Arthur C. Clarke once said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." I think about thatoften when one of my Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers asks me to explain how something works, or why it didn't work. The reality is that any explanation I offer will be no better than just saying "Abracadabra!" Any more I don't even know how much of this stuff works well enough to explain it.

This morning I visited one of my IT support services customers for our quarterly business review. I started by asking about her new (first) grandchild. Now I expected she'd whip out one of those little packets from the photo shop filled with 30 or so prints of the new baby. Instead, she pulls up a website and launches a photo show (set to music) of her new granddaughter. She did it as if it was the most normal thing in the world to do. It was magic.

Later, she showed me a website where she should be able to download a document but it didn't work. The site popped up a little window with a warning about downloading the file. We clicked to download the file and nothing happened. Why not? Sometimes the magic isn't strong enough.

Our office has been without air conditioning for most of the last week. We called an HVAC company because some areas didn't seem to be as cool as others. $6,000 dollars later, everywhere in the building was hot, and the HVAC people were telling us things that didn't do much to cool us off. They've promised to come back tomorrow to get it all working again.

I often take an objective look at the interactions I have with service providers. I think about the way in which my network technicians deal with our Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers, and wonder if they'd do better than the level of service I'm experiencing. Most of the time I think they do. First, we always practice the rule of "First do no harm." If we can't get the issue resolved, we do all we can to ensure that our help desk customer isn't worse off than when we got there. More importantly though, we take responsibility for the things we do, even when they turn out to be a bit bone-headed in retrospect. It's the bone-headed technical support that puts us into the frying pan.

In the end, we're human and we make mistakes. We don't compound those mistakes with attempts to pass the blame. This way, we can at leasy be sure we don't end up in the fire.

One of the fallouts of the Sarbanes-Oxley law is a renewed emphasis on disaster recovery planning. Most practitioners call it Business Continuation these days to signify that it is more than having a tape backup. Recently, we've been working with many of our Indianapolis small business computer consulting customers to review, rewrite, or create plans that are significant enough to pass the muster of the auditors who spend time auditing SarBox sized organizations.

What we found as we started is that most of our IT outsourcing customers had the kind of plan that would allow them to say, "Sure we have a Disaster Recovery Plan. It's right here." The truth being that these were just place holder documents. They've not been touched since they were first created, while their computer network has gone thru enormous changes. As their IT consultant, I have to take the blame for letting them get by with this. However, in light of the mishaps that get reported nearly every day in the media, we're tackling this site by site, starting with ourselves. That's right. We had a check-the-box plan as well, and I know that most of my peers in the computer tech support field are the same way.


Today I finished the Port-to-Port Consulting Business Continuation Plan. It represents our computer network as it exists right now. It has scheduled tests of all of its features at least once per year. Surprisingly, I feel more comforted after having done it. The process pointed out things we had been overestimating about our ability to get back to work after a disaster.

If your DR plan was slapped together by a summer intern six years ago, you'd do yourself and your organization well to dust it off and give it a thorough review with your IT service manager.

Working wirelessly is a beautiful thing...but sometime we expect to be able to connect in places where we can't.  We've become spoiled by the number of free WiFi sites at coffee houses, restaurants, bookstores, banks and more.  How does one not go without? 

As an Indianapolis Computer Consulting firm, we are called upon by our clients to research and make recommendations that best suit their needs.  I recently had an opportunity to find the best broadband carrier for a client who travels the state extensively, and goes into some areas of construction where wireless is not available.  Based on knowing her parameters and her current cell carrier, we were able to recommend a service that should provide her the best coverage she can get.  A few minutes of my time will allow her to improve not only her productivity but also her safety.  She will be able to work where ever and when ever she needs to. 

Port-to-Port Consulting provides Computer Consulting Services and finds a better way to do business.  Look us up the next time you are sitting at your favorite WiFi spot.  See how clear we come in! 
 

