Remember the transporters from Star Trek? Did you ever think how cool it would be if we could do that? Wouldn’t it be something if someday we could actually recreate objects on the other end of a data stream? Beaming me up Scotty, might be closer than you think. Check out this video below to see what we are capable of today with 3D printers.

We’ve recently been seeing a rash of people infected with seemingly real but in reality what is completely fake anti virus malware. The user reports that they were surfing the web innocently enough and suddenly a window appears that looked like it came from Microsoft informing them that their system is seriously infected. The window wouldn’t close when clicked and when they restarted their machine the fake anti virus software appeared to have become installed on their machine and couldn’t be removed, urgent warnings of infections are appearing everywhere, popups to embarrassingly raunchy websites are coming up and the machine is basically unusable. Uttimately the software wants you to subscribe in order to remove these “infections” and this is the object of Fake Anti-Virus it's all about getting your credit card.

If this should happen to you, DO NOT CLICK on anything and do not attempt to navigate through the Fake Anti-Virus user interface, It is not legitimate and all roads lead to you inputing your credit card. Immediately restart your computer.

Hopefully you have caught it in time but if after the reboot, you find your machine is infected, you can try to restore it to an earlier time if you are familiar with how to do this but if all else fails call a professional to clean your computer as malware infections can be very difficul to remove and you may actually damage your computer if you're not sure what you are doing or following bad or incorrect instructions.

Check out the video below from SophosLabs to see a Live Demo of Fake Anti Virus in action.

Get ready for Windows 8

Although it is really too early to predict exactly when it will be released or what its official name will be, Windows 8 is generating an increasing amount of buzz on the Internet. Microsoft has hinted that Windows 8 will be released in the fall of 2012 but rumor has it that preliminary builds have been widely distributed for testing on various platforms.

There are a lot of stories circulating about the features that will be included in Windows 8 such as 128 bit compatibility, native 3D support, an App Store, Tablet support, O/S level facial recognition, Hyper-V, faster start up time and quite a few others.

We’ll keep you posted as the details of Windows 8 develop but earlier this month; Microsoft released this video of Windows 8 Preview for partners in Taipei, Taiwan.

Do multiple monitors really increase your productivity? Can you significantly increase your efficiency by not limiting yourself to a single screen? Is it better to have a single very large monitor or several smaller monitors?

This has been a topic of some debate for quite a while and there have been many research projects over the last few years seeking to prove all sides of the argument. Ultimately, it’s probably more of personal preference than anything but here at PCX everyone is equipped with at least two 20” LED monitors so in our opinion, for delivering IT support to our clients, it’s a no-brainer decision.

Determining just how much time per day is wasted minimizing applications, sizing windows and finding the program you’re looking for is going to vary from person to person depending on how and how much they utilize a computer for their job. But, over the years there are a few observations that we’ve had that seem to be fairly constant.

• People who try out a multiple monitor solutions rarely choose to go back to a single monitor.
• When multiple monitor solutions are first introduced to a limited number of individuals in an office, everyone else in the office is not far behind.
• Monitor prices have been steadily dropping for the last several years causing the ROI of the decision to continue to rise.
• Newer technologies like LCD and LED monitors operate on increasingly less energy which can have a dramatic impact on your electricity bill when multiplied by all of your staff.
• Dual and triple head video cards continue to drop in price making the implementation both easier and much less costly.

Which is better, one large monitor or several smaller monitors? it’s generally better to opt for multiple monitors for a few reasons. Really large monitors are exponentially more expensive than several smaller monitors and there are limits as to the resolution that can be used on a single monitor no matter how big the monitor is. So unless you just want a really big image, multiple monitors are generally a better and less expensive choice.

All things considered, utilizing a multiple monitor solution is a very cost effective way to increase productivity, increase efficiency and provide a more pleasant work environment for you staff.

Has this ever happened to you?

You decide to make an online purchase or join a web service or something similar and at some point in the process you are asked to choose a password. Oh great, another password to choose.

So you try to use your good old favorite password that you’ve used for everything for years only to find out that it doesn’t have enough characters in it.

So you add a few extra letters or numbers only to find out that it also has to have Letters and Number, so you fix that.

Then you learn it has to have UpperCase and LowerCase characters so you change it to satisfy that requirement only to find out it also has to have special characters as well.

