July 2010
www.lancom.co.nz
Inside This Issue
Monthly Featured Technology

LANcom is now on Twitter and Facebook

How to get the most out of your laptop battery

Interesting internet sites

Office Web Apps

Is it time to upgrade from Windows XP?
 
 

Monthly Featured Technology

Microsoft PowerPivot for Excel

Microsoft PowerPivot for Excel 2010 is a free data analysis add-in that allows you to manipulate and analyse large sets of data, from multiple sources, with ease. As a business intelligence application, PowerPivot integrates with many data sources to help you gain better business insights.

 

So what can you do with Microsoft PowerPivot?

  1. Work with 100s of millions of rows of data

  2. Pull data from multiple sources and combine them

  3. Create relationships between the imported data and analyse it using familiar Excel tools like PivotTables, PivotCharts, and slicers

  4. Use new DAX (Data Analysis Expressions) Formulas which are specifically optimized for business intelligence use.

  5. Publish your analysis on SharePoint

To read more about Microsoft PowerPivot click here.
 
 

LANcom is now on Twitter and Facebook



Want to keep up with what’s happening at LANcom and other interesting news in the managed IT services market? You can now follow LANcom on Twitter and become a fan of LANcom on Facebook.

Phill, Kevin, Waruna, Imran and I will all be tweeting, so if you would like find out about what we are up to as it's happening you can visit LANcom's Twitter homepage at twitter.com/LANcomTech

If you would like to see LANcom videos, photos, and status updates from Facebook you can go to www.facebook.com/lancomtechnology

^ top

How to get the most out of your laptop battery


Need your laptop battery to last as long as possible? If you ever forget your charger or you’re in a situation where you don’t have access to power, here are 5 simple tips to help you keep your laptop battery going.
  1. Adjust your power settings – In Windows you can adjust your Power Options through the Control Panel, here you’ll be able to do things like reduce the length of idle time before your computer turns off the display.
     
  2. Reduce the brightness on your screen - A lot of your laptop’s battery is used up illuminating the screen, but you can quickly and easily reduce this by reducing the brightness. Most laptops have keys on the keyboard that allow you to do this.
     
  3. Turn off programs you are not using – Any programs that you’re not using should be turned off. This includes programs you may have running in the background like chat programs or iTunes.
     
  4. Avoid using your CD/DVD drive - Accessing data off your hard drive or a USB uses less power than using your CD or DVD drive.
     
  5. Avoid using external speakers, hard drives, or other external devices – If you can avoid it, don’t use external devices. Turning off your laptops internal speakers or muting the sound will also save you power.

 ^ top

 Interesting internet sites

 

Norton Safe Web - Ever been sent a link by someone and not been sure if it’s safe? Or maybe you want to buy something from a website but want to make sure it’s the real deal before you give them your credit card number.

 

Norton Safe Web allows you to enter a URL and receive a report on the safety of that site. Norton Safe Web will let you know if there are any specific threats and will grade the site as  Safe, Caution, Warning, or Untested. To try out Norton Safe Web click here.

 

Trick.ly - Do you have a link you would like to post online, but would like only certain people to be able to access it? Trick.ly is a website that shortens and password protects links, so anyone trying to access them has to accurately answer your question before they are taken to the URL.

 

This service would be great if you wanted to do something like share a link on Facebook, but only wanted close friends to be able to access it. To visit the site and create a Trick.ly link click here.


Soundation studio -Want to have fun mixing your own electronic music? Soundation Studio is an online music mixer that allows you to layer different sounds to create your own tracks. This tool has a really easy to use drag and drop interface, has over 400 royalty free audio loops for you to choose from, and even has a virtual keyboard to create your own sounds.

Once you have created a track you can either download it or save it to Soundation and share the link. To visit Soundation studio and try it out click here.

Office Web Apps - Free basic editing for Office documents online


Ever really needed to edit or create an Office document, but didn’t have access to a computer with Office? Microsoft has just recently released Office Web Apps on Windows Live, which means you can now edit and create Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote files for free from any computer connected to the internet.

These free versions have limited functionality, so they are not designed to replace Office on your desktop, but having the option to edit anytime and anywhere definitely makes working with these files more convenient.

The applications in Office Web Apps use a ribbon interface just like Office 2007 and 2010, so if you are familiar with this you shouldn’t have any problems learning how to use it.

So what can you do with Office Web Apps?
There are no SmartArt tools and tools for working with pictures and tables are very limited, but all the basics are there. Office Web Apps also allows co-authoring in Excel and OneNote, which means you can work together with others on files at the same time.

How do you sign up?
To use Office Web Apps all you need is a Windows Live ID, so if you have a hotmail account you can use this or you can sign up for a Windows Live ID here.

Once you have a Windows Live ID you just need to click here and sign in . From here you will be able to upload Office files for editing or create new ones. You can store up to 25GB of files on your Windows Live account.

If you would like to read more about Office Web Apps from The Windows Blog click here.
 

For a full list of the services we offer visit www.lancom.co.nz

^ top

Is it time to upgrade from Windows XP?

 
Still using Windows XP and wondering when you will need to upgrade to Windows 7? As we mentioned previously on this blog Microsoft will be supporting XP with security updates until April 2014, but there are some good reasons why you may want to upgrade before this.

According to ComputerWorld, the IT research company Gartner says “Most organizations should try to eliminate Windows XP by the end of 2012″. This is because by 2012 many new versions of applications will not support XP, so if you are still using XP after 2012 you may not be able to use the latest versions of certain programs.

If you would like to read more about this from ComputerWorld click here. To find out about the top 10 benefits of Windows 7 click here.
 

For more helpful IT information, tips, and reviews visit the LANcom Technology blog at blog.lancom.co.nz

^ top

 

 
    
 

Contact LANcom Technology Ltd
P.O Box 91412 AMSC, Auckland, New Zealand
Ph 64 9 377 8282      Fax 64 9 377 7900      Email info@lancom.co.nz
 

If you wish to be removed from our mailing list please reply to this email with "remove" in the subject line.