Business Owners Start the New Year Right!

Wow 5 days to New Years!

San Diego Small Business Owners Rate your business practices:

1. I have good book keeping software and use it
2. I back up MY complete computer regularly
2. I have good records about my customers
4. My Web site, and Shopping Cart and are up to date and look good
5. My customers can contact me easily
6. I have cleaned up existing warranty, quality, and other product issues.
7. I have a plan on how to reduce my shipping costs
8. I have maximised my selling channels
9. I am ready for tax fillings
10. My computers are running well
11. My Business Plan is current

Perhaps, for you, some of the above are New Years resolution material.

Start the year with a clean slate. Contact me for a free 1/2 hour consultation via phone.

“Break the Trance” Says Dave Brown!

Webster's Dictionary defines trance as a stupor, or a daze.

Sometimes we are in a trance in the way we conduct ourselves in our business or personal lives.

There is a new Blog by Dave Brown: Please Pass the PASTA.

Dave's first post is, “Ten Ways to identify, “Break the Trance” and learn how to dance with your Trance”. The first step, Dave writes is to, "Recognize the signs of your trance. Write down five to ten concrete and specific behavioral, emotional andintellectual patterns that indicate that you are in your trance."

Just as your business will benefit from a “Computer Coach” you will also benefit from a professional life coach! Dave is an accomplished Executive Coach - Mentor - Personal Advisor and Business Coach. He is based in Del Mar, California. You will benefit from what he has to say! (and the way he says it!). His web site is, Dave Brown Coaching.

Vista – The Myth and the Reality for San Diego Business Owners

In the last several weeks I have done 4 Vista installs and or upgrades. I have just converted the machine that I use the most to Vista Ultimate.

Vista has been out since January 2007. I usually wait a least 1 year before I install a new operating system but I needed to stay current with this new technology. So, I decided to use Vista every day.

First reaction - I think Vista Ultimate is the fist big step forward since Windows 3.1! Vista is GREAT!

The “MAC versus the PC” commercials are very entertaining but they don't reflect the experiences that I and probably millions of others have with Vista. I am not an unconditional Microsoft fan, however my expectations were substantially exceeded Vista.
No problems with install!

• All my drivers were found (I used 1 XP driver for a RAID card that was ”not supported” by Vista)
• Programs seemed to run faster
• I have not had an application “hang” since I installed vista

My computer environment is a low end machine by vista standards:

• ASUS mother board (P4P800-MX)
• P4 4 Hz processor
• 3 gigs memory
• 1 60 gig mirrored disks
• 2 160 gigs

I installed an OEM version of Vista Ultimate on a clean disk. Over the next several posts I will review the features that I find most interesting for the home and the business user.

Customer Service and Your San Diego Business

I think that there is still hope for he smaller regional retail and service businesses in San Diego given my experience with Macy's (The department store).

While in New York my “GF” shopped at the flagship Macy's store in Herald Square (34th Street). She purchased several items to be shipped to us in California.

A week later I tried to get a tacking number for the shipment. After an hour of calling the store I had no luck in reaching any one who could help me. However, I did reach several rude and or untrained employees.

Last Monday I decided to try again. After a half hour of making several calls I finally reached the administrative assistant to the store manager. After getting some information from the sales slip she got me the tracking number in 1 minute!

I decided to write the CEO of Macy's:

Terry J. Lundgren
Chairman, President &
Chief Executive Officer
Macy's, Inc.

about my poor customer service experience. I needed to confirm his mailing address. I got his administrative assistant on the first call in about a minute!

I will publish the letter to Terry (mailed today) and the response if any.

Lessons I learned:

• No process for tracking in store shipments that is known to employees
• When in New York don't shop at Macy's and ship it home
• It is easier and faster to call the office of the CEO of Macy's and speak to a human (Margaret) than it is to get a response from the 34th Street store to a simple question regarding a purchase. (One minute versus 1 ½ hours.)
  

Lessons for business owners:

• The basics of customer service is to help the customer
• Employee training in customer service is KEY
• Make employes aware that thy should always offer to take the customers contact information so the appropriate person in your business can resolve the issue.

More on this latter.

MySpace and Web Site E-marketing One San Diego Example

For businesses catering to the edgy, young, trendy, urbans, the importance of e-marketing to reach your demographics is KEY.

The first thing you need is a great product! No problem for Barrie the designer and self styled "cornfed fashionwhore". The clothes are HOT, EDGY, and priced affordable!. You can see her stuff 12/2 at "The Fashion Event" (THREAD San Diego - Sunday December 2, 2007 The Aerospace Museum, Balboa Park..)


