Windows 7 is not new.  However, there is a lot of functionality built into it that most of us don’t take advantage of (and just like you, we discover more each week).  In this, and future, Tuesday Tip we’ll share some productivity shortcuts we use; hopefully you’ll find them to be useful.

1)    Go to the desktop
Ever have a bunch of applications / windows open and just want to go to your desktop?  Try this:  click on the vertical bar in the lower right-hand corner of any screen (circled below) and you’ll instantly go to your desktop.

2)    Lock your computer
Perhaps you’ve got a laptop that you may leave briefly while you go to lunch or to the restroom (like at a client site or on an airplane).  To quickly lock your computer simply when you’re away simply hit “Windows – L” on the keyboard as shown below:

Check back for more Windows 7 productivity tips in the future.

Network 1 Consulting is a 14-year-old, IT Support company in Atlanta, GA.  We become – or augment – the IT department for professional services companies: law firms, medical practices and financial services firms.  Our IT experts can fix computers – but what our clients really value is the industry-specific best practices we bring to their firm.  This is especially important with technology, along with regulations and cyber threats, changing so rapidly.  We take a proactive approach to helping our clients use technology to gain and keep their competitive advantage.

I enjoy my iPad as much as the next guy although I have to admit that my kids end up using it to play Angry Birds as much as I do ‘real’ work on it.  There are a few apps that I use regularly and I primarily use it getting on the Internet and checking email.  I find myself more frequently wishing I could effectively work on Excel spreadsheets or edit Word documents.  The iPad just isn’t ready for this and, arguably, isn’t designed for this role.  However, there are a few emerging solutions that may help us achieve iPad nirvana.

When Steve Jobs designed the iPhone and iPad, he insisted that neither have a stylus nor physical keyboard (by the way, I highly recommend Steve Jobs’ biography).  He pushed the Apple design team to make sure the software was smart enough to do everything for the user and screen was more important than keyboard.  One could say Apple clearly beat RIM’s Blackberry on this front.  But if many iPad users do a bit of spreadsheet editing while on the airplane or at home just before bed, where does that leave the iPad for business use?

Office documents
Like most people I do a good bit of work away from the office like working on spreadsheets I’ve taken home with me.  I may be reviewing financials, working on a proposal or planning how Network 1 will complete world domination.  Currently there are no good choices for working with spreadsheets and documents although there are some promising candidates.   A lack of a built-in USB drive certainly doesn’t help the situation (there are other solutions to this problem such as AirStash’s Port device).  There are apps available on the App Store such as Documents To Go, Quickoffice Pro and Apple’s iWork suite.  But they don’t integrate seamlessly with documents created on a Windows PC.  They are decent and are improving all the time.  Another promising solution is OnLive Desktop.  This app actually creates a Windows desktop on your iPad screen and has the real versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint right there.  It is a cloud based solution, which has a potentially game-stopping problem: if you have no or slow Internet access, the app will not work well (think, while you’re on an airplane or at the mountain cabin).  But if this isn’t a problem for you, OnLive Desktop is a great solution.  They have a free version that is a fully functioning trial version.  The paid version is $9.99 per month and has some decent upgrades.

Editing Long Documents
Another big complaint I hear from folks and experience myself is the lack of a physical keyboard on the iPad.  If you plan on doing any significant amount of document or spreadsheet editing, a decent-sized keyboard is a requirement.  I have one built into my case (by Sketch) and the jury is still out on it.  It’s a very small keyboard (lots of fat-fingering) in order to fit in the iPad case but it is small and goes everywhere with me.  If this solution doesn’t work for you, a bigger blue tooth keyboard would be in order.  (note: the OnLive screen keyboard isn’t the iPad onscreen keyboard, so a full blue tooth keyboard is definitely in order here).

The iPad has certainly been a game-changer in a lot of areas.  I’m a big fan.  But when it comes to working with Microsoft Office spreadsheets and documents in any kind of meaningful way, a Windows laptop is still the way to go.

