Batteries inside the UPS provide power to the devices plugged into it when power from the wall outlet is no longer available. The batteries are rechargeable and often replaceable, providing a long term solution to keeping your computer system running. As a UPS gets older, its battery life becomes shorter.

To test your UPS, throw the circuit breaker with the UPS on it to simulate an outage and see how the transition goes. In general, testing a UPS by pulling the plug from the wall is not a good idea. If you unplug a UPS, it's still powered but now has what electricians call a "floating ground". Not only can this be bad for electronics, but it can be quite dangerous as well. It is likely that unplugging just about any UPS for a short amount of time isn't likely to result in disaster, but throwing a circuit breaker would be a better thing to do.

Contact us and schedule an appointment to have one of our IT professionals test your UPS for you. Or, call us if you do not have a UPS - we can make sure you have the tools to keep your information safe!

Most likely, those files were created with Office 2007. While one work-around is to ask for the file to be saved again as an Office 2003 file, that doesn't help Microsoft sell upgrades. To their credit though, Microsoft now offers a free "Compatibility Pack", allowing older versions of Office to open and edit Office 2007 files. If you don't have Microsoft Office or don't want to shell out hundreds of dollars for an upgrade, I strongly encourage you to try "OpenOffice", a professional office productivity suite that can read and write Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files, including those created with Office 2007. For information on OpenOffice and the Compatibility Pack, browse the "Featured Products" on our website.

In spite of its new name, Windows 7 is Microsoft Vista with certain improvements. And whether it is ready or not, you will find it installed on almost all new personal computers. Gone are some of its most annoying features, and it does appear to be faster and more stable. However, it lacks support for many older devices, such as wireless networking cards. If you are starting from scratch, your problems should be few. If you are upgrading, you may have to pay extra in order to get everything working in Windows 7, as well as it did in Windows XP.

The problem with anti-virus software is that it usually only treats "known" viruses. Viruses are created to exploit defects in your computer software, which sometimes aren't discovered until after the virus has already done its job. The best you can do is to keep your anti-virus software up-to-date regularly, or switch to an operating system with a natural immunity to viruses, such as Apple's Mac OS or a Linux-based OS such as RedHat or Ubuntu.