August 2008: Recycling Computer Parts
What do you do with your old computers? There are a couple schools of thoughts when it comes to discarding old equipment. Most of you know at this point, that you can not throw them in the garbage. Most areas will have a local recycler. They may or may not charge for their services depending on the vendor. Most recyclers will make their money by selling the parts and copper from the discarded unit. This is a viable option. However, what if your recycler just dumps your equipment? When improperly discarded equipment is found, it can easily be traced back to the purchaser. You would be liable for any fines that came down from the EPA.
The Colden Company is working with an organization that actually takes liability for the equipment once the equipment is given to them. This absolves your organization of that responsibility. For a few dollars per unit, this may be a very nice solution, especially for publicly held companies that need to answer to stock holders.
If you would like to know more about this solution, please feel free to call us at (518) 885-2857.
What's new at The Colden Company Inc.?
We have some excellent new solutions for disaster recovery in the Windows environment. Ask us about them!
July 2008: Referral Program
Did you know that The Colden Company Inc. has a referral program? If you are currently one of our satisfied customers, we encourage you to tell your friends and business partners. We believe in our methodology and our commitment to customer service. We believe we can help almost any organization become more efficient and use technology to its advantage. Yes, our maintenance plans are affordable and help avoid costly downtime, but we also look at the big picture, examining the business functions and the possible technologies that can streamline the processes.
Our referral program works as follows: Provide us with contact information of an associate who is looking for assistance, or give them our contact information. If we find a match and we can do business with your associate, we provide a referral check for you, based on the amount of work we do. It is a simple plan. We hope that you are encouraged to do this because of our excellent customer service! If you have any questions, please feel free to call us at (518) 885-2857.
What's new at The Colden Company Inc.?
The Colden Company Inc. welcome C.J Lacish to our team. CJ is a Microsoft Certified System Administrator and is with us part-time.
June 2008: Solid State Drives
The future of hard drives may be changing very soon. Solid state drive technology is not new, in fact it has been available for quite some time. The change is that these drives are now able to have the type of capacity that can be used in laptops and personal computers at a reasonable price instead of traditional hard drives.
Solid state drives (SSD) use semi-conductors not magnetic hard drives. (much like a flash drive) There are definite benefits to this technology, such as lower power consumption, more reliability, and faster data access. All three of those benefits are major reasons why the technology is likely to go in that direction in the near future. Everyone likes a “green” solution and SSD uses less power making it the fashionable choice if not slightly more eco-friendly. Laptop users will get more battery life as a result as well. More reliable is a feature everyone can be happy about. Finally, faster data access is a result of not having to “spin up” a hard drive.
Look for this technology to begin to make its appearance in the market in the coming year. If you have questions on this technology, please feel free to call us at (518) 885-2857.
What's new at The Colden Company Inc.?
Beginning June 1, in response to the market, we will be charging for travel to customer sites to cover gas and travel expenses. We have not done this our first five years in business and we are out of step with the rest of the industry in this regard. We plan to do so in a fair way, so please feel free to ask us about our policy.
May 2008: Data Recovery
At The Colden Company Inc. we are always looking for new technology that can help our customers. We have found a company that performs hard drive recovery for a reasonable price. We used their services and found we liked their service just as much as we liked their technology. The company is called Gillware. If you have a hard drive that has crashed and you need to pull data from the drive, Gillware might be the solution for you.
Here is how it works…..You send the broken drive to their office. There is no need to send payment upfront. Gillware will show you, through an on-line portal, what they were able to recover from your drive. If you see the data you need, you pay the quoted price. We found their solution to be straight forward, and we were able to recover our customer’s data at a reasonable price. We were so impressed, we signed on to be a partner with Gillware, so we can more easily assist our customers.
If you would like to hear more about this solution or you have a hard drive that you need to recover data from, give us a call at (518) 885-2857.
What's new at The Colden Company Inc.?
This month the Colden Company Inc. celebrates the completion of 5 years in business. Thanks to all of our loyal customers!
April 2008: Robocopy
One of the many tools in the backup toolkit, is a utility called "robocopy". Robocopy will allow you to make scheduled copies of your data to different location on your network. Why is this utility different? With other backup programs such as BackupExec, the backups are placed in a format readable buy the utility. In other words, you need to use a restore function to pull the data back.