Network 1 Consulting is a 14-year-old, IT Support company in Atlanta, GA.  We become – or augment – the IT department for professional services companies: law firms, medical practices and financial services firms.  Our IT experts can fix computers – but what our clients really value is the industry-specific best practices we bring to their firm.  This is especially important with technology, along with regulations and cyber threats, changing so rapidly.  We take a proactive approach to helping our clients use technology to gain and keep their competitive advantage.

David Gracey and I were guests earlier this week on Everything Atlanta!, an Executive Talk Radio Show.

We had a chance to discuss “The Cloud” and how law firms and medical practices in the Metro Atlanta area can best harness this and other new technology trends to advance their business goals and maintain business as usual in the event of an unplanned disaster.

Click here to listen to the full interview.

Network 1 Consulting is a 14-year-old, IT Support company in Atlanta, GA.  We become – or augment – the IT department for professional services companies: law firms, medical practices and financial services firms.  Our IT experts can fix computers – but what our clients really value is the industry-specific best practices we bring to their firm.  This is especially important with technology, along with regulations and cyber threats, changing so rapidly.  We take a proactive approach to helping our clients use technology to gain and keep their competitive advantage.

It’s crazy to think that technology is supposed to make our lives simpler yet at times it can be very easy to make it more complicated.  If you’re like me you bounce back and forth between lots of different devices: laptop, desktop, iPhone and iPad.   One of my biggest challenges was basic document management.  For a while I found myself either emailing documents to myself or moving them around using USB devices which leads to multiple copies of the same file and just a poor use of my time.

So I found myself looking for tools to keep things simple and hence more productive.  Dropbox is one of these tools.

Dropbox is a simple web based file sharing and data storage solution that allows you to place electronic files in a central location so that they can be easily retrieved from just about anywhere.

When you first go to Dropbox you create an account that is tied to your email address and then follow the steps to load the Dropbox application onto all the devices you want to set up (I have it on my desktop, laptop and iPad).

Once it is in place an icon appears on each of your devices.   From here you are ready to drag and drop electronic documents into the ‘box’.  Because it is web based and the data is not actually stored locally on your device anything you put in there will also show up on all the devices you have it set up on, as long as you have an Internet connection.

Furthermore if you’re travelling and let’s say your iPhone dies, you can still get to your files by logging into the Dropbox website directly using your username and password.

Now, I wouldn’t go so far as to suggest that this is the solution to use to store all of your mission critical business data and I certainly wouldn’t suggest that it should replace any business class back-up or disaster recovery solutions you have in place.  But for me it certainly has been a time saver.  I use the starter package that is free and gives me 2GB of storage space, if you need more then there is a monthly fee.

Network 1 Consulting is a 14-year-old, IT Support company in Atlanta, GA.  We become – or augment – the IT department for professional services companies: medical practices, law firms and financial services firms.  Our IT experts can fix computers – but what our clients really value is the industry-specific best practices we bring to their firm.  This is especially important with technology, along with regulations and cyber threats, changing so rapidly.  We take a proactive approach to helping our clients use technology to gain and keep their competitive advantage.

Being able to survive a snowstorm, fire or other disaster is critical for today’s law firm.  A good disaster recovery (DR) plan does not have to be complicated or expensive.  Some basic procedures and solutions can be put in place to keep the lights on and folks billing, even if they cannot physically access the office.

The main cost driver behind DR plans is the amount of time to get a business back up and running after a disaster.  The closer to zero downtime, the higher the cost.  Fortunately, solutions are continuing to get more robust and less expensive.

For most law firms with fewer than 50 attorneys, a solid remote access/VPN solution in combination with offsite data protection is adequate.  This requires some investment in the infrastructure, data lines and backup solution.  Additionally, annual testing (at a minimum) is recommended so there are no surprises in case “D-day” ever occurs.  Your IT professional should be able to design and implement a good DR plan and it is always a good idea to retain a reliable third party DR expert to provide guidance, planning and auditing.

