Imagine owning a car and never checking the tyres, oil or water while ignoring any flashing lights on your dashboard.
Then imagine, when it breaks down, you desperately flick through the yellow pages to find the cheapest mechanic that can fix it immediately.
That's what the vast majority of businesses do with their computer systems.
Like the mechanic, a computer tech is a tradesman. When you call a tradesman out to a crisis it means you are up for a big bill. Whether it's cars, plumbing or computers, it's best to pick up a problem early than before a disaster happens.
Finding a tech can be a problem, though; there's few barriers to anyone who knows something about computers, and a few that don’t, putting up a sign saying "I'm a computer tech". Many of these people can barely be trusted with the family computer let alone the systems that keep your business running.
The first step in finding a good support organisation is to ask around. Your accountant, contractors and clients might know some names. Word of mouth is always the best reference.
Next, you need to know how big they are. The single man operator is often very good. But they are going to struggle supporting you and a dozen other customers.
Ideally a small support company will have at least four techs. This gives them a range of skills and they won’t have to rely on one or two people to service you.
Once you've found a support company with a number of staff you need to look at their pricing; "the no fix, no fee" and the "no call out fee" guys are firmly aimed at the consumer market. Their services are based on fixing comparatively small problems. You want to be avoiding problems, not having someone rush out to fix them when you can.
The hourly rate itself is a warning sign. A professional tech support outfit simply cannot provide quality services, employ decent staff and make a profit at under a $100 an hour. $150 is probably closer to a realistic rate when dealing with server support and network issues.
You should also remember that good techs cost. An experienced computer guy charging $150 an hour will often fix a problem in the first hour that the inexperienced $25 an hour tech will take two days to fix, if at all.
The support company should offer a support plan or retainer. This support plan will include documenting the system, monitoring its performance and regular inspections.
It's important to emphasise how critical support plans are. It's a win for both the tech and the customer. The customer gets regular maintenance done while the tech company has regular jobs that allows them to plan their cash and work flows.
One absolute no-no is buying on the recommendations your local computer superstore. The big box movers aim squarely at the home market. The stock at the computer superstore is rarely designed for business use and, even if it was, the staff couldn't support it.
Just as an aside, some businesses make the mistake of not only buying from the local computer superstore but also hiring one of the shop assistants to help them with setup. This almost always turns to tears.
Your IT investments are important to your business, so it's important they are looked after by someone who knows what they are doing.
Saturday, September 08, 2007
Small Business IT mistake 3: Buying bad equipment
Just as frustrating as old equipment for the tech guru or IT guy is bad equipment. By bad equipment, I mean cheap kit that isn't up to the job.
The problems with bad equipment are numerous; they won't last as long, the warranties will be poor, the after sales support will be awful and they will have lots of downtime.
Probably the biggest trap is buying consumer equipment. Not only are business needs different to households but the driving factor in consumer IT is price. Consumer equipment often doesn't have features that businesses need.
You should also keep in mind the local computer superstore aims squarely at the home market. The stock at the computer superstore is rarely designed for business use and even if it was, the staff couldn't support it.
Price is the killer for any home or business IT purchase. You pay peanuts, you'll get something even monkeys won't use. Because the IT industry knows price is so important to much of their market, they sell some very poorly specced product to meet price points.
Strangely though even if you pay a lot, you don't necessarily get what you pay for either. Some expensive products are as disappointing as the cheap stuff. This is why it's important to do your research.
Of course, research is time consuming and there are still plenty of traps awaiting the inexperience player. That's why you should find a trusted advisor to help you with your IT purchases.
The problems with bad equipment are numerous; they won't last as long, the warranties will be poor, the after sales support will be awful and they will have lots of downtime.
Probably the biggest trap is buying consumer equipment. Not only are business needs different to households but the driving factor in consumer IT is price. Consumer equipment often doesn't have features that businesses need.
You should also keep in mind the local computer superstore aims squarely at the home market. The stock at the computer superstore is rarely designed for business use and even if it was, the staff couldn't support it.
Price is the killer for any home or business IT purchase. You pay peanuts, you'll get something even monkeys won't use. Because the IT industry knows price is so important to much of their market, they sell some very poorly specced product to meet price points.
Strangely though even if you pay a lot, you don't necessarily get what you pay for either. Some expensive products are as disappointing as the cheap stuff. This is why it's important to do your research.
Of course, research is time consuming and there are still plenty of traps awaiting the inexperience player. That's why you should find a trusted advisor to help you with your IT purchases.
Thursday, September 06, 2007
Small Business IT mistake 2: Old Equipment
The most common small business mistake we see is old equipment. The office struggles with a bunch of decrepit pentium IIIs running Windows ME, crashing regularly and taking five times as long to do a job.
It's quite understandable for a business owner to hold onto old kit. IT equipment is a major capital cost and upgrading computers always involves money, time and pain.
But that cost and time is worth it. Slow old computers are a false economy. The whole idea of computers is help people do their jobs better and quicker.
One of the worst clients I had was a food distributor that had a terrible old machine. Every afternoon he received emails from his clients with the next day's orders. Almost every day his machine would crash.
In one year he spent over two thousand dollars in unnecessary support costs. What's more, he lost a number of days orders. I would guess that one dodgy computer cost him ten of thousands in lost orders and disaffected customers.
Saying "the computer is down" is one of the worst possible images your staff can give customers. It looks shoddy and unprofessional.
Ten years ago customers might have nodded sagely and accepted "the computer done it" as an excuse. Today they won't, they’ll take their business elsewhere.
Five year old equipment is the limit. Older than five years and computers become unreliable. Once past that five year limit the odds are high that you'll see hard drives, power supplies and motherboards failing.
One of the strangest attitudes I see in home and small business IT is the owner knows their systems are old and decrepit. But they are waiting for the Next Big Thing™.
The problem in the computer industry is there will always be a Next Big Thing™. When this big thing arrives there will be another coming soon after.
Often a business finds itself rushed into replacing the old computers when one gives up the ghost, or they find the new printer or software just won't work with the older equipment.
This is when businesses make the next mistake; they grab the first thing they see when they need the new computer, they either pay too much for substandard equipment or buy on price and suffer the consequences.
It's quite understandable for a business owner to hold onto old kit. IT equipment is a major capital cost and upgrading computers always involves money, time and pain.
But that cost and time is worth it. Slow old computers are a false economy. The whole idea of computers is help people do their jobs better and quicker.
One of the worst clients I had was a food distributor that had a terrible old machine. Every afternoon he received emails from his clients with the next day's orders. Almost every day his machine would crash.
In one year he spent over two thousand dollars in unnecessary support costs. What's more, he lost a number of days orders. I would guess that one dodgy computer cost him ten of thousands in lost orders and disaffected customers.
Saying "the computer is down" is one of the worst possible images your staff can give customers. It looks shoddy and unprofessional.
Ten years ago customers might have nodded sagely and accepted "the computer done it" as an excuse. Today they won't, they’ll take their business elsewhere.
Five year old equipment is the limit. Older than five years and computers become unreliable. Once past that five year limit the odds are high that you'll see hard drives, power supplies and motherboards failing.
One of the strangest attitudes I see in home and small business IT is the owner knows their systems are old and decrepit. But they are waiting for the Next Big Thing™.
The problem in the computer industry is there will always be a Next Big Thing™. When this big thing arrives there will be another coming soon after.
Often a business finds itself rushed into replacing the old computers when one gives up the ghost, or they find the new printer or software just won't work with the older equipment.
This is when businesses make the next mistake; they grab the first thing they see when they need the new computer, they either pay too much for substandard equipment or buy on price and suffer the consequences.
$4000 dollars a year to support a laptop?
Infoworld reports that a Microsoft and Wipro study shows the annual cost of a Windows Vista laptop is only $3,802, while XP costs $4,407.
Let me repeat those figures.
Three thousand, eight hundred and two dollars compared to four thousand, four hundred and seven dollars.
That's per year.
Someone's kidding themselves. If I gave a client those numbers they'd go back to using abacuses, pilot pigeons and carbon paper.
There's no doubt the figures are fudged. 55% of the number comes from indirect cost and all but 5% is "User labor: Primarily self support and time spent learning to use IT systems".
The study also assumes all users have full admin rights. I suspect this actually understates the $635 per year direct support costs for XP in the study. Users screwing their machines through installing spyware and filesharing programs is a huge issue which seems to be a much smaller problem with Vista.
What interests me from a quick reading of the WIPRO study is that the savings seem to be mainly in the direct setup costs. This would be consistent with improved management tools for both Vista and Server 2003.
So while it is probably true rollout costs are cheaper for a properly kitted enterprise it means Vista's value proposition for home and small business users is dubious at best.
The other interesting point is the user labor number remains unchanged. This indicates businesses should be investing more in training and Microsoft's changes to the Vista and Office 2007 user interface hasn't helped those who use MS products for a living.
I'm not sure releasing figures like this will help Microsoft convince customers to upgrade. The idea of a laptop costing 4,000 per year is going to scare a lot of computer and business owners away from.
Let me repeat those figures.
Three thousand, eight hundred and two dollars compared to four thousand, four hundred and seven dollars.
That's per year.
Someone's kidding themselves. If I gave a client those numbers they'd go back to using abacuses, pilot pigeons and carbon paper.
There's no doubt the figures are fudged. 55% of the number comes from indirect cost and all but 5% is "User labor: Primarily self support and time spent learning to use IT systems".
The study also assumes all users have full admin rights. I suspect this actually understates the $635 per year direct support costs for XP in the study. Users screwing their machines through installing spyware and filesharing programs is a huge issue which seems to be a much smaller problem with Vista.
What interests me from a quick reading of the WIPRO study is that the savings seem to be mainly in the direct setup costs. This would be consistent with improved management tools for both Vista and Server 2003.
So while it is probably true rollout costs are cheaper for a properly kitted enterprise it means Vista's value proposition for home and small business users is dubious at best.
The other interesting point is the user labor number remains unchanged. This indicates businesses should be investing more in training and Microsoft's changes to the Vista and Office 2007 user interface hasn't helped those who use MS products for a living.
I'm not sure releasing figures like this will help Microsoft convince customers to upgrade. The idea of a laptop costing 4,000 per year is going to scare a lot of computer and business owners away from.
