All posts by Scott Alan Miller

Started in software development with Eastman Kodak in 1989 as an intern in database development (making database platforms themselves.) Began transitioning to IT in 1994 with my first mixed role in system administration.
Purchasing

Desktop and Laptop Purchasing

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The first rule for any purchasing situation is, of course, plan.  Desktop and laptop purchasing is no different.  A good plan is the first step to good spending when it comes to your small business’ personal computer needs.  This plan should, quite obviously, be made in conjunction with your IT department or manager who will have valuable input not only to features that may be needed but also important information as to the IT staff’s readiness to support specific models and features.

The first piece of advice that I generally give to small businesses looking to purchase new computers is to not become religious about which vendor to choose.  There are many good vendors.  I, like all IT professionals, tend to be pretty biased towards one vendor over all others and have a few vendors which I specifically dislike.  I won’t mention any of them by name here.  But most anyone to whom you will speak looking for purchasing advice will be almost religiously zealous about one brand over another.  In reality, all of the serious players make very good equipment and you can get your needs met very well by any one of them.  Your key players in the desktop and laptop space include Lenovo, Dell, Acer, Toshiba, Hewlett-Packard and Fujitsu.  Apple, of course, is also an important vendor but is rarely, if ever, purchased in competition with other vendors.  Apple hardware is purchased to run Mac OSX.  There is rarely a buying decision made involving Apple that is not made simply through operating system support necessity so there is no point in including them here.

All of these vendors make great products so don’t worry if your pet vendor does not get picked in the end.  There are other, more important, considerations that demand your attention.  Picking the vendor to supply your needs will most likely be determined by factors that are often overlooked.  Here are a few factors which you should consider when picking your vendor:

  • Which vendor can provide a “holistic” supply of all of your desktop, laptop, netbook and server needs?  Working with a single vendor is often preferable to working with serveral when it can be avoided.  This leaves Dell and Hewlett-Packard as your true “stand outs” simply because of their broad and impressive portfolios.
  • Which vendor’s products are most able to be supported by your IT department or your IT service vendor?  If your IT provider has great expertise with certain makes and models then these may present an advantage not to be overlooked because your IT staff will already be prepared for hidden “gotchas”, common failures, repair tactics, documentation, driver issues, etc.
  • Which models support operating systems that you are using today and any that you expect that you may use during the lifespan of the product?
  • Which models have features which, on their own, are important to your business such as type of processor, power consumption, network options or management features such as Intel ATM?
  • Which products provide the warranty that makes you most comfortable?  I generally recommend getting units that come with a standard three-year warranty as this covers, by default, most of the life of the hardware.

The second piece of advice that I give to small businesses at the beginning of their purchasing process is to be sure to only deal with commercial products.  That means to avoid consumer-grade products at any cost.  There are many reasons why commercial-grade equipment is important to your business and I will just touch on some of the highlights.  I should point out that I also give this advice to individuals looking to purchase computers for home use for the exact same reasons.  In general, computer manufactures make consumer grade equipment for a less discerning audience and you never want to run your business on anything designed around a lower degree of discernment when you have the option.

