What single piece of hardware will give your computer the biggest speed boost?

If your laptop or desktop computer leaves a bit to be desired in the speed department (assuming it's not due to malware or insufficient system memory), you may want to consider swapping out the original hard drive with a new type of disk—a solid-state hard drive. Solid-state drives (SSDs) differ from their conventional hard disk drive (HDD) counterparts in that they have no moving parts.

Instead of spinning platters that are read by a mechanical arm in an HDD, SSDs use memory chips like the ones found in an iPhone, iPad, or stick of RAM (Random Access Memory - the memory modules in your computer). The lack of moving parts offer several advantages, including faster read/write times, less heat output, lower power consumption (generally), and better longevity.

The faster read/write times contribute to significantly faster responsiveness of both your operating system and your software applications.

There are, however, a couple of drawbacks. First of all, SSDs are not yet available in capacities as large as conventional HDDs (3 terabytes and up). The current maximum for widely available SSDs is 512 gigabytes (GB). Secondly, SSDs are significantly more expensive per gigabyte than conventional drives. Even 256GB SSDs cost north of $300.

While the lower capacity might seem like a heavy price to pay for increased speed, several mitigating factors exist. First, if your computer has room for two or more drives, installing your operating system and software apps on an SSD and keeping your data (documents, music, movies, pictures, etc.) on a conventional, large-capacity HDD gives you the best of both worlds. Your programs gain a speed boost from the SSD, but you still have plenty of storage for a large media collection on the second drive.

Secondly, with much of computing moving to the cloud model, your computer needs less storage space for data and media libraries. Your applications (such as Word, iTunes, or Windows Media Player) reside on your local machine, while your libraries are stored in the cloud, accessible from anywhere you have an Internet connection.

Are Free Email Services Worth the Price?

Security breaches of free, web-based email services like Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, and Gmail are on the rise. Perhaps you’ve experienced the phenomenon yourself. Ever received odd messages or a single hyperlink in an email from someone you know? Spammers use fake return email addresses all the time, but if the return address belongs to an acquaintance of yours, chances are that person’s actual account (and address book) has been compromised.

Such breaches happen in a variety of ways: partially stemming from the widespread popularity of such services, sometimes through the use of weak or recurring passwords on the part of the account owner, and for other reasons.

Because of these vulnerabilities, business owners should never use free email services for their commercial operations. The risk of a breach (not to mention the potential consequences of clients and partners receiving spam from your account) is just too high.

In addition, use of such free services projects an unprofessional image to clients and potential clients. You want an email address that uses the name of your business in the domain field (i.e., the characters that appear after the “@” symbol and before the “.com” suffix).

Registering a domain name for your business and hosting your company’s email on it is relatively inexpensive, and well worth it in terms of both security and peace of mind.

Cheesy Holiday Poetry, IT Style

Twas the night of the deadline
The systems were choking
I had twelve programs open
My computer was smoking

Emails wouldn’t send
Excel wouldn’t add
My desktop had blue-screened
Someone stole my iPad

From down the hall “Just reboot it”
Someone shouted aloud
But there’s no server here
We had moved to the cloud

But then on my screen
The cursor did fly
A Log Me In session
It was the IT guy

He wiped out the virus
And patched Windows 7
Upgraded my iTunes
While Jobs smiled down from heaven

And I heard him tweet loudly
As he ended our call
“Whether Mac or PC
Happy Holidays to All”

Tax Rule Offers Nice Savings on Hardware and Software

Congress has extended IRS Section 179 to cover the 2011 tax year. That means that qualifying business equipment purchases (including most computer hardware and software) can be deducted at full cost on your 2011 business taxes, instead of being amortized over several years. From section179.org:

“The Section 179 Deduction limit increased to $500,000. The total amount of equipment that can be purchased increased to $2 million. This includes most new and used capital equipment, and also includes certain software.”

Translation: Now is a great time to purchase hardware and software! You effectively receive a discount equivalent to your tax bracket on the purchase.

For example, if you were to purchase $100,000 of IT equipment by December 31^st and were in the 35% tax bracket, you could write off $35,000. That’s the price of a new car! The equipment’s net cost to you is $65,000.

If your plans for 2012 include any hardware or software purchases or upgrades, do it now! The Section 179 provision is scheduled to expire at the end of 2011.

Disclaimer: We are neither accountants nor tax lawyers. This should in no way be construed as tax advice. Talk to your CPA or visit www.irs.gov for details.

What Kind of Monster is Lurking Under Your Desk

Ever rush home with your latest greatest coolest new thingy for your home entetainment system, then spend the better part of an afternoon working through that tangled maze of cables and wires trying to figure out how it ever got this way? Wouldn’t it have been better if everything had been neatly organized and labeled? Read More

Are your online accounts secure? 5 tips for making sure

If you are working with a good managed service provider, then you should already be in good shape, or at least on the path, to having proper security for your business network. But there is one aspect of security that only you can do for yourself: strong passwords for your network and internet accounts...read more

Dropbox breaks their security for 4 hours

Be careful in the cloud. For 4 hours yesterday, a bug in Dropbox's code allowed any user account to be accessed with any password. Read more

Six Tips for Securing Your iPad and Everything On It

Don’t make the mistake of assuming that just because the iPad isn’t a typical computer, it isn’t a security risk. The iPad, and it’s Android and Blackberry kin, are all very much computers. They store both your private and business information. They store your emails messages, server information, passwords, contact lists, browser history, cookies, and so on...Read More

When Technology Doesn't Help Customer Service

I'm sitting on a slow and ocassionally not moving NYC subway right now. Every few minutes, there is a friendly automated announcement informing me "we are being delayed because of train traffic ahead." That's all well and good and it's somewhat better than the previous situation of no information at all.