I was sitting at a stop light the other day with my daughter.  The cars were backed up enough so that we could just see the light; we were probably 15 to 20 cars deep in line.  We saw the light change, but we had to sit, because the car in front of us didn't move.  My daughter, being 14 and quite impatient, was annoyed that the light was green but we weren't going anywhere.  By the time we were able to move up in line, the light had turned red.  We were in the weird situation where we were stopped on green lights and going on red lights.

She couldn't figure out why this was happening.  I explained that there was a delay between when the car in front of you moves and when you put your foot on the gas to move your car.  If you are far enough back in line, all those delays add up until you get completely out of sync with the color of the lights.

It seemed obvious to us that if everyone in line would look at the stop light, we could all go at the same time and traffic would flow much faster.  The problem is that if you're looking at the light and the person in front is not paying attention and doesn't move, a rear ender is sure to ensue.   You are forced to wait on others before you can do what you need to do.

That to me seems like a perfect description for this recession.  Everybody is waiting for something before they will take the next step in their business.  You can see the signs around you and you've got your foot on the gas, but you can't put your foot to the floor because you see plenty of brake light right in front of you.  You'll eventually make it thru the light, but everyone is else certainly holding you back.

So here's the deal folks.  If we're going to get thru this recession, let's start focusing on the lights above us and not pay so much attention to the brake lights directly in front. If you get a nudge in the rear, it will probably do you a little good.  If you ram somebody in front of you, so be it.  You're just doing your part to get things moving again.

At Port-to-Port Consulting, an Indianapolis Computer Consulting Services firm, we are moving our business forward.  We've added staff, reorganized our work flow and added services to support our clients better.  We expect that this will enable our clients to do the same for theirs.  If we all do our part and look up instead of at all the brake lights, this recession will be over before we know it.

 My Indianapolis small business computer consulting company has sponsored a golf league for more than a decade now. We call it the Port-to-Port & Friends League. Every Wednesday night from May until September, 30 to 40 golfers hit the links for nine holes of fun. I started this league because many of my IT support services customers would talk about their desire to play more golf. Over and over the conversation would end with, "I just can't find the time."

One of the things I pride myself on is that our company focuses everything we do on making our customers better at everything they do. The solution to this problem seemed simple enough: Create a way for my customers to play golf more regularly. In order to demonstrate that computer consulting is a part of nearly all that we do, I found a piece of software that would handle the management of league stats.

I give this as an example of the kinds of things that are unexpected of a computer services vendor. We don't view ourselves as the vendor. We think of ourselves as a part of each and every one of our client businesses. It's why we started offering our bundle of computer network services that we call Pertingo^®.

I've written in the past about the great browser wars that have been rekindled recently. Microsoft, Google, Apple, Mozilla, and Opera have all recently announced new versions of their respective browsers. We here at my Indianapolis IT services company believe that this battle isn't over bragging rights to the fastest browser. We believe it's because the migration of software to a web-based subscription model is making the operating system less important. The company that produces the best browser will have access to the most eyeballs when they figure out how to take advantage of them.

The change that will make even the browser obsolete will be the coming onslaught of Rich Internet Applications. These are programs that run on your computer, looking like regular applications. However, they are really customized browser windows that are the interface to a web-based application. Microsoft has a development environment for these applications, as does Adobe and Google. The latest to enter this fray is Mozilla. They did it by way of a plug-in to their Firefox browser that allows you to turn any website into a Rich Internet Application of sorts. Now the purists in the audience will say that Prism doesn't really create RIAs, but I say if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

My network technicians are playing around with various approaches to RIA development. We're watching the changes that are taking place in the development of web browsers. Google's Chrome has first place in my mind, but the Prism plug-in to Firefox has me trying some things that can only be done there.

Imagine if every car manufacturer used a different type of gasoline such that you had to go to a particular gas station in order to tank up. That's been the way computer software has been written in the past. Once you chose a word processor, for instance, you were stuck with using that word processor if you wanted to be able to open your documents. Further, if your friends or associates wanted to open your documents, they had to use the same word processor that you used. Of course there was a huge advantage to the biggest player in each application segment because he locked in his customers and forced others to switch to his application for the convenience of trading documents.

