How Much Memory Does Your PC Need?

hardware, ,
23
Jun 2015

ram

Do you need to figure out how much memory is needed for your PC? Our guide can help you run through the various scenarios and their memory recommendations.

Whether a computer complains about running low on memory  or struggles to run with multiple application open, it’s clear that it may need more memory.

As a rough guide, read our list below to see which memory size to purchase for ideal system usage.

Suggested computer memory usage guide

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  • 2GB – At present, this amount of memory is the suggested minimum to use. Avoid this level of memory unless the system is being used to only process basic documents, email or browse the web and only one of those tasks at a time. Be warned, it’ll be incredibly slow!

Note: 2GB was considered to be fast around a decade ago. It goes to show how the standard computer specification is changing and growing in tangent with newer software, operating system updates, applications, and computer processors becoming more resource hungry.

  • 4GB – This size of memory is considered good enough for business work stations and any systems which need to be able to efficiently access email, browse the web and work on documents or all at the same time.

Note: 4GB also used to be considered good to use on servers about 10 years ago. This is another example to put things into perspective.

  • 8GB – This is good for business workstations that require more resources from memory such as heavy multitasking. For instance, a workstation that runs more than one program at a time, works on multiple documents and opens many browser tabs will need this. 8 GB will offer a much more seamless performance.
  • 8GB+ – Memory can go beyond 8GB. For instance two 8GB modules can be installed in a server’s memory slot, making it 16GB. This is ideal for highly productive systems such as servers, or production systems, or systems that carry out graphics processing, video editing or work on large files and databases.

DIY memory upgrade?

diy-dream-build-970x0

Systems with sufficient levels of memory for its intended purpose can be purchased straight out from the box. Alternatively, memory can also be upgraded within a system.

Computer memory can be purchased as “memory sticks” and they can be inserted into the memory slots of a pc or laptop. If a laptop is under warranty, opening up the seal to upgrade the memory may cause the warranty to become void. So be  sure to consider this first.

Also keep in mind that 32-bit systems can only have a maximum of 4gb of memory.

Types of Memory

If going down the route of manually upgrading your system’s memory, there are different types of memory to consider.

As a quick overview, memory does not only come in size, but it also comes in different speeds. DDR, DDR2, and DDR3 are the memory modules available on the market that operate at different at speeds. For instance, DDR will have transfer rates of 1600 MB/s, whereas DDR2 will double that of DDR and DDR3 will double the speed rate of DDR2 memory modules.

What also differentiates each type of DDR memory is the number of pins on it. Therefore, be sure to acquire the right type of DDR memory to fit into your system’s motherboard, as well as one that supports the memory speed of your motherboard.

Different types of DDR memory will not be compatible with one another. For example, a mother board built to fit DDR2 memory sticks will not be compatible with DDR and DDR3. So be sure to also check this before purchasing additional memory for your system.

For the best performance pc, it’s desirable to have the highest level of memory size and speed, such as 16 GB+ DDR3 2933, however it does come with a premium price tag.

For more ways to optimize your systems and office productivity, contact your local IT professionals.

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Summary of the NSA Malware Discovery

Security, ,
21
Jun 2015

nsa-malware-hard-drives-570

Security firm Kaspersky reveals malicious National Security Agency (NSA) malware hidden in drivers and firmware around the world. Read the summary here.

Kaspersky exposes NSA malware built into hard drives worldwide

Sitting on millions of hard drives across the globe lays a deep rooted NSA malware designed to spy on computer activity, which has also been noted to have done so for over a decade!  The NSA is responsible for gathering electronic intelligence on behalf of the U.S. government.

The majority of brands such as Seagate, Toshiba, Western Digital and many others, have had the tampered firmware built into their hard drives, according to the security software giant Kaspersky.

As many as 30 countries around the globe have the spyware infection implanted on their personal computers. Prime targets have been found to be military and government bodies, banks, energy companies, telecommunication firms and many others.

Most of the targets are from countries such as Afghanistan, Algeria, China, Mali, Mexico, Pakistan, Russia, Syria and Yemen; however it has been picked up in other western countries such as the UK, and parts of Europe.

The party behind all of this has been branded with the name “The equation Group”, who cleverly gained access to the various different firmware’s source code and cracked complex encryption algorithms. They’ve used their highly skilled ability to infect and access very specific targets.

Kaspersky has not named the firm responsible for all the spying operations. It’s believed to be strongly related to the Stuxnet attack which was led by the NSA. Stuxnet was a campaign designed to attack the uranium enrichment facility in Iran.

