Archive for the ‘Business’ Category

« Older Entries

Backup and Cloud Storage

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

Earlier in the month we wrote a blog about getting a new computer or fixing your old one if it breaks.  We mentioned the fact that you should back up your precious files and pictures so it is easier to move them and so you don’t lose them if something on your computer breaks.

We received a lot of questions from people about how they can do that and whether they should back up their home computers.  So we decided to write a blog about it, to let everyone know their options.

While most people think Backups and Cloud storage are for businesses, we also think that home users should use these for their own files too.  The solutions we cover here are really not meant for businesses, so if you are interested in solutions for your business then please contact us and we will be glad to help.  Even small businesses on a tight budget have greater needs than most home users and so we have plans to help you.

What is Cloud Storage and How Does it Differ From Backups?

A backup is a copy of the original file kept in a different location (preferably not on the same computer), which is sometimes compressed to save space.  The backup can then be (expanded and) restored to the original location or another location if something should happen to the original file (deleted, disk or computer broken or stolen, virus attack etc.).

Cloud Storage is using the internet to store your files, which is the same as storing them on someone elses computer.  An example of cloud storage is when you upload your pictures to flickr or Facebook.  There is now a copy on their computers and they back them up.  So if you do lose it on yours then you can get it back from them (though it may be a reduced size in this example).

How Do I Use Them and How Much Does It Cost?

Costs vary, but they start from FREE (we like that word!).

Lets start with backup.  Most computers have some sort of back up program built in.  You click it, start the wizard, tell it what you want to back up and how often (e.g. nightly) and where to store it and as long as your computer is on it will back them up.  We suggest you have a large enough second drive to hold your backups and keep a few (usually a weeks worth).  A portable hard drive is fairly inexpensive (less than $100) to hold all your data, or you may be able to share it with one or two computers in the house.  If you don’t have one then we suggest a USB stick (they can be 32Gb and getting bigger) and either copy the files over or use the backup program.

The reason we say another drive is so that if your computer breaks, is stolen or gets a virus then you have the files somewhere else where they can be recovered.  There is nothing more disheartening than us explaining to a customer that we cannot recover their family photos when a drive fails and they didn’t have them backed up.  Those moments in time are lost forever.

Another way is using online backups.  There are many companies including ourselves who provide this service for a small monthly fee.  This time you download their small backup program, configure it in much the same way (files, how often etc.) but this time you have to be connected to the internet and they send it to their servers for storage.  This is backup and cloud storage in one.  Now your files will be safe even if a disaster struck your home.

A word of warning about some of these company’s advertising.  When they tell you they have unlimited backups or storage, don’t get overexcited.  You can only upload so much data at a time over the internet.  Gigabytes of data takes days of non-stop sending from your computer and the next backup cannot start until that one finishes.  So take a step back and have it explained to you properly and don’t choose one company over another for unlimited data only.  It is just a marketing ploy.

The downside of these backups is they are only  backing up your file and not your full disk.  This usually makes little difference to the home user (but is critical for business use) but it means that if your computer fails and you have to replace or fix it and start again you will have to install Windows, all your programs, the online backup program if you used it and then restore your files – which can take a long time and then not be guaranteed to work.

There is another type of backup that takes an image of your disk and backs that up, meaning the full system.  It works in a similar way to the other backups but it is doing everything and not just the files.  Then your whole system can be restored including Windows, your programs, your desktop, favorites and everything else in one click.  We provide this type of backup for home users starting at $10 per month.

Whichever type of system you use you should always periodically check the state of the backups and do a temporary restore to make sure the file will work.  The number of backups we have seen that were never tested until they were actually needed only to find out there was a corruption and everything was lost is staggering.  All for the sake of a few minutes to check.  With the free backups on your computer it is hard to check.  With these online programs it should be easier.

With our system, because we image the whole disk we can perform two checks. First we can open the whole backup as another drive (e.g. F drive) on your computer and you can copy files over from it or just open them up as if they were on your main drive.  Secondly we can create a virtual copy of your computer on your computer or another computer to make sure the whole system works if needed.  Not bad for $10?

As we mentioned before, Cloud storage is similar and often goes hand in hand with backups.  There are a number of places, including Google that will allow you to upload files for no charge.  Other places will let you store and share certain types of files.  And if you have email hosted by these companies and have a lot of storage (e.g. Gmail will give you something like 2Gb of email) then send yourself your important files as attachments and store them in a folder on your email account.