Dodgy hardware
Brother's problems with their multifunction printers as reported in today's Sydney Morning Herald don't surprise anyone in the industry.
We haven't recommended Brother for years. Their printers have been flakey and the software that controls the multifunction units has been dreadful and buggy.
From a tech's point of view, these sort of problems are the worst. The client expects you to be able to fix them, but you can't do anything about an "error 41".
In the worst case, you've come out on a "no fix, no fee" basis. You can't fix it, so you don't get paid. It's another reason why I'm dubious about doing jobs with this guarantee.
The quotes from the techs are instructive. My guess is some of these guys spent a lot of non chargeable time on these problems.
The lesson here for a customer is to do your research before buying. Have a look at the models on the market and which ones meet your needs. Then fire up the search engine of your choice and type in the model name with the word "problem" at the end.
That way, you go fully informed into the market and hopefully will avoid a dog. It also means your computer tech will love you too.
We haven't recommended Brother for years. Their printers have been flakey and the software that controls the multifunction units has been dreadful and buggy.
From a tech's point of view, these sort of problems are the worst. The client expects you to be able to fix them, but you can't do anything about an "error 41".
In the worst case, you've come out on a "no fix, no fee" basis. You can't fix it, so you don't get paid. It's another reason why I'm dubious about doing jobs with this guarantee.
The quotes from the techs are instructive. My guess is some of these guys spent a lot of non chargeable time on these problems.
The lesson here for a customer is to do your research before buying. Have a look at the models on the market and which ones meet your needs. Then fire up the search engine of your choice and type in the model name with the word "problem" at the end.
That way, you go fully informed into the market and hopefully will avoid a dog. It also means your computer tech will love you too.
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Small Business IT mistake 1: Torturing the office guru.
This is the first of our top ten small business mistakes. As part of the 2007 NSW Small Business Week I'll be posting these mistakes over the next few days.
None of the ten are in any particular order; every business is different so these mistakes affect businesses in different ways. The first we look at is putting too much on the office guru.
a. The mainstay of small business computing is the office guru. It’s rare to find an office that doesn’t have one. To a point, this is good for the business as there's always someone who can fix a password problem or clear a printer jam.
The guru’s usually the ideal employee; they are industrious, take initiative and get irritated when they can’t do their job. Usually they've become the guru because the computer systems got in their way.
So the office manager, bookkeeper or secretary becomes the designated guru. Now everyone in the office comes to them to fix paper jams, recover lost files and figure out how to insert pictures into powerpoint documents.
Your business will come to depend upon them. They are cheap, reliable and often your best employees. They are also the only one that knows how to avoid paper jams on the cranky Laserjet 4L you bought in 1996.
But they are still the office manager, bookkeeper or secretary. They have to do their main job as well as the IT.
Eventually the guru gets fed up. They are doing two jobs and only being paid for one. What's more, the IT support role is a demanding, time consuming and often thankless.
While most gurus become disaffected others become protective; the system is their baby. They’ve had to care for it, nurture it and sometimes resuscitate it. They've raised it from a tantrum throwing toddler to somewhat stable adulthood, although prone to strange episodes.
For the small business owner, it's usually a losing proposition; you end up losing good staff and you have a computer network that doesn't work well.
The smaller the business is, the worse the problem becomes. In the worst case, when the owner is the guru, the entire business suffers as the owner is fluffing around with the computers while the business drifts.
The solution for the business is to respect your employees and your IT investment. Get a proper tech to look after the system.
Usually when the tech arrives, they find the biggest problem is old equipment. Most guru run networks are lumbered with ancient systems. That's the topic of our next post.
None of the ten are in any particular order; every business is different so these mistakes affect businesses in different ways. The first we look at is putting too much on the office guru.
a. The mainstay of small business computing is the office guru. It’s rare to find an office that doesn’t have one. To a point, this is good for the business as there's always someone who can fix a password problem or clear a printer jam.
The guru’s usually the ideal employee; they are industrious, take initiative and get irritated when they can’t do their job. Usually they've become the guru because the computer systems got in their way.
So the office manager, bookkeeper or secretary becomes the designated guru. Now everyone in the office comes to them to fix paper jams, recover lost files and figure out how to insert pictures into powerpoint documents.
Your business will come to depend upon them. They are cheap, reliable and often your best employees. They are also the only one that knows how to avoid paper jams on the cranky Laserjet 4L you bought in 1996.
But they are still the office manager, bookkeeper or secretary. They have to do their main job as well as the IT.
Eventually the guru gets fed up. They are doing two jobs and only being paid for one. What's more, the IT support role is a demanding, time consuming and often thankless.
While most gurus become disaffected others become protective; the system is their baby. They’ve had to care for it, nurture it and sometimes resuscitate it. They've raised it from a tantrum throwing toddler to somewhat stable adulthood, although prone to strange episodes.
For the small business owner, it's usually a losing proposition; you end up losing good staff and you have a computer network that doesn't work well.
The smaller the business is, the worse the problem becomes. In the worst case, when the owner is the guru, the entire business suffers as the owner is fluffing around with the computers while the business drifts.
The solution for the business is to respect your employees and your IT investment. Get a proper tech to look after the system.
Usually when the tech arrives, they find the biggest problem is old equipment. Most guru run networks are lumbered with ancient systems. That's the topic of our next post.
The top ten small business IT mistakes
As part of NSW Small Business Week I'll be giving a talk in Parramatta and another in the Sydney CBD on how businesses can make more from their IT investment.
Over the next week, I'll be putting the top ten mistakes here and on the PC Rescue website.
Over the next week, I'll be putting the top ten mistakes here and on the PC Rescue website.
False bargains on the net
In the days before eBay took off I used to go to computer auctions looking for bargains. I quickly learned that the combination of technology and auctions is pretty dangerous for most bidders; they are first dazzled by the tech and then caught up in the excitement of bidding.
The worst example I came across was a room full of 386 laptops (this was 1998). I wasn't going to bid for those things, but I mentioned to the other computer tech I was there with that I'd be surprised if they sold for ten bucks. He made a bet they would sell for fifty.
He won. The things sold for $150 a piece. I'm sure the mugs thought they were getting a good deal.
Another auction I went to was a for a shop clearing excess stock. While talking to a mate, a lady interrupted and asked "what would be a good price for these systems?"
My response was if you don't know what these are worth you shouldn't be here.
At least back then people had to make the effort to get to an auction. These days of eBay and Grays Online mean that anyone with an Internet connection can make a bid. Which increases the ratio of dills prepared to overbid on junk dramatically.
The Bleeding Edge blog has a description of how people get themselves caught. Today the Sydney Morning Herald reports on 1500 complaints the state government has received from upset online buyers.
I've no doubt a lot of those 1500 are legitimate ripoffs, but I'll bet there's a large proportion where the buyers didn't read the description like the example in the Bleeding Edge article or were just looking for the cheapest deal.
Searching for the cheapest deal is where people get stung. The days of exceptions bargains falling off virtual trees online ceased years ago.
The old saying "if something seems too good to be true then it probably is" applies just as much to the net as anywhere else.
The worst example I came across was a room full of 386 laptops (this was 1998). I wasn't going to bid for those things, but I mentioned to the other computer tech I was there with that I'd be surprised if they sold for ten bucks. He made a bet they would sell for fifty.
He won. The things sold for $150 a piece. I'm sure the mugs thought they were getting a good deal.
Another auction I went to was a for a shop clearing excess stock. While talking to a mate, a lady interrupted and asked "what would be a good price for these systems?"
My response was if you don't know what these are worth you shouldn't be here.
At least back then people had to make the effort to get to an auction. These days of eBay and Grays Online mean that anyone with an Internet connection can make a bid. Which increases the ratio of dills prepared to overbid on junk dramatically.
The Bleeding Edge blog has a description of how people get themselves caught. Today the Sydney Morning Herald reports on 1500 complaints the state government has received from upset online buyers.
I've no doubt a lot of those 1500 are legitimate ripoffs, but I'll bet there's a large proportion where the buyers didn't read the description like the example in the Bleeding Edge article or were just looking for the cheapest deal.
Searching for the cheapest deal is where people get stung. The days of exceptions bargains falling off virtual trees online ceased years ago.
The old saying "if something seems too good to be true then it probably is" applies just as much to the net as anywhere else.
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
Will Sony ever learn
Another rootkit debacle hits Sony. This time software bundled with USB memory sticks.
What on Earth are these guys thinking? Why do they find it necessary to hide this stuff?
From a tech's point of view, this sort of thing is a nightmare. It really makes our job difficult when these things go wrong.
And go wrong they do. In this case the user could find themselves locked out of their own data.
Once again, we see vendors adding unnecessary complexity to systems. What they don't seem to understand is the more complex you make things, the more likely they are to break.
Sony, like many other hardware and software companies, need to get people that understand that simplicity is the key to keeping computer customers happy.
What on Earth are these guys thinking? Why do they find it necessary to hide this stuff?
From a tech's point of view, this sort of thing is a nightmare. It really makes our job difficult when these things go wrong.
And go wrong they do. In this case the user could find themselves locked out of their own data.
Once again, we see vendors adding unnecessary complexity to systems. What they don't seem to understand is the more complex you make things, the more likely they are to break.
Sony, like many other hardware and software companies, need to get people that understand that simplicity is the key to keeping computer customers happy.
Monday, September 03, 2007
The limitations of web 2.0
The PayPal payment outage this weekend is the latest of a number of online systems falling over. Last week we saw the Microsoft Genuine Advantage system fall over and before that Skype.
The problem with these services failing is they have a terrible impact on people who depend upon them. This is the major reason why I discourage businesses from relying on online services.
One of the worries I have is that IT and web businesses don't fully understand customer service. The PayPal outage is a good example; "sorry, we have no idea; come back later."
I never cease to be amazed at how companies like PayPal can't stick a simple message on their website and keep their customer service people in the loop that there is a problem, what the problem is and how long it's expected to continue.
To add to the problem, the Internet itself is not wholly reliable for the average home or small business user; outages are still more common than they should be.
Until we have a much higher level of reliability and responsibility from vendors, it's very difficult to recommend Web 2.0 applications to businesses.
