New Website, Windows 10, Electronics Recyling & More

New Web Site:  After 8 years, I finally decided to redo my web site.  The folks at Kapp Koncepts did a fantastic job in bringing my site up to current standards and it looks great! Feel free to stop by at DunwoodyPC.com.  If you see anything that doesn't look right, please don't hesitate to let me know. If you're looking for a great web designer, give Kapp Koncepts a call (678-336-5277), they are local and I have been working with them for years.

Windows 10:  Still don't do it.  Not yet.  Nope.  It seems to be relatively stable on a BRAND NEW installation but there's issues we've run across regarding public/private networks and printers which can render it unusable.  Plus I have clients at corporate sites (REALTORS, I AM TALKING TO YOU) where their IT folks have said DO NOT INSTALL.  You can still buy Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 computers.

Electronics Recycling Event: There will be a recycling event at St. Luke's Church on Mt. Vernon Rd on October 4th from 2pm to 5pm.  Bring your old computer equipment.  Unfortunately, you would have to preregister by September 25th to dunwoodyrecycling@gmail.com.  Maybe, just maybe, if you email them, you can be included.

Carbonite: I found out from Carbonite that all I need from my users is their account email address to be able to include them in my 'account portal'.  This way I can monitor and let you know if you haven't backed up.  I have already informed two users that something was wrong and they fixed it themselves!  Let me know if you'd like me to add you to the monitoring at no charge.  Or if you'd like to get set up as a new user, go to partners.carbonite.com/dunwoodypc.

Business IT:  To clarify my last email, I am not giving up providing Residential IT services which I have carved a great niche for here in the Dunwoody area.  For larger clients, I have enlisted the help of a partner of mine to service them with the same high quality support.  If you need that level of help, let's talk.  These guys are very competitively priced and anxious to help.

Geeky Want-To-Purchase #1:  My wife just got a new iPhone 6s.  It's slimmer, bigger and faster than my 2 year old iPhone 5s.  It also supports haptic feedback (press softly for 1 result, harder for a different result) and has much better cameras.  She ordered it from Apple, got it on Friday and had it set up within minutes.  If you do get a new iPhone, make sure that you restore from iCloud backup.  DO NOT set up as a new device and link to your iCloud account.  AT&T set me up that way once and it didn't link my info properly.  I ended up wiping out the phone and restoring from backup and it worked perfectly (except I needed to put in my passwords again)

Geeky Want-To-Purchase #2:  Some of you know one of my hobbies is fishing.  In fact, when I am fishing it's probably the only time that I don't answer my phone.  I do a lot of fresh water bass fishing off a tiny little 9.5' flat bottom boat with a 30 ft/lb trolling motor (slow.  like Prius with 4 flat tires slow.).  It's fun and relaxing.  But sometimes, boring when there's no fish biting.  There's a cool device called Deeper (buydeeper.com) which is a fish finder that talks via bluetooth to your smart phone and turns your phone into a fish finder!  I will be getting it for my anniversary soon, so I will make sure to give you a full report soon afterwards!

Chrome vs Firefox vs Internet Explorer 11 - This is akin to boxers vs briefs, mayo vs miracle whip, etc.  When I am setting up a new computer, I also ask which web browsers they use and why.  Most of the time, I get a question right back "Which one do you use Mr. Wizard?"  (I think they say Wizard, my hearing isn't that great.  In fact, not even sure if they say Mr.  They could say Twisted Blizzard for all I know.)  I use Firefox.  It's quicker for me then the others.  But a lot of it has to do with personal preference.  Internet Explorer 11 is not the train wreck security concern of the older versions.  Chrome was great, then bad, now good again.  Firefox seems to do everything I want it to do.  A wrong answer is "I use Chrome because Internet Explorer stopped working".  To me that say you attempted to work around a pretty dangerous symptom and not fix the problem in the first place.  Why did it stop working?  A virus?  malware?  Windows bug?  To me that's worth fixing.  Slapping Chrome or Firefox on your computer is a short term fix.

Other Notes:
*  Costco has the HP 8625 All In One Printer for Sale from 10/1-10/25 for $100 off, at $149. Item #869271. I have the older version of this, the 8600, and have been very happy with it.  It's ink but it's not as thirsty as other printers I have seen.

If you are sick of your smart TV manufacturer doing a poor job of maintaining streaming media content and capabilities (Netflix, Amazon, Hulu et al) get the Roku Streaming Stick! All you need is an available HDMI port and either a USB port on the TV or an electrical outlet for awesome streaming content!  A perfect example of why this is the right solution can be told by two of my clients where their expensive Samsung smart TV won't connect to Netflix. (link: http://amzn.to/1L1J7PI)