Simple Computer Maintenance for Small Businesses & Nonprofits

Early this year, a quiet turn of the calendar marked Year 6 for $1.8 million worth of desktop and server computers at a cutting-edge product development company where I was CIO. The strategy used to put this into place was simple - we based it on our cars.

The average automobile, if you follow the maintenance schedule, protect it from rust and drive reasonably, should last you six to 10 years. The maintenance schedule is based on your use of the car as a complex tool to get you from Point A to Point B. Your computer is also a complex tool and your usage will determine its maintenance and protection needs; how you follow through with those needs will determine how long you'll get to use your computer, and when you'll need to put monies toward its replacement.

This five-part routine is based on my experience since the early days of personal and "mobile" (Kaypro II) computers in the 1980's. It is equally applicable to both Windows®- and Macintosh®-based computers, although I use Windows® XP as an example throughout simply because of the Windows® prevalence. I am assuming an office / cubicle-based computer. If your computers are located in dusty warehouses or manufacturing floors, step up the physical annual maintenance routine to be quarterly.

1. VERIFY YOUR PHYSICAL SETUP

Just as it's hard to keep a car in top condition out in a pasture, it's hard to keep a computer functioning well if it's in a poor environment. There are three factors to consider: temperature, air quality and electricity.

For most computers, room temperature should be between 60-85 degrees Fahrenheit with a humidity level between 50-75% (to minimize any static build-up). While most offices are kept at this level, check with your landlord to ensure when you leave at night that the HVAC does not change (or is cutoff) to be above or below these levels.

Air quality is important because computers require air circulation to prevent overheating. There are two rules of thumb: First, the vents on the case need a good 3-4 inches of clear space (no blocking cable tangles, etc.) to get good airflow; that's roughly the width of your hand from thumb to pinkie finger. Second, if you use air cleaners / ionizers, keep them at least 2 feet from the computer or any particles heading for the cleaner will be drawn into the computer first.

Electricity is a dominant factor in determining the longevity of your computer. It's akin to the oil, fuel and coolant in your car's engine. Poor or dirty engine liquids will take their toll on your car and shorten its life. So-called "dirty" electricity (brownouts, surges, sags, spikes, etc.) will damage your computer, and your files, far more effectively than any virus.

There are four steps to good electrical conditions:

1. Ask your local power company to provide you a power profile / graph with the range of electrical sags and spikes entering your building over a typical billing period (if you lease, you may need to ask your landlord to obtain this). This will show you your problem areas and times. I recommend you obtain this report once per season (or quarter). We discovered a spike in power that occurred at 8:32am every morning when the neighboring manufacturing plant started its production lines.

2. Get good surge protection with battery backup. Plug your computer case and your monitor into the battery-back up portion - and your docking station if you have a laptop; everything else (including printer) simply receives surge protection. There are three goals for the 5-10 minutes of battery backup: provide you time to save your work; assess if this is just a momentary flicker or a longer outage; and then, for an outage, to turn off your computer.

3. After an outage, wait five minutes before turning back on your computer. If the power grid has problems, they will usually show up within less than 3-4 minutes after power is first restored.

4. Power sag problems can be noticed when your local printer suddenly prints comic-book characters ("@#!l%^", etc.) in the midst of printing. Beyond brief battery backup, contact the power company or a company like APC to work with you on solution options.

2. VERIFY YOUR ELECTRONIC SETUP

Automation is the name of the game when it comes to preventive computer maintenance for the busy small business owner or nonprofit executive. This is one area where automobiles are playing catch-up. There are three items that you must automate : virus protection, critical software updates and computer firewalls that are either part of the operating systems (such as Windows® XP's firewall) or part of your anti-virus software.

I recommend getting virus protection software that combines virus and spyware protection at a minimum; add the firewall option if you do not use an operating system with a built-in firewall (such as Windows® XP). Critical updates are just that - software patches rated as "critical" by the vendor; all other patches, enhancements and updates can wait for the end of the year.

3. MONTHLY PREVENTATIVE MAINTENANCE

Once a month, perform two tasks: clean your temporary files and empty your trash/recycle bin (you can do this with the "Disk Cleanup" utility in Windows® XP); and then defragment your computer (run the "Disk Defragmenter" utility in Windows® XP). Think of this as checking your oil, tire pressure, window washer fluid, and cleaning out the kids' toys in your car.

4. ANNUAL COMPUTER MAINTENANCE

Just like a car needs a tune-up once a year, so too does a computer. There are two parts: electronic and physical.