But what is it really telling me? What I mean is, am I getting any useful information that will help me on the rest of this trip?

What I really want to know is how far up the line does the traffic extend and should I consider transferring at an upcoming station to a line that's moving better. It wouldn't be difficult to implement since all the trains are already monitored. Simply calculate the delay and update the announcement to include that information.

But the MTA hasn't done that (at least not yet). They installed new technology but didn't actually provide any additional value.

Don't fall into that trap with your technology. There are always new and exciting things out there. But just installing a new system doesn't necessarily give you an advatage. What has to be done with that new system to improve you business, sales, revenue, customer experience, etc.

The iPad is cool. But it can be more than just the slickest way to check your email. What should you do with it to drive sales? Same for Facebook. And Windows 7.

Don't take the easy way out and then wonder why you spent all that time and money. Take the next step and use technology to drive your business.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.9

Amazon Cloud Down for 12 Hours. What's the Lesson for a Small Business Owner

I love Amazon EC2. I love the concept. I love the technology. And I love the service it offers. Many, many, many companies that we're all familiar with and probably use frequently would never be if it wasn't for EC2.

Foursquare, Hootsuite, Quora, Reddit and many others all reply on EC2 for part or even all of their back end technology.

So when EC2 when down yesterday, everyone of these sites went down with it. Embarrassing, yes. Bad for business, yes. A pain in the butt, absolutely. But everyone one of these companies will survive and do fine, even though they were down for most of not all of the day. They'll do fine because they have pockets deep enough to absorb the loss. They'll do fine because they hire big PR firms to run damage control. They'll do fine because they've got millions of customers who use their services daily.

But what about your business? Where would you be if you were down for an entire day? No orders. No client service. Perhaps no email flowing. How easy would it be for your company to absorb a loss like that.

I'm not saying don't move to the Cloud. Cloud based technologies offer huge advantages to small businesses. But when you do make the move, do it smart. Get yourself a trusted advisor, one who knows 1) the Cloud, 2) your industry and 3) your company.

Get into the Cloud properly. Manage your risk, prepare contingencies, and use it to grow your business.

Internet Explorer 9 Officially Released

Was Internet Explorer 6 so much of a turn off for you that you've dropped IE never to return? Well you may want to reconsider. IE9 is here and from what we see so far, it's worth a look. Check out LifeHacker's screenshot tour at http://lifehacker.com/#!5638885/internet-explorer-screenshot-tour-the-best-new-features-in-ie9

False IRS Threat Email

A email appearing to come from the IRS is making the rounds. The email is a scam and clicking on the link will subject your computer to infection.

If you receive an email like the one below, be safe and ignore it

*******

From: "Internal Revenue Service" update@irs.gov.us

Date: January 21, 2011

Subject: Important W-2 form update

We would like to inform you that as of the 21st of January you are late in updating your W-2 form submission with the new updated version. Please send us your completed W-2 update form by 2/1/2011. For the updated version of the W-2 form please click on the link below

http://offscreen.com/update/modules/W-2form.exe

Make the most of Outlook

Make the most of your Outlook!

Did you know Outlook 2010 can be used to keep track of your customer sales pipeline and marketing campaigns? Learn how to turn your Outlook into a sales tracking tool to increase your sales and effective manage your customer thanks to a new CRM option. And you'll be the first to get an EXCLUSIVE Sneak Peek at it BEFORE it launches globally!

Date: January 19th

Time: 8-10am

Location: Microsoft Office, NYC

Presenters:

• Umang Vasa, Microsoft
• Melanie Gass, CenterPoint Solution

30-min of networking is included, so be sure to bring business cards!

Sponsored by: Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, Smallbiztechnology.com, Microsoft

Click here for more information and registration

Tech Things I'm Thankful For

As 2010 wound down, a snowstorm blanketing the Northeast gave me a few extra quiet days to reflect and plan for 2011 (it also gave me an extra day on the slopes but that's a post for a different blog).  Some of that reflection brought me to thinking about what "tech things" I was most thankful for in 2010. Here's my list. Add your own thoughts below.

My Droid 2 - I made the switch from 5+ years of various Blackberries to a brand spankin' new Droid 2. Emails, calendar and contacts are still great and thanks to ActiveSync, they're seamlessly sync'ed to my mail server, Entourage and Outlook. I'm a heavy user of DropBox (www.dropbox.com) and Evernote (www.evernote.com), which have always been great on my Mac and are now great on my Droid too. Google Maps and Navigation have saved me from getting lost and also from getting stuck in traffic. The interface is so intuitive by 2 year old figured out how to scroll through photo and paint pictures in the Dora Coloring Book app without any help from me. Voice Commands work pretty well and have no doubt made me a safer driver. And, oh yeah, I've got Flash on there too (Steve Jobs, you're going to have to give on that one day soon).

