Perhaps just picking up some off-hours contract work for server maintenance may be a decent way to go? You'd get exposure to other environments, likely bigger ones, and get paid to do it. You'd also be free to work your day job without being impeded by your side work. You could also sign up with Onforce and keep an eye out for evening jobs.

@IT-ADMIN said:

@alexntg said:

@IT-ADMIN said:

@scottalanmiller said:

Linksys was never good.

what is your recommendation Mr Scott regarding ADSL router for small size companies

How small is small?

about 30 computers

Take a look at the Meraki MX60W. It's extremely easy to manage, and has several features such as IPS and content filtering.

@scottalanmiller said:

@alexntg said:

Would it be possible to add some informative text? New visitors don't necessarily know what the site's about.

What should the text say, I wonder.

"Welcome to MangoLassi, a community of IT professionals. Ask questions, give answers, and network with other IT pros from around the globe. Post jobs, discuss current trends, and find solutions to new and existing issues." Something like that, perhaps?

@IT-ADMIN said:

@scottalanmiller said:

Linksys was never good.

what is your recommendation Mr Scott regarding ADSL router for small size companies

How small is small?

@technobabble said:

@alexntg Backup and Restore area, click on Create a system image

Ah, Windows Backup. I used it once, and it seemed to work ok. If I recall, it had issues trying to restore when I used a USB drive for the ISO instead of a DVD.

@scottalanmiller said:

@Mike-Ralston said:

The particle effects and physics for Half Life 2 are done via CPU. And my mistake, by natively I mean that it isn't getting hardware support from PC streaming or anything. So far as I've seen, PhysX and video encoding are the most taxing CPU processes, and this has been running them without a hitch or hiccup. I know a few people who have 3770K's that choke with PhysX rendering.

PhysX is explicitly GPU. Always has been. Particular effects should be GPU too. Nothing significant in 3D graphics is CPU bound. Your seeing the GPU at work.

You can't even enable PhysX without a GPU and specifically an nVidia one. That's a GeForce proprietary physics engine.

I haven't messed around with video settings in a while, but I do recall being able to choose PhysX to run on either CPU or GPU.

@technobabble said:

@Dashrender Thanks. I wanted to know if anyone had successfully re-installed an image created by W7/W8 . I tried a W7 version I saved to a network drive, but that was a complete failure.

When you say created by Windows 7, which program did the creation?

@technobabble said:

Comes with GFI Max or is it an up-sell?

Both GFI Cloud and GFI MAX offer features a la carte, so everything's technically an up-sell.

Are you considering this for personal use, or corporate use?

@JaredBusch said:

Vipre is owned by ThreatTrack Security now. I never checked if that is just a spin off or what.. but it is still part of the GFI suite.

It's its own company again. It's still used in GFI's suites of products.

@NetworkNerd said:

So now that we have all talked about different mobile carriers and how much we love / dislike them, is there any kind of feedback on ATT's Toggle product?

Not specifically? To part of your OP, AT&T's been in the hosting/colo space for while, though they aren't quite the first name that comes to mind.

@Carnival-Boy said:

So they're at risk from attackers physically located within a few miles of them, who know what to do with a random password, and know exactly when the SMS is being sent? This seems very low risk or am I missing something? I only send the password, there is no other information with it. It's not quite the same as two-factor verification, but I think it's similar.

There's still some risk. If someone's phone's being monitored, the person monitoring the phone would have some idea of who's it is. If someone's just absorbing all SMS traffic in a given area, it wouldn't have any particular meaning or value.

That depends on the environment I'm in. At home, Webroot and OpenDNS. In my hosted environment, Webroot and Sophos UTM.

@technobabble said:

Is there a product that would allow a system image to replace the image on a hardrive due to OS failure, malware, user error. Curious if there is a program I could recommend to my clients which would keep the cost down of repairs or a re-install. Has anyone used the Win7/8 system image successfully to repair a pc?

I've used SCCM on a regular basis to reload machines. A user screws their computer up, gets it infected, whatever, just advertise the imaging task sequence, PXE boot it and you have a ready-to-go computer in a couple of hours. It may not be such a good fit for SMBs, though.

@Carnival-Boy said:

Not sure. Google et al's two-factor verification is based on SMS, so how bad can it be? What's the worst that can happen?

Well, you know, their password being broadcast on-air to everyone within a few miles of your user is up there in risk. Two-factor verification isn't quite the same as a password.

@Carnival-Boy said:

Possibly. I really don't know what best practice is and to be honest, I haven't thought about it all that much. E-mailing passwords just feels wrong to me.

I normally send them by SMS, which is possibly even less secure (but like I say, I haven't thought about it much until today).

If you know how SMS works, your pants would be brown right about now.

@Dashrender said:

@JaredBusch said:

Also realize that email may not be as insecure as you think.

Before you went off the handle and wasted all that time changing passwords, did you check if the email had been sent via TLS?

Not very many SMTP servers use TLS by default (even if both sides have it available).

Office 365 does.

Lync had a bit of a login disruption. The issues related to Exchange and SharePoint only impacted certain use cases and went unnoticed by most companies.

@technobabble said:

@alexntg I am using Office 365.

That uses opportunistic TLS. If your receiving party does the same (or forces TLS) you'll be good to go for transmission encryption.

Them emailing you the passwords, for lack of a better phrase, is pretty derpy. Next go around, set up separate users and passwords for your main systems. That'll give you the ability to block their access as needed without having to hand over your passwords. If you want to get rid of them, toast their accounts. If you go rogue, they can still help your company keep control.

Also, take a look at the other types of companies that the MSP works with. Ones that have more security-focused clients will naturally lean towards being more secure.