  • Companies stake their reputations on their commercial products, not their consumer ones.  The bulk of sales go to businesses and this is where the real money is.  Large companies do not turn down large orders because of home-user complaints and so only issues with commercial products impact corporate buying decisions.
  • Commercial products are often purchased in large quantities to single purchasing managers with a great deal of control over the success of that particular model.  Vendors have a lot at stake with each order and work hard to make sure that the equipment is reliable and consistent.  Consumer gear is sold on an individual basis and so vendors have no reason to pursue consistency and rather than making systems reliable it is easier for them to replace them quickly when their fail.  So consumer parts are cheaper and have less testing.
  • Commercial products are produced in fewer, more useful, configurations in larger quantity.  This means that each model gets a high degree of scrutiny and testing both by the vendor and by highly skilled IT departments.  Consumer goods get a lesser degree of internal diligence and are purchased mostly by average home users who do not provide a great degree of detailed technical feedback to the vendor and to the community.
  • Corporate buyers demand that their systems be field repairable and modifiable using standard parts.  This causes commercial systems to be, almost always, extremely easy to repair and upgrade.  Consumer gear is often highly proprietary and made using non-standard parts making repair and upgrade processes less reliable.  This has decreased in recent years but is still prevalent.
  • Software vendors, like Microsoft or Red Hat, have a much larger interest in making sure that corporate machines are well tested and supported from a driver perspective.  Supporting hardware that may only exist in a relatively few consumer machines is of lesser importance.
  • Commercial hardware is almost always manufactured directly by the vendor directly or under contract to that vendor with heavy supervision.  Consumer systems are often manufactured by third parties, sometimes with no vendor interaction, and then simply labeled with the vendor’s brand name and sold as if the vendor had manufactured it themselves.  Often this results in system documentation and drivers available only from websites hosted in Taiwan with little or no support in English (which is important to my readers who only get SMB IT Journal in English.)
  • Warranty support for commercial systems is generally far superior to warranty support for consumer systems.  Vendors will often overnight parts and allow field repairs at the end-user’s request.  Consumer systems often have to be shipped back to the vendor and will be shipped back weeks later having been wiped clean while out for repairs.
  • Phone support for consumer gear usually involves off-shore call centers using staff that does not work for the vendor in question.  Commercial phone support, while still often off-shored, is usually handled by internal vendor staff with direct access to internal resources when necessary.
  • Most vendors have local partner firms who are available to help your business work with, modify and acquire their commercial gear.  Consumer gear is often available only via the web or from large consumer electronics chains.  One channel is designed for business users and one is clearly not.  Access to local partners can be a big advantage when you need warranty repairs but dare not ship your equipment away or when you need any number of custom services.
  • Commercial hardware generally ships with OEM (original equipment manufacturer) licensed copies of Microsoft Windows in “business” configurations (i.e. Windows Vista Business or Windows XP Pro) which are appropriate for businesses to use while consumer hardware almost always comes with “home” editions of the same operating systems which are not appropriate for business use.  I have known many businesses to mistakenly purchase consumer gear and then have to pay full price for an appropriate Windows license after having thought that they were saving money.
  • Commercial hardware is seldom more expensive than consumer gear by more than fifteen percent and often is comparable in price and sometimes less expensive.  Price is a rather nominal factor when other features are compared side by side.
  • Commercial hardware is generally built on far superior chipsets and with more reliable technologies while consumer gear often comes with “flashy” features designed to entice users looking to use this hardware for entertainment puroses.  In speed tests, commercial gear from major vendors tends to outperform consumer gear from the same vendors when all other specifications are the same.  There are many facets to computer system building that are not mentioned “on the box” and this is one place where consumer-grade equipment can skimp because the purchasing process does not take these things into consideration.
  • Commercial products generally have excellent online documentation while consumer gear often lacks in this area quite dramatically.
  • Commercial hardware is often warranties for much longer periods of time than is consumer gear and generally lasts for many times longer than its warranty period without incident.  It is not uncommon for commercial desktops to be in use after more than ten years.
  • Commercial hardware is often less noisy than consumer gear.  Good commercial computers are often nearly silent.
  • Commercial products look professional and uniform when outsiders, or even employees, come into your offices.  Consumer gear gives the impression that people have been bringing in computers from home to use at work and can give a bad impression to your clients and even to your own employees.

When purchasing your new computers keep in mind the importance of uniformity.  Your IT staff, especially if it is just one or two people, but even if you have a large staff, will appreciate the opportunity to get to know the hardware which they support.  This can do much to reduce support issues and downtime.  It is very comforting to know that when a desktop technician arrives at your desk to fix your computer that they know every screw, port, cable and part of that computer inside and out and that they can take it apart and put it back together without thinking twice.

This hardware familiarity means that upgrades are handles much better as well.  If each machine is unique in your environment and you decide to upgrade all machines to double their memory (RAM) then you may be in for one surprise after another as your desktop technicians open up the machines to discover that they have differing types of memory, different configurations and different limits from each other.  Each machine will be a new surprise on its own.  If all of the machines were the same then the technicians would already know that the current configuration was two sticks of one gigabyte each and that there were two open slots which could accomodate a total of four more gigabytes but that the existing sticks had to be moved to the empty slots before putting in the new memory in the currently used slots.  Simple upgrades that are almost a no-brainer in a uniform environment can become a maintenance nightmare when equipment varies dramatically.

