Microsoft throws away Money!

Nearly 15 years ago, in the mid-90s, Microsoft was under a cloud of antitrust investigation and not for their Windows OS dominance. Microsoft and Intuit were planning to merge and become the de facto software provider for the personal and small business finance and tax software inside the US and worldwide. Seeing that prospects for completion of this giant software merger were very dim, the two companies agreed to walk away and stay independent.

Fast forward to 2008 & 2009 to see Intuit being that dominant player and Microsoft finding itself in the awkward position of not being able to leverage its OS market share to win with the software trifecta of Windows-Office-Money. Microsoft stopped selling Money in retail stores last year and was only offering it as a digital download. Now, Microsoft has begun notifying banks & users that they are totally discontinuing the MS Money product and will stop supporting it in 2011.

I do know that a few of 2K's clients are utilizing MS Money in some form or fashion, and should be starting to look at moving to another product soon (most likely some form of Quickbooks) as banks will begin to drop support for MS Money sooner than Microsoft does. If your company is affected by this move, 2K is fully qualified to help your company identify and implement a new financial management software package.

As a small token of their appreciation - read sarcasm here :-) , Intuit has released a new version of their free Quickbooks Simple Start Edition which can be utilized for personal finances and give you a taste of what their business versions can offer.

Microsoft releases MyPhone (beta) for windows mobile 6+ users!

Microsoft has opened up their Windows Mobile product named My Phone for public beta use.

This service finally would allow users of the Windows Mobile phones to have access to a service similar to the Apple "Mobile Me" service. This provides the capability to synchronize contacts, calendar appointments, tasks, photos, videos, text messages, music, and documents between your phone and your My Phone web account.

Of note is that if your phone is connected to an Exchange server - any items that synchronize with Exchange (email, calendar, contacts and possibly tasks), then these items will not synchronize with your My Phone account.

I have really wanted this type of service for my work phone (WinMobile Motorola Q) as my personal phone (iPhone 3G) synchronizes with iTunes and that does a backup of my calendar, tasks, photos, text messages, contacts and interestingly call history. I can really appreciate what that all means as my highly used iPhone 3G actually has to reformat itself every time there is a software update. Once the update is complete it restores the data to the phone as if nothing happend. The My Phone service will be very useful in those situations when problem/broken phones are replaced, stolen phones are replaced or the ever increasingly needed new smartphone purchase that would require HOURS of time spent re-entering information. You get that added benefit of pictures being backed up and restored as well as text messages that nearly always contain important last minute information that cannot be found in your email.

I unfortunately have a Windows Mobile 5.0 phone that would be unable to take advantage of these services, but that is not stopping me from providing the link below to those that would like to test out (BETA TEST) this extremely useful service from Microsoft.

Check out Microsoft My Phone here.

2K Networking at PASBO in Philadelphia!

Come see us at Booth #337 at the Valley Forge Convention Center for PASBO

37% of Business Users Unknowingly Purchased Pirated Windows and Office

No less than 37% of business users unknowingly acquired pirated copies of Microsoft software, including Windows and Office, according to statistics made available by the Redmond company. The software giant reviewed no less than 30 companies and suggested that business users with counterfeit software in their IT infrastructure were actually victims of bootleggers. In this context, the software giant has warned that even professionals can be tricked into taking counterfeit products as genuine, especially high-quality pirated software.

“It’s obvious that the strategy of software pirates is to create high-quality counterfeit software that is designed to deceive. The study reveals just how prevalent the problem is within the business environment. The best way to protect companies is by educating people about software piracy and providing tools to help identify and prevent the risks of counterfeit software before they purchase and install it in their workplace,” revealed Cori Hartje, senior director of Microsoft’s Genuine Software Initiative.

Microsoft indicated that midsize businesses managed to spend no less than $112,439 on pirated software. Companies that had already purchased genuine software spent on average $10,222 for pirated or otherwise unlicensed products. The most consistent danger comes from increasingly sophisticated pirated materials that can easily be taken as genuine products. Microsoft has advised such customers to turn to solutions such as Windows Genuine Advantage and Windows Office Advantage in order to confirm that the software they acquired is indeed genuine.

