Then, people started shrinking machines even further. The first introduction of Personal Digital Assistants saw us taking programmable computers in our pockets. They didn’t do very much back then, mainly a note-taking, email checking device with tiny monochrome screens, but it signalled an important change.

One thing is for sure. They weren’t born from the same machines on our desks. They didn’t run the same software. And as they grew in functionality, they allowed you to do more and more, becoming less of a toy or a digital curiosity and more like a tool. Then the tiny screens grew larger one day, the day the iPad was introduced. Sure, tablet PCs had been done before, but one detail was different. The software. It didn’t run the same software birthed from humming desktops but rather, derived its software from the tiny screened pocket devices.

Now this was an important detail. Because desktop computers had been with us too long, and everybody presumed that they should work a certain way. Trying to shoehorn desktop software into a portable computer was a fine exercise in shrinking the physical parts, but you couldn’t get away from their true nature. The software was designed for the keyboard and mouse, cost you an arm and a leg and littered your desktop with a dozen shortcuts.

Perhaps the best example of the worst offender is email. Its bad form to point fingers, but I’m afraid I have to. Microsoft and its Outlook and Exchange software are perhaps the most known names in business software, complimenting each other and making sure neither of them really change or evolve fast enough to keep up with the world.

Exchange feeds emails to your ever hungry Outlook application. Let’s not even go too deep into how ridiculously obese Outlook data files can become. Instead, let’s just take a closer look at how Outlook can bite the hand that feeds it. Exchange software allows you to synchronize not just your mail, but your calendar, contacts and even your task lists. Nothing wrong there, you begin to wonder, what’s there to complain about? It even lets you check your personal email account even with all this exchanging its doing, being all corporate and busy.

One day, you find yourself needing to access two Exchange accounts. Whether the company you’re working at acquires/gets acquired by another, or you decide to start your own business, or you decide to become a spy and take on multiple identities. Outlook simply won’t have it. Its corporate-ness decides that you belong wholly to your primary organisation. No way is it going to let you have two Exchange accounts. To heck with your startup idea. You’re not working on that on your boss’s laptop.

My trusty 2 year old android phone lets me add as many distinct personalities as my brain can keep track of, and so does any iPad, iPhone or any number of Android devices. How did this happen? How did these supposed limited functionality mobile devices become more functionable than the supposed all-encompassing desktop?

I’ll admit that this isn’t a problem faced by the majority. You have one computer, you work for one company, and that’s the end of it. But this problem is symptomatic of the state of software as a whole. I doubt many would read along if I went into an in-depth explanation of the technical reasons why this issue even exists, so I won’t start. Besides, its a really bad excuse.

Software has gone from something companies buy and issue to you to something developers need to make you want, and so have computers, mobile or otherwise. That’s the real reason. Nobody respected the user (that’s you) until quite recently, and it made all the difference when developers were forced to care.

Not every software scenario plays out the same way; you’re still far from being able to create CAD layouts or vector art on your iDevice, but the progress thus far has been encouraging. Especially when we find we can no longer do anything without software.

By Victor Huang

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The search for the ideal firewall began when we were looking to host our own web server from our own office. Having seen first hand how badly wrecked unprotected servers could be, we needed to know that it was absolutely safe from prying eyes. Firewalls are the first, and arguably the most important, line of defense from getting hacked. The trouble is, they tend to bog down the network with their complicated algorithms and intrusion detection systems.

So it comes back to the age old question of speed vs security. You can have both, of course, but at a price. High end firewall systems cost an arm and a leg. They’re understandably expensive, considering how much responsibility they bear.

I found myself dissatisfied with the answer. Some expensive equipment is truly worth it, but I began to suspect that high end firewall systems were priced to fit the budgets of large corporate IT departments. What’s there for the small business owner whom has to work around a budget? It seems the options are to stick to the consumer range of devices and keep your fingers crossed.

With off-the-shelf equipment being out of the question, it seemed like the only way was to build something ourselves. At the end of the day, firewalls are just computers, albeit ones that perform a very specific function.

We looked online and found pfSense. PF stands for packet filter, the rock solid software that BSD operating systems use to analyse network traffic. Built around an operating system so stable Apple decided to base theirs on it, we were pretty confident we had found what we were looking for.

