Ferrum Technology Services Blog

With technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence entering further into our daily lives, what was once science fiction is becoming fact - assisting our lives (which most would agree is better than threatening our lives). For this week’s tip, we’ll show you how to leverage machine learning in a very basic way: in the Android version of Gmail’s Smart Compose feature.

I don’t mean to gross you out, but have you ever considered how disgusting your laptop is? Studies have compared the relative cleanliness of a keyboard and a toilet seat… and unfortunately, the keyboard wasn’t the cleaner of the two. This is why it makes sense to regularly give your laptop devices a good cleaning, and why we’ve put together some tips to ensure you safely sanitize a laptop device.

For this week’s tip, we thought we’d talk about something that most businesses have already dabbled in: the cloud. If your business is like those that we interact with, you’ve already implemented some type of cloud service, but if you haven’t, you should know just how cloud-hosted services can benefit the small business. We’ll look at the benefits of cloud-hosted services and how to pick which services are right for you.

For those of us that don’t have access to fiber-to-the-home or LTE Internet, the cable modem is a must-have. You can always rent a modem from your ISP or you can purchase your own, but no matter what your decision is, knowing what to look for when modem shopping is advantageous. Let’s take a look.

Why do manufacturers and developers constantly issue updates and upgrades to their software and hardware solutions? A business’s IT solutions might seem like something you want to set up and not think about ever again, but this is simply not how the cookie crumbles. This week’s tip is dedicated to why your organization needs to have a strategy in place to approach your upgrades.

When a business uses its technology the right way, it typically has positive effects on the business. That’s not to say that technology is a major priority for EVERY business. There are some business owners that don’t prioritize having the newest, shiniest technology on the market; and, that’s fine, if the business functions efficiently.

It’s no secret how useful the Google Chrome browser is to a user. What is a secret, however, is that Chrome has some added capabilities that make it even more useful than first impressions would suggest. For our Tip of the Week, we’ll review some of these capabilities so you can implement them into your daily workflows.

Like a well-oiled machine, any business needs its internal components to line up correctly, interacting with the others to accomplish the ultimate goal of the device. This is more or less how we always describe collaborative processes in the context of your IT. Here, however, we’re going to focus our tip on ensuring these processes are directed by employees who are ready to collaborate as well.

Ever get an email with the subject line “No Subject” and not feel compelled to open it? Us too. Your email subjects are crucial to getting a user’s attention and helping them understand what the email is about. We’re here to help you develop more effective email subjects to ensure your messages are opened and responded to.

Windows 10 received its second update in 2018. While some experts believe that this second update is too much, others look at it and are happy that more features and functionality is being added. Today, we’re going to dig into the details about this update, as well as some of the helpful features that you can take advantage of.

With the holiday season winding down, business needs to get done, which means that organizations will be expecting their employees to get back to work and make things happen as quickly as possible. Mobile devices make this prospect much easier, as work can be done on-the-go in a flexible manner. Here are some tips to get the most out of your mobile devices post-holiday season.

With Windows 10 being a major part of most business’ computing strategy, many people use it at their jobs each day. It has a lot of features not found on any other PC operating system, and more are added regularly. Today, we take a look at four features of Windows 10 that we think can really help your business.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year… for scammers, that is. These kinds of criminals love to take advantage of the gift-giving season. With the right tools for the job, hackers can have a field day stealing sensitive information, like credit card numbers, due to the sheer amount of stuff being purchased by consumers. It’s up to you to stay vigilant and make sure you’re not being scammed, but we have a couple of tricks you can use to stay as safe as possible.

Did you know that almost 90 percent of small business owners feel they are completely safe from attack? It’s unfortunate, but the truth of the matter is that half of these businesses will eventually be proven wrong--they too can suffer from a cyberattack. Are you going to risk becoming one of them? You should know now that there is no reason to.

The business world is inherently somewhat Darwinian: instead of organisms with desirable traits surviving and carrying on, better businesses tend to outlast those that are inferior. In order to keep on, you need to ensure that your business has the tools it needs to be better than the alternative. Part of this is a great staff, yes, but for today’s tip, we’ll discuss how optimizing your technology can help.

The best way to access the Internet is to use a web browser. Today, we’ll discuss five of the most helpful basic tricks we can think of to help you make the most of your web browser.

When a computer is new, it seems to blaze through tasks at unbelievable speeds… but this doesn’t seem to last very long at all. In short order, a computer seems to slow to an excruciating crawl. What makes this happen, and how can it be fixed? We’ll go over this below.

You would be hard-pressed to find a better-known software suite than Microsoft Office, Microsoft Word probably leading the pack in terms of name recognition. When a solution is so well-known, it can be hard to call anyone who uses it a power user. However, for this week’s tip, we’re doing a deep dive into its capabilities to take your use of Word a few steps up.

Data backup has the nasty misconception that it’s only worth having if you actually use it, but this isn’t necessarily the case. Businesses let this misconception get in the way of an important aspect of business continuity, simply because they don’t want to waste money on something that they won’t actually need. Little do they know that data backup is the only thing standing in the way of your organization failing forever.

Mobile data is extremely important to the productivity and efficiency of modern businesses--especially when employees and administrators are out of the office. The major drawback of this is that it can be an expensive setup, as mobile data transfer can be pricey. We can help you get around this issue by minimizing the amount of data your Android device uses.