For those students looking for places to store their school coursework etc. then look out for our blogs and next months newsletter.  This will focus on “Back to School” and one installment will be on storing and sharing those documents.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Backups and Disaster Recovery, Best Practices, Business, Computers, Hardware, Software | No Comments »

HTML 5 – Are you making the most of it?

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

HTMWhat? No idea what I am talking about? Should it bother you?  If you have a website for your business then the answer is a definite YES!

Without boring you unnecessarily, HTML is the language written for web browsers that display web pages.  It is pretty boring to look at (you can usually click on a web page and click View Source to see it) and you only see what the browser does with that source (that tells it the content, colors and how it is laid out).

HTML is also important for two other reasons.  First, for visually impaired people visiting your website then they don’t see the results they hear the HTML code that the browser has – so keep the source as clean as you can to make it easier for them.  Secondly, this is the stuff Google and the other search engines use to examine your content and place you in their results.  So again keep it clean to boost your ratings.

So if you have been using HTML for all these years why should you care about HTML 5?  Well it is revolutionary as far as writing websites go.  Even though most sites were using HTML4 it hadn’t changed too much over time and was not powerful enough to cope with modern websites.  For example, with old HTML if you wanted to put a box on your website so a person would put their email address in there and you sent them something, then there is no real HTML to do that and make sure they entered an email address not any old text.  So we had to rely on other measures.  Not with HTML5 we now have one!  And for Phones, and lots of other things.  And if you wanted to watch a movie, you had to install Flash, but you couldn’t in some corporations and locked down computers, and certainly not on your iPhone (we won’t bring that up again though).  With HTML 5 you can, with no plugins needed.

I hear you saying “Great! But my site works and does all that now so no need to change”.  Wrong.  And your web developer will probably tell you no too (because they haven’t learnt or understood it yet).  I bet the #1 topic about your website with your team at any point is “Search Engine Results”.  Whether it is Google, Yahoo, Bing or any of the others – you care a lot about where you are placed on the results pages.  Let me tell you that HTML 5 will boost those results, especially over non HTML 5, with a thing called Microdata.

The results of Microdata can be shown in the example below.  Please note these are made up examples and not actual real search results or links.

Without HTML5 a Google search would look similar to this (the standard results we see)

But the same page written in HTML5 with Microdata looks like this

Even if it didn’t get you a higher placement, if there were two results on a page – which would you choose to click on?  It isn’t a new language, it is enhancing your current site and taking advantage of new features available to web developers.

And if your web developer doesn’t know how to use HTML 5 or has never heard of it, don’t let them learn on your dime!  Ask them to show you real live websites they have written before they work on yours.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Best Practices, Business, Marketing, Software, Web Design | No Comments »

Atlantic Hurricane Season Gears Up

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010

Windows being boarded up. Supplies selling out at hardware and grocery stores. Interstates and back roads packed with cars.

That’s what happens when people hear a dangerous tropical storm is forming in the Atlantic, endangering the eastern or gulf shores of the United States.

While hurricanes may hit at any time, certain times of the year generate the most storms. June 1 issues in the beginning of the 2010 hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean.

The season of 2009 was a mild one for the United States. Only Hurricane Ida and Tropical Storm Claudette came ashore.

The year 2010 could be very different. Early predictions are that more hurricanes and tropical storms will come ashore.

The position of El Nino, a climatic fluctuation, is important in these determinations. El Nino produces warm Pacific waters and upper wind levels that do not favor hurricane formation. El Nino’s position off the coast of South America cooled waters in the Atlantic in 2009 which also inhibited hurricanes.

The current El Nino is expected to dissipate by the 2010 season, possibly causing the waters of the Atlantic to warm, which would increase the possibility of storms.

Scientists from the Colorado State University’s Tropical Meteorology Project, in an early forecast, have indicated a warm sea surface in the North Atlantic during 2010. It’s not good news.

Due to improved tracking of storms and their projected paths, the U.S. National Hurricane Center will be able to announce storm watches and warnings 12 hours earlier than last year. This will give residents in coastal areas more time to evacuate.

