Ferrum Technology Services Blog

Dark mode is becoming commonplace in most modern technology solutions, incorporated into both desktop and mobile applications and even some operating systems. Despite being embraced by vendors and users, what does dark mode actually offer in terms of benefits? Let’s find out.

The concept of productivity isn’t what it used to be. It has evolved significantly over time. In fact, it wasn’t until the late 16th century, where subsistence living was less frequent, where the term started to mean what we know it to mean today. Today, we’ll take a look at how the modern definition of productivity came about.

With each day, it seems that we all have a new threat or risk to worry about. Lately, there’s been a lot said about the dangers of blue light exposure, with lots of things to buy that supposedly help fix the problems it can cause.

Wouldn’t you know it, but blue light actually can create some issues that could negatively impact your health and wellbeing. Let’s discuss it, and what you can do to address it.

Let’s face facts: there could easily be quite a bit on your mobile device that you don’t want someone to have access to. However, on the other side of the coin, you hardly want to appear rude and never let someone use your phone to place a call or look up some contact information… right? As it turns out, Android has a little-known feature called Android Guest Mode that many can use to share one’s device more securely.

Laptops are pretty great. They’re powerful, yet portable computers that can be brought effectively anywhere work needs to be done. That being said, there are a few drawbacks that can irritate many users to some extent. For instance: trying to click-and-drag your cursor as you are using the trackpad. For this week’s tip, let’s go into a feature that you can use to make this process a lot simpler.

Passwords are effectively the cornerstone of your business’ data security—if they aren’t up to muster, your protections could crumble. Unfortunately, many users shortchange their passwords to try to make them more convenient, also making them more convenient for cybercriminals. Let’s see how we could (and should) make passwords as effective as possible.

We’ve all had those days when motivation eludes us, and they can be extremely frustrating. Fortunately, there are ways that you can rejuvenate your drive in either your personal or professional life. Let’s go over some of these tactics to try and keep burnout at arm’s length.

Today’s software solutions are hugely benefited by the collaborative capabilities that are now included in them, but this is not to say that there isn’t the potential for confusion as people make changes to documents. Some software lets you track these changes, which is particularly useful in particularly dense applications like Microsoft Excel.

Smartphone users know how hot their devices can get, seemingly without reason, and how unnerving that can be. No wonder—these heat levels can damage the device itself. This means it is very important to try and control its temperature as best you can. We’ve put together some tips to help you keep your phone from overheating.

Most computer users have at least a passing familiarity with Portable Document Format files, better known as PDFs. As a tip, we’ll review how a PDF can be created, and even edited.

Say you are looking to learn something about a concept that you don’t know much about, what do you do? You “Google” it right? So when you are using Google Docs you’d think that it would automatically know any word that you would type in. This isn’t the case. It knows a lot of words, but if it doesn’t recognize a word that you would normally use, you will need to add it to your dictionary. Today we will tell you how to do so.

While Windows 10 is inarguably the better choice of OS over Windows 7 (especially now that the latter has officially gone the way of the dodo), the experience is made even better with the right customizations made to the settings. Let’s go through some changes you might want to make as you’re starting off (or even later on).

At the time of this writing, Microsoft Word has a market share just shy of 37 percent, making it a pretty safe bet that you’ve used it at some point. As a result, you’re probably familiar with Word’s insistence of changing how certain things are formatted, which can become irritating - especially if you had it formatted how you wanted it the first time. This week, our tip will cover how you can stop Word from editorializing.

Do you have a smartphone? Do you feel as though your data is secure on it? Users are relying on smartphones more and more to accomplish daily tasks. This means there is a massive amount of data traffic each day transferred to and from your device, and potentially transferred into the hands of a cybercriminal. 

Thanks to file management systems that can be digitized and stored online, filing cabinets can be considered a thing of the past. Of course, you still have to keep digital filing systems organized, but this is easier to do and more efficient than paper files. Today, we provide you with tips on how to ensure that you can keep your files in proper order.

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.

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.

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.

It seems that businesses today are obsessed with productivity, and while this isn’t a bad thing inherently, it can encourage you and your employees to pick up bad habits. Unfortunately, those who try to juggle responsibilities are often less productive than people that focus on one task and take it through to completion. Let’s discuss why this is, and how you can better, more productively make use of your time.