Distribution groups let you send messages to any number of recipients, large or small, using only a single name. That’s right, you don’t have to enter each individual email address each time you want to send your team a message. A distribution group is also super easy to manage—you can add and delete recipients at will, so if someone joins or leaves the team, you don’t have to create a whole new list.

Follow the following steps to create a distribution group of your own:

1. Open Outlook and open your Address Book, located in the “Home” tab at the far right.

2. This will bring up your global address list. Click “File” from the top and select “New Entry…” This will bring up another window.

3. Select “New Contact Group” and click “OK.” This will create a new contact group.

4. You can now add members to my distribution group by pressing (you guessed it) “Add Members.” You can choose to add from Outlook Contacts (any recipient from your personal contacts), from Address Book (any recipients in the Global Address List), and New E-mail contact (create a new contact).

For Outlook Contacts and Address Book, another window will open that shows the list of possible contacts I can include in your distribution group.

5. Let’s say that I want to send a message to three of my office buddies. I double click each of their names in order to add them as members of the group and then click “OK.”

6. Now I give the distribution group a title by entering text into the “Name:” field.

7. Click “Save & Close,” and from now on I will be able to send to all three as if they were a single contact:

Pretty easy, huh? Now you don’t have to worry about remembering everybody on your team’s email address. Just don’t forget to update your distribution group whenever personnel changes take place in your organization.

Seriously though, you totally have to check out this video during your next coffee break.

We also created a few directed questions that you can ask your IT service provider so that you don’t fall victim.

So without further ado, here are the five most common mistakes that a small business can make with regard to its IT:

1) Using consumer-grade equipment to run business-grade operations
You want your organization up and running at all times, but you bought a home edition? Business products are more expensive for a reason: they work. Don’t cut corners to keep your budget down. It’ll come back to bite you sooner rather than later.

2) Using hardware longer than it should be used
Each piece of technology has a lifespan. Servers and PC hardware usually last between three and five years before they show signs of bloatware or failure, and yet we continue to see 8, 10, and even 12 year old machines in production environments. People seem to not understand that these things can and will die, and that they will be left in the cold if they don’t plan for this.

Three things you can count on: death, taxes, and hardware failure.

Note: There is a way to use the predictability of a technology’s lifecycle to your advantage. For example, in a technical architecture that employs thin clients and Terminal Services, all work is carried out on the server. This means that you can use the thin client until the day it drops dead and then go out and get a new one without losing any of your data. The cost difference is pretty big—about $330 for a decent thin client versus approximately $1,150 for a PC in the box—and thin clients have a working life of about two to three times that of PCs.

This technical architecture strategy highlights the strength of an investment in a server. Servers are more reliable than desktops systems, they are faster and more efficient in processing data, and they allow your employees to easily and quickly access that data. The fact of the matter is if you are going to invest in a piece of hardware—and believe me, this is a good investment—you should recognize that it has a limited lifespan, and you should plan to replace it.

3) Lax security
Whether it’s an easy password or an open environment, small business networks are almost always exposed somehow. Hacker culture has changed, and it’s time to stop pretending that you’re immune to attacks. Gone are the days when teenagers in their basements clumsily hacked networks just to get a little bit of attention. Today’s hackers want to silently slip into your systems, and the name of the game is financial gain. Every business ought to have a proper firewall to protect their assets.

4) Not taking advantage of backup software
Some operating systems come with basic backup software already built in, but small businesses seem to either not see it or ignore it. We recommend a more sophisticated backup solution to our customers, but every small business should be creating backups of their data and regularly testing them.

5) Working without a roadmap
Your business should be planned, and for the most part it probably already is. You have project plan; you have a sales process; you even have procedures in place for who goes out to buy coffee when the office supply runs low. But when it comes to IT, small organizations all too often are working with the blinders on. At the very minimum, you should be planning out your IT initiatives and upgrades at least once a year, if only to take account of your ongoing hardware and software needs. But you really shouldn’t stop there. You also need to plan ahead and budget for any additional manpower or tech support that inevitably jumps out to bite you when you least expect it. Establishing a baseline plan for your IT needs will allow you to get that much more out of those systems.

