February 2010

In this Issue:

Microsoft Big Easy 4.0

HP Total Financing

IBM Smart Computing

Xerox Solid Ink

Cisco Enterprise

VODA Tip

Quote of the Month

Product of the Month

Ask the VODA Expert

Latest Virus Threats

Resourses

   VMWare Server Virtualization

   NVidia: Meant to be played

   Ergotron - Workspace         Planner

   Symantec - Backup Exec         Challenge

   3D Maps

VODA News                                                             Back to
VODA Home

Want to spend less and grow more? We’re ready when you are. Earn thousands in partner subsidy dollars towards your future purchases.

It seems that now, more than ever, your business needs to get the best value possible out of every purchase you make. That’s especially true when it comes to IT. You need to find ways to reduce your IT costs while never compromising on security, so that you can concentrate on keeping your business competitive.

We can help you do just that with The Big Easy Offer 4.0 from Microsoft®. Purchasing Microsoft products and solutions today makes you eligible for potentially thousands of dollars towards your future purchases.

Contact us today. We can help you find the right solutions.

For more information visit www.microsoft.ca/bigeasyoffer
or give a VODA sales representative a call today.

Back to Top



For the life of your technology. For the good of your business.

On the road to recovery

The recent economic downturn has caused companies to cut spending on the very technology that can help drive profit. As the economy moves toward recovery, your business has to come out swinging. The right technology investments can help you do that.

Extended leasing offers to help you through the tough times:

Economic Recovery Lease program with fixed price purchase options

An extension of our popular 0% 36-month Fair Market Value lease

To take advantage of these special promotions, contact your local HP Financial Services Representative or in the United States, call 1-888-277-5942. In Canada, dial 1-800-HP-LEASE.

How HP leasing can help your business.

Small and midsized companies face unique challenges in today's fast-paced environment. You face the same marketplace challenges and complexities as your larger counterparts and you must perform the same business processes—yet get the job done with far fewer resources.

HP Financial Services makes technology solutions easy to own and easy on the balance sheet, enabling you to focus your financial and other resources on managing and growing your business.

Highlights include:

Special offers – From low-rate financing to a 90-day bill-me later option, HP has several offers to give your budget the boost it needs. See our current offers.

Total technology solutions – Take advantage of one-stop shopping of hardware, software, installation and maintenance services into one lease with a single low monthly payment. HP Financial Services offers financial solutions for transactions as low as US$349.

Simple, paperless lease – Streamlined procedures are designed to move the process along quickly. HP Financial Services' basic SMB lease agreement is just one-page long and approval can happen within minutes.

Flexible terms – With terms up to 60 months, a lease solution allows you to do more while spending less. End of lease options include owning your equipments at the end of the term or simply returning the equipment to HP Financial Services, allowing you to upgrade to the latest technology.

Eliminate old equipment headaches – HP Financial Services' manages the disposition of leased equipment in an environmentally sound fashion. We also offer industry-standard processes to help safeguard your proprietary information that may reside on drives or in memory.

Live support – Our Rapid Response Center is available 8am to 8pm ET Monday through Friday to help you with all your financing needs.

Additional benefits – Businesses that lease technology may be able to take advantage of accounting and tax credits.


Back to Top

IBM Smart Cloud.


Workstations used to be tied to a mainframe. Now they're conversing with a cloud.

Conserve energy. Consolidate resources. Make information secure and available whenever and wherever it's needed. With mandates like these, we have to be smarter about accessing, processing and storing data.

This means thinking beyond the desktop and outside our own data centers. Thinking about more intelligent ways to handle the 15 megabytes of new information we generate each day, and the massive increase of connected devices we use to work with that data. Optimizing for the remarkably diverse workloads managed by businesses, organizations and governments.
It's time for a platform designed for efficient, effective computing in wide open spaces...in other words, everywhere. That's what cloud computing is all about.

The benefits of cloud computing—accessing your data and applications stored on remote hardware by way of the Internet instead of keeping it all in your local workstation—still requires a leap of logic for many. But now that a workstation can go anywhere as a smartphone, a stripped-down netbook, or even an e-book reader, it's practically a virtual desktop operating in conjunction with a virtual server anyway. If the user can be anywhere, so can the source for data and applications.

The cloud equation adds in the flexibility to scale bandwidth up or down at will and the affordability of pay-as-you-go service, and subtracts energy-devouring hardware from your local environment. Factor in the IBM security and experience that go into each of its industry-leading global cloud computing centres and myriad enterprise private clouds. The result: an instrumented, interconnected, intelligent approach to smarter computing.

It all comes together in the IBM Smart Business cloud portfolio, which introduces the industry's first set of enterprise-directed cloud services and integrated products. It brings sophisticated automation technology and self-service to tasks as diverse as software development and testing, desktop and device management, and collaboration. Offerings include:

  • IBM Smart Business standardized and private cloud services for secure, scalable software development and testing
  • IBM Smart Business Desktop deployment options for virtual desktops

IBM CloudBurst server with integrated storage, virtualization, networking and built-in service management systems.

Back to Top

Xerox Solid Ink Technology

Introduced in 1991, Xerox’s proven solid ink colour printing technology gives you the most value for your money. Solid ink produces brilliant, vibrant prints on a wide range of media, is the easiest technology on the market to use, and produces 90% less waste than a typical colour laser product.

With the invention of the ColorQube™ 9200 Series , Xerox combines solid ink innovation with its legacy of advanced multifunction product leadership. The ColorQube multifunction printer melds two proven technologies into one unique device that eliminates cost barriers to printing colour everyday.

