Hill Top Information Technology

Adobe just killed off its boxed version of Creative Suite, which includes widely used software such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and Dreamweaver.  They’re replacing it with “Creative Cloud“.  So now instead of buying the normal retail box version of the software which can cost thousands of dollars, it gets rented for about $50/month.  It’s brilliant, actually…

Why?  Two reasons:  It gives Adobe an even cash-flow, and it effectively defeats software piracy.  But that’s not the bad news.  What’s really going to change is when other companies such as Microsoft, Autodesk, and many others start modeling their software distribution after Adobe.  In a few years, it’ll be cloud everything and retail software will simply cease to exist.

And why not?  Why pay $800 for Photoshop that’s going to be outdated in six months when you can rent the cloud version and always have access to the latest features for $20/month?  Why spend $3,000 on AutoCAD when you can get it for $15/month?  Why buy Microsoft Office for $400 when you can rent it for $10/month?  Do you see where this is going?

But it doesn’t stop there.  Dell and HP are changing their server business to support hypervisor hardware, and they’re slashing the PC offerings.  IBM is getting out of the server business just like they got out of the laptop and workstation business.  PC sales are falling year after year in favor of mobile devices.  A large percentage of the newest generation of young people don’t and won’t own a PC.  Exchange servers are being replaced with Google Mail.  Entire MRP’s and CRM’s are going to Google Apps.  Back-end servers are going to public cloud data centers such as Amazon and Rackspace, which is where websites have been going for years.  Because it costs less.  It costs less, and it works.

Where does that leave small and medium businesses?  Very soon now, workstations will be replaced by virtual workstations in the cloud and business owners can simply rent everything they need for a fraction of the cost.  Physical machines will still exist, but they’ll be replaced with very low-power laptops, tablets, and zero-clients.  The PC x86 architecture will be replaced with lower cost ARM units.  Data will automatically be backed up in the cloud data center.  Even phone systems will be switched over to cloud-based virtual-PBX’s.  It all sounds good, until we fall into the trap.

The Legacy Trap.  Imagine holding onto a VCR from 1985 and a bunch of VHS tapes with all those precious home movies.  Now in 2015, the VCR breaks.  Since VCR repair shops are long gone, the only thing left to do is find a specialist who can transfer those VHS tapes to Blu-Ray in 3D, or find a DeLorean.  Either one would be very expensive, maybe so expensive that you would just have to accept that those memories were gone forever.  When this happens to computers and business systems, it’s very expensive and very messy.  And while this all sounds a bit over the top, this is exactly what happens in small business all the time.  Things get put off because other things, like making sales, are more important.  Eventually, temporary becomes permanent, and the Legacy Trap closes over the throat of the now fatally-injured business.

I’ve seen the Legacy Trap kill businesses before.  Every time, it is quick and sudden, and the only thing that takes a long time is the irreversible death-spiral.  It happened to this one small high-tech electronics factory that employed 50-people, had $7-million/year in sales, and had been in business over 25-years.  All of their engineering files were literally on a Mac from the late 1980′s, and then that Mac died.  They thought they had backups and a way out.  They were wrong.  No one could help them, not even those $100,000 hard-drive recovery people.  It took them 5-years to die; they drained their contingency funds, blew their credit, crashed their retirement funds, killed their benefits, and laid-off employees.  They looked at the dust in their hands that had once been hope and refused to believe that all was lost.  They went out of business April 1st, 2013.  But their mistake wasn’t back in 2008 when the Mac died, is was back in 1991 when they stopped upgrading and the subsequent 17-years of doing nothing to fix it.

The trap happens because most small businesses and large alike treat IT and computer resources like a utility.  They treat it like something that should cost less if only they could find new and creative ways to contain those costs, and they only throw money at it when they absolutely have to.  In reality, Information Technology is supposed to be part of the business strategy.  IT is leveraged to innovate, attract new customers, and grow business.  IT is like a financial engine with a rate of return, so instead of spending less on it to “save money”, you invest as much as is reasonable and profit.

Expanding on my analogy:  If a person wanted to invest heavily in the stock market, they would be an idiot not to seek the advice of a professional financial adviser.  And when that idiot ends up poor, they blame the rich.  I feel that anyone who is running a business and wrangling their own IT resources without the aid of an IT professional is equally stupid.  And when their technology betrays them, they blame the very same IT people that could have helped them.   So please, look to the future and ask the advice of IT professionals that you trust.

We’ve just opened a new second location for Hill Top IT located at 2161 Hillsdale Road in Prescott at the intersection of Highway 89 and Willow Lake Road.  Our new kiosk is located inside the Hair Lair salon, next door to Twin Lakes Automotive and the Pit Stop restaurant in the Twin Lakes Market center.

The new kiosk is a convenient drop-off and pick-up location for customers who need our computer services.  At this location, we can provide free repair estimates, provide limited services on site while you wait, and transport computers to and from our main shop in Prescott Valley for full service without additional charge.

