As Christmastime approaches we are all wondering how to keep our lists small and our purchases minimal. The economy is forecasting a “drugstore” Christmas or even a DIY sort of giving mentality. One way to keep from spending unnecessary money is to NOT buy anyone you know Windows Vista. According to Fortune magazine, only two machines with Microsoft’s latest version of Windows appear on Amazon’s list of 25 top-selling laptops - the fastest growing segment of PC sales. Apple’s MAC OS X and Microsoft’s seven-year-old Windows XP dominate the roster. So, save yourself $260 and recycle those XP editions.

America’s 25 million small businesses are the heart of the American economy.  They produce 51 percent of nation’s private sector output, 47 percent of sales, and provide employment to over half the country’s private workforce. Since the beginning of the digital age, small businesses are personally responsible for the majority of computing resources and energy output. And while the result is an increase in productivity, there is also a financial downside in terms of power expenses.

In the past, small businesses hoping to go green were limited in their options by expenses and availability. As a result, around 1/2 to 1/3 of the 48 percent of the nation’s electricity and 39 percent of nation’s natural gas used for commercial and industrial purposes is wasted due to inefficiency.  That amounts to billions of dollars in electricity alone, with a large percentage being used by computing resources.

Now, after over a decade of this waste, new solutions are starting to appear.  As a small business, one excellent place to start is to use newly available products to adopt an efficient server infrastructure.  Many companies are offering exciting entries geared to help businesses small and large achieve this goal.

1. Energy Efficient Sun Fire Servers When small businesses grow in size and need dedicated mail service and file storage, they typically need to buy a server setup.  By the end of 2008, Sun Microsystems will have released several energy-efficient products, including the Sun Fire T1000 and Sun Fire T2000 servers with CoolThreads technology.  These new servers, according to Sun, will provide “30 times more performance while using one-tenth the energy and generating half the heat compared to products offered in 2003″.
2. Improving Hot Aisle/Cold Aisle With Containment Studies show that up to 60 percent of the power in a server room goes to cooling.  One green cooling method to consider is contained hot aisle cold aisle.  Hot aisle cold aisle is a best practice in which server racks are lined up with alternating rows with cold-air intakes all facing one aisle, hot-air exhausts the other.  This only provides small efficiency gains.  However, if you combine this with containment solutions such as plastic curtains, which separate the hot air from the cold, you can save more — up to 75 percent on fan energy by some estimates.
3. Low Watt Xeon ProcessorsIntel, the world’s largest microprocessor maker, offers several energy efficient variants of its Xeon processor, its 45 nm Penryn based offering.  The new processors come in both quad core and dual core varieties.  The dual core X5270 consumes 80 watts, but can run as fast as 3.5 GHz.  For quad cores, there’s the X5492, the X5470 and the L5430.  These models use 50 W of power, or a scant 12.5 W per core.  Powerful and efficient, these new processors are also halogen free, making their eventual retirement more eco-safe.
4. Consider The Switch To Linux Server OS Suggesting an OS is a tricky business.  In the server market the main candidates are Windows Server 2008 and the various Linux distros.  Part of the difficulty in making a suggestion is that some OS’s are naturally better at certain tasks, and some like Windows Server 2008 have some nice extra features.  That said, if you’re looking to save power, consider turning to Linux.
5. Putting It All Together As you can see, building an energy efficient server architecture requires a multi-tiered approach.  No one component will eliminate all inefficiency in the setup, but by selecting an efficient OS, low watt processors, an energy efficient server system, and efficient cooling that meets your needs, you can begin to save money and lessen your company’s impact on the environment.

(in no particular order, of course)

• Charlene Li - Social networking analyst and expert.
• Craig Newmark - Founder of Craig’s List.
• David Swain - PR for Facebook.
• Matt Cutts - Google’s most famous blogger.
• Shel Israel - Co author of Naked Conversations.

I woke up this morning (rather early, I might add) to a phone call asking for emergency computer help. It seems the blue screen of death had attacked yet another computer and Safe Boot just wouldn’t do anything. After researching some error codes and some file threads I realized that the hard drive was just toast. Now, I am not done with the full diagnosis, mind you, but it served as a great reminder for backing up one’s hard drive and being aware of keeping your backup files current. So, I thought I would put this little reminder together.

Open Windows XP Backup

Windows XP includes its own backup program, although you may need to do some digging to find it.

If you use Windows XP Professional, the Windows Backup utility (Ntbackup.exe) should be ready for use. If you use Windows XP Home Edition, you’ll need to follow these steps to install the utility:

• Insert your Windows XP CD into the drive and, if necessary, double-click the CD icon in My Computer.

For more information, see How to Install Backup in Windows XP Home Edition.

With that chore out of the way, you’re ready to begin backing up. By default, the Backup utility uses a wizard that makes the process straightforward. To start Backup:

• Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then click Backup to start the wizard

Decide What to Back Up

You might be tempted to click All information on this computer so that you can back up every bit of data on your computer. Think twice before choosing this option, however. If you’ve installed a number of software applications, your backup could add up to several gigs.  For most folks, the My documents and settings option is a better choice. This selection preserves your data files (including e-mail messages and address books) and the personal settings stored in the Windows Registry.

