that's just me.

I was entering a Bell contest (as I am known to do) online and discovered that Bell is now offering a 16Mb download internet service! This is twice as fast as the highest speed offering Rogers has, and would provide unbelievable internet speeds. It costs $100 per month, but when you have a need for speed only the fastest internet will do!

While my feelings on Windows Vista's readiness are mixed, I think Microsoft has done a fantastic job with Office 2007. Outlook is vastly improved the area of reliablilty; a mailbox that we were trying to repair would not open in Outlook 2002 at all, but in Outlook 2007 it opened immediately.

The search function in Outlook operates so quickly that your search results start appearing even before you finish typing! Buckle your seatbelt!

Microsoft Word is also improved in a few areas. You can preview font style and size changes on the fly, and the letter mailing section is vastly improved.

Way to go on this one Microsoft!

I have been using Vista since January and have assembled a list of what I like and don't like about it.

First let's look at the positives:

• Searching is very quick. A search for a file on your PC will usually take less than 10 seconds
• Good Product Support: Windows Vista recognizes more hardware than XP as soon as you plug it in.
• Nicer looking interface: Mac users will be happy to see that Microsoft has changed the look and feel of Vista over to a Mac-like look.
• I also like that there is a "favorites" bar in the file window that gives you shortcut access to various file locations.
• Windows Update is built right into Control Panel, which is convenient.

And now the negatives:

• User Account Control is a feature that drives me batty. It asks you for confirmation after every potential security related action you take. It is too annoying and I disable it ASAP when working on a new vista PC.Older programs do not work that well (or at all). Outlook 2002 (XP) will no longer store your passwords as one example.I find myself with butterflies in my stomach when running any application on Vista for the first time.
• Some software tech support teams are simply saying "we do not support Vista" which I find very frustrating. HP has not released updates for quite a few of their printers for Vista so be aware of that.
• You need a very strong computer to run Vista as well. The specs for systems that run Vista are pretty gaudy.
• Also because of the many different flavors of Vista you may or may not get all the features you need. I discovered at a client's site that his version of Vista did not have Windows Scan and Fax which would have been useful to the client.
• The Power Off button does not power off the PC. I find this extremely annoying, as I have to remember to select Shut down or restart from a side menu. Power off should mean power off!
• Wireless network support seems to have lost a step. I am finding wireless connections sporadically disconnect.

All in all, I do not feel Vista is ready for prime time yet. Will keep you posted.

With so many options to choose from, there is no excuse to not backup your data. There are even no-cost solutions such as Mozybackup which backs up your data to an internet-based server. The free size limit is 2gb, which is enough for all your documents and, most likely, your pictures. Best of all, the more friends you refer, the more size Mozy gives you for your backup. Be a good friend and tell your friends about Mozy!

Another low cost option is a removable drive, which will set you back less than $200 in most cases. These drives are large enough to backup everything on your pc, and you can use Windows Backup to schedule a weekly backup onto them.

As you can see there is no longer an excuse not to backup. Please save yourself the stress of lost data and get a backup solution right away!

Lately I have had a client or two buy these mini PCs for their office. I do not like them because they are overpriced (you pay around $1000 for a computer that should cost around $600), some parts are extremely difficult to replace as they are made only for that particular PC and opening them for service is akin to opening a Sony Playstation for repair; not very easy! Standard sized PCs are definitely the way to go, particularly for a business.