As I'm sure you know, the big guy was Microsoft. Their reluctance to use an open format for documents led to some of the success of Adobe's Acrobat software. With Acrobat, we can convert our documents into something that anyone using the free Acrobat Reader software can open. Now Microsoft is starting to see the benefit of sharing documents with other applications. Their adoption of the Open Document Format (ODF) in Office 2007 has been slow coming and it still has issues, but it brings us one step closer to being able to share ubiquitously.

This shift to support of ODF allows some of my Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers to consider alternatives to Microsoft Office for some of their staff. Most of us don't use more than 10 - 15 percent of the power available to us in the Microsoft Office. We won't use more than 15 percent of the power in Open Office either. Their version 3.1 makes the applications nearly interchangeable with similar Microsoft offerings, at no cost.

It is incumbent on your IT support services consultant to bring you money saving ideas. Some ideas may be too risky (or not rewarding enough) for you to do, but you should be allowed to make the informed decision about things. We've mentioned the Open Office suite to several of our customers where we believe it makes sense. As of today, we've had no takers.

Years ago, when Open Source software first started to attract public attention, I joined with the bulk of IT support services companies to deride the stuff as amateurish, buggy, and unsupported. I realize now that I was reacting to what appeared to be a potential threat to my livelihood. More than that, I had underestimated what could be accomplished by a group of people working for free at something. I shouldn't have. Today, I stand with many of my computer network consulting peers and say that Open Source software is changing the rules for small business computer support.

I have a computer at home that runs nothing but free software. It's too old to run the current versions of Windows, or Microsoft Office, or Internet Explorer, or Adobe Acrobat, or just about anything else that would cost me a couple hundred dollars at the local Office Depot. Nonetheless, I have an office suite, a web browser, an email client, a photo image editor, and loads more on the box. So why haven't we started using more of this stuff within the offices of our Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers?

They are still afraid of it. That's why. And to some extent, so are we. Afterall, if we have a problem with Microsoft software, we know exactly who to blame. With Open Source, we don't have any idea who to blame. Does it matter though? After we blame Microsoft, we go looking for non-Microsoft resources to help us fix the problem as often as not. The same could be done for the Open Source applications.

Don't think that I'm recommending we all abandon the major software vendors and send them running to Congress for a bailout. I'm only suggesting that it is past time we started trying to use some of this on the periphery. That's what I've been doing.

 I've written before about my foray into the world of Twitter. It has some strange kind of hypnotic appeal, similar in many respects to the way in which we gauk at accidents as we pass by them on the road. I feel like I should "get it" but I don't. I keep trying to figure out what it is but I can't. Now a company, Purewire, has evaluated Twitter usage with a new tool they created for grading Twitter users (mine is an A- right now). As they did research on more than seven million Twitter users, they found:

• 40 percent of Twitter users haven't tweeted since the day they created their account
• 25 percent of users are not following anyone
• 30 percent have no followers
• More than one third have never posted a tweet
• Over 80 percent have posted less than 10 tweets

These statistics seem to indicate that perhaps I'm not the only person who can't figure out what the big deal is. Yet so many of us feel like there is some kind of big deal there that we just can't figure out. Like when those 3D Stereograms were popular, I just think if I stare in the right spot or catch it out of my periphery, it will suddenly become clear.

The hang up for me is that my Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing keep asking me what they should do about Twitter. How do I answer that question when I don't even know what I should be doing about it? For now, I'll keep posting from time to time and reading my followers more often than that. I certainly won't be the last one to abandon Twitter when its popularity follows that of the stereogram.

Earlier this year, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention released the results of a survey that indicates more than 20 percent of US households had a cell phone and NO land line. This is notable because the number of homes that had a land line but NO cell phone was only 17 percent, making this the first time that the cell phone only homes outnumbered the land line only ones. The rate is accelerating too. In the first half of 2003, the same survey found only 3 percent of cell-only homes and 43 percent of land line only ones.