This thing is blazing fast. Most people aren’t aware that routers have little processors inside them. Most of them barely half the speed of your modern smartphone. They do pretty alright, mainly because most internet connection speeds haven’t quite maxed them out yet. The average router handles 30mbps connections without much complaint, until you bog it down with a few VPN tunnels and you start to notice the strain. But throw a little desktop computing muscle behind your router/firewall and it absolutely flies. Even with its comparitively low powered Intel Atom processor, our pfSense box managed 300mbps while fully functioning with its intrusion detection and firewall rules. Throw in a few VPN tunnels and there’s no noticeable strain, even if the throughput numbers go down a little.

But speed is only a part of it. The interface is what really surprised me. After the initial software setup, I entered my login details into the web based graphical interface to find everything amazingly easy to understand. If I wanted to add extra functions to the device, I just instal an additional package and away we go. No reboots, no complaints. If I added a port-forward rule, a corresponding firewall rule will optionally be created and marked out as such. It was all so clear and easy to understand. Instead of staring at cryptic messages on the command line and wondering what each statement actually did, I had cross-referenced firewall rules which clearly marked out what each of them was for. One look and you’d understand what was going on, and at the end of the day, that’s what security is really about. Understanding. Not throwing expensive equipment at a problem and crossing your fingers. Not knowing what security measures you actually have in place is as good as leaving a back door open and hoping for others to be kind with you.

Instead of laboriously trying to interpret what each line of a configuration script meant, afraid of removing permissions for fear of breaking something, I could readily understand what rules were in effect and why they were there. If something wasn’t working right, the log files were simple to understand and had quick shortcuts to allow something it had previously blocked. Instead of obscurity and confusion, you feel like you’re in absolute control with the pfSense interface.

In terms of functionality, pfSense gives you everything you could possibly wish for which is truly refreshing considering most router manufacturers leave out key functions in their “small business” line of products, hoping you’ll pony up more for useful functions arbitrarily denied in their cheaper stuff. It comes with every type of VPN option imaginable, full featured intrusion detection, fancy graph charts of historical bandwidth usage and even a graphical breakdown of which hackers are sniffing about your network. It litters its interface with helpful little hints about what you might want to do, and what best practices are, rather than littering it with error messages complaining that you aren’t using Internet Explorer (yes, Cisco, that’s you).

With all this functionality served up to you in a well laid out web interface, there’s little to fault pfSense for, aside from the minor aesthetic issues with its default theme. Even that grows on you. pfSense is good. So good that you find yourself missing it. Especially when you next find yourself having to configure a router on the command line and get a headache from furrowing your brow. Its so good that it ruins its competition for you forever. Its so good that you find yourself writing haikus into the comments section of firewall rules because you feel so relaxed and in control that you can’t help but wax a little poetical.

Even with the added work of getting the right hardware and the little extra effort of installing the software yourself, the payoff is well worth it. pfSense can make you a router so good it’ll be hard for you to use anything else.

By Victor Huang

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Its primary feature is that it is based in the cloud. Instead of having the information stored locally in your computer, which is the norm for many businesses, it is stored in the cloud, in powerful servers running 24/7 and accessible from everywhere. This makes it very versatile, especially if you have to frequently travel overseas, viewing your accounts becomes a very simple issue.

Classic accounting software is tedious and complex, sometimes requiring proper training for the user/accountant to fully utilize the software.Not to mention, it is also difficult for others to understand, especially bosses. Xero provides a powerful interface to analyze the data and come out with impressive figures and graphs to answer the queries that bosses often have. This software really encourages people to look at the analysis generated by the tools and make suitable changes in their business if need be. This is different from the direction taken by many other accounting software, whose function is to just get the accounts right. Some software complicates thing further because of their messy, complex-looking interface. Xero, in this sense, score full points because of the way they design the interface. It aims to simplify things, making it easier for people to understand and generate what they want to know from all the confusing figures that they input.

And the power of it does not end there. It is made better with all the additional plug-ins that can be used to integrate the accounting software with other softwares (e.g. Payroll, CRM, inventory management, etc) to make it one giant software that incorporates all aspects of your business.

All these features make Xero an outstanding innovation and product.

By Chris

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When we then go on to recommend the changes we are going to make, they go into a state of shock and doubt, because they feel that our recommendations are too simple and fall short of their expectation of revamping the whole system, which often is unnecessary. Customers need to understand that the more complex the system is, the more areas where system errors can occur. They must try to keep their system as simple as possible to weed out all the possibilities of all these errors/failures. What I mean by simple is to get hardware/software that specifically only do what you want to do with it. If you want to host an application, get an app server that does that. If you just need a file server, get a NAS that do just that.

