Posts Tagged ‘ireland’

Dublin guide to IT services for Small Office Home Office (SOHO)

Sunday, February 28th, 2010

If you are planning on working from home, there are some things that you need to take into account. If you follow this guide you may not need to avail of iPing’s IT services.
The first thing that you will need if you are planning to work from home is a dedicated room to work from. In most cases this will be the smallest bedroom in your house. This room may need to be renovated to include some extra power sockets. You may also need to have your telephone line moved into this room so you can have your broadband and telephone line close at hand.

If you are working from home for a company you will need to connect into the corporate network over a VPN connection. This is a secure connection that connects you into the office network and will let you access all of the resources on the office network.

If you are working from home only part time and you have a computer in head office, an alternative to using a VPN would be to use an application like logmein to connect to your head office computer. This would mean that you were able to work on the head office computer from home. This is something you would have to talk to your IT service department of company about as there are some security issues with this solution.

Some companies are now using Virtualization to improve the IT services that they are providing to their users. This means that you would be able to connect to a virtual computer and do your work from home with your laptop or home computer or even if you are out on the road.

If you are working from home and you have broadband in your home office, I suggest that you sign up for a VoIP telephone service.  There are many VoIP service providers and Google search will provide you with a good selection for your country. Large companies who have employees working from home provide them with VoIP phones to work from home with.

 
Another point to consider if you are using your home computer to connect to the corporate network, is that it is important to make sure that you have good Internet Security. I use Eset Nod and I would recommend this to my customers, as it provides excellent cover.

In addition, you need to have a system in place to backup your data if you are working from home. This is crucial. For people working from home, I recommend online Data Backup;if you would like some more information on this drop me an email.

E-mail has become indispensible now and if you are working from home you will need an IT service provider that will let you access your mail on your computer, online and on your mobile. If you work for yourself and are just starting up, I would suggest that you use the Software as a Service (SaaS) provided by Google Gmail for Business. This IT service will let you use Calendar, Chat, Blackberry sync etc. Your company may already use Microsoft Exchange to provide it’s e-mail service and you will need to contact your IT service provider to set your account up so as you can work from home.

For more information on working from home and the required IT services just give iPing a call.

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Guide to Print Service

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

I will begin by explaining what a print service is. A company comes into your office and they do an audit on your current printing usage. They will use some high tech tools that will connect to your network and find all your networked printers. This tool will be able to find out how many prints you have done on each printer.

Once they have worked out how many prints you are doing per printer, they need to find out how much you are spending on toner for each printer. This is the place where the real cost of printing sneeks into your printing budget. From my experience and from doing this research, the cheaper the printer that you buy – the more expensive the toner for this printer will cost. You may even find that some of the companies that sell you a printer will only let you use their printer toner in the printer. This is something that really grates, as they can charge what they like for this.

Another point to look at here is how much you are spending on geting your printers serviced. On completion of the print audit, having identified how much you are spending on printing and how many prints you are doing per month, in colour and black and white, the company will make a proposal to you that you will pay them an average cost of say less than 1c per black and white print and less than 6c per colour print.

  • From my experience toner will generally cost you more than this alone.
    The key advantages of having a good external company provide you with a print service and the points you should be looking for are as follows:
    If a printer breaks down the company will fix it the next day or replace the printer.
  • The total cost of your printing will drop by between 20% and 40%
  • The company has a good print management software that lets them know when to send you toner before you know you need it and it just arrives.
  • You know in advance how much your printing costs will be for the next few years so you do not get any shocks.
  • The print management software provided by the company should give you the information to really streamline your printing service and help with total savings.
  • By pooling printers in an office and using printers approprate for your office size you will find that the printing experience of your users improves.

There are some questions and matters to look out for when selecting a print service and they are as follows:

  • What are the costs if I print above or below my monthly or yearly quota of prints. A good company will give you a rate nearly identical to what you have in your contract.
  • If for some reason you need to remove some offices or printers from the contract what will the cost of this be. Again a good company will be flexible here.

If you are based in Ireland or around Dublin and you are interested in the idea of having print service, please contact someone here at iPing as we have some good companies we would like to put you in contact with.

Until next time,
Mark

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Apple iPad

Sunday, January 31st, 2010

Hi everyone,

I have been reading all the hype out there about the new Apple iPad and I was wondering if any of you will be running out to buy one?

Over the years I have not used Apple products all that much and we would only provide support to our clients who use them.

I have a feeling that the iPad will be a big hit among graphic design studios, PR companies and some web developers but do you think there is much point getting one outside of this area?

Let me know your thoughts my Apple using friends :)

Mark

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Viewing your IP settings on Windows.

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

I am going to start off with a nice easy one and that is viewing your IP settings. Personally I like to view them using the old DOS command ipconfig.

To try this command for yourself you need to open a DOS window. To do this in Windows NT, 2000 and XP do the following.

Click Start.
Then Click run.
Then type cmd and press enter.

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