The Hilltop Blog

Every Wednesday morning at 7:45AM, I have breakfast with a Business Networking Group named the Bethesda Business Exchange.  The group is part of BNI, which you can read more about here.  www.bnimaryland.com

We meet at the Pooks Hill Marriott in Bethesda.  It is right inside of the Beltware on the Rockville Pike.

If you have visited our website, read the blog, and now you want to find out more about Hilltop, you can always join me for breakfast.  While you are there, you can meet representatives of other Bethesda businesses as well.

During the meeting, all members get up and talk about their businesses for 45 seconds.  Every couple of months each member also does a 10 minute presentation.  We also exchange referals and leads with each other.  I have been a member of this group for over a year and it has been useful for my business.

For more information on the Wednesday breakfast, visit www.bethesdabusinessexchange.com or drop me an email at jturner (at) hilltopconsultants.com.

One of the things that makes Hilltop Consultants, Inc. different than our competitors is the fact that we operate The Hilltop Computer Shops.  We operate these shops because from time to time, our clients and even our own highy trained network engineers need the services of a repair shop.

At the Hilltop Computer Shops, we have technicians that can perform certain tasks faster than our network engineers.  These tasks can also be done at a lower cost in the repair shops than they could be done at the clients office.

Here is a list of common services performed at our  computer repair shops:

Laptop Power Jack Replacement
Spyware / Virus / Malware Removal
Operating System Reloads
Data Recovery
Hardware Diagnostics and Replacement

By offering these services at our computer repair shops instead of performing them onsite, we are able to increase efficiency and keep our costs low.

Hilltop Computer Shops are currently located in Bethesda, MD and Manassas, VA.  We hope to open another shop in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of DC later this year. 

Hilltop Computer Shop Bethesda also serves as our base of operations and allows us to quickly deploy onsite technicians to businesses and homes in Chevy Chase, Rockville, Potomac, Silver Spring, and Washington, DC.

Hilltop Computer Shop Manassas serves as a base of operations and allows us to quickly deploy techniciants to clients in Gainesville, Fairfax, Vienna, McLean, Tysons Corner, Herndon, and Reston.

 

This week the Hilltop team performed what used to be considered an impossible task.  We renamed a Windows 2003 domain along with Microsoft Exchange 2003. 

The domain rename was completed over a weekend with quite a bit of follow up with the users on Monday morning.

We used the following links for reference:

http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/Domain-Rename.html
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/842116

The project went very well and was nearly seamless for the users on Monday morning. 

One thing that the instructions did not cover was how the domain rename would affect Activesync on our Exchange server.  We ended up working with Microsoft to make some changes with ADSIEDIT to get Activesync working again.  Keep this in mind if you have Windows Mobile or iPhone users connecting to your Exchange 2003 server.

We're going to celebrate Earth Day (April 22) all week! Bring any computer into our stores for recycling and we'll give you a $20 credit toward the purchase of a new computer.

Everyone wondered when it would happen, and it appears the widespread conficker virus has started updating itself in an attempt to make money for its shady creators. Articles in today's New York Times and Washington Post give the lowdown from industry experts.

Tom Wanat and Jim Turner will be co-moderating a discussion on using Social Networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter for the Bethesda Chevy Chase Chamber of Commerce on June 3rd.  Chef Tony Marciante from Visions Restaurant in Bethesda will be co-moderating with us as well.  If you have not met Chef Tony, he is a very interesting guy with great stories about how Twitter and Facebook have helpded his business. 

http://www.bccchamber.org/calendar_day.asp?date=6/3/2009

The event is open to the public.  Visit the BCC Chamber website for more details and to register for this event.

Hilltop has setup an account on Twitter.   We will use Twitter to broadcast interesting tidbits about Computers, Network Security, or other items of interest.  You may occasionally get a Tweet about an especially good offer on computer hardware or software if we find it.

Hilltop is proud to be a sponsor of the upcoming Environmental Expo & Mixer put on by the Dulles Regional Chamber of Commerce.

Quicker than any scan, this "eye chart" Web page will tell you if a system is infected with the Conficker virus. Very clever.