By simplifying your system to the bare minimum that does only what you want it to do, you are effectively reducing all the potential problems that you are going to face; Remember prevention is better than cure.

We provide simple solutions that works. Many of our current clients can stand testament to that. We feel that many other companies need to embrace this minimalist approach to IT systems. It is simple only when you make it so.

By Chris

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I am in charge of the setting up of the network for a certain company. It involves some laying of lines from the exchange box, which is outside of the building, to the riser. This requires the expertise of the SP’s technician as only they themselves are knowledgable about their system. So an enquiry was made via proper procedure, and a date was set for the technicians to come down to fix the problems. The timing set was 9am-6pm, for 2 days which I personally felt was kind of unreasonable, as the time window of 2 days, 9 hours is simply too big and for certain customers (like me), it may cause a lot of inconvenience. Sitting around for 9 hours waiting for these technicians to arrive sounds like a pretty stupid idea to me. But it was understandable (maybe the scheduling on their side was that bad), so we had no choice but to go along with it.

On the 1st day, they arrived at 3pm. I had to rush down as I was still at Sim Lim Square buying products for my customers. Upon rushing down, I was quite glad to know that the technicians actually know what they are doing, and they had went ahead to do the job. Just as I was getting my hopes high, the technicians started packing up to leave. So I guessed that the technicians were waiting for the contractors to bring the modem, which I logically assume would come in the following day.

So the following day, I waited till 3pm and yet nobody arrives. I called up the SP to clarify and found out that, they themselves do not know when will the modem arrive. They gave me a the contractor’s number to call them directly to find out. This number did not get through, so I called the SP to give me another number. This next number led me to the wrong contractor. I once again got another number from the SP (at this point I was boiling with anger already), which finally led me to the right contractor.

This contractor informed me that there was 3 phases to the whole setting work. Only phase 1 was completed on that day, and there were still 2 other phases to carry out, dates of which I have no idea about previously as it was not stated in the letter which the SP issued. The SP insists that I have to be there for all the 3 phases (I do not know the reason why), but if I were to agree to be there, would it not be fair to at least let me know, in advance, of the dates so that it would not clash with my own schedule. The technician that I called up, understood my predicament and reschedule the dates to a more comfortable arrangement.

It is disappointing to have such customer service standards from SPs in Singapore when it is positioning itself to be a global telecommunications hub. I understand from the SPs point of view that in Singapore, the market is small. And by its own there are 3 SPs in Singapore, thus the small market is cut even smaller among these 3. Therefore with the small amount of revenue that they can bring in, to increase profits; they have to cut costs. Employing third-party contractors will let you cut down on manpower costs, training costs, and it just saves you a whole lot of trouble when it comes to administration.

All this is agreeable to me, but what I like to see is that SPs improve their level of coordination with their contractors. Not just from the SPs to the contractors but also within the contractors themselves. So when a enquiry is made and repair needs to be done, there must be a cohesive plan made known to the customer, to ensure that everything goes smoothly.

It is difficult for big companies like the SP to micromanage and because of this the standard of customer service suffers. SP have to take this into consideration and put up, perhaps, a better, more efficient centralized planning system. Until they correct this, dissatisfaction among the customers will built up and in the long run, can hurt their business reputation.

Regards,

Parry

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After a few days of working here, I was very glad I made the right choice to join this company as an intern. Firstly, it is indeed heartwarming to work in such a cozy environment with friendly and fun colleagues. There is a no-stress environment and because of how the job scopes and roles are separated, there is almost no conflict of interest and everyone works together, help each other out to improve things around here, making everyone’s lives easier. Such working conditions is really conducive for good productivity and I enjoy such an atmosphere. It is a good breakaway from the stressful and often frustrating National Service lifestyle.

Secondly, they are offering me a position for me to do writing. I may not be the best when it comes to writing and expressing oneself, but I do have a strong passion for it. For an introvert like myself, writing is often the only escape for me. So I am very used to writing and exploring/adopting different kind of styles and perspectives when writing.

