A useful feature for collaboration in Office documents is the concept of markups. This feature allows you to track changes made to a document and even offers the ability to mark comments that can be made invisible when looking at the "final" product. When trading a...
The release of Microsoft's new operating system, Windows 8, does not appear to be going very well. Recent studies show that its sluggish adoption by PC users is making it less popular than Vista at the same point in time after its release. Arguably, there are quite a...
One of the most useful methods of communication is with images. I use screenshots a lot to either convey or understand a problem based on what a user or I are seeing. The Snipping Tool is an excellent time saving tool by Microsoft. It's a simple program that allows...
December is usually a busy time of the year at SpireTech. Clients begin looking at year-end profit projections (if any, in the current economy) and start figuring out what portion they will need to spend or pay taxes on. Usually, this is a good time of...
SpireTech has been providing Backup solutions with Dell Appassure Replay for over a year now with great success. A server or workstation crash is one of the worst things that can happen - the best thing assurance you can have is a complete image backup of your...
Microsoft is getting ready to finally pull the plug Windows XP permanently. XP came out eleven years ago on October 25th, 2001. After years of success, on April 8th, 2014, support for the operating system will cease. It has been a longer road than it was...
Just want to keep you all up to date on our progress with Server 2012 testing: We've acquired some more hardware to continue our evaluation of Server 2012. Our lab environment includes two servers connected to a shared external SAS drive array, which allows for...
Despite Microsoft's added security in Windows 8, Vupen, a French security firm, claims it has already found a vulnerability unknown to Microsoft. The attack comes via security holes in Internet Explorer 10 and can be used to take control of a computer over the...
One of the largest security stories this month came from the goliath book retailer, Barnes & Noble. In September, they found some of their credit card scanners - limited to one PIN pad at each of 63 stores in nine states - had been "bugged" and used to steal card...
There was a major dust-up at the world's most valuable company, Apple, at the end of October. Two top company executives, mobile software head Scott Forstall and retail chief John Browett, were forced to step down from their position. They were both removed for...