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.

Surprise, Surprise......XP Deadline Extended Again!

Happy Friday to all!

Today we received breaking news from Microsoft which I'm sure will come as a shock to all of you (sense my sarcasm?).....but the sale of Windows XP has been extended from Jan 31, 2009 to July 31, 2009. This means that for the 3rd time since Windows Vista was released, Microsoft has extended the date to which customers can buy computers with Windows XP preinstalled. New computers will continue to ship with the Windows Vista license should you choose to upgrade at a later time.

In my opinion Windows Vista is an ok operating system now that it has had a service pack released for it, however my take is that it is too late for this version of Windows. It has received so much negative press that it will never recover. Do I like it better than XP? Absolutely not (I did say "ok" operating system!). We'll still recommend XP to clients, however we have no problem working with Vista either. Microsoft has been quietly working on what they are calling Windows 7, which is the successor to Vista and is slated for release sometime in 09. We went roughly 6 years without a new operating system, and now they are going to release another one in under 2 years....just a coincidence? I don't think so!