Spencer Wolfe

There are so many companies these days selling various products and services. You’ve got financial services, consumer product (probably the easiest sell), industrial products, technology products, and all sorts of services to support and enhance them.

In AINEO Network’s business, we are truly an engineering service company. People rely on our ability to be bright, quick, and flexible in supporting their technology around the Asia Pacific region. They trust AINEO because our fundamental is that everything we do should be win-win. Our definition of win-win business is only sell what you would buy yourselves. If you wouldn’t buy it, it almost seems immoral. On top of that, it is no fun for your team to support.

For three years, AINEO has been providing outsourced customer care to consumers. We did not plan to be working with consumers. We have a ten year track record and our success has been based on enterprise (corporate) clients. In 2002, we were asked by one of our enterprise clients if we could add this function to our already existing customer support team (helpdesk). It has been a great success. The wonderful thing now is that our team probably knows the products better than the Japan office of the manufacturer. I am very proud of our team. Evidently, we have done such a notable job that other clients have asked AINEO to do their consumer care. Great job AINEO Customer Care!

As we continue to expand the AINEO Customer Care to support consumers, we anticipate our will continue to provide great support which is bright, quick, and flexible. The consumers will continue to love us. We wholeheartedly believe that the best person to sell your product is you, but the best team to service your customer is AINEO.

When choosing the right computer there are many things to think about; is it for work, games, desktop publishing, organizing your personal life? There are many variables that picking the right computer much like putting together a puzzle.　　Before you take anyone’s on opinion or comments, it is advantageous to understand their background. Most people see things through filters.

For example, the President of the United States may be doing a great job, however if the media doesn’t like him then they will spew forth anything and everything negative about him to work to discredit him. Those constant negative attacks through the media can eventually hurt that President’s reputation with people that trust or believe what they are told. Bad news sells evidently. Our natures should be positive and supportive of people trying to do their job. We should not be afraid to speak our mind, rather than another negative voice in the world. We should offer an alternative idea and be a positive force not a negative voice.

This writer runs the Tokyo, Japan branch of a major information technology (IT) systems support firm. Our firm stays very busy helping people (our great customers) use computers to support and grow their businesses. The vast majority of those computer environments run on Microsoft products. Microsoft servers, Microsoft personal computers running Windows, Microsoft databases; the list goes on and on. We know Microsoft products like no other. Microsoft keeps us busy but AINEO’s strength is we believe all busy should be win-win. We are not afraid to give advice in the best interest of our friends, who are usually our customers.

If you are looking for a computer to

-search the web

-do your email

-organize your music and videos

-edit video

-build a website

-organize edit, publish pictures and slideshows

-and so forth

Then Apple Computer’s Macintosh built on OSX (pronounced OS ten) is for you. Version nine of Apple’s operating system was not interesting to AINEO at all. But with the introduction of OSX, we have seen the advent of the best operating system on the market. What makes it so good? This can be very easily summarized in two points

– It is extremely stable.

It is based on Free BSD UNIX kernel. What does that mean to the end user? Let me give and example. I purchased a Powerbook three years ago at the same time I purchased and IBM Thinkpad. The Powerbook is based on Apple’s OSX operating system. The Thinkpad is based on Microsoft’s Window XP system. With use the Windows registry fills up with various files. It starts slowing down, hanging, and things just not working right. The best fix for Window XP is to rebuild the machine (get a fresh install from scratch). In terms of time that means about 5-7 hours of work reinstalling the OS, the applications, and your profile. Painful! I the In the three years since of use of both machines. We have had to reinstall Windows XP five times. Conservatively speaking that is 25 hours of time. We have yet to do anything with the Mac and we have used it more.

– User Friendly

Coming from a Windows environment of users, the Mac is a bit of a shock. Everything is so simple and logical. Three years ago when I pulled the Powerbook out of the box, I remember the struggle trying to figure out how to add my email and how to see things. I figured out that if I pressed the plus at the bottom of the box of email accounts, I could add an account. It took me 30 minutes, as I was so used to the so-called wizards from Microsoft that help you set up accounts. The windows way was so much more complicated than the OSX logic. Once I figured out not to make it too difficult, things became a breeze. Clicking on the right pointing triangle would show you the details within the account.

There are so many things I could tell you about Apple’s Mac versus Windows and even items like LINUX. However, the best thing is buy a Mac for yourself and check them out. The Mac Mini is a great little entry level box for 50,000 yen (about $500 USD) that can give you a feel for the system. Of course, not everything is perfect with the Mac. We did have the speakers in the Powerbook fail. We had purchased Apple Care (a three year extended warrantee for parts, service, and advice). Fortunately, the speakers were replaced due to that warrantee. Also there is is an abundance of software written for Windows. So Apple users can sometimes be limited.