The problem with these services failing is they have a terrible impact on people who depend upon them. This is the major reason why I discourage businesses from relying on online services.
One of the worries I have is that IT and web businesses don't fully understand customer service. The PayPal outage is a good example; "sorry, we have no idea; come back later."
I never cease to be amazed at how companies like PayPal can't stick a simple message on their website and keep their customer service people in the loop that there is a problem, what the problem is and how long it's expected to continue.
To add to the problem, the Internet itself is not wholly reliable for the average home or small business user; outages are still more common than they should be.
Until we have a much higher level of reliability and responsibility from vendors, it's very difficult to recommend Web 2.0 applications to businesses.
Weekend show 2 September 2007
The September weekend show was our first spot with Simon Marnie for months. We had a look at the new iMacs and looked at the pros and cons of switching to a Mac.
We had quite a few callers on the Mac vs PC topic including Margaret who had reluctantly switched to Windows a few years back because of incompatibilities with her accounting software.
Of the eight callers we got through, three were having hardware problems, which is unusually high.
I'll have a rundown on the show on the PC Rescue website in a few days time.
We had quite a few callers on the Mac vs PC topic including Margaret who had reluctantly switched to Windows a few years back because of incompatibilities with her accounting software.
Of the eight callers we got through, three were having hardware problems, which is unusually high.
I'll have a rundown on the show on the PC Rescue website in a few days time.
Sunday, September 02, 2007
ABC Nightlife 31 August, 2007
August's Nightlife spot was less than successful given we had communications problems between the Sydney Tardis and Tony's Perth Studio.
We covered the National Identity Fraud Prevention Week and the Netalert free webfilters.
The full show is available at the Nightlife website. We'll also have a rundown and answers to listener's queries on the PC Rescue site tomorrow.
We covered the National Identity Fraud Prevention Week and the Netalert free webfilters.
The full show is available at the Nightlife website. We'll also have a rundown and answers to listener's queries on the PC Rescue site tomorrow.
Friday, August 31, 2007
A million hijacked computers
A gang infecting blogs with malware is estimated to have infected a million PCs over the last eight months.
That number is not surprising and just goes to show how bad the security issues are on Windows systems.
I can't emphasise how important it is to run computers in Limited User mode.
Or get a Mac.
That number is not surprising and just goes to show how bad the security issues are on Windows systems.
I can't emphasise how important it is to run computers in Limited User mode.
Or get a Mac.
The heartbreak of lost data
Megan Bowen's story of losing her family photos and videos to a housebreaker is a reminder of how data is far more valuable than hardware and why you need to guard the backups.
The sad thing for the Bowen family is they had burned CDs with the photos, but these were in a laptop case that was stolen as well.
It's important to do backups because theft is the only way you can lose data; your hard drive might fail, you may accidentally delete it or a fire might destroy your computer.
Fires, theft and floods often also destroy backups. That's why we recommend keeping a copy off site. Ideally we'd recommend having at least two backups and rotating them so one is by the computer and another is somewhere else.
Backup software's always a major issue. For home and small business users, we recommend using the Microsoft Synctoy. For larger businesses there's all manner of software that can be used.
Regardless of what you use, we'd recommend checking the backup on a regular basis to make sure everything is being backed up. One of the most stressful and heartbreaking parts of working as a computer tech is when you find a backup has failed.
The sad thing for the Bowen family is they had burned CDs with the photos, but these were in a laptop case that was stolen as well.
It's important to do backups because theft is the only way you can lose data; your hard drive might fail, you may accidentally delete it or a fire might destroy your computer.
Fires, theft and floods often also destroy backups. That's why we recommend keeping a copy off site. Ideally we'd recommend having at least two backups and rotating them so one is by the computer and another is somewhere else.
Backup software's always a major issue. For home and small business users, we recommend using the Microsoft Synctoy. For larger businesses there's all manner of software that can be used.
Regardless of what you use, we'd recommend checking the backup on a regular basis to make sure everything is being backed up. One of the most stressful and heartbreaking parts of working as a computer tech is when you find a backup has failed.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
The Monster.com mess
As we enter National Identity Fraud Awareness Week, the story of Monster.com's security breach just seems to get worse.
What amazes me is just how little coverage this is getting in the media. This story is huge with not only millions of accounts at risk, but the company seems to have no idea of how many accounts have been compromised.
Even more disturbing is how this scam works, it relies on infected machines running software that logs onto to Monster's database, looks up candidate details and sends the results to spammers and phishers who then use the addresses to spread more spam and malware.
What really concerns me is that I've received a few of these type of emails purporting to be from Seek and MyCareer. I'm wondering if the same scam is at work on these sites as well.
What amazes me is just how little coverage this is getting in the media. This story is huge with not only millions of accounts at risk, but the company seems to have no idea of how many accounts have been compromised.
Even more disturbing is how this scam works, it relies on infected machines running software that logs onto to Monster's database, looks up candidate details and sends the results to spammers and phishers who then use the addresses to spread more spam and malware.
What really concerns me is that I've received a few of these type of emails purporting to be from Seek and MyCareer. I'm wondering if the same scam is at work on these sites as well.
Dodgy cheques and laser printers
On the techno-fraud front, the Consumerist has an article on the surge in fake bank cheques due to high quality laser printers.
Given fake cheques are a favourite trick of Ebay and 419 fraudsters, it's really important not to trust cheques unless they have come from someone you know.
It also pays to be very cautious of foreign cheques. It can take quite a while for a cheque drawn on a foreign bank to be cleared. If you've sent goods or given money to people based on one of these cheques you might be in for a nasty surprise a month or two down the track.
Personally, I'd be very reluctant to accept any cheque drawn on an institution I've never heard of. If I did, I'd be making doubly sure it had cleared before acting on it.
Given fake cheques are a favourite trick of Ebay and 419 fraudsters, it's really important not to trust cheques unless they have come from someone you know.
It also pays to be very cautious of foreign cheques. It can take quite a while for a cheque drawn on a foreign bank to be cleared. If you've sent goods or given money to people based on one of these cheques you might be in for a nasty surprise a month or two down the track.
Personally, I'd be very reluctant to accept any cheque drawn on an institution I've never heard of. If I did, I'd be making doubly sure it had cleared before acting on it.
Vista Service Pack 1 Beta
The announcement the first Vista Service Pack is about be released in beta is welcome news.
Experienced Microsoft customers know that waiting for the first service pack is a really good idea with a new MS operating system so the release of SP1 will spark the so far lacklustre sales of Vista.
What should be emphasised is that non-techy users shouldn't go within miles of a beta release. The computer industry is unique in this practice of releasing products that might not work so the general population can test.
It's akin to the motor industry giving away a new model car for testing, figuring that they'll save on the cost of crash test dummies.
Would you accept a free car on the basis that the brakes might fail, the airbags might kill the passengers and the whole thing might randomly burst into flames? Well that's what a beta release is.
To be fair to Microsoft they aren't making this available through mass market channels, it will only be available through the MS Developers Network and Technet.
We should also point out that at least MS beta test their major releases rather than using paying customers as crash test dummies which I'm convinced certain anti-virus companies do.
It's good MS are working on the Vista service pack, now we have to ask is where is the XP service pack three? The thing is two years overdue and it's becoming an embarrassment.
Experienced Microsoft customers know that waiting for the first service pack is a really good idea with a new MS operating system so the release of SP1 will spark the so far lacklustre sales of Vista.
What should be emphasised is that non-techy users shouldn't go within miles of a beta release. The computer industry is unique in this practice of releasing products that might not work so the general population can test.
It's akin to the motor industry giving away a new model car for testing, figuring that they'll save on the cost of crash test dummies.
Would you accept a free car on the basis that the brakes might fail, the airbags might kill the passengers and the whole thing might randomly burst into flames? Well that's what a beta release is.
To be fair to Microsoft they aren't making this available through mass market channels, it will only be available through the MS Developers Network and Technet.
We should also point out that at least MS beta test their major releases rather than using paying customers as crash test dummies which I'm convinced certain anti-virus companies do.
It's good MS are working on the Vista service pack, now we have to ask is where is the XP service pack three? The thing is two years overdue and it's becoming an embarrassment.
Appreciating your tech
One of the more saddening parts of being a computer tech is how little your skills are really appreciated.
A good example was yesterday, the first job had been locked out of her computer. The fix for this is usually quite easy and it only took twenty minutes to reset the admin password. When that was fixed she asked to setup a new profile which took another half hour.
So the total time was an hour. Her response?
I didn't expect it to be that expensive?
I mean, FFS! Thanks lady for the appreciation.
In the afternoon I did another job, this was for a client I hadn't seen for years. It took me ninety minutes to fix the spyware infection that had crippled her wireless connection.
Her thanks?
I hope I don't have to see again.
Gee lady, thanks.
One of my staff told me yesterday about the client who thought the three hour job he did on Monday should have been simple to fix in half an hour. It reminds me of the Dilbert principle that anything you don't understand must be simple to do.
On a related topic referring to yesterday's rant about Symantec I was delighted to note the first client's computer was almost new and the Norton, which was supplied with the computer, was defective.
Just to prove it's not just Norton, the afternoon job had a fully subscribed and up to date McAfee Internet security suite which had let a number of spyware packages on and allowed them to damage the TCP/IP stack.
Dealing with ungrateful customers and incompetent software vendors is why it makes this industry such a challenge.
If you really want to cultivate a good relationship with a computer tech, don't whine about the bill, time or insult them if they've done a good job.
A good example was yesterday, the first job had been locked out of her computer. The fix for this is usually quite easy and it only took twenty minutes to reset the admin password. When that was fixed she asked to setup a new profile which took another half hour.
So the total time was an hour. Her response?
I didn't expect it to be that expensive?
I mean, FFS! Thanks lady for the appreciation.
In the afternoon I did another job, this was for a client I hadn't seen for years. It took me ninety minutes to fix the spyware infection that had crippled her wireless connection.
Her thanks?
I hope I don't have to see again.
Gee lady, thanks.
One of my staff told me yesterday about the client who thought the three hour job he did on Monday should have been simple to fix in half an hour. It reminds me of the Dilbert principle that anything you don't understand must be simple to do.
