JAN 2013 • VOLUME 5• ISSUE 1
Speed Up Your
Internet
2
Tech Tip of the
Month/The Techie
Dictionary
2
From the CEO’s
desk—
Improvements
over The Last
Year
3
10 things we do
better than our
competitors
4
Follow us: www.facebook.com/tdcnet www.twitter.com/tdcnet
Our Mission is to use
technical wonder to wow businesses.
WHAT’S INSIDE
It’s that time of year again – New
Year’s Resolution time! It’s a great time
for all of us to look at our businesses and
see how we can improve to hit our goals.
We have a renewed focus this year on
helping all of our clients use technology to
improve productivity and we’ve suggested
some resolutions you can make to do ex-
actly that.
Proactive maintenance – your
computers and servers need constant
maintenance to ensure
they are secure and
running as fast as pos-
sible. Unfortunately
many people take their
car to get the oil
changed more often
than running mainte-
nance on their net-
work. A good mainte-
nance plan prevents problems, gets rid of
annoying pop ups and increases productiv-
ity for everyone.
Say goodbye to those Windows
XP machines – this operating system is
reaching end of life and if you have any-
one left in your office using a Windows
XP machine it’s time to replace their com-
puter. Computers using XP are slower,
have more security holes and generally
lead to less productive staff.
Speed up the internet – as more
business is done online using applications
hosted in the Cloud, the pressure on a
conventional business internet line is in-
creasing. We’re seeing for a lot of offices
that upgrading their internet line can im-
prove
productivity for everyone.
Get the wireless working well –
more tablets, smartphones and laptops are
appearing in offices around the GTA and
it’s critical wireless is working well. Imple-
menting a commercial grade wireless net-
work using linked access points is a must
now and an improvement we’ve imple-
mented lately for many businesses.
Standardize – standardizing the
computers in use, their setup and the pro-
cesses surrounding all parts of
your IT will eliminate problems
and dramatically improve produc-
tivity. “Custom” is a dirty word in
the IT world because it frequently
leads to solving one issue and
creating many new ones.
Spare computer – even with
extensive proactive work, com-
puters can sometimes have hard-
ware malfunctions. If you have a spare
computer in the office, you can limit this
disruption by quickly moving the user to
a spare computer instead of having them
unproductive for a day.
Tablet/Smartphone strategy –
one of the biggest changes over the last
year was the increasing use of tablets and
“super phones” as part of day-to-day
business. These devices in many cases
have the same type of access to your
network that computers do and you
must have a strong strategy for how to
manage and secure them.
As always, we’re here to help you
improve your business. Give us a call if
you’d like help with any of your IT new
Year’s Resolutions!
New Year’s Resolutions
Monthly Tips and Tricks on How to Prevent Pesky Computer Problems While Improving the Security, Performance and Reliability of Your Technology (Plus a Little Fun From the TDCNet Team!)
Managing Uptime
TECH TIP OF THE MONTH
Printing Multiple Files:
1. First, go to the location of the files you want to print. 2. Select all of the files you want to print.
3. Right click on the selected files, and select ’Print’ from the menu that appears.
Techie Dictionary
DVR: This stands for ‘Digital Video Recorder’. A
DVR is basically a VCR that uses a hard drive
instead of videotapes. It can be used to record,
save, and play back television programs. Unlike
a VCR, a DVR can also pause live TV.
Recent Blog Post from www.tdcnet.ca
Speed Up Your Internet
MANAGING UPTIME PAGE 2
One of the challenges many businesses are having the-
se days is that their internet connections just aren’t fast
enough for their business and they are not sure what to do
about it.
This stems from the fact that standard cable or ADSL
Internet lines that businesses have used for years are no
longer good enough because of how much is done online
or remotely from your office. I’ve been spending a lot of
time lately helping clients improve their Internet connectiv-
ity and I thought it would be useful to spend some time on
this on our blog.
So here’s an overview of the connectivity op-
tions your business has and some advice when
you’re considering your options.