An example of this relationship between a web site and a MySpace site is her sites: http://www.fablesbybarrie.com/ and her MySpace site Cornfed by Barrie.

Her MySpace site has more of the current events, personal feel, and edgy graphics, while the web site gives the clothes and how to buy center stage. Both work well together. If your market is 18-35's this is the kind of thinking that will help create the Buzz or "Urban Stampede" (as I call it) for your business.

See you at the Show!

Client Wondered Why - His Computer Ran Slow!

I worked on a computer this week in a San Diego business that had 256 megs of memory! We took it up to 2 Gigs - problem solved. He was running AOL and Norton two programs that eat memory!

At approximately $50 per gig it is a good business decision to add the much needed memory. More latter on a future post about this machine as it has several other intresting issues...

RAID Me! (sm) - San Diego Business Should Say!

Is your business earning $40,000 or more? Do you rely on your computer as as a key tool for your business? In the event of a disk drive failure following the methods I outline will reduce your recovery time to minutes!




If you don't want to backup your disk drive just view the video above...

A disk drive failure is a relatively a low probably event but will have a high negative impact on your business. You already have purchased insurance for "low probably events that have high negative impacts" such as home owners, (fire, flood, earthquake), personal liability, auto collision, health etc. I am advocating investing in insurance for your business data!

This post will discuss how to protect both your business data and the time it took you to set up your computer. Using my "Raid Me! (sm) method you can protect your investment by backing up your desk top computer or small office server with a high degree of safety and relatively low cost.

I will address your initial investment, how much data you should plan to backup, a recommended strategy, and costs.

After reading this article you will be aware of your costs of setting up your PC, the amount of data that you have, the choices that you have for backup, and my recommendation of the “best way” to safeguard your data. You can contact me (SanDiegoCIO@gmail.com) if you would like my for assistance in execution your back up strategy.

Your initial investment

You probably remember how much you paid for your computer, but do you remember how much time (and pain!) you spent initially setting up your PC? You probably invested at least 4 to 16 hours setting up your PC including: adding the computer to your network, loading Office, QuickBooks, printer and or scanner software, getting the colors, desktop icons, and other settings just the way you like them. Let's not forget adding the anti-virus software, Windows Defender, the latest patches for Windows and any other software you have. You also may have deleted the “crapware” that your PC manufacturer loaded on your PC to entice you to purchase a DSL service, antivirus software, AOL, Office or other software that clutters up your drive. What is this setup time in dollars or lost opportunity worth to you? Just backing up the “My Documents” folder will not protect this investment in time.

How much data do you have to backup?

The Windows operating system will take 3-4 gigabytes on your hard disk. Your programmes such as office and QuickBooks may take another 2-4 gigs. So we are looking at 5-8 gigs of information with none of your data. In addition, you may transfer your data (documents, bookmarks, pictures, etc.) from your old PC. As time goes on we load still more programs, save and create documents, add bookmarks, shortcuts, and desktop icons to our computer. It would be easy to have 20-30 gigabytes (7 DVD's) of data and programmes on a business computer. So I ask, “What is your backup plan?” Is it working?

Recommended Strategy

When you purchased your desktop the most lightly configuration is one hard disk connected into the disk controller on the mother board. Most newer desktops come equipped with disk drives of 160 gigabytes (or greater) and a DVD burner that can place 4.7 gigs of data on a DVD.

If you back up a 160 gig drive that is half full, using your DVD burner, it would take 18 DVD's, Yeah, right your are really going to do this weekly! Well some of you are thinking that I can just backup the “My Documents” folder. This is better than nothing but is a flawed strategy for several reasons:

1. No protection for your the investment you made in setting up your computer

2. Does not save bookmarks, links, document templates, desktop icons, shortcuts.

3. Not all of your data is in the “My Documents” folder (such as your QuickBooks data for example)!

Well your in luck! I have an easier method it requires 2 additional disk drives and something called a RAID Card.

Step 1: "Mirror your "boot drive". The diagram below shows 2 disk drives (green) that are “mirrored” i.e. The same data is on both disk drives. This "magic" is accomplished automatically by the RAID controller card. RAID protects against a hardware failure of a single disk drive.