Another important consideration for desktop and laptop purchasing is that of the operating system.  Small businesses, unlike large enterprises who get their operating systems through bulk volume licenses with Microsoft, generally get their software licenses through the OEM copies that are included with their purchases.  Small businesses may opt to work with a volume licensing program as well but this generally adds extra cost which only makes sense in the large scale of big enterprises.  Because of this small businesses need to be very aware of the included software license of the desktop and buy accordingly.  The cost of changing the operating system on a newly purchased computer should the wrong operating system be purchased with the system can easily be fifty-percent again the cost of the original computer.  A rather significant mistake to make.

In addition to considering the operating system that ships with the computer we should also consider if we will be changing operating systems during the life of the computer.  If this is the case then we need to be sure that the computer is able to accomodate the changes in the future.  Often this is a guessing game and cannot be determined up front but this is not always so.  Currently it is very common to purchase computers to run Windows XP with the intent of eventually, or at least potentially, moving to Windows Vista.  Many commercial machines today ship with both operating systems as options.  It is very easy for a business today to purchase a machine that is certified to run either operating system so that the business can upgrade when they are ready without needing to purchase new hardware in order to support the new operating system.  Even better is cases where the computer comes dual-licensed and the older operating system can be used until such time as the migration process is ready and then the newer operating system can be installed without any additional licensing costs.

Of course with any computer purchasing plan we also need to consider basic features.  For most businesses there are very few important features for a desktop model.  Almost any desktop unit will suffice from a raw feature perspective.  Occassionally special features like Intel AMT are required but this is rather uncommon and less common in smaller offices.  Laptops often have a few additional features of interest such as wireless connection technologies, availability of docking stations and port extenders, size, weight, etc.

Careful planning for these features can have a big impact on an office environment.  For example, purchasing ten laptops with expensive 802.11n wireless technology might be a great way to improve wireless productivity but it could all be worthless if you accidentally buy one cheap laptop that only has 802.11b causing your wireless system to degrade itself to support the lowest common denominator in your environment.  Or buying all of your gear with GigE connections just to discover there is no budget for a GigE switch or cabling.

Another important factor to consider when planning your buying decisions that applies exclusively to desktops is form factor.  Most major vendors provide commercial products in one of three basic sizes.  The largest size is the “mini-tower” which is the form factor with which most of us are most familiar today.  This form factor looks best when standing “upright” and is, as it sounds, a small tower.  It is able to accept full-sized expansion cards which may be an important consideration depending on what your users will be doing with their desktop computers.  Often mini towers can accomodate two or more hard drives.

The medium form factor is generally known as “small form factor”, SFF or “desktop form factor”.  This is the more traditional desktop style computers that we see mostly in office environments and less often at home.  This form factor is roughly the same size as the mini tower but is “thinner” making it work best when laying on the desk.  This makes it very stable and often it works very well as a stand on which to place your monitor.  This size also fits well under desks especially when mounted to the under side of the desk.  Many SFF models are also designed to be easy to stack so that they can be stacked on a desk when need be.  I often use then this way myself as I use several desktops at a time and have them stacked behind my monitor array.  Small form factor desktops generally can only accept “half height” expansion cards which limits their options significantly although it is not very common for businesses to need to expand their desktops in this way.  Small form factor desktops can often accomodate up to two hard drives although only being able to fit a single drive is quite common as well.  Many vendors provide stands that allow SFF desktops to stand on their sides.  Special stands are needed because they generally vent from their sides and cannot be sat directly on them.

The least common and smallest is the Ultra Small desktop.  Most commercial vendors only make a few special high volume models in this smallest form factor due to its increased cost and lack of popularity.  Often to keep the size small on these units they have only a single expansion slot, lack many standard ports and can only handle slower than standard processors because of heat dissipation issues.  It is not uncommon for them to have less memory growth options than their larger siblings.  These machines are very commonly mounted under desks as they are so small.  They are very easy to manage for companies that regularly need to move their computers around.  IT staff can easily carry them from desk to desk and transporting several by car is no problem.

