Posts made by technobabble

Has anyone used Decrap?

My latest on is my favorite, http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/classic-sports-cars-download-theme. It looks great on dual monitors.

I see your ScreenConnect @jaredbusch

@NetworkNerd said:

I spoke with a representative from AVG about this today and realized they can offer mail security, web content filtering, e-mail archiving, anti-virus, and even remote access through their CloudCare offering. For those that use it, do you feel the feature set is good compared to other products? Any information would be helpful.

Our anti-virus subscription will be up at the end of this year, we use LogMeIn for remote management, we do not have web content filtering at every site but could benefit from it, and we use Mimecast for spam filtering and e-mail archiving (subscription up in June). There may be a chance to save some money here if their product is good.

I am using it for a client's 3 servers and 2 desktops av protections. I am looking at the other options they offer.

@Hubtech said:

Well, What are y'all doin up so late? I'm tinkering with Affinity Live to see if it's a good fit for me. Growing past Freshbooks I fear, need to keep track of too many projects at once.

That looks pretty good. I saw them while looking for a replacement for all the programs I was using to run my small IT business: MS Accounting 2007, OneNote, Evernote, PHP task manager programs, and ZenDesk. I ended up with RepairShopr and haven't looked back!

I used Carbonite for small business and recently had a dual disaster. I woke to my PC's SSD drive was borked a week ago Saturday. I turned off my backup rig (PC as a backup drive) and put the drive in a USB dock and lost the partition! Luckily I had backed up the backup rig to Carbonite small business. The disappointing part is that on day 8 I am only at 82% of the 250GB drive using a 16MBs Comcast business connection.

I too am looking for something faster for retrieving an online backup.

Haven't played in years, but my favorite racing game was Pro Race Driver, I had it for PC and PS2. Loved Need for Speed Most Wanted v1.

@JaredBusch said:

Windows 8.1 told me to piss off this morning after I came back down to my office after getting a new cup of coffee

Did the restart "fix" the PC?

@Dashrender said:

@alexntg said:

@Dashrender said:

@alexntg said:

A bit on the reimaging rights. Intune with SA is a volume license. You could use the volume license media and key to reimage other computers that run the same exact product version. You could use the Win8.1 Pro media and key for other Win8.1 Pro computers. Upgrade rights are only available with SA, one device per user. Do understand that if you cancel Intune, you'd be revoking your volume license rights.

Alex,
Under the old SA in a VL setup, let's say you bought Office Pro plus with SA, when you purchased it Office 2010 was out, but during your subscription, Office 2013 comes out.
Now say you discontinue your subscription. It is my understanding that you can use 2013 in perpetuity.

Is the same true for machines that you purchase Intune with SA? So you have a Windows XP machine today, you buy Intune with SA which allows you to upgrade to Windows 8.1 Pro (or Enterprise if you wish). If you dump the SA portion of the subscription are you required to go back to XP on that computer? If that's the case, calling it SA was a bad decision as the rules would be different for two things with the same name.

The software, including the OS license, is provided on a subscription basis only. There is, however, a buyout option that's available for cancellations after the initial 12-month term. I'm not sure what the pricing on it is offhand, as that requires contacting MS directly.

Thanks - I do recall seeing something about a buyout.

Do we have a MS rep around to answer this?

@scottalanmiller said:

Microsoft already lowered the price. Windows 8 was cheap and 8.1 was free.

Did you just see that Mac is offering Maverick upgrade at no cost?

@scottalanmiller said:

@technobabble said:

@scottalanmiller

It's funny...I originally looked at Office 365 as a way to get my clients on the new Office and at the same time benefit from the web apps and exchange. In my mind, I saw InTune as an extension of the same logic, get users off old OSes and add some management and tada! very small businesses are now updated and maintained. At least that was the idea.

Makes sense. It's that you are paying for the OS twice and in this case paying for the Enterprise upgrade that make it expensive. It would be cheaper to buy a volume license of Pro rather than the InTune of enterprise.

Also, consider the total cost. Getting a new PC with a Windows 8.1 OEM would probably make more financial sense in most cases.

True on the cost. However it is extremely hard to get businesses with 2-12 PCs and no server to upgrade hardware or software until something breaks. Biggest issue is that they have NO budget for IT at all.

@Reid-Cooper said:

@technobabble said:

I used to play in HS too, and also had the lecture of the D&D satanic influence...I fought the good fight for a bit and then just quit to get mom to stop harping and lecturing.

Did you ever try other games? I found that most people knew the games by the name D&D. Play a different RPG and no one cared.

No, I found other activities including some that were worse than D&D (flammables comes to mind)

@scottalanmiller

It's funny...I originally looked at Office 365 as a way to get my clients on the new Office and at the same time benefit from the web apps and exchange. In my mind, I saw InTune as an extension of the same logic, get users off old OSes and add some management and tada! very small businesses are now updated and maintained. At least that was the idea.

I should also mention I haven't actually used InTune yet. I believe I can use it for one of my office PCs under IUR.

@Carnival-Boy said:

I've run InTune for our some of our remote workers for a few years now. We got it more or less when it was released. It has improved a lot since then, but I've generally hated it. We got it because we needed Windows Enterprise licences for DirectAccess; remote assistance; antivirus; patch management; and MDM.

I abandoned DirectAccess and use Hamachi instead. The remote assistance part of InTune is dire, and I quickly replaced it with LogMeIn. The antivirus didn't stop some of our Sales Reps getting infected, and I had to use a third-party antivirus program to clean up the mess. The patch management is ok, but LogMeIn does that very well too. The MDM is mediocre and I replaced it with Meraki.

To conclude, InTune does everything poorly compared with its competitors. I now do everything I need much quicker, easier and cheaper with LogMeIn and Merkai, apart from security. For security, I like the look of GFI Cloud, but haven't rolled it out yet. The concept of one portal handling everything (InTune) is very attractive and should be cheaper (in theory), but I now prefer a best of breed approach. So to answer the thread's question: No and No.

Yikes, with a review like that, it would make most people run! I have looked/setup GFI cloud briefly and also Continuum. The part about InTune I liked was the option to get the upgraded OS.

I just watched The Usual Suspects yet again! It was on Netflix.

I signed up to sell both Intune and Office 365. I got around to testing Office 365 but not Intune. It looks like it could be a low cost entry to get people off XP while managing their systems. I am pushing it with a few of my smaller clients that are frugal.

I used to play in HS too, and also had the lecture of the D&D satanic influence...I fought the good fight for a bit and then just quit to get mom to stop harping and lecturing.

I will have to ask the bartender next time if I got the cheap stuff or the good stuff.

@Nara said:

Windows 8/8.1 is like a significant other that is ugly but also has a great personality. You're shocked/appalled at first, but it grows on you.

Having an option to disable the left screen's charms window would be a nice touch nonetheless.

I agree with both statements. I train my customers to help them get over the "shock" of the system and all have moved forward with no complaints. A little bit more mods would be nice like the choosing where or if the charms bar was available via the mouse movement. I found a "charms" script that I used to put on my customers W8 taskbar, and they would click to access the charms bar.

I had a client like that too. No matter what PC she used the gremlins and weird stuff happened. A partial fix was the direct ethernet cable I ran from the switch up the wall and to her office, bypassing the jack. This slowed down the issues for her. It was "fixed" when the business moved to a new location. How's that for weird?