The electronic tune-up consists of the monthly maintenance plus a scan disk of your hard drives and a manual check of all software for updates. In Windows® XP, utilize the "Check Disk" utility - check both boxes to fix file system errors and scan for bad sectors.

For each software package such as Adobe® Reader or Microsoft® Office, check for updates using their built-in method or via their support/downloads website sections. Although you may not be required to do so, I recommend restarting your computer after each different software package has been updated. This will allow the various bits of code to properly "register" with the computer and cause any error messages to be isolated to the last update you did (versus just "something").

The physical tune-up is short, yet can be intimidating. Don't let it be.

First, turn off and unplug your computer and your monitor. Second, unplug the rest of the cables from the computer case - the network cable, the printer cable, etc. Inspect the cabling for any broken or frayed bits. Third, unscrew the case (generally in the back) and lift it off (some computers, like Dell and HP, have flip-cases that you press down a plastic button to open).

Now, with the hose/bristle-sweep attachment of your vacuum, clean off the air vents on the outside of the computer case and the monitor. Then, gently vacuum out the dust from inside the case. This is not a detailed spring cleaning; go lightly and quickly - it should take you less than 30 seconds.

5. INDEPENDENT "HEALTH CHECK"

At least once every 18 months, if not yearly, ask someone you trust, or who comes recommended, to do a "health check" of your systems and processes. Think of this as your "10-point" check or other type of review you might subject your car to prior to a big trip. You want this done by an IT professional who is a generalist, not someone specialized in a particular aspect like back-up software or databases, or who has a solution in need of a problem. You want personalized advice focused on your technology, business and environment.

For recommendations, look on the web at generalist IT and consulting professional societies like ICCA.org, SPConsultants.org or IMCUSA.org. Educational institutes and nonprofits should also look at technology providers on NTEN.org or TechSoup.org.

If you or your organization cannot devote the time away from your business or mission, or are uncomfortable handling this maintenance, treat it no differently than your car - ask for help for an IT professional or service firm. Use the annual "health check" process to see their quality of work prior to any long-term commitment.

Following these simple guidelines will help you get the best benefit out of the technology you have for the least cost.

Copyright 2006 John Avellanet

John Avellanet is the managing director of Cerulean Associates LLC, a Virginia-based consultancy focused on helping clients improve their bottom-line by aligning IT and Compliance with business strategies. Cerulean offers a workshop for nonprofits on Cost-Effective IT Strategies and a part-time CIO service for nonprofits and small to mid-sized businesses. More information and downloads can be found on their website (www.CeruleanLLC.com).

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Will Computers Ever Meet the Expectations Of Small Businesses?

Old School Vision of Computers

As a child of the 60's, I grew up watching Hollywood's vision

of the computer of the future. I use to watch in amazement as

TV character would feed a question into a computer and an

obscure answer would immediately be spit out. I remember

playing "computer" with my grade school friends in the

neighborhood. I put a cardboard box over me with a light bulb

jammed in the middle of it with a slot in the front. I would

have my friends write a question on a piece of paper and slip

it threw the slot, and as I made 'bleeping' and 'zooping'

noises, I replied to their questions about the universe, the

best a grade school child could.

I eventually outgrew the Hollywood vision of computers, or at

the very least, Hollywood's vision for the computers of the

future became a little more realistic. Although, the

reoccurring notion that computers will solve all our problems

won't go away. As recently as five or six years ago, I

remember seeing a commercial promoting the Internet and how it

will magically solve all our woes, minus all the 'bleeping'

and 'zooping' I remember from TV as a child.

Unfortunately, the promises of computers and the Internet have lagged behind our expectations of them, especially the expectations of small businesses. While large multinational corporations have been able to afford IT departments that could create specific applications to suite their needs, many small businesses were left out in the cold during the "computer revolution". If a small business had a specific need or requirement with respects to automating their business process, their only choice was to hire a computer consultant, who could take weeks, and possible months, to write their program, and charge a cost prohibitive amount for the service.

Unfortunately, the reality is that most small businesses have been left with the same applications and programs they've been using for the last 10 years. Computers for the small business resemble a typewriter of the past more than Hollywood's image of the computer of the future. At best, some small companies might have an individual on their staff that could create elaborate Spreadsheets, but more times than not, a computer was seen begrudgingly as items of unfulfilled promises.

The Second Coming of Computers

Over the last four or five years, there has been another "computer revolution", and unlike the "computer revolution" of the mid to late 90's, that mostly affected consumers and large businesses, this one is aimed at small businesses.