Display output is another important consideration when choosing desktops and laptops.  It is becoming increasingly common for office workers to have multiple monitors and not all computers are prepared to handle this.  Many commercial machines support dual monitors out of the box but many require special expansion cards to handle this.  Planning to buy computers that provide this capability natively or planning to add on expansions should be considered from the onset of the purchasing project.  Laptops often have the ability to add a monitor built in either to the laptop itself or, at least, to a docking station.  This can make laptop users far more productive when they are sitting at their desks.  Many businesses opt to simply add high-end graphics cards to their desktop units that support multiple monitors in addition to providing increased GPU power to their users.  This can be a good option but can easily add as much as twenty-five percent to the cost of the hardware so should be considered carefully.  Common configurations appropriate for business machines will often be around ten percent of the initial hardware cost.

As you can see, there are many factors that should be considered when making a desktop or laptop purchase and in this discussion we have not even begun to discuss those factors that everyone discusses under normal circumstances such as cost, availability, performance, etc.  The point here is that cafeful planning should be employed and should not be a purely emotional or financial decision but should involve the staff who will be supporting and managing these devices as they will have a great deal of important insight into this process in your environment.  Be sure to have your IT strategist, whether this is an IT manager or your desktop support technician, play the key role in this process.

IT Management, Purchasing

Buying Printers for Small Business

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While some small businesses today have managed to ween themselves from the world of paper, the vast majority of small and medium businesses are still tied, to some degree, to their printers and faxes no matter how hard we all try to move away from them.  Everyone recognizes the cost of acquiring printers, maintaining them, networking them, stocking ink and toner, etc. and yet we just cannot quite manage to do away with them completely.  Given that printers remain a business necessity we should treat them as such and devise a well-planned printing strategy for our business whether it is for an office with two users and a single printer or several offices with dozens of printers or more.  Every business will benefit from planning before purchasing their printers.

One of the biggest mistakes that I have seen happen time and time again is with small businesses deciding that they need a printer and runing out to buy one at the local shop without any planning whatsoever including failing to determine if the printer being purchased will even meet the immediate need let alone fit into an ongoing printing strategy.  Printers are so common, lack significantly visible new features between generations, are low enough in cost and are so readily available in the consumer market that it is misleading to businesses making them think that buying any printer off of the shelf will meet their printing needs, but this simply is not the case.

Our first concern in printer purchasing is in appropriately sizing our printers.  Before buying a printer we need to decide what type of printing load it will need to handle over its lifetime.  Many small businesses today, as paper begins to phase out, will find that even a very small printer will provide more than enough capacity for an entire office.  If users can share a single printer then printing costs can be saved through centralized printing.  It is far cheaper to maintain a single printer and to stay stocked with supplies for one printer than for one printer on everyone’s individual desks.

If reliability is of concern you could place two printers in the office to be shared and have half of the staff print to one printer and the other half to the other but permission everyone to both printers so that, if one should fail, everyone would remain able to print.  You could take the opportunity to place the printers in different areas of the office to reduce time walking to the printer to pick up printed pages.

Most small offices have no problem sharing a single printer for most printing needs with a single, separate printer on the desk of whoever is doing personnel management to allow for “private” printing for times when the data coming out of the printer cannot be seen by just anyone in the office.  Although this type of printing is one of the areas where the company can go paperless the most easily and so this may not be a factor in your office.

Now that we are considering shared printers we must concern ourselves with making sure that the printer(s) that we are selecting has a duty cycle capable of handling the printing needs of the entire office.  In many cases any printer will be up to this task but for offices who print customer invoices throughout the day, for example, may want to step up to a slightly more heavy-duty model designed for the extra wear and tear.  Larger duty-cycle printers often use lower cost ink or toner supplies that reduce the per-page printing cost that is highest with smaller, lower-cost printers.  For an office with very heavy printing needs the cost savings of big printers can be significant just in the cost savings from the supplies before even considering other factors.  Larger printers will generally also hold more paper reducing time spent restocking the printer and will often have other cost saving features such as dual-sided printing and automatic collation.