Every organization needs a technology roadmap.

In order for IT to help drive your business, you need to know at least something about your systems. Now, I’m not asking you to sign up for computer science courses in your free time, because—let’s face it—you don’t have any free time.

Luckily, you don’t have to review and evaluate everything that goes into creating your IT infrastructure. Here are a few questions you can arm yourself with to see through the hype, the buzzwords, and the fog, and get to where IT is truly delivering value in your business.

1) Is IT giving me the freedom to transform and grow my business, or is it holding me back (or, even worse, is it endangering my business)?
Before you can ask anything of your IT service provider, you need to ask this of yourself. The purpose of this question is not to get you thinking about the strategic use of this or that piece of technology. The point is to find the ideal means of interacting with and serving your customers, because at the end of the day IT is a tool to drive business.

2) Are we ignoring key business differences as we standardize across the company?
This question follows very logically with the previous one. As soon as business owners light on something that works, they often tend to mandate and standardize. While standardization can be a boon to your business, it can also choke some departments. Take the thin client-Terminal Services approach mentioned above in mistake #2. Just because thin clients are cheaper doesn’t mean they are necessarily better. Some employees will be perfectly fine with a thin client, whereas others may need to harness the awesome power of a personal computer. The crucial idea here is not to use blanket standardization with your IT because even though it may be simpler to manage, it might end up strangling your business. Instead, standardize selectively.

3) Who is in charge of implementing my technology strategy and enforcing my technology policies?
When you bring together your decision makers and your managers, the people who know what the company needs in order to succeed, don’t forget to include your top IT guy so that together they can start coming up with the methods of using technology to your advantage. However, this senior management group should not be in charge of implementing company-wide processes. This is the job of a designated process owner. This person takes the input from the senior team, designs the system, trains the users, and then after implementation, monitors the performance of both the people and the machines in order to establish metrics and ensure continuous improvement, which they then report to the senior team. What’s important here is that you realize that while you are in charge of creating the ideas, you should not be in charge of implementation. Now you just need to find the right manager who can.

It is for precisely this reason that when we at Responza are taking on a new client, we always start off with what we call an “IT Gap Analysis,” which allows us to evaluate current systems, processes, and strategies so that we can identify any problems or issues with their Information Technology systems and procedures. Following this, we regularly hold strategic planning sessions to ensure that business goals and IT plans are aligned.

To learn more about how Responza can help you circumvent these mistakes (and many others!), call 206-762-5100 or email solutions@responza.com today.

Click. Drag. Highlight. Go to the Page Layout tab in the ribbon at the top and manually adjust the indentation. What a drag. You may think you’re saving time because you know that you can access this in the Paragraph region of the Home tab in the ribbon, but you should know that there’s a way to do this sort of thing even faster: keyboard shortcuts.

Suppose you’re working on a proposal. You’re done with the content, and all that’s left before you send it to the prospect is formatting.

Let’s say you have a coworker who has a habit of stealing and hiding your mouse while you’re away. Instead of using Chinese Water Torture to find out where your mouse is and finish that proposal, you can take advantage of the built-in formatting styles of Word 2010 with these simple keyboard shortcuts, and devise a better way of getting back at that coworker later.

1)      Apply styles- through these keyboard shortcuts, you can quickly and efficiently take advantage of built-in styles of Word 2010 to create headings, bullets, and normal text in your proposal:

• Ctrl + Shift + N = apply Normal style
• Ctrl + Shift + L = apply List Bullet style
• Ctrl + Alt + 1 = apply Heading 1 style
• Ctrl + Alt + 2 = apply Heading 2 style
• Ctrl + Alt + 4 = apply Heading 3 style
• Ctrl + Shift + S = open the Apply Styles dialogue box, where you can choose any style available to the document

2)      Adjust font size- maybe your proposal needs some fine print, which is easy to create:

• Ctrl + ] (right bracket) = increase size of selected text by 1 point
• Ctrl + [ (left bracket) = decrease size of selected text by 1 point
• Ctrl + Shift + > = increase selected text to the next largest installed point size
• Ctrl + Shift + < = decrease selected text to the next smallest installed point size

