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- Go under your Mac's hood with the OS X Terminal
- Apple's Mac OS X has a powerful command-line interface that many users will never even know exists. It's not for everyone, but for techs the Terminal can be a powerful tool. If you haven't explored the command-line resources provided with OS X, here's where to begin. by William Jones
- Tags: Apple Macintosh, Apple Inc., Unix, Terminal, Command-line Interface, Apple Mac OS X, Desktops, Apple Mac OS, Operating Systems, Software, Hardware, William Jones
- Blog posts 2008-07-31
- Sysadmin Day: a day for techies to celebrate each other
- Systems Administrator Appreciation Day was originally created so 'civilians' could commemorate the individuals they rely on for their technology support. IT folks shouldn't lie idle this Friday, though. They should use the day to thank the people who support them. by William Jones
- Tags: System Administrator, William Jones
- Blog posts 2008-07-24
- Supporting support: Where does the help desk fit in your IT planning?
- There are lots of best practices that have been developed for IT management, but an organization's culture might resist efforts at standardization. This time, a peek behind the curtain to see a particular problem for small offices -- scaling support capacity. by William Jones
- Tags: Staffing, Information Technology, Help Desk, Call Centers, Strategy, It Operations, Management, William Jones
- Blog posts 2008-07-17
- Keep Thunderbird from building too big a nest on your hard disk
- Mozilla's Thunderbird is a great cross-platform alternative for reading e-mail. I've found that the software can require some tuning to provide the best possible experience, though. Here's a tip to keep your Thunderbird install speedy and healthy: compact your mailboxes. by William Jones
- Tags: Hard Drive, Mailbox, Mozilla Thunderbird, E-mail Clients, Software, William Jones
- Blog posts 2008-07-10
- If your users must IM, at least spare them from using adware
- IM clients from the biggies--AOL, Yahoo, MSN and so on--are full of annoying advertising. Spare your users from the sales pitch and put the focus back on communication by providing alternative client software. William Jones looks at Adium and Pidgin. by William Jones
- Tags: Adware, Advertisement, Open Source, IM, Jabber, Pidgin, Instant Messaging, Internet, Online Communications, William Jones
- Blog posts 2008-07-03
- Lines in the sand: Three requests support techs should turn down
- There's policy, and then there's real life. Users often make inappropriate requests from the help desk and its techs. Look out for these big ones, and make sure that your support staff is prepared to refuse them. by William Jones
- Tags: Help Desk, Call Centers, It Operations, William Jones
- Blog posts 2008-06-26
- What can support pros learn from their auto mechanics?
- An examination of how good mechanics attend to their customers can provide some guidelines for how the help desk can provide a high level of service. Six tips for support pros. by William Jones
- Tags: Car, Mechanic, Mechanics, Help Desk, Call Centers, Productivity, Product Marketing, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), It Operations, Marketing, Enterprise Software, Software, William Jones
- Blog posts 2008-06-18
- Balancing support and security: Do you encrypt your drives?
- This story has become all too familiar: a mid-level employee leaves the office with a pile of private data on his or her laptop, and then the computer is lost or stolen. Employee loses job, employer is humiliated, customers are angry. It's become obvious that computing support pros and system...
- Tags: Disk, Encryption, TrueCrypt, Security, William Jones
- Blog posts 2008-06-01
- Advanced partition management on your Apple computer
- I don't know about you, but a partition editor has been part of my computer support tool kit for a long time. All modern OSs include basic tools that will let you format and partition a volume. This isn't enough for me, though. I like having a partition tool that...
- Tags: Apple Macintosh, Apple Inc., Partition, Tool, PartitionMagic, iPartition, Productivity, Desktops, Hardware, William Jones
- Blog posts 2008-05-29
- Keep your training classes useful with these four rules
- I've been conducting a number of training sessions for my colleagues lately. We've been integrating a departmental wiki site into our computing environment, and it's introduced some significant changes to our internal culture, as well as being a software platform that most people haven't used before. I'm really excited about...
