Tip of the Week: What You’ll Need to Leverage BYOD
Bring Your Own Device has a lot of benefits for businesses, chief among them being giving your users the opportunity to use their own devices for work rather than those provided to them. More often than not, they will benefit from easy-to-use apps on their preferred devices, allowing them to get more done throughout the workday. When you implement BYOD, though, there are various concepts that you have to consider in order to ensure productivity, flexibility, security, and profitability.
Tip of the Week: How to Restore the Recycle Bin Desktop Icon
Have you ever had your Windows PC lose its Recycle Bin? This has been known to happen since the update to Windows 10, but even updates to Windows 7 and 8.1 have seen similar issues. If your Recycle Bin has pulled a Houdini, we’ll help you get it back. Read on to find out how!
Tip of the Week: Which Headphones are Right for Your Needs?
If your office is hectic, a pair of headphones is practically a necessity in order to get anything done. If they are wireless, all the better. When picking your own set of wireless headphones, you’ll want to keep a couple of factors in mind. Here are some of them for your consideration.
Tip of the Week: 3 Pieces of Software that Read the Screen to the User
If we’re all going to be honest, the ability to read is an underappreciated skill. However, many people need assistance with reading, often due to some visual impairment or learning disability. Preparing yourself for the day when someone in your office may need the assistance is a simple step in the right direction.
Tip of the Week: Which Headphones are Right for Your Needs?
If your office is hectic, a pair of headphones is practically a necessity in order to get anything done. If they are wireless, all the better. When picking your own set of wireless headphones, you’ll want to keep a couple of factors in mind. Here are some of them for your consideration.
Tip of the Week: 3 Pieces of Software that Read the Screen to the User
If we’re all going to be honest, the ability to read is an underappreciated skill. However, many people need assistance with reading, often due to some visual impairment or learning disability. Preparing yourself for the day when someone in your office may need the assistance is a simple step in the right direction.
Tip of the Week: 3 Pieces of Software that Read the Screen to the User
If we’re all going to be honest, the ability to read is an underappreciated skill. However, many people need assistance with reading, often due to some visual impairment or learning disability. Preparing yourself for the day when someone in your office may need the assistance is a simple step in the right direction.
For your consideration, we’ve compiled some of the most common screen reading software titles.
Job Access with Speech (JAWS)
JAWS has a history of being the most common screen reading application worldwide. In 2015, JAWS was the program of choice for 30.2% of frequent users, while infrequent users made up about 43.7%. Whether the user is browsing the web, reading content like articles and ebooks, reaching out to a team member through telecommunication, or is engaged in another activity, JAWS can simplify their process – even if that user is still using Windows Vista!
Windows Narrator
A standby on every version of Windows since Windows 2000, Windows Narrator was originally meant to work as an accessibility tool for the blind and visually impaired. Narrator can read basic dialogue boxes and the information displayed in windows to a limited degree. This is because Narrator was never really meant to be a be-all, end-all solution. Instead, it is recommended by Microsoft that Windows Narrator is used to help download a more advanced solution.
NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA)
NVDA can be pretty accurately summed up as the free version of JAWS, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have features worth talking about. Not only can NVDA read back text as it appears on the screen, it can also provide the output for a braille machine to print a hard copy. NVDA can be installed to a computer or can be made portable through the use of a thumb drive. This solution is also compatible with text in email and social media, as well as word processing and productivity software, and can be used with Windows 10.
Are there any other screen reading titles that you’ve heard of? Share them in the comments below!
Tip of the Week: Which Headphones are Right for Your Needs?
If your office is hectic, a pair of headphones is practically a necessity in order to get anything done. If they are wireless, all the better. When picking your own set of wireless headphones, you’ll want to keep a couple of factors in mind. Here are some of them for your consideration.
Specifications
First, you should ask if the headphones in question will be able to serve your express needs. You’ll have to do a little bit of research into the specifications of each of the potential models you plan on looking at, as well as reviews whenever possible to see what the masses think about them.
The first factor you want to look at is the sound quality. Will you be using this headset to talk on the phone? In this case, the quality of the microphone and sound quality is going to be particularly important. Bluetooth headphones are often limited in their sound quality, but they are still perfectly usable for talking on the phone. If you absolutely have to use one of these devices, you should make sure that it’s a headset designed specifically for this purpose. The headsets that are primarily used for listening to music tend to fall short of expectations when considering phone calls.
Next, think about how your headphones might restrict flexibility in the office. If you’re using a headset that has a dongle plugged into your workstation, you might be limited by the distance your headset can travel from the source of the call. Some headphones will also have battery life variables that will need to be considered, and you can’t have your headset powering down in the middle of an important call.
Lastly, you’ll need to determine just how comfortable each pair of headphones is. You don’t want to be uncomfortable while being productive, especially since this could put your productivity in jeopardy. In order to get the most out of your headphones, make sure that they don’t hurt your head.
