Decatur Computers Inc. Blog

Patches are one of the most important aspects of your technology. As with anything, technology is constantly changing, so shouldn’t your software? Today we will discuss three tips, sharing advice on optimizing your patch management process. 

Small business owners are always looking for a way to shave some of that overhead off of their budgets. While this is probably true for most business owners, the more capital a small business can save, the more it can do. Outsourcing its IT management is one way to either cut down the company’s technology maintenance costs--or, if your company doesn’t currently have a dedicated technician--can keep you from paying way too much to keep your business running smoothly. 

The Windows operating system has quite a few shortcuts baked in, each offering a user quicker access to the utility they are seeking out. It may sound crazy, but using these keyboard shortcuts can actually eliminate the eight days the average employee accumulates every year by just moving their hand from their keyboard to their mouse. 

Most people today spend a lot of time on the Internet, which means that most people spend a lot of time using a browser. Little do they know, selecting the wrong one could easily put their cybersecurity at risk, along with dozens of other actions. For this week’s tip, we’ll go over how to make your Internet browser as secure as possible.

As time passes, your business will need to be able to grow and develop its use of technology through thoughtful investments and improvements. To do so, it helps to calculate the returns you can anticipate seeing from these investments. For this week’s tip, we’ll go over how to do so.

The modern workforce depends on collaboration, which is one reason why solutions like Slack have taken off in recent years. Another reason for this is that it’s very user-friendly with many shortcuts built right into the interface. Here are just a few of these shortcuts that can save your business time during the workday.

Microsoft Excel has a ton of functionality, but how much of it are you actually utilizing? This week’s tip will help you take full advantage of keyboard shortcuts, so you can leverage the solution to the best of your ability.

Collaboration is, in many ways, one of the most important parts of running a business. The issue is that you need to ensure your entire team is prepared to participate and work towards the same goal. This week we want to emphasize the importance of collaboration, and to that end we have provided six simple steps to better collaboration.

Smartphones have become an important part of our lives, whether it’s for personal or professional purposes. Downloading media to devices rather than computers was practically unheard of, but nowadays it’s commonplace. Now that we mention it… where exactly do those files wind up going on an Android device? This week’s tip is all about how to find your downloads on an Android device.

Thanks to file management systems that can be digitized and stored online, filing cabinets can be considered a thing of the past. Of course, you still have to keep digital filing systems organized, but this is easier to do and more efficient than paper files. Today, we provide you with tips on how to ensure that you can keep your files in proper order.

Facebook is a great tool to connect with people in both your personal and professional life, but having a business page on Facebook can attract a lot of attention--and it’s not necessarily wanted in certain cases. For example, what if someone started slinging expletives at your page without your consent? This doesn’t just hurt your feelings; it makes you look bad. This week’s tip is dedicated to blocking unwanted content on your Facebook page.

There’s nothing quite as annoying as a computer whose volume is either too low or too high. Today’s tip is dedicated to helping you assess and respond to sound problems with your computer or device.

With technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence entering further into our daily lives, what was once science fiction is becoming fact - assisting our lives (which most would agree is better than threatening our lives). For this week’s tip, we’ll show you how to leverage machine learning in a very basic way: in the Android version of Gmail’s Smart Compose feature.

I don’t mean to gross you out, but have you ever considered how disgusting your laptop is? Studies have compared the relative cleanliness of a keyboard and a toilet seat… and unfortunately, the keyboard wasn’t the cleaner of the two. This is why it makes sense to regularly give your laptop devices a good cleaning, and why we’ve put together some tips to ensure you safely sanitize a laptop device.

For this week’s tip, we thought we’d talk about something that most businesses have already dabbled in: the cloud. If your business is like those that we interact with, you’ve already implemented some type of cloud service, but if you haven’t, you should know just how cloud-hosted services can benefit the small business. We’ll look at the benefits of cloud-hosted services and how to pick which services are right for you.

For those of us that don’t have access to fiber-to-the-home or LTE Internet, the cable modem is a must-have. You can always rent a modem from your ISP or you can purchase your own, but no matter what your decision is, knowing what to look for when modem shopping is advantageous. Let’s take a look.

Why do manufacturers and developers constantly issue updates and upgrades to their software and hardware solutions? A business’s IT solutions might seem like something you want to set up and not think about ever again, but this is simply not how the cookie crumbles. This week’s tip is dedicated to why your organization needs to have a strategy in place to approach your upgrades.

When a business uses its technology the right way, it typically has positive effects on the business. That’s not to say that technology is a major priority for EVERY business. There are some business owners that don’t prioritize having the newest, shiniest technology on the market; and, that’s fine, if the business functions efficiently.

It’s no secret how useful the Google Chrome browser is to a user. What is a secret, however, is that Chrome has some added capabilities that make it even more useful than first impressions would suggest. For our Tip of the Week, we’ll review some of these capabilities so you can implement them into your daily workflows.

Like a well-oiled machine, any business needs its internal components to line up correctly, interacting with the others to accomplish the ultimate goal of the device. This is more or less how we always describe collaborative processes in the context of your IT. Here, however, we’re going to focus our tip on ensuring these processes are directed by employees who are ready to collaborate as well.