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We’ve been on a roll lately discussing the changes and products being rolled out by Microsoft this year, primarily Windows 11 which should be launched this fall. Last week Microsoft announced a price increase to their ubiquitous business products, Microsoft 365 and Office 365.

Office has been a business staple since it’s launch in 1989 (although Word predated the Office grouping of products quite a bit, launching in 1983). The original launch set was Word, Excel and Powerpoint but the product line up has exploded since then including other must-have features such as Outlook, Teams, OneDrive and more.

While it hasn’t been made official yet, all sources seem to indicate an October 2021 release of Windows 11 is eminent. That date would track with previous release schedules and merges nicely with the big feature updates that always occurs around that time for mainstream Microsoft products.

Your relationship with your IT person can be a somewhat fragile dichotomy, sure you’re friendly with them and they’re probably a great person (you chose/hired them after all).

But for many small business owners they couldn’t really tell you what this person does beyond making the computers “work”. You hired them for their skills and those skills should exist outside the realm of what you could manage for your own IT (though many owners try).

So, if they quit, you’re suddenly in the lurch.

If you’re not aware, phishing is another word for scams perpetrated over email. It was coined in 1996 and was first associated with hackers attempts to steal America Online (AOL) accounts, and it has not slowed down since then.

As of 2021 most hacking attempts are phishing scams, the phrase is meant to evoke the image of a hacker literally fishing for their victims by baiting a hook which in this case is a credible looking email from a place you might actually do business from, a colleague or a family member.

As we mentioned in our last post, Windows 11 is coming and with its announcement also came with the announcement of what’s being dubbed “Teams 2.0”.

In preview builds right now appearance wise Teams 2.0 is very similar to the Teams you’re used to using.

On July 14, 2021, Microsoft held their annual Inspire summit, a conference for Microsoft partners to be given inside information about what the year ahead will look like in the world of Microsoft products and how they can leverage changes and features for their clients.

Continuing our talking points about Windows 11 (which was officially announced June 24th of this year), we would be remiss to not talk about one very important thing - will your computer be able to run it?

We know for business owners this question is even more loaded as you consider not only your personal machine(s) but also those of your employees.

It feels like Windows 11 news is everywhere at the moment following the official announcement on June 24th. We covered that announcement in our post found here.

More details will continue to be released as we move toward the estimated fall release of Windows 11. It’s going to be a free upgrade for Windows 10 users, and we think making the move to Windows 11 will be a smart choice for most customers so long as they’re running newer hardware (which to be fair is a big caveat). We’ll be covering the hardware required for Windows 11 in next weeks post as it’s an ongoing situation.

Yesterday, June 24th 2021 Microsoft unveiled Windows 11. While they struggled to get the live stream going (it went down several times during the unveiling) Windows 11 itself still had an impressive range of features, many of which we think will shake the PC industry as we know it.

While Windows 11 (code name Sun Valley) hasn’t officially been introduced to the public, it’s created enough of a stir that the topic of Windows 10 support ending has been pushed to the forefront of the tech news cycle. Windows 10 will officially end mainstream support on October 14, 2025.

Back in 2015 it was circled around that Microsoft 10 would be the “last Windows release”, indicating Windows would follow the route of Apple and just continuously update this version in perpetuity.