3)      Modify line or paragraph spacing- add some white space and improve the readability of your proposal:

• Ctrl + 0 = apply or remove 12 points of space above the current paragraph
• Ctrl + 5 = apply 1.5 line spacing to the current paragraph
• Ctrl + 2 = double-space the lines in the current paragraph

4)      Transfer formatting- you can quickly transfer existing formats from one block of text to another, and you just add one key to the copy-paste keyboard shortcut that you already know

• Ctrl + Shift + C = copy the formatting of selected text
• Ctrl + Shift + V = apply the copied formatting to a new selection

5)      Remove manually applied formatting- this is especially useful when working with documents created by others who use extraneous formatting; get rid of all that manual formatting and get back to the document’s underlying styles:

• Ctrl + Spacebar = remove character formatting, leaving just the formatting of the default character style
• Did you know you can change the default character style? Click here to learn how.
• Ctrl + Q = remove paragraph formatting, leaving just the formatting of the paragraph style applied to the selected paragraphs

Using these keyboard shortcuts should drastically reduce the amount of time it takes you to format your documents.

Got a request for a Microsoft Office tip or trick? Let us know in the comments below or shoot an e-mail to solutions@responza.com.

Short of deleting your e-mail account, there are few strategies as easy as the following six:

Empty your “Deleted” folder. This may seem like a “duh” thing to do, but you’d be surprised how much space the messages you’ve already deleted are taking up.

Invest in a reputable spam detector and filter. Responza recommends Postini, a cloiud-based service operated by some of the best and brightest minds in the industry.

Unsubscribe from irrelevant or erroneous mailing lists.

Set up subfolders for mail that actually does need to be saved, and then use them.

Touch once, delete often – recognize that you only need to read an e-mail once before deciding what to do. If action is required, schedule what you need and then get rid of it.

Budget and schedule a finite time block to process your e-mails.

Think you’re up to the challenge? Send us some before and after screenshots of your inbox at solutions@responza.com.

Happy deleting!

Office Challenge #1:
How do I insert text above a table at the top of a word document?

If you’ve inserted a table into a new blank Microsoft Word document and you want to add text outside or above the table – but no matter how you try, you can’t get the text to place there – try this:

The active cursor is normally at the bottom or top left of the table. Hit CTRL+HOME to get to the very first character of the file, then ENTER to move it down. This may not look like it works, because the cursor appears inside the first/top cell, but hitting enter does indeed put the new-line outside of the table.

Note the change in cursor placement in this left to right succession of screen shots.

Office Challenge #2:

Why does a document that I’ve created in Microsoft Word look different on my computer than it does on the computer of a colleague in another office? Is this an Office versioning issue?

Don’t get frustrated trying to pin this issue on different versions of Microsoft Word. You’re actually trying to do something that Word documents aren’t really intended to do: Makes documents that look exactly the same on every computer.

It isn’t the version of Office that you’re running. It is all about the system/printer each person viewing the document is using.
The most common reason documents look different on one machine as compared to another is the printer. When Word displays a document in “Print Layout” form, it actually uses the characteristics of the currently selected printer to determine what the layout should look like. Obvious items such as default margins, paper size, and other characteristics of printers in general can have a document appear quite differently when viewed, or printed, on one system versus another.

In fact, if you have more than one printer on your system, you can watch this happen. (See inserted image.) While the document is up in Word, hit File, Print and then select another printer. When you do this the Cancel button will change to Close. Select Close, to close the document without printing it, and the document you’re viewing will be redisplayed, taking the characteristics of the new printer into account. Depending on the differences between your printers, the change can be subtle, or quite dramatic.

A secondary possibility is the use of fonts not common to all systems. If you create a document using one font, and then view that document on another system where that font is not installed, Word will attempt to substitute something “close” to the font you wanted. Unfortunately, “close” is fairly vague, and can often be startlingly different from the original.