On a related topic referring to yesterday's rant about Symantec I was delighted to note the first client's computer was almost new and the Norton, which was supplied with the computer, was defective.
Just to prove it's not just Norton, the afternoon job had a fully subscribed and up to date McAfee Internet security suite which had let a number of spyware packages on and allowed them to damage the TCP/IP stack.
Dealing with ungrateful customers and incompetent software vendors is why it makes this industry such a challenge.
If you really want to cultivate a good relationship with a computer tech, don't whine about the bill, time or insult them if they've done a good job.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Symantec whinges
I had to laugh out loud when reading Symantec's whinge about Microsoft's anti-competitive practices.
This is an outfit that's made a lot of money from Microsoft's inability to grasp the basics of computer security.
The fact is OneCare has lousy record as a security product so if Symantec's products were any good, OneCare wouldn't be a threat.
However Symantec has dropped the ball even more than Microsoft; their anti-virus software completely missed the spyware epidemic and their packages have become the industry byword for system clogging bloatware.
Instead of whining, these people should be looking at getting out well written, effective software that delivers what it promises. I suspect that's a challenge too far for them.
This is an outfit that's made a lot of money from Microsoft's inability to grasp the basics of computer security.
The fact is OneCare has lousy record as a security product so if Symantec's products were any good, OneCare wouldn't be a threat.
However Symantec has dropped the ball even more than Microsoft; their anti-virus software completely missed the spyware epidemic and their packages have become the industry byword for system clogging bloatware.
Instead of whining, these people should be looking at getting out well written, effective software that delivers what it promises. I suspect that's a challenge too far for them.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Acer and Gateway
Acer's proposed takeover of Gateway It's a good move by Acer.
Like Dell, Gateway lost the plot sometime around the year 2000 when the PC industry was hit by the post Y2K downturn. Dell went on a downmarket splurge while Gateway tried to get into fields it didn't understand such as retail stores.
One of the ways Gateway saved itself was by retreating from foreign markets and concentrating on their home US market.
In this light it will be interesting to see how Acer deals with the Gateway and e-machine brands outside the US. The reports indicate Acer have made the purchase to increase US market share. So perhaps we won't see the Gateway brand reappearing soon.
Like Dell, Gateway lost the plot sometime around the year 2000 when the PC industry was hit by the post Y2K downturn. Dell went on a downmarket splurge while Gateway tried to get into fields it didn't understand such as retail stores.
One of the ways Gateway saved itself was by retreating from foreign markets and concentrating on their home US market.
In this light it will be interesting to see how Acer deals with the Gateway and e-machine brands outside the US. The reports indicate Acer have made the purchase to increase US market share. So perhaps we won't see the Gateway brand reappearing soon.
Monday, August 27, 2007
Windows SteadyState
One of my colleagues has bought the new Windows SteadyState to my attention.
Oh boy! This looks like fun. Why do I get a bad feeling when an IT vendor boasts "set and forget".
It appears the bulk of SteadyState is just a nice interface to Window's Group Policy functions. That's good to simplify it, but group policies are a powerful tool that can leave systems in a quivering heap.
I'll be looking forward to having a look at this over the next week.
Oh boy! This looks like fun. Why do I get a bad feeling when an IT vendor boasts "set and forget".
It appears the bulk of SteadyState is just a nice interface to Window's Group Policy functions. That's good to simplify it, but group policies are a powerful tool that can leave systems in a quivering heap.
I'll be looking forward to having a look at this over the next week.
The Federal government web filter
The Federal government was always on a hiding to nothing with their free web filtering software. Some kid was going to crack it in ten minutes flat and indeed they did.
Any technology measure can be circumvented and web filtering is no different so it's no surprise a computer savvy kid cracked it. It's just disappointing these programs don't make it harder for the smart kids.
The difficulty with web filtering is that it's an incomplete answer. While it might protect kids from the odd rude word or dirty picture, it does nothing to protect them from online predators, bullying or other inappropriate behaviour.
No web filter is a substitute for proper supervision. I've said before that most important thing is to keep an eye on what the kids are doing. The first step is to get the computers out of the bedrooms.
I'm trialling these products over the next few days as we're discussing them on this week's Nightlife spot. I'll be posting some of my observations and findings here.
Any technology measure can be circumvented and web filtering is no different so it's no surprise a computer savvy kid cracked it. It's just disappointing these programs don't make it harder for the smart kids.
The difficulty with web filtering is that it's an incomplete answer. While it might protect kids from the odd rude word or dirty picture, it does nothing to protect them from online predators, bullying or other inappropriate behaviour.
No web filter is a substitute for proper supervision. I've said before that most important thing is to keep an eye on what the kids are doing. The first step is to get the computers out of the bedrooms.
I'm trialling these products over the next few days as we're discussing them on this week's Nightlife spot. I'll be posting some of my observations and findings here.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Struggling with home networks
"Troubled times for home networks" declares the BBC. A little over the top perhaps, but there is an element of truth.
Networks are complex, it's the nature of the beast. As the article says,
The problem, he said, was the sheer complexity of getting all those different devices to work together and swap data via a home network.
The only devices I've seen that work as advertised are the Airport Express devices when streaming music. Even there they have the same problems with SSIDs and WPA that everything else hits.
Where the BBC article hits rocky waters though is in falling for the LAN over powerlines hype. Quite frankly, they are problematic and don't work properly. Trying to your network over your powerlines is an exercise in frustration.
The article also falls for some Wireless LAN hype quoting Selina Lo, chief executive of Ruckus Wireless, as saying "wide usage would not have come about without it being straightforward to use."
Well yeah, except it isn't. In 50% of home and offices it simply doesn't bloody work properly due to all manner of factors.
What worries me even more is Selina's, and many other computer users, idea that WLANs should be ubiquitous and just work when you turn your computer on. This is a security nightmare.
The lesson for users is to be careful of the hype. When you buy stuff like wireless networking or network over powerline equipment, make sure the retailer has a satisfaction guaranteed refund policy.
Networks are complex, it's the nature of the beast. As the article says,
The problem, he said, was the sheer complexity of getting all those different devices to work together and swap data via a home network.
The only devices I've seen that work as advertised are the Airport Express devices when streaming music. Even there they have the same problems with SSIDs and WPA that everything else hits.
Where the BBC article hits rocky waters though is in falling for the LAN over powerlines hype. Quite frankly, they are problematic and don't work properly. Trying to your network over your powerlines is an exercise in frustration.
The article also falls for some Wireless LAN hype quoting Selina Lo, chief executive of Ruckus Wireless, as saying "wide usage would not have come about without it being straightforward to use."
Well yeah, except it isn't. In 50% of home and offices it simply doesn't bloody work properly due to all manner of factors.
What worries me even more is Selina's, and many other computer users, idea that WLANs should be ubiquitous and just work when you turn your computer on. This is a security nightmare.
The lesson for users is to be careful of the hype. When you buy stuff like wireless networking or network over powerline equipment, make sure the retailer has a satisfaction guaranteed refund policy.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Broadband Australia 2007
I was fortunate enough to be invited to the Broadband Australia conference and managed to get to the first morning session. It proved to be an interesting window on where broadband is in Australia at present.
The list of speakers featured the big players in the field, specifically Telstra, Optus and the government. Senator Coonan, the minister for telecommunications, kicked off with the keynote.
Helen Coonan
I quite like the minister, but this wasn't one of her strong performances. Rather than giving us a run down of the government's broadband policies and how broadband can help the country, she spent her time scoring points off the Labor opposition.
The only good thing about her speech was the repeating of the words "strength" and "experience" give a fairly good idea of what the Federal government's re-election slogan will be.
Phil Burgess
Phil can always be counted on for an entertaining talk. Apparently he didn't know people lived in Iceland until he went looking for a country as disadvantaged as Australia in rolling out a new network.
Phil made some very good points; the fact is 1Gb to the home and office is not the future, it's now, his teleconferencing software requires a 40Mb/s link on it's own.
One had to laugh out loud at his point about 256kbit connections not being considered broadband. This is quite true, but Phil still markets them as such and with a crappy 200Mb monthly data limit to boot.
Most of Phil's presentation was focussed on kicking the ACCC and their pricing policies. An interesting accusation he made was that the access price for ULL has just been pulled from the UK OFCOM with no allowance for Australian differences.
A good performance by Phil, but he was preaching to an audience of sceptics. Particularly enjoyable were his anecdote of visiting Birdsville and their struggles with phone and Internet access.
Warren Hardy
I haven't heard Warren speak before and he gave a credible corporate speech on Optus' broadband position. He wasn't as lively as Phil Burgess and this may not be a bad thing.
He rebutted a number of points Phil made about the OPEL network. There's no doubt this proposal and the government funding for it has struck a nerve with Telstra and Optus can't help but rub it in.
I've been scathing of Optus' performance in this market and nothing Warren said changed my mind, but he at least raised a laugh by pointing out to Phil Burgess that he could get broadband in Birdsville from the Optus satellite.
David Kennedy
It was good to hear from someone prepared to admit to have been involved in setting up the mess we currently find ourselves in. David put his hand up as being a ministerial advisor at the time of the 1997 reforms to the telco industry.
His historical perspective was that a few core countries dominate new technologies such as the UK with railways, the UK and Germany with steel production. In his view, Australia will not be one of those core countries in the Internet revolution. I'd have to agree.
Panel Discussion
The panel topic was Broadband in Australia; what do we want? How do we get it? The three panelist were Derek Francis from UBS, John Stanton from People Telecom and Anne Hurley from the Communications Alliance.
Anne Hurley: I feel sorry industry lobbyists, they often have to juggle different competing interests of their members and the lowest common denominator often turns out to be bland. The problem for the Communications Alliance is the industry is dominated by Telstra with Optus paddling in it's wake and the rest making up numbers. Anne tried hard, but really couldn't add much.
John Stanton: It was good to get a reseller's view. But the main topic of the morning was infrastructure so John's experience is somewhat limited. We did get a view of some of the economics of the industry and a glimpse of how vulnerable service providers are when the market is dominated by two or three large players.
Derek Francis: Derek was by far the most interesting panel member. He came to the debate with the position that we should let the market rip. The simple application of "comparative parity rules" to stop incumbents from protecting their own operations.