Remember that if a hurricane is forecast and you are asked to evacuate, leaving the area is the only safe plan.

Are you prepared?

Many businesses are not.

Everyone thinks it cannot happen to them. But recent years have shown just how quickly things can change.

Look at Nashville under many feet of water, all the tornadoes appearing lately, or Galveston and New Orleans in recent years. It couldn’t happen to them either, could it?

What will happen if one of these disasters hits your areas and your critical data is lost? Can you recover? Is it backed up, and offsite? And how quickly can you recover.

Did you know that over 60% of businesses that lose their critical data never recover and close within 6 months?

Do you test your backups? Most of the companies we come across don’t test them until they need them, only to find it is too late and they don’t work.

On June 1st we are launching our newest and ultimate Backup and Disaster Recovery Service – “Sentinel” and we are holding a live webinar on June 4th to show you how Sentinel is the ultimate protection for your business. Seats for this webinar are limited so hurry and reserve your free seat by visiting our website at www.keepmynetworkrunning.com

This webinar will not be recorded and there will be some “never to be repeated” offers made, so this is one webinar you do not want to miss!  Click here to register for this webinar now!

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Backups and Disaster Recovery, Best Practices, Business, Technology | 1 Comment »

More Talk, Less Cost for This Local Real Estate Office!

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010
Remax Texas Heritage Logo

Remax Texas Heritage

RE/MAX Texas Heritage, in Bryan/College Station, recently upgraded their office telephone system with our help.

Their old system was a proprietary digital based system using analogue telephone lines (you know – the type you get from Verizon or AT&T that date back to Alexander Graham Bell) and special phones, all of which increased the cost of the system and increasing the number of lines or handsets when needed.

This old system was also limited by its storage, especially voicemails, and configuration of different routes.

John Byers and Brady Brittain, the two new owners of RE/MAX Texas Heritage, came to us to help solve their problem.

“We did not want to be restricted in what we could do with the new system now and in the future” said Brady.

John also had the vision of having their Agents be able to work from anywhere and still have access to the resources in the office. “I want to be able to allow our agents to be ‘Virtual Agents’ and work from anywhere where they can be connected to the office” he said.

The Solution

Given those requirements and the directive to also “cut costs” we looked at the old system and realized it was more cost effective to totally replace it.

Their new system was a Windows based IP PBX system, Cisco IP handsets, softphones for virtual agents and when mobile and Voice Over IP (VOIP) based telephone lines.

Under FCC regulations anyone is allowed to port their existing numbers from their old carrier to a new carrier, and our process makes it very simple – just a signed Local Number Port (LNP) authorization (a 1 page document) and a copy of the front page of your last bill, and we take care of the rest.

VOIP brings major cost savings to businesses like RE/MAX Texas Heritage. When switched over to VOIP most of our customers save in the region of 80% on their monthly bills!

How is this possible?

Well unlike a traditional phone line where one call means 1 physical wire, VOIP comes over your internet connection. Just as many users can view many web based applications at the same time over 1 internet connection, you can receive many VOIP calls at the same time over 1 internet connection.

As you don’t have to add physical wires each time then you won’t incur those extra monthly costs.

Also as no physical wires are involved you can have as many numbers as you want for little extra cost.

RE/MAX Texas Heritage can take 8 concurrent external calls on their system but has around 30 phone numbers – we will explain why in a minute.

Phone numbers (also known as DID’s) are $1 per month. And the VOIP lines start at $12.75 per month.  Compare that with analogue lines which average $50+ per month per line.  30 numbers would have cost them around $1,500 before they make a call! Compared to the (approximately) $200 per month they currently pay with VOIP, the savings soon add up.

Most of our customers also remark how “clear the line is compared to the old one” when we switch them over to VOIP, in the same way that CD’s and MP3’s are clearer than the old vinyl and tapes (remember those?) for music.

Additional Features

In addition to the cheaper, clearer calls, RE/MAX Texas Heritage was also able to make use of all the additional features that comes with the IP PBX.

They now have an unlimited amount of extensions, so they can add or remove extensions at any time. This is especially useful for setting up “dummy” extensions to be able to have more control over an incoming call and then forwarding it based on some rules you have (such as to a cell phone) without having to buy a physical phone.

