SeanPT

There are a few exercises that everyone must perform when a new e-mail comes in. It doesn’t matter how deluged in spam you are, you still have to go through these steps with every single e-mail. You have to first decide if you know who sent you the e-mail. Then you have to decide if you trust it enough to look at the e-mail itself. From there you have to decide if that person really sent you that e-mail or if it is a fake and the true origins are hidden.

At any point along the way, you may just delete the message and move on to the next e-mail. But if you trusted everything so far, you may be tempted to open the attachment that came with the e-mail. But at this point, you must ask yourself more questions. First, were you expecting an attachment from this person? If you weren’t, reply back and ask for some kind of human verification that everything is ok. It takes a few seconds for both parties but can save hours of torment.

And it is because of that torment that you must also ask yourself “Is it worth it?” “Is seeing a funny video, looking at these pictures, or opening this document at this time worth the potential risk?” Most of the time, the answer is “No!”

I’m sure you have heard by now that Windows 7 is out and about. Thankfully Microsoft has learned since the days of Windows XP and released Windows 7 to a fairly wide group of advanced customers months ago. I have been using Windows 7 for well over a year now and the final version since my birthday back in August.

To put it simply, Windows 7 is fantastic. There are so many features that make every day computing easier. There are also numerous behind the scenes changes that you may never notice, but you are grateful those changes have been made.

I am suggesting, advising, and pushing everyone to Windows 7 as soon as possible. Staying on Windows XP and Vista when there is something this improved available is just silly. The only thing holding me back are various 3rd party application providers. Despite Windows 7 having nearly the same requirements as Vista and the incredibly long development lead time for Windows 7, some major companies with major programs were still not ready for the Windows 7 launch.

I am keeping a close eye on all of the software that my current customers use as well as bugging anyone that will listen to get their programs up to Windows 7 snuff.

If you received a notice from “your administrator” or “your server” or “Microsoft” or any other generic source advising you that upgrades had been performed and you needed to click a link to continue: don’t click that link!

As a general rule, unless you are 100% certain that you trust who sent you the e-mail and you know the link that you are clicking, you should not click links in e-mails. It is just too easy to direct you to a malware infested site in one click and it is not worth the risk.

As for getting E-Mails about upgrades, etc. please note that any e-mail I would send out would be a personal E-Mail and would not be in such a format. Plus, I would never have you click on a link to take further action or anything silly like that.

Just delete e-mails like that and move on.

In a day that most thought would never come, SeanPT.com has officially launched.

Over the years I have advised many of my clients that they simply do not need a website, and I stand by that advise. There are those that will try to tell every single micro business out there that a website is a must have part of their business and that is simply not the case. And for many years, it was not the case for me.

2009 has been a busy year of growth and new challenges. I wanted an easy way for my wonderful clients and prospects to see the services that I offer. I wanted to make contacting me as easy as possible. I also wanted to leverage multiple contact methods so that I won’t ever miss someone’s smoke signal. Finally, it was getting kind of silly that I offered web design but didn’t have a site myself.