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Your Guide To Workplace Computing

It doesn’t matter if your business is big or large, short and small or remote. It matters not if you are working from home or running a small business out in the city. No matter what – you are always going to be in close contact to computers.

They are a bit complicated though – from lines of code to social media reports – there’s a lot to get to grips with, especially when computers do so much for us.

It can be quite difficult to work with computers because there are so many advancements in technology and things are constantly changing! With new apps, hardware and the constant change brought by the internet – there is a lot going on.

It’s worth reminding ourselves rather quickly about what computers are doing for us right now, though.

Computers have changed communication in the workplace and beyond for good. Communication is clearly a big part of business – it helps you speak, negotiate and talk with clients. Communication helps us build relationships. Communication is also essential in terms of consumer service – how can you answer calls and queries if you can’t communicate? There are plenty of ways we can communicate thanks to computers – from typing text to engaging in long distance video calls. Of course – communication also helps us market our business ideas and products through marketing campaigns, design tools, social media and internet advertising.

You won’t get far if your business doesn’t actually have a computer, though. You can’t do much without one. There are many different types, shapes, and sizes of computer – exactly like the varying kind of businesses. The type of computer that will work best for you depends on your needs.For example, if you’re a remote worker or freelancer a laptop or even a tablet equipped with a keyboard will be fine. If you’re a normal, run of the mill business – a bunch of networked systems is the basic setup you can expect. If you are a design firm you might want computers that are more powerful so they can process digital graphics.

You simply need to know your needs and exactly what your business is going to need from a computer. When you can identify your needs – you’ll be able to pick a model of computer that works best for you. Shop around and look for the best price possible for this model and then you can start right away!

Knowing your needs gets you a long way with computing, especially with purchasing computers. You’ll need to know your needs for the various types of computing accessories on offer – you could need a scanner to digitize documents, for example. If you know what your business requires, you’ll be able to know what to buy.

Each computer is mainly the same – but there are a bunch of varying operating systems, and each OS provider has a number of different systems for different needs. Again – know what you will require from an operating system. Most of them are similar, and there might not be a real difference between MAC OSX, Windows or Linux. Just work with the system that will work for you.

As with any product that you use for business purposes – don’t be cheap here! If you buy cut-price goods, they are certain to fail on you and you cannot afford that to happen with business computers. Cheaper computers are going to have less power, less space and a slower speed of operation. Your business deserves a lot better than a bargain computer that isn’t capable of much.

So now that you’ve got your computer, it’s time to run it into the ground, right? Wrong. Computers are hard work and if your team are building databases and constructing records as they work they are going to get full and sluggish. Some computers might have too much asked of them and break. It’s worth saying at this point that if looking after your computers is too much for you and your team, you need to take on additional IT support help. A good maintenance team can save you a lot of stress and money.

No matter if you’ve got a computer support team or not, it pays to take control of your computer’s health and welfare.

Computers fill up of dust over time, so keep your workspace as clean and debris-free as possible. Dust is a killer of computers, and the cooling systems of your computer will suck the air in – no matter if it’s chock full of dust or not. This dust will settle on the inner workings of your computer and cause it to fail. Bad news and of course, and avoidable outcome. Ask the janitors or cleaners on your site to clean your desk to ensure it is free from dust if you cannot do it yourself.

What’s more, data and software as well as temporary files can pile up in our computers. Delete whatever you don’t need in a timely and secure fashion to ensure you computers don’t perform sluggishly thanks to a lack of storage space. Storage is key in business so ensure that you’ve got either remote storage provided by cloud services or enough Windows VPS servers to support your business. If you run out of virtual space at a critical time, you’ve got problems.

Keeping your computer healthy also takes a bit of a more serious turn when we focus on the issue of cyber-crime. You see, any business holds a vast amount of data and information on its servers. This data is gold dust to cybercriminals who can steal it and pass it on to third parties.

Ensuring sensitive data is protected is a good deterrence, but taking action with anti-virus software and educating your staff about internet safety can ensure you’re not just reacting to the danger. Computers can be hacked and the lockpick of digital criminals is the computer virus. Some viruses are annoying, some are malicious and you want nothing to do with either of them. Keep your computers well up to date and ensure that the systems are scanned on a regular basis. Every system that you use should be equipped to deal with viruses and if you are operating on a network, you need to ensure that this is the case – any opening could bring everything down.

Keeping your operating systems up to date is key. If the OS of your computer isn’t up to date, there could be an opening created by a bug in the software that could cause your computer to crash and fail. Updating the operating system gives you a shot to avoid this.

Of course, there is plenty of use that we can get out of computers. From the internet to specialized applications – there’s no end to the uses we can find.

Thanks to the growing power of cloud computing, there is so much the internet can do for our businesses. For one, the internet is the perfect hybrid of data gathering and marketing platforms. An optimized website can extend our business to new horizons, dragging in new customers. These customers might not buy anything, but they will leave their data behind which can be turned into focused audience reports. Of course, the more traffic your receive, the more server space you’ll need. Keep on top of it.

As with the health of the business computer, you need to consider your own health when using it. Take regular breaks from the screen as computer glare counts as ‘blue light’, which is bad for our eyes and our sleep. Try to get at least 15 minutes away from the screens every hour or so. It’s also important to support your back, arms and hands while typing, so make sure you are sitting upright and working in a way that is friendly to the ergonomics of your body! It’s important to stretch your legs, so keep mobile throughout the day. You wouldn’t know it, but working at a computer can be quite taxing – so take the appropriate breaks throughout the day.

Finally, it’s worth noting some of the applications and software you can use to give your workplace a boost.

Slack creates a virtual office environment for your business and can be connected with multiple other applications to offer a more fully functioned experience. This is great if you need to replace emails in your office, but it really comes into it’s own if you have a team of remote workers as it creates that office environment that they might be missing out on! Dropbox can answer your storage needs with remote cloud storage that works with ease like normal storage. This application allows you to share files across the globe as well as access your work from anywhere. Of course, there’s always plenty more for you to use – but these two are great for getting you started.

After all that, we’d say you’re ready! You should know how to care for your computer and how to create, so there’s nothing stopping you from mastering computers in your place of work.

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