Surface Pro, Microsoft Office and Apple OS X Tips

Surface Pro, Microsoft Office and Apple OS X Tips

Traveling with your Surface Pro

When traveling with a Surface Pro for extended periods of time, we recommend shutting the device down. When the device is in sleep mode while sandwiched in your backpack or travel case, it can easily overheat and has a tendency not to turn back on upon request. Sometimes this can cause battery issues like requiring a 24-hour charge. We recommend erring on the side of caution and shutting your Surface Pro down before going on the road.

Microsoft Office Troubles

Microsoft Office is a very valuable tool, but like many other pieces of software, it can add problematic plug-ins when it connects to other programs. Most of these add-ins are well intentioned, but they can sometimes break and cause issues. OFFCAT is a free software that will scan your Microsoft Office installation, recommend fixes, and walk you through them.

Apple OS X – Wait Before You Update

email-encryptionWhen should you update your computer to the latest OS X update? Once you have spoken to your IT team and verified that the latest update won’t break any business-critical applications. We observed that Apple’s recent update to High Sierra caused a lot of business disruption. Printing stopped for some clients, Office applications failed, and some clients couldn’t boot up afterwards. In general, it’s a good idea to wait and observe how the software release goes, unless there is some great new feature you just have to try and you don’t use your Mac for business.

Another good example of why you should wait to update is that a bug was discovered in High Sierra whereby a user could bypass all of the security on a Mac by simply typing in the username “root” with no password. This was discovered after the update and left everyone vulnerable until Apple fixed it. Again, waiting a bit for these issues to be ironed out is the best plan of action.

If you have any questions about these tips, or anything to do with your technology, please don’t hesitate to give us a call at 970.373.5428 or contact us today.

February 2018 Edition

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