Kinetics Bill Lunam spots an escalating trend of cyber-attacks on POP3 servers.

Now that we are used to getting our emails on our phone, what else can we get easily do on our phone?

We've had an increase in enquiries for advice about getting mobile data access while overseas. We have all heard the horror stories of massive bills. The good news is that the answers have got easier!

STOLEN! The source code to a bunch of Symantec software like Norton Antivirus, PC Anywhere and so on was stolen. And it's now in the hands of hackers ...

Time for a career step? We're looking for an outstanding engineer to join our KARE team, looking after our premier clients ... read more

It's over 10 years since Windows XP came out, and 4 years since the iPhone. If you are still using PCs and software from those eras, then you are missing the enormous advances that have come out since.

Santa is on his way again. Doesn't seem like a year since last time! As many of our clients head away, others are working through. And Kinetics has a team working too. We'll be here when you need us.

These scammers are an industrious bunch. It's timely to remind our clients and friends of the dangers of emails that sound too good to be true. Here's one we got yesterday "from" the IRD

Kinetics is proud to be supporting Stewart’s environmental initiative, run in partnership with “Trees for Survival”

For the second year in a row, Kinetics Group has won the Microsoft Small Business Solution of the Year. And it's the 4th time in 5 years!

The saying goes "if it works, don't fix it", and it's pretty sound advice, but it doesn't always work. One of the challenges of IT is that things can stop working if you don't keep them maintained. Frustratingly, sometimes that becuase of nasty internet vandals ...

Every year Kinetics see’s the same Christmas and New Year’s holiday issues occurring. Bill Lunam explains the simple preventive fix.

Is Cyber-crime real? It’s a fair enough question to ask.

What will your next PC look like? With so much change in mobiles, and tablets (iPads), it's fair to expect the wave of innovation to change PCs as well. And it will. Very soon ... Microsoft has started to show off the next version of Windows ...

Westpac Auckland Central Business Awards

Kinetics Operations Manager Bill Lunam reports back after attending a technology briefing.

You might have noticed some particularly odd looking black boxes starting to appear in advertising. Have you wondered what they are? We’re quite excited at the possibilities that this simple idea offers and the opportunities they create – they are there for you and your customers!

We’ve been making changes at Kinetics! We’ve got the best problem of all in business – and that’s that we are busier than ever. We’re very grateful to our wonderful clients for the support you are showing us and we’re rising to meet the increased demand.

Back in October 2010 Kinetics warned of cold calling scam

Windows 8 is coming, and it brings "touch" to the mainstream PC.

July marks the end of life of two versions of Windows. XP with Service Pack 2 and Vista with Service Pack 1.

Kinetics Group sent Rhys Kerrigan along to the Trend Micro Anti-Virus road show to get Trends take on what is happening in the AV security space. In this article Rhys shares some interesting snippets.

Kinetics customers that use BPOS (Microsoft Hosted Exchange) will get a free upgrade to the new Office 365 product. As part of the free upgrade Microsoft will be enforcing new password policies.

Kinetics invests a lot of time into understanding now our customers can benefit from technology changes. We sent Bill Lunam along to find out where Windows 2008 and 7 are going.

Three years after being told SSD will be in all Servers next year. Bill Lunam finds SSD disks are now starting to appear, but in Laptops not Servers.

Over the last couple of years, server software has grown rapidly in complexity and size. SBS 2008 is an example of this increased complexity. As updates have added new enhancements and features, the time required to rebuild and restore a failed system has become unacceptably long. A resolution that once would have taken 12 to 24 hours can now take two or more days. The challenge is to reduce the disruption, and cost of a recovery operation.

We’ve seen a fake email circulating recently that links to a page which mimics the Trade Me website. It asks you to enter your Trade Me login details and credit card information. We’d never prompt you to enter your credit card details in this way so if you have entered your credit card information, please contact your bank immediately

Christmas has been and gone, and already it feels like a distant memory. Kinetics had a complete office refit over the break, and while the final touches are still being applied, we’re enjoying the improvements immensely. If you are in our neighbourhood, we’ll look forward to showing you what we’ve done! So what does the year hold?

Change is constant! This October, Microsoft have revised their partner programme and lifted the bar. With our commitment to being the best IT partner we can be, it was vital that we demonstrated this by retaining our ‘Gold’ status. It was a challenge, but one that we rose to and succeeded, becoming one of very few NZ IT companies to achieve it.

It can't be Xmas already? As we head into the holiday season, the Kinetics team remains available to support your IT

Nothing like an earthquake to raise awareness of business continuity planning! With increased interest in the topic, we're prepared a few thoughts. You can't predict every eventuality. It is unrealistic to have a plan that says 'if X happens, then do Y'. What your plan should seek to do is to make a recovery easier.

A very odd call from "Microsoft" (well, it wasn't actually Microsoft)

We've launched our new website for our coaching business - check out it and tell us what you think

Bill Lunam explains why you need Adobe updates.

