Author Archives: Mary Hester

About Mary Hester

My journey has taken me many places I never imagined - from a family driving school business, to a dairy farm, to an engineering degree, to parenting two teenage girls. My first position after completing my electrical engineering degree was at Commonwealth Edison in transmission line design. After returning to Atlanta, I accepted a temporary position as a support engineer at Advanced Control Systems. It was a 3-month contract that lasted 10 years and I was promoted to department manager at ACS.. Now at LAN Systems, I still devote myself to providing support without compromise. My goal is to make LAN Systems known to all as the best IT Solutions and Service provider in the metro Atlanta area. Still committed to providing exceptional support that serves the needs of the people that use technology, I work with our engineers to improve their problem solving and interpersonal skills. In addition to my responsibilities with LAN Systems, I volunteer with several non-profits that serve the electric utility industry and introduce engineering as a career to young people.Technology is almost as awesome as people and look forward to exploring many “technology for the people” topics at AtlantaSmall.biz.

Disaster Preparedness Essentials: The best offense is a good defense.

Cindy Bates 2011

Guest Blog by Cindy Bates, Vice President of Microsoft’s US SMB Organization Planning for “the worst” isn’t quite as fun as refining a business plan or coming up with new ways to market your products or services, but doing so … Continue reading

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Top IT Trends for 2012

crystal ball

In keeping with our New Year’s tradition, we have compiled our list of the top technology trends for 2012. We scanned the available data, reviewed our previous predictionsand made some leaps of faith. We are optimistic about the economy and … Continue reading

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Safe Computing for the Holidays

computinh

Taking time off to spend with family and friends is such a treat, but alas for many it is hard to stay away from the computer.  If you are going to do some online shopping, play a new game or … Continue reading

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Hard Drive Prices Skyrocket

hard drive

 By now you have heard that hard disk drive (HDD) prices are increasing rapidly because of widespread flooding in Thailand. The monsoons of 2011 brought factory production to a standstill. The human toll has been devastating as hundreds have perished … Continue reading

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Your Amazing Brain

cartoon-brain

Recently, I received a variation on an old email chain letter: TH15 M3554G3 53RV35 TO PR0V3 H0W 0UR M1ND5 C4N D0 4M4Z1NG TH1NG5! 1MPR3551V3 TH1NG5! 1N TH3 B3G1NN1NG 1T WA5 H4RD BUT NOW, ON TH15 LIN3 YOUR M1ND 1S R34D1NG … Continue reading

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Black Friday and Cyber Monday

This past year just about every retailer was using the terms Black Friday and Cyber Monday to advertise their holiday “specials” and grab the attention of holiday shoppers.  Those seem like strange terms, not very glamorous or even illustrative of … Continue reading

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Requiem for the Blackberry

AT&T BLACKBERRY CURVE

Last week’s Blackberry outage has caused lots of withdrawal pains.  The blogs and message boards are filled with comments defending and vilifying Research in Motion (RIM) Blackberry’s creator.  Network interruptions are inevitable as we have seen with Sony, Google, Microsoft … Continue reading

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Weathering Storms in the Cloud

     Twice over the past few weeks Microsoft’s Office 365 suffered interruptions. The first occurred on August 17th and was reported as a network interruption. Several blogs reported the cause as faulty Cisco equipment, but that fact was … Continue reading

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Talk Like a CIO

The Chief Information Officer (CIO), sometimes called Chief Technology Officer (CTO), coined in the early 1980s is a rather recent addition to the corporate governance structure. It makes sense that the position coincided with the technology explosion as companies implemented … Continue reading

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A Giant Leap for Quantum Computing

Today’s computers are the product of a digital revolution.  When we talk about computing, we talk about an environment of ones and zeroes that add up to all the programs, graphics and communications that we use. Often we tease, it’s … Continue reading

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