Network 1 Consulting is a 14-year-old, IT Support company in Atlanta, GA.  We become – or augment – the IT department for professional services companies: law firms, medical practices and financial services firms.  Our IT experts can fix computers – but what our clients really value is the industry-specific best practices we bring to their firm.  This is especially important with technology, along with regulations and cyber threats, changing so rapidly.  We take a proactive approach to helping our clients use technology to gain and keep their competitive advantage.

by Tony Rushin

Even though Richard won, I thought I would still finish out the series!

Portals (no, not a ship’s portal) enable law firms to securely and easily share information with their clients.  As with many of these trends, the sum is greater than the parts and portal solutions have benefited tremendously from the evolution of Cloud Computing.  In the “olden days” a portal may have been called an FTP Server.  It worked okay but had to be part of a law firm’s IT infrastructure and be implemented, configured and maintained by technical people.  Now a portal can be located in the “Cloud” and can be maintained by a non-technical person.  In addition, these solutions are much more feature-rich than they used to be – making it easy to share documents back-and-forth with clients.  Sendthisfile.com, Box.net and FilesAnywhere are just 3 examples of the many solutions available for attorneys to deliver greater client service.

Mobile solutions keep proliferating.  Many help with personal productivity but the solutions we’re focused on here help with client service.  Whether the solutions are for Tablets or for Smartphones, the mobility enables an attorney to bring more value to their clients.  Simply being able to click on a link in a client email, view the webpage and then respond to the client – within 5 minutes and while away from your computer – provides tremendous client service.  Here are a couple of other examples of mobile solutions and client service: a personal injury law firm in Phoenix gives iPads to clients during the case; an app helps attorneys work more closely with clients on pro bono cases.

Client service-oriented portals and mobile solutions will continue to be a trend for law firms in 2012.

Network 1 Consulting is a 14-year-old, IT Support company in Atlanta, GA.  We become – or augment – the IT department for professional services companies: law firms, medical practices and financial services firms.  Our IT experts can fix computers – but what our clients really value is the industry-specific best practices we bring to their firm.  This is especially important with technology, along with regulations and cyber threats, changing so rapidly.  We take a proactive approach to helping our clients use technology to gain and keep their competitive advantage.

I’m guessing everyone who has had an iPad for over 6 months already knows this tip.  However, none of the 5 new iPad users I showed this to had seen it before and told me it was real helpful tip so here goes.

If you’re like me (and most other people I know) you type with your thumbs on your iPhone.  However, with the size of the keyboard on the iPad that isn’t feasible.  In fact, you have to lay the iPad on a table or balance it somewhere to type.  The tip is to split the keyboard so the iPad seems more like an iPhone keyboard – but you type with 2 thumbs not one.  Here’s how it looks:

At first it looks kind of funny – like I’m hugging my iPad – and I was a little disoriented (which thumb do I move to press the “y” key).  However, I quickly got used to it and found that the split keyboard is more convenient plus I type faster.

Here’s how you do it.  When the iPad keyboard appears at the bottom of the screen, put your thumb on the key in the extreme lower right of the keyboard

and slide the entire keyboard up the screen until it splits, like this:

That’s all there is to it!

Network 1 Consulting is a 14-year-old, IT Support company in Atlanta, GA.  We become – or augment – the IT department for professional services companies: law firms, medical practices and financial services firms.  Our IT experts can fix computers – but what our clients really value is the industry-specific best practices we bring to their firm.  This is especially important with technology, along with regulations and cyber threats, changing so rapidly.  We take a proactive approach to helping our clients use technology to gain and keep their competitive advantage.

Being able to survive a snowstorm, fire or other disaster is critical for today’s medical practice.  A good disaster recovery (DR) plan does not have to be complicated or expensive.  Some basic procedures and solutions can be put in place to keep the lights on and the doctors and nurses helping patients, even if they cannot physically access the office.

The main cost driver behind DR plans is the amount of time to get a business back up and running after a disaster.  The closer to zero downtime, the higher the cost.  Fortunately, solutions are continuing to get more robust and less expensive.