What is Solid Ink?
Solid ink is a proven colour printing technology only offered by Xerox. A solid ink printer or multifunction printer uses solid sticks (or blocks) of no-mess, non-toxic ink instead of toner or inkjet cartridges. Solid ink is easy to use, produces incredible colour print quality, is cost-effective, and is very good for the environment.

The benefits of solid ink
From greater ease-of-use to less waste, the benefits of solid ink are numerous. The simple design of solid ink technology means more simplicity for you – simple maintenance, less impact on the environment, fast speed, and less worry.

Back to Top

Cisco's Expertise in Securing Enterprise Architectures

Cisco's expertise in securing enterprise architectures helps you combine collaboration with protection. Our security solutions can help you protect your people, information, applications, and network by providing:

  • A broad network security product line, from hardware appliances and software to security-as-a-service to risk assessment services, so your company can find a solution that is just right for your needs.
  • Increased visibility into your overall infrastructure so you can proactively protect applications, computers, your network, and even physical locations.
  • Comprehensive security intelligence, sophisticated threat correlation, and automated response, so you can be confident that your business is protected from new and emerging threats.

Use your network to unify communication and collaboration while transparently implementing access and security safeguards. With Cisco security solutions, you can unleash your company's productivity with the confidence that you are minimizing IT security risk.

Back to Top

VODA Tip

Configure Legacy Devices to Run on Windows 7

The Windows 7 driver store includes a small collection of drivers for legacy devices, mostly older printers, modems, scanners, infrared ports, PCMCIA controllers, and other oddball devices that don’t use Plug and Play connections. As you might suspect, Windows will not automatically set up such devices, and you’re rolling the dice if you find one of these old but still worthwhile devices and try to install an old driver.
But what if the device in question is valuable to you and can’t be easily replaced by a newer, supported one? Then by all means give it a try. Download the most recent hardware drivers you can find (ideally, for Windows XP or Windows Server 2003), and then use the Add Hardware wizard to complete the hardware setup process. Follow these steps:

1. If you’ve found a downloadable driver package or a CD that came with the device, look for a Setup program and run it. This option places the driver files on your hard disk and simplifies later installation steps.

2. Connect the new hardware to your computer. In the case of an internal device such as an add-in card, turn off the computer, add the device, and then restart.

3. Open Device Manager, select any item in the list of installed devices, and then click Add Legacy Hardware on the Action menu.

4. Click Next to skip past the Welcome screen. On the next wizard screen, choose how you want to select the device to be installed.

  • For printers, network cards, modems, and other devices that can be detected mechanically, choose Search For And Install The Hardware Automatically (Recommended). After you click Next, the wizard quickly runs a detection module that searches for anything on its list of non–Plug and Play devices. If it finds the new device, it installs the driver automatically, and your work is finished. If the wizard doesn’t find any new hardware, you’ll be prompted to click Next and look manually.
  • If you have a driver on a disc, skip the detection process. Choose Install The Hardware That I Manually Select From A List (Advanced) and click Next.

5. From the Common Hardware Types list, select a hardware category (or the inclusive Show All Devices category) and click Next.

6. From the master list of available drivers, select the device manufacturer and the correct model. Click Next to continue. Follow the prompts to complete the wizard.

Back to Top


Quote of the Month

Words, when well chosen, have so great a force in them, that a description often gives us more lively ideas than the sight of things themselves.
- Joseph Addison

Back to Top

Product of the Month

Progressive new design
Project the right image for your business. ThinkPad® Edge. Progressive. Streamlined. No fluff, just clean lines and (yes!) bold color options foreshadowing the robust ThinkPad performance inside.
Trust your small business to Lenovo
Priced right and engineered for small business, ThinkPad Edge is truly mobile and reliable.

  • Powerful dual-core processors
  • Windows® 7 operating system
  • Gigabit Ethernet, WWAN with GPS, 802.11bgn WiFi, Bluetooth and WiMAX connectivity options
  • Thin and light with a 13.3" widescreen
  • Spill-resistant keyboard
  • Up to 7.8 hours of battery life
  • Worry-free ThinkVantage® Technologies
  • Enhanced multimedia and HD audio
  • Low-light-sensitive Web camera
  • Three USB ports (1 powered), 5-in-1 media card reader and HDMI
  • Various services and warranty options

Simplified user experience
ThinkPad Edge is a smart laptop that's a breeze to use.

  • Legendary ThinkPad keyboard feel
  • Streamlined keyboard layout
  • Famous ThinkPad TrackPoint® pointing device
  • Multitouch touchpad with zoom, rotate and scroll functionality
  • Easy password management to protect your business files
  • Intelligent system updates

Greener business
ThinkPad Edge helps you do a little more for the environment.

  • EPEAT Gold, ENERGY STAR® and RoHS compliance
  • 100% recycled paperboard packaging
  • Recyclable packaging

Nontoxic inks on packaging

Back to Top

Ask the VODA Expert

Q: How do I password protect data on my USB key in
     Windows 7?

A: USB flash drives are convenient, portable, and very easy to lose. Which is a problem, especially if they're carrying sensitive data. Fortunately Windows 7 has the solution: encrypt your documents with an extension of Microsoft's BitLocker technology, and only someone with the password will be able to access it. Right-click your USB flash drive, select Turn on BitLocker and follow the instructions to protect your private files.

PROTECT YOUR DATA: Your USB flash drives can easily be encrypted with BitLocker

Back to Top

Back to Top

VODA Computers Systems Ltd.
Kamloops - #102 - 1361 McGill Road - 250.374.8002
Kelowna - 2263 Leckie Road, - 250.712.9311
Penticton - 250.487.7499
Toll free: 1.877.374.8002     www.vodagroup.com

© 2007 VODA Computer Systems Ltd. All Rights Reserved.