Email is dynamic. Your mailbox changes every second of every day. In many ways email flows like a river. It is impossible to stop the flow, even for a little bit.

I came back from 5 days without my phone or computer to 400 new emails. (And that doesn’t include Spam, either). Because email is dynamic, it must be managed and archived.

Most mailboxes have a maximum size, and if you’re not using an Exchange Server or other mail server, you probably have most of your mail locally, in a file on the c drive of your computer. We can discuss mailbox files and file locations for the Mac in a subsequent blog, but for now we’ll discuss Microsoft Outlook.

Outlook keeps all of it’s data (mail, calendar, tasks note and any subfolders) in a .pst file or personal folder file. Unless specified otherwise specified and configured, mail is stored under your profile folder under documents and settings.

Here is an exerpt from Microsoft:

“If you use a POP3 e-mail account, which is one of the more common types of personal e-mail accounts, your e-mail messages are downloaded from your POP3 e-mail server at your Internet service provider (ISP) to your computer and delivered to and stored locally in a Personal Folders file (.pst) named Outlook.pst (the default data file name). Outlook.pst is stored in the <drive>:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook”

Here is an article about how to move your Outlook.pst file to another location, perhaps a folder in your Documents folder which is already included in your backup.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA011124801033.aspx

In Outlook Express, mail is located in a hidden folder named Identities under the Application Data folder in under Documents and settings. Here is a Microsoft article regarding backing up and restoring your Outlook Express data.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/270670

Outlook has an archive fuction that will automatically move mail that is older than a specific date to an archive folder. While this is handy, it can also lead to missing emails. For example, I was not diligent in manually archiving my email and turning off the auto archive. What happened was that some old mails were archived to different files on different computers, making it almost to find a specific email that was archived at my house verus on my work computer.

The easiest way to arhive is to copy the file to another location or backup hard drive, then clearing out all of your old mails, leaving perhaps the last month or quarter for reference. Another method is to use the Import/Export tool in Outlook, which will effectively do the same thing, but with a few more steps. I would highly recommend moving your Outlook.pst file to your Documents folder for ease of backup.

Your archive files can be named by the date you archived them, and a copy of them can be stored in a folder on your desktop or in your documents folder for quick reference.

In the next blog, we’ll discuss the benefits of Hosted Exchange, and spotlight the

AMT Hosted Exchange Service in our new Service Spotlight edition blog.

AMT Spam Filter service

Happy Computing,

Chris Alexander

Is your computer moving too slowly?

Does your computer seem to be performing worse than it used to?

AMT can help.

Often slow machine performance is an issue that can be solved by maintenance or a tune-up.  ’Computer slowness’ does NOT necessarily mean that it is time to replace your computer - especially if it is less than 3 years old. 

If your computer is running slowly don’t give up on it - Let us help!

It’s that time of year again, back to school and back to school shopping. Many of you may have noticed all the great deals out there for shiny new laptops.  All Mountain Technologies in Eagle-Vail is always available if you’re looking for a custom order or computer upgrade.  Whether its off to college, back to high school or just because you want one, now is a great time to take advantage of all of the great offerings by manufacturers and our channel partners. 

Let us help with our Back-To-School Tune up.

Back-To-School Special Includes:

 - General PC Tune-up and evaluation

 - Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware software installation and scans to be sure PC is clean

 - Hard disk defragmentation and Clean-up

 - Backup System evaluation

 - Suggestion of customized guidelines for ‘best practices’ based on what we see on your machine

All for a flat fee no matter how long it takes us on our bench! 

Great offer if you think you have a virus!

All for the cost of one hour only at $100 - even if it takes us longer!

Call our office at 970-748-8880 to set up an appointment!

We can give you true digital peace of mind.

All Mountain Technologies  has more professional certifications and professional channel partners than any of our competitors in our market here in Eagle County, Colorado (and surroundings areas).  We have invested resources in our channel partners such as Microsoft, Dell, and Cisco so let’s briefly examine the benefits this effort confers on us for our customers vs. less qualified and less well staffed competitive alternatives. 

First, AMT is professionally certified with all Microsoft offerings that are likely the IT cornerstones in your business (MCSE, MCP, etc.).  Second, AMT has a staff large enough to cover our clients 24/7/365 which doesn’t take vacations - someone will always be available to help.  Our size and available resources allow us the freedom to invest in utilities to resolve and even proactively prevent IT issues that are cost-prohibitive to smaller companies.  Third, we constantly work with our channel partners to educate and certify our technicians as new products are introduced in order to get our certifications current and so AMT can stay up to date.

All Mountain Technologies believes it is important to invest in this training and professionally certify our staff.  Let’s look at one example: Cisco - one of the leading providers of routing, networking, and IP telephone equipment. All Mountain Technologies is a Cisco Certified Premier partner.  Our staff takes classes and receives training with regard to the exact software and hardware that we offer.  Using our example, our certifications allow us to offer partner only Cisco resources (such as superior levels of Cisco support inaccessible to non-partners). 

We believe that our customers are best served by technicians that are prepared, ready, and qualified to deal with your IT issues and that is what we try and provide.  We have also partnered with IT industry leaders in these areas for that same reason.  Those industry leading vendors recognize our commitment and will often give AMT significant ‘partner discounts’ that we can in turn pass on to our current customers as well - they don’t want to see their expensive equipment being used improperly out there either!

We have seen instances of misdiagnosed issues or technicians who are unfamiliar with rapidly evolving and ever more complex IT equipment causing serious downtime and weeks of problems at some companies.  In fact by coming in, diagnosing, and promptly resolving issues just like this we gained several of our current and more loyal clients!

So, do we charge more the guys working out of garages for our consulting services?  Maybe… but if you had a need for a medical procedure — say ACL knee surgery — wouldn’t you expect to pay more to have a certified physician perform the procedure in an appropriate environment instead of a witch doctor?  The answer is probably "yes" because then you would also expect standardized methodology and someone who has more than his or her word to prove competence in that field!  You don’t want to find out after the fact you’ve bought the wrong equipment or your technician doesn’t have the IT knowledge that he should either.

No offense to witch doctors but that’s how we approach it with IT.

If keeping your business up and running really matters to you then professional certifications should matter too and you should give us a call at 970-748-8880 to see if we can help you with your IT needs.  We can also be found on the web at http://www.allmtntech.com.

…or you can keep relying on the witch doctor and hoping!  Good luck

All Mountain Technologies, LLC, is a fully-insured, unaffiliated, owner-operated computer support company comprised of experienced, certified network engineers and technicians who believe in quality personal service to our customers. We understand that your computer systems are an essential component of your business. Efficiency, productivity and your bottom line are as important to us as they are to you.

Whether you need help with a home business PC or a complex multi-location and multi-server environment we’ve got you covered.  We have the certifications that ensure our professional capabilites in enterprise level projects and we also focus on the personal service needed to make new users comfortable up and working quickly working with technology that can initially seem daunting and unintuitive. 

All Mountain Technologies, LLC. can also offer significant price savings on most hardware.  Servers, workstations, routing equipment and much more are available from our exclusive vendors and partners that make it very hard for other IT companes and box stores to compete effectively with us.  We offer the perfect balance of hardware quality from industry leading vendors and price savings when it comes to IT here in the mountains of Colorado.  Our expertise, experience and personal touch combined make our value offering pretty tough to beat.

Now, more than ever, business owners need a competitive edge and the efficiency our professionals can provide. All Mountain Technologies can take care of your technological needs while you take care of business. We can give you that edge to assure your digital peace of mind.

Give us a call at 970-748-8880 or email!  We’d love to help your company too.