TechRepublic Resources
- 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
- Use a screen recorder to create better documentation
- Like most of you, I rely on TechRepublic for an overview of tools and tips that will make my job easier. While the tool I'm going to recommend today has been discussed on TR before, I think it's worth highlighting again, mostly because it has been so useful to me...
- Tags: Software, Recorder, Video, Tool, Camtasia, Corporate Communications, Productivity, Marketing, William Jones
- Blog posts 2008-02-28
- How invested are your users in their own computing experience?
- Joe Rosberg is a prince for drawing attention to Jessie's problem, and the challenges faced by the techs who provide support to schools. Let's face it, whether they're raised in an urban or rural setting, whether they attend a public or a private school, kids can be a handful. Even...
- Tags: School, Laptop Computer, Computer, Joe Rosberg, Help Desk, Productivity, Call Centers, Notebooks, It Operations, Hardware, Notebooks & Tablets, William Jones
- Blog posts 2008-02-28
- Valentines from the help desk
- Valentine's Day is here in the U.S., and a conversation with some coworkers about the holiday got me reminiscing about how we celebrated when I was a child in school. Every year, I'd decorate a shoe box or a paper sack with construction paper and markers. This would serve as...
- Tags: Card, Valentine's Day, Help Desk, Call Centers, It Operations, William Jones
- Blog posts 2008-02-14
- Does your help desk need to stock up on Windows XP licenses?
- Nobody has hired skywriters yet, but Microsoft intends to pull Windows XP from retail channels this June. We're not using Vista right now, so I'm considering laying in some spare XP licenses. Should you stock up, too? If your office is anything like mine, you've decided to...
- Tags: Volume-license, Stock, Microsoft Corp., Help Desk, Campus Agreement, Service Pack 3, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Windows XP, Operating Systems, Software, William Jones
- Blog posts 2008-01-30
- Palm has problems, but smartphones aren't going anywhere
- Last Wednesday, the 23rd, Palm Inc. announced that they would be offering cash rebates to customers who have experienced problems with their Treo 600 or 650 handsets. The rebates can be applied toward a replacement phone from Palm. In addition, any qualifying handsets that haven't been serviced twice already are...
- Tags: Palm Inc., Smart Phone, Handset, Palm Treo, Smart Phones, Cellular Phones, Handhelds, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology, Hardware, William Jones
- Blog posts 2008-01-29
- Ultralight-er than Air
- Apple Inc. announced an addition to their portable computer line during this month's MacWorld Expo: the MacBook Air. As I watched this entry into the "ultralight" laptop space, my thoughts turned to some of my issues with mobile computing, and why I'm not looking forward to providing Air support. ...
- Tags: Portable Computer, Laptop Computer, Computer, MacBook Air, Productivity, Notebooks, Hardware, Notebooks & Tablets, William Jones
- Blog posts 2008-01-27
- Set a reminder and avoid storm shocks
- Driving home during a thunderstorm last night, I was treated to quite a show. Lightning slashed across the sky, and I couldn't help but gasp as I saw several bolts hit skyscrapers along the Chicago skyline. Once my awe passed, though, I was left wondering about my power protection systems....
- Tags: Storm, Engineering, Productivity, William Jones
- Blog posts 2008-01-08
- Reminders of how little I know, and how much I take for granted
- There's a stereotype of a know-it-all computer support guy that has gotten some traction in the media (cf. The Office and Saturday Night Live). The personal style of these characters can be variable—taped glasses and an abrasive nerdiness or sarcastic stoicism paired with a fetish for sci-fi in-jokes—but universally they're...
- Tags: Software, Mouse, Computer, Acquaintance, Productivity, Mice, Tools & Techniques, Help Desk, Hardware, Peripherals, Management, It Operations, William Jones
- Blog posts 2007-12-30
- How do you handle help desk staffing during the holidays?
- I recently heard from a friend of mine who does tech support at another university. He's burnt out. In fact, he says in his email: "Work: I [expletive deleted] hate it." The things putting my pal under strain will sound familiar to many of you: an understaffed...
- Tags: Staffing, Morale, Help Desk, Call Centers, It Operations, William Jones
- Blog posts 2007-12-28
- MozBackup: a must-have for Moz fans on the bleeding edge
- Firefox and Thunderbird have their fans, and I count myself among them. I've been burned every now and again by instabilities in these apps, though. This time, I suggest a utility that makes it easy to protect your profile data. Firefox is the browser that I recommend...
- Tags: Mozilla Firefox, Backup, Mozilla Corp., MozBackup, Backups, Microsoft Windows, Web Browsers, Operating Systems, Software, Internet, William Jones
- Blog posts 2007-12-14