Threw the mid to late 90's, innovators and visionary's toted the Internet as the end-all-beat-all to everyone's woes and problems with promises of a "new economy" and riches for all. Everyone was excited about the promise of computers, and everyone was eager to hop on the Internet dot com bandwagon. I'm sure most people know of someone that attempted to make money off the Internet, from that cousin that attempted to start a web site, to that neighbor that changed careers and went threw a technical training to learn programming or systems administration.

When the tech bust of 2000 happened, thousands of individuals that had hoped to reach their goals threw computers and the Internet, found themselves unemployed and ferociously competing for jobs. Within a matter of months, job postings that were only receiving two or three resumes were suddenly being flooded with resumes. Over the course of months it went from being an employee's market to being an employers market.

The tragic events of 9/11 were what put the computer industry into a tailspin and ironically opened up the possibility of the second "computer revolution". As corporations froze their budgets and killed projects, thousand more individuals found themselves unemployed. For roughly one and a half years, the computer industry seemed to die on the vine, and as individuals began to become despondent, they began to change careers again hoping to make an income that could support their families and life styles.

Fortunately, a certain percentage of individuals refused to give up on a career in the IT industry, and many programmers began to search for alternatives to being employed by large corporate IT departments. Some were bitten by the entrepreneurial bug and began writing programs for industries they were familiar with from past careers. As new entrepreneurs began with limited budgets and resources, many of these programs were targeted towards smaller businesses.

Is There a Limit to the Industries Affected?

I myself use to consult with Fortune 500 companies, have moved my practice to small and mid-sized corporations. Since doing so I've become amazed at the evolution I've seen in some of the most surprising industries. The industry I'm most surprised with is the pest control industry. I have an acquaintance that has a pest control business. Basically he catches rats and mice for the food service industries.

We were talking one day about the subject of a second "computer revolution", when he began to share his own experience with it. Apparently, he had purchased an application that utilizes a bar code reader that records the status of his mice and rat traps. As he goes from customer to customer, he scans the traps and records the status of the trap, if it was empty, had a catch or even if the trap was gone. After he is done with his route for the day, he goes back to his office and downloads the data into his application and is able to compile trends at his customer's sites.

With the use of this database, he no longer has to rely on his memory, guessing, or digging threw paper work to figure out what is going on at his customer's sites. He can simply use his application and have his database tell him if his customer's site is clean, infested or if the infestation has moved. Based on these reports, he is able to sell his customers more accurate services and products based on their individual needs. He claims his business has grown approximately 12% over the last two years threw the use of this product.

After I moved my practice to small and mid-sized business, I stumbled across a small application that I have since recommended to many of my customers in the Service Industry. I had a customer that is in the Chimney Sweep industry, and for their industry, the business is considered quite large with 9 trucks and approximately 30 employees. They had been experiencing many problems with issues like inventory, dispatching/scheduling, and invoicing they wished to correct threw the use of a customized application.

In an attempt to make the business more productive and profitable, they had contacted me with the desire my company write a program that would fulfill all their needs. Upon assessing their requirements I quickly analyzed that that it would be a more cost effective solution to identify an existing product that could fulfill all their needs. After a few days of searching I discovered an Enterprise Resource Planner (ERP) for small Service-oriented industries.

The application was written by a group of three programmers who found their jobs outsourced to India in 2002. One of them had experience in the HVAC industry prior to changing his career in the mid 90's, after discovering himself unemployed but still with hopes of staying in the IT industry, he wrote the application with two of his former co-workers.

After discovering the software vendor, I worked with them to identify their products full potential and eventually established it was flexible enough to be a good match for my customer's requirements. With a good deal of hindsight, the programmers developed their product on Open Source technology, which allows parts of programs to be distributed for free, allowing it to be created for a fraction of the cost their counter parts of the 90's.

My customer is now able to manage invoicing, purchase orders, inventory, scheduling/dispatch, and Marketing with two - three office employees verses the four - five they need a few years ago. The application, which the multi-user version costs approximately $2,500 and the single-user version costs approximately $650, is very cost effective.

For a smaller business to have an application of this versatility and functionality would have been unfathomable prior to 2001. I have since installed this application into several customers, all of which have become dependant upon it for the smooth operation of their companies.

The Promise has Finally Arrived

For smaller companies wishing to experience the promises of computers the time is finally here. More and more small computer vendors are springing up, producing complex and cost effective applications and products for most conceivable industries.

