Windows 7 Release Date and Office 2010

Good morning. I just wanted to bring you up to speed on a few Microsoft items. In previous blog posts, I speculated that even though Microsoft was saying 1st quarter 2010 for Windows 7, I thought they'd have it out by year's end. I also said that when released, it was my bet Microsoft would no longer sell Windows XP. It appears I am 1 for 2!

Microsoft has announced that Windows 7 will be released 10/22/09, but they will continue offering the downgrade license to Windows XP until 2011. This is mostly due to large corporate environments not being ready to deploy Windows 7 just yet. While I don't have confirmation, I believe Dell will continue to give us the option to buy a computer preloaded with XP, however once Windows 7 is released Anchor will no longer be advising clients do so. In our testing, Windows 7 has been terrific. There are no real bells and whistles here, just better security under the hood and better peformance and reliability than Vista!

Should you need to purchase new computers this fall, we'll recommend Windows 7 but of course give you the option of selecting XP as long as it is available. Before selecting Windows 7 as your operating system, it will be imperative you check to ensure all applications you are using are compatible. For example, if you are using anything older than Quickbooks 2007, you would need to upgrade that as well, so XP might still be your choice in this scenario.

On another note, are you ready for Office 2010? Candidly, I'm not.....and I don't think many of our clients are. We're all still adjusting to Office 2007, and we have many clients on Office 2003 still. I just wanted you to be aware we will see it about this time next year. For clients who have Office licensing with Software Assurance from Microsoft, you will get this upgrade for free. For those of you who do not, there is the potential of having 3 different flavors of Office on your network, so you may want to consider standardizing next year.

Please let me know if you have any questions or comments!

Anchor Customer Survey Reminder

Good morning and Happy Friday! Thanks to all who took a few minutes to complete our client satisfaction survey. We really appreciate your time and effort on this to help us improve our service delivery.

For those who haven't done so, here's just a reminder and the link to our customer satisfaction survey. We'd appreciate it if you could complete and/or pass on to other folks in your office as applicable. The more data we can gather, the better information we'll have to help us improve!

Here is the link:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=B0Gz8sw8c_2f3qIs5lZlkv2Q_3d_3d

Have a great weekend, and thanks again for your business!

Regards,
Vince

A Little Help From Our Customers

As a consumer, I’m typically not a huge fan of customer satisfaction surveys. It seems they are always being sent by huge companies who never show me real change anyway, so what’s the point?

Today I am going to be a complete hypocrite and ask you to take 5 minutes and complete our short survey to let us know how we are doing. At Anchor, we want to ensure we are providing the best service possible to you. As a small business, your input is the only way we can measure ourselves and improve our service delivery. The survey is completely anonymous, and the results will be compiled and sent directly to me. We will then review the results as a team and take action to improve as a company.

You can find the survey at the link below:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=B0Gz8sw8c_2f3qIs5lZlkv2Q_3d_3d

I realize your time is valuable, and really appreciate you taking a few minutes to help us make Anchor better. Please feel free to forward this link to any of your users as well. The more input the better!

Thanks for your time and consideration,
Vince

April 1st Virus Information!

As you may have heard, the latest virus threat, DOWNAD worm (a.k.a. Conficker), is believed to take effect on April 1st. Anchor has received numerous questions regarding this threat and what can be done to help prevent issues. If your server and/or workstations are under contract with us, they have been patched with the Microsoft Security Bulletin MS08-067 created to resolve the vulnerability the virus exploits. In addition most all antivirus programs are set to update dail and in some cases hourly with the latest virus definitions. Lastly your SonicWALL or Anchor Managed Security appliance has a gateway antivirus service which provides us another layer of security to help ward off this threat.

Please be aware that these are layers of protection but do not guarantee we won't have any infections, which can often be initiated by user actions regardless of antivirus. We are cautioning all users to be aware of any email attachments being opened within the next few days. If you are not 100% sure of the sender AND attachment, do not open it!

For more information on this virus, please see Trend Micro's article here: http://blog.trendmicro.com/what-will-go-downad-on-april-1/

Please contact the helpdesk if you have any questions or concerns!

Phone System Issues Resolved

Good afternoon-

I was informed a few hours ago by Level 3 Communications that our phone system is now functioning properly again and all tests indicate that this is the case, so please feel free to give us a call as needed on our office number of 303-904-0494.

Thanks so much for your patience and your business!

Phone Service Issues at Anchor Today-3/12/09

Good Morning-

This morning our phone provider is experiencing service issues and our inbound phone lines are not operating properly. If you try to call our office, you may experience a fast busy signal or it may disconnect you after dialing an extension. Our provider is working on this issue and should have it resolved shortly for us. We sincerely apologize for this inconvenience and will notify you once the issue has been resolved. In the meantime, please send any service requests directly to helpdesk@anchornetworksolutions.com and we will be in touch as soon as possible. Our helpdesk team is in the office today working diligently on requests as they come in!

Thanks, Vince

Important Windows 7 News

I have shared with many of you that we at Anchor continue to recommend Windows XP for new computer purchases, and skipping Windows Vista in favor of Windows 7 when it arrives. It's been my feeling that Windows 7 would essentially be the fixed up and optimized Vista.....meaning what Vista should have been the first time! Why else would Microsoft be working so diligently on Vista's successor just a year later? Well, early reports are confirming those thoughts which is good news for all of us.

Follow the link below to an article in today's Wall Street Journal:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123258632983004629.html

Microsoft typically gets enough bad press as it is, and never have I seen anything so positive in a critique of a beta release. So we'll get a little geeky at Anchor and install it for ourselves to take an early peek at what it can do and be sure to report back to you. Let us know if you have any questions!

Holiday Hours

Good Morning-

Just an fyi that Anchor's holiday hours are as follows:

December 24th-Closed at 12pm MDT
December 25-26-Closed

December 31st-Closed at 12pm MDT
Jan 1-2-Closed

As always, clients with service agreements have 24x7x365 coverage for server emergencies.

Please let us know if you have any questions!

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year,
Vince

Holiday Business Hours

Good Afternoon!

Our offices will be closed in observance of the Thanksgiving holiday this Thursday and Friday. We will resume normal business operations on Monday, December 1st.

For clients with service agreements, rest assured that while our business offices are closed, our NOC team will continue to monitor and resolve any issues on your server during this time. As always, we also have our on call technician available for any after hours server emergencies as well.

At Anchor we have much to be thankful for. We thank you for your business and appreciate the opportunity to serve you. Have a great Thanksgiving, and we hope you get to enjoy some down time before the rush of the holiday season!

Urgent Microsoft Patch for all Monitored Clients!

Today Microsoft released security bulletin MS08-067 as an unscheduled patch release. This bulletin affects all current supported versions of Microsoft Windows (Windows 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, & 2008) and identifies a vulnerability where an attacker could execute code of their choice on a vulnerable machine without authentication. Direct external attacks are unlikely due to the public facing firewall you have in place, however if a machine were to become infected from a user download or malicious website, the infected PC on the LAN would be able to infect other vulnerable Windows machines on the LAN as well. Therefore we are working with our NOC team to deploy this patch on all monitored servers and workstations this evening starting at 7pm.

This is very short notice from Microsoft and uncharacteristic for them to release a patch off schedule. As a result, we are heeding their warnings and have a sense of urgency to get the patch applied to all monitored servers and workstations this evening. If you have our patch deployment service for pcs, please ask your users to keep their pc turned on this evening so the patch can be applied. It will also require a reboot, so your users may find their pc at the logon screen tomorrow. Thanks for your time and please contact our Help Desk if you have any problems.