Robocopy places a readable, usable copy of the file in a different location for easy viewing and recovery. The utility is available for free download and might be a good option for an extra layer of redundancy for your business at minimal expense.
If you would like to implement this functionality on your network, please feel free to call us at (518) 885-2857.
What's new at The Colden Company Inc.?
At Colden Company, we are preparing for Microsoft Server 2008. This is the latest version of the server operating system and will replace Server 2003.
March 2008: Volume Shadow Copy
One of the underutilized features in the Microsoft server operating systems is the volume shadow copy function. The Volume Shadow Copy Service is a method of keeping point-in-time backup copies of file data on your servers. It allows users to recover previous versions of documents without the involvement of IT staff. Users can right click on a document and choose a restore point for that particular document, provided they have the proper security permissions to do so.
At The Colden Company Inc., we can assist your business in setting up this functionality. It will reduce the reliance on tape backup for restoration and reduce dependency on IT, saving your business time and money. This feature is also still available in the new Microsoft server version 2008.
If you would like to implement this functionality on your network, please feel free to call us at (518) 885-2857.
What's new at The Colden Company Inc.?
At Colden Company, we are investigating Symantec BackupExec v12. This is the latest version of the backup software and has more integration with other Symantec products such as End Point Protections. As Symantec partners, we are working with them to make sure we can make informed recommendations for our customers.
February 2008: Acronis Partnership
The Colden Company Inc. is proud to announce that we are now a reseller for Acronis products. Acronis is the maker of True-Image, a software program for restoring PC’s from backup. We recommend this software for those who have critical PC’s on their network that would be time consuming to restore or if there is critical data on that unit that needs to be backed up. True-image has the ability to do “bare-metal” restores, which means if you have a hard drive failure, there is no annoying processing of finding your manufacturer re-installation disks and manually loading drivers for your components.
One way to effectively utilize this product for laptop users would be to backup to an external hard drive so that the laptop can be restored in the event of a disk failure. If you are interested in hearing more about this product and how it can be of value to your organization, please contact us at (518) 885-2857.
What's new at The Colden Company Inc.?
The Colden Company Inc. is renewing our commitment to giving back. Please check out our charity link on this page for more information.
January 2008: Green Machines
Did you know that the Dell Optiplex was rated as the most energy efficient PC among the major vendors? PC World magazine rated the top manufacturers based on energy usage with common configuration. At The Colden Company Inc., we are Dell Resellers and get discounted pricing on Dell equipment because of the volume of sales we do with Dell. We offer a “Green Machine” configuration, where we take the Dell Optiplex and configure it to be as energy efficient as possible, by changing BIOS settings and operating system power settings. Just ask us about it when ordering your PC and we can show you how taking a little extra time upfront will save you money on your energy bill.
What's new at The Colden Company Inc.?
We will be making an adjustment in our rates in 2008. This rate change will not affect most of our customers, and is specific to our UNIX services. Our billing rate for UNIX services will go to $125/hr from $115/hr, still far below industry averages.
December 2007: eSATA Stoage Devices
eSATA Stoage Devices
Many businesses are turning to external storage devices for alternative backups. Prices have come down and capacities keep going up making external hard drives a real alternative to tape. There are different technologies out there, including the fast sounding “firewire” or 1394, USB, USB 2.0 and eSATA (external serial ATA).
The graph below, compliments of www.serialata.org, show the performance benefit that eSATA can provide over alternative technologies.
The comparison shows just how fast eSATA technology is. This technology is overwhelmingly faster. It is the same technology that most internal disk drives are using in new PC’s today, just outside of the PC. The speeds shown here are “first generation speeds” with second generation speeds doubling the performance to 3 Gbps. Consider this technology if you have a large amount of data you need to backup quickly.
There are some points to consider before choosing eSATA storage devices. First of all, they require a PCI card to be inserted in your computer. This may not be convenient for everyone. The connection is a bit trickier that a USB connection, but not overwhelming for the non-technical user.
Prices are becoming quite reasonable for all type of external storage devices and can play are part of your disaster recovery plans.
What's new at The Colden Company Inc.?
While our accounting office will remain at 37 Woodthrush Court, our main office is now located at 357 Milton Ave, Suite A, Ballston Spa, NY 12020. Our phone number remains the same and we hope that our larger space will help us to provide even better service and support for our customers!
