IFYBRIAN

In the 15 years that I’ve been running a small company, I have survived several malware attacks. The only thing that kept me in business was a reliable backup of my data. When it comes to my data (if not my pants), I’m a belt and suspenders kind of person: In addition to periodically copying my two key work folders onto an external hard drive, my system automatically backs up my computer’s contents to an encrypted cloud-based backup service at 1 o’clock every morning. If I’m attacked or my main computer goes south, I won’t lose my company’s 40.9GB of data, even if some catastrophe destroys both the computer and the external hard drive. More than once, I have used the backups to save my digital bacon by retrieving a deleted file, and the online backup has the added convenience of letting me use just about any connected device to access a document and show it to a client during a remote meeting. I’m not alone in recognizing the benefits of online backup. Phil Goodwin, research ...

That was the sound Microsoft's browsers made last month as they leaked user share. Yet again. According to U.S. analytics vendor Net Applications, the user share of Internet Explorer (IE) and  Edge  -- an estimate of the world's personal computer owners who ran those browsers -- slid by nine-tenths of a percentage point, ending at a combined 22.2%. The August decline was the largest since January. It can be difficult to accurately spot short-term trends with Net Applications' data: At times, changes seem more an artifact of the company's methodology. IE+Edge's latest plunge may signal a renewal of losses after a five-month slow-down in the desertion rate, or it could be simply a hiccup. Overall, however, Microsoft's fortunes remain dark in the browser race. While the share loss in the eight months of 2017 has been just over half that of same period of 2016 -- illustrating a slowing of the bleeding -- IE+Edge has shed almost a full percentage point e...

Professionals using server-grade PCs in mission-critical computing will soon have a new version of Microsoft's operating system designed specifically for their needs: Windows 10 Pro for Workstations. Announced yesterday, the latest addition to Microsoft's expanding family of Windows 10 options was created based on feedback from Windows 10 "Insiders" who test-drive pre-release versions of the operating system. Set to be released as part of Microsoft's coming Fall Creators Update, Windows 10 Pro for Workstations will come with high-end persistent memory, support for faster file sharing, and an enhanced file system for handling large volumes of data. It will also feature expanded hardware support for advanced, server-grade processors, up to four CPUs, and as much as 6 TB of memory. Built To 'Take Advantage of Raw Power' "We know that power users have unique needs to run efficiently and we take the feedback we hear seriously," said Klaus Di...

With more team projects being managed in the cloud and on the go, Google has added new collaboration capabilities to its G Suite productivity apps. They include the ability to name different versions of cloud-based documents, suggest editing changes from mobile devices, and use and create document templates with built-in add-ons for signatures, graphs, legal matters, and more. G Suite users with paid Business or Enterprise subscriptions will also see enhanced Google search capabilities integrated into their cloud-based Docs and Slides. Google has rolled out an ongoing series of updates to G Suite, once called Apps for Work, over the past year or so. In July, the analyst firm Gartner Inc. included Google as a leading company in its Magic Quadrant for content collaboration platforms. New Template Customization Capabilities Some of the changes Google announced yesterday will be familiar to users of Microsoft Word, which has long offered version control, "clean version"...