IT support news

TekBusters is growing and wants you to join us

Gerry — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 01:44:14 +0000

Would you like to work with a fast growing IT company in South Surrey? We’re looking for some one who can remove a virus, swap out a hard drive or set up a WiFi network. Can you build a server too? Because that would be a plus. Got some experience and maybe some qualifications? Then send us your resume and see what kind of a job you could have. We’ll provide training, competitive pay, a car or mileage expenses and a cell phone or allowance.
There’s great career potential here, TekBusters is growing fast and now is the time to join.
Send your resume, or any questions you have about the position to hiring@tekbusters.ca.

Find out more about the job here.

Come meet us

Gerry — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 19:40:17 +0000

TekBusters will be at the South Surrey and White Rock Chamber of Commerce Trade Show on this Friday the 21st. It’s all on at the White Rock Community Centre, 15154 Russell Ave. It runs from noon – 7:30 p.m. and is free admission. Come along and find out more about our backup services, our uptime contracts or our web and seo packages. Meet Gerry and Ursula and find out more about our latest web offerings with freshspark web design.
We’re also in the elevator pitch competition, see our video and vote for it here.

Android Tablet – the ASUS transformer

Gerry — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 17:39:50 +0000

Is it a tablet or is it a laptop? It’s both. The Asus Transformer is an Android Tablet that has a keyboard to dock to. With a 10″ screen and weighing just 680g it makes an ideal tablet. We just got one here and found it easy to use and the screen is really good, great viewing angles, though like most tablets not so good in direct sunlight. Running Android 3.0, it also comes with full Flash support (unlike some other tablets) and as well as mini HDMI and a headphone jack it has a Micro SD card slot allowing you to expand the memory available.
Then you add the keyboard, and this adds 2 USB ports and an SD card reader as well as a multi touch mouse pad and well, keyboard. It also extends your battery life from 9.5 to up to 16 hours. Not bad at all. It also includes a 5MP rear camera, a 1.2MP front camera and will shoot HD video.
Not a bad tablet at all and currently my favourite toy.

Google Plus

Gerry — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 17:48:15 +0000

Yet another addition to the Social Media experience Google+ is now in a trial (a rather big trial, they have 25 million users already). Is it the new facebook? Or Twitter?
It seems to be both. From a quick update (twitter or facebook) to sharing a longer post (blog) or video (youtube and then shared with facebook) or keeping track of business associates (linkedin) it seems to do it all. With the idea of circles you can put people in groups and easily decide who you want to share with. So the video of your kids first steps might be family and friends but the news that your company is launching a new product might be customers and suppliers.
Although there’s no business pages yet, it is definitely under way and with a 25 million user base already, it’s going to be an important one to watch.

2 new phone scams

Gerry — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 18:37:16 +0000

There are 2 scams currently popular in BC to watch out for.
In the first one you get a phone call from Microsoft (or another large IT company) warning you about a new security threat and they ask you to check for a file on your PC or a log for errors. Once they confirm this is there it’s all “oh no, your computer is about to explode / bank account hacked / world will end”. But they will of course fix it for you. Just go to this website and click here to give them control of your PC….
Microsoft will not be calling you. It’s a scam. Event logs nearly always have errors. Go to a large computer store and check their demo PCs for the same files and errors. They’re all there.
The second is similar but you may already have a virus. You get a phone call from Shaw or Telus saying that your computer has a virus and is spamming millions of people. You’re about to be cut off from internet / tv / phone / electricity and arrested / shunned or whatever for this major offence. When you check your computer it may even have crashed or have a warning message on it. Of course they can fix it, just $49 (the number varies). And yes they take credit cards….
The amount of time it takes them to spend the limit on your credit card? About 10 minutes.
If you are called by one of these people there are a few numbers to call.
Hang up and call the company back, Shaw 1-888-472-2222, Telus 310-2255 and verify that it wasn’t really calling them.
Call your local police station. It’s good to have noted the number you got the call from (though usually unknown), the time of the call etc.
Call your own IT guys, TekBusters are at 778.294.2917

Estate Taxes

Gerry — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 20:07:37 +0000

While planning your estate might not be at the top of your list one of our SEO clients specialises in this and asked us to help them get found on Google. A search for Estate Taxes Surrey seems to be working for them now, the top 3 results are the Estate Tax team at Aylett Grant Chartered Accountants.
They also have a team specialising in cross border taxes and a search for cross border taxes surrey also has the top 3 organic results as well as a paid listing. The key here is to have a well laid out website with quality content and TekBusters can make sure your website gets found too.