If several people use your computer—as might be the case on a shared family PC—select Everyone’s documents and settings. This option backs up personal files and preferences for every user with an account on the computer.

If you know that you have data files stored outside your profile, click Let me choose what to back up. This option takes you to the Items to Back Up page shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2

Select the My Documents check box to back up all the files in your personal profile, and then browse the My Computer hierarchy to select the additional files you need to back up. If some of your files are on a shared network drive, open the My Network Places folder and select those folders.

This option also comes in handy if you have some files you now you don’t want to back up. For instance, I have more than 20 GB of music files in the My Music folder. To keep my data file backup to a reasonable size, I click the check box next to the My Music folder. This clears the check box from all the files and subfolders in My Music.

Decide Where to Store Your Backup Files

On the Backup Type, Destination, and Name page, Windows asks you to specify a backup location. If you’re one of those geeky people with access to a backup tape, the Backup utility gives you a choice of options in the Select a backup type box. No tape drive? No problem. Backup assumes you’re going to save everything in a single file; you just have to choose a location for that file and give it a name.

By default, Backup proposes saving everything to your floppy drive (drive A). Although that might have made sense 10 years ago, it’s hardly a rational choice today. You’d need dozens, perhaps hundreds of floppy disks to store even a modest collection of data files, especially if you collect digital music or photos.

Instead, your best bet is to click Browse and choose any of the following locations:

After you’ve chosen a backup location, enter a descriptive name for the file, click Next to display the wizard’s final page, as shown in Figure 3, and then click Finish to begin backing up immediately.

Let’s face it. This is Google’s world. We just live in it. Google has revolutionized the ‘net, created an app that allows users to zoom in and out on Earth, invested in geothermal tech and done most of it without charging a penny.

One of Google’s slightly lesser known applications though is iGoogle. A homepage for those with a Google account, iGoogle is a customized homepage that can be populated with games, calendars, RSS feeds, schedules, headlines, stock quotes, etc.

So as we all struggle to leave less of a carbon footprint and green our lives a little, why not consider greening your iGoogle? What’s that? You don’t know how?

• Click the ‘Add Stuff’ tab to add green applications—all green search engines, daily green tips, a TreeHugger feed. They’re all available if you just type ‘green’ into the search field.
• After you’ve loaded up your iGoogle with green apps, you can make the homepage physically greener, too. Set the theme to All Black, or Classic Black, or the like by clicking the ‘Select Theme’ tab and searching for ‘black’ or ‘dark.’ This will help reduce the amount of electricity you use while you’re on Google—some estimates say using a black Google could save 750 Megawatt Hours a year.

Get ready guys. With the mess on Wall Street you can believe that a trickle down concept is giong to bring the threat to Main Street. How so? Well, cyber criminals are apparantly taking advantage of the financial meltdown and subsequent bailout by sending SPAM and phish email that are disquised as updates from recently acquired institutions.

I am a Bank of America member and from what I have been told banks do not prefer to contact customers via email. They still utilize snail mail for important notices. Most banks rarely contact customers via email. On the occasion that they do use email they certainly won’t include a link asking customers to click on it to confirm personal banking information.

In the wake of the shotgun takeovers now taking place, banks have neglected to tell customers about what changes will be made to their online-banking setups. So it seems that cyber criminals are trying to fill that void. We need to be aware and be prepared to debug and warn our customers of such issues.

Today’s banking emails aren’t that different from older attacks such as the infamous eBay emails and even Paypal. But they’re topical. A typical headline or subject line may address a recent merger.

Some days the traffic isn’t as great as others. Some days the problems seem impossible. And yet some days you may feel like you just can’t get it right. But your effort never goes unnoticed. MinuteFix, still in its adolescence, is consistently becoming a leader in customer service and it is because of technicians like you. Thank you for your hard work. Thank you for your dedication. And thank you for just bringing your magic to this team. Happy customer service week!

Okay, okay. I know that when writing for techies I am going to get chastised for writing about Email templates. I realize we prefer text over HTML. However, sometimes those we love and care for the most want to go and get all cutesy and design their email. Getting your email to look great in all the major email clients can be a challenge though. Thanks to CampaignMonitor it has become a lot easier. In fact, they have done the work for us and provided the world with 33 cross-platform, cross-client email templates.

I guess by now it is taken for granted that candidates have websites. In fact, Obama has a website complete with a social network. I guess it is also taken for granted that both sites are best viewed on a high speed connection and include flash elements vital to viewing the site. McCains website begins with a very direct video from VP-hopeful Palin. But I guess the idea that technology does not need governmental aid and support to continue to thrive and (dare I say, advance) is also taken for granted. In watching the debate last week and in preparing for this weeks vice-presidential debate I can’t help but to ask, where do the candidates stand on these issues?

