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I see Danny Burke of PC Magic
once a month to sort out any problems on my computer and
to help me move ahead with an internet info product
business.
Danny spends most of his
week rescuing business owners who are having problems with
their computers.
Last week I asked him for
the advice he would give a business owner who was having
trouble with his computer. This is the advice he gave me:
Keep things simple on your
computer. Don’t use it for games etc. Just use it for
business. Danny finds that half his customers have caused
their own problems by the extras they have downloaded from
the internet such as:
Additional toolbars for
internet explorer. Unnecessary utilities like internet
speed boosters which seldom work. Eye candy such as wall
paper changers, animated cats etc
All most businesses need is
A base operating system
An email client
A web browser
An office suite
A firewall and anti-virus system
Don’t download any old
stuff off the internet. The more stuff you put on your
hard disk, the more likely it is that you will have
problems. Microsoft cannot check all the different
applications you might download for compatibility.
Your first graphics package
and another graphics package might fight over the file
extensions. Try to stick with one package. Similar
problems occur with music and video players which should
not be on a business system anyway unless you are in that
field.
Don’t upgrade unless you
could name three good reasons to upgrade. After Danny gave
me this advice, I rather guiltily tried to upgrade my BT
broadband service to the new combined BT Yahoo broadband
service.
Sure enough as soon as I
had installed the new service, things started to go wrong.
Things that had worked before (like links in emails) no
longer worked. I’m not blaming BT Yahoo. I just had too
much stuff on my computer! When I uninstalled the new
service everything started working again.
Danny comments: “If it
ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” When you upgrade, the
file formats are sometimes different from the earlier
versions of the software. This means you cannot go back to
the earlier versions because they don’t recognise the
new file format.
Do not assume that newer
versions are better than the earlier versions. All you
have done is make the software producer richer!
Have a firewall and virus
checker and keep them up to date
Back up your data. 90% of
companies who have a catastrophic data loss go bankrupt
within two years. You should have two copies of important
data and three copies of critical data stored in three
different locations.
One copy should be in a
fire safe off site. This should be standard practice. You
cannot trust computers. Sooner or later they will get you!
If you don’t back up, you are an idiot and deserve all
you get!
Today I received this
message from an ezine owner:
A lot of you sent me an ad
this week, which I had saved on my hard drive and guess
what?
My computer crashed and I
lost every one.
I have a backup computer,
but no ads.
Please re-send your ads so
I can get them in the Friday edition.
Sorry for the trouble.
The ezine owner is
obviously a nice person but he may lose customers who
haven’t got the time to resend their ads. No one likes
to repeat their efforts.
Maybe his computer crashed
because he had broken not only the back up rule but some
of the other rules.
As a general principle, use
your machine and don’t tinker with it. Once it is
working, leave it alone!
Leave it alone!!!
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About
The Author
John
Watson is an info publisher on the
internet and a martial arts school owner.
He taught Religious Studies and Life
Skills to teenagers in London schools for
about 33 years before retiring in 2000
A.D. His own e-books and those of the
English multimillionaire and businessman,
Stuart Goldsmith, can be found on his site
at http://www.motivationtoday.com |
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