“Small and midsize businesses become easy, unsuspecting victims of counterfeiters who take advantage of customers looking for a bargain on their software,” Hartje added. “Like larger enterprises, these businesses also wrestle with the demand to maintain and upgrade their software. But when they make their purchases from the least expensive vendor instead of a trusted advisor, they can easily end up with pirated products, ultimately resulting in greater losses through employee downtime and product replacement.”

Source: Softpedia

As a Microsoft Gold Partner, 2K Networking works to ensure that all of our clients have properly purchased and licensed Microsoft products ranging from the server to the desktop. Our staff also know how to determine the difference between pirated and 100% Genuine Microsoft products. As the information above discusses, businesses that do not have properly licensed software are usually unaware of this fact. Microsoft just last week updated it's Microsoft Genuine Advantage (WGA) anti-piracy software that validates official copies of Windows XP to be able to detect illegal copies installed with newly stolen or faked product keys, or with new activation cracks.

Once Microsoft's WGA software identifies a pirated copy of Windows XP it will notify the user with on screen pop up messages as well as background image messages. WGA will also disable the ability for Windows to update itself. This poses an extreme security risk to the user of that computer as well as the network that computer is connected to. Viruses, trojans and other malware often utilize unpatched vulnerabilities in Windows XP to infect a computer from websites, email attachments or downloaded files.

Should you find your computer or another on your network notifying you that it "Is not Genuine", please contact 2K as soon as possible at 717-724-0537 to have one of our technicians investigate the issue and determine the best course of action to remedy the situation.

You can find more information on the recent WGA update from this ComputerWorld article.

Conficker Virus and April 1st: Here's the Deal

The latest variant of the Conficker Virus is being widely reported to begin causing problems on April 1st and we have been getting some questions on this.

Quite honestly – if your anti-virus is updating normally (every day or every other day) and all windows computers are updated (as the patch for the vulnerability that this is targeting came out in October/November) then you should have nothing to worry about.

Here’s a bit more of an extensive list of FAQs to look at regarding this issue:

http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00001636.html

If you do feel that your company's computers are at risk, or do not know at all, please contact 2K at 717-724-0537 and we will work with you to ensure the security of your company's computers and network.

Internet Explorer 8.0 is now available - should you upgrade?

Microsoft released Internet Explorer 8.0 last week as an upgrade to Internet Explorer 7.0. IE8 is available for Windows XP SP2/SP3, Windows Server 2003 SP2, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. While this new version of IE8 is a big improvement over IE7, 2K Networking does not recommend any of our clients to update to this new version until compatibility testing has been completed against your enterprise software and web applications.

Because IE8 builds on the foundation of changes that were made with IE7, there is a very good chance that any web applications that did not work properly in IE7, will continue to malfunction in IE8. This is one of the biggest reasons we do not recommend upgrading at this time.

Microsoft will begin releasing IE8 to all users via windows automatic update the week of April 13, 2009. 2K Networking has the ability to block the automatic download and installation of IE8. Please make sure you talk with your primary contact regarding blocking IE8 at your organization.

It's a Wild Internet with many thorns - be careful not to get stuck.

Security vendor F-secure last week alerted us to two different identity theft & malware scams going around that is likely to have the potential to be very damaging.

The first of these is a Comcast High Speed spam email that is offering users with a special self installation kit and asking them to sign in with their account information.

See the link here for the full article and screen capture of the bogus email..

http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00001630.html


This is specifically targeting comcast users and since Comcast covers most of the areas we service, our clients an clients' employees need to be aware of this. Think clearly before clicking a link in your email and providing personal information online.


The second item F-secure mentions is alerting us all to many YouTube "advertisement" videos describing a wide range of iTunes, computer, gaming and entertainment devices that would require you to download a file and "may need to turn off your anti-virus" software to get the file to run properly. This is a very polite way of telling you - "Turn it off and I'll infect your system."

See the many screenshots on the original article below

http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00001628.html