The ASSS (Advancing Science, Serving Society) has recently administered a series of science and technology questions aimed at the presidential hopefuls to help us better understand their positions on this seemingly overlooked category. Their responses to the most relative questions (in the computer fields) are as follows:

INNOVATION Mr. Obama calls for doubling federal budgets for basic research over a decade and supports broadband Internet connections “for all Americans.” Mr. McCain stresses policies to provide “broad pools of capital, low taxes and incentives for research in America,” as well as the streamlining of “burdensome regulations.” Mr. McCain also said Congress, “under my guiding hand,” adopted wireless policies that “spurred the rapid rise of mobile phones and WiFi technology.”

EDUCATION Both candidates advocate policies to develop a highly skilled workforce, partly with cash incentives for teachers. Mr. McCain would put $250 million into a program to help states expand online education.

So, there you have it. That is the full discussion to date on the future of computer and Internet technology as represented in the 2008 presidential election.

If you have heard something more or have other websites for us to read, please do let us know. I am beginning to wonder now if the candidates even understand how much of our nations economy and the burgeoning global community relies on computer and Internet tech.

So, here’s the big question. Who helps the helpers when they need help?

You may have noticed a problem yesterday with our site, our forums, etc. The issue was not with our business but rather with our server. To read the exact issued statement from DreamHost, you can visit this webpage.

I am not writing today just to acknowledge a “water under the bridge” problem but rather to point out that even through the problem DreamHost displayed great customer service. Before we could even alert them to our problem the following email was in our inbox.

It would appear that a network file server (which is mounted by your web
server) had an issue with a bad backplane.
This was causing the file server to fail drastically and cause issues for
customers across your cluster.  Please accept my most humble aplogies for
this problem.  Keeping your sites up and running is rather important to us.
Our admin team is cleaning up a few straggling servers and all previously
affected sites and services (including mail) should be up again for the most
part.

I am also sorry that we had to use an impersonal canned message to respond
to this matter, but the scale of what happened and the amount of support it
generated called for it.  If you are still running into issues, please
contact support by replying to this message and one of our representatives
will be happy to help you get things resolved as quickly as possible.

Thanks!
Jason C.

In my opinion, that is a company that cares. Thank you DreamHost for helping us when we needed help!

This morning I got a call of desperation from a friend whose mother is in her 60s but is still very smitten with the Internet for multiple reasons. This morning while trying to log on she kept getting “Invalid Password” messages. Now this was news to her as she has had the same password for the entire two years she has had Netscape as her ISP. Now, I am a bit skeptical anyway of Netscape through Wal-Mart as an ISP…but I digress. The point is that my friend’s mom contacted Netscape and was immediately put through to a customer service agent who barely spoke English, mispronounced her name each time she said it, and offered no real help.

Netscape is, of course, owned by AOL who is infamous for their lack of customer support. Their are forums and chatboards loaded with complaints.

So in the process of this conversation my friends mother was asked for her account number. She was not sure what account and accidentally gave the operator her bank account number which her monthly payment is directly withdrawn from. The customer support agent looked frantically for the account but could find nothing. She never once asked for any other information that might help locate the account in an effort to get the password issue taken care of. So, after about nine minutes of “conversation” the tech support person ended the call……..WITHOUT SAYING GOODBYE.

My friend’s mother was left emotionally upset and feeling guilty that she had done something wrong and her account had been cancelled. My friend suggested calling me and we made a 3-way call to get the issue solved. I was appalled at the customer support I heard on the other end of the phone and I asked to speak to management. No better. So, you ask, why does it matter? It matters because these are real people we work with with real feelings and real issues.

This all makes me so much more proud of MinuteFix. We have an awesome team of really solid customer support technicians. Thank you.

According to the Association of Support Professionals the top 5 support sites for at least the past 5 years (making them uber-consistent) are:

This post is shamelessly stolen from “Make It Great! with Phil Gerbyshak.
September 13 was Happy Positive Thinking Day and in observance, Phil wrote up a blog post on 5 ways we can all make a more positive attitude. I really liked his suggestions and though I would, therefore, pass them off to you. Remember, all the words, anecdotes, and suggestions are his. They were quite relevant and compelling though so I have not altered a word. Enjoy!

• Reframe the situation. No matter how dire the situation is, unless you’re dead, it could always be worse. Trust me. This year, I’ve hit bottom in a lot of my life. Over half my team turned over. I’ve worked REALLY long hours. My best friend moved away. My bank account has been near zero. I gained 20 more pounds.

I’ve had to reframe most of my life.

I have new ideas from all my new people.

I learned a lot during the long hours.

I still talk to my best friend.

My bank account is slowly growing.

I’m doing a duathalon tomorrow to jump start my exercise program.

All depends on how I look at it.

It all depends on how YOU look at it.

• Count your blessings. I have a lot to be thankful for. You probably do too. Write the blessings down. Understand your abundance and be thankful for it.

• Give thanks to those who’ve helped you. Few people are self-made anymore, but few know how big of an impact they’ve had on your life. Give them a call, and say thanks. Or send a hand-written thank you note. Nobody does that anymore.

• Read or listen to something that makes you smile. Re-read a favorite book or article. Listen to some fun music. Maybe it’s the sound of a baby, or the sound of your brother. Call someone who’ll make you smile.

• Smile or make a silly face for no reason. Start small, and just smile. It won’t hurt anything. Just smile big and wide!