February 23rd, 2010 by Alex Nozdrin This probably happened to you at some point: you enter a web address or click a link, and your browser takes its sweet time to respond. Sometimes you need to click “go” again or refresh the page for it to get out of its limbo — and sometimes it just wouldn’t go to the page that worked fine a minute ago. You, being the power user that you are, curse [insert your ISP name here] under your breath and go to www.speedtest.net to see what speed you’re getting — only to find that the connection works as advertised. You even restart your router — and that doesn’t help either. Before you get on the phone with your ISP and hold endlessly while they’re “testing” the line, try our little DNS trick.
DNS or the Domain Name System is essentially your computer’s phone book for the Internet. It helps translate an Internet domain name like www.itmaxgroup.com into an IP address that your browser needs to connect to that website. Each time you visit a new website, a DNS query is issued in the background to one of the many servers that handle such translations. Your ISP configured one for you, but they likely send thousands of other customers to the same server – causing it to get overworked and slow to return the IP addresses your browser needs. Hence the low responsiveness you get during browsing. This doesn’t affect the speed of your downloads or bandwidth tests — just how long it takes you to go to new web destinations. Most of the time, all you need to do is configure your computer or router to use a different DNS server — and you’ll see the difference immediately. Here’s what you need to do:
There’s quite a bit of buzz out there about Microsoft’s newest Windows 7 operating system. You’ve probably heard it’s easier to use, more stable and secure, and packs a bunch of productivity features right out of the box. But you’ve been running Windows XP (with not much drama, you might add) since 2001, and keep wondering just why you’re supposed to switch. You obviously don’t have to. Although Microsoft will start significantly scaling back support for Windows XP in 2010, your PC will work just fine. There are, however, some things about Windows 7 that may make it worth it for a small/medium business like yours to upgrade:
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Wireless networks (Wi-Fi) seem to be at every stop these days: at hotels, coffee shops, schools, libraries and airports. In fact, you can walk around for blocks in downtown Chicago and stay connected by roaming among multiple free Wi-Fi hotspots and office wireless networks. The technology’s great convenience drives many businesses to deploy their own Wi-Fi networks, and doctors are no exception. We are getting a flurry of interest in business-grade Wi-Fi from our healthcare clients, and a lot of it is driven by the deployment of Electronic Medical Records Systems (EMR). Since many doctors now maintain patient charts and records electronically, doing so on wirelessly connected tablet PCs and laptops offers great advantages in patient experience, portability and doctor satisfaction. If you’re thinking of deploying a Wi-Fi network for your office, here are some things you should consider:
Let’s face it, the iPhone may be the coolest piece of consumer technology you can get your hands on today. It looks great, has a user interface unlike anything else we’ve seen from mobile phones and packs a ton of features for a relatively affordable price (an 8Gig 3G model was $99 at the time of this post). The question we get asked a lot, though, is whether iPhone is fit for use as a true business device in a challenging environment like a law firm. Here’s a quick rundown of iPhone’s features across categories that our attorney customers say matter to them.
