BUSINESS TIPS OF THE MONTH
Have you reviewed your insurance
policies lately? Life? Business?
Homeowners? Auto? Have you
checked to make sure that
everything you THOUGHT was
covered is, in fact, covered? I
recently had my agent, Jeff
LeCouche, review my insurance
policies and he found a few
discrepancies that he
immediately handled.
It made me think about how many
people find out only too late
that the things that they
thought were covered were not.
It is really important that you
have a trusted agent who
understands your financial
picture and can give you advise
that truly takes care of you and
your family’s needs. If you
already have an agent you like,
check in with them on the status
of your policies once a year. If
you are in the market for a new
agent, I can’t recommend Jeff
highly enough! He’s with
Farmers—give him a call at
526-5222.
ORGANIZATIONS—PERSONAL TIDBITS
The recent
cruise the
family took to
Alaska was a
blast! My son
Michael and his
dad and
grandparents had
a wonderful
time. One of the
highlights was a
train excursion
in Skagway, AK
(see pic on
right). Many of
you are aware
that my oldest
is a HUGE train
fan. After
taking the train
ride and
chatting with
the Engineer,
Brakeman, and
Conductor, the
Engineer’s son
(who isn’t much
older than
Michael) tracked
him down and
told him that
the Engineer
wanted to talk
to him. To
Michael’s
delight, the
Engineer offered
a ride in the
engine while
they moved it
from the front
to the back of
the train.
Elation doesn’t
even cover it!
He was just
ecstatic. A true
lifetime memory.
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The other
picture is Ms.
Baltimore—who
would constantly
look away from
the camera as my
husband was
trying to catch
her eye.
She is a
juvenile Bald
Eagle.
Very impressive
bird—er,
correction—“raptor.” |
GROWING MY BUSINESS
Do you know a business owner who
has been complaining that they
simply can’t handle all the day
to day administrative work of
running their business AND do
the selling, and product/service
development as well? If you hear
that, please mention my
services, since bookkeeping is
often one of the first aspects
of an overwhelmed owner’s
business that will fall through
the cracks. I provide everything
from piece-meal support and
consulting, to complete
bookkeeping and payroll
services—and I make the process
relatively painless!
VIRTUAL JEANNIE VIRTUAL
SPOTLIGHT
This month’s Spotlight is on
Charles Lindauer. He is the
owner of Lindauer Mac Consulting
and a MAC wizard extraordinaire.
If it’s Apple oriented
(Macintosh, iphone, etc…) he is
the ‘go to’ guy.
Managing Your Computer
There are two major
complaints/issues for computer
users, in my experience. The
first is data loss prevention.
Hopefully, you’ve never
experienced this problem.
Protecting business data should
be a primary concern for all
business owners and managers. As
dependent as we all are on our
computers, Macs or PCs, a hard
drive crash or corruption can
stop our businesses dead in
their tracks.
A redundant backup plan is the
answer to this problem. As a
Macintosh consultant, I can
provide several good solutions.
PCs have different solutions,
but the principle is similar:
1. Have at least one backup, and
preferably multiple backups.
2. Make sure that they are easy
to restore reasonably quickly.
3. If possible, have at least
one recent backup off-site.
If you have a bootable clone as
one of your backups, then drive
failure will not stop production
for more than a few minutes.
This is simple to do on Mac. If
you’re a PC user, call your tech
or IT person, or contact me for
a referral.
The second issue I run across
frequently is slow computer
performance. With PCs, virus and
spyware can be a main culprit
for slowing your computer down.
On both platforms it can be due
to neglected maintenance or an
over-full hard drive.
All computers need to have some
maintenance—much as your car
does. While a lot of the routine
maintenance tasks are built into
the computer’s system software,
some systems (and versions) are
better at accomplishing
maintenance tasks than others,
so some necessary tasks may not
be performed by your system.
Once a year, or perhaps twice if
a computer is in heavy
production use, it’s a good idea
to rebuild the directory, flush
caches, etc. If you don’t know
how to do regular maintenance,
call your tech or myself for
assistance.
Something most users don’t
realize is that modern operating
systems require a certain amount
of contiguous free space on the
boot hard drive (“contiguous”
means “unbroken” space that is
available in the same part of
the drive). For Macs I recommend
a minimum of 15%, although on
larger drives it may be possible
to shave that percentage a bit.
Virtual memory and swap files
are constantly written to the
hard drive, and if there is not
a good-sized chunk of free space
in one place to write to, the
system has to hunt for little
bits of free space to write,
erase, write etc. This can
really slow a computer down. A
good disk utility can check your
drive and will rewrite your data
to free up contiguous space.
This check should be done as
part of your routine
maintenance.
If you are chronically low on
drive space, consider a larger
internal drive or an additional
external drive. Computer
storage, particularly hard
drives, have become incredibly
inexpensive. A 1 Terabyte drive
can be had for as little as $85
these days, perhaps a little
less if you find a sale. On most
computers a new drive can be
installed and data transferred
within an hour. If you have a
machine that is difficult to get
into, external drives are not
much more expensive, and work
very well indeed.
If you want to keep productivity
up, and down-time minimal, plan
on getting annual maintenance on
your Mac or PC, and pay a little
attention to the amount of free
space on your drive… don’t let
it get too full.
Charles Lindauer
Lindauer Mac Consulting
707.479.6170
charles@lindauermacs.com
http://www.lindauermacs.com