Also at this location:

• Hair Lair salon.
• Twin Lakes Market convenience store.
• Gas, Deisel, Propane.
• US Post Office.
• Twin Lakes Automotive service and repair.
• Pit Stop restaurant.
• U-Haul.

This is straight from azcentral.com (Arizona Republic):

A Prescott man was arrested Thursday in connection to a fraud case at Quad City Computers, officials said.

Beginning in March 2011, Prescott Valley police received complaints from consumers relating to Prescott Valley’s Quad City Computers reportedly overcharging clients for repairs and computer parts, said Brandon Bonney, a Prescott Valley police spokesman.

Customers reported they were being charged large sums of money and at times, the repairs were not done or poorly done, officials said.

The most recent complaint came from a couple in their 80s stating that Jerry Jeff Martin had overcharged them for a new computer system. The pair claims Martin charged them between $8,000 to $12,000 for a job that should have cost them close to $1,300, Bonney said.

Martin was not willing to talk to detectives, Bonney said.

Martin was booked into the Yavapai County Jail on one count of vulnerable adult abuse, one count of fraudulent schemes and one count of theft, officials said.

Authorities are asking people who may have had similar dealing with Quad City Computers to contact Detective Daniel Oen at 928-772-5167.

Update: Daily Courier also reported on this with essentially the same information, plus this:

“On one occasion, they were told to go to Best Buy to purchase items for the computer,” Bonney said. “It was discovered that the items they purchased for the computer were not put into the system he was building for them.”

Wow, this is quite alarming.  This kind of news is why I always encourage people to seek out honest and ethical businesses and then spread the word.  Do your homework, check the BBB, read reviews, ask your friends and colleagues.  It’s easy, here’s how you do it:

Dr. Bower, great dentist, honest, ethical, and affordable.
Prescott Checker Cab, clean taxi’s, honest, ethical, and affordable.
Prescott Flower Shop, superb flowers, honest, ethical, and affordable.
Twin Lakes Automotive, terrific mechanic, honest, ethical, and affordable.
Hill Top IT, fantastic computer techs, honest, ethical, and affordable.

See how easy that was?  In a community like ours, it should be relatively easy for people to know good businesses by reputation.

Competition promotes growth, advances the community, forces us to be more creative, teaches us, compels us to take risks, makes us goal-oriented, makes life more entertaining, and is just plain natural.  I would not want to be in business without my fellow competitors.

An anonymous party has been impersonating us and making negative statements about our competition.  This kind of cowardice has happened before, and normally we just ignore it.  But not this time.  To clarify, I believe in 1st Amendment protected speech, and if I feel compelled to say something that might hurt somebody’s feelings then I will say it here on this blog.  I have before (click here to see).

For the record, I don’t have anything negative to say about any of our competitors.  Most of them are just hard-working people doing their best to make a living.  We have complimentary working relationships with a few of them.  We admire those that excel.  We empathize with those that are forced to close shop.  We avoid the very few that have questionable ethics.  Usually, we are simply unaware of them.

We always tell people: If you’re happy with your current IT / Computer provider – keep them.  Otherwise, please consider using us.

An online electronics retailer in Australia charges an extra 6.8% if you use Internet Explorer 7.  It does take a lot of work to make websites look and function correctly in different browsers and different versions of those browsers.  If you’re an online retailer, the cost can be huge.

Kogan, the inventor of this “tax” apparently has some real issues with the outdated browser.  It wasn’t that long ago that Google and half the internet officially dropped support for Internet Explorer 6.  After all, people don’t like to update their computer.

Now you may think this is a bit silly.  No online retailer in the US would charge a fee based on what you’re using to shop.  But why not?  Gas stations have different rates for cash and credit.  Huge retailers like Costco don’t even accept credit cards.  Some of you even shop online so much that you’ll pay $80/year to get free shipping.

Cross-platform development (that’s what they call it) is a huge super-expensive cost for online retailers.  What if Amazon charged 5% because you were not using the latest version of a browser?  Would you update or change browsers to save 5%?  Most of us would.  And I think most of us will.

Although, and I have to note this is educated conjecture, Kogan is clearly anti-Microsoft.  Chrome and Firefox browsers are very modern and capable.  However, Safari is so bad that not even Apple fanatics like it (though it’s what’s on iPhones), and Opera was never even considered a serious contender.  In fact, Facebook has been considering buying Opera so they can twist it into one of their hack-a-thon products.  IE7 really isn’t all that bad from a coding point of view?

Via: DVICE

Well now there’s a website for the Occupy Movement in Prescott at OccupyPrescott.org.  I suppose I have to give Mr. Adcock some credit for beating everyone else to the domain name and slapping a blog on it.  However, if this is a serious attempt to enable the local 99% to fight the 1%, then I’m disappointed.