Many business also need additional functions in addition to pure printing such as faxing, scanning and copying.  These functions are natural extensions of the printer and are available in office all-in-one multi-function printer models.  Often, though, low end all-in-one models are marketed heavily towards small businesses in the hopes that these businesses will buy on a whim without researching duty cycles and supply costs as these models often include a cheap-to-acquire, expensive-to-maintain printing element bundled with the unit.  In general, printer manufactures make their big money on printer supplies and almost nothing on the printers themselves so we must be acutely aware of the specifications of the printer portion of the all-in-one unit before making a purchase.  Often a single all-in-one multi-function printer will suffice for even a relatively large office and any additional printing needs could be met with high-volume printers that do not have additional functions included in them saving additional costs through careful planning.

We must also consider how our new printer or multifunction device will connect to our network.  Most low cost printers use USB connections to allow them to connect to a single workstation or server for printing.  This is fine for most home users and very small offices but larger offices (and many advanced home users) find this unsuitable as it means that all printing must go through someone’s workstation and that the computer must be in close proximity to the printer.  The computer must also be on at any time that the printer is being used and maintenance on the computer will impact the printer as well.  I know many small offices that only use this model and for them it works fine, but it does cause additional management overhead that is not necessary.

Networked printers have long been the norm in the office environment and they provide many advantages over direct-attached print devices.  Networked printers can be located anywhere on the network whether or not there is a computer close-at-hand.  Networked printers can be monitored and managed on the network just like any other network device making their management costs lower from an IT perspective.  Network printers can print even if no other computer is turned on.  Some network printers have wireless networking built in giving them additional flexibility.  Non-network enabled printers can be made into virtual network printers through the use of a print server such as HP’s DirectJet or the NetGear PS121.  Print servers are often built in to multi-function network appliances such as small business firewalls like the Apple AirPort Extreme.  These types of devices will allow you to attach any USB printer to the network if you did not buy this functionality built in to your printing device.

Often overlooked by small businesses is the differences between laser and other printer technologies such as ink jet.  Generally, laser printers cost more to purchase but have lower lifetime operational costs both from a hardware perspective as well as from a printing supply perspective.  Laser printers are more likely to be able to be fixed when parts wear out and their toner costs are almost always significantly lower than the cost of ink for ink jets and need to be changed out far less frequently making printers less of a manual burden as well.

The output of a laser printer is almost always more pleasing as well and looks more professional.  It is difficult to hide the use of an ink jet printer and even if the reader does not directly notice the quality of the printing subconsciously they will often register that the printing process was less than professional.  This may not matter for most of your office printing, but considering that laser printing is generally cheaper in the long run there is little reason to not also get the best looking prints possible.

Ink jet, bubble jet and other non-laser technologies generally come into serious consideration only when photo printing is required which is very rare in a business environment.  High quality colour printing requires additional printer management and very expensive paper and ink supplies.  For most businesses, if this type of printing is needed, it would be needed in addition to, not in place of, traditional monochromatic laser printing.  Colour laser is another consideration for presentation graphics but is generally not suitable for photographic printing.  Colour laser adds additional cost that is seldom warranted for the type of printing that most businesses need to do.

So, in conclusion, when making a printer buying decision for small business we must carefully consider our printer strategy.  We must size our environment, take into consideration our network design, scale our printer(s) appropriately, consider the cost not only of the printer but also of the printer supplies and consider the manner in which the final prints will be used.  A simple spreadsheet can be used to do some very useful and telling calculations about print volume, printer cost and the cost of supplies.  All of the information necessary to do these calculations should be available from printer vendor web sites.  Consider your printer to be an investment and research accordingly and, as always, use your IT department, whether internal or outsourced, as a resource in any IT purchasing decision – it is their job to understand the technical differences in these products and to provide you with the necessary information to discern between different models, vendors and technologies.

