Home & Small Office Computer Guide

Microsoft has not yet officially released its pricing for the new operating system but someone in Microsoft’s Canadian office managed to let the cat out of the bag.

For a short period of time the prices for Vista were displayed on Microsoft’s Canadian website and it now seems that the basic Vista operating system is likely to retail for around $US233 (that’s $A305 as I write this).

For the top of the range Vista product you can expect to pay around $US449 ($A$588) and for Vista Business the price will be $US379 ($A497).

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For some years after computers first became popular screensavers were a must have otherwise it was quite possible to ruin a monitor by burning an image into the screen. This happened if the monitor was left displaying something for too long.

Over the years though the need for screensavers disappeared as monitor technology improved and today many experts will tell that it’s impossible to burn an image into your screen.

Well don’t you believe them because right now there is a rather expensive 19 inch flat screen monitor sitting on Toni’s desk with a very large image burnt into it.

Screensavers still have an important function to play - but be careful when you’re downloading free screensavers - you often get a whole lot more nasty stuff hidden in the download.

Last week it was Dell and this week it’s Apple’s turn to issue a recall on laptop batteries.

This recall is directed at users of Mac iBook G4 and Powerbook G4 laptops sold between October 2003 and August 2006. An estimated 1.8 million batteries are involved.

This recall is related to Dell’s and affects laptops that were sold with a Sony battery.

You can read the full story here

And full details of the recall can be found on the Apple site here

Yesterday we gave you Toni’s five tips for buying the best computer for a small business and today you can have mine.

1. Plenty of memory - for exactly the same reasons Toni gave yesterday.

2. Dual monitors - for exactly the same reasons Toni gave yesterday. I have access to two computers in my office and both of them are equipped with dual monitors.

3. On-site service - when something goes wrong back to base can be a disaster and it will be an even bigger disaster if the base happens to be hundreds of kilometres/miles away. And don’t fool yourself by thinking that you can fix any problems that may arise because most people who try that only make the problem worse.

4. Plenty of data storage - one hard drive is rarely enough. A second internal hard drive is OK but the insurance of an external hard drive can really protect your data.

5. Cost effective software - don’t skimp on the software that you have installed on your new machine. Sure open source office software may save you money initially but for productivity it just doesn’t stack up against Microsoft Office and the same goes for any other software you might need for your business. Free is rarely as good as what you have to pay for.

And I’m not going to show you what my office looks like - my desk is too messy to even think about cleaning up for a photo

Toni and I have been using computers for our business for almost 10 years now. In the early days we managed to buy some that worked well and some that were less than ideal for their intended use.

We’ve managed to learn from our mistakes and now we have a mental check list that we run through each time we set out to buy a new machine. Recently we sat down and each of us compiled a list of the top five things that are important to us when buying a new computer.

Interestingly the lists were slightly different and so we’ll publish them seperately. Today here is Toni’s list:

1. Plenty of memory - the more RAM you have installed the faster your machine will operate (up to a point). If you’re running Windows XP on anything less than 512 MB you’re missing out.

2. Make sure the processor can handle the work you want it to do - but at the same time don’t over-spend on a processor that has more capacity than you need. Don’t stay stuck on Intel either - AMD is just as good (if not better) and can be cheaper.

3. Don’t settle for just one monitor. Dual monitors will increase your productivity more than you could ever imagine. (Three monitors is even better but will be much more expensive)

4. Make sure you get an ergonomic keyboard and mouse. The mouse in particular should fit your hand comfortably - if you have a small hand buy a small mouse and if you have a large hand buy a mouse that allows your hand to spread across it.

5. Make sure you buy a quality keyboard too. Sure you can buy your computer with a cheap $20.00 keyboard but it won’t last so be prepared to buy one that will. We’re great fans of the Microsoft keyboards - they certainly stand up to the hard work we inflict on them.

Tomorrow we’ll be back with my little list. In the meantime we’ll leave you with a photo of Toni’s work desk.

If you look closely you will see that Toni’s keyboard is not a Microsoft one - but my two are

Forecasters are suggesting that we will be seeing the commercial release of desktop hard drives that will hold 1 terabyte of data before the end of 2006. Seagate has already released a 750GB hard drive and they are said to have development of it’s big brother well under way.

The recall is aimed at batteries made by Sony for mobile workstations and XPS units in the Inspiron, Latitude and Precision ranges delivered between April 2004 and July 18 2006.

Visit this website for further information on whether your Dell laptop is one of those affected by what could be the biggest recall of batteries in the history of the electronic industry.

If your laptop is among those listed on the Dell website Dell suggests that you switch your laptop off, remove the battery and continue on mains power until Dell has replaced the battery.

Well we’ve now been running for several days with all three UPS boxes in position and almost everything is going fine. I say almost because at 2am this morning we were woken by a beeping noise coming from my office.

The first UPS we installed was warning that it was almost fully discharged and about to shut down … despite the fact that there hadn’t been any power outages at all. So it’s something we will be watching.

One night a week ago the lights flickered and died and the power went out for over 90 minutes. It caught us unprepared - a half-written email was lost and a large file download had to be re-started when the power came back on so we were quite lucky. It could have been a lot worse.

But it made us realise that power is one of those things we take for granted in our small business. We rely on the power grid to supply uninterrupted power free from spikes and drops in current. We need that so we can keep working and ensure that our fragile computers keep working too.

Of course there are always going to be power outages and Murphy’s Law will always tell you that the outages will occur at the worst possible times so we decided to do something about it.

For the last few days I’ve been sitting here with an MGE Ellipse 750 UPS System under the desk. The UPS stands for uninterrupted power supply and I’m running two monitors and one computer through it.

The UPS consists of a single small box that contains two batteries and some control equipment. The box is plugged into the power socked and the computer and monitors are plugged into the box. If the power goes out or the voltage drops the batteries supply power for up to 15 minutes - more than enough time to shut everything down in an orderly fashion.

The box doesn’t run hot and there have been no glitches at all. A little monitoring icon that sits in the toolbar has shown me though that we’ve had more voltage drops than I would have expected.

For under $200.00 that seems like money well-spent to us and today Toni will be bringing two more back from the computer shop to keep our other two PCs running the next time the power goes out.

CNET news is suggesting that Microsoft will release 12 security patches next Tuesday for Windows and Office. It’s suggested that at least one patch will require a reboot and another is a patch of a patch.

Hmmmm

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