More interesting is that 15 percent of the homes have both cell phones and land lines but don't make or receive calls on the land line! This is reminiscent of some conversations I have with my Indianapolis small business computer support customers about old technology in their offices. It seems we become attached to things that we used to use all the time. So much attached that we don't even realize that we're paying for something that we don't need and won't use. We justify it by considering how small the payment is.

I'm not a keeper or collector of things (except for the coffee cups that drive my wife batty). When something has no ongoing use for me, I'm quick to get rid of it. Realizing that about myself cause me to speak gently with my computer outsourcing clients about throwing out old information technology equipment that has little chance of providing any future service. Yet, telling them that it's time to let go is a part of my job as their IT support company.

So, if you can't remember the last time your home phone rang other than pollsters and solicitors, perhaps in addition to getting rid of that monthly bill at home, you should ask your computer systems consultants to give you a list of "things that should be gone."

As a network technician, part of my (ever-growing) task-list is to help maintain accurate inventories of software and hardware.  This is nothing new, and the concept certainly isn't any different than any other inventory process.  So why is it so difficult to maintain an inventory in the IT world...particularly if you are outsourced?

Since I work for a network consulting company, this is of particular interest to me and my co-workers.  In an effort to try and figure out how to do this successfully, I've been kicking the inventory process around in my head.  I've worked in a retail envrionment, a manufacturing environment, and now in IT.  In each of those environments, maintaining an accurate inventory was crucial. 

In retail, you need to know what products you have on hand, what you need more of (and when to order), and for that matter, what isn't selling.  Typically there is a database that is tied into some scanners and possibly the registers.  This works great for managing everything except for theft (so, you still need a physical touch of the items).

Manufacturing is pretty similar to retail, except you are dealing with internal departments instead of external customers.  Each part needs inventoried so we know what we have (and if we can fill our orders).  Again, theft is the main reason the inventory process can fail in this environment (excluding laziness).

So why is it so different in the IT world?  If you are an internal network admin of a single-site company, it's not so bad.  Generally you know where all the computers are, people will come to you to move them if need be.  If they go out and buy a laptop over the weekend (thank you management staff), they'll come to you for help configuring it.  However, when you are in a consulting position, or managing several sites, you are often excluded from these kinds of events.  People grab a spare machine when their's isn't running as fast as it should.  People get fired or quit and you don't find out until 3 weeks later.  It gets to the point that it feels like the only time the inventory is right is the day that you actually go onsite and touch every computer.

So how do we make make the inventory process work in the IT world?  Well, if we think about what makes the other environments more successful, it's control.  In retail, the cashiers and anti-theft devices provide the control.  An event happens as items change hands from store to customer.  In Manufacturing, it's the same thing (at least where I worked).  At each station, you inventory the parts (from the warehouse to assembly, from assembly to QC, from QC to shipping).  They all have control over their assets.  When you are an outsourced IT company, you don't necessarily have that same luxury.

So how do we gain control in the Outsourced IT world?  Tune in next time as I explore possible ways to get and maintain and accurate inventory.

 Two new smartphone opportunities will become available in the next week: the Palm Pre (only on Sprint) and the Apple iPhone 3G S (still only on AT&T). As soon as the media started reporting these events, my Indianapolis small business computer support customers started calling me to get my take. Everyone knows that the portable device is my weakness. True to form, I've been looking at all of the reviews and reading the pros and cons. As of this moment, I've decided to pass on either of these new choices. It just feels to me that the Palm brand has sailed, so I'll have to wait until I hear Earth-shattering advantages before getting too excited. I do, however, have a line on a couple of people who will be getting them so there will be some play opportunities for me. With the iPhone, besides the new name being dumb, I can try out most of the new features by upgrading my current iPhone to the new firmware, which I will do as soon as Apple's servers get over the initial shock of downloaders.

The bigger reason I won't jump to get one of these new devices (aside from the fact that my partner won't have anything to do with me buying yet another device) is that even more is coming. HTC is working on a couple of Android based phones. Palm has all but announced that they will debut more WebOS based phones very soon. And my iPhone is still a fabulous way for me to get things done while on the move.