The Factors behind the Malware’s success

  • The malware, reported as a  dll file, is able to resist computer reformats and hard disk wipes in a ploy to reinfect the host.
  • Ironically, this has impressed Kaspersky Labs in the sense of a piece of hardware having the ability to cause re-infection to a pc. They described it as “ground-breaking technology”.
  • The malware was coded into the hard drive’s firmware, which is the software that allows it (the hardware) to run. For instance, when a computer is switched on it’ll access the firmware to talk to hard drives and other system hardware.
  • In the case of the dll file, a computer will end up getting re-infected as the firmware is needed to use the hard drives.
  • The spy program could work on any hard disk currently sold on the market.

How did it get there in the first place?

NSA-Listens-Shirtmock

It begs the question as to how such malware could have been embedded into the firmware of so many hard drives and to the majority of hard drive companies in the first place?
According to Kaspersky’s director, Costin Raiu, the makers of the spyware must have been able to have had access to the actual source code of each and every infected hard drive. The source code holds the structure, and when in the hands of a third party programmer, this can permit vulnerabilities to be identified and used to harbor malware within it and used for attack.

Raiu continued to add, that’s there’s little chance for the hard drive firmware to be rewritten by just anyone with the use of public information.

Most hard drive companies would not officially disclose whether or not they’ve allowed any such NSA agency officials to access the source code. However Western Digital, Seagate and Micron spokesmen have stated that they have not allowed their source code to be tampered with and take security very seriously.

Despite this, it is still possible for undercover NSA coders to have been employed by any given hard drive manufacturer over a decade ago or disguised as software developers to acquire the source code. It is also likely for hard disk code evaluations to have been requested on behalf of the Pentagon. All are theories of how social engineering could have been part of “the equation”.

This has now made many corporate giants, like Google and others in the US, rethink who could have attacked them back in 2009, which was originally pinned on China.

Evidence exists of hackers having reached the source code from various large American technology and defense corporations, according to reports from investigators.

For more ways to secure your data and systems, contact your local IT professionals.

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Microsoft’s New Strategy: Free Software

Software,
19
Jun 2015

Microsoft-Logo

Microsoft has always used a traditional way of marketing their products to customers until now. Here’s a look at Microsoft’s Free Software strategy.

The idea behind the strategy

With Microsoft dominating the desktop applications market for decades and charging customers for all of their products suites, why would they want to move away from their usual marketing method to offer free software?

It could be that in recent years, Microsoft has been falling behind Google and Apple, who’ve dominated their niche markets by offering their products and services free in return for ads or data. With smartphones becoming as ubiquitous today as PCs were in the 90s, Microsoft has had to step up their game to attract more users to their products. Their new strategy of offering free software is a step in aligning themselves to the competition and keeping up with the times.

Executing the strategy

Microsoft has recently offered a free version of Microsoft Office that can be used on the iOS platform. They’ve extended this to give Android devices free versions of Excel, Word and PowerPoint. In addition to this, they’ve also offered free licenses for Windows as well as Windows Phone for PC and mobile devices.

Reaching out to new markets

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Since they’ve acquired a number of mobile applications, they’ll also plan to offer these for free too. Some examples include free mobile apps such as an email app that is used with Android and iOS platforms acquiring a much larger user base than before. For example, an Android or iOS user, who may not use Microsoft software at all, would now be presented with the opportunity to try the software for free and use it.

Microsoft’s hope is that users will gain a beneficial experience from their software, enough for it to become indispensable to them. The free version will come with a whole host of features that will be very useful. Still, there will be some features that are held back from the free versions, which will be offered in the subscription plans.

Microsoft’s ecosystem

Microsoft-Metrics-2014-Counterpoint-Research

Image courtesy of Counter Point Research

Microsoft is also looking to get users to experience a whole host of other products and services that are closely aligned with the free software offered by them.

This ecosystem of products and services is the perfect strategy that will entice users to sign up to their subscription plans. For example, by integrating Skype into Outlook, Microsoft plans to get users to become accustomed to Skype. Once they are familiar with the product, it’ll be easier for the user to upgrade within minutes of seeing the offer as well as the other paid features available through Skype.

In the same vein, users of Cortana are encouraged to use Bing, which will help draw them away from Google as a search engine.

For more ways to optimize your office software and productivity, contact your local IT professionals.

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Microsoft Office 2016 Preview: What you should know

Software, Uncategorized,
17
Jun 2015

office-2016

Microsoft Office 2016 has features that will benefit any office and business environment. Read our Office 2016 Preview to get an overview of what’s to come.

Microsoft Office has made a big impact in handling the nuances of small and big business document processing and management. With Microsoft Office 2016 being released, everybody is curious to know what features and enhancements it will bring to the work environment.

