Had a customer recently who was having trouble getting linked excel spreadsheets to update in Word 2007, despite checking all the various autoupdate options. The quick fix was to hit Control+A to select the entire document, and then press F9 to update the links. That’s it!
I got an iPhone 4 about 2 months ago, in late June 2010 a couple of weeks after they came out. I got the recommended bumper case when I bought it, and have never used it without it.
There have been lots of comments and controversy about the “antenna issue”, etc. regarding losing service.
I have not had one dropped call. I can stay on a phone call in an elevator up to the 22nd floor of a building. I can make a call from 3 floors below ground in the parking garage of that same building. My battery lasts twice as long as the iPhone 3GS, and my wireless speed is great. The phone itself is great, and the resolution on both the camera and the screen are fantastic.
I do have one gripe – the proximity sensor which tells the phone to turn off the touch screen when its near your head doesn’t work too well sometimes, especially when its hot out and you get sweaty. What this means is periodically my phone will get muted by my cheek, and I find myself periodically having to check and see if this is the case because all of sudden the other person is saying “Hello? Are you there?”
That has been my only gripe, and supposedly they are working on a fix for it. If its a hardware thing, in a few months I’ll bring it back to the store and get a new one. No big deal.
The bumper case I have two gripes with – one of them is that the opening on the bottom has rendered my surround sound dock and my car connector for the iPod functionality useless because the opening is a millimeter or two too small. I could fix this with a dremel tool, and will probably do so when I have the free time. The other gripe I have with it is that when trying to scroll all the way to the left of the screen when highlighting text, I have to kind of dig my thumbnail under the edge of the case.
All in all, not a big deal. If you don’t like using cell phone cases, don’t buy a $400 iPhone. If you buy the iPhone and don’t like it, you have 30 days to return it. Please note I’m primarily a Windows/PC person, and work heavily with Blackberries, so I am not at all biased towards Mac products. I have owned both, and while I do miss a physical keypad sometimes, the benefit to the touchscreen is that it discourages me from attempting to text or email while driving.
Here are some common errors and issues I have seen customers experiencing lately:
1.) After performing a reboot of a domain controller or blackberry enterprise server for Windows Updates, the blackberry users stop receiving emails, etc. from the BES
FIX – go into the Blackberry Administration web page (5.0+) or the Blackberry administration tool, and restart the instance of your BES server. Wait about 15 minutes, and go to manage users and make sure everybody has checked in.
2.) Contacts/Calendar magically stop synching.
FIX 1 – this can be a number of things. For Calendar and Contacts, go into each icon, hit the BB menu button, and choose “Options”. Wireless Sync should be set to “Yes”. One thing to try is to change wireless syncing to “NO”, hit BACK and save, wait 30 seconds, go and change it back to “YES”, back arrow and change. It should start updating.
FIX 2 – If that fails, you can go into either icon you’re having issues with, go to options, and type “RSET” on your bb keypad. Note: it will not display as you are typing it. Select Yes to erasing your device (it will say Desktop by it is referring to the device content) calendar and reloading a copy from the server.
This works for both calendar and contacts.
FIX 3 – Go into settings/options -> Advanced Options -> Service Books – scroll down to the ones named “DESKTOP”. Get rid of ones with “MIME” “SYNC” and “CAL” in the name. Before you do this, make sure your BB Admin for your network is available, and once done, have him do “Resend Service Books”.
Other tips I recommend -
Random miscellaneous issues – try a battery pull.
Blackberry doesn’t work right at all – wipe the device and re-do the enterprise activation.
Use the latest firmware for your phone – Go to settings/options -> Advanced options -> Wireless upgrade and make sure you have the latest firmware for your phone.
Are you getting errors trying to scan a PDF to email on a multifunction office copier?
When you have an exchange server, and a Konica C550 or other similar multifunction office machine, here are some things to check:
1.) Create an email box on Exchange for the device
2.) Check the TCP/IP settings, and point your copier to the IP address of the Exchange server (rather than hostname, to rule out DNS resolution errors)
3.) You have to create an Exchange connector – I will not detail this here as you can google it. In a nutshell, you have to create an exchange connector with the IP address of your copier as being allowed to send email without logging in. After you do so, make sure to go into services.msc and restart Microsoft Exchange Information Store.
I normally don’t like to post things like this, but I’m fresh off the phone and freshly aggravated. This is not the first time with this kind of thing with Dell for me either.
In November of 2009, I assisted my best client in purchasing an extended warranty for their office desktop. It wasn’t cheap – I don’t remember the exact cost but it was in the 200-300 range. We purchased the Dell ProSupport for IT – basically, when you have an IT guy (me) already, I do the troubleshooting and call Dell and tell them “Hey, the DVD drive is busted” or whatever the issue is, and they send out the part and a tech to fix it. This particular computer is about 250 miles away at a weekend home, so it’s not exactly practical for me to visit in person.
Today is what, 8 months later? For some reason, they never updated the service contract on the service tag, so after explaining this in online chat, I provided the order number for the warranty renewal we purchased. The rep then said “Unfortunately, because it doesn’t reflect on the service tag yet, you’ve reached the basic workstation dept. I’ll need to transfer you.”
Great. Generally the word “transfer”, especially with Dell, means being sent to the wrong place after long hold times, only to get someone who has no clue who you are. In another life, I worked various phone support roles. We weren’t allowed to “blind transfer” people – we had to stay on the line until we got through, and expain everything to the next rep.
So, after 45 minutes of staring at a screen saying “You are next in the queue” and not getting my session picked up, I decided to call.