Thursday morning saw Microsoft release the beta of IE9. It’s the latest version of their popular web browser. It’s a surprisingly competitive market, for a product that’s essentially free, and Microsoft has been under considerable pressure from competitors like Google and Firefox.

Kinetics wins Microsoft NZ Small Business Award (again)

Beware!! There is a very realistic email "survey" going around purporting to be from McDonalds. Be careful, its a CON! Lets take a closer look ...

Over the last couple of years, VDI has emerged as a relevant technology for concentrating PCs into a single server. So what s it exactly? A simple introduction to VDI ...

There is never a good time for things to go wrong, and late afternoon on Friday 13th before a busy weekend is amongst the worst

Every year, vendors from all around the globe use Microsoft's Worldwide Conference to showcase their products to a technical audience. Like all expos, some products catch your eye, and many don't.

Phones continue to evolve into pocket computers. We will see the next generation of Windows phone shortly and it looks really cool!

With 12,000 people including 9,500 partners from 130 countries, this year's WorldWide Microsoft Conference holds great promise for us to learn more about what we can do to help our clients

Great news for Kinetics today. We have again been honoured by Microsoft NZ as a finalist in the Small Business Category in 2010. We've been fortunate to be a finalist year after year. It's incredibly rewarding to be able to reflect on the great things that our clients do everyday, and to play our small part in your success.

Bill Lunam explains e-mail spoofing, its legitimate and illegitimate uses.

Symptom – start web browser, after a few seconds, a weird 80’s tune starts playing. No matter what web page you browse to, the music plays on. Sounds like a virus! But, virus software is up-to-date, and one careful user.

At last, Office 2010 launches this week. We’ve been out talking about it, at client meetings, seminars, in our newsletter and in our twitter feeds. So you’ll know we’re excited by it. Here's TEN great reasons

We would like to invite you to be our guest at this year’s Bizzone Business Expo.

We've had a timely reminder about backups before roll-overs

News today that 3.5 diskettes are on the way out. Crikey, it's not that long ago that they were new!

We’ve all been using Office2010 at Kinetics for some time. It’s been in ‘beta’ for some months. In fact, our experience with Office 2010 has been so good that we’ve rolled it out to all our staff. And now we’ve collated their favourite experiences.

Office 2010 launches on May 13th. It's a huge step forward - come and see what the fuss is all about - register now

For April Fool's day, Google decided to do something a little different ...

Statistics released this week show that Facebook has overtaken Google as the most visited site on the 'net in the US - a significant evolution of web usage

Right now, we’ve become aware of a range of IP addresses belonging to Vodafone NZ subscribers being blacklisted by the ‘UCEprotect’ site, located in Germany. Even worse, the particular site may be a scam, allegedly demanding money from Vodafone before they’ll correct their list.

We picked up a useful article in ‘stuff’ this week. It seems that the anti-SPAM laws are now going to be more vigorously enforced. Despite the law change back in 2007, there has still been a small number of persistent rogues.

We’re hearing stories about phone systems being hacked. Stories out of Christchurch talk about massive thousand dollar toll bills occurring over just 2-3 days. As the stories go, the hackers are apparently out of Somalia. It seems they are using the stolen services to sell cheap toll cards to their customer base.

Just days after a security vulnerability in IE6 caused problems for Google in China, we are now advised that IE6 and older are no longer supported

As happens from time to time, new security threats emerge for common software. Hackers are always looking for new ways to vandalise the internet. Recently some attacks have happened in China, apparently targeting Google. It seems the hackers have found a way of using a vulnerability in Internet Explorer.

Microsoft Office is the one program that most of use each day. Whether it's for Word, Excel or something else, Office is key to our daily productivity. So with a major new release due in the middle of this year, Kinetics staff are busy getting familiar with the beta release.

This week, Google announced their latest smartphone, the Nexus One, unfortunately not available here in New Zealand. The pricing is incredible, the equivalent of just NZ $243 with a two year contract, or NZ $718 without a contract. Devices like this are changing the internet, and the shape of PCs.

With the Christmas holiday season upon us, you can go on vacation knowing that Kinetics will be here to look after your IT

Susan Carlow recently delivered Windows 7 coaching seminars to NZ Institute of Chartered Accountants in Remuera. The event was a success, and attendees took away a comprehensive user guide, packed with hints and tips to get the best out of Windows 7.

The latest news reveals that Windows 7 is now on more desktops that the current Mac OS - after just one month.

We think SharePoint is the most exciting Microsoft technology available today. We’ve helped many clients get get their intranets underway, using the technology that in many cases they already own. More and more of our clients use the document management features to share documents, track updates and access them over the internet. They use workflows to manage business processes ranging for staff leave through to accounts payable and job orders, and that’s just scratching the surface.