After about half dozen or so attempts you finally end up with some really long password that you’ll never remember but you are happy to move on to the next step in the process.

We often find this totally secure, impossible to remember, very strong password written on a yellow Post-it note and stuck to the edge of the monitor...

The next time you have to choose a password, try to remember to visit http://www.safepasswd.com where you’ll find a free and very easy to use web interface that will help you choose a strong password that you might have an easier time remembering.

Here's a great story about one of PCX's clients Creme de la Creme  Early Learning Center in Sterling, VA where they recently got hit with record snowfall creating gridlock on their roads and causing some parents 5 hours delays and not being able to pick up their children until 11:30 PM.

Clearly this is a classic story of going the extra mile for your customers and doing whatever it takes.

I was speaking with a client the other day that had recently experienced a brief amount of downtime on a mission critical server for their entire company due to a hardware problem.

We were able to resolve the problem quickly and place the server back online but the experience led to further discussion between us about the cost of downtime and the value of network uptime to a company.

The Gartner research group estimates the average cost of downtime to be about $42,000 per hour per company. Since this is an average, some companies lose far less, while others report seven-figure losses per hour.

Because there are so many variables, it can be very difficult to calculate what the cost of network downtime is with just a few factors being loss of business, loss of discounts, penalties for late payments, costs of idle equipment and telecommunications, costs of facilities, the cost of repairs, missed deadlines, overtime, data recovery etc. but one component that is fairly easy to calculate and usually the largest cost is the lost productivity or idle labor associated with downtime.

As a hypothetical and, very crude example, for a 40 person company with an average salary of $50K per year per employee, it costs approximately $1,200 per hour of downtime just due to the lost productivity. As I said, this example is unrealistically low and does not take a great many variables into account with the actual costs being much higher.

Obviously this is a deep subject that we could spend a lot of time talking about but the essence of the conversation is that today’s computer networks are an essential component to almost any company’s productivity.

Many companies recognize the importance of their computer networks and how IT enables their business to function but some companies have to experience a significant downtime period before they place the proper value on their network uptime.

In any event, when I speak with people on this topic I always summarize it like this. "Downtime is expensive, very expensive and should be avoided at all costs. It is much less expensive to avoid downtime than it will be to endure or recover from it."

Take good care of your network and it will go a long ways towards avoiding downtime. Your business depends on IT.

In just a few short weeks the 2011 Super Bowl will be held at the brand new Dallas Cowboy stadium in Arlington, Texas and we thought it might be interesting for you to know just what sort of technology goes into  the IT side of this mammoth complex.

Deep inside of Cowboy Stadium lies a state of the art Data Center that many Fortune 500 companies would be envious of. It takes 13 IT staffers to support and operate this 100 percent HP network that consists of  127 HP Blade Servers and a 100 terabyte Storage Area Network that all communicates on a high speed Cisco network connecting IP Phones, IP televisions, 3,100 flat-screen televisions and 300 IP security cameras.

In addition to the stadium and team operation, the data center also supports Jerry Jones' 35-plus other companies in more than 90 locations.

How could we possibly get along today without much of the technology that we rely on? Isn’t it amazing how much these devices have become a part of our daily lives? Check out this video below for a fun look at some of these devices from a slightly different perspective.

If you’re not familiar with SSD’s don’t worry, these are not something that you’ll need to go get a shot of penicillin for. SSD stands for Solid State Drive and they are a direct replacement for conventional computer hard drives but with many advantages.

SSD’s are basically a big chunk of non-volatile memory that emulates a standard hard drive but because they are only RAM, SSD’s have no moving parts, they are extremely fast in their read/write speeds, they consume very little power and produce very
little heat.

All of these benefits make SSD’s an excellent option for laptops and other types of mobile devices. Although SSD’s have been available for a while now, they have carried a premium price tag. The good news is that SSD prices are dropping rapidly and they are becoming much more affordable.

The biggest downside to SSD’s is that they are relatively small is size when compared to conventional hard drives.  Common sizes for SSD’s today are 64 and 128 Gigabytes which is pretty small compared to an entry level 500 Gigabyte hard drive but depending on how and where you store your data, this may not be a problem for many users.

As their prices comes down, SSD’s will become increasingly popular so when it comes time to purchase your next laptop or notebook computer, it would be worth checking into if an SSD option is available.