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...solving your
problems.
Business PC Checklist
On this
page we have decided to provide you a checklist covering
some of the things that every PC should have, especially
business PC's.
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UNINTERRUPTIBLE POWER SUPPLY - A UPS is
basically a big battery. It has a built in surge
protector that protects your PC from the variance in
power voltages that can easily kill the sensitive
chips and circuits inside your PC. The battery
inside a UPS will allow you to turn your PC off
properly in the event of a power outage. Some UPS's
even come with software that will automatically shut
down your PC for you or send you an alert that there
is a power problem, especially useful if you have a
file server.
-
BACK-UP DEVICE
- Any business that uses PCs
should have a plan for both backing up their data
AND restoring it. Its one thing to have a collection
of CD's with some data on but do they really work?
Any back up plan should be tested, you don't want to
find out too late that your disks are blank or you
cant find the software that you so carefully backed
up the data for. You also have to make sure you
cover every eventuality. Will your backup plan work
if your PC gets stolen or you lose our laptop? If
you have to replace a hard disk do you have
everything you need to install your operating system
and applications? For example, its very common to
hear from clients that they back up their accounts
databases on to CD. But what happens if your hard
drive fails? A reinstallation of Windows XP,
including the installation of drivers, Anti-Virus
software and all those patches that Microsoft love
to release every month can take 6 hours or
more. That doesn't include reinstalling your
applications, it also doesn't get you back your
emails or any other documents on your PC.
Wouldn't it be simpler to just back up everything?
With a big enough hard disk in an external USB
enclosure and the right software, not only can you
back up you entire system at the click of a mouse
but restoring it couldn't be simpler. If you need to
restore on the same machine then its a few clicks of
the mouse but if your PC suffers a terminal failure
or gets stolen, you can actually remove the hard
disk from its enclosure, install it in another PC
and restore everything, operating system,
applications, data files, everything, all within 2-3
hours. Providing you have a big enough hard disk,
you can also back-up multiple systems onto the same
disk!
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PASSWORD LOG
- I have lost track of the number
of times I have been to a clients to resolve a
problem, only to find out that they have no idea
what the password is for one thing or another,
whether its for the internet connection, email
accounts or something else. For network user
passwords I recommend keeping written passwords in
sealed envelopes (signed across the seal to show
they haven't been tampered with) in the company fire
safe. In the eventuality that the password is needed
in the users absence, simply open the envelope to
get the password, do what you need to do and then
generate a new password which is then sealed in a
new envelope and placed back in the safe. Making
sure to give the new password to the user. While
email or internet connection passwords may not need
to be this well protected a similar system could be
easily put in place.
-
MEDIA STORAGE - Each PC has a set of disks that
belong with that PC and wont necessarily be an good
for any of the other PC's. The operating system
disks are the most important, without them you may
end up having to buy another copy and at around $150
for Windows XP Home Edition its an expensive disk to
lose. Also important are the driver disks for the
motherboard and other components that you may or may
not be able to download from the internet. Typically
printers come with software on the driver CD that
cant be downloaded from the manufacturers website,
digital cameras too, typically come with
applications on the disk that are only on the disk
and not online.
In a
perfect world you wouldn't need any of the above, in a
perfect world winter storms wouldn't cause power
outages, hard drives would never fail without warning
and PC's & laptops would never get stolen.
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