Some time back, we posted a comment on our 'Handy Hints' page about the most useless key - scroll lock. It's prompted a loyal reader to ask why the '@' key, one of the most useful keys, is still relatively inaccesible.

Kinetics welcomes our clients to a preview event. Learn about Windows 7 and Office 2010 and see what you can expect

One of the “lighter” sessions at TechEd 09 was based around the changes and future of mobile PCs. The session covered the past, present and future of mobile computing – the definition of mobile computing here being anything capable of running a desktop operating system (i.e. not a phone or PDA).

One of the most significant new features in Exchange 2010 is the storage capacity archiving. Mailstore size has often been an issue for our clients, and that's going to be history - find out why ...

Windows 7 is launching very soon, and expectations are high. What will Windows 7 do for you? We sent Corrie Schoonbee to Tech-Ed to find out.

We're regularly asked for advice on building websites. It's not something we're particularly expert in, but this morning, on one of the 'must-read' blogs, we saw some great pointers that we'd like to share

What happens to old computers? It's not like you can compost them! Kinetics helped out at our local eDay collection centre.

Some may think Google pretty much is a monopoly - but that's not what this is about. We've just become aware of the popular game going online

Having the latest software is one thing, but knowing how to get the most from it is vital. Kinetics offers a 'Power Plug' session to help you get some quick wins from Office 2007

Over the last few months, a new force has emerged. It’s called “cloud computing”. Like many innovations, it’s not actually new. So, cloud computing is a proven idea, tested over the ages. So why’s it back in vogue?

Clean up New Zealand’s e-waste. Recycling electronic waste (e-waste) enables the recovery and reuse of valuable materials and ensures toxic materials are not buried in our landfills - so it's better for our environment.

Like many people, we’ve now got more than one PC at home. The kids have one, there’s a shared machine in the office, and my laptop spends a fair amount of time there too. And like a lot of home machines, backups aren’t what they could be. Likewise, we seem to download the digital camera to whichever PC is closest at the time, resulting in a real shambles. I’ve been meaning to sort it out for a while now.

Kinetics Group invites you to improve your productivity with Outlook 2007 - unlocking the power of collaboration

Microsoft NZ's Partner Awards for 2009 are coming up. Kinetics has won the Small Business category for the last couple of years, and we are a finalist again this year.

Bill Lunam explains Server Virtualisation in simple terms.

One of the product highlights from Microsoft's Partner Conference was the unveiling of Exchange 2010. We summarise the key new features ...

Microsoft Office is the most commonly used business software on the planet. So the chance to see what's new in 2010 at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference was high on Kinetics' CEO Andrew Hunt's list.

Lessons for success in a downturn - Microsoft started their Worldwide Partner Conference with their advice to partners. Kinetics CEO Andrew Hunt was there, and thinking about what it means on a day to day basis ...

Times are tough. We know that everyone needs to trim their costs - frankly businesses are always trimming costs in good times or bad - but some apparent savings can be very expensive.

There's another email doing the rounds, purporting to come from Microsoft with an attached 'fix'. Do NOT believe it!

Google Maps gets better and better. User pictures are now appearing in Street View

One of the cool applications on iPhones are RSS viewers. Weirdly, RSS viewers aren't included in Windows Mobile. So we went looking for a free one

Bombarded day and night on the news, its becoming obvious that swine flu is going to have an impact. What is Kinetics doing to maintain service?

Microsoft has released one download that applies Service Pack 2 to both Windows Vista and Server 2008. The download is available in both 32 and 64 bit versions. The Service pack includes all previously released updates, patches and enhancements. It also includes new features to add value to your Vista or 2008.

October 22nd sees the general release of Windows 7. With widespread anticipation and positive reviews, this is great news!

Using SharePoint - Kinetics's SharePoint Templates include SalesNet for Small Business

Google is verb. It has become part of our language. Even the most computer illiterate know that ‘googling’ means searching the internet. I understand that Google commands over 60% of all internet searches, which is truly incredible. And now we have Bing. Kinetics CEO Andrew Hunt takes a look.

Last week, Kinetics CEO Andrew Hunt took a trip to Sydney to look around Cebit and see what's new

How far away is it from hitting a computer near you, and why does it matter to your business? Kinetics takes a closer look at Windows 7 RC1

Savio is a well-respected CRM and Events Sofware Specialist, has outsourced it's network support to Kinetics

Following last month's article, this month Susan Carlow reviews the most popular social media sites

28 April sees the release of SP2 for Office 2007. What's going to be in the pack?

While browsing the internet, we came across this gem from the 1980's. Would you trade your PDA for it?

Kinetics Coach Susan Carlow explores the online world of social media. Is it relevant to business?

Everyone gets frustrated at their computer from time to time. "How do I", "Why did that happen" ... so what can you do about it?

Evolving forward to meet the challenges of 2009 means some changes in faces at Kinetics