Picking a Computer Consultant in the 21st Century
So what do you look for in a Managed Service Provider? Here are a few things to start with.
1) They should monitor and patch all of your equipment.
2) They should provide reporting that makes sense to you. You probably don’t need and wouldn’t read a 200 page report every month. But you should at least get an email that tells you the health of you backup system, your servers, etc.
Seems like these days, almost all computer consulting companies list “managed services” as part of their service offerings. Anyone looking into hiring a company or individual to help with their computers will see managed services listed everywhere. But, what does managed services mean in computer support and what does the service include?
Unfortunately, the term “managed services” does not mean the same thing to all of these companies who offer it. And it doesn’t matter if you are comparing large national computer consulting companies or small local shops.
With the summer months approaching, we all welcome the warmth that the sun brings.But did you know that room temperatures above 80 degrees can actually decrease the performance of your computers, and possibly damage some of the components of your system? Computers and networking equipment such as routers work optimally when the ambient room temperature is in the low 70’s and below.
We recently had several of our clients experience loss of connection from both the internet and their network. A closer inspection of the problem found that they were keeping their routers on a table in direct sunlight. The added heat was forcing the routers to stop functioning until they would return to safe operating temperatures.