There is also unlimited voicemail storage. As the PBX is Windows based (RE/MAX has theirs on a Windows 7 PC) then all storage is on a hard disk.  It is very easy and inexpensive to upgrade that disk or add a new one.

As it is Windows based, voicemail is an audio file which can be listened to on the phone, via a web browser or even emailed to the email address associated with the extension. This is great for RE/MAX Texas Heritage Agents, who can now get their voicemail as soon as a message is left, especially when not in the office.  Even on their cell phone!

The PBX also has a built in fax server. This receives a fax and converts it to a PDF and emails it to the extension’s email address. This is why RE/MAX Texas Heritage has those extra numbers and how they are the only Real Estate office in the area with “Virtual Agents”. Every agent has their own personal fax number – essential when dealing with contracts, offers and inspections all day – which has been configured by John and Brady to forward to their email address.

RE/MAX Texas Heritage also made use of the many different configurations of Digital Assistants, Ring Groups, Queues and dummy extensions that are available in their PBX system, not only for their Agents & Customers, but also for their Property Management side of the business. To provide the best emergency maintenance services (e.g. plumber) to the tenants of the properties they manage, the system will now route the tenant through to the correct maintenance person no matter what time of night it is so the emergency is dealt with immediately, without having to leave a message or call another number.

“We believe we are the only property management company in the area that offers this immediate ‘after-hours-direct-to-maintenance-contractor’ service” said John. “In situations when there is a water leak, or no electricity for the A/C with children in the house, time is critical for our tenants and this service saves valuable time”.

If you would like to read more about how RE/MAX Texas Heritage saved money and increased productivity through their new system then download our free eBook here. For more information on RE/MAX Texas Heritage or if you are looking to buy, sell or rent a property, call them on 979-846-4500. For more information on VOIP systems, call us on 979-985-5301 or visit our main site here

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Best Practices, Business, Hardware, Software, Technology, VOIP | No Comments »

How to get started in Online Marketing for Businesses – free eBook

Friday, May 7th, 2010

Today we offered our eBook titled “An Introduction To Social Media” for free on our Online Marketing Mastermind website.  We had previously sold this eBook for $9.95 or it was included as part of the kit on the website.  But we felt that there are a lot of small businesses out there who either do not have the time to learn how to set up the basics of online marketing, or they don’t understand the advantages of social media and online marketing using sites such as Twitter and Facebook amongst others.

Free eBook

Free eBook

As with everything, there is good and bad with using these platforms, and you probably have been on the receiving end of bad marketing practice by a lot of companies or have heard about them.  The problem with these companies is that they are applying old school, offline marketing techniques to an online, social network.  It wont work!  In fact it will do the opposite of what they intended and drive people away from them.

We used to get asked by our customers whether online marketing was worth it.  Whether they should use Twitter and Facebook, Linked In and others.  How do they get started?  They dont want all their customers seeing their family and friends and vice versa.  How do you set up a fan page. How do you get the time to post?  What should they post about. And a lot more.  We found we were getting the same questions over and over so we put together some documents to give to them. Over time this turned into an eBook.  And now we are giving it away free to anyone who wants it.  No catch! No registration, email address or any other information needed to get it. Just go to the website at www.web2mastermind.com and click on the Open eBook link and it will open for you.

Some of you will already have these accounts and think you don’t need the eBook.  But we suggest you read it and compare it with what you are currently doing.  If nothing else it will be reassurance that you are doing it all correctly.

We hope it will answer some of your questions about how to start online marketing in social media networks and how to use them effectively.

Enjoy the book and get marketing for your business!

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Best Practices, Business, Marketing, Social Networking | No Comments »

How To Save $$$’s On Printer Ink/Toner Costs In 5 Minutes

Wednesday, April 7th, 2010

Want to save up to 31% on your printing costs?  For one school this amounts to a massive saving of $10,000 in one year! No, you don’t have to change printer, or ink/toner to the cheaper versions.  Nor do you have to use refils, or have any technical knowledge.

The solution? Change Font!  Yes it is that simple but makes a big difference according to Printer.Com a Dutch company who did the research.  They did a study of two printers and used Arial as the reference or “zero” font to measure against as this is the most popular font.

The winner?  Century Gothic, followed by Ecofont, Times Roman, Calibri, Verdana and then Arial.  Century Gothic would reduce printing costs by 31% and Times Roman by 29%.