If you’d like to get your website found when your customers are looking for it, give us a call and see how we can help.

Speed up boot times

Gerry — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 20:41:11 +0000

A new piece of software being developed examines all the processes and services that start with your computer and helps you choose to stop them starting or delay the startup until after boot. It’s called soluto and can be downloaded from www.soluto.com. If you understand a bit about which programs are stalling your computer this will help you choose which ones to uninstall or delay.
For example by stopping some toolbars from starting, some automatic updates from programs I rarely use and uninstalling some software that came with my laptop but I don’t use I was able to knock 10 seconds off my boot time.

Canadian SR&ED Tax credit program

Gerry — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 17:08:27 +0000

It’s not all about computers here. Your business also needs capital to work and the Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA) have develeoped the SR&ED tax credit program to help business involved in R&D. The federal government program is called SR&ED (Scientific Research and Experimental Development) and is a federal tax incentive program to encourage Canadian businesses of all sizes and in all sectors to conduct research and development (R&D) in Canada that will lead to new, improved, or technologically advanced products or processes. The SR&ED program is the largest single source of federal government support for industrial research and development.

Claimants can apply for SR&ED investment tax credits for expenditures such as wages, materials, machinery, equipment, some overhead, and SR&ED contracts.
At TekBusters we’ve been working with Green Hat Consultants who are experts in the Canadian SR&ED tax credit program. They have some great information on their website and it includes a handy SR&ED tax credit calculator to help you see how much this program can help.

Google Calendar Sync Error 2147312566

Gerry — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 15:29:14 +0000

Google calendar is very useful to sync your calendar from Outlook to the web to yout mobile device etc. The problem though it that sometimes it doesn’t work. Often you will see an error along the lines of
could not connect to microsoft outlook error -2147312566 (or error -2147319779 or error -214695355).
First check that you are using a supported operating system and version of Outlook and if so try this fix.
1. Close Outlook and exit Calendar Sync.
2. Click on Start – Run and type in regedit and hit enter.
3. Find the key HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\TypeLib\{00062FFF-0000-0000-C000-000000000046} and look for entries 9.3 or 9.4.
If either of these are there rename these keys to OLD-9.3 or OLD-9.4.
4. Restart Outlook and Calendar Sync and try again.
In once case I had to delete all keys under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\TypeLib\{00062FFF-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}

WARNING : Be careful editing the registry. If you make a mistake you may end up crashing your system and it may not boot. If in doubt please call TekBusters for computer support.

Getting found on Google

Gerry — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 20:45:56 +0000

Now that you have a website, are people using it? SEO (Search Engine Optimizaton) is the process of making your website not only human friendly but search engine friendly. This is making sure that when a search engine (like Google, Yahoo, Bin, AltaVista) check your site and index it they know what it is. The next step is getting to the top of the results page.
So if you are a plumber in Surrey you have to ask yourself, does Google know this? Suppose you are the best realtor in White Rock, does Bing know. SEO is the process of making sure they do so that everyone else does.
A simple test, suppose John, newly arrived from Manitoba to Surrey buys a house and one of his pipes start leaking. He needs a plumber fast, so he types’ plumber in Surrey’ into Google. Who do you think he will call? Some one in the first page. Research tells us that most likely he will call one of the first three results. If you’re a plumber and your website comes up on page 17, your website is no good for you. Sorry, no one will call.
More and more people search on the internet for goods and services and if your business is not being found then customers are going elsewhere. If you think your website could work harder for you (or you have no website and would like a hardworking one to start with), give TekBusters a call and we can help