But just to make sure I wasn’t being unfair, I thoroughly searched the Occupy Movement’s website for any mention of Prescott.  I found nothing.  Once again, I am disappointed to find that “action” has been limited to a blog and a smattering of Facebook comments.  Once again, I can’t rely on the local groups, local media, and not even CNN.  They’re too busy name-calling.  No sir, I have to go to a foreign media source like Al Jazeera to find out what’s really happening with the 99%.

I’m not saying the 99% are right, or wrong.  I think both sides have legitimate and illegitimate gripes.  There are rich who prey upon the innocent.  There are poor people of good conscious who are powerless to stop them.  Then again, there are beneficent rich people, and poor who reek with the stench of villainy.  Greed is the real problem.  There’s greed on both sides.

If we want to fix greed, then we must make politicians live by the same rules the rest of us do.  Congress is on the take, and everybody knows it.  Congress is owned by the greedy with money.  Force them to stop accepting what I call “bribes”, take away their special privileges and retirement plans. Make them live under the same laws that the rest of us do.  I just wish I knew how to make that change happen.

There’s not a lot of technological growth in the local area that makes the news.  Few are interested in the latest technology used to sell cars or track property taxes, and consequently little makes the headlines.  But tech changes in day-to-day operations of just about anything are interesting, especially when you compare before to after.

In another fine article from the Chino Valley Review, we see that our local friendly ambulance company has upgraded the technology that they employ on a daily basis.  Here’s what caught my eye:

Before the software existed, Kasprzyk said a paramedic took a cellphone camera shot a of the electrocardiogram print out and send that to the Emergency Room, where a doctor would look for abnormalities.

“If the photo was sent, the quality was usually very poor and many times we couldn’t even tell what was going on,” said Yavapai Regional Medical Center Dr. Christopher Lampe. “Now you get these perfect images as if they’re being done in the emergency department.”

I’m just amazed. I see hacks all the time, and just when I think my skin is thick enough, along comes another marvel of “how did it come to this?”.  Seriously, at some point, some EMT had enough creativity and ingenuity to snap a cell phone picture and send it, which was probably far better than what was done previously.  And then it became standard procedure.  I’m certainly glad technology has come far enough along to allow Life Line to upgrade to something that should have existed since the 80′s.

It’s the most sinister computer virus ever made.  God could not create a more perfect instrument of digital destruction.  It’s the kind of thing science fiction and government conspiracy movies are made of.  It can literally go nuclear.  It’s so evil, even SkyNet said Daaaamn.  It was obviously made by some secret black-ops computer team.  And best of all, it’s open source and free to the public.  Watch the video of how our world is going to end.

CableOne is now offering 50Mbps business plans as of today.  The old business packages will continue to remain available.  This chart (that I snagged from CableOne’s photocopier) shows their month-to-month pricing.  However, there are bundled rates and other saving available.

It wasn’t that long ago that CableOne made their 50Mbps available to residential customers.  Now with their DOCSIS 3.0 technology fully implemented, both business and residential customers alike will have to seriously consider the power of 50Mbps over the offerings of anyone else.

However, throughput limits are in effect on some of the packages.  Any current CableOne customer can log into their account and see their current throughput to determine if the limits will effect them or not.  Also, CableOne uses an in browser popup warning system to make sure that users are well aware of the potential of exceeding their limit.

There are a lot more questions to answer for any business considering a move to CableOne.  What are the bundles?  What are the potential savings?  If phone service is added, will that save money?  What about existing contracts?  The thing to do is to speak with a CableOne Business Account Representative.  Every business has unique needs, and they are the only ones qualified to fully answer any question for any situation.

The CableOne Business Account Representative that we do business with and prefer is Maryanne DeMarco.  She prefers to be reached on her cell phone at (928) 202-1963.  Tell her Hill Top IT sent you. 

The Daily Courier posted an article about the E-mail accounts of a few police officers getting hacked and posted online for the world to see.  While I generally disapprove of crap like Wikileaks or the posting confidential information in any online forum, here’s what caught my eye:

“This leak has names, addresses, phone numbers, passwords, social security numbers, online dating account info, voicemails, chat logs, and seductive girlfriend pictures belonging to a dozen Arizona police officers. We found more internal police reports, cops forwarding racist chain emails, k9 drug unit cops who use percocets, and a convicted sex offender who was part of FOP Maricopa Lodge Five,” the [hacker] group said.

Now technically I don’t think any of that is illegal, but the statement does certainly paint the police in a bad light.  In my personal opinion, the police should hold themselves to the highest standard of morality and ethics and should be ready to stand inspection and be accountable for anything found to be less than exceptional.  However, cops are people too and they have a reasonable expectation to privacy that should not be violated by anyone.

Never the less, this is a lesson and prime example to the rest of us to not trust anything connected to the Internet.  If the cops can get pwned, where does that leave the rest of us?  My personal rule:  If it can transmit, don’t trust it.  Of course, it also helps if one is not a racist drug-abusing sex offender. 

Via: Daily Courier