Why does the font matter?  Well different fonts have different thickness of lines. Bold will use more than a regular font and some fonts have a specific bold counterpart (e.g. Arial Bold).  Also serif fonts – those with short horizontal lines at the top and bottom of each character use thinner lines and so less in than their sans-serif counterpart.

Although we wouldn’t recommend Century Gothic for most text (it was designed for small blocks of text and is also wider so would use more paper) we do recommend Times Roman for the real savings.  At 29% cheaper than Arial it still makes a big savings of about 1 cartridge a year per printer and is designed for large amounts of text.

Of course the best way to save money is to not print at all, or at least only when necessary.  Microsoft changed their default fonts in Office 2007 from Arial and Times New Roman to Calibri and Cambria. Why?  Their philosophy is that the more pleasing a font looks on screen the less tempted someone will be to print.  But for those who want to print – try changing your default font to Times Roman and see how much you save in a year.  Remember to switch the printer to “draft” mode by default and also print on both sides of the paper whenever you can.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Best Practices, Business, Hardware | 3 Comments »

Social Media Users Are More Likely To Buy

Sunday, March 28th, 2010

For those business users who are still unsure whether social media such as Facebook and Twitter is worth the effort, or cannot see the point in gathering twitter followers or sending tweets, a new research study from Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate which shows that social friends and followers are more likely to buy from businesses and brands they follow should change their minds.

The study found that more than one-half of Facebook users said they would be more likely to buy from brands they followed and that figure rose to 67% of Twitter users.

60% of Facebook users said that they recommend businesses they follow to a friend.  With Twitter that rose to nearly 80%!

So, if your business is not on Facebook or Twitter, now is the time to make your presence known.  Follow these few simple steps to get going:

  1. Even if you are not ready yet – reserve your space.  If your business name is similar to someone else’s then chances are they are reading this same blog and will be reserving the name you want.  Get your Facebook and Twitter names now and post when you are ready.
  2. Keep Business and Personal separate!  For Facebook get a Fan page for your business.  For Twitter register your business page under its name not yours – even if you are a one-person business.  Why?  Because people don’t want to know about your personal life or see what your family is up to.  If they do then allow them to be your friend/follower on your personal page too.
  3. Keep your posts informational.  Your fans want information not “sell, sell, sell!”.  They want coupons and discounts. They want to know about the new item/product you have. But they also want other information that may be useful.  Position yourself as the expert on your industry, not just force sales on them.  They chose to follow you so respect their choice.  We made a commitment with this blog to provide information only and never sell on here.  If readers want to know more about something we write here then they can contact us but we do not provide links in our blogs to sell our services – this blog is for information only – our other sites will highlight our services.
  4. Add links to your websites, email signatures and business cards. Let them know you have your pages and invite them to follow/be an fan.  If you don’t know how to do this, either search on the sites or contact us and we will be glad to help.
  5. Add content.  And add it often.  Ideally at least weekly.  It can be from anywhere or anything useful. Your new product, just a status update, from your blog or from something you read.  Not sure what your fans want? Ask them.  Use a survey, forum, discussion board, email, letter or any other feedback and then give them the information they want.

Remember give your fans and followers what they want and they will keep following you and when they are ready, they will buy from you.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Business, Marketing, Social Networking | 800 Comments »

Marketing Tip #224 – Music On Hold

Saturday, February 20th, 2010

For those of you with a PBX telephone system, what do your callers hear when they are put on hold?  The music that comes with it?  The radio? Something else?

Other than some legal broadcasting problems with playing some CD/MP3 or the radio, it is also not doing much for your business.

Consider some marketing or other promotions.  With most PBX’s you can easily record your own ad’s.  Our preferred PBX allows us to use wav files which we record on our computer and quickly upload it.  We can record and edit on our computer which allows us to fade in music in between brief current promotions. We change these regularly so that people don’t hear the same thing and that our promotions are current.

The bonus is that it is very cheap in todays economy and your callers are calling you for a reason.  We hope it is a good reason and so will be eager to hear your latest sales promotions, current offers or new product.  All for a few bucks and 30 minutes of your time.

Of course, you need a PBX system to do this, but they are very inexpensive and if you didn’t read our January blog about telephony savings then we recommend you go and read it now and save yourself some money and increase your marketing reach!