The PDF is one approach to solving this problem. PDF (Portable Document Format) is a document format that attempts to be rendered exactly the same everywhere, no matter what your system or printer characteristics. The software does this by acting like a printer. It carries those printer characteristics in the file and when the document is opened on any computer it will appear the same – regardless of the printers installed on that computer.
You can create PDFs using Adobe Acrobat (the most recognized tool) or an open source version called PDFCreator.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t work if you’re trying to pass editable Word documents between colleagues.

Office Challenge #3:

Are there any shortcuts that make it easier to use my Outlook Calendar while I’m working in another view?

If you spend a lot of time in Outlook’s Calendar view, or needing to do something in Calendar view while working in another view. Fortunately, there are a number of keyboard shortcuts that can help (especially if you still feel a bit lost with the 2010 ribbon). There are more shortcuts than the half dozen listed here, but these seem to be the most popular.

[Ctrl]+2
Go to Calendar view from any other view.

[Alt]+1-9
View specific number of days, beginning with the selected day. For instance, if April 14 is selected and you press [Alt]+4, Calendar will display April 14 through 17. I use this one often.

[Ctrl]+G
Go to a specific date. When you press [Ctrl]+G in Calendar view, Outlook displays a dialog box. Enter a date or choose a date from the dropdown, and click OK. Calendar view will maintain the current view.

[Alt]+-
Switch to Weeks view. (That’s the hyphen or minus character to the right of 0.)

[Alt]+=
Switch to Month view. (That’s the equal sign to the left of [Backspace]).

[Ctrl]+[Shift]+A
Create a new appointment in any view.

Responza helps companies and organizations of a variety of sizes and types determine their best computing strategies and optimize their IT environments to get the most for their investments. Call Responza experts at 206-762-5100. Visit www.responza.com to learn more about how Responza’s IT pros can help you.

Summing filtered records is another matter. Trying the SUM() function will be surprising, so abandon that method and follow the method below:
Fig 1 shows a filtered list. It is obvious by the row numbers to the left that many rows are hidden. How the filter itself works is not covered here, but you can read more about using filters in Excel on another posting on Responza’s blog.

Fig 1

The next figure shows what happens when users try to sum the filtered values. It is obvious that the result isn’t correct; the value is too high. The SUM() function is evaluating all the values in the range D14:D64, not just the filtered values. There’s no way for the SUM() function to know that you want to exclude the filtered values in the referenced range.
Fig 2

The solution is much easier than it might seem. Simply click AutoSum—Excel will automatically enter a SUBTOTAL() function, instead of a SUM() function. See Figs 3 & 4. This function references the entire list, D6:D82, but it evaluates only the filtered values.
Fig 3

Fig 4

Responza helps companies and organizations of a variety of sizes and types determine their best computing strategies. Call Responza experts at 206-762-5100.

According to a recent survey from financial analyst firm Ernst & Young, only 33 percent of the participants indicated that social networking is a considerable challenge to effectively deliver information security initiatives. Interestingly enough the same survey revealed that only 10 percent of this group considers the examination of new and emerging IT trends as a critically important function.

It seems that almost everyone recognizes the fact that there are risks and information security issues related to social media but very few have actually examined social media and developed an approach that will balance the business opportunity with the risk exposure.

And there are risks associated with the use of social media. A recent article noted the frequency with which worms are identified as originating from Facebook that infiltrate friends lists without the owners knowledge and proliferate throughout their friends’ networks.

What were the participants’ greatest concerns/highest priorities?

Achieving compliance with regulations (55percent)
Protecting reputation and brand (51 percent)
Managing privacy and protecting personal information (44 percent)

Without an effective process in place (i.e. policies and accepted behaviors) to evaluate the risks associated with new emerging IT trends – such as social media tools which encourage the sharing of personal information – protecting privacy-related data could become increasingly difficult to achieve.

A couple encouraging points:
- Only 15 percent of those participating in the survey indicated that they don’t have a security awareness program in place.
- 42 percent plan on spending more over the next year on security awareness and training.
However
- only 34 percent currently use information updates on the risks associated with social networking.

