In recent years, Microsoft has taken a pummeling in the Web server business. At one time, IIS and Windows NT Server 4.0 was the most popular commercial Web server platform; today, Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003 are fighting against a wave of free and inexpensive versions of the Linux operating system and Apache Web server software. Microsoft argues that such servers don’t come with the support that a multi-billion dollar company like Microsoft can provide; f....

In the early days of the phone system, you picked up a telephone and talked to an operator who put your call through. As more people got phone lines, the phone company began to replace its operators with special switching equipment. When you dialed a number, your telephone sent a signal to the switching equipment, which routed your call to its destination. Such switching systems could handle more calls more efficiently than human operators, but they also opened the door to pho....

In 2001, Safeware(http://www.safeware.com) estimated that thieves stole over 500,000 laptops for that year but only 15,000 desktop computers. Laptops make the most obvious and enticing targets because of their small size, light weight, and high resale value, so if you’re traveling with a laptop in public, do your best to hide it. Walk through any airport and you’ll see many people carrying their laptops in distinctive black carrying cases, easily....

Your users might not know that they can use Excel to analyze data from the various databases in your organization. They can use the powerful analytical tools of Excel on data they previously only viewed or edited within the database user interface. Using these features, they can pull data from your customer database, sales tracking database, product catalog, and HR systems into various sheets in a workbook and perform complex pivot table analysis not possible using the separat....

When a company or organization wants to use the Internet, they must decide whether they want to do it by directly attaching to the Internet system or whether they will use another company to supply the connection. Many companies choose to use another company, called a service provider, because it reduces the amount of equipment, administration, and costs involved. If the company or organization wants to directly connect (and sometimes when they are using a service provider), t....