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In unrelated news, Productivity at most office with unfiltered internet connections has increased drastically over the last hour!

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Gjeret from Sensible Gurus

Spam Protection? What product should I use?

Earlier this week, a different service provider (Out of Big Bend, WI) called up Sensible Gurus looking for some help. On one of their customers machines they installed the ESET Spam protection and Anti-Virus Suite. Exchange was none too happy, after a bunch of magic we did get Exchange to a point where mail was flowing again.

Two other service providers (one in New Berlin, the other in Wauwatosa) in the area that I know of only sell Barracuda Devices for Spam Filtering. The Barracuda is a hardware device that sits in front of the mail server checking each piece of mail before it is delivered to the mail server.

And finally a number other Service Providers in the Greater Milwaukee and Waukesha Area use the UTM Devices (Such as Fortinet, Sonicwall, or Untangle) to filter the Spam at the Firewall Level.

We, at Sensible Gurus LLC, feel that these solutions, while they work, are not in the best interest for the customer. Sensible Gurus used a hosted based mail scrubbing service that not only filters the spam offsite, but also archives for disaster recovery, system outage, or even compliance.

In all of our competitors solutions, the junk mail is still being delivered to the mail server, and in many times being bounced back. This uses up precious bandwidth. In one office of 5 computer users, switching to our Anti-Spam solution freed up over HALF of their bandwidth!

With the Sensible Gurus Anti-Spam Service we also remove the possibly of blacklisting of the customers IP Address when the server or internal computer gets compromised and starts sending out spam! Because our Anti-Spam filters both incoming and outgoing messages and is sent out from our hosted location, it doesn't matter if your internal IP address is ever blacklisted!

The Remote Access to our backup mail server is a lifesaver in the event of a natural disaster! As our Hosted Servers are located in multiple locations our customers mail is accessible even if their internal mail server is underwater (as was the event in the local flooding)

Shoot us an e-mail as sales@sensiblegurus.com to discuss your mail security and continuity strategy!

2nd Grade in New Berlin, WI is shorting their students

This is in regard to the Ronald Regan School in the School District of New Berlin. As part of the school district that Sensible Gurus is based in (and more importantly where my kids go to school) I thought I would share this e-mail I received. We, at Sensible Gurus, feel that education is very important, and not something that should be shorted. After all, these are the people that will be choosing our retirement home!

The Website for the New Berlin School district is http://www.nbexcellence.org/ and the motto is "Expect Excellence" if this is the Excellence that I'm Expecting, I'd hate to see what mediocre is.
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I'm not sure if you have heard - as of last week, the plan for 2nd grade was to go down to 4 classes. Since there are 112 students, this means there would be 28 kids in each class. That is too many. That means there would be an extra 6 kids in each class. The teachers already struggle to fit in all the curriculum - how are they going to teach another 6 kids and provide the individualized attention that is needed? In my opinion, they are still learning the basics and are still too young in 2nd grade to have that many kids in a class.

I've received a couple emails over the weekend from other parents and here is the plan:
Sorry if you've already received this from someone else - just trying to get the word out!

1st step--call Christine Cody and let her know your thoughts. There are 112 kids in the grade with a good amount with IEP's. Ask her how they will be assisting the teachers? 28 kids per class is too many. Let her know your thoughts. My guess is that she won't be able to tell you much. The good thing is that 28 of 30 teachers were reinstated to the district; however this doesn't guarantee the we will have 5 classrooms.

2nd-after your call/email to Christine, call Joe Garza (asst. superintendent) and tell him that we need 5 classrooms.

3rd-call each one of the board members.

In the meantime, call and email the classmates and get them to do the same. the only way to move things forward is to tell them that we are not going to be happy with 4 teachers.
Open house is Thursday...we gotta get moving!

All Email addresses and phone numbers can be found on the district webpage.

Who is your Firewall Vendor Sonicwall is looking at some changes

Sonicwall, a longtime SMB Firewall Provider, is looking at a shakeup!

SonicWall, one of the larger SMB Firewall Providers is looking at being sold, to a different Firewall Provider, Watchgaurd. as per our sources here at Channel Insider

Is this good news, or not? Watchguard's reputation in the SMB Space has been declining in the past number of years, and an injection of new Sonicwall Customers would really boost their market share? But what of the quality of Sonicwall Support? It is already on shaky ground, having a number of SonicWall partners dropping their contracts with Sonicwall. Astro has been picking up a number of these Contracts as well!

Where does Sensible Gurus LLC Stand in this? We are a Fortinet partner, and have been very happy with our choice. If your company subscribes to our managed service plan, where we are on the hook to keep your systems safe, you already have a Fortigate Firewall in place!

Sensible Gurus

sales@sensiblegurus.com or
support@sensiblegurus.com
(414) 455-5455

Sensible Gurus LLC

15417 W National Ave Suite #63

New Berlin, WI 53151

Yuck… Please, don’t buy Windows XP Media Center for use with Business!

Hello, This is Gjeret, head Guru from Sensible Gurus.

I am working on a Client's computer right now, it got infected with "Internet Security 2010" The Norton 360 installed by the customer didn't catch the infection. Boo!

I've been working on getting this guy cleaned up for… oh about 7 hours now, and we are getting closer to being done! This is a Flat Rate project so the customer is getting one hell of a deal! Part of the reason why it is taking so long is this machine is "Windows Media Center 2005", branded HP no less.

Media Center isn't XP Home as it has more features, and it isn't XP Professions (Preferred XP version for Business because it contains SO many more tools) because the features it has are "Media" related that you cannot get on Pro, well, not from Microsoft at least. The issues is, you cannot upgrade Media Center to XP Professional to get all the cool business tools, like joining a Domain, using Group Policy, Centralized logins, etc. The only way to get Windows Pro on this box it to buy a BOX copy! And that is Mucho expensive. Volume License will not cut it as VL for desktops need Box or OEM Currently on the machine. We could upgrade to Vista or Windows 7, but I would recommend a new computer instead of the price of an upgrade.

Back to the issue, Computer would not allow us to log in, we would try and it would log in/log off right away. Safe mode or Safe mode with command prompt included.

We yanked the HD out of the machine, ran Malwarebyes on it (great tool at www.malwarebytes.org) Picked up 7 icky critters, threw the HD back in. Still no go.

Got our trusty restore media. And Restore media for Media Center is TRICKY, Media center is OEM Only, and some OEM disks will wipe, and lay down new tracks. Not a fun thing to do.

Fired up the install, ran a chkdsk in safe mode, then fired up the installer. Chose repair installation.

First Snag, ASMS is not found, tried the MS KB http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=311755 but no go. Finally got the files it needed onto the hard drive by pulling it again and placing the files needed in an i386 folder on the root. Then re-running the install.

Next Snag, Windows Activation. Whee, this is a fun one. Windows Activation now needs IE7 or 8 to run, Media Center needs to be activated before it will start, a Repair Install will re-lay IE6 down.

The solution? Download the network version of IE8 at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=341c2ad5-8c3d-4347-8c03-08cdecd8852b&displaylang=en save it to CD, boot into Safe Mode, and install. Again, Safe Mode with NETWORKING will not allow you to log in!

Once IE8 is installed, we can boot, activate, and we are almost good to go! Well, we still need to install SP3 for Windows, run another malwarebytes scan on it, and most importantly, install the Sensible Gurus Managed Service Agent. If they had the agent to begin with, they would have been up and running in no time with the automated tools our agent can do! Like Remote Registry editing, file system modification, etc.

 

A few more hours then bed!

-Gj-

Head Guru, Sensible Gurus

www.sensiblegurus.com