In the participant pool of executives, 45 percent are attempting to control data leakage of sensitive information by restricting or prohibiting the use of instant messaging or e-mail for sensitive data.

Of course the most logical way to reduce the risks associated with social networking would be to restrict or limit the use of these tools in the work environment – but there is nothing to show that this approach is successful.

Statistical Source: Survey from financial analyst firm Ernst & Young as part of the company’s 13th Global Information Security Survey that included 1600 senior executives in 56 countries

Responza’s experts can help companies determine security strategies tailored to fit their needs. Call Responza experts at 206-762-5100.

Weighing the Pros/Cons of Desktop Virtualization

For:
The argument in favor of desktop virtualization is powerful: What burns through more hands-on resources or incurs more risk than desktop computers? Even with remote desktop management, admins must invade cubicles and shoo away employees when it’s time to upgrade or troubleshoot. And each desktop or laptop provides a fat target for hackers and an opportunity to steal data.
But if desktops are run as virtual machines on a server, those desktop user environments can be managed and secured in one central location. Patches and other security measures, along with hardware or software upgrades, demand much less overhead. And the risk that users will make mischief or mistakes that breach security drops dramatically.

Against:
The argument against desktop virtualization is almost as strong. Overhead costs conserved through central management get cancelled out by the need for powerful servers, virtualization software licenses, and additional network bandwidth. Plus, the cost of client hardware and Microsoft software licenses stays roughly the same, while the user experience – at least today – seldom lives up to user expectations. And then the kicker: How are users supposed to compute when they’re disconnected from the network?

Decisions about whether or in what form to adopt desktop virtualization become a whole lot easier when the basic variants and technologies are clear.

Information decision makers should have:
1. Desktop virtualization really is virtualization. Just like server virtualization, desktop virtualization relies on a thin layer of software known as a hypervisor, which runs on bare-metal server hardware and provides a platform on which administrators deploy and manage virtual machines. With desktop virtualization, each user gets a virtual machine that contains a separate instance of the desktop operating system (almost always Windows) and whatever applications have been installed. To the desktop OS, the applications, and the user, the VM does a pretty good job of impersonating a real desktop machine.

2. Traditional thin client solutions are not desktop virtualization. By far the most popular form of server-based, thin client computing relies on Microsoft Terminal Services (recently renamed Remote Desktop Services), which lets multiple users share the same instance of Windows. Terminal Services is often paired with Citrix XenApp (formerly known as Presentation Server and, before that, MetaFrame), which adds management features and improves performance – no hypervisors or VMs here. The main drawbacks: Some applications run poorly or not at all in this shared environment, and individuals can’t customize their user experience the way they can with virtual machines or real desktops. Nonetheless, people often refer to traditional thin client solutions as desktop virtualization because the basic goal is the same: to consolidate desktop computing at the server.

3. Desktop virtualization and VDI mean pretty much the same thing. VMware was first to promote the VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) terminology, but Microsoft and Citrix have followed suit, offering VDI solutions of their own based on the Hyper-V and XenServer hypervisors, respectively. Think of it this way: VDI refers to the basic architecture for desktop virtualization, where a VM for each user runs on the server.

4. Don’t confuse desktop virtualization with … desktop virtualization. The desktop virtualization discussed in this post refers to server-based computing. But “desktop virtualization” also refers to running virtual machines on desktop systems, using such desktop virtualization solutions as Microsoft Virtual PC, VMware Fusion, or Parallels Desktop. Probably the most common use of this sort of desktop virtualization is running Windows in a Parallels or Fusion VM on the Mac and has nothing to do with server-based computing.

5. No server-based computing solution supports the same range of hardware as a desktop. The Windows folks in Redmond spend half their lives ensuring compatibility with every printer, graphics card, sound card, scanner, and quirky USB device. With thin clients, support for hardware is going to be pretty generic, and some items won’t work at all. Other limitations are introduced by the fact that users interact with their VMs over the network. Multimedia, videos, and Flash apps can be problematic.

