4 Tech Updates

Several Updates Just for You

Microsoft Edge—The legacy software, the one with the blue-only icon, is end of support March 21st, 2021. If you use this product, be sure you’re using the blue/green logo version. It’s a small nuance, but worth checking out or you’re going to have quite a surprise.

Hot Spots, Printing—Many of our clients started using their phone Hot Spots for internet access last Spring. Very handy, and I use it, too. But, printing this way just isn’t going to work. If you have to print, get plugged in for the best result, Wi-Fi is second, but don’t bother over a hot spot.

 Microsoft Project—If you purchased MS Project outright in the past, it is no longer supported. It’s only available through a monthly subscription and that’s the only version they’ll support.

 Solarwinds, in the news—You may have heard of the very serious data breaches for some big companies and the US Government associated with the Orion software, which is owned by Solarwinds. You may also recognize the name because we use several products that are under the Solarwinds umbrella. We’ve been on multiple calls with Solarwinds as they keep us (their partner) up-to-date, so we thought we’d share some details.

We do not use the Orion software at all. Our N-Central software, which is part of our monitoring, anti-virus, and patch management, was purchased by Solarwinds several years ago, but is a completely separate product. The cloud-to-cloud backups for M/O365 accounts and the local backups are also a separate product, not related to the Orion software.

Solarwinds is making many changes due to the breach, which we definitely applaud. They’ll apply these lessons to all of their software offerings. In the meantime, none of our clients were ever exposed to this event; all is well. -CMW