Adobe has acknowledged a critical security flaw in its Reader, Acrobat and Flash Player software. Adobe says the vulnerability potentially enables hackers to take control of affected computer systems and that users running Windows, Macintosh or Linux might all be open to attack. The company is working to fix the problem. In the meantime, users of Reader, Acrobat and Flash are advised to ensure their anti-virus software is up to date. “It doesn’t really get any worse than a vulnerability like this,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, a security software company. He said that hackers could create a “booby-trapped Flash animation, or PDF” that would give them access to a person’s computer, potentially allowing them to harvest personal information or use the machine to send spam messages. In recent years, PDFs have become a popular means of sharing documents that are not easily altered by the recipient.

In a security advisory, Adobe said: “There are reports that this vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild against both Adobe Flash Player, and Adobe Reader and Acrobat”. Whilst it works to fix the problem, the company suggests upgrading to the latest versions of their software, which appear to be less vulnerable”.

Alternatively, the company said that advanced Reader and Acrobat users could delete or rename the “authplay.dll” file on their system but that doing so means users will experience a non-exploitable crash or error message when opening a PDF file that contains Flash content. Keeping anti-virus software up to date will also help to avoid problems.

If you feel that your network is at risk or that your PCs may have been affected by this vulnerability, call Responza at (206) 762-5100 for advice and support.

E-Mail has become an essential and unavoidable force in everyday business communication—billions of pieces are sent every week in the US alone. But it is far too easy to become overwhelmed with the contents of your inbox when you receive hundreds of messages per week, if not per day. Here are some indispensable tips inspired by professional organizer Elizabeth Bowman to make sure you are in control of your e-mail, and not the other way around:

When dealing with e-mail, be proactive not reactive.

• Forbid yourself from checking messages at inappropriate times like as soon as you wake up or in the middle of the night. Remember work/life balance!
• Limit the number of ways you receive information: services now exist to have both physical mail and voice mail become e-mail attachments to unite all your most important communication in one forum.

Take three steps to prioritize when to read and respond to messages:

1. Delete what’s unnecessary: spam, mailing lists, messages with attachments (save the file elsewhere and ditch the note)
2. Delegate tasks & responses. If you have staff who can deal with a message in a more timely and effective manner than you, don’t be afraid to pass it along. The “forward” button is your friend.
3. Decide your next step: if responding to a message will take you less than two minutes, don’t put it off till later. If it will take longer, set aside time on your calendar to respond. Set an appointment with yourself.

Messages in your inbox should fall into four specific folders:

1. Needs a response
2. Requires taking action (non-email)
3. Waiting for a response
4. Read & review (newsletters, mailing lists, etc.)

• Create a schedule for checking e-mail. Turn off automatic receipt and the distractions it creates. Instead, pick regular times each day devoted to checking and responding to messages. If people are expecting a more immediate response, don’t be afraid to set an auto-response to explain your schedule.

Check back soon for part 2 with Elizabeth’s tips on writing effective e-mail!

A recent study on laptop failure rates from SquareTrade, a PC warranty services provider, had some unsettling results: one in three laptops is likely to catastrophically fail within three years. But not all laptops are created equal, and some are more reliable than others. Here are the results among top manufacturers, from worst to best:

9. HP: They may be the laptop market share leader, but nearly 26% of their units failed within the three year study.

8. Gateway: The Acer subsidiary didn’t fare much better, with a failure rate of 23.5%

7. Acer: At #3 in overall sales, Gateway’s parent company was only marginally more reliable at 23.3%

6. Lenovo: A 21% failure rate from the Chinese-owned giant isn’t what you’d call inspiring.

5. Dell: Make fun of their ads and criticize their business practices all you want, but the oft maligned 2^nd place manufacturer was found to be more reliable than their top competitors, coming in at 18.3%.

4. Apple: They’re hip, attractive, innovative, and popular, but Mac Books aren’t immortal. Their 17.4% failure rate puts them in the middle of the pack.

3. Sony: Sony Vaio laptops aren’t cheap, but you get what you pay for with only a 16.8% incidence of crashing.

2. Toshiba: In recent years, they’ve lowered price without sacrificing quality: only a 15.7% chance of becoming a doorstop.

1. Asus: While not quite as much of a household name as many of the PC makers on this list, the quietly dominant Taiwanese company produces components for HP and Apple, and their own units experienced the lowest failure rate of all, edging out Toshiba with a healthy 15.6%.

Source: http://www.squaretrade.com, 2009

If you’ve been working with computers for any length of time, you know computers aren’t invincible. Hard drives crash, data gets lost, and it costs a good chunk of money to fix the issue.

Responza specializes in mission-critical data recovery for businesses like yours. We have IT experts who specialize in virtualization and backup.
The long-term solutions we offer could save your business thousands in recovery costs, but if all you need right now is a quick fix for a crashed hard drive, here are a few free tools:

TestDisk^* – cgsecurity.org
^*Only good for recovering lost partitions and making non-bootable partitions bootable again.

PC INSPECTOR File Recovery – www.pcinspector.de
supports the FAT 12/16/32 and NTFS file systems. Includes a ton of great features.