I'm not making promises or commitments that I'll still be using my iPhone 3G at the end of the Summer, but I'll keep it thru June. Right now, if my computer network consulting customers asked me what to get, I'd start by asking what carrier they have. On Sprint, the Pre. On AT&T, the iPhone. On T-Mobile, the G1. On Verizon, well, you've got that great network.

Thanks for the info, but why take three steps when it only took one before (“I miss my shortcuts!”)?

Thankfully, Microsoft gave us the “Quick Access Toolbar” for this very reason.  Unless it has already been moved, it is located at the top of your screen, next to the Office Button and above the Ribbon.
 

This is where we can add the shortcuts like “Save” or “Print” so they are just a click away.  But they only give us space for 5-6 shortcuts, which probably isn’t nearly enough space.  To remedy this, let’s move the “Quick Access Toolbar” to beneath the Ribbon.

Right-click in the space next to the “View” tab in the Ribbon.
 

In the pop-up menu, choose the option to “Show Quick Access Toolbar Below the Ribbon”.
 

And now we now have much more room to add our shortcuts too.
 

Ok, so how do I add those shortcuts I miss so much?  Well, you Right-click on the “Quick Access Toolbar” and choose “Customize Quick Access Toolbar”
 

You will get a screen that looks similar to the following one:
 

From here, you can choose from a variety of commands that you might want to use.  To get the full list, select “All Commands” from the “Choose commands from:” drop-down.
 

Now, let’s add a command, scroll down the list to whatever you’d like to add, in this case, I’ll do “Print”.  Click the add button to place it in your “Quick Access Toolbar”.  Once you are done adding all of the commands of your liking, click OK.  Your “Quick Access Toolbar” will now be updated with all of the commands you choose to add. 
 

And here is our updated toolbar:
 

Hey, that Ribbon thing is pretty cool, but the tabs don’t seem to have everything I need.
To get the complete pop-up for each option in the Ribbon, Microsoft has provided us with “Dialog Box Launcher” buttons (sounds impressive, doesn’t it?).  These are the little buttons in each section of the Ribbon.  One is pictured below (in the red circle).
 

Click the “Dialog Box Launcher” button, and you will get a screen similar to the one below (in this case, I’ve clicked the one for Font).  This is where we find the rest of our options.


So there you go, these are some of the basics to get you started with Office 2007.

 The battle for desktop supremacy has definitely moved to web-based services, or "Cloud Computing". I can't open a trade magazine without coming across another service that Microsoft or Google are taking into beta (which is where they tend to stay until they figure out how to make money with them). The other day, I watched part of a video about Google's coming soon communications app called Wave. I signed up to be an early user. It looks like what email would have been had its original designers had any idea what they were creating.

Today I signed up for Microsoft's Live Mesh. It's one of the newer offerings in Microsoft's ever-expanding suite of applications available thru their live.com site. I carry around an 8 Gb USB drive that holds all of the data I'm currently using. I back it up online using Data Deposit Box so I can recover to within a day. Every now and then I need a file that isn't on the flash drive. With Live Mesh, I can create folders online that I can access from anywhere. I can also share those folders with others. I can even use Live Mesh to remote control any of the machines I've added to my mesh. This single app does for me what I currently need two applications and a piece of hardware to accomplish. And it's FREE!

Don't need all of that capability but would like to have some online disk space? How about 25 Gb from Microsoft SkyDrive for... you guessed it... FREE!

I've been telling my Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers that they shouldn't expect these services to remain free forever. If they do, they'll be so awash in advertising as to make you want to avoid them (see mapquest to understand what I mean). While they are free though, we have lots of time to experiment with them to determine what we'd be willing to pay for when the time comes.

 
On Thursday, May 14th, Google went offline. It took only moments before Twitter and Facebook lit up with people wondering if it was something wrong with their stuff or if Google really was down. Minutes after that, all of the amateur and professional journalists on the Internet were investigating the extent of the outage so they could break the news first. They missed that it had already broken right there on Twitter.