For small businesses to reap the benefits of present technology, they need to:

1. Know exactly what business process you wish to affect with the introduction of software.

2. Do your homework on the Internet, there are many small software vendors out there, if you do a through search, a vendor can be found with the solutions you need.

3. If you wish to use a consultant to identify a solution, don't assume they are familiar with your industries needs and requirements. Ask what experience and solutions they've had with your specific industry.

4. Get references, an established firm should be able to produce previous customers that can vouch for their quality of work.

5. Get a break down of the costs involved with the installation of the product. Get it in writing if there is any training or tech support.

6. A consulting firm should be attentive to you and your needs. There are good consulting firms out there and there are bad consulting firms out there, the difference should be evident in the amount of effort and energy they spend to identify the correct solution for you and your company.

While we are definitely in the beginning of the second computer revolution, unfortunately, if you are expecting to magically obtain the benefits of it, chances are you'll be let down. Expect to do some work when trying to find the right solution for you and your business. The more energy you spend in trying to find the right solution will directly equate out to the amount of increased productivity and profitability your company will experience after the solution is installed.

While computer solutions may never reach the point where an individual will simply input a question or problem and suddenly receive an answer, small businesses are much further ahead of where they were five years ago.

Keith Tyson

Midwest Business Performance, Inc.

[http://www.mbp-inc.net]

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Computer Tips that Help Small Businesses Operate Profitably

When working properly, computers enable small businesses to make big business profits; however, get booted off your computer and you're suddenly starving. In most instances, computers usually act up due to lack of care by its owners. Here are four computer tips that'll keep you up and running smoothly.

Tip #1 -- Back up your computer's data no less than once a month.

Too often a small business is thrust back to infancy because it didn't take time to back up precious data; information that took hours upon hours to create. Information that's irreplaceable, such as customer databases or employment contracts. Keep in mind you'll want to back up your written data as well as check books such as Quicken and email address books. If your computer has a CD writer, it's simple and quick to back up your data. Simply select the files and folders you want to back up and copy them to the writer.

Or if you have an older computer, copy your most important files to a floppy disk. Either way, don't stop there; now take the CD or disk and store it in a fire-safe box! To expedite the process, organize your files within folders so you can quickly grab and copy one or two folders.

Tip #2 - Don't turn off your computer every evening.

Too frequently computer users turn their computers off every evening. This is unnecessary and not recommended. A computer's components are at their most vulnerable when turned on and off. When a computer has to heat up [turn on] or cool down [turn off] it's at this precise moment components fail. It's recommended you turn your computer off once or twice a week or only when necessary, such as from a power outage. However, don't do the opposite and never turn your computer off, since many anti-virus programs require a computer reboot be performed before new virus patches take effect.

Tip #3 -- Automate anti-virus software so it updates automatically no less than once a week.

Depending on your software, you may need to prompt it to update. Unfortunately, there are people with too much time on their hands who desire to attack and make your computer unusable. A computer user is not ultimately protected from viruses and spyware [pop-ups, cookies, etc.] unless you're using a combination of anti-virus and anti-spyware software and a firewall, a piece of hardware that protects computers from being hacked. You must have all three pieces in order to ward off viruses, lurkers and attacks. What's more, most of the attacks are very quiet. You don't know someone is on your computer. Instead, they secretly store information, such as child pornography or music MP3s on your computer, since it's illegal, and redirect child-porno or MP3 seekers to your computer instead of theirs.

Tip #4 -- Install a firewall if you keep your computer constantly on.

Using a broadband or DSL connection dramatically increases your exposure to being hacked. It only takes an average of 15 minutes being online before a home-based computer is attacked. The only true way to protect a computer from a hacker is to install a hardware firewall. It's a misconception that software-based firewalls ultimately defend computers. This is simply not true. Computers must have a hardware firewall for ultimate protection, such as a SonicWall or Netscreen firewall, a component installed between a home user's cable or DSL connection and their computer.

About The Author

Sharron Senter is co-founder of VisitingGeeks.com - an on site computer repair, security and networking company that helps families, home power users and small businesses north of Boston, Southern NH and Maine. Visiting Geeks? technicians are crackerjacks at squashing viruses, pop-ups and securing and making computers perform faster. To reach Visiting Geeks call (978) 346-4087 or visit http://www.VisitingGeeks.com. Sharron?s also the author of, ?Make Money While Sleeping.? Learn more at http://www.sharronsenter.com/fs_increase_seo.shtml

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