For most medical practices with fewer than 25 doctors, a solid remote access/VPN solution in combination with offsite data protection is adequate.  This requires some investment in the infrastructure, data lines and backup solution.  Additionally, annual testing (at a minimum) is recommended so there are no surprises in case “D-day” ever occurs.  Your IT professional should be able to design and implement a good DR plan and it is always a good idea to retain a reliable third party DR expert to provide guidance, planning and auditing.

Network 1 Consulting is a 13-year-old, IT Support company in Atlanta, GA.  We become – or augment – the IT department for professional services companies: medical practices, law firms and financial services firms.  Our IT experts can fix computers – but what our clients really value is the industry-specific best practices we bring to their firm.  This is especially important with technology, along with regulations and cyber threats, changing so rapidly.  We take a proactive approach to helping our clients use technology to gain and keep their competitive advantage.

by Richard Stokes

At the mHealth Summit technology conference in Washington, DC this past year; Paul Jacobs, CEO of Qualcomm stated that more than 5.6 billion people are using cell phones, and that the smart phone has outpaced computers.

More specifically in the healthcare space, and according to a COMPTIA study, nearly one third of healthcare providers already use some sort of mobile device to access EMR/EHR’s.  2012 is going to see this trend continue and revolutionize the way that patient care is delivered.

In addition to the efficiencies that practices gain by using mobile devices to access patient information either at the time of service or remotely, one of the fastest growing markets in this arena is the health app market for devices like the iPhone.

Just the other day my wife showed me an app that she is now using that counts her daily calorie in-take.  It then goes a step further and based on her eating habits and exercise regimen it calculates how long it will be before she hits her weight loss goal.  Pretty cool!

So, other than the overall improvement of people’s personal health how does something like this directly affect a physician’s practices?  The way I see it is that it is very similar to how Apple shifted the business technology space through the introduction of the iPhone.  As consumers started using them and bringing them in to work, the demand for integration in to the business environment grew.  What we have seen is the consumer market driving change instead of the business environment.

I think we are going to see the same thing in healthcare and 2012 will bring more of it.  As consumers continue to adopt things like healthcare apps they are going to be looking at their healthcare providers to either be on the same page as them or they will be looking for some direction on how they can get better and faster information.

I was at a Wireless Technology Forum event in 2011 and the keynote speaker, Praveen Chopra; CIO of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta was asked about his thoughts on the growth of mobile devices and how did he see that changing the physician/patient relationship.  His short answer was that there is no way to avoid it.  He went on to point out that upcoming generations prefer to communicate via mobile devices and so providers better get on board if they want to stay in business.

Network 1 Consulting is a 13-year-old, IT Support company in Atlanta, GA.  We become – or augment – the IT department for professional services companies: medical practices, law firms and financial services firms.  Our IT experts can fix computers – but what our clients really value is the industry-specific best practices we bring to their firm.  This is especially important with technology, along with regulations and cyber threats, changing so rapidly.  We take a proactive approach to helping our clients use technology to gain and keep their competitive advantage.

Thought I should probably help Tony out again since I just helped Richard!

With computer processing power continuing to double about every 18 months, the hardware capacity of most network servers have long since outpaced the software’s ability to keep up.  That, combined with improving hardware reliability means there is a lot of underutilized computer horsepower available to businesses today.  With the advent of virtualization software, we are now able to take advantage of this excessive hardware capacity.  Additionally, IT professionals can increase network reliability and redundancy using server virtualization.

Other advantages for law firms include reducing power consumption (being “green”), quickly and inexpensively create test environments for new software and better scalability for growth. This is particularly important for testing new document management, practice management (PM), and other systems.

Network 1 Consulting is a 13-year-old, IT Support company in Atlanta, GA.  We become – or augment – the IT department for professional services companies: law firms, medical practices and financial services firms.  Our IT experts can fix computers – but what our clients really value is the industry-specific best practices we bring to their firm.  This is especially important with technology, along with regulations and cyber threats, changing so rapidly.  We take a proactive approach to helping our clients use technology to gain and keep their competitive advantage.