The Life and Times of Seattle’s Small Business Systems Consultant. Articles and advice on small business phone systems, phone and internet services, VoIP, and all things technology related.
Selkowitz Technology | Seattle’s small business network and telecom consultant
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Danger, Danger Windows User!
January 30th is the release of Windows Vista (replacing Windows XP) and the news is interestingly mixed - everything from product of the year to train wreck. The important thing to remember is Vista may not function initially with the software you need for work, so don’t just dive into this headfirst.
Perhaps more important is don’t try to install Vista on your current PCs unless you bought really high end systems last year - Vista needs a lot more resources than XP. Some are arguing the practical minimum is a dual core processor and 2GB RAM - something few PCs have.
Long and short of it is there isn’t a compelling reason to upgrade yet and plenty of opportunity for problems. I recommend waiting and giving Vista time to mature - Vista’s time will come, just not right now.
Lights Out
Last month’s power outages reminded many of us how dependent we are on power - I can’t even make a phone call without having power. I went looking for practical emergency power and found the Powerpack. The Powerpack is a battery backup (like a UPS) but is designed for emergency use - it has AC and DC power outputs, charge and load monitoring, a light, and radio. The PowerPack can charge off household AC or off the lighter jack in your car when you drive around. It can even jump start your car.
Obviously the PowerPack won’t run the fridge or furnace, but is great to keep a laptop running, cable/DSL modem, cell phone and other small electronics for days. At about $130 its a bargain for a bit of comfort in an outage. PowerPack 
Cookies, Defrag, and other Old Wives Tales
Cookies and de-fragmenting the hard drive are common “household remedies” many people use when encountering unknown issues with their computers. Unfortunately these rarely solve any problems and can create others. The threat of cookies was long ago over-hyped and somehow they’ve become in the eyes of many to be a threat to security, privacy, and will cause the sun to go nova. The truth is cookies are an important and safe tool on the web - cookies are benign files which help web pages know your customer ID or shopping cart contents. Cookies are rarely the source of computer problems.
De-fragmentation in the process of “organizing” the hard drive in a more efficient manner - think of it like re-alphabetizing a bookcase. While fragmentation hurt performance of older operating systems, new ones like XP, Vista, and Mac OS X don’t suffer significant performance hits due to fragmentation. Its not bad to de-fragment and you may get a temporary boost, but it won’t solve any problems.
When things go awry the best thing to do is write down exact error messages or conditions and either google them or email us. And definitely skip the matzoh ball soup.
Utility of the Month
While there are many dangers of smoking, there’s one benefit of regular smoking breaks - getting away from your computer. Overuse of a computer without a break can cause injury and hey, people can’t buy new computers if they’re injured. So having said that, download a copy of Workrave for Windows or AntiRSI for the Mac - its safer than smoking and gets you needed time away from your computer.
The Author: Kevin Selkowitz
About: Kevin Selkowitz is the founder and lead consultant for Selkowitz Technology, a Seattle-area small business systems consulting company. We focus on the four major technology needs of small businesses - phone systems, phone and internet service, servers/network infrastructure, and business applications.
This entry was posted by Kevin Selkowitz, on Thursday, January 25th, 2007 at 3:58 pm and is filed under Phone Systems. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response on the right, or trackback from your own site.
