Issue #1, May 2007
Save 50% on your next phone switch
Telephone Tax Refund – Are we Finally Done Paying for the Spanish-American War?
About Badger Data Systems, Inc.
Google is launching a free 411 service for local business listings. Currently it is experimental, but I’ve called it a few times and it works. The service is fully automated and uses speech recognition software so you won’t be talking to any live operators. To use it just call 1-800-goog-411 and follow the prompts. The system will even connect the call for you and send a text to your phone with the number; that comes in real handy when you’re trying to contact a business while driving. While they are calling the 411 service free, Google’s web site warns that telephone company charges may apply. Here’s a tip within the tip, have your telephone system person program your switch to automatically dial 800-goog-411 when 411 is dialed. That could save you a few bucks by directing employees to a free 411 service instead of a fee based service. To learn more go to http://labs.google.com/goog411. Click to go Back to the top.
Just click here and send us an email asking any question you’d like. Likely someone else has the same question so there’s a pretty good chance it will wind up in one of our newsletters. Click to go Back to the top.
Get an AVAYA IP Office 406v2 Phone System with voice mail lite for 50% off the List Price. AVAYA is offering a great price to their distributors and we’re passing the savings right on to you. Your cost is just $906.50. This system will handle 10 extensions right out of the box and is expandable to more than 200. Choose from VoIP, Digital, Analogue, 900Mhz wireless and WiFi Phones. Go to our website to see the extensive list of features the IP Office system offers like voicemail-email, twinning, hot-desking and more…. Offer expires June 29th, 2007. Phones, line cards and installation are extra. Call us at 715-346-1000 or click email for a complete quote. Click to go Back to the top.
We sprung ahead in March this year instead of April, but your computer may not have. Windows computers required a patch so that they would recognize the new DST change date. Hopefully your company and home computers have already been fixed but if not you can get information on what to do here. Microsoft put out a fix to adjust for the new daylight savings for XP and 2003 Server and newer systems but did nothing for Windows 2000 or Windows 98 computers. Others have stepped up to the plate to take care of the problem. Your Windows 2000 system may be fine now but that’s because we’re past the original 1st Sunday of April, DST change date. Unless its been patched, next year your computer will be an hour off again starting at 2:00am March 8, 2008. Click here to read about and download the free patch that I used to fix Windows 2000 systems. For XP systems you can visit Microsoft’s web site. Click to go Back to the top.
You may have noticed that there was a FCC Telephone Tax refund when doing your taxes this year or maybe your accountant mentioned it. And just maybe you’re like me and wondered what that tax was there for in the first place and why they are giving it back now? Well here’s the scoop. In 1868 The US Treasury enacted a tax on Americans who owned phones; this tax was used to pay for the Spanish-American war. We were still paying the tax in 2006. This tax shows up on your phone bill and is collected by the telephone company. Over the past few years there has been rising resentment to paying the tax. Many Americans have refused to pay the tax and there was no clear law in place backing the telephone companies who were required to collect the tax. If the telephone companies failed to collect the tax they faced steep penalties. Ultimately this lead to law suits against the US government and after losing a number of appeals the government finally gave up. The excise tax is going to be refunded for the past three years on 2006 tax returns. Click to go Back to the top.
When I was the IT Director for a large company we were getting well over 10,000 SPAM emails a month; something had to be done. After looking at the alternatives we chose to use an email filtering service company called Frontbridge. Frontbridge not only stopped SPAM but also stopped viruses too and will hold your mail for you if your server or internet connection crashes. Long story short, the employees loved it; some employees went from 200 SPAM messages a day down to none. The antivirus in Frontbridge was astounding; each and every email is scanned by at least three different scanning engines long before it reaches your email server or inbox. As an IT Director I loved the fact that no virus or worm was able to get anywhere near my network. Yep, just sat there with my feet up on the desk while others had their email servers getting creamed with thousands of worm infested emails. Since this was a service solution and not installed software, there was no client or server software that the staff had to install and continually update and manage. Microsoft recognized what a great company and great service Frontbridge was so they bought the company in 2005 and renamed the service to Microsoft Exchange Hosted Filtering. Oh one more thing, the price, Exchange Hosted Services takes care of the SPAM and the viruses and more for under $22 per year per mailbox. Give us a call and we’ll get you set up with a free 30 day trial. Call us at 715-346-1000 or click email. Click to go Back to the top.
Congratulations to Al Haga of Del Monte. Al won the LCD TV drawing at the Portage County Business Expo that was sponsored by Badger Data Systems, Midwest Computer Recyclers and Starworks, LLC. Enjoy that TV Al. Good luck to the rest of you on next year’s drawing. Click to go Back to the top.
Badger Data Systems, Inc.
816 Meadow Lane
Stevens Point, WI 54481
(715)346-1000
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We are a computer networking and telephone sales and services company. Our staff carries Microsoft Engineer Certifications and we are an AVAYA Business Partner. Contact us for all of your telephone and computer system needs. Learn more about the company online by clicking here. Click to go Back to the top.
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