Other Concerns
There are other questions that you’ll want to ask about your headphones, but they will be based on factors within your office. These include how the headphones are used and inter-office noise. If your office doesn’t have a lot of noise, you won’t need noise-cancelling headphones, but otherwise they might be a worthy investment. To this end, over-the-ear headphones will prove to be quite valuable, but it’s best to err on the side of comfort for the sake of your productivity.
Do you have any suggested headphones? Let us know in the comments and be sure to subscribe for more technology advice.
Tip of the Week: 3 Ways to Get Windows 10 to Boot Faster
Have you ever waited far too long for your Windows workstation to boot up? Chances are that you’ve seen first-hand how much time can be wasted during this process. If you want to save some time, you can review our three tips to help you speed up your Windows 10 computer’s boot time.
Before we get started, however, a word of caution; always check with your IT department before changing any settings on your workstation. Ideally, you will have your IT department handle these changes on their own.
Use Fast Startup
Windows 10 has a special startup feature called Fast Start-up. It basically cuts down on the time it takes for Windows to boot up. Fast Start-up works by utilizing a special filing system that makes each subsequent startup process quicker. Rather than shut down completely or go into sleep mode, your device sits somewhere between the two.
To set up Fast Start-up, start by opening up your Control Panel and finding your way to Power Options. If you can’t find it, just search for it in the search bar. Next, select Choose what the power buttons do. Locate the checkbox option for Turn on fast start-up. Once you’re done, save your changes.
Edit Your Startup Programs
There are a lot of programs that start up alongside your Windows operating system, but you don’t necessarily need all of them. What started as an attempt to improve the user experience has led to bloated system slowdown that ultimately betrays its original intent. By removing some of these from the startup process, you can considerably improve system speed.
To get started, open up your task manager by pressing Ctrl + Shift + Esc. You then need to click on the Start-up tab. You’ll see all of the programs that open on startup, where you can remove any applications that you want. Just make sure that you work with IT to make sure that none of these programs are ones that are crucial to your organization, as one false step could create problems.
Implement Simple Hardware Updates
If you upgrade a couple components on your computer, you can improve its performance–including startup. Even making a simple change, like implementing a solid-state drive, can make a huge impact on the way your computer starts up. If you use an SSD to hold your Windows 10 installation, as well as add in a little extra RAM, you’ll be able to improve your performance in ways you don’t believe.
Catalyst Technology Group can get your computers running as smooth as possible. To learn more, reach out to us at (317) 705-0333.
Tip of the Week: Moving Your Apps to Your New Phone
While it feels great to power on a new phone and marvel at its slick new interface and features, you might feel frustrated by the fact that you now have to reinstall all of the applications and data that was on your original device. This week’s tip is dedicated to helping you make this process easier and more efficient for an Android smartphone.
First, you need to make sure that your Android’s data can be retrieved by your new device, so make sure that it’s backed up properly. You might even have backup implemented by default, so you want to check before doing anything else.
To check, open up your Settings. Next, look for Backup & reset. You’ll have to flip the switch for Back up my data. You’ll be brought back to the previous menu to select Backup & reset again. Be sure to check your Android account and make sure that the correct one is set as your Backup account. The final step here is to make sure that your account is toggled to automatic restore, ensuring that you’ll be able to restore the settings of your preferred Android account.
Now that your Android’s backup service has been enabled, you’ll be able to save your personal settings and application data right to Google Drive. Once these steps have been taken, it’s time to actually restore your applications and settings to your new device.
The Restoration Process
Thankfully, once you’ve actually gone through the preliminary activity of setting up which account you want to restore, the process itself is relatively simple. For Android phones running the Lollipop version of the Android operating system, this feature can be used when you boot up the device for the first time, or upon initiating a factory reset.
- Select the arrow at the welcome screen when setting up your phone.
- Select your System language and plug in your information for the Wi-Fi network connection.
- Select Accept and continue.
- You’ll then be able to copy your Google accounts, apps, and data from another device. If you don’t want to do this, you can continue simply by logging into your Google account.
- Click Accept for the privacy statement.
- Go to your Google services page and enable the backup service for your account.
- Select your preferences and click Next.
- You can then add an email account by selecting Add another email. If you don’t want to do this, just select Not now and hit Next.
- Now you can restore apps from the “Which device?” menu. You’ll see all of your Android devices here. Select the device with the apps that you want to restore. If you don’t want to restore anything, just select the arrow next to the Restore option and select that you’d rather not restore anything.
- Finally, select the device with the configurations that you want to restore from. Hit Restore and you’re all set.
Once you’ve done all of these steps, you’ll want to make sure that you have enabled security on your phone. For more information about how to maximize your business’ productivity with mobile devices, reach out to us at (317) 705-0333.