- Tags: Training, Training Session, Workforce Management, Wiki, Human Resources, Online Communications, William Jones
- Blog posts 2008-05-27
- A scalpel specially designed for PDFs
- A few months back, I posted an article detailing some of the software tools that I use to provide support for PDFs in my office. My goal was to avoid shelling out big bucks for the expensive, bloated, and buggy packages from Adobe. Turns out that many of you have...
- Tags: Adobe Systems Inc., Adobe PDF, Tool, PDFill PDF Tools, Ghostscript, Productivity, William Jones
- Blog posts 2008-05-12
- Don't waste your time supporting problems that don't exist
- We're moving some staff into a new suite of offices, which means that we're shopping for new furniture. This is also a great opportunity for us to choose some new workstation equipment to standardize on, and I've been talking with a very competent sales rep that has been helping us...
- Tags: Office, Kurt, Jim, Keyboards, Sales Strategy, Hardware, Peripherals, Sales, William Jones
- Blog posts 2008-04-30
- What's more important at the entry-level, a service attitude or technical aptitude?
- I'm looking at hiring people for a couple of new IT positions in my office. One of these jobs is for a full-time professional that we hope can help us on some upcoming Web development projects. The other position is for a part-time support assistant, and since we're based here...
- Tags: Hiring, Customer Service, Position, Qualification, Recruitment & Selection, Product Marketing, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Human Resources, Workforce Management, Marketing, Enterprise Software, Software, William Jones
- Blog posts 2008-04-29
- Use asset tracking to provide better support
- The small research department I inherited was pretty thin on IT practices when I joined up. There weren't too many users to worry about, so the previous tech manager could get by without having many documentary procedures in place. He kept most of the maintenance history of his machines in...
- Tags: Asset, Department, Hardware, Help Desk, Insurance, Financial Planning, Call Centers, It Operations, Business Operations, Corporate Insurance, Finance, William Jones
- Blog posts 2008-04-29
- Password redundancy for the help desk: Craft your own escrow
- Proving you are who you say you are has gotten more complicated over the last few years. There are new technologies for user authentication popping up all the time. We've seen the rise of security tokens and client certificates, key pairs and biometric devices, and they all have their purposes....
- Tags: Escrow, Password, Security Best Practice, Help Desk, It Operations, William Jones
- Blog posts 2008-04-07
- Help desk "support" means more than answering calls
- One thing I really don't like about my job is being on call for AV presentations. As the only support pro for my office, there are a lot of things that I wish I could delegate, but being AV guy is at the top of the list. ...
- Tags: AV, Help Desk, Call Centers, It Operations, William Jones
- Blog posts 2008-03-28
- Breaking my hoarding habit: spring cleaning behind the help desk
- I have a confession to make. I'm a bit of a hardware pack rat. When you work computer support and are pulling boxes off of the line regularly, this quality can put you on a slippery slope. Maybe it was my upbringing, but I really hate discarding...
- Tags: Storage, Help Desk, Hardware, William Jones
- Blog posts 2008-03-27
- Hard disk recovery ice capades
- One of the first things I remember reading on TechRepublic was an article with 200 tips and tricks for recovering data from failing hard disks. One of the most outlandish ideas contained in that mountain of advice was the suggestion that you can sometimes resuscitate a drive that's experiencing mechanical...
- Tags: Hard Drive, Apple Macintosh, Ice, Cold Calling, Sales Tools, Sales, William Jones
- Blog posts 2008-03-26
- Warding off the gremlin help desk calls
- Many of the problems I'm called for are teeny mysteries. Gremlins, if you will. (I mean these gremlins, not Joe Dante's Gremlins.) These calls are about program settings that have changed mysteriously, or an e-mail that won't send. Gremlins don't cause emergencies, usually just annoyance. But if a user's work...
- Tags: Problem, E-mail, Help Desk, Monitors & Displays, Online Communications, It Operations, Hardware, Components, William Jones
- Blog posts 2008-03-25
- Help desk rants: What do you need to get off your chest?
- My neighbor at the office and I have something we call Saucy Fridays. Whenever it's coming to the close of the week, and one of us feels like we're down to our last nerve, we'll warn the other by declaring "I'm having a Saucy Friday." It's a...
- Tags: Help Desk, Call Centers, E-mail, It Operations, Online Communications, William Jones
- Blog posts 2008-02-29
