With everything in the world becoming bigger, stronger, faster, smarter, so are viruses and malware.

Anti-virus and malware protection are needed essentials in everyday computer use, and especially for veterinary practices. Without it computers are left unptrotected. A previous article on this blog shows one of the worst viruses out right now called “Police Pro”.  Police pro has been spotted mainly on computers that either don’t have anti-virus protection or have out-of-date anti-virus information.

Most people don’t realize the importance of anti-virus until it is to late. We have seen an increasing number of infecitons. Virus can jump from one computer to the next in a network environment, meaning it only takes opne infection to start the process. Computers are an investment and need to be maintained.

It is easy to forget how vital computer data is; we use them for purchases with our credit cards , banking information, family pictures, music,  documents, and - most importantly - client and patient records. If you lose this data, especially in a paperless practice, you lose your business.

Pute! continues to fight against viruses and malware and we are winning the battle. We supply our clients with the correct anti-virus protection to meet their needs, and strongly recommend to all our readers that they examine current protection and contact pute! if they need changes or imporvements.

With Apple becoming a rising demand in the workplace there is an increasing need for compatibility with workstations, servers, and software that are PC based. Now with Parallels Desktop a person can run their Apple computer and Windows at the same time, on the same machine. 

Veterinary clinics will be able to use there Mac’s for running their favorite programs like iPhoto, iTunes, editing software, etc. and run Cornerstone, Avimark, Outlook, Access, or Excel in another window . Although people like their Mac's, some software is only available for the PC. Parallels breaks the barrier and integrates everything.

The image shows Vista running on a Mac with Internet Explorer open.

Another advantage is that Parallels only uses the space that is needed . Unlike some other programs there is no need to partition your hard drive for Windows because it's like adding a program to your computer. This saves more room for photos, music , video or work related documents.

Parallels works with XP, Vista and Windows 7. It also has the option to go full screen so no one can tell you are running the Mac operating system in the background. It also makes it great for when you just want it to be a Windows XP day. A person gets the best of both worlds!!

Contact pute! about adding Parallels to your Mac.



  I ran across a new error for Avimark the other day: “unable to load graphics conversion filter".

A staff member was trying to print a Rabies Certificates. The Rabies Certificate prints through Microsoft Word and can sometimes cause Avimark to freeze if it can not read the image. . If you have a duplicate image or a corrupted image that was uploaded into Avimark you will receive an error in Word: “unable to load graphics conversion filter. There are two things to attempt when troubleshooting:

1. When importing an image the customers picture folder comes up. Make sure there are no duplicate image files in the customer picture folder. If there are duplicates delete them from the folder. If there are no duplicates but your still having the error then try the next step.

2. In the customers picture folder delete the image file, then import the image again.  If the image does not appear in the preview box of the Avimark import software then the image is most likely corrupted or in the wrong format. JPEG (.jpg) is the preferred format. You will need to resave the picture in the .jpg format before attempting step 2 again.

3. If it is still not resolved then call pute! computer services.



It's that time again, where we at pute take a long, hard look at the data to see what trends can be seen. The trends from our previous analysis continued, although the strength of the trends were slightly different than expected.

• Database growth, on average, slowed slightly. However, since January 2008 the average monthly growth rate has not varied by more than 43MB's per month. The slight drop may be attributable to a decline in business due to economic factors. Additionally, as more clinics implement newer practice management software versions, these newer versions are more efficient in the way they store data, thereby causing the database to grow more slowly.
• Image growth continues to outpace database growth. In addition to growing more quickly, the   rate of growth continues to increase on a monthly average. Currently image growth averages slightly over 2GB's of data per month. One factor is the move to paperless record keeping, thereby requiring paper records and documents be scanned into the practice management software. Another contributor is the move away from traditional x-ray film and towards digital radiography; this is further exacerbated by imaging software that uses the DICOM protocol, as the dcm format is significantly larger than traditional jpg.