The problem is this has been tried and doesn't work; Telstra will be able to confound any such rules with transfer pricing and other tactics.
I also found Derek's claim that the OPEL consortium should be paying $300 per line to use the existing copper network as being misleading. This is the replacement cost of the copper lines and no way represents the current value.
While I'm sure a lot of the merchant bankers and hedge funds would love "open slather" as it would generate lots of fee income through a bigger Telstra, I'm certain it's not in the nation's best interest to deregulate when the market is dominated by one player.
My observations
From the first day, I'd have to say the case for splitting Telstra into at least wholesale and retail companies is compelling. Do this and most arguments about regulation and market dominance disappear.
One of the most disappointing aspects of the morning was the nit picking and point scoring, whether it's the minister scoring points off Labor, Telstra scoring points off the ACCC or Optus scoring points off Telstra.
It's clear the industry is bogged down in distrust between almost all the players. In this light, it's not surprising we're in the breakdown lane of the Information Superhighway.
An interesting morning, but I can't help but think we need some leadership in this field.
The list of speakers featured the big players in the field, specifically Telstra, Optus and the government. Senator Coonan, the minister for telecommunications, kicked off with the keynote.
Helen Coonan
I quite like the minister, but this wasn't one of her strong performances. Rather than giving us a run down of the government's broadband policies and how broadband can help the country, she spent her time scoring points off the Labor opposition.
The only good thing about her speech was the repeating of the words "strength" and "experience" give a fairly good idea of what the Federal government's re-election slogan will be.
Phil Burgess
Phil can always be counted on for an entertaining talk. Apparently he didn't know people lived in Iceland until he went looking for a country as disadvantaged as Australia in rolling out a new network.
Phil made some very good points; the fact is 1Gb to the home and office is not the future, it's now, his teleconferencing software requires a 40Mb/s link on it's own.
One had to laugh out loud at his point about 256kbit connections not being considered broadband. This is quite true, but Phil still markets them as such and with a crappy 200Mb monthly data limit to boot.
Most of Phil's presentation was focussed on kicking the ACCC and their pricing policies. An interesting accusation he made was that the access price for ULL has just been pulled from the UK OFCOM with no allowance for Australian differences.
A good performance by Phil, but he was preaching to an audience of sceptics. Particularly enjoyable were his anecdote of visiting Birdsville and their struggles with phone and Internet access.
Warren Hardy
I haven't heard Warren speak before and he gave a credible corporate speech on Optus' broadband position. He wasn't as lively as Phil Burgess and this may not be a bad thing.
He rebutted a number of points Phil made about the OPEL network. There's no doubt this proposal and the government funding for it has struck a nerve with Telstra and Optus can't help but rub it in.
I've been scathing of Optus' performance in this market and nothing Warren said changed my mind, but he at least raised a laugh by pointing out to Phil Burgess that he could get broadband in Birdsville from the Optus satellite.
David Kennedy
It was good to hear from someone prepared to admit to have been involved in setting up the mess we currently find ourselves in. David put his hand up as being a ministerial advisor at the time of the 1997 reforms to the telco industry.
His historical perspective was that a few core countries dominate new technologies such as the UK with railways, the UK and Germany with steel production. In his view, Australia will not be one of those core countries in the Internet revolution. I'd have to agree.
Panel Discussion
The panel topic was Broadband in Australia; what do we want? How do we get it? The three panelist were Derek Francis from UBS, John Stanton from People Telecom and Anne Hurley from the Communications Alliance.
Anne Hurley: I feel sorry industry lobbyists, they often have to juggle different competing interests of their members and the lowest common denominator often turns out to be bland. The problem for the Communications Alliance is the industry is dominated by Telstra with Optus paddling in it's wake and the rest making up numbers. Anne tried hard, but really couldn't add much.
John Stanton: It was good to get a reseller's view. But the main topic of the morning was infrastructure so John's experience is somewhat limited. We did get a view of some of the economics of the industry and a glimpse of how vulnerable service providers are when the market is dominated by two or three large players.
Derek Francis: Derek was by far the most interesting panel member. He came to the debate with the position that we should let the market rip. The simple application of "comparative parity rules" to stop incumbents from protecting their own operations.
The problem is this has been tried and doesn't work; Telstra will be able to confound any such rules with transfer pricing and other tactics.
I also found Derek's claim that the OPEL consortium should be paying $300 per line to use the existing copper network as being misleading. This is the replacement cost of the copper lines and no way represents the current value.
While I'm sure a lot of the merchant bankers and hedge funds would love "open slather" as it would generate lots of fee income through a bigger Telstra, I'm certain it's not in the nation's best interest to deregulate when the market is dominated by one player.
My observations
From the first day, I'd have to say the case for splitting Telstra into at least wholesale and retail companies is compelling. Do this and most arguments about regulation and market dominance disappear.
One of the most disappointing aspects of the morning was the nit picking and point scoring, whether it's the minister scoring points off Labor, Telstra scoring points off the ACCC or Optus scoring points off Telstra.
It's clear the industry is bogged down in distrust between almost all the players. In this light, it's not surprising we're in the breakdown lane of the Information Superhighway.
An interesting morning, but I can't help but think we need some leadership in this field.
Monday, August 20, 2007
Skype is run on Windows servers?
Edit: It appears from the comment I read the article incorrectly, it was the Windows clients rebooting that caused the outage.
I have to admit I have to find that a bit baffling as what is so different with this Windows Update, rebooting's pretty well par for the course and not every Windows machine in the world rebooted at once.
Anyway, there's still lessons to be learned from what happened to Skype.
According to the Skype official blog, the two day outage last week was due to an automatic restart after a Windows Update.
Who'd have thought something like Skype has hosted on servers running Windows?
The lesson here is not to set Windows to reboot automatically after receiving a Windows update.
In fact, no server should automatically install update patches. If the computer is running important functions, each patch should be checked to make sure it won't affect those functions and a "backout" procedure should be enacted so the patches can be undone if they mess the computer up.
All businesses should learn from what happened to Skype.
I have to admit I have to find that a bit baffling as what is so different with this Windows Update, rebooting's pretty well par for the course and not every Windows machine in the world rebooted at once.
Anyway, there's still lessons to be learned from what happened to Skype.
According to the Skype official blog, the two day outage last week was due to an automatic restart after a Windows Update.
Who'd have thought something like Skype has hosted on servers running Windows?
The lesson here is not to set Windows to reboot automatically after receiving a Windows update.
In fact, no server should automatically install update patches. If the computer is running important functions, each patch should be checked to make sure it won't affect those functions and a "backout" procedure should be enacted so the patches can be undone if they mess the computer up.
All businesses should learn from what happened to Skype.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Fixing Firefox problems with Firetune
While I'm a fan of Firefox I've found the habit of Firefox 2.0 to lock up on certain websites a minor nuisance which requires restarting Firefox to fix.
I've been experimenting with FireTune and so far it's worked well. Over the next few days we'll see.
According to the professional cranks at Cranky Geeks, it's due to the way Firefox assumes you are using an old computer on a slow connection and one of Fire Tune's fixes is to change those settings.
I'm not so sure, in my case it seems to coincide with flash heavy websites so I'm suspicious it isn't a Flash or scripting issue.
Anyway, we'll see in the next few days, but the results have been good so far, I've added it to our IT Queries website.
I've been experimenting with FireTune and so far it's worked well. Over the next few days we'll see.
According to the professional cranks at Cranky Geeks, it's due to the way Firefox assumes you are using an old computer on a slow connection and one of Fire Tune's fixes is to change those settings.
I'm not so sure, in my case it seems to coincide with flash heavy websites so I'm suspicious it isn't a Flash or scripting issue.
Anyway, we'll see in the next few days, but the results have been good so far, I've added it to our IT Queries website.
Sensis sell Invizage
I said a few months back that Sensis would be looking to sell Invizage so the news they have sold it isn't a surprise.
The big surprise is the buyer. Peter Kazacos sold KAZ to Telstra, which was another failed attempt by Telstra to get into services. Now he buys a services business back from a Telstra subsidiary.
I'm sure Peter will do well with Invizage; he has experience with and understands IT service businesses. The problem for Telstra, Sensis and manner of Telcos, computer companies, software vendors and other businesses is they see the revenue but don't understand the work involved.
The interesting thing I've noticed over the three years Sensis have owned Invizage is how the domestic support arm shrivelled away.
Home IT support is a much different creature to business support and it obviously didn't fit the Sensis business model. One of the benefits Peter Kazacos will get from Sensis is he won't be paying for the domestic support operation that Invizage bought.
I can't help but suspect that Peter Kazacos' experience with Telstra is not unlike Kerry Packer's with Alan Bond.
I'm glad I no longer hold shares in Telstra.
The big surprise is the buyer. Peter Kazacos sold KAZ to Telstra, which was another failed attempt by Telstra to get into services. Now he buys a services business back from a Telstra subsidiary.
I'm sure Peter will do well with Invizage; he has experience with and understands IT service businesses. The problem for Telstra, Sensis and manner of Telcos, computer companies, software vendors and other businesses is they see the revenue but don't understand the work involved.
The interesting thing I've noticed over the three years Sensis have owned Invizage is how the domestic support arm shrivelled away.
Home IT support is a much different creature to business support and it obviously didn't fit the Sensis business model. One of the benefits Peter Kazacos will get from Sensis is he won't be paying for the domestic support operation that Invizage bought.
I can't help but suspect that Peter Kazacos' experience with Telstra is not unlike Kerry Packer's with Alan Bond.
I'm glad I no longer hold shares in Telstra.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
The number one warning sign
If you are worried someone close to you has a computer or Internet problem, the number one indicator is them spending too long on the machine.
In a previous post, I mentioned in my experience it's mainly older people that get in trouble. This is bourne out in a recent Wall Street Journal story about Ric Hoogestraat, his wife Sue and his Second Life wife, Tenaj Jackalope, or Janet Spielman.
The sad thing's Ric is a comparative success in Second Life and he actually has people "working" for him.
You wonder how much good Ric could do or money he could make if he'd spend that long on real life pursuits.
In the meantime, his new marriage (the real one) goes down the drain............