Firstly, you must have two Internet connec-
tions for redundancy. It will cost your business
way too much if your Internet goes offline for a few hours
and you can get a backup for as little as $30/month.
Next, you need to ask yourself how important speed is
with your Internet connection. If a lot of the applications
you use are hosted offsite or if you deal with large files
(such as video or design files) regularly, you will need a bet-
ter line.
Most people don’t know there are lots of options avail-
able so I wanted to give a quick rundown of what’s out
there. Note, internet speeds are measures in megabits per
second or Mbps, which is used to measure data transfer
speeds. The higher that is, the faster your internet line will
be.
ADSL - this is a standard Internet connection used by
many businesses. It uses the unused portion of traditional
phone lines. It starts at 6 Mbps (download and 800k/s up-
load. For most businesses this is too slow. Price is usually
around $60-$90/month.
VDSL2 - also using phone lines, this is a much newer
type of Internet connection and much faster. It can be 4
times faster than ADSL download speeds and almost 10
times faster uploads (25 Mbps down, 7 Mbps up). Price is
usually around $130-$150/month.
Cable - many businesses now get their Internet con-
nections through cable from Rogers. Provided its available
in your neighbourhood, this can be as fast as 12
Mbps down and 2 Mbps up. Price ranges from $50-
$170/month depending on speeds and whether you
need a static IP address, which most businesses
need.
Ethernet over Cable - this is the next step up in
terms of speed. You can get up to 10 Mbps upload and
download with this service, which is usually around $400-
$600/month. If you’re doing voice over your Internet lines
you’ll want at least this speed. Again availability is limited to
buildings wired with Rogers cable.
If you wish to read about more options, please go
online at www.tdcnet.ca. Hopefully that helps give you a bit
of an idea of your Internet options. The first thing you
need to consider is how many staff you have, what they use
the Internet for, if you use it for phone systems, video con-
ferencing or big uploads/downloads.
As always, give us a call and we can help you navigate
through these options and make the best choice for your
business!
- Written by Brendan Howe
Follow us on Twitter!
www.twitter.com/TDCNet Follow us on LinkedIn! www.linkedin.com/company/tdcnet-inc.
JAN 2013 • VOLUME 5• ISSUE 1 Page 3
2012 was a great year for TDCNet as we continued
to grow and mature our business to better serve our
clients.
When we make investments in our business, we feel
we're also making an investment is our clients' business-
es because of the direct impact it has. We've made a
number of these investments over the last few months,
including:
More Proactive
Steps for Fewer
Problems
We have
made huge in-
vestments of
both time and
money in up-
grading our re-
mote monitoring
and proactive
management
capabilities.
While there are a
number of areas
we've improved
here, one of the
most exciting is
deeper monitor-
ing and automat-
ed problem pre-
vention. We've taken numerous steps to improve our
ability to detect problems and run automated actions to
fix issues right away and keep your email, computer or
network from going down.
Maintenance for Higher Productivity and Security
We run weekly maintenance on all the computers
and servers we manage. This maintenance program is
one that we continually put in R&D hours to optimize
how things run and prevent issues. This will continue to
be a big focus and opportunity for us to improve
productivity for our clients in the New Year.
MACs and Apple devices
We’re seeing more businesses integrate MACs and
Apple devices into their Windows environments. We’ve
been researching and implementing new ways to moni-
tor and manage these devices which in the past have
been problematic. We are developing more and more
ways to have them integrate seamlessly into our clients’
environments.
More Technical Staff
for Faster Response
Times
We’ve boosted our num-
ber of technical staff to 7
which is a huge invest-
ment for us to be able to
provide much faster re-
sponse times to our cli-
ents, including what we’re
calling “Live Service
Desk”. When people
have issues, they can call
or email in and get help
right away as opposed to
waiting for call backs,
which is the case at many
of our competitors.