But most importantly, it is because I subscribe to what this company is doing for its customers. You may start  wondering why the previous sentence sound illogical and wrong. How can one subscribe, or believe in what one company does? In the normal context, you cannot as we all assume companies to be selling something, a product or a service. So logically, one cannot believe in a product or service, as it does not make sense at all. But to me this company is not selling any good or service, it is actually selling an idea. And this idea being that, we, ComputerGuys, wants to ensure that our customers have a smooth and fun experience on the IT platform doing their work. The main focus is on “Why we do it” rather than “What/How we do”.

(To get a better understanding of this concept, I strongly encourage you to watch this: http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html, it is awesome and really changes the way you see things)

It is because of us selling you this idea, we have the incentive to provide you with the best technology in the market when it comes to IT. We set a whole new level of service standards that is not seen in the entire IT industry. We go out of our way, to meet the specific requirements of every customer that we have. That is the idea that ComputerGuys is selling, and to me it is very inspiring.

In conclusion, I hope that this internship here will be a great experience and please look forward to more articles/blog/rants from me.

Cheers,

Chris

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Hardware manufacturers (e.g. Dell, ASUS) are the people who make the product that you uses. These companies do not often sell their goods directly to consumers. It takes a lot of marketing, influence and a manpower to penetrate the market. Big manufacturers thus prefer to sell their products to resellers. Resellers will then employ their own manpower and resources to then sell those products to the customers. And in this process they charge a little more than the cost price of products and take that as their profit. This is how resellers work.

Since their main incentive to higher profits is to just sell more products, resellers here employ hard sell tactics and in the process possessing a complete lack of service ethics. In their effort , to sell more products, they ignore the basic service demands of customers and it irks the customers. (like us)

I don’t have that big of a expectation honestly, but we do expect at least a few things:

1. Prompt follow up on request for goods
(when we do have to call up to request for goods, it is obviously urgent already, don’t drag it further!)

2. Listening and understanding what is being requested.

3. (not asking repeated questions and giving wrong answers; even though you do not produce the good yourself, at least have some basic knowledge in it)

4. Follow up with quotes

5. (we should not be the one doing the quoting for you)

6. Deliver the goods as promised and on time.

7. (tell us the time you will deliver it, and please don’t stop the delivery just because we are too far. What kind of silly excuse is that. How big can Singapore get?)

8. Put all the delivery charges/whatever charges into the quote!

These ‘expectations’ do not really pertain to service standards at all. I regard them as basic business ethics. That should be the way you conduct your business between you and your customers. If there is no honesty, sincerity and professionalism, it tells a lot about not just the company, but your individual personality also!

Honestly, in our experience, only 30% of all all the suppliers that we know, can deliver the basic expectation that we have of them. ComputerGuys make it a point to partner only with resellers who understand service and business ethics.

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Users of Apple products have long touted “simplicity” as one of the primary reasons they made that choice. For a long time, Microsoft could safely ignore Apple’s advantage in that respect because the Mac’s historical market share (well under 10%) indicated that simplicity simply wasn’t all that important to most people.

The first time I picked up an iPhone was magical it was the first generation 2G model with the aluminum backing. I was instantly brought 10 years into the future.

I guess Microsoft will never get the idea of simple is beautiful. Every generation of software just gets more and more complicated and more and more steps to each and every configurations.

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Or is it that your IT are incapable of implementing a system that doesn’t need so much firefighting?

I have came across personally a few organizations a size of 50 or less with their own IT personnel.
Are you sure you need that guy over there?

The truth is even with a in house IT personnel. They usually cannot solve the root of a problem.

Why?

• Because he is your employee. (Recommendation are less likely to happen from him)
• He is on your pay cheque. (Fear of losing the job)
• He is just a single guy in your organization. (Doesn’t come in a team)
• He only have limited knowledge on whats going on in the fast moving IT world. (Definitely doesn’t catch up with news)
• He doesn’t have management experience (Cannot see the big picture and improve processes)

For Computer Guys. our single System Administrator have a combine knowledge of 10 or more organization. With our proper training to keep in mind the “big picture”and weed out things that just doesn’t work.

I would say if your organization needs 1 or more full time IT personnel in your office always to do firefighting. Chances are..

He is not doing a good job. Think about it.

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Computer Guys is now offering special pricing for Proactive IT System Administration for our
Neighbours.

It would be fantastic if we could partner together since we are all under the same roof !

Contact us today to find out more on how your company can benefit with us !

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