In a previous post, I mentioned in my experience it's mainly older people that get in trouble. This is bourne out in a recent Wall Street Journal story about Ric Hoogestraat, his wife Sue and his Second Life wife, Tenaj Jackalope, or Janet Spielman.
The sad thing's Ric is a comparative success in Second Life and he actually has people "working" for him.
You wonder how much good Ric could do or money he could make if he'd spend that long on real life pursuits.
In the meantime, his new marriage (the real one) goes down the drain............
Friday, August 17, 2007
The final goodbye to Yellow Pages
I was wakened out of my massive head cold recovery by a call from our Sensis rep. Despite what she said previously, she did call back to try and get me to see the light of renewing our Yellow Pages advert.
In our conversation, she mentioned another Sensis product, Clickmanager. A look at their website indicates this is part of their Bidsmart program.
It seems to me Sensis are playing catch up in this market, like their search engine they are behind Google on this product.
This wouldn't be so much a problem if Sensis were leveraging these products using their existing sales channels, but once again they have a separate set of salespeople to deal with them.
If they had an online console system they'd be able to offer these services directly. I'm also amazed the sales lady didn't mention these earlier.
The sad thing for Sensis is they have a massive range of products, many of which are attractive to small business. They seem to go out of their way to make it difficult for small businesses to learn about them, let alone buy them.
You can't help but think that unless Sensis can snap out of this mentality, then it's doomed to a slow decline as Internet searches improve and the paper directories decline.
I've said previously that Telstra need to sell Sensis. The more I look at it, the more I think this is the only way for Sensis to survive in the long run.
In our conversation, she mentioned another Sensis product, Clickmanager. A look at their website indicates this is part of their Bidsmart program.
It seems to me Sensis are playing catch up in this market, like their search engine they are behind Google on this product.
This wouldn't be so much a problem if Sensis were leveraging these products using their existing sales channels, but once again they have a separate set of salespeople to deal with them.
If they had an online console system they'd be able to offer these services directly. I'm also amazed the sales lady didn't mention these earlier.
The sad thing for Sensis is they have a massive range of products, many of which are attractive to small business. They seem to go out of their way to make it difficult for small businesses to learn about them, let alone buy them.
You can't help but think that unless Sensis can snap out of this mentality, then it's doomed to a slow decline as Internet searches improve and the paper directories decline.
I've said previously that Telstra need to sell Sensis. The more I look at it, the more I think this is the only way for Sensis to survive in the long run.
Monday, August 13, 2007
More battery recalls
It seems the Sony battery debacle is not over. Toshiba have announced another recall. While the initial announcement appears to apply to the US only, it seems unlikely it won't be extended internationally. This follows a number of previous recalls.
I've taken to making sure things like laptops, mobile phones and power tools are left recharging while unattended and definitely making sure they are unplugged overnight.
Given it's only a tiny proportion of batteries with these problems, we shouldn't over-react. But reducing the risk of trouble is a good idea.
I've taken to making sure things like laptops, mobile phones and power tools are left recharging while unattended and definitely making sure they are unplugged overnight.
Given it's only a tiny proportion of batteries with these problems, we shouldn't over-react. But reducing the risk of trouble is a good idea.
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Trouble on the net
We tend to focus on kids getting in trouble on the Internet, but in my experience it's adults that get in the most trouble.
The frightening story of Desmond Gregor's African adventure is an extreme example of the story.
Over the years, I've seen a lot of relationships fail because someone has got themselves involved in something over the net. It's varied from financial scams, through online dating and Internet porn.
One of the saddest was a friend of mine who was surfing a notorious website that features bad taste pictures like autopsy and crime scene photos. One of the photo names suggested a kiddie porn site.
My mate's partner saw this in the browser history and assumed he'd been looking at kiddie porn. The ensuing row finished their relationship.
The Internet's a big scary place. It pays to be careful regardless of how old or street wise you think you are.
The frightening story of Desmond Gregor's African adventure is an extreme example of the story.
Over the years, I've seen a lot of relationships fail because someone has got themselves involved in something over the net. It's varied from financial scams, through online dating and Internet porn.
One of the saddest was a friend of mine who was surfing a notorious website that features bad taste pictures like autopsy and crime scene photos. One of the photo names suggested a kiddie porn site.
My mate's partner saw this in the browser history and assumed he'd been looking at kiddie porn. The ensuing row finished their relationship.
The Internet's a big scary place. It pays to be careful regardless of how old or street wise you think you are.
Trusted friends
A sad fact of life in the IT industry is that it's largely every man for himself. You get little help from other techs and it's difficult to establish networks to help spread the load.
I used to try to establish these relationships but went nowhere with them. The saddest one was someone I worked with prior to setting up my own business.
Mark saw how well I was doing and set up a competing business. I was happy as I figured the market was more than big enough for both of us and having a trusted colleague meant we could help each other out with things like holidays, busy periods and difficult jobs.
I kept my side of the bargain, over the next five years or so I directed tens of thousands of dollars worth of work to Mark. I didn't get one referral back. To add insult, he'd go on holidays and leave a message saying "sorry I'm on holidays, I'll call you when I get back."
I asked him about this and pointed out it was costing him customers. At least if I looked after his customers while he was away, he'd keep his customers. By not doing this he was probably losing two or three customers for every week he was away.
The final straw was when I found Mark stealing customers from me. I couldn't get to one very good customer and referred them to Mark who then gave them a spiel on why I was no good. I later found he'd done this to a few people.
So much for thanks. I haven't spoken to the guy since.
Funnily enough, I was called out by one of these clients this week. Mark had gone on holidays and left him in the lurch so he called me. I guess what comes around goes around.
The point of this post is to illustrate the risks of a sole trader going on holiday in a service business like computer support. You need a friend you can trust to take the load while you are away. Without it, you lose customers as well as money.
The real moral though is every sole trader needs colleagues they can trust. Sadly the IT industry doesn't lend itself to building these networks.
I used to try to establish these relationships but went nowhere with them. The saddest one was someone I worked with prior to setting up my own business.
Mark saw how well I was doing and set up a competing business. I was happy as I figured the market was more than big enough for both of us and having a trusted colleague meant we could help each other out with things like holidays, busy periods and difficult jobs.
I kept my side of the bargain, over the next five years or so I directed tens of thousands of dollars worth of work to Mark. I didn't get one referral back. To add insult, he'd go on holidays and leave a message saying "sorry I'm on holidays, I'll call you when I get back."
I asked him about this and pointed out it was costing him customers. At least if I looked after his customers while he was away, he'd keep his customers. By not doing this he was probably losing two or three customers for every week he was away.
The final straw was when I found Mark stealing customers from me. I couldn't get to one very good customer and referred them to Mark who then gave them a spiel on why I was no good. I later found he'd done this to a few people.
So much for thanks. I haven't spoken to the guy since.
Funnily enough, I was called out by one of these clients this week. Mark had gone on holidays and left him in the lurch so he called me. I guess what comes around goes around.
The point of this post is to illustrate the risks of a sole trader going on holiday in a service business like computer support. You need a friend you can trust to take the load while you are away. Without it, you lose customers as well as money.
The real moral though is every sole trader needs colleagues they can trust. Sadly the IT industry doesn't lend itself to building these networks.
Net Alert website down
Is it just me, or is taking the entire Netalert site the day the Prime Minister announces an almost new protecting families online initiative just plain silly?Does this mean web predators are going to go on holiday until the site is back up?
The site should have been ready before the announcement of a new web filtering system. Unless of course the policy was thought up in the last day or two.
Say it ain't so, Joe.
Friday, August 10, 2007
Old rope for new policy
The Federal government's on again, off again experiment with web filtering has come back on again with the Prime Minister announcing the Federal government will provide web filtering software for families.
We should remember this scheme was announced over a year ago. Six months ago I asked the department what was happening with the scheme and didn't hear back.
One aspect of all of this is a lot of people don't seem to understand what filtering will do, a good example is from the AustralianIT story.
Jeremy Horn, 37, a web-developer from Pagewood, was among them. He welcomed the Prime Minister's Netalert strategy, saying internet safety was an issue for his 12-year-old son. "I want to know that he is safe online -- there are so many games sites he plays at the moment and a lot of them have chatrooms."
Unfortunately for Jeremy, it's unlikely any web filtering software is going to do much for chatrooms. Sadly I'm not surprised a web developer doesn't understand this.
The big flaws I see with both political party's schemes is they are obsessed with the web; much of the really damaging stuff on the net is happening in chatrooms and other forums. The other problem is the resources required to police the web are huge.
Both parties rely on the Office of Film and Literature Classification to review and ban inappropriate websites. This is a huge undertaking and will require a massive increase in resources. Even with that, they will have to move very quickly to block the bad stuff.
There's also the problem of what exactly is inappropriate. The Federal government already has form in abusing copyright law to take down embarrassing websites. It wouldn't surprise me to find all manner of sites banned for spurious reasons.
One of the disappointing things with all these policies is they miss the point of a lot of the problems. Sure, there are a lot of offensive websites that really aren't suitable for kids. But the real problems are much deeper.
The online predators are using legitimate web sites and other tools to stalk their victims. Blocking websites won't stop them.
But we shouldn't lose sight that online predators are a tiny group. The vast majority of cybercrime is online fraud, phishing, spyware and trojan distribution.
These aspects need to be adressed as well. Just blocking smutty websites does not make the Internet safer for anyone.
We should remember this scheme was announced over a year ago. Six months ago I asked the department what was happening with the scheme and didn't hear back.
One aspect of all of this is a lot of people don't seem to understand what filtering will do, a good example is from the AustralianIT story.
Jeremy Horn, 37, a web-developer from Pagewood, was among them. He welcomed the Prime Minister's Netalert strategy, saying internet safety was an issue for his 12-year-old son. "I want to know that he is safe online -- there are so many games sites he plays at the moment and a lot of them have chatrooms."
Unfortunately for Jeremy, it's unlikely any web filtering software is going to do much for chatrooms. Sadly I'm not surprised a web developer doesn't understand this.
The big flaws I see with both political party's schemes is they are obsessed with the web; much of the really damaging stuff on the net is happening in chatrooms and other forums. The other problem is the resources required to police the web are huge.
Both parties rely on the Office of Film and Literature Classification to review and ban inappropriate websites. This is a huge undertaking and will require a massive increase in resources. Even with that, they will have to move very quickly to block the bad stuff.
