Virtual Private Networks

VPN Servers

Have you ever tried to listen to some content from another country only to find out that they are blocking the connection from your country?  I discovered this problem when the 2012 Olympics were taking place and I wanted to watch some of the events in the UK.  Unfortunately, they were blocking connections from the United States.  By using a VPN Tunnel to the UK, I could trick the networks into thinking that I was in the UK by using a client that expatriated my connection and routed the signal through the UK's VPN Server.

Here is a good place to get a VPN Client, it's open source, and easy to use.  It's called VPN Gate and it creates a Virtual Private Network connection to any VPN server in any country.  It is sponsored by the University of Tsukuba, Japan.

http://www.vpngate.net/en/

We Wish You A Merry Christmas, from Our Family to Yours...

Season's Greetings

To everyone who supported Enterprise Personal Computers during 2015, I just want to say Thank You.  It has been a privilege to serve the IT community this year and help perform essential installations in the community at Tops Friendly Markets for Catalina Marketing and Tolts Service Group.  I look forward to serving you in the new year.  Have a safe holiday season and New Year, and we'll see you in 2016!

                                                              The Morgan Family

The big Windows 10 decision... The scary upgrade and the urge to buckthe system.

I have three servers, two workstations, a gaming rig, a media center, five laptops, three tablets, and three smartphones between me and my wife.  Windows 10 runs comfortably on my gaming rig, my workstation, my Surface Pro 2, my work laptop, my wife's laptop and her workstation.. server 2012 on the servers.

I don't understand what problems everyone is having with Windows 10.  It was a painless upgrade for me, except for my Surface which came with Windows 8, and crashed when I upgraded to 8.1, did a complete wipe using 8.0 and an upgrade to Windows 10.

I mean, seriously, Windows has been the same GUI overplayed MS-Dos since the 1990s...sure, there have been updates and features, but it all still works the same... I can open a command window, drop to Dos and do the same commands on Windows 10 that I used to do with Windows 3.1.... 

And it doesn't work well with Mobil computing?  Let me tell you about my Surface Pro 2... It is quiet, it is a little chunkier than my iPad, but unlike my iPad mini, it has a keyboard/cover with a built in spare battery for longer runtime...with the solid state drives and aluminum housing efficiently reducing heat and waste, it runs for about ten hours.

Seriously...if your computer keeps crashing on Windows ten, then either it is the computer that has the issue, or it is just not designed to run Windows Ten and you'll be looking to scrap it.  I have one PC still running Windows 7 because it is easier to run old school games like Diablo 2 on it... Other than that, it'll be recycled by next year.

Don't bemoan your inability to run Windows Ten on a PC that you prefer Seven or even XP on...if it works for you, great.  Maybe install Linux on it and play around with Ubuntu and Fedora.  But whining that "Windows 10 sucks" because you can't run it is as pointless as wishing you could run Apple's cannibalized BSD Linux OSX on your PC... If you really want to that badly, buy a Macintosh Mini.. They cost about the same as a PC anyways, and everyone should have at least one Mac in their Household anyways if you have a student in school.

As far as this "Forcing 10 on to the public" debate that I have seen going on for months... I don't buy it.  I have a catalog of every OS on disk from MS-DOS 5/Windows 3.0 to Windows 10.  I can always run a virtual appliance of Windows 98 on my PC, or 2000, or XP.. Etc.  progress happens because someone made it happen whether you wanted to or not... Either you roll with it or you miss the bus and make other plans.

Computers stop being useful when they no longer work the way they are designed to, not because they don't do the way you think they should...if you think your design is better, then build it yourself.

That is my view from the bridge...

Order Now and get this custom built system for the Holidays... a computer built for portability and gaming from Enterprise PC.

Start with a Corsair Graphite Series 380T Mini-ITX PC, add an

Asus H81I-PLUS Motherboard with ADATA XPG 8GB Desktop Memory, Intel® Core™ i3-4340 3.6 Ghz Dual Core Processor, XFX Radeon R9 280X 3GB Video Card, Corsair Hydro Series H55 Quiet liquid CPU Cooler and a Ultra - 850 Watt X4 Special Edition Modular ATX Power Supply.

The case comes in Black or White with Red or White LED exhaust fans.

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Order now and get this Gaming System for the Holidays!

And remember, I build to suit, so if there's anything you want modified, a bigger and badder video card, I can build it up for you.

Mp3 Skype Recorder is a good tool for small business.

Have you ever had a call come in at your small business and you hang up with the customer only to ask yourself afterwards when looking at your notes..."Did I miss something?"

I have been using MP3 Skype Recorder now for recording short phone calls for answering my Skype for business and it is a great tool.  It's helping me, by enabling me to go back to the call and review it in case I missed writing anything down.  It is very easy to use since it immediately begins recording the phone call automatically and allows you to save the call to a designated folder after you're done.  It is an important tool on my computer that anyone working from home should have on their computer or workstation.

More info can be found about this important addition to Microsoft's Skype at the following links.

https://mp3skyperecorder.com
http://voipcallrecording.com 
http://voipcallrecording.com/MP3_Skype_Recorder

Who's In Charge?

When working with a team of people, it's important to remember that everyone is a team member and works together for a common goal. Unfortunately, there are some people who seem to feel that they are the sole reason that the team exists and that their final say in the matter is all that counts.

I worked with several teams this week and one teammember is a good example of this.  He is the micromanager, the one calling all the shots and wants all the credit but doesn't want any of the hassle involved.  He ordered me to do suchandsuch and suchandsuch... and I complied.  As I was doing suchandsuch, he came over to me and jumped into the middle of my work saying "I'll take it from here."  When you are a technician and you've established what you are doing and want to take the work to the end and someone just jumps in, it's an indication that they do not respect you.  This micromanager told me to go take care of something else and then started checking my measurements to make sure they were all uniform with what he was doing.

This kind of teammember is the unelected boss of the group, the one who usually gets fragged first in every military movie.  Unfortunately for him, I don't work for him, I work for me and my contractor. This type of guy doesn't like the independent thinker, it unnerves him that someone might disagree with his ways or might know something more than he does.

Anyways, I pointed out that there was  a difference between doing something sloppy and doing it wrong... it's called tolerance.  And it's not like the work I was doing had to be so exact that it was life-saving and critical...he's just an egotistical megalomaniac.  Typical mentality of a laborer who doesn't measure twice and cut once.