New Technical and
Service Management
I’m pleased to welcome Carl Giles as our new Ser-
vice Manager. Carl’s role is to ensure our client’s IT sys-
tems are being proactively managed, monitored and
maintained effectively and when users need support, it’s
quick and effective. We want all of our clients spending
less time managing their IT, which is why we’ve put in
place more resources to do this.
I’m excited about what this year has in store and we
have many more improvements on the way to both our
proactive level of support and the reactive support we
provide. Please give me a call any time to talk about
how we can help you!
- Brendan Howe, President and CEO, TDCNet Inc.
From The CEO’s Desk
Improvements Over The Last Year
TDCNet’s Secret Santa —Here our staff has just exchanged presents and they seem happy with their Secret Santa haul. Next
time you talk to them—ask them what they got. Happy New Year from our team to you!
We are the leaders in IT services for businesses in and around
the GTA. Here are 10 things we do better than our competitors:
We’ll Have a Technician Working on Your Issue in
60 Minutes or Less – Our Guarantee. Our experienced
qualified technicians will answer immediately or will re-
spond to your service request in less than sixty minutes –
Guaranteed.
Ultra Speedy Repairs. We know you don’t want to
waste your valuable time waiting for your computer to be
fixed so our remote network IT support services are the
answer. We can fix 93.5% of problems immediately by
taking control of your computer from our office. For any
problems that require an onsite visit, we’ll send a techni-
cian over.
We Talk Like You Do. If you have any problems or
computer support questions, you can ask and we will
answer in PLAIN ENGLISH. Don’t worry – there is no
“geek speak” by our team of IT support technicians.
We Guarantee Absolute 100% Satisfac-
tion. Complete satisfaction will be yours with our prod-
ucts, technology services and IT Consulting. With our IT
management services, nothing will get in the way to
make sure you are a happy customer.
We protect your critical business data and back it
up offsite. The most important part of your network is
your data (hardware and software can always be re-
placed). We back up your data securely offsite in case of
fire, flood, theft or hardware failure. We completely man-
age and monitor the process so you don’t need to worry
about taking tape or hard drives home with you and you
won’t lie awake at night wondering if your data is proper-
ly backed up.
We are far less expensive than hiring a full time
computer support staff. By outsourcing your computer
support to us, we can save you thousands of dollars on
hiring salaries and benefits. We have a proven track rec-
ord of reducing IT and internet costs, sometimes by
more than 50%!
We will give you fixed quotes on all work and prod-
uct. This ensures your project gets completed on budget
without any surprises at the end.
We proactively look for ways to improve your busi-
ness. We monitor your network 24/7 to prevent prob-
lems before they occur and will give you proactive sug-
gestions regularly to improve the way your business runs.
We integrate your IT and Internet services. When
you have an email or internet problem, you don’t have
to worry about calling five different people. We take care
of everything whether it’s your internet services, Black-
berry, server or individual computers.
We are always here to help. We have technicians on
call 24/7.
885 Don Mills Rd., Suite #112, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3C 1V9 Tel: 416.913.8998 | Toll-free: 1.866.483.2638 | Fax: 416.479.4157 Web: www.tdcnet.ca Email: [email protected]
JAN 2013 • VOLUME 5• ISSUE 1 PAGE 4
Attention Business Owners: Check out 10 Things We Do Better Than Our Competitors
Tech Wonder Profile: Carl Giles This is a chance for you to find out a few things you didn’t know about the peo-
ple who work on our wonderful team! This month’s Tech Wonder is Carl Giles, who is the Service Manager of our
amazing Tech team. Carl is from Toronto and he has two children, Hayley who’s 10 and Carson, who’s 9. Carl has lived in the UK and California and travelled all over Europe and US.
He loves to watch Movies and TV, and keeping up with the entertainment indus-try. He’s hoping to do a Mudder or Triathlon in the summer. He loves Fettucine Alfredo and he loves going out to eat at funky restaurants with his wife Sherry.
Carl has 13 years of IT management experience that he will be using to help TDCNet’s clients.
The Tech Wonder Profile is a new series where we’ll be profiling a member of our great team. Carl Giles—Service Manager at TDCNet