There's also the problem of what exactly is inappropriate. The Federal government already has form in abusing copyright law to take down embarrassing websites. It wouldn't surprise me to find all manner of sites banned for spurious reasons.
One of the disappointing things with all these policies is they miss the point of a lot of the problems. Sure, there are a lot of offensive websites that really aren't suitable for kids. But the real problems are much deeper.
The online predators are using legitimate web sites and other tools to stalk their victims. Blocking websites won't stop them.
But we shouldn't lose sight that online predators are a tiny group. The vast majority of cybercrime is online fraud, phishing, spyware and trojan distribution.
These aspects need to be adressed as well. Just blocking smutty websites does not make the Internet safer for anyone.
Thursday, August 09, 2007
Unreasonable terms
I've been following the story of Angus and Robertson's new supplier terms with interest after a client mentioned it to me a week or so ago. The terms are quite remarkable and it's not surprising to see the backlash against A&R.
The best response has been the reply written by Michael Rakusin, director of Sydney's Tower Books, sadly the only copy I've read is behind the Crikey subscriber wall so the link doesn't give the full detail.
The gem from Michael's letter is this line,
it would seem to me paramount to stop blaming suppliers for your misfortunes, trying ever harder to squeeze them to death, and actually focus on your core incompetencies in order to redress them.
Michael also makes the excellent point that trying to adopt department store and supermarket tactics to publishers might be a mistake for a bookseller given variety stores have a range of products while book stores only have one.
Personally I ceased to be amazed a long time ago at the sort of nonsense big business tries on, either as a customer or supplier. What I do find amazing is the 5% DAILY interest payment for late remittances. I hope that's not compounding as the Annual Percentage Rate maxed out my calculator.
What makes this letter priceless is the arrogance in it, particularly the closing line,
"If you would like to discuss this with me in more detail, I am delighted to confirm an appointment with you at .........for ten minutes at my office....."
Unbelievable.
The best response has been the reply written by Michael Rakusin, director of Sydney's Tower Books, sadly the only copy I've read is behind the Crikey subscriber wall so the link doesn't give the full detail.
The gem from Michael's letter is this line,
it would seem to me paramount to stop blaming suppliers for your misfortunes, trying ever harder to squeeze them to death, and actually focus on your core incompetencies in order to redress them.
Michael also makes the excellent point that trying to adopt department store and supermarket tactics to publishers might be a mistake for a bookseller given variety stores have a range of products while book stores only have one.
Personally I ceased to be amazed a long time ago at the sort of nonsense big business tries on, either as a customer or supplier. What I do find amazing is the 5% DAILY interest payment for late remittances. I hope that's not compounding as the Annual Percentage Rate maxed out my calculator.
What makes this letter priceless is the arrogance in it, particularly the closing line,
"If you would like to discuss this with me in more detail, I am delighted to confirm an appointment with you at .........for ten minutes at my office....."
Unbelievable.
Microsoft overtaking Apache web server
Netcraft are claiming Microsoft's Internet Information Server might overtake the dominant Apache web server software early next year.
I'm wondering if those numbers are boosted by all the Windows Small Business Server installations that have IIS enabled but aren't really used. These would still appear in the statistics, but visiting them would only get the default page up.
I don't Apache's going to be knocked off any time soon.
I'm wondering if those numbers are boosted by all the Windows Small Business Server installations that have IIS enabled but aren't really used. These would still appear in the statistics, but visiting them would only get the default page up.
I don't Apache's going to be knocked off any time soon.
Paul Kelly gets a sex change.
Strange times on the The Australian website last night. Paul Kelly seemed to have had a sex change.
Far from being a staid, serious middle aged fellow it turns out he's a regular chick who loves licking the tops of ice cream containers.
They say never judge a book by it's cover.
IceTV wins court case
IceTV, the Australian PVR guide company, has won the legal case bought against it by Channel Nine.
This is great news for Australian consumers and TV viewers.
I have to admit I was less than optimistic about IceTV's chances. In the past, Australian courts have tended to side with the incumbents in cases like this. The DtMS versus Telstra case where Telstra won their copyright claim on phone directories is the best example.
One thing to temper the good news is how accurate IceTV can be. Given the problems we find with Australian TV schedules, it's possible that an online schedule isn't much use anyway.
This is great news for Australian consumers and TV viewers.
I have to admit I was less than optimistic about IceTV's chances. In the past, Australian courts have tended to side with the incumbents in cases like this. The DtMS versus Telstra case where Telstra won their copyright claim on phone directories is the best example.
One thing to temper the good news is how accurate IceTV can be. Given the problems we find with Australian TV schedules, it's possible that an online schedule isn't much use anyway.
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Chucking out customers
Steve, the boss at Eastwood Hi-Fi, makes a good point about turning away potentially troublesome customers in his August 6 post. I reckon it's good practice.
One of the joys of running a tech business is that many customers have either unrealistic expectations of the products or they have unrealistic beliefs in their abilities to use it.
The result for the tech (or the tech's boss) is many hours of stress and unchargable time and eventually returned products or disputed bills.
So when you sense a customer might be trouble, it's best to politely refer the customer elsewhere.
In a similar topic, Valerie Khoo in the Sydney Morning Herald's Enterprise blog asks "is the customer always right?"
The answer is an emphatic "NO!" Often customers have some very strange ideas that they are unwilling to ditch regardless of what advice you give them.
Once again, it's best to pass their custom on elsewhere.
I've been doing this a lot recently. I'm sick of spyware and I'm tired of computer setups with all manner of strangely setup applications.
I don't know if it's because I'm old and jaded or I've just become picky or because I'm just not hungry enough for the work, but I find I'm reluctant to do jobs that might have the slightest complication down the track.
I'd suggest any business owner really should have a line in the sand they draw with customers. While a disappointed customer might tell five or ten people about their experience, a bad customer might distract you from twenty good customers.
One of the joys of running a tech business is that many customers have either unrealistic expectations of the products or they have unrealistic beliefs in their abilities to use it.
The result for the tech (or the tech's boss) is many hours of stress and unchargable time and eventually returned products or disputed bills.
So when you sense a customer might be trouble, it's best to politely refer the customer elsewhere.
In a similar topic, Valerie Khoo in the Sydney Morning Herald's Enterprise blog asks "is the customer always right?"
The answer is an emphatic "NO!" Often customers have some very strange ideas that they are unwilling to ditch regardless of what advice you give them.
Once again, it's best to pass their custom on elsewhere.
I've been doing this a lot recently. I'm sick of spyware and I'm tired of computer setups with all manner of strangely setup applications.
I don't know if it's because I'm old and jaded or I've just become picky or because I'm just not hungry enough for the work, but I find I'm reluctant to do jobs that might have the slightest complication down the track.
I'd suggest any business owner really should have a line in the sand they draw with customers. While a disappointed customer might tell five or ten people about their experience, a bad customer might distract you from twenty good customers.
Monday, August 06, 2007
More finger pointing at nVidia
It seems a lot of people agree with Ed Bott's observation about nVidia graphics cards and Windows Vista. Another blogger, Ryan Wagner, notes that most of his Vista problems have been on problems with nVidia graphics.
NVidia have really spoiled their own nest with this. It's very difficult for any tech to recommend their products after this mess.
Another interesting observation on Ryan's site is how he's found Vista's slow file transfer speed improved with the latest patch from Microsoft.
We suggested a few fixes at ITQueries and this is a welcome patch. But I'm still not convinced that doubling the speed is acceptable. It is still way too slow.
NVidia have really spoiled their own nest with this. It's very difficult for any tech to recommend their products after this mess.
Another interesting observation on Ryan's site is how he's found Vista's slow file transfer speed improved with the latest patch from Microsoft.
We suggested a few fixes at ITQueries and this is a welcome patch. But I'm still not convinced that doubling the speed is acceptable. It is still way too slow.
Friday, August 03, 2007
Automated password hijacking
Brian Krebs' Security Watch blog describes a hacking tool for stealing user's passwords from webmail sites.
This again shows the risks of connecting to the net through unsecured or public wireless networks which I mentioned a few weeks back.
If you regularly use other people's networks, particularly wireless networks, you need to use secure socket layer protocols. That means using webmail sites that start with https and email servers that support SSL.
Brian's article notes that gmail has a secure version simply by typing https:// before the address rather than just using www.
I tried this with my Internet providers, Pacific Internet and Bigpond, and found they support these protocols on their logins.
Interestingly, Bigpond's webmail reverts to standard http:// once you've logged in. I'm not sure this is a good thing and that's going to need a little more research.
I'm going to get into the habit of using https for all my webmail accounts. Naturally, you should always make sure financial websites always use https before you logon.
Stealing passwords is a big and lucrative business for the bad guys. Using secure websites reduces your chances of being a victim.
This again shows the risks of connecting to the net through unsecured or public wireless networks which I mentioned a few weeks back.
If you regularly use other people's networks, particularly wireless networks, you need to use secure socket layer protocols. That means using webmail sites that start with https and email servers that support SSL.
Brian's article notes that gmail has a secure version simply by typing https:// before the address rather than just using www.
I tried this with my Internet providers, Pacific Internet and Bigpond, and found they support these protocols on their logins.
Interestingly, Bigpond's webmail reverts to standard http:// once you've logged in. I'm not sure this is a good thing and that's going to need a little more research.
I'm going to get into the habit of using https for all my webmail accounts. Naturally, you should always make sure financial websites always use https before you logon.
Stealing passwords is a big and lucrative business for the bad guys. Using secure websites reduces your chances of being a victim.
Thursday, August 02, 2007
Printer cartridges
The news that the Cartridge World founders have sold 90% of their business for $60 million is great good news story for for an Australian IT company.
I have to admit I'm surprised at how well Cartridge World has done. I've always found customers to be sceptical of refilled and generic cartridges. However, given Cartridge World specialise in this field, it gives them a expertise advantage over the big chain stores, Australia Post and newsagents.
Mark Fletcher at the Australian Newsagents Blog mentioned yesterday how he's reducing shelf space for generic cartridges. I guess this shows how different markets buy through different channels. While someone who buys from the local newsagent wants the name brand, there is a big enough market to sustain a specialty refilling business.