This version’s focus is definitely on simplifying things. Many features which had been missing in previous versions and were in great demand have now been added to MS Office 2016.

Preview of the Microsoft Office 2016 features

Here are some of the striking features and enhancements that have been included in Microsoft Office 2016:

office365-suite-img

 

  • Word, Power Point and Excel finally get the data loss protection feature. Centralized sharing mechanisms have been built into these tools to help keep the office documents safe. Authoring policies can also be applied which gives a way to restrict and authenticate the use of documents. This feature was previously only available in Outlook, Share Point and One Drive. Due to popular demand it has now been brought over to Word, Power Point and Excel too.
  • Outlook has also been revamped to suit popular business requirements. Support of multi-factor authentication has been added, which scales up the security and integrity of official emails. The search functionality has been improved to a large extent which will make it easier for professionals to search for emails from huge folders or inboxes. Outlook’s performance has also been enhanced so that users don’t have to wait for their messages to download. In addition to the above, extra options related to mail storage has also been included.
  • Excel has added improvements related to accessibility using the keyboards. Vital diagrams like Pivot Tables can now be constructed with keyboard shortcuts which save a lot of time and adds precision.
  • Office will still continue to offer macros and add-ins, which have proven to be a great success in other versions. Since Microsoft feels that these features are designed to the best of their ability, there hasn’t been any updates or changes made to them.
  • Visio has also gone through an enhancement in this version. It can now accommodate Information Rights Management protection. So all Visio images and diagrams can be protected, irrespective of whether they are online or offline.

Along with the enhancements that this version will bring about, IT professionals can reap great advantage by using bandwidth management features. Not forgetting, much more flexibility and support in accessing and applying updates. Administrators will be able to manage users and give them designated rules to activate devices.

For more ways to update and improve your systems, contact your local IT professionals.

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USB Thumb Drives that can Fry your System

hardware, Security,
06
May 2015

PC On Fire Shoot

Learn how USB thumb drives can potentially destroy laptops / pcs. We’ll explain how this works and what measures can be taken to protect your computers.

If you happen to find an unknown flash drive in any place that you aren’t familiar with, we strongly advise not to plug it into a computer, especially one that is used for work.  It makes sense when there’s a high element of risk involved. Not only does the possibility of being infected by a virus exist, but as of late, a new type of attack has been created which can physically damage your systems. We have recently learned of dangerous USB thumb drives that are capable of frying a computer or laptop. 

How does it work?

Think of a computer’s ports as physical access points for an attack.

USB-Killer-2

  • An attacker would modify or build a USB thumb drive by using an inverting DC-DC converter to draw power off the USB port.
  • The power drawn from the USB port is then used to create a -110VDC charge on a capacitor bank.
  • Once the caps have charged up, this triggers the converter to shut down.
  • This forces a transistor to propel the voltage from the capacitor over to the port’s data pins.
  • This pattern repeats every time the caps recharge, discharging its high voltage through the port.
  • As long as there’s a bus voltage and high current present, the attack will run its course and overrun the small TVS diodes present on bus lines  of the computer or laptop.
  • Inevitably this will lead to a computer’s components, including possibly the CPU, to fry.
  • With fried components, a laptop or computer will be “dead”.

In typical circumstances a USB thumb drive is design to be protected, and a computer is normally able to dissipate manageable amounts of power, which wouldn’t cause this type of damage.

An example of an attack

A thief had stolen a USB flash drive off a commuter on the subway.  When the thief inserted the flash drive into his computer USB port, the least he’d expected was to see some data. Instead, his computer died as its internal components have been fried.  Although one may think that it was good for the thief to get their just desserts, it addresses a more serious problem- trusting unknown peripherals such as flash drives.

Precautionary measures

Now that we have a good overview of how a USB thumb drive can be engineered to take out a computer, let’s discuss how to prevent such an occurrence.

  • Don’t allow strangers to connect a USB thumb drive in to a mission critical computer or laptop.
  • Don’t plug in USB thumb drives found in public.
  • Do only use thumb drives purchased from reliable retailers or officially provided by an IT administrator.
  • Avoid sharing thumb drives, especially if they leave the premises and return to be used on computers.
  • Aim for individuals to carry their own thumb drives which can safely be used within an office environment.
  • Always question any thumb drives which may be presented to your business by an unknown third party. Even if it lands at your office’s reception desk, have an IT admin check it out first.
  • Have a thumb and flash drive policy in place to cover all of the above as part of your IT security policy.

For more ways to safeguard your computers and IT infrastructure, contact your local IT professionals.

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