Managed IT Services: A company or an organization retains a Managed Service Provider (MSP) for a contracted monthly fee, to act as the company's outsourced IT department.

BENEFITS:

Fixed costs, with customizable payment models

Access to skilled IT professionals, without putting them on payroll

Strategic Planning of IT infrastructure

Low downtime due to monitored and mitigated risks

Access to enterprise-grade automation and monitoring systems

Incentive to keep networks and infrastructures stable

Break/Fix IT Services: A company or organization contacts a Managed Service Provider (MSP) who dispatches a technician to diagnose and perform on-premise remedies for IT issues. The company only pays for the work that is performed.

BENEFITS:

No contracts

Fee-for-Service: only pay for services rendered

Low cost solution if your business doesn't depend heavily on IT

Low cost solution if your IT employee is out sick/on vacation

Yes, absolutely. Many updates that Microsoft pushes out are to mitigate security threats. The landscape of security vulnerabilities changes daily and the security updates are to address those exploits. Other updates are bug fixes, new malware definitions or enhancements to the operating system.

As often as you can. Microsoft always pushes out updates on Tuesday’s (update Tuesday). Very seldom is there not some kind of update by Microsoft every Tuesday. You can schedule updates for after hours, during the night or weekends.

That depends, many companies have their computers set to install updates at night, and backups usually are scheduled for after hours. In those cases it may make sense to leave them on all the time. If we are talking about your computer at home, it comes down to personal preference. I generally leave my computers on all the time at work and at home.

They all have their strengths and weaknesses. Generally speaking you should stick with products that you see most in the marketplace. Symantec, Mcafee, are Webroot some of the popular ones that have most of the market share. None of them are perfect and all have advantages and disadvantages.

For the desktops, I usually recommend Hewlett Packard, Dell or Lenovo. The reason is that generally speaking they are the leaders in the market and offer the best support when and if you run into problems. These days, computers do not break very often and you likely will not need hardware support. However, when your computer(s) gets to be 5+ years old, you are bound to need some kind of out of warranty support eventually.

Wifi technology has changed and is improving constantly. If your router/wifi is more than a few years old, you can benefit greatly by replacing it with a newer one. Generally speaking, the newer the device the newer the technology and faster processor thus it will have faster throughput. Also the newer devices use newer technology that penetrates wall much better than the older units. For the best whole house coverage, I recommend going with a newer mesh network. Mesh uses two or more Access Points to give you coverage throughout your home or to extend you wifi to more remote areas of your home. it is relatively new technology but many manufacturers have product to meet the new demand.