6. VDI solutions cost more (and deliver more) than traditional thin client solutions. With VDI, each virtual machine needs its own slice of memory, storage, and processing power to run a user’s desktop environment, while in the old-fashioned Terminal Services model, users share almost everything except data files. VDI also means a separate Windows license for each user, while Terminal Services-style setups give you a break with Microsoft Client Access Licenses. Plus, VDI incurs greater network traffic, which may add a network upgrade to the purchase order for beefy server hardware.

In return for that extra cost, along with a better user experience, VDI delivers greater manageability and availability. As with server virtualization, virtual machines can be migrated among servers without bringing down those VMs, can enable performance of VM snapshots for quick recovery, and can run automated load balancing, etc. If a virtual machine crashes, that doesn’t affect other VMs; with Terminal Services, that single instance of Windows is going to bring down every connected user when it crashes.

7. Dynamic VDI solutions improve efficiency. In a standard VDI installation, each user’s virtual machine persists from session to session; as the number of users grows so do storage and administration requirements. In a dynamic VDI architecture, when users log in, virtual desktops assemble themselves on the fly by combining a clone of a master image with user profiles. Users still get a personalized desktop, while administrators have fewer operating system and application instances to store, update, and patch.

8. Application virtualization eases VDI requirements even more. When an application is virtualized, it is “packaged” with all the little operating system files and registry entries necessary for execution, so it can run without having to be installed (that is, no changes need be made to the host operating system).

In a dynamic VDI scenario, admins can set up virtualized applications to be delivered to virtual machines at runtime, rather than adding those apps to the master image cloned by VMs. This reduces the footprint of desktop virtual machines and simplifies application management. If application streaming technology is added, virtualized applications appear to start up faster, as if they were installed in the VM all along.

9. Client hypervisors will allow virtual machines to run offline. A client hypervisor installs on an ordinary desktop or laptop so that “business VM” containing your OS, apps, and personal configuration settings cqn be run. Talk about full circle: Why place all that in a virtual machine instead of having it installed on the desktop itself? Two reasons: One, it is completely secure and separate from whatever else may be running on that desktop (such as a Trojan some clueless user accidentally downloaded) and two, all the virtualization management advantages are there, including VM snapshots, portability, easy recovery, and so on. Client hypervisors also make VDI more practical. A user can run off with the business virtual machine on a laptop and compute without a connection; then when the user connects to the network again, the client VM syncs with the server VM.

Client hypervisors point to a future where individual computers are brought to work and synched with business virtual machines to start the day. Any computer with a compatible client hypervisor can be used – anywhere. The operative word is “future” – although Citrix has released a “test kit” version of its client hypervisor, and VMware is expected to release its own early version soon, shipping versions will not arrive before 2011.

The long march to the server side. A completely different form of server-based computing continues to gain traction: the variant of cloud computing known as SaaS (software as a service), where service providers maintain applications and user data and deliver everything through the browser. A prime example is Google’s GOOG campaign for Google Docs. This encourages users to forget about upgrading to Office 2010 and adopt Google’s suite of productivity apps instead. Google’s Chrome OS also promises to create entire desktop environments in the cloud that retain user personalization.

Very likely, no big winner will emerge in server-based computing. Old-style Terminal Services setups will continue to crank along for offices harboring users with narrow, simple needs. True desktop virtualization on the VDI model will make sense where security and manageability are paramount, such as widely distributed organizations that use lots of contractors. And where far-flung collaboration is key, SaaS will flourish, because anyone with a Web browser can join the party. Conventional desktops may never disappear, but one way or another, the old centralized model of computing is making a comeback.

Virtualization strategies can tremendously impact the performance and the total cost of ownership (TOC) of business’s technology environments. Responza’s experts can provide insight and expertise that helps identify, design and build out the VDI strategy appropriate to each buisness’s needs. Call Responza experts at 206-762-5100.

Keep batteries at room temperature whenever possible.
That means between 20 and 25 degrees Celsius or about 65 to 75 degree Fahrenheit. The worst thing that can happen to a lithium-ion battery is to have a full charge and be subjected to elevated temperatures. So don’t leave or charge mobile device’s battery in a car if it’s hot out. Heat is by far the largest factor when it comes to reducing lithium-ion battery life.

