SMH Electronics's blog

The Other Side of Hurricane Sandy

Wed, 10/31/2012 - 15:46 | SMH Electronics

Thankfully we here on the Southcoast of MA have all survived, relatively well, hurricane Sandy. We have had a busy few days trying to work out situations and problems that have occurred for customers with power issues. It seems like we keep saying the same thing over and over, back up, back up, back up. But as much as we repeat this mantra we still see customer problems with not having a current back up. If you do nothing else please formulate a plan for your data to be backed up. Ideally you will have a two tier plan with an external hard drive that you can swap out and an offsite or cloud backup in the event there is a critical physical failure at your location.

So once you have your back up plan what else do you need? Well that depends on your situation. Power, or the lack of it, has been a significant problem during this storm. It is not the actual loss of power that is wreaking havoc with systems but the back and forth of power, no power, power, no power. If your servers are set to reboot each time the power goes down and you don’t have a generator that is going to kick on then set them to a manual reboot. If you do not you could end up with damaging your hard drives. Other pieces of equipment that are in danger of failing during these situations are your workstations (desktops and laptops if plugged into an outlet) as well as any routers or switches. Each of these should be on a surge suppressor and ideally on a battery backup so that you have the time to save the data that you are working on.

The bottom line to remember, all of the issues with hardware and software that seem so critical now is never as important as you or your staff’s health and safety. To all of our friends and customers, stay safe and if you have any question related to your electronics please call us.

Q3 Drawing to a Close

Tue, 09/11/2012 - 17:01 | SMH Electronics

It is here, the end of the summer and all too shortly the end of the third quarter for your business. It is now that we all should take a good long look at what the year has developed into. Did you reach your goals? There is still time to accomplish those items you have been procrastinating about and finish the year off with some checks in that done column.

September is also the time when you should be planning you next meeting with your Accountant. Review your finances and make adjustments where necessary to reduce your tax burden before the end of the year. Is there a profit that you would like to offset with equipment purchase? Now is the time to plan for any system upgrades.

Keep your IT administrator in the loop with any thoughts of upgrading software and whether it is compatible with your hardware or not.

Technology is always moving forward and recently we have found that many companies still working with software designed for use on Microsoft XP operating systems are having difficulty replacing these systems because XP is no longer available for purchase and their older software does not run on Windows 7. We are also facing compatibility issues if you are running an operating system built on a newer 64-bit platform and the software is designed for a 32-bit platform. All of these issues and questions should be reviewed with your IT support person to ensure as smooth a transition as possible.

Not sure of about all of the issues related to your IT systems? Contact us at SMH Electronics (508-291-7447 or by email sgray@smhelectronics.com) for a full review of your systems and a cost effective plan to remain current with all of the changes in technology.