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The simpleroute Blog

  • Spear-phishing - Read E-mail With Care
    April 7, 2011

    Epsilon, a company entrusted with large amounts of personal information on customers for all sorts of businesses was recently forced to notify large numbers of customers of a potential data breach. Best Buy, Marriott International and Scottrade are just a few of the big names who relied on Epsilon to store e-mail addresses, personal names, marital status and other personal information. While much of this information may be public in some form, the breach itself puts linked personal information in the hands of people who have ways of using it against you.

    You've probably been told time and time again to be careful of people soliciting you for information via e-mail. Occasionally you might even see such e-mails hit your inbox - maybe an e-mail that appears to be from a bank where you don't have an account asking for you to change your account password. The information gained from this recent leak allows spammers to target those informations to you using personal information to...

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  • Used Computers - Caveat Emptor
    October 20, 2010

    The desire to cut costs has lead a lot of businesses and individuals to consider used computers to replace previously failed PCs or act as basic data entry PCs as they expand. While this choice can yield positive results, it's important that consumers understand the pros and cons of used PC equipment and understand alternatives that are out there that can often times yield better options in both the short and long term.

    Reasons Behind Choosing a Used PC

    Perhaps the largest reason people go with used PCs is the cost. Most people who replace their old PCs feel their old machine no longer provides them a value and thus must not have value anymore. Often times, people will give away old machines instead of having to pay to place them in a recycling facility. As a result, there is an abundance of older PCs that are cheaply available to local repair centers that are willing to take from their inventory of aging hardware and 'fix-up' old PCs they came across cheaply....

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  • Cut Costs With Creative Networking
    October 4, 2010

    While the economy slowly starts to regain momentum, a lot of us as small business owners learned a valuable lesson about frugality during the slowdown of the last few years. To that end, one large expense faced by businesses is their internal network infrastructure. At simpleroute, we specialize in creative networking solutions that can help you cut costs while remaining productive. 

    Breathe Life Into Existing Hardware

    The constant replacement of machines before their time has come can be a financial drain on any business. Often times, PCs just require a simple tune-up rather than full on replacement. While viruses and other malware can certainly slow a machine, a full systems tune-up isn't limited to just virus removal. Tweaks can be performed at the operating system level and the addition of cheap hardware can often times provide large boosts in productivity in a very cost effective fashion.

    Should your network include a server, there are also ways to...

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  • Decline of Newsletters & Bulk E-mail
    August 9, 2010

    Every business needs to keep in touch with it's clients. The ease of communication enabled by email combined with the ability to send a single message to a large number of people made un-targeted mass emailings and newsletters an easy way to keep in touch. Today, however, users receive a huge amount of unsolicited bulk e-mail (UBE). Discerning between UBE and a newsletter that may be desired can be difficult for end users and as a result most users have become turned off to company mailings in general. In reality this is all for the better as the web has evolved into a far better medium to reach clients.

    The Downsides of Mass Emailing and Newsletters

    As spam has grown on the Internet, so have the methods used to detect and eliminate it. While legislation almost always trails new technology, it's finally caught up in the mass emailing arena. The CAN-SPAM Act has imposed guidelines for any business sending...

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  • The Expense of Exchange
    July 10, 2010

    Exchange is something that we've grown to use as up until recently, there wasn't much of an alternative that provided similar services.  Exchange has always had an eye on scalability.  With it's inclusion into Microsoft Windows Small Business Server, Exchange started targeting small businesses as well.  

    Due to the features of Exchange, including it's maintenance and system requirements, newer cloud based alternatives are becoming more attractive as they offer large cost savings with comparable feature sets.  In particular, Google Apps Premier has a feature set that matches or exceeds that of current Exchange setups - particularly for small businesses.

    Why are we using Exchange now?

    Simply put, most users rely on Exchange due to one of the following reasons:

    • Mobile sync options
    • Remote access via Outlook Web Access
    • Calendar features
    • Ability to scale as business grows across multiple servers to handle load
    • ...
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