Consider a high-capacity lithium-ion battery, rather than carrying a spare.
Batteries deteriorate over time, whether they’re being used or not. So a spare battery won’t last much longer than the one in use. Also try to buy batteries with the most recent manufacturing date.

Allow partial discharges (usually).
Unlike NiCad batteries, lithium-ion batteries do not have a charge memory. That means deep-discharge cycles are not required. In fact, it’s actually better for the battery to use partial-discharge cycles — with one exception. Battery experts suggest that after 30 charges, you should allow lithium-ion batteries to almost completely discharge. Continuous partial discharges create a condition called digital memory, decreasing the accuracy of the device’s power gauge. So let the battery discharge to the cut-off point and then recharge. The power gauge will be recalibrated.

Avoid totally discharging lithium-ion batteries.
If a lithium-ion battery is discharged below 2.5 volts per cell, a safety circuit built into the battery opens and the battery appears to be dead. Unfortunately, in this situation, the device’s original charger will likely not be able to recharge the battery.

Only battery analyzers with the boost function can do the job.
For safety reasons, do not recharge deeply discharged lithium-ion batteries if they have been stored in that condition for several months. For extended storage, discharge a lithium-ion battery to about 40 percent and store it in a cool place that is not exposed to moisture.

Lithium-ion batteries are a huge improvement over previous types of batteries. Getting 500 charge/discharge cycles from a lithium-ion battery is not impossible, but does require a little attention to the battery’s well being.

The mobile technology enterprise is vital in staying ahead of the competition, Responza’s experts can help can help businesses determine the best mobile strategy to integrate with and enhance internal IT infrastructures. Call Responza experts at 206-762-5100.

Right Click for Jumplists
New to Outlook 2010 is a Windows 7 integration feature that lets the user right-click on the Outlook icon on the taskbar and pop up a “jumplist” menu that lets the user create an e-mail message, appointment, meeting, contact, or task by selecting an item. (See Fig 1) Outlook doesn’t need to be open when the user clicks on an item, and the only part of the Outlook interface that opens is the part needed to perform the task selected.
Fig. 1

Outlook’s Mobile Options
In large corporations, IT managers may have set up Outlook’s mobile options for sending reminders, calendars, and messages to users’ mobile phones. But individual users can take advantage of this feature too by going into Mobile options (See Fig. 2) and selecting an SMS Service Provider; some offer free trials with no credit-card data required. The user can set up the SMS service to connect to a mobile phone number and get instructions for setting up the SMS account in Outlook. The user then chooses one of the buttons on the menu and sets up Outlook to send the reminders, messages, or calendars that the user need.

Fig. 2

Synch Outlook Calendar with Google Calendar
It may not be surprising that Microsoft doesn’t provide a tool for synching a user’s Outlook calendar with a Google Calendar. But Google does. Start by downloading Google Calendar Sync from this link:
http://dl.google.com/googlecalendarsync/GoogleCalendarSync_Installer.exe
Run the installer and follow the prompts. As shown in the screen shot (Fig 3), the user can choose different kinds of synching and different synching intervals—but the minimum is every ten minutes. Google Calendar Sync installs an icon in the Windows system tray. Right-click on that icon and choose Options to display the menu shown here.

Fig. 3

Create a New Search Folder
An underused feature of all modern e-mail apps is the “search folder”—a virtual folder that displays all messages that fit specified conditions. Outlook comes with four search folders built-in; the user can find them in the navigation pane under “Search Folders.” The user can create a new search folder either by right-clicking on the Search Folders folder on the navigation pane or by going to the Folder tab on the ribbon and clicking New Search Folder (See Figure 4). In the dialog box shown here, create your new search folder by specifying the criteria for the messages that you want to see inside the folder—for example, messages to and from your boss might go into a search folder named Urgent Mail, especially if the boss is in the habit of looking over your shoulder when you work.

Fig. 4

While users are learning to get the most from applications, Responza can help establish or tweak the network environment to optimize computer use and bandwidth consumption.
Call Responza experts at 206-762-5100.