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Tech Review: Microsoft Surface 2

It isn’t often we get to review a new piece of technology so soon after its release, so you can imagine our excitement to get our hands on the Microsoft Surface 2 (RT). My expectations for the Surface 2 were not high, considering the negative press for the original Surface, and dismissal by the industry of the second generation.

The Microsoft Surface 2 features Windows 8, and as a current user of Windows 8, I have many thoughts about it now that I’ve used it for several months. Shortly after deploying Windows 8, I made the move to Windows 8.1 Pro Preview and now to Windows 8.1 Pro. I have had a number of complaints about the move, but Windows 8.1 is a better OS than Windows 8 and enough to make one wonder why Microsoft didn’t incorporate its features in the first version. However, credit is due to them for listening to their customers and making necessary changes. We look forward to continued improvements in the future.

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Patrick Ciccarelli February 18, 2014

Tech Review: Google Nexus 7

We’ve had some recent inquiries regarding the use of tablets for everyday work. One tablet in particular interested us so we thought we would pilot it—Google’s Nexus 7.

What we found was that given the flexibility of the Android OS, the size, and the cost, we think the Nexus 7 is a viable candidate for business use.

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Patrick Ciccarelli October 4, 2013

Tech Review: Adobe Echosign

Adobe Echosign is an e-signature service that allows traditional documents in Word and PDF to be formatted to be electronically signed. Originally a standalone service, Echosign was acquired not too long ago by Adobe.

Over the past two decades of being in business, I’ve found the process of managing legal documents (contracts, offer letters, etc.) to be stuck in a different time period. That is until we decided to move to an electronic process for getting those documents signed.

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Patrick Ciccarelli September 13, 2013

What’s Next, Microsoft?

There has been a lot in the news lately about Steve Ballmer’s retirement from Microsoft. And many are asking what this will mean. I’m excited

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Patrick Ciccarelli September 6, 2013

Managing Social Media With HootSuite

Over the past several years we’ve been contributing to our social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter. We have felt compelled to increase our social media efforts with a belief that they will help to improve our SEO and that some of our clients might like to interact with us online. Although some of our efforts have been fruitful, we are still figuring out how more consumer social media apps like Facebook can be used effectively in business-to-business relationships.

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Patrick Ciccarelli August 22, 2013

WordPress for Education and Nonprofits

Varsity recently completed a re-branding process that included migrating our website to a new host. Our former site was quite dated (in appearance and content) but it still had some life in it when we moved to HubSpot a little over a year ago. We saw some improvements in our social media and creation of new content. The investment improved some of our marketing metrics, and helped us to understand where we should be focusing our efforts.

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Patrick Ciccarelli August 19, 2013

Really, Someone Shot the Fiber Connection

In IT, there are always important discussions and investments regarding Disaster Recovery. Just like companies around the world, we take disaster recovery seriously, which is reflected in our thorough investment in things like our data center. Varsity has two data centers. One is located in the central valley near Sacramento and the other is near Salt Lake City. We selected our data centers based on the level of redundancy.

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Patrick Ciccarelli August 5, 2013

Should You Upgrade to Office 2013?

Recently I was pulled into a conversation between our technical staff and my client. The client had decided to migrate to Office 365, and was considering whether to update their local version of Office to 2010 or 2013. After several comments back and forth I decided to jump in. Here are some of the questions that came up and my responses.

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Patrick Ciccarelli July 19, 2013
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