In the weeks since then, every one of the trade magazines we receive at our Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing company included an article (usually an editorial) in which the author lamented the great risk of Cloud computing as demonstrated by the Google crash. I guess that makes it official that we've lost interest in Swine Flu. The next great scare for IT support services is that the cloud doesn't work all the time.

So back to the question that titles this blog. Did you notice that Google was down? I'm guessing not. First, because the outage lasted less than an hour. Second, because the rest of the Internet worked just fine while Google figured out a routing problem. Even if you'd been heavily dependent on Google's suite of services for your operation, I'll bet you could hav found something productive to do for that hour. And given that the average downtime for a server crash in a small business is well over an hour, one shouldn't feel better served by having the machine in the back room.

I tend to be a reader of the genre I call "Pop Business." I trace its roots to Tom Peters and In Search of Excellence, but it probably goes back to Machiavelli or thereabouts. Generally, these books tell about a good idea upon which the author has stumbled. After describing the Earth-shattering impact of this usually obvious idea, the author goes on to provide examples of his idea in action, usually quelled from other pop business books. I only deride this genre because it can cause damage to a good company if the leader decides to swallow the idea whole without applying a little common sense and knowledge of her own situation to it. From each of these books, I learn something that I believe can be applied to improve the way in which we provide computer network consulting in central Indiana.

One always needs an exception to prove the rule. Here it is. Hisashi Sakamaki, the CEO of Canon has written a book in which he proposes that you not allow your employees to sit down. That's right! He's taken away all the chairs. If that could be overlooked as an idiosyncrasy, how about the sensors in the hallways that alert workers if they walk too slow? Even better is the sign on the floor that tells employees: "Lets rush - if we don't then the company and world will perish."

Currently, Sakamaki's book is only available in Japanese. I can only imagine that it will get published in English at some point. The computer help desk technicians on my staff don't have to worry about me trying to pick up good management tips from that book.

I have worked for an IT support company in Indianapolis for a while now and have found that the role of computer tech support keeps getting bigger. Back in the 90's tech support consisted of keeping the computers running, keeping the internet up and making sure everyone could print. The technology was not as advanced as it was today and it is ever-growing.

Today network support seems to take on a bigger role. Not only do IT technicians have to stay faithful to keeping their computers online and running fast, but they also have to deal with new technology. Handheld devices are turning into unified communications devices and will require IT support. Also there are manufacturing machines that connect to the network so you can upload/download CAD drawings from any computer in the network. These are only the tip of new jobs for network technicians; there are many other jobs such as wireless VoIP phones, alarms, and timeclocks.

The duties of network support technicians have pushed their way into anything that can take an IP address. With technology always advancing and constant migrations toward IP based products, IT support comanies have to keep up with their end of the responsibilities and know what is coming next. Our computer consulting service is always ready for the next step and researching the step after that. All the other computer outsourcing companies that can only handle computers, printing and internet will simply be left behind.

Every now and then we drop the ball on a network support project. We don't do it because we're incompetent. We don't do it because we're mean. There is absolutely no malice intended. We sometimes drop the ball because we're human, and people make mistakes. I've discovered over the years that our response to those mistakes determines the kind of relationship we have with our Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers. I've also found that it isn't in the normal nature of most Information Technology support companies to handle these mistakes correctly.

Many of my competitors in the Indianapolis and Carmel area will, as soon as they discover a problem, start looking for someone other than themselves to blame.
"It's stupid Microsoft!" 

"I can't believe they didn't put that in the instructions."

"Who would make a part that doesn't fit a standard jack?"

And on and on until they get to the worst one: "That's what you told me you wanted!"

If my dear IT outsourcing peers would stop for a minute and consider what these excuses really say to their computer services customers, they might not ever make excuses again. Didn't you hire them because they are the experts? Aren't they supposed to investigate the IT solution they recommended to be sure it meets your needs? Shouldn't they have known going in how stupid Microsoft is? What my friends in Indianapolis IT consulting are saying is, "We don't have the necessary knowledge to provide you with a working solution." They're screaming it with each excuse until they finally turn on you. 

