iTSTL Blog

Now that smart mobile devices are a mainstay in business, the landscape will never be the same again. Your organization needs to have a plan to acquire, manage, maintain, and secure these devices. Businesses generally choose either Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) or Corporate-Owned, Personally Enabled (COPE), depending on their needs.

When evaluating your business assets, it's essential to prioritize technology. Let's briefly go into the reasons why this is important and explore effective management strategies your business can roll out to improve your operations.

The Right to Repair movement has evolved from a simple idea into a full-fledged campaign, with numerous states enacting measures to enhance the rights of consumers and businesses who use various technologies daily. Let's take a moment to assess the current status of this movement and explore what it means for businesses.

Selecting the right servers for your business is extremely important and can either promote optimal performance, reliability, and security of your business computing; or it can present nothing but problems. Today, we will go through six tips to help you make good decisions about servers for your business.

All businesses depend on the Internet in at least some capacity, and it’s so commonplace and accessible these days that people often take it for granted. However, a lot of work goes into making sure that the infrastructure you know as the Internet remains accessible and operational. Let’s go over the hardware you’ll need to ensure you stay connected.

In recent years, educational institutions have widely adopted the regular use of laptops in the classroom, and with budgets being a pressing concern for many of these institutions, the cost-sensitive nature of Chromebooks make them an excellent option… at least, that would be the assumption. However, this is not the case in the slightest, as the software that powers these devices regularly reaches its end of life, despite the hardware being perfectly capable of more.

Any business that utilizes technology is sure to accumulate wasted materials over time, whether it’s a drawer full of old chargers or a room full of old, outdated workstations. To make sure that they don’t land themselves in a landfill, you should make a conscious effort to recycle and reuse your old technology in some way. Here are some options to consider.

Small businesses create a lot of waste. Fortunately, many are taking responsible steps to ensure that their old technology doesn't end up in landfills. Let’s explore what small businesses do with their technology once it's thrown away and how they contribute to a more sustainable future.

Without hardware, where would your business be right now? You can’t run your mission-critical applications and software without devices to host them on. You need to do all you can to ensure it stays in a proper state, but there will always eventually come a time when you cannot sustain it any longer and need to upgrade.

Here’s what you need to know about your hardware refresh cycle, including what it is, what you can do with one, and how to plan it out.

The growth that digital storage has seen over the past several decades is immense. In that time most data has been stored on hard disk drives (HDD). Now with solid-state drives (SSD) being more affordable than ever, it’s no surprise that most computers are preferring this faster and less fragile model. Today, we wanted to highlight that fragility and try to expose some variables that help you tell if your HDD is about to fail. 

HP has been taking steps to disable any ink cartridges that they didn’t produce from working in their printers, much to the disapproval of users everywhere. Let’s go over what this means, both in terms of the backlash as well as what it means for your business.

Apple has long been a key part of the technology industry, producing quality hardware year after year. Although Apple tends to produce sleek and high-end hardware running its proprietary operating systems, these devices are far from perfect and were especially controversial at certain points in the past.

The next time you’re near a desktop, take a peek at the back where the motherboard’s various ports offer the opportunity to connect to different cable types. Many of these cables have overlapping functions—like the capabilities of USB and HDMI. Having said that, however, one of these cables will probably outlast its contemporary.

When it comes to procuring new technology solutions for your business, what is your preferred method of doing so? If you haven’t thought about it, perhaps you should start. Gartner predicts a major decrease in PC shipments for the remainder of 2022. This has significant implications for any technology user, but this is especially true for business owners who might need to consider hardware refreshes in the near future.

The hard drive is an essential component of every computer. When you start looking at new computers you may notice that there are two different types of hard drives available. There are the HDD (hard disk drive) or the SSD (solid state drive). Today, we’ll go through what the difference is and what benefits you may get from outfitting your hardware with solid state drives. 

Sometimes it might be tempting to just smack your computer to make it work appropriately, and while it’s often a joke that this can fix the problem, it’s not something that we would recommend you get used to doing. Let’s discuss why it might not be a good idea to abuse your computer.

Businesses that utilize technology often try to make it last as long as possible to avoid the costs of overhauling their entire infrastructure. This can cause a lot of damage in the long term, though, especially if this practice leads to keeping technology longer than necessary. Let’s examine some of the variables that go into technology refreshes and how you can know when it’s time to do so.

If you have tried to replace any hardware over the past couple years, chances are you were either met with significant disappointment or a hefty price tag. There is currently a hardware shortage—particularly for business electronics—and the entire business technology industry is reeling from it. If your organization depends on technology, as many do, you need to understand how this shortage could impact your day-to-day operations.

The cloud is a tool that businesses can use to improve operations in a variety of ways. Through the use of the cloud, businesses can dramatically alter the way they conduct themselves, many of which can reduce costs. If you implement cloud solutions, you can expect them to improve accessibility, enable scalability, and improve flexibility, all of which contribute to cost savings in the long term.

We’ve been covering some of the biggest names in the smartphone market over the past couple of weeks, but that’s not to say that there aren’t others out there—some of which are incredibly innovative, but also quite expensive. Let’s examine some of these options.