Ferrum Technology Services Blog

Have you ever spent time writing an email to somebody that you haven’t emailed before, hit send, and then wondered if the email address is even valid? For the active email user, this is an all-too-common scenario. How can you know for sure if an email address is valid before sinking time into writing a message?

When it comes to implementing virtualization technology for your business, you’ve got multiple options to choose from, with two, in particular, standing out; virtualization desktop infrastructure (VDI) and Desktop as a Service (DaaS). Going with the right technology is paramount to the success of your business. Here are some tips on how to choose between the two.

Editing text can be a rather drawn out process. Thankfully, technology has made editing much easier than it was back in the day when papers were marked up with red ink and notes like “F- See me after class.” Here are two great editing tools that you will want to take advantage of.

One nail-biting aspect about email is that you’re never sure if the person you sent your message to has actually opened it and read it. This is especially the case if it’s an important message. When you don’t hear back as quickly as you’d like, you then begin to doubt if the message was ever even received, which could lead to unnecessarily contacting them by different means. This only looks desperate. To calm your nerves, there’s an extension for Chrome that tracks details like this for Gmail.

It’s fun to find new ways to customize your PC’s desktop to fit your taste and personality. In fact, we bet that your current wallpaper image speaks volumes about who you are. Did you know that you can even adjust your desktop’s icon sizes?

Years and years of doing business means years and years of applications and software getting installed on your computer. Before you know it, you don't use any of them anymore, or they are outclassed by other, more useful programs. Going through each of your systems individually is time-consuming and monotonous. So, what can you do about this?

For people that have super-busy schedules, reading books seems like a luxury, but somehow, the most successful people always seem to have time to read the latest publications pertaining to their field. How do they do it? Many avid book readers have a little help.

What's the licensing status of your company's software look like? If you've not been intentional about this, then your business may be using several unlicensed applications. You may be thinking, "Everything works fine. No big deal." Sure, it's no big deal--until you're caught!

What would the world look like if everybody spoke one language? We think a lot of conflicts would be resolved and our civilization would advance to the place where we're more like Star Trek and less like a train wreck. Thanks to new technologies like Skype Translator, the language barrier may soon be a thing of the past!

This wasn't supposed to happen. After Microsoft pulled the plug on its popular Windows XP operating system this past April, use of the decade-old OS was supposed to sharply decline and quickly become extinct. Only a few months out from the XP-end-of-life event and the opposite has proven to be true.

It's a nightmare scenario for any business when a computer virus cripples their system. It's even worse when it happens to a company that has invested in a dedicated antivirus software, especially when the virus got through because someone felt the need to disable it! Because of scenarios like this, you should never disable your antivirus software.

There's nothing like a professional looking graph to get your point across in a big way. Having all the facts and figures compiled in a dynamic graph is a great way to show market trends and make decisions, but how do you create compelling graphs? One of the best tools for graph making is Microsoft Excel.

After you've finished with that incriminating file (you know which file we're talking about), you will drag and drop it into the Recycling Bin. You may think that just because you selected "Empty Recycling Bin" that the evidence is gone forever, but that's not exactly how the Recycling Bin works. You will need a more permanent solution to completely cover your tracks.

Have you ever been frustrated by not being able to edit information locked up inside of a PDF? Now, with Microsoft Word 2013, the issue is resolved, making it super easy to edit text, tables, and graphics within a PDF file.

Keeping your software up to date is one of the most important things you can do to secure your system and give your business the competitive edge. However, staying on top of these upgrades is a big maintenance job that's easy to neglect when things get busy. A system with neglected upgrades could spell trouble for your business.

The computer mouse is a great tool that has made our operating system navigation much easier. However, our dependence on the computer mouse has naturally led to an independence from its counterpart, the keyboard (aside from everyday word processing). Here are a few awesome functional keyboard shortcuts that everyone has forgotten about.

Change is risky. Microsoft decided to go for it a year ago with the release of Windows 8, bringing users a whole new feel to the interface design and straying from the path of the previous twenty-year-old template. Microsoft has addressed the feedback of its users, made improvements, and recently released an improved version: Windows 8.1.

For years we have been recommending to our clients that they upgrade from Windows XP. Come April 8th, 2014 this is no longer a recommendation, it's a necessity! While April 8th may not be the end of the world, it is the end of your computer's world if you're still running XP because Microsoft is ending support.