Not at Port-to-Port Consulting. When we drop the ball we take responsibility for it. We'll tell you what went wrong, and why, and what we're going to do to get it fixed.

"We should have expected that Microsoft was exagerating their claim and tested this in advance. We'll put things back while we go do that testing."

"It's surprising that this part doesn't fit a standard jack but we should have checked that back in our office."

"When you told me that this was what you wanted, I should have questioned more to be sure we had the same understanding."

We'll continue to make mistakes. If we don't, we'll have difficulty learning. We understand that it's a part of doing business as a computer consultant. We won't go on witch hunts when mistakes happen. We'll own them, just like we own the computer network that powers your business.

 

I hate doing work more than once or making something more complicated than it needs to be in Indianpolis Information Technology. Take for instance, Casseroles! Casseroles are fast easy and everything is in one dish. One dish to take to a party, one dish to clean. No worries about the proper proportions of Veggies, and meat. Those choices were done ahead of time.

This is why I like Dell. Sorry, HP/Compaq and Toshiba. Although the Hardware in all three manufacturers’ Indianapolis Small Business Computer machines is pretty similar when it comes to their business class, Dell comes out ahead in the Indianapolis IT Outsourcing world for three main and very influential reasons.

Proprietary Software Galore! So let me ask you this. When did the world decide it wanted The manufacturer to create and install loads of poorly written software on business class machines? When receive a new machine for a client and it has more than 20 proprietary nonsense software installed which has nothing to do with the machine performing properly, it makes me ask why? Why make this machine more complicated and include more points of failure. I can understand 1-5 things the manufacturer may want to included to say, “Hey, we thought about you” but please do not drown us. It wastes our time by having to go through deleting all of this junk so it will not interfere later on. So Dell, you get an A+ for having far fewer junk applications installed on your new business class machines.

Speaking of making things harder and more complicated than it needs to be, HP and Toshiba have restore CD/DVD’s which ship with their new equipment. Great idea right? Kinda. If you are a regular home user or an in house technician with a small or medium size business then this should not bother you much. However, for Larger IT departments and  Computer Network Consulting Groups, and Computer Outsooucing scompanies managing more than 20 machines it begins to become quite difficult keeping track of so many CD’s and ensuring you have the proper discs if a machine needs to be restored. Especially if you have an HP machine, as HP requires 2 discs, one for system prep which Must be used prior to using the Recovery Disc. By the way, they are not labeled so be sure not to accidentally mix them up with another set.  Also, HP and Toshiba Recovery Discs are Model Specific. This means, as an outsourced company trying to follow the Boy Scout modo “Be Prepared” you would be insane to try and carry around recovery discs to clients, if by chance you needed one or the client miss placed their copy (which happens a lot).  Dell Shines here because each OS disc shipped from Dell can be used on any other Dell Machine. One Disc, Many Computers. Can you Say Freedom or Simple. Of course this opens the door for licensing problems, so be careful not to install Vista on a machine the only came with XP.

So far Dell has been Rock’n out with simple machines and simple recovery options for computer services. Dell continues this trend online support. If by chance you miss place your driver disc, all three manufacturers have support online to download the original or updated drivers. All you have to do is look at the three websites support pages and you will know who will come on top, as if this blog has not given it away already. Once again Dells simple design enables you to easily find and download the 5 or so drivers you need to run your system. HP and Toshiba are left to feel silly as they must offer the myriad of proprietary software which originally shipped with the PC, leave the technician to filter through to find the required chipsets nic drivers.

So Dell My Hat is off to you. Thank you for making my life simply easy. Everything from the initial install onsite to the rebuild/repair of a machine is simpler with your products. Keep it up and you will keep my business. I hope this has encouraged other IT support Companies as well. So Keep your Network Support Clean and Simple with Dell.