Has your email account been hijacked?

In the past month there have been increasing reports of email accounts being hijacked, especially free email accounts such as hotmail. When an account is hijacked the email owner is often unaware until they start hearing from people that are getting spam from their address. In some cases victims have reported address books being deleted or sent items cleaned out. Hijacking doesn't necessarily mean you've lost access to your account.

What should you do if you are a victim of email hijacking? Most important change your password immediately and make it a complex one (a combo of upper and lower case letters, with numbers and/or symbols) is best. Change your security question and answer and make sure your alternate email address is correct and hasn't been changed on you.  Let everyone in your address book know what happened so they can be aware and question and suspicious emails that have come from your address up until that point.

Tax Break on New Computers

Thinking it’s time to upgrade computers for your business soon?

Did you know your business may be eligible to claim 100% of computer costs (including systems software) for purchases between Jan.27/09 to midnight Jan.31/11?  This only applies to new equipment used in Canada. Click Here for More Info

Computer purchases can seem like a large expense, but consider productivity lost on computers three or more years old.  Some have trouble handling newer versions of software  or freeze/crash frequently.  The cost to upgrade or replace failed parts can add up quickly and when all is said and done repairs can equal the cost (or more) of what a newer better system would have.

When selecting new computers for your business (or home) it is more important to look at quality and length of warranty as a top concern.  The majority of computers sold in retail stores are sold with a one year warranty; if something go wrong after that first year the part replacement cost and or labor could be more than the computer is worth.  Many stores offer extended warranty, but be aware these extensions mean the computer must be serviced by that retail store, it is better to extend the manufacturer’s warranty if possible (and most do).  Generally you want at least a 3 year warranty plan that includes parts and labor.

As mentioned in a previous post Polarverse offers high-grade computers (Extreme Series) which carry a 3 year parts and labor warranty plan. (Click Here)

What to do with an old computer?

We are often asked what to do with an old computer that is no longer usable.  The concern is not about the disposal but more about any data that is on the hard drive especially for a business.    Polarverse offers a free service to guarantee your hard drive is wiped in such a way that no one can retrieve data from it, all you have to do is remove the hard drive from the computer itself.  We can either pickup the drive during our next visit or you can drop it off at anytime to our mail box at the UPS Store at Highland & Westmount Box 113.  Contact us for more information.

As for the rest of the old computer you can’t just put it on the corner or in a dumpster (at least you shouldn’t) if you take it to the dump they often charge a fee for electronics; but there are electronics recyclers that will take the equipment for free.  In Waterloo there is a place off Erb street near the dump called My Old PC  http://www.myoldpc.ca/ for businesses they are now offering a limited time “Free Pick-up”

Oops! Where did Polarverse.com go?

A few days ago I was doing some learning with Drupal which is an open source website building tool.  What I didn’t realize till this morning was it had made itself my default page for polarverse.com.  Unless someone was using a link to a specific page you would have been seeing a Drupal default page.

Our main site was created with Joomla (open source as well) but we are considering moving to Drupal and merging our Blog and Store with the main site to make one big mega site.  Sorry for the hiccup if anyone was trying to get to the website but couldn’t.  The issue has been corrected and the main website is the default again.

Extreme Computers

Polarverse Computer Services is now offering high quality custom-built computers.  Systems are built only with best quality parts and brands (ASUS Motherboards, Kingston RAM, Seagate and Western Digital Hard Drives, etc).  Mid-range systems for home and office, high-end systems for design work (autoCAD) of for high-end gaming!

All systems come with 3 years parts and labor warranty starting at $495.99

Click here to see our line up

IE 9 - Quick Review

I installed IE9 this morning, which is still in beta, and thought I would give a quick review.  During the upgrade it rebooted my machine without asking which I wasn’t too impressed by having a few applications open that I would normally close before any reboot/shutdown!  All seemed good when it came up, Microsoft has changed the menu system a bit which took me a few minutes to figure out if I right click in the upper area I could get my quick links, status and other toolbars back; basically any preferences I had before were lost.  Browsing websites seemed fine, speed nothing different than IE8 really.

The show stopper for me:  If I have another browser open such as Google Chrome or Firefox not only does IE9 crash but it takes Chrome and Firefox along with it which has made IE basically useless to me.  I’ve reported this bug so hopefully the full release or next beta update fixes this issue.

Introducing our Client Portal

We’ve added a new menu to our website called “Client Portal” (you can find it on the right just under the search box).  The client portal will allow new and existing clients to:

• Request service
• Initiate remote support
• Access self help documents
• Pay invoices online with our new secure payment system

We have plans in the near future to add the ability to view and update support tickets.
Click Here to visit our main website now