After punching in the express service code, and giving the rep all of my information, again it’s “Oh you don’t have that type of warranty”. I explained the story, again, and provided the order number (twice, bit of a language barrier it would seem…) to be told “Oh, you need to be transferred”. I asked him if he had updated the records showing I had the correct warranty, so I wouldn’t keep going through this. He explained I’d need to call back during business hours and speak to customer service to resolve that. I asked him “Well, instead of just passing the buck, or making me do it since I’ve already paid for it, why don’t you handle it?” He explained “Oh, well they are closed now.” to which I responded “OK, so make yourself a note and take care of it tomorrow while they’re open”.
This is one of the things I find everywhere – nobody seems willing to help the customer if is at all outside of their normal duties. I can’t imagine telling one of my customers “Yes, well I sold you this, but I can’t help you – you’ll have to call back and speak to somebody else”. We’d be out of business.
We used to have a saying in a call center I worked at, that our job as representatives made us better customers for one – we didn’t unnecessarily give people on the other end a hard time, but secondly, you had better give us good customer support, because when you do it for a living, you don’t tolerate poor customer service.
Get it together, Dell. I don’t have to keep buying your hardware.
Future Tech Systems supports local charities. This week, the owner and his fiance donated their good used work clothes and kitchen appliances to the Norwalk Emergency Shelter in South Norwalk, CT. If you would like to donate money or goods, you can find all the info below:
I both use and work on Brother MFC printers quite regularly. They’re affordable, reliable, and generally easy to use… except when it comes to some of the scan to features.
Because this has come up quite frequently recently, I figured I would share some of my tips to make things work properly.
Problem 1 - When you scan documents, they come up as individual JPEGs instead of PDF documents.
Solution – Go into ControlCenter3. It’s the little blue square icon that says “CC3″ on it. You may have to show inactive icons. Once in, click on Configuration at the top, and choose Scan->File.
There will be two tabs – Software Button and Device Button. The software button is the settings for when you choose “Scan” from the CC3 program. Some people may want different settings depending on how they scan. The device button is for when you press Scan on the Brother MFC and choose Scan to File. Where it says File Type in the dropdown window, change it from *.JPG to *.PDF for both the software and the device button, assuming you want it that way. That’s it! You’re done!
Problem 2 – The Scan To File feature is not working on your Brother MFC, or your PC isn’t listed, etc.
Solution – this one is a little more complex. Sometimes, when installing the software people don’t click the box labeled “Add this computer to the Scan To” button. Previously my fix had been to uninstall and reinstall the software, but there is an easier way that is a little bit hidden.
The first thing is to check your router configuration on your network to make sure it allows UDP ports 54925 and 54926 through. As it is outside the scope of this article, I will leave instructions on that part out, as there are many router types, and to be honest, if you don’t know how to do it on your router, you should probably have your local IT Professional do it (Us!).
The second thing is to add an exception into Windows Firewall/Norton Internet Security/etc. – you need to allow ports 54925 and 54926 through. I have Vista on this particular machine, so basically you just open up the windows firewall settings, do “Add Port” and add in those two specific ports.
The third thing is the “hidden” part – it took me quite a bit of digging to find this, so I figured I would share it and make your life easier. Go into the Control Panel (generally off the start button) and choose Scanners and Cameras, and bring up the properties for your Brother MFC. There are a few tabs – Start with the Events tab and make sure when you choose the scan button from the printer it starts Control Center 3. Next go to the Network Setting tab. I prefer personally to use a static IP for my printer and machine in my home office, and just specify the IP address of the printer here. If you use DHCP or just don’t know the printers IP Address, choose Browse and you can use its NetBIOS name. Next, on the Scan To tab you will see “Register your PC with the “Scan To” functions at the machine” and a display name for what you want to call your computer. When having issues, and I’ve tried Windows Firewall and router settings for the ports, I uncheck this box, click OK, open the properties back up, and recheck the “Register your PC…” box.
After all of that, power cycle your Brother MFC, and give it a try!
This past week, Future Tech Systems completed training and certification on Speakeasy’s VOIP and broadband services. We can now provide not only the technical expertise to handle your phone system needs, but cost savings as well! We can now offer standalone phone systems where you host all the equipment yourself, or hosted VOIP solutions which requires very little capital expenditure compared to a traditional customer owned PBX type setup. We can provide IP phone system solutions with Polycom, Linksys, or Cisco phones to increase your productivity and reduce your costs!
Speakeasy Certified VOIP Partner
There are many times in the computer repair business when we come across silly, annoying errors. Most recently, I was repairing a computer that just needed to be reformatted and have the software reinstalled. We reinstalled Vista, and installed Office 2003 (as opposed to Office 2007). The license agreement was popping up every time we opened any office application. Unfortunately I didn’t save the link so I could give the individual credit, but User Access Control, also known as UAC in Windows Vista, was apparently the problem.
UAC is the notification that dims your screen and pops up with a message asking permission to do things. Basically, the background features of UAC were preventing Outlook from making the changes it needed to the registry to show that we had accepted the license agreement. Basically all that was necessary was to go to Start->All Programs->Microsoft Office and right click on one of the office applications. Choose “Run as Administrator” and then accept the license agreement. Close the program, and open it back up. VOILA! You’re all done!
Windows 7 Ultimate Upgrade – $209.99 for the software (our cost), $100.00 for installation. Includes up to 2 hours of onsite time! Let us come to you; bring your laptop in to your office, and we’ll come install it there, have us come on the weekend or during the week and we’ll install it at your house, your choice.
Before installation, we will evaluate your existing system for free, and if necessary, assist you with any upgrades or replacement of your system.
Buying a new computer and need some help? Give us a ring!