Smart Tech Support People - specifically, my engineers at CMIT. I used to be the smart tech guy. I'm still somewhat smart and somewhat of a tech guy. But I'm the last person you'd want standing up your new Windows Server 2008 box. Technology is so integrated into our lives now. It's more complicated than ever yet we need it to be as simple and painless as possible. Smart Tech People are the ones who make that happen.

Facebook - I know this isn't a new 2010 thing. But what did happen in 2010 is my family and friends discovered Facebook. I don't care what cereal you had for breakfast. I'm not crazy about some of those 20+ year old pictures of me that have surfaced. But I do like knowing what my family, friends and their kids, all of whom have scattered around the globe, are up to. I like knowing that my 17 year old cousin in California got his drivers license. I like seeing pictures of my college friend's newborn baby. And I like that I can find all of this out on my own time (usually at 10 pm, on my couch, while trying to not watch annoying reality TV shows).

Evernote - You won't know how useful Evernote is until you start using it. Every note, every bit of information, every detail of every active project, every fact that needs to get filed away in case you need it one day. PDFs, Word docs, Excel, pictures, mp3, free form text, you name it. Handwriting recognition, easy searchable, available to me on my laptop, Droid, any web browser, sharable if I want it to be and most importantly, easy to get the information in to and out of.

Kindle - I'm reading again. And I'm reading for pleasure. I read 12 books in 2010. That may not seem like much but it's more than I read in the last few years combined. I read trashy sci-fi, business books and my friend Jeff' Berg'ss novel Miller's Tales (shameless plug...buy it here). I haven't compared it to a Sony Reader or Nook and what I love about it is probably just a relevant on those devices as well.

What tech things are you thankful for? Let me know.

Remain Calm

Nice blog post from my friend Beth Rosen on remaining calm when your technology fails you here

Top 5 Technology Dos and Don'ts when starting a business

I'm speaking to a group of students at Columbia Business School today about the basic IT needs when starting a business. Here's the summary


Top 5 Dos

• Back Up and then plan your Disaster Recovery
• Set it up so you can work from anywhere
• Learn to fully use your tools
• Monthly options are often better than outright purchased (for tech reasons, not just because of cash flow)
• Proactively manage your technology. It’s not set it and forget it

Top 5 Don’ts

• Underestimate the importance of security
• Spend money just because it’s cool (unless cool is important to our business)
• Assume just because it’s in the CLOUD it’s cheaper, safer and better
• Skimp. Invest where you need to
• Make all the IT decisions yourself. Use a professional. Your IT advisor is as important as your accountant and your attorney

Time to buy new equipment

It may be time to buy new equipment before 2010 comes to a close. The benefit of doing so is that one-hundred percent of your purchases this year (up to a maximum of $500,000) can be expensed. This means you can subtract the amount of money for the whole tax year instead of over several years. This is one of the new tax incentives for small businesses, according to IRS Section 179.

Qualifying purchases could be computers, servers, and accessories. While it is unknown what tax codes will look like in 2011, now seems to be a smart time to make a purchase. The current tax code is definitely appealing due to the dramatic increase in the amount to be written off.

To find out if your desired items are eligible and learn more, CMIT Solutions is here to help. We can assist with making recommendations and we suggest that you also consult with your tax professional.

Spotlight Franchise

Spotlight Franchise: CMIT Solutions CMIT Solutions franchise network is a franchise company thats on the right track, helping small business owners to manage their technology needs.  In addition, this franchisor practices what they preach when it comes to supporting their franchisees. Read more.

MS Web Apps vs. Google Docs

If you're looking for an inexpensive way to handle common business applications like spreadsheets, presentations and word processing, chances are you've looked into free Web-based services like Google Docs, says John Smythe of CMIT Solutions in Everett. What you may be less aware of is the fact that Microsoft has come up with its own free, Web-based competitor to Google Docs: Office Web Apps...read more

Does Your Office Technology Need a Makeover?

Are your computer systems so out-of-date, slow, and just plain ugly that trying to fix them is as futile as putting lipstick on Frankenstein’s monster?

ENTER CMIT’S MAKEOVER CONTEST

If you’re in the market for a serious technology makeover, you’re in luck! From now until November 12, CMIT Solutions is accepting entries for its $75,000 office technology makeover.

Tell us about what makes your I.T. setup so scary and you could win …
     • Dell server, laptops/desktops, and peripherals
     • Microsoft Windows 7 operating system and Office 2010 software
     • Desktop/workstation care, backup, email filtering, and security services from CMIT Solutions

Do it now while you’re thinking of it! Take 5 minutes to enter our technology makeover contest and you could win $75,000 worth of hardware, software, and services courtesy of Dell, Microsoft, and CMIT Solutions.

ENTER THE CONTEST NOW