If you are living in a large city (such as Tokyo) the Mac notebook computers are monsters to lug around. This is when you want to think about a nice lightweight Panasonic PC. At 900 grams Apple is not a good choice for a road warrior doing email and such on the fly. For that matter, that is what Blackberries are for.

In closing, for the home user or someone not corporately tied to Windows, the Mac is an option you don’t want to pass up. If you have any questions about what computers might be right for your office environment, give us a call. The elite team of AINEO experts would be happy to find out what you do and give you the best advice for your needs.

© 2006 Wolfe- AINEO Corporation

Years ago, the first users of email could have never imagined that software threats could reach them through amber-colored characters of the black and white dumb terminals sitting on their desks. I remember being amazed when a customer asked me what my email address was when I was working at a large American Telco. I was surprised that someone outside of what I thought as an internal corporate mail system could actually send me a message.

These days we can get music, pictures, links to information on the internet, documents of various types, and even videos through our email accounts. But just like anything, it seems there is always someone looking to twist something good into something else for personal gain or some sort. The first computer viruses started coming out in the 1980s as people with some software programming skills wrote software applications that would attack their prey in an effort to take down the system or delete data.

As time has passed, these attacks have become more complex and more harmful. Operating systems (Ie. Windows)can be rendered inoperable, files can be deleted, self-propagating virus applications can infect machines and send their payload to our contact lists, false fronts to our bank accounts, wicked websites can install software on our or on-line payment systems can steal our account information and eventually money; the list goes on and on with time. What can we do to protect ourselves by protecting our computers?

1) Turn on that firewall. With Window XP, a software firewall feature is built in standard. Go to the control panel and enable the firewall application. A firewall in technology works like a firewall in buildings; it keeps the nasty things outside and protects those on the inside. A technology firewall keeps people from attacking your computer through the internet once you have connected it.

2) Keep you computer up-to-date– Whether your running Windows or Apple Computer’s OS X (X is pronounced ‘ten’) you should be updating your OS (operating system) at least once a week. Both Microsoft and Apple OS’ provide an automatic setting for updates in Windows XP and OSX. We recommend that you set it to check daily.

3) Install Virus protection software. This is a must for anyone who connects to the internet or receives files in any way (Ie. Via CDs, USB Memory sticks, or even the floppy disks of yesteryear. The most popular software is Norton Antivirus by Symantec. We tested several applications and have found it to be better than Mcafee and most of the other options in that the definitions files are updated frequently and it seems to get viruses that Mcafee misses. There are also free options like AVG software for PC users. It inserts a ‘scanned by…’ note at the end of every email which might be an irritation to some users. For OSX, there really isn’t a good anti-virus application. But then again, most OSX users don’t use them. This is the area to watch as someone may write a virus software to attack Mac in the coming months and pop the Mac user’s sense of security bubble.

4) Run your login to your computer as a ‘limited user’, not as an administrator. In Windows, the administrator can install whatever they want whenever they want. This combined with websites that try to install software when you open them in your web browser is trouble. Most likely, your computer will be infected with Spyware (software that tracks your actions) or worse yet, key stroke logging software. This software logs every keystroke that you make and sends it back to another computer for thieves to get into your bank accounts, payment systems, or online shopping profiles. This is not an issue for an OSX user. But passwords are for a purpose, if you have a hard time remembering your passwords then we recommend that you get an application like Passwords Plus to help you keep track of all account information.

5) Beware of public computers! Although, Internet Caf?s and other computers that are accessible to the masses are convenient they are also extremely dangerous. It is very possible that whatever you type (ie. Logins and passwords, access to your accounts) will become available to someone else.

6) Install Microsoft’s Windows Defender to protect your computer from spyware. This is the best tool on the market and its free. Windows Defender deletes spyware and allows you to authorize what software runs on your machine while you are using it.

Overall, Apple’s OSX provides a more stable, secure, and user-friendly computer. However, 90% of the world is on Windows from Microsoft so there are fewer software titles to compare with the vast Windows library. If you need a computer mainly for personal use; email, music, pictures, browsing the web. Then Apple to the way to go. For those who are connecting back to a corporate network through a VPN(Virtual Private Network) it would be probably wise to go with a Windows machine at this point.

If you are reading AINEO Insights and are not sure about your organization’s network, please contact AINEO Networks at
http://www.aineo.net/contact.html

Keep watching AINEO Insights for more valuable points to make sense of technology.

© 2006 AINEO Corporation
Written by Wolfe
Contributions by AINEO Technical Support