Kudos to Brother for good printer support

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I had a client email me today lauding Brother for their phone support.  He needed to adjust his printer’s output to make it darker and they helped him do so in about 15 minutes without charging him.  Good phone support is rare these days, so good job, Brother!  Of course, bad phone support keeps me in business, so let’s not make this a trend.  

I recommend Brother printers, especially for multifunction lasers.  I own an MFC-7360N.  For your cheaper inkjet multifunctions, I like Brother, Epson, and Canon.  The Epson Workforce 3620 model is excellent.  

Microsoft’s Latest Blunder

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In the latest example of their incompetence, Microsoft released an update to Microsoft Security Essentials which basically broke many Windows XP machines.  Startup freezeup/errors, lack of an ability to log in and see the desktop, malware service or memory errors are all examples of the symptoms.  Some people can’t even log in at all, others can do so after a long while but with many errors.  The solution at this time seems to be to boot into Safe Mode and remove Microsoft Security Essentials the hard way, by using the Install/Uninstall Fixit utility from here:

http://support.microsoft.com/mats/program_install_and_uninstall/en-us

After removing Microsoft Security Essentials, you can reboot and install AVG from here:

http://free.avg.com

Obviously they didn’t bother testing this update with Windows XP machines or just wanted to sabotage them some more to force upgrades.  Imagine employees of Ford running around blowing up all the Ford Explorers older than 2001 to force the purchase of new ones.  I am reminded of Hanlon’s Razor, however: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

Windows 8 File History Backup Works Well

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Windows 8 File History external hard drive backup passed a real world restore test on a client with a dead internal hard drive.  It kept backing up automatically until the failure and restored like a champ to the new drive.  I had thought ahead and added the Downloads folder to the Documents library (it doesn’t back up Downloads by default, which is a mistake) so the client had access to all the downloaded installation files to reinstall programs.  I like the fact that Windows 8 does not back up an image of the whole PC because the Windows 7 image backup program had rampant long term failures.  Perhaps the simpler Windows 8 backup will actually keep working.   

Google Apps fails to sync with Outlook

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Microsoft is mainly distributing Office 2013 through the “click to run” web-based installer (which is another story), and I just learned today that this is NOT supported by Google Apps Outlook Sync.  I attempted the hack workarounds and succeeded on one machine out of 4.  For the others, they are back to Outlook 2010.  This is in addition to many other intermittent problems over the last couple years between Google Apps Outlook Sync and Outlook (sync errors, log files out of control, missing calendar appointments, unsupported Outlook features, etc).  I am pretty much ready to stop recommending Google Apps as an email solution to those people who use Outlook.  Whether Microsoft is damaging Google’s connection to Outlook or Google is not exerting enough effort to keep its tool compatible and bug-free, I can’t have my clients stuck in the middle.   

For the users who prefer webmail over Outlook, or who are ready to take the plunge, Google Apps is a fantastic solution.  For those who still love their Outlook, it is not an adequate product.  Office 365 or Rackspace Hosted Exchange may be better options.  We set up all three of these solutions regularly, but it’s a pity Google Apps isn’t working out well for the Outlook fans (of which there are many!).