Recuva – www.recuva.com
The only freeware that can do a “deep scan” of your drives for lost files. It can take hours, but may turn up more missing data than the other options out there.

As for performance, I think Microsoft is going to surprise people. And if you’re working for an enterprise that hasn’t upgraded to Vista because it won’t run acceptably on your existing PCs, you’ll want to look again at Windows 7.
– Paul Thurrott, Supersite for Windows

Small business owners need a no-hassle, secure OS. Windows 7 is just that. Here are 5 benefits you’re sure to enjoy:

1. Improved Wi-Fi connectivity – Say goodbye to those woeful days of sitting in an airport, trying to find a signal. Windows 7’s Virtual Wi-Fi allows you to connect to multiple networks simultaneously, allowing you greater flexibility and easier connectivity.
2. Cut costs with “XP Mode” – All your old software and hardware will work fine thanks to the new compatibility mode in Windows 7. This saves your business the expense of forced upgrades.
3. Improved Security – Bitlocker on Windows 7 makes it easy to encrypt sensitive data on your computer.
4. Energy Efficient – This leaner, more efficient OS saves you money and is better for the environment too.
5. Improved Useability – Of course, we can’t forget the awesome new taskbar in Windows 7. The ability to peek at opened windows just by mousing over the icons works really well and saves you time. You can also quickly access your files with the jump lists.

If you’ve been disappointed by Vista in the past, now is the time for your redemption. Give Windows 7 a chance. You won’t be disappointed.

This technique is very cool for two reasons:

1. A flash drive is much more responsive than an optical drive since it doesn’t rely on physical moving parts, so the installation procedure will be faster.
2. It provides an easy way to install Microsoft Windows 7 on a system that doesn’t have a DVD drive, such as a netbook.

Before you begin

First, you need to have a USB drive big enough to store the files. I’d recommend at least 4 GB.
You will have to reformat your entire flash drive for this, so make sure all your files are backed up before you begin.
Also, check to make sure your computer can boot from a flash drive. Most newer computers can do this, but it’s always a good idea to check.

Using the DiskPart utility to configure your USB drive

The DiskPart utility allows you to manage disks, partitions, or volumes from within scripts or directly from a command prompt. You’ll use this simple method to configure your USB drive.

Step One

– connect your USB flash drive to a computer.

Step Two

– locate the command prompt shortcut on the Start menu, then right click on it and select the “Run as administrator” command. If you’re running Vista, that annoying little UAC window will pop up. Get rid of it and proceed. You can now launch the DiskPart utility by typing “Diskpart” on the command line. Now, the real fun begins.

Step Three

– locate the flash drive on DiskPart. Type in “List disk” into the command prompt. You can verify which disk # is the flash drive by looking at the size. If you’re still unsure, you can type “List volume”. This will tell you the drive letter as well as the label.

Step Four

– use the “Select Disk” command to shift focus over to the flash drive. For example, if your USB drive is Disk 4, you’ll type in “Select Disk 4″. It should then tell you “Disk 4 is now the selected disk.”

Step Five

– to complete the preparation, you’ll need to format your flash drive. Type “Clean” into the command prompt. This should be quick and painless.

Step Six

– type in “Create partition primary” into the command prompt. Once the partition is created, you should see a success message. The focus should then shift to the new partition. Use the “Active” command to mark the petition as Active. This will allow the BIOS to recognize that yes, you can boot to this new disk. The USB drive is now ready! Type in “Exit” to leave DiskPart and close the command prompt.

Step Seven

– copy the Windows 7 files. This part is easy. Just open Windows Explorer, double click on the Windows 7 DVD, click Ctrl-A to select all the files, then drag them all onto the USB drive icon. Copying the files takes a while, so sit back and relax. You’re almost there.

Step Eight

– to install Windows 7, you’ll need to restart your computer and boot to the USB drive. As your computer is restarting, look for a message during the POST about a particular key, usually Del or F2, that you need to press to enter Setup. Press this key as soon as you see the message. Once you enter the setup, you’ll need to locate and change the boot order. If this sounds too confusing, just ask your IT guy for assistance.

Once you save the changes and restart your computer, installation should be easy. The installation procedure will actually run much quicker than usual off the USB drive.

Have you ever worked hard on a report in Word, only to lose everything with a system crash? Well, don’t give up quite yet. Here are a few ways you may be able to salvage your lost data.

1. Open and Repair – Next time you open up Word, select the file in the Open dialog box, then click on Open and Repair from the drop-down list in the bottom-right corner.
2. Save the file in a different format – sometimes, converting the file to RTF or TXT will cause some of Word’s code to be stripped from the document, which could fix the problem.
3. Try opening the document from another computer – if this works, the problem is with your computer, not the file itself.
4. Check your e-mail – if you sent the document to someone else, you should be able to recover that copy by searching through the Sent folder.
5. Run CHKDSK – this will help you figure out the real source of the problem, and fix it if the issue is at the file system level. Simply click on the Start button and type CHKDSK into the search bar.

If all else fails, you may just have to fork over the cash for a data recovery program.