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Pastel My Business
http://www.liztec.za.net/blog/index.php?entry=entry120915-124529
WOW ... Is this Pastel not a treat to work with.
Now, as a business owner, Pastel was hell to work with in the past!!!
Came along this Cloud Solution from Pastel aimed at small business and I saw the light ... It's fast ... Stable and straight forward to use and and and ...Pastel My Business
Thank you Pastel for making it easy to use an Accounting Package again.
Regards]]>I'm Back ...
http://www.liztec.za.net/blog/index.php?entry=entry120908-113201
Have not used the LizTec Blog pages for a while ... Stuff happened ...
But, I'm back
Adriaan]]>2011 - Last post
http://www.liztec.za.net/blog/index.php?entry=entry111223-104246
I hope that you and your families have a wonderful festive season and a blasting new year.
Be save !!!]]>Microsoft versus Open source
http://www.liztec.za.net/blog/index.php?entry=entry100823-203116
Computers opened a whole new business market not just with the hardware but also with software. A decent pc will cost you anything between R5000 and R15000 and that's still without any software: Operating system, an office package and a decent anti virus.
Microsoft Windows has been the widest used OS for most of the computers life span, but in the last few years Linux has become more active on personal computers than in its beginning a few years ago. The main reason for this is that the OS friendliness and graphical user interface has improved allot.
Companies started switching over to Linux servers to save money, seeing that Microsoft servers charges over R1200 for every extra user you add to your package. Although Linux administrators are more expensive than Microsoft's, the flexibility and possibility to expand makes it worthwhile.
Then there's the office package, MS Office 2010 stretches anything from R700 to over R3000 for 3 licenses, where Open Office grants you the exact same functionality with just a little different look( not even that different), but people are so scared of change that they would rather spend that money than try something new or in worse cases people don't even know about the existence of Open Source Software.
Open Source Software are a dream for any small programmer, thanks to the fact that the source code for the program is freely available, so they can edit and convert the program to a unique package that suites there every need.
Now looking at the internet browser: Microsoft's Internet Explorer is well known and commonly used (seeing that its included with windows) but is limited to Microsoft's restrictions and in Version 7, had allot of stability issues.
Then there is Mozilla Firefox. It works allot in the same way as Internet Explorer 8 but there are virtually a downloadable plug-in for everything you may ever want to do on the internet, for example, there's a video download plug-in that has the capability to download almost any video on a web page.
There's a whole OPEN ... FREE world out there but only a few are aware of it!
For more information on the Open Alterative, please visit: Our OpenSource links]]>Panda Cloud Office Protection (PCOP)
http://www.liztec.za.net/blog/index.php?entry=entry100608-090343
It is compact. Does not suck up your system resources like other AV's, in fact, you hardly know its there. But don't be fooled by this!
This is a very powerful and complex piece of software that gets the job done.
Before I get in to the details about PCOP, let me sketch you a scenario...
We had a massive virus breakout at one of our sites, a school in Pretoria. We bombarded one of the infected computers with all the market had to offer, and I mean everything!!! At that time, we had a trial version of PCOP, that Panda Security set up for us, free of charge.
We loaded it on the machine, and it started to solve our problem. We saw light at the end of the tunnel...
Now, with that out of the way, lets look at how PCOP works...
The main concept behind PCOP is Collective Intelligence. What it basically comes down to, is that panda have their servers that process the threats as they are picked up by the client computers. These servers take care of around 99.5% of the threats that they receive, and distribute the fixes to the clients, basically in real time. This is revolutionary, seeing that the old way of resolving virus issues was for technicians physically analyzing the threat, and then release the solution on the next update.
The other thing that makes this the ideal tool for business, or anyone that is networked is the update process. Computers will first look on the local network for updates. If there is none, they will connect to the internet for this. This will save your business allot of bandwidth, as it comes down to one computer that updates, and then the rest of the networked computers will update from there.
Installation is a breeze. You have two options:
1. You install like a normal program, with an installation file. 2. You install on the network via the distribution tool.
The second option is a beauty if you have a massive network.
And lastly ... the centralized control panel...
I love this!
You have a web interface where you can monitor your computers to see who did not update and where there is an error. It has full reporting capabilities, so you can see where the problem computers are, what viruses frequents your network, what was blocked etc.
You configure here as well, so you configure your fire wall, when the computers must update, what must be scanned etc. This makes administrating allot easier, as you do this once, and on the next PCOP updates, it is enforced, network wide.
My overall impression of Panda Cloud Office Protection...
If you administer a network, or if you have networked computers at home, get your hands on this product. I give it huge thumbs up.