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Welcome to
The Spider-letter, the
newsletter from Anthony Licate and
Spidernet Technical Consulting, LLC
focused on helping you streamline the
way technology is used in your
organization.
www.spidernetconsulting.com
In this issue you will find:
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ARTICLE:
…sending documents through email?
Don’t get burned by metadata!
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ASK
ANTHONY:
Your
Questions Answered
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SPIDER-STAT: Factoid Of The Month
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ARTICLE |
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...sending
documents
through
email?
Don't
get
burned
by
metadata! |
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During my seminar at the Main
Line Chamber of Commerce August
3rd, I discussed something
called, "metadata". When I asked
whether anyone ever heard of
metadata, I was confronted with
blank stares. That is
exactly why I decided to make
this part of the August
Spider-Letter.
Metadata is information that
exists in Microsoft Word, Excel,
and PowerPoint files. Metadata
is simply “data about data”, and
your electronic documents
probably contain lots of it.
Metadata describes document
attributes such as the title,
author, content, location, and
date of creation.
Knowing this information can be
helpful when cataloging
electronic information. But
metadata can also share
confidential and potentially
embarrassing information with an
unintended audience. Would you
want a potential customer of
yours finding out historical
data regarding the original
author of the document you sent
them? How many times it was
edited? Who was editing the
document? It’s
possible….especially if you are
a user of the Track Changes
feature in Microsoft Word. The
picture below gives you a better
idea of what someone may be able
to find out from a Word
document:
Scary huh? So I'm sure all
of you are thinking, "How do I
keep this information from
leaving my company?" One
option for you is to pdf
documents with a pdf creator
program before sending it (take
a look at the Technology for the
Tech-Impaired seminar notes for
links to download free pdf
creators).
There are enterprise level
programs on the market that will
clean this information from
documents too if you'd prefer to
just clean the document before
you send it to someone. A
good program to use is called
Metadata Protect, by a company
called Workshare.
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ASK
ANTHONY |
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Your
Questions
Answered |
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Anthony,
Our office has 15 remote users
that work outside of the office.
We are looking into the purchase
of 15 new Dell Latitude
commercial grade laptops for all
of the remote users. The
laptops are about $1,200 each.
When I go to Best Buy and look
at the cost of some of the
laptops there, the laptops that
seem to be equal in hardware
specifications are much cheaper.
Why would I want to spend money
on 15 laptops that are going to
cost more with Dell when I can
just pick up 15 cheaper
comparable HP Pavilion laptops
from Best Buy? What do I
really gain if I go with the
Dell purchase?
-Ben, Villanova, PA
Ben,
The first thing I should explain
is the difference between
"commercial computers" and "home
user" computers. Most vendors
that make pc’s have a commercial
line and a home user line of
machines they sell. The
difference between the two is
that the commercial machines are
more thoroughly tested, meaning
that updates to the pc over time
will be smoother and more
resilient than the home user
models that are cheaper.
Also, the commercial machines
are exactly the same
part-for-part if you buy them
all at the same time, whereas
the home user machines may have
slightly different parts within
them, which means that
administratively, the home user
pc's will be more labor
intensive to run software
upgrades on when it comes time
to do so.
Simply put: the home user
machines cost more in the long
run to support in a corporate
environment. A small fix
that only takes 5 minutes on one
home user laptop will mean that
it may cost 15 x 5 minutes = 75
minutes to fix all 15 laptops.
You see where I'm going with
this?
Try this:
In a corporate environment, you
always want to go with the
commercial line of machines (aka:
Dell Latitude and Optiplex
lines/HP Evo lines/IBM Thinkpad
and Thinkcentre lines).
You can only buy Dell pc's
direct. It is also possible to
pick up the HP and IBM
commercial computers at
reputable companies such as CDW
(www.cdw.com)
or Pc Connection (www.pcconnection.com).
Don't get sucked in by a cheap
price...it'll cost your company
in the long haul!!
-Anthony
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SPIDER-STAT |
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Monthly
Factoid |
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During the past year, 44% of
small businesses (less than $100million in rev.)
report that billing and account problems had an
adverse affect on customer satisfaction at their
company.
-CIO Insight Research Study, July, 2005
For
more information on how you can reduce technical
support issues and streamline the way technology
is used in your organization, call (877)
281-0322 or email
newsletters@spidernetconsulting.com
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