Step 2: Make weekly disk image backup of the mirrored drives. Using the disk drive you originally got with your PC (yellow disk in diagram above) and software provide by the disk manufacturer we will we will make a (at least) weekly backup of your mirrored drives. This protects you against a disk controller error which might impact both mirrored drives as well as some other unplanned for catastrophic event. Most of the disk manufactures provide (or you can download) software that will preform this task easily with several clicks of the mouse. This backup will take about an hour depending on the size of your drives and the data they contain. This drive is a bootable drive! Should something happen to both mirrored disks you can be back running in minutes rather than days!

Ultimate protection

To protect against loss of data for the time in between your weekly back ups you can use the backup software included in your windows disk. Set up the program to back up any changed files (incremental) in your PC each day and write them to a CD or DVD. This will take only minutes as on a daily basis not many files will be changed.

Costs

Hardware: $275 - 2 hard disks, 1 “2 channel” controller card (use a name brand controller card! -Hardware costs may vary) Installation: IF you don't want to install this yourself, I will install your hardware, create the mirrored drive, set up the back up drive, load and set up the back up software for a not to exceed cost of $ 175 ($65 / hour).

Your cost to RAID a 160 gig drive will be $275 hardware $175 (or less) labor = total of $450.
RAID Is A Cheap Investment!

Is your investment of $450 a good one?

The real cost of of a disk failure is the cost of disruption to your business for the length of time it takes to recover your computer and resume normal business activities plus out of pocket costs to recover your data.

The diagram above shows the savings of my RAID solution given several levels of earnings or income.

I have assumed the following:

• 240 working days in year
• Out of pocket recovery cost to hire some one to reload your computer will average $700. (If you had no backup for important data and had to use a data recovery service to get data off of a crashed disk drive the usual cost is $1,200. )

If you earned $40,000 last year and lost 2 days of earnings installing my RAID solution will save you $583 if you have a disk drive failure. You earn more than $40,000? (of course!), then it is even more important to act now! If your business is earning you $80,000 per year and you have a disk drive failure recovery will cost you $1,367. The investment of $450 is a 2 to 1 return!

If you have a 160 gigabyte drive I will install this RAID solution for $450*! (* Pending confirmation of your PC configuration).

Contact me (SanDiegoCIO@gmail.com) to take advantage of this relatively cheap data insurance!

#1 in Google - How is it Done?

Recently I was referenced as #1 in Goggle searching for “San Diego Computer Concierge”. That was a pleasant surprise and the “Holy Grail” for Search Engine (SEO) experts. Is there a trick, YES!

I can't promise you that you will have the same results! I will tell you that this technique will cost you nothing (other than my labor). It may not work for you. It depends on your business and key words needed.

Engage me for any Computer Concierge service (Minimum of 2 hours) and I will see if this technique will work for you (NO charge)! NO Guarantees - Except my best effort!

Windows Event 1517

When you are ready to leave the office does your windows machine computer take a long tome to lo off? Below may be a answer to a real time waster.

If you have event number 1517 in your event viewer (application):

"Windows saved user ComputerName\UserName registry while an application or service was still using the registry during log off. The memory used by the user's registry has not been freed. The registry will be unloaded when it is no longer in use. This is caused by services running as a user account, try configuring the services to run in either the LocalService or NetworkService account. "

Although there may be many causes of long log off and shut down time if you get the 1517 error a good bet is to try is a fix offered by Microsoft http://support.microsoft.com/kb/837115
I have installed this on my XP machine. I have installed the suggested Microsoft solution. Only once have I received an Event 1517 warning since installation. In addition log off times have been reduced!

Computer Concierge Services for Business

(This is the first (and old) "Post" to this blog! Click here for latest post or subcribe to this blog (Use on the top right box)

One of my clients needed a Blog. So I also created one for my self as well. Like any "computer project" the scope expanded and I decided that I needed to have 2 blogs this one focused on San Diego business owners and and another http://blobblogblogblogetc.blogspot.com/ for "home office" and personal use topics.

I am in the process of separating past posts into the two interest groups.

Yes, "Geek I am", San Diego CA.

I am San Diego based and provide technology services, home or business, including hardware repair, software selection and installation, technology planning for your business, e-commerce, and "e-based" marketing campaigns.The mission of the San Diego CIO blog is to connect technology with actionable ideas for the entrepreneur.

The scope ranges from PC tips to “Techo-Strategy” In addition "liberties" will be taken for topics of interest to me and I trust to you. For Computer Concierge Services for Home or Business e-mail me at SanDiegoCIO@gmail.com or use the "Vonage Me" link on the upper right of this page and you will be connected to me toll free.



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For some thoughts see http://blobblogblogblogetc.blogspot.com !