Tags: , ,
Posted in Best Practices, Business, Marketing, Software | 6 Comments »

Start the year by reviewing your phone costs

Thursday, January 7th, 2010

Many businesses are looking for ways to cut costs in this economy.  One way is to look at your telephone costs. On average we save our customers between 50% to 85%.  How? Voice Over IP (VOIP).

Now before you all click away, we don’t mean Vonage or Magic Jack or those other inferior products (though we don’t have a problem with home users using them – they just are not suited for businesses).  And VOIP quality has improved immensely in the last 12 to 18 months.

We are talking about an IP based PBX system linked to a dedicated SIP trunk phone line(s).  Everything goes through your network and out over the internet.  With this type of system it is important that you understand a different type of concept.  A phone number is no longer dedicated to a phone line.  In traditional wired systems that most of you use if you want a 2nd, 3rd or similar number then you had to have another phone line put in and pay for it.  With VOIP you don’t, you just add another number (in our case it would cost you $1 per month extra).

And you don’t have to have that phone number tied to your local prefix as you do with traditional systems!  So if you are in Raleigh, North Carolina and have customers in Los Angeles then you can add yourself a local L.A prefix number and it will ring your office at no extra cost to you. This will save your customers money because they can make local free calls to you on the other side of the continent.

The other advantage (and we make heavy use of this ourselves) is for marketing.  Lets say we have 5 yellow pages ads and want to track them. Then we get 5 numbers ($5 per month) and put one in each ad.  By monitoring the call logs we can see which ad or which book is working for us.  Can you do this for $5?

So, now you are wondering how can you have all these numbers and how do you get more than one call at a time? The trick is in how VOIP Sip Trunk providers work.  A SIP trunk is how you make or receive external calls via a SIP Trunk provider.  You connect your PBX over the internet to the provider and make a secure connection between the two (don’t worry this would be configuredwhen you set up your PBX and is then automatic). You then contract and pay for the number of Concurrent Call Services (CCS) you wish to have.  So if you have an office of 10 employees and you work out that you usually have a maximum of 4 on the phone at any one time then you contract for 4 CCS’.  Of you course you can simply and easily request to upgrade or downgrade at any time.

Now you may want to give each one of them their own phone number, and with some PBX’s (especially our preferred one that we use) you can also give them a dedicated fax number (as it can receive faxes and then convert them to pdf and email to the person). So that would be 20 numbers and only 4 CCS’. So if your employees are on 4 external (whether it was dialed out or it rang in) calls then the next caller would get a busy tone – regardless of which number was called or which caller was on the phone.  You don’t need 20 lines as you would do with your old provider you just need the maximum you think would be in use at any one time.

And how much do these lines cost?  Well our preferred provider gives us two types – an unlimited local or an unlimited nationwide.  The local starts from $12.99 per CCS per month and the nationwide from $29.99 per CCS per month.  But the long distance calls are about 2.3c per minute for local calls, which means you would have to be making around 2500 long distance calls per month before you would consider moving to the unlimited.  We find most businesses spend around $15 per month (including calls) per CCS.  And as we said $1 per month for extra incoming phone numbers.  You don’t need these – you could have just one number and 4 CCS’.  When the first person calls your number it rings your PBX.  Then when a second person rings, it again rings your PBX (which you have programmed how you want these multiple calls handled) and so on until you run out of CCS’.

So if you are looking to save money this year – start with your antiquated telephony and also increase your marketing $ by tracking different campaigns with a $1 phone number.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Best Practices, Business, Hardware, Marketing | 17 Comments »

Windows 7 – Should I upgrade?

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

We get asked this question a lot. Some also ask if “Windows 7 isn’t just Windows Vista with a new Service Pack?”.  The answer to that question is no, it is more than that.

Windows 7 has a lot of the great things from both XP and Vista and a lot less of the annoying and work-hampering things that were introduced with Vista. Some people did not upgrade from XP, partly because they heard there were annoyances with Vista and partly because some of their applications just would not work with Vista, especially older legacy applications that a lot of small businesses still use.

The good news is that Windows 7 versions for business use comes with a new “XP Mode” built in.  XP Mode is a virtual pc built into your Windows 7 pc.  You can start XP mode which is like starting a second computer on your on (has its own window on your screen) and install your programs that work with XP only.  You do not need to buy an XP license as Windows 7 comes with one for you and you do not need to install it as it is pre-built for you (just as if you bought a new pc from the store).

