IT Wurks Blog

It’s often said that a clean workspace is a safe workplace. When your workspace is mostly your computer, safety has less to do with it, but that shouldn’t deter you from doing what you can to keep your computer clean. It can help keep it in working order, longer, and is just a sanitary thing to do. Let’s get into why a clean computer is better, and how to go about cleaning your workstation. 

The laptop has been gradually seeing a boom in the office, replacing the desktop for a more portable option for meetings and remote work. Long gone are the days where the laptop feels like a more expensive, less capable option. They do have their detriments, though. One of the most complained about parts of using a laptop is the trackpad. They’ve added features and improved materials over the years, but the overall experience of using a trackpad hasn’t changed very much for over a decade.

Each business uses a certain amount of technology to get things done, but today, no technology is as important to businesses as the Internet. You’ve begun to see businesses of all sizes spending thousands of dollars a month on Software-as-a-Service platforms designed to get workers the tools they need without placing undue pressure on a company’s capital budget. Today, we will talk about another cloud-based platform that is growing rapidly: Infrastructure-as-a-Service.

If you are buying a new desktop or laptop, one of the specifications you might care about is how much data it can store. After all, your family computer needs plenty of storage for your photos and documents, and if you have kids, they’ll want to install games and other applications on it that fill up a hard drive. These days, however, it’s less about how much space your hard drive has and more about how fast it can run. Let’s explain this, and then talk about something you should almost always look for when picking a hard drive for your PC.

In the not-all-that-distant past, connectivity required an actual, physical connection between two endpoints. As a result, a wired connection was the only option for businesses to access online materials and resources. This leaves businesses with a choice to make: is a wired connection better for my operations, or should I implement wireless connectivity?

Other than matters of scale, most businesses have very similar needs when it comes to their hardware. As a result, many of the considerations businesses need to make are the same, regardless of their size. This week, we’re sharing some of these considerations to help you more effectively plan for any upcoming hardware implementations.

If COVID-19 didn’t already jam up your business’ progress enough after five months, it seems as though the new normal is going to include replacing onsite hardware with cloud-based alternatives. At first glance, the presence of hosted platforms comes as a godsend to the business who doesn’t want to commit large amounts of capital to a hardware refresh. The cost of cloud computing, however, could actually be a major problem for your business. Today, we’ll take a brief look at the hardware choices you have and where the value comes from.

Your business depends quite a bit on its wireless connectivity, which means that your choice of router is an important consideration. Let’s review some of the key points that you need to remember as you select the router that best fits your needs.

How long have you been working on the same computer? Depending on your answer, it may be time to replace it with a new model. That’s simple enough (especially with our help), but the question remains: what are you supposed to do with the old one?

When you have a problem with your computer and you reach out for help, the first thing you will probably be asked is, “have you turned it off and turned it back on?” This is not because the technician is lazy, it is because a lot of problems can be fixed by rebooting your computer. Do you need to shut down or simply restart your computer? It might surprise you that turning your computer off and restarting it actually accomplishes different things. Today, we’ll discuss the difference. 

When you consider all that the typical workstation has to endure (potentially grubby hands poking at it all day, crumbs, sneezes, you get the idea), there is little wonder that our devices can get so dirty. Here, we’ll be discussing how to properly clean your device.

Google’s contribution to streaming, the Chromecast, is a nifty little device. While many might hear “streaming” and immediately think “consumer device,” the Chromecast can actually offer your business a few handy utilities as well. Here, we’ll go over four of them, as well as guide your through setting up (and if necessary, resetting) your Chromecast.

If there’s one thing you likely have plenty of in your office, it’s cables. Each device you regularly use probably has compatibility with at least one kind of cable… but can you identify them and what they do? Below, we’ll go over a few common cable types so that you’ll be able to do just that.

For all the paperless solutions that are available, we understand that some businesses still rely on printed hardcopy documentation. This doesn’t mean, however, that there aren’t ways that you can optimize your printing habits, saving your business a pretty penny in the process.

Every so often, we encounter an IT solution that could prove to be intensely beneficial to businesses when it can be fully adopted, but also has a few obstacles to its complete implementation. Here, we’ll review how augmented reality can be used practically in the future, and the challenges that will need to be overcome in order to do so.

We all know someone that has to have the latest and greatest technology. They have all of the gaming platforms, they have to get the newest smartphones every year, and they are the only person you know that owns multiple smartwatches. Clearly, some gizmo or gadget would make a great gift, but there’s still the age-old concern: what do you get for someone who seems to have everything?

Just like how your organization relies on hardware solutions to keep operations moving, this hardware relies on regular refreshes which keep it in proper working order. If you fail to replace or maintain the solutions that you have in place, you’ll be more likely to experience downtime, or at least hardware failure. Managed IT has provided SMBs with a way to bypass many of the frustrations involved with acquiring new hardware in the form of Hardware as a Service.

You need to quickly move documents from one computer to another. Do you reach for a USB Thumb drive? You may want to think twice and entrust the cloud to your data. Let’s talk about why.

Sometimes when your workstation feels bogged down, a relatively cheap and simply hardware update can make a huge difference in performance. Adding more RAM (Random Access Memory, often just referred to as memory) can be a game changer for your bogged down PC.