Genius Tech Blog

In 2009, companies looking to cut IT costs will benefit from the low cost of virtualization, revitalizing older systems through remote desktop or terminal servers, and the outsourcing of tech support.

Virtualization

The big news in ‘08 was that the big players made their entry-level bare-metal virtualization software available for free. For the small company that does not require the sophistication of the entire virtualization infrastructure, this is a perfect opportunity to reap the benefits of virtualization — call YCG to help you start your server consolidation today.

Remote Desktop

With all the server hardware you save by effectively using virtualization, you can devote a machine or two to remote desktop. With the server doing all the heavy lifting, client machines can be reduced in computing power and sophistication. Suddenly, 2 to 8-year-old hardware becomes relevant again. YCG can help you create custom boot patterns — with or without client hard drives — that instantly connect your new ‘thin clients’ to their home servers.

Outsource Tech Support

Still have in-house IT guys? Get with the game and start our phones a-ringing. After the competent experts at YCG get you squared away, your servers will be safe and secure.

2009 will be an exciting year for computing. The Apple iPhone and the Blackberry will continue to go head-to-head for the business mobile computing environment, all hardware’s prices will fall, especially as consumers and businesses demand lower prices, Netbooks will come increasingly into style, and desktops will continue to fade.

Your Computer Genius can help you in all these departments. Contact us now for a strategic consulting session.

We’ve long been a proponent of OpenSSH.

You can grab a client/server version for Windows from sourceforge:
http://sshwindows.sourceforge.net/

However, here’s an interesting note about the SFTP server part of the package:

Creating Home Directories for you[r] Users
In the passwd file, you will notice that the user’s home directory is set as /home/username, with username being the name of the account. In the default install, the /home directory is set to the default profile directory for all users. This is usually c:\documents and settings.
If you want to change this location you will need to edit the passwd file. The passwd file is in plain text and can be edited in Notepad or any text editor. The last two entries for each user are safe to edit by hand. The second to last entry (/home/username) can be replaced with any other directory to act as that user’s home directory. It’s worth noting that when you run SSH on windows, you are actually running SSH in a scaled down version of cygwin, which is a Unix emulator for Windows. So, if you will be placing the user somewhere outside the default directory for their Windows profile, you will need to use the cygdrive notation.
To access any folder on any drive letter, add /cygdrive/DRIVELETTER/ at the beginning of the folder path. As an example, to access the winnt\system32 directory on the *c:* drive you would use the path:
*/cygdrive/c/winnt/system32*

Emphasis added.

http://www.digitalmediaminute.com/article/1487/setting-up-a-sftp-server-on-windows

OpenDNS, the choice of tens of thousands of businesses and schools,
lets you easily block individual or entire categories of Web sites in
just minutes. It’s free and requires nothing to download or install.

It also makes your network faster and more reliable, and gives you
tools to easily see which Web sites are most visited on your network. If
you see problem Web sites in your network stats, you can easily block
them.