Even better is that you can launch your XP only applications from your Windows 7 desktop and programs menu directly.

We have even set up XP mode (which is 32 bit) on Windows 7 64 bit computers (which take advantage of more memory and other resources only available to 64 bit machines) and loaded 32 bit only programs and drivers on there and made them work successfully.  One thing this scenario highlighted that some manufacturers (Adobe for one) need to address is licensing.  We were testing a 32 bit only printer driver on XP mode.  We needed to print from an adobe application that we had installed in 64 bit mode to do our work.  We then had to install it on our 32 bit XP mode machine on the same computer.  However Adobe complained that we had exceeded our licenses as it saw us using it twice – even though it was on the same physical machine.  There needs to be a way where you can have it running on the same hardware at the same time.

For current Vista users there is a much nicer user interface.  The task bar and quick launch bar (which we made extensive use of) have merged into one (similar to the Mac) which we like a lot.  In fact we have stopped using both the quick launch and the start menu in favor of the task bar.  Another great feature is the task bar hover preview.  When you hover over an icon on the task bar that has a window open but not the active window you get a preview (about 2inches square) of that window so you can choose if you want to switch to it or not.  You can also close that window without having to set it as the active window.  If you then hover over the preview window all the other windows will temporarily become minimized and you get the window that you are previewing as the active window without making it active.  As soon as you move away from the preview with your mouse then everything goes back to as it was. This is a huge productivity gain for us.  For example if a new email comes in I can hover over the outlook icon and then hover over the preview window which will show me my full size outlook window.  I can then read the subject and the first few lines of the email and if I don’t need to reply immediately then I take the mouse away from the preview window and all goes back to as it was before I decided to preview – so if I was halfway through writing something my cursor has not moved as I didn’t click away from it.

The other advantage to this preview is when you have multiple documents open for an application.  If for example I have 3 MS Word documents open then the Word icon in my task bar will show it as activated and will show it as having multiple active windows.  When I hover over the icon this time, all of the documents will show a preview each.  I can hover over each to read each one (handy if you are referring to them in another document or application), close one or more or switch to the correct one I am interested in.  That alone saves hours of work each month as we are often referring to multiple documents and emails when corresponding in various forms.

We find that Windows 7 is a lot less buggy than Vista. In fact we have never had a BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death) or a single problem with Windows 7 on all of our computers.  For laptops we also have found the start up time from hibernation is much faster.  And we are comparing apples with apples as we upgraded some of our computers with a clean install and others with just an upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 – so it is the same hardware and applications running that were running under Vista.

We should point out that it is much better to do a clean install of Windows 7 than upgrade and we should point out that you can only upgrade from Vista.  XP owners will have to do a clean install.  Remember to migrate your user settings, documents and other files first and to also back up your PC in case something goes wrong in the upgrade.

Other features we like is the vast number of built in drivers for most peripherals – way more than XP or Vista.  There are very few (we have found none) printers and other peripherals that have not got a built in driver in Windows 7 so no more searching for lost disks or going online to the manufacturer’s site to try and find your printer driver.  This is how it should be – users should not have to go looking for drivers for their printers.

There are a number of people who always maintain that you should not upgrade your Microsoft OS until at least 2 service packs have been released.  We used to agree as there was a tendency for the OS to be released quickly and quality will come later.  Not so in Windows 7.  We have found it to be more stable than Vista (even on the latest Vista service pack) and have yet to have a problem.  So for those businesses who are unsure.  Our advice is to not hold back waiting for a service pack.  The main driver for your decision to upgrade should be the business benefits and the timing should be down to finances and least interference with day to day business.  As we said we recommend that a clean install is the preferred upgrade, and this takes time.  So the PC user will be without their computer while this is going on which will dictate the best time to interrupt their daily work.  When you scale this up to a large company with 100’s of computers this soon becomes a real planning nightmare.

In conclusion, we must give Microsoft some respect for listening to us users over time, especially after the Vista launch.  We think Windows 7 is THE best client operating system for businesses and most home users, and recommend all XP and Vista users upgrade.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Business, Microsoft, Software | No Comments »

« Older Entries