The Thurston, Pierce, Lewis, and Mason Counties IT Experts

Condition 1: Your Battery Will Degrade Over Time, and Naturally Hold Less Power in a Full Charge

While the ones currently being put into smartphones are much better than the ones used in the past, batteries have long been one of the fastest components to fail in smartphones and laptops alike. The timeline of this failure can come as a surprise, too—manufacturers admit that, by the time a year has passed, most batteries will have lost a sizable amount of their available life. Many recommend users to expect a loss of 20 percent after 400 charge cycles. With this knowledge, you can see that it is important to adjust how a device is charged to help extend the lifespan of its battery.

Condition 2: Temperature Extremes Can Encourage Degradation

A smartphone’s battery capacity can also be adversely impacted by very high as well as very low temperatures. This is a common issue for people who often leave their devices in their cars. With the potential for extreme temperatures on either side of the spectrum depending on where someone lives, the enclosed car only exacerbates these impacts. Keeping a device at a happy medium can therefore help keep the device’s batteries from losing too much potential.

Condition 3: You Let Your Battery Run Out of Charge

Not too terribly long ago, the prevailing advice for preserving a mobile device battery’s lifespan was to let it get all the way down to zero before you next charged it. More recent innovations in batteries and their internal chemistry have actually made this a bad thing to do for the battery’s longevity. Instead, it is advisable to keep your device’s battery somewhere between 20 and 90 percent.

Condition 4: The Screen is Too Bright

It just makes sense that keeping your screen turned all the way up would result in a greater draw on the device’s power reserves. However, it can actually harm your battery in the long term as well. Fortunately, both iOS and Android devices now have built-in utilities to help you control your screen’s brightness, but you can also boost it further by manually setting your brightness to the lowest brightness that is still visible.

Condition 5: The Screen Stays on Too Long

Most modern smartphones feature a setting that turns off the screen if there is no activity registered for a set period, usually ranging between a few seconds to a few minutes. There are also applications that can give you more granular control over this, and some smartphone makers will include extra software to keep unnecessary battery usage at a minimum.

Condition 6: You Haven’t Adjusted the On-Board Battery Saver

Most smartphones today come with some capability to control how much battery life is taken up by background processes. While this solution might not give you the longevity you would expect from a device that likely cost you over a grand, it can help you to make the most of it.

Properly managing your mobile device’s battery can have a lot of impact on how it operates, which in turn can impact your finances. To learn more ways to get more out of the technology that your business relies on, subscribe to our blog, and give PC Technologies a call at 360-491-2227.

There are a few different outcomes here to consider. Remote work may be the best and safest option for some time to come, but some businesses may have no choice but to bring their teams back in-house and will need to prepare accordingly. Whichever approach you take, your IT resource is going to play an invaluable role.

On-site Operations

Many businesses and their processes simply aren’t suited to remote operations, necessitating them to open once again. Of course, this will require these businesses to enact a few significant measures to protect the health of their teams and clientele alike.

As many of these measures will in some way involve protected health data, compliance to HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) and other similar data protections will be necessary. This means that you need to ensure that you are prepared to properly store, track, and protect this data in some way. There are also many services popping up that allow businesses and employees to share COVID-19 test results securely and privately, assisting further in reopening processes.

Remote Operations

If a business can support it, remote work is likely going to be the wisest strategy at the present time. After all, it subjects your staff and your patrons alike to the least amount of exposure.

To successfully do so, however, it is crucial that businesses who utilize remote work fully educate their remote team on how to work productively while also remaining secure. For many, this unfortunately has yet to be the case. An IMB survey recently reported that 45 percent of remote employees were not trained in how to protect their work devices while using them at home. While remote protections are far from the security that can be accomplished in-house, tools such as virtual private networks (VPNs) and remote access logins can significantly boost their capabilities. This becomes an even larger priority if an employee handles sensitive or personally identifiable information.

Regardless, properly training employees to safely use their devices needs to be a priority as remote operations continue.

