New Technology Era

It comes as a shock to many business owners that their newly purchased PC’s don’t work straight “out of the box.” In fact they need a fair amount of IT Support setup. Usually this is done by your IT Support Company

After your new PC is unboxed and on your desk here are some of the things that your IT Support Company needs to do before you can start using it:

IT Support Company

• Complete initial Windows configuration:
  • Windows product key
  • Date
  • Time zone
  • Language
  • Input type
  • Computer name
  • Local administrator username and password.
• Update the Windows operating system with the latest patches
• Register the Microsoft Office licence with Microsoft online
• Update Microsoft Office with the latest patches
• Set the virtual memory to the size recommended for Microsoft Windows. This will improve the speed of your PC
• With laptops ensure network card is always on when it’s operating on battery power
• Uninstall any trial applications that clutter the machines memory and use up space.
• Install Adobe Reader, Flash & Shockwave
• Install afree PDF writer such as CutePDF Writer
• Install the latest version of Java – some applications may require it
• Install Anti-virus and Anti-spyware – use your company standard software. You may need to purchase additional licences
• Create a VPN connection for remote users or laptops.
• Join the PC to the company network domain enabling it to use server resources and come under the server management
• Provide access to network printers

You may also have a few additional IT Support setup requirements specific to your company such as:

• Company specific operating system configuration
• Installation of company specific applications
• Installation of company specific plug-ins and templates
• Setup network profile specific to the nominated user
• Login as user and setup email software if PC is designated for a specific user

And potentially some IT Support setup requirements specific to each individual user. For example:

• Any personalised operating system configuration
• Installation and configuration of personal software applications
• Migration of personal settings to new machine, where possible
• Migration of personal data to new machine

Setting up a PC is time consuming and as you can see beyond the skill of most users. After all they are not IT Support Engineers! Clearly this is going to require some assistance from your IT Support Company. Your IT Support Company does this time of work all the time so can get the IT Support work done in a few hours. In contrast the average not IT Support users would probably take all day, but most couldn’t do this IT Support setup no matter how long they had!