November 2007: Colden Company Charity Computers
Colden Company Charity Computers
If you could buy a computer at a discount and at the same time provide a donation to a charitable cause, wouldn't you do it? At The Colden Company Inc., many of our vendor relationships allow us to provide pricing for computers and other equipment at lesser costs than going to a local computer store. This is because of the volume we purchase and also because we keep our margins at low levels. In addition, as many of our web site visitors know, we pride ourselves in civic responsibility. We have been fortunate to have wonderful customers and a successful business with great employees. We like to give back from time to time for those who need it. We now have a program in place where our customers can join us in our efforts. For example, our Dell partnership allows us to sell our customers computers at a discounted rate. If you or your company would like to become a Colden Company Charity partner, we'll add $20 to your cost of the computer and we will match the $20 so that $40 goes to charity. To see a list of some of the charitable contributions we have contributed to in the past, see
None of your contribution goes to overhead costs. The full amount will go to charity.
If you are interested in hearing more about this program, please feel free to call The Colden Company Inc. at (518) 885-2857.
What's new at The Colden Company Inc.?
We're moving! In November we will be moving to our larger office space at 357 Milton Avenue in Ballston Spa NY. More to come on that!
October 2007: Firmware Updates
Firmware Updates
When is the last time the firmware was updated on your server? When is the last time anyone even mentioned firmware in a sentence to you? Firmware is a forgotten necessity of computer maintenance. Let’s start by defining the term. Firmware, as defined by Wikipedia, is a computer program embedded for a hardware device to control it. It lies between the hardware and software layers. Extrapolating on that definition, firmware is a necessary component that allows software and hardware to talk to each other. It is not regularly updated on most systems. It is good maintenance practice to update the firmware on your servers periodically.
Here is a scenario where firmware updates would make a difference. Your company updates the tape drive on your server since you need more capacity. Since the system firmware is years old, it does not have the updates necessary to work with your new tape drive and your backup fails periodically. This is a real life scenario we encountered her at The Colden Company Inc. If the system firmware has not been updated in years on your servers, it is time. We have also seen disk drives “fail” because of old firmware. The drives were not really bad, just the communication between the software and hardware was not working properly – the firmware.
Proactively updating firmware will help to prevent problems with your system and allow you to schedule maintenance time for the update, rather than taking more time to troubleshoot failures in your critical computer systems.
Please feel free to call us with any questions about how we can help at (518) 885-2857.
What's new at The Colden Company Inc.?
Did you know that we are Dell Resellers? We have recently been upgraded by Dell because of the volume of products we purchase, allowing us to pass those discounts on to our customers!
September 2007: Windows XP Lifecycle
Windows XP Lifecylce
As Microsoft Windows Vista operating system becomes more entrenched in the marketplace, Microsoft will be pulling Windows XP from the shelves. The date for this transition is January 31, 2008. Windows XP will not be available on the shelf or through OEM distributors like Dell and HP. This should concern many of you. Your business should evaluate all of the software products that are critical to your business and determine if Vista is a viable option in the future. This means checking with your software developers to see if the code you use on a day to day basis has been tested and certified. The scenario we can see affecting many users is a PC crashing and a new PC being ordered with Vista and the critical applications do not work.
It is not a given that your software development company will have certified Vista. Because of the security changes in Vista, many software developers are finding it difficult to make their products work correctly on Vista and some that we are aware of are not certifying Vista at all. We encourage your business to have a plan in place to document your critical software applications that are Windows based and whether or not it is certified for Windows Vista.
If you would like The Colden Company Inc. to assist you in this process we will be happy to. We have already inquired about many of our customer’s software packages and can help your business to be prepared. Some of the options you have are to pre-order licenses of XP or PC’s with XP on them. It would not be a bad idea to review your PC’s life cycle at this point in time. The Colden Company Inc. are Dell resellers and can offer very good pricing and we beat the Dell web site pricing almost 100% of the time.
Please feel free to call us with any questions about how we can help at (518) 885-2857.
What's new at The Colden Company Inc.?
Jim Lapointe successfully renewed his Certified Business Continuity Planner certification in 2007. Jim is experienced in helping business prepare for an avoid disasters and his skills have been tested and recognized by the Disaster Recovery Institute.
What's new at The Colden Company Inc.?
Please note that Jim Lapointe will be unavailable between July 10-24th. Jim will be traveling outside the country and have limited access to email or phones. Please call our helpdesk with any issues at (518) 885-2857 and one of our helpful technicians will be happy to assist you.