Hybrid Operations

For many businesses, logistics may make it necessary to stagger out how their workforce operates. As a result, a lot of these businesses will likely take a hybrid approach—some team members working in-house, and some working remotely, possibly switching periodically. This will require the technology solutions to assist in managing these schedules. This approach will also require business owners and managers to make a few decisions… for instance, what if one of their employees was to test positive? Should everyone else working in the office at the time be relegated to their homes to work remotely, or only those who share their immediate workspace, or used the same restroom as Patient Zero?

As for the IT and cybersecurity strategies of these businesses, they will suddenly have to deal with double the opportunities to complicate matters. Basically, IT won’t have just in-house or remote to worry about—both will be in play. This makes comprehensively locking down a business more challenging.

Regardless of your chosen approach, PC Technologies is here to assist you in implementing and maintaining the solutions needed to enable your business’ success. To learn more or discuss your options, give us a call at 360-491-2227.

The 747’s Floppy Disks

People took notice when a retired Boeing 747 made an appearance during a virtual hacking conference. More specifically, a cybersecurity firm spotted a classic 3.5-inch floppy disk drive in the cockpit… you know, for the 1995 staple floppy disks that have been immortalized as the Save button’s icon.

In the 747, these drives are used to load the plane’s navigation databases. Any updates require eight floppy disks to be installed in sequence.

The funny thing is, floppy disks have all but vanished otherwise. When did you last think of one, let alone use one?

At PC Technologies, we’ll occasionally come across one that’s been hiding deep inside a drawer or a cabinet. If you’re pressed for options, they can make a pretty decent coaster to keep your beverages from leaving a ring on your desk.

So, why would an aircraft rely on a technology that is so outdated, most college-aged people have never used it? After all, reliability is pretty important in an aircraft, so can we really trust these floppy disks to perform?

Fortunately, the answer is yes, for a few reasons. First off, most 747s were built in the ‘90s, the heyday of the floppy disk, with exceptionally specific hardware. As you would imagine, large commercial aircraft meant to go considerable distances aren’t just slapped together. If you refer to the Wikipedia page, only 1,558 Boeing 747s were ever constructed, with 419 still in the air. They were designed to use the computing equipment available at the time, built specifically for the aircraft’s use. So, the Boeing 747 uses floppy disks because it was originally built to use these floppy disks.

This is also an example of a time when older technology isn’t introducing any vulnerabilities. While there is nothing inherently more secure about a floppy disk than other data storage options, the systems on a 747 could only be hacked if someone were to bring in their own disks, with the correct data on them, to successfully undermine the system. By comparison, a cybersecurity professor was able to use a normal USB mouse to crash a plane’s in-flight entertainment system in 2019.

Hopefully, this hasn’t made you swear off planes or flying. The professor was only able to impact the entertainment system, not the airplane’s critical processes.

So, what we should take away from all this is that older technology is only less secure when it is connected to modern tech or a modern network. Your old cassette player will continue to play your cassettes without ever requiring an update or charging a premium subscription fee to listen without ads. However, if your player were to break, the only way you could listen to your tape of Radiohead’s OK Computer would be to replace the player with a second-hand device.

Business technology works in largely the same way—sure, the old printer that isn’t connected to the network might not make you any more vulnerable to cyberattacks, but it may not be able to update to the point where it can support Windows 10.

This is the true danger of outdated technology. If it hasn’t been updated, but is still connected to everything else, a hacker could use it as an easy access point onto your network. A good rule of thumb: if it connects to the Internet, keep it up to date.

Secure Older Technology is Still Secure

Depending on your business’ processes, you may need to run an older operating system… but running it on your business’ network is going to present you with some unavoidable risk. Having said that, we aren’t saying that keeping an old Windows 98 desktop with RollerCoaster Tycoon installed on original hardware to have some nostalgic fun with the kids is a bad idea, either. Just make sure that the PC doesn’t connect to your network.

What other older pieces of technology do you still use? Share some of your favorites in the comments!