Frequently Asked Questions

Visit the Contact Us page, and send in your question. If it's one that we get more than a few times, it might get added to this FAQ.

Digirati is an alternate spelling of "digerati", which generally means "people who are highly-proficient at working with computers."

According to the Computer Dictionary Online, Digirati are "People knowledgeable about computers, 'computer literate'".

For more information, see the Wikipedia article.

The products most people are familiar with are those that are advertised in print media, on the web, and on television. By definition, this means that these products are commercial, and have advertising budgets.

Some open source projects and companies do indeed advertise, but they usually lack the budget to pay for broad exposure. You may see advertisements for these types of products on tech-oriented websites, or in trade magazines.

Most projects, however, are community-driven and have no commercial backing. There is no advertising, and no centralized management or spokesperson. Occasionally, companies will stop working on a project commercially, and release it as open-source to the community, or a big company like IBM or Sun will buy a small project from someone else and release it under an open-source license.

For more information, see the Open Source page.

There are many companies that either offer commercial support for open-source products, or maintain their own open-source products and sell support as their only income.

In the free-support realm, there are countless websites hosting support forums for open-source projects. The Ubuntu Linux community is a great example. Ubuntu has one of the largest community support groups of any Linux variant.

In addition to free, online support, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of books published on open-source products each year. O'Reilly Media is a large publisher of technical books, as any true computer enthusiast will attest to.

This is a difficult question to answer. These days, security is a concern with a broad range of technology, and every situation is a little bit different.

Some of the simple steps to take include: changing default passwords, using firewalls, and keeping software updated. A large part of the security equation, however, is educating employees. Many security disasters, such as private or confidential information disclosure, are results of human error.

For information about security auditing, feel free to contact us.

Adding a wireless network is not difficult, but must be done carefully and with security in mind. You do not want customers, sitting in the lobby perhaps, to have access to anything else on your network. Depending on how much area you need to cover with wireless, it isn't necessarily an expensive project.

Also, you should be aware that wireless is not usually a suitable replacement for old-fashioned wires. Wireless is not as fast, and all wireless connections must all share the available bandwidth with each other. Additionally, wireless connections are subject to interference and range problems.

Many factors can contribute to spyware and virus problems. Most of these types of malware are introduced via email attachments and surfing infected websites. A mutli-tiered defense is the best approach for these issues.

Different IT departments have different ideas about how to deal with these problems on a large scale. Some would prefer to block access to all but non-essential websites, and restrict the use of email attachments. While these methods may seem to fix the problem, they are really avoiding the problem instead of properly handling it. Employees tend to resent this sort of extreme lock-down scenario, and it can also have a negative impact on productivity.

Alternative methods include: filtering malicious email before it gets to the inbox, using a different, more-secure web browser, and discouraging casual browsing of unfamiliar websites.

If such proactive measures are not feasible, anti-spyware and anti-adware software can be set to periodically scan your computers, and automatically remove any malicious software.

Spam-filtering software can be installed on your mail server, if you have one, to move spam into a designated folder, or remove it entirely. Our anti-spam solution is flexible and quite effective at finding spam. In fact, we use it on our own mail server.

The spam industry, however, is (apparently) very profitable, and spammers are often one step ahead of spam filtering software. Many different techniques must be used to keep pace with them, without being overzealous and falsely-tagging messages. Nothing is ever going to be 100% effective, but we can come very, very close.

This is always a difficult question to answer. Depending on your definition of "died", as it relates to a computer, the answer is usually "yes", but it can be a difficult and time-consuming process.

To protect yourself from the dreadful scenario of losing everything on your computer, it is important to backup your files as often as you can, and to make an extra backup at the first sign of trouble. It may seem like a huge waste of time, but it's a small investment compared to the amount of time it would take you to re-create all of your work, re-take vacation photos, re-purchase music, etc. Disk space has gotten very cheap in the last few years, and many companies make affordable networked storage solutions that are perfect for backing up data.

If you need a backup solution, or wonder if your current system is adequate, feel free to contact us.

You might have seen Tux, the Linux mascot, in our press kit, or on some of our fliers. Tux the Penguin is associated with Linux, and many Linux projects. For more information about Tux, see his Wikipedia page.

Depending on your current infrastructure, you may need additional network equipment and wiring. There can be considerable cost associated with rewiring an entire office, or an entire building, so it may not be feasible to do a large-scale conversion to VoIP unless you are already considering replacing your phone system.

Certainly, if you are setting up a new office or building, or if you are starting to think about replacing your existing phone system, you should be considering VoIP. The open-source telephony system that we work with is very capable and 100% customizable, at a fraction of the cost of a traditional PBX system.

Unless you have good internet service, you might want to steer clear of VoIP service for your outgoing phone lines at this point. If your internet connection is ever down, are you prepared to be without outside phone service as well?

There are definitely pros and cons of VoIP service. Depending on your exact situation, the balance may shift one way or the other. VoIP can yield drastic saving in long distance charges, but can be more complicated to setup and maintain than traditional, analog phone lines.

This question comes in many different forms. For example "Isn't Linux harder to maintain?" or " to administer?", or "I read somewhere that the total cost of ownership is higher for Linux."

Our answer to this question is that most people dislike change, and define things that are different as "hard". Using Linux on the desktop has many, many advantages, but is also different from what most people are used to.

All of the studies that we have read about "Total Cost of Ownership" (TCO) place extreme emphasis on the cost of training employees to use a new system. The trust is that they will need training with any new system, not just Linux. Sit a Windows XP user in front of Windows Vista for the first time, and see what happens.

You don't need a calculator to figure out that not paying (approximately) $1000 per server can result in dramatic savings. Let's not even count the cost of all the extra software that you will need on top of the operating system, and the cost of expensive software for each and every desktop or laptop computer.

The answer to this question depends on how much you value your time. You might be able to have someone's son or daughter come in on weekends, or have the resident computer-savvy salesperson do double duty as system administrator, but you will pay in the long run with your, and your employees', time.

If you have enough technical work to keep a full-time "computer guy" employed, you might think that you don't need any more help. Calling in Digirati Consulting gets you the collective ability of multiple computer experts, often for less than the cost of a full-time employee. Also, consultants can be used to augment your existing IT staff during busy times, or for large projects.

Many people try to use a free email service, either from their internet provider, or some other free service like Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail. Aside from looking unprofessional on a business card, using these services puts you at the mercy of these companies, and may expose you to other problems. Don't misunderstand us, we love Gmail and use it for personal email, but it may not be appropriate for business use, and limits your flexibility and control.

Aside from privacy concerns and possible legal issues, there are other, potentially important factors that many people don't consider. By outsourcing your email, you forfeit control over spam filtering and anti-virus, and lose the ability to integrate email with other applications. Also, if your email is off-site, you are cut off from it during an internet service outage, which may or may not be a problem for you.

If you only have a few employees, or do not want to be bothered with your own email server, there are middle-ground alternatives to using free email services, such as having your own domain, but hosting your email on one of our secure servers. Email has rapidly become a critical business service. Contact us if you are not satisfied with your current situation.