Byran Stokes and Paul Wheeler deserve a real pat on the back for how well they've built this business. But I imagine a thirty million dollar payday will suit each of them just fine.
I have to admit I'm surprised at how well Cartridge World has done. I've always found customers to be sceptical of refilled and generic cartridges. However, given Cartridge World specialise in this field, it gives them a expertise advantage over the big chain stores, Australia Post and newsagents.
Mark Fletcher at the Australian Newsagents Blog mentioned yesterday how he's reducing shelf space for generic cartridges. I guess this shows how different markets buy through different channels. While someone who buys from the local newsagent wants the name brand, there is a big enough market to sustain a specialty refilling business.
Byran Stokes and Paul Wheeler deserve a real pat on the back for how well they've built this business. But I imagine a thirty million dollar payday will suit each of them just fine.
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
Bye bye Yellow!
After 12 years, I'm kissing goodbye to our Yellow Pages ad. For a service business a Yellow Pages ad is usually a good investment but I've decided to save 15k by skipping it this year. There's a number of reasons for this;
Lousy Service
A couple of days ago, our rep left a message "your deadline is approaching. Call me back because I'm too busy and won't get time to call you before the books close."
Great service I have to say, but given the way Sensis operate I can barely blame the poor girl.
I subscribe to the Sensis job alerts as I'm always hoping to find a corporate gig suited for a forty something nervous wreck who's been broken by customers.
I've noticed Sensis are constantly advertising for reps. It's not surprising they have to keep advertising given the job pays 58k if you make your targets. That is not good money for a barrel load of stress and a lot of hard work.
But that's a problem for the reps and their bosses. None of that would really matter if I were getting a good return. Sadly, the inquiries we get through the YP these days generally doesn't attract the right customers.
Customer types
In our line of work, the Yellow Pages attracts too many tyre kickers and too many panic merchants.
The panic merchants ignore strange noises and error messages until their computer blows up.
This usually happens at 3am the night before their tax return and their daughter's PHD thesis is due.
This of course wouldn't be so bad if the buggers wanted to pay for emergency service at 3am. But they'll either hang up when you tell them the price or never pay the bill.
Tyre kicking types might not ring at 3am, but they are a bigger waste of time.
A favourite trick of these folk is to make a booking then continue ringing around until they find someone cheaper. They then cancel your booking, often five minutes before the tech arrives.
Category Bloat
I've mentioned previously the Yellow Pages has too many categories. When you have to decide between seven different categories it becomes a gamble. Unless of course you want to spend 100k+ putting for a small ad in all seven.
Of course for some businesses, this is not a problem. Particularly if Sensis give you your ads for free.
The Yellow Pages is our competitor
Why give money to your competitor? Sensis bought their own IT support business, Invizage, a few years back.
Like The Trading Post it's gone nowhere since. But it still rankles me they decided to compete in my field. Even more so when their reps try to steal my customers during their advertising sales pitch.
I also bet Invizage get their quarter page display ads in twenty different categories for a good deal less than the millions of dollars it would cost me.
Price
The price is also a sticking point. It seems to jump every year and has always been my biggest single marketing cost. Although I don't begrudge that if it generates enough leads.
Clunky systems
For a company that claims to be at the forefront of Internet search and online services, their systems are a quaint throw back to the 1950s.
When you call them, you can't do anything until a rep spends some time with you. It seems their idea of selling is to make your head spin with different options.
The problem is small business owners simply don't have the time for this. If they made online ordering available. It would improve their service out of sight, be a cheaper channel and small business owners would jump at it.
They'd probably sell more too. I know plenty of business owners who would go mad optioning up their ads. They certainly do it when they order online with Dell.
Not only would they have lower costs, they'd have a higher sell through rate. They could also use their online service to push extras like Sensis Search and Invizage.
If they had a concept of service, they'd sell more, spend less and probably have fewer double handling and communication stuff ups.
I've always loved their idea of service. Visit their update your listing page. Not only do you have to call them, but the free and paid listing service hours and number are identical.
Good product differentiation there. I'm sure it's never occurred to their senior managers to give paying customers better support than the freebie customers.
It's a shame Yellow Pages can't do with a forty something victim of the IT wars. They might learn something.
But in the meantime, they'll have to do without my modest 15k for this year's ad.
Lousy Service
A couple of days ago, our rep left a message "your deadline is approaching. Call me back because I'm too busy and won't get time to call you before the books close."
Great service I have to say, but given the way Sensis operate I can barely blame the poor girl.
I subscribe to the Sensis job alerts as I'm always hoping to find a corporate gig suited for a forty something nervous wreck who's been broken by customers.
I've noticed Sensis are constantly advertising for reps. It's not surprising they have to keep advertising given the job pays 58k if you make your targets. That is not good money for a barrel load of stress and a lot of hard work.
But that's a problem for the reps and their bosses. None of that would really matter if I were getting a good return. Sadly, the inquiries we get through the YP these days generally doesn't attract the right customers.
Customer types
In our line of work, the Yellow Pages attracts too many tyre kickers and too many panic merchants.
The panic merchants ignore strange noises and error messages until their computer blows up.
This usually happens at 3am the night before their tax return and their daughter's PHD thesis is due.
This of course wouldn't be so bad if the buggers wanted to pay for emergency service at 3am. But they'll either hang up when you tell them the price or never pay the bill.
Tyre kicking types might not ring at 3am, but they are a bigger waste of time.
A favourite trick of these folk is to make a booking then continue ringing around until they find someone cheaper. They then cancel your booking, often five minutes before the tech arrives.
Category Bloat
I've mentioned previously the Yellow Pages has too many categories. When you have to decide between seven different categories it becomes a gamble. Unless of course you want to spend 100k+ putting for a small ad in all seven.
Of course for some businesses, this is not a problem. Particularly if Sensis give you your ads for free.
The Yellow Pages is our competitor
Why give money to your competitor? Sensis bought their own IT support business, Invizage, a few years back.
Like The Trading Post it's gone nowhere since. But it still rankles me they decided to compete in my field. Even more so when their reps try to steal my customers during their advertising sales pitch.
I also bet Invizage get their quarter page display ads in twenty different categories for a good deal less than the millions of dollars it would cost me.
Price
The price is also a sticking point. It seems to jump every year and has always been my biggest single marketing cost. Although I don't begrudge that if it generates enough leads.
Clunky systems
For a company that claims to be at the forefront of Internet search and online services, their systems are a quaint throw back to the 1950s.
When you call them, you can't do anything until a rep spends some time with you. It seems their idea of selling is to make your head spin with different options.
The problem is small business owners simply don't have the time for this. If they made online ordering available. It would improve their service out of sight, be a cheaper channel and small business owners would jump at it.
They'd probably sell more too. I know plenty of business owners who would go mad optioning up their ads. They certainly do it when they order online with Dell.
Not only would they have lower costs, they'd have a higher sell through rate. They could also use their online service to push extras like Sensis Search and Invizage.
If they had a concept of service, they'd sell more, spend less and probably have fewer double handling and communication stuff ups.
I've always loved their idea of service. Visit their update your listing page. Not only do you have to call them, but the free and paid listing service hours and number are identical.
Good product differentiation there. I'm sure it's never occurred to their senior managers to give paying customers better support than the freebie customers.
It's a shame Yellow Pages can't do with a forty something victim of the IT wars. They might learn something.
But in the meantime, they'll have to do without my modest 15k for this year's ad.
The most influential tech products of the last 25 years
IT Industry association CompTIA celebrated it's 25th anniversary with a survey of the ten most influential IT products of the last 25 years.
I'm wondering who voted for this. The list is bizarre.
My suspicion is whoever they asked confused popularity with influence. That can only explain Internet Explorer being more influential than Netscape Navigator.
Similarly voting Blackberry over Palm (or the Psion or Newton) and voting MS Word over WordPerfect seems odd to me.
The most bizarre thing about the list is they overlooked Microsoft Windows.
One of the things that always worries me about these surveys is we see the press release but we don't see the survey itself, particularly how it was done and who was asked. I'd love to see the raw data for this one.
I'm not sure CompTIA's done itself a favour with this. It's going to antagonise more people in the industry. I guess it will draw attention to them and maybe that's a good thing.
I'm wondering who voted for this. The list is bizarre.
My suspicion is whoever they asked confused popularity with influence. That can only explain Internet Explorer being more influential than Netscape Navigator.
Similarly voting Blackberry over Palm (or the Psion or Newton) and voting MS Word over WordPerfect seems odd to me.
The most bizarre thing about the list is they overlooked Microsoft Windows.
One of the things that always worries me about these surveys is we see the press release but we don't see the survey itself, particularly how it was done and who was asked. I'd love to see the raw data for this one.
I'm not sure CompTIA's done itself a favour with this. It's going to antagonise more people in the industry. I guess it will draw attention to them and maybe that's a good thing.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Microsoft Works to become free?
Are Microsoft responding to Google Apps with making MS Works free?
Mary Jo Foley reports Microsoft will release the next version of Works for free and support it with advertising.
MS Works is a product I've always disliked. My main beef is that largely incompatible with MS Office with the exception of a period where Word was bundled into it, which they dropped two versions ago.
I'm not sure the last time I actually encountered amug customer who had paid for Works, usually it's thrown in as an extra by a vendor or salesman desperate to get it off their shelves.
However, one thing going for Works is that it is a far more powerful group of applications that Google apps.
Personally, if you don't want to buy MS Office, I'd go for Open Office or 602 Office over MS Works any time. But for free, it's certainly an alternative although it's probably less compatible with Office than OO.
The only thing I hope is they at least give the next version of Works the ability to save into MS Word, Excel and Access formats. If they did this, people might actually be prepared to buy it.
Mary Jo Foley reports Microsoft will release the next version of Works for free and support it with advertising.
MS Works is a product I've always disliked. My main beef is that largely incompatible with MS Office with the exception of a period where Word was bundled into it, which they dropped two versions ago.
I'm not sure the last time I actually encountered a
However, one thing going for Works is that it is a far more powerful group of applications that Google apps.
Personally, if you don't want to buy MS Office, I'd go for Open Office or 602 Office over MS Works any time. But for free, it's certainly