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Considering NetBooks for Small Business

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There really is not any question about whether or not NetBooks will be an important tool for businesses of all sizes – they will be.  The upsides to NetBooks are too big to overlook: highly portable, generally more rugged that laptop counterparts due to size, light weight, easier to store and transport and mostly quite inexpensive compared to traditional laptops.  There are exceptions to any rule but the prototypical NetBook is dramatically smaller than a traditional laptop, weighs only one to two pounds (under a kilogram) and often costs no more than seventy percent as much as a laptop (any price comparison is massively subjective for obvious reasons.)

The question is not whether or not NetBooks are a good idea, but whether or not the NetBook market is ready for the enterprise (or, in our case, the SMB.)  While the idea of NetBooks has been around for quite some time that realization of the market has only begun to take effect within the past two years.  The NetBook was originally developed by Psion in 2000 but they exited the market in 2003.  The next big player was the United Nations with the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) which was an extremely low cost, ruggedized, Linux-based NetBook available for just $199USD.  With the development of the OLPC and the ecosystem of suppliers and developers that it fostered the low-cost, portable Internet device market was set to explode.

The big news for normal consumers came in 2007 when Asus, a major Taiwanese manufacturer famous for their high-quality motherboards, released their EEE PC line of NetBooks and, later, NetTops.  The EEE PC proved to be a major hit with consumers because of its low price tag, attractice looks and size.  Once the market was identified many manufactures jumped in with top-tier manufacturers like Acer, Lenovo, Dell and HP finally in the market now as well albeit generally from their consumer divisions and not from their commercial divisions.

Today we are in a rapidly maturing consumer NetBook market.  This means that NetBooks are well established, widely available and stable but, thus far, only in configurations designed for consumer use.  This presents our first barrier when considering these devices for the workplace.

With only rare exception, NetBooks ship with either consumer versions of Microsoft Windows (i.e. XP Home, Vista Home) or with non-enterprise versions of Linux (i.e. Linpus, Mandriva.)  To be sure, there are a few machines that ship with appropriately enterprise class operating systems like Vista Business or SUSE Linux but mostly the operating system that you find on the NetBooks are not the same as you would require in your business.  (Many niche NetBook manufactures do ship with Ubuntu or Fedora which are acceptable to many businesses but these are rare as well.)

In some cases, such as the very popular Acer Aspire One, it is quite easy for an IT department to establish their own operating system image and to apply it to the NetBook.  This is hardly a cost effective approach for a small shop to take, however.  This is only an effective approach under very specific circumstances or for very large orgazations who will be rolling out a large number of identically imaged machines and can spread the cost out over the group.

In the case of the Acer Aspire One we have a very well built unit that runs either Linpus Linux (a derivative of Fedora 8) or Windows XP Home.  Windows Home editions are not able to be integrated into business environments so we can rule out that option completely.  The cost of obtaining an additional XP Pro license would be very prohibitive on hardware that is so inexpensive.

The Linpus model is significantly less expensive than the Windows XP Home model and can be outfitted with a custom build of Fedora 10 replacing the including system at no additional external expense.  This does require a rather knowledgable Linux engineer to do and takes many hours to perfect and test.  Most likely a few days of labor at a minimum.  Only large shops with good internal Linux expertise or smaller shops with IT outsourcing partners with the necessary expertise should attempt to go down this path as it leaves you completely without any form of vendor support.  It also requires your IT department to monitor and support an additional operating system image unless you have already standardized on Fedora – which is not very common.  There are other options, such as installing OpenSUSE or an Ubuntu variant but these require additional work as Fedora is used to create the Linpus base and installs so easily onto the device.

Using Linux-based NetBooks often presents another problem.  On a normal corporate desktop running Linux it is most common to find either KDE or Gnome running as the desktop.  These are the two most popular, full featured desktop environments for the UNIX platforms and, to most users, it is the choice of KDE or Gnome that establishes the familiarity with the environment and not the underlying operating system.  Because of this, users who have used KDE on SUSE Linux can often be switched to KDE on PC-BSD without the user even realizing that the operating system has changed (Linux to FreeBSD.)  But NetBooks are often underpowered when it comes to running these heavy desktops and so alternatives are generally recommended.  Most commonly today we see XFCE chosen as a lightweight desktop environment alternative but even lighter options exist such as IceWM.  These environments can make NetBooks very usable instead of being slow and cumbersome but they do cause users to face potentially unfamiliar interfaces that can lead to additional support needs and possibly even training.

Having NetBooks available for a certain class of highly mobile or continuously on-call personnel can make a lot of sense.  The advantages are very real and, while some users are put off by the small screens and keyboards and dislike the lack of high-performance hardware, many users adore the portability and easy of use of these small devices.  If having a NetBook makes the difference between staff being able to work or having to disconnect from the office then the NetBooks will easily pay for themselves.

For most businesses I feel that we are still in a phase of early-adoption when it comes to NetBooks.  The hardware itself is well tested and widely available but the software is mostly not ready at this time.  In the next two years I expect that we will see a lot of advances in the market, especially as AMD and NVidia are expected to begin entering the market in force during this time allow with other potential players who currently have had very little input to the market such as Freescale.

Currently, and for the near future, businesses looking to NetBooks need to almost across the board make a commitment to using Linux rather than Windows.  The Windows operating system is just not ready to handle the NetBook market and will likely wait until NetBooks catch up to modern laptops in performance before really looking to enter the enterprise NetBook market.  During the mean time, however, alternative architectures, such as PowerPC, ARM and MIPS, are being experimented with within the market and their adoption poses a technological barrier to running Windows on these devices.  Microsoft may find that the NetBook could be a critical loss of market for them as Linux vendors like Novell, Red Hat and Canonical will see it as an inroad into the enterprise desktop space.  It is not coincidence that Red Hat has just announced its official return to competiting in this market.

At this particular time I feel that it is good to begin investigating NetBooks and seeing how they may or may not fit into your business IT strategy.  Most small businesses will find, like their large enterprise cousins, that the NetBook is inexpensive to obtain but expensive to support in a corporate environment.  This will be changing rapidly as the NetBook format becomes more common and business begin to clamour more and more to get these provided, in business-ready configurations, from the top vendors.

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Free Web Reporting with Google Analytics

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As a small business it can often be a challenge to obtain deep insight into the workings of your information technology organization.  When it comes to web sites there have always been a number of decent, free tools that would do the job adequately, such as Webalizer.  But these tools require some level of additional setup and expertise which means either more time being spent on your own attempting to learn and manage another IT skill or paying your IT staff to do so.  Today we have another option.

Google offers a great, free product available online called Google Analytics.  Analytics is a complete website tracking package that sends all of its data to the Google Analytics website where you can view your statistics online or have a report emailed to yourself automatically at set intervals.  Google handles all of the code, storage and reporting involved in keeping tabs on your company’s websites making your job very easy and allowing you to focus on your business rather than your technology needs.

The system works very simply.  After signing up with Google as an Analytics user you go through a very simple process of adding a web site to be monitored to your account and then Google generates a small snippet of JavaScript code which you then need to copy and paste into the code of your website.  This works for multi-page sites and with most content management systems such as WordPress – although for a CMS you will need to check your CMS documentation to know exactly where to place the code.

Obviously it will take a little while for Analytics to begin collecting the data that it needs in order to generate reports for you.  After a day or so you should begin to see the reports in action, although it takes a month or more before the data that is collected will really begin being valuable to you.  Some of the most important data obtained from a web site is changes in your readership over time to alert you to when you are doing things right or doing them wrong for your market.

Google Analytics collects and collates a lot of useful information for you.  You can see breakdowns of which pages are drawing readers and which are turning them away.  You can see what search terms readers are using to find your site.  Analytics also provides a very nice map report that allows you to see your readership from around the world.

Using Google Analytics you can find out more about the users that your site is attracting and you can learn how they are using your site.  By obtaining this data you can learn how you can better reach you intended customer base or learn more about your existing customers.  It can also teach you what information on your site users are able to find and what process they are using to reach that information.  A tool like Google Analytics or Webalizer is a critical first step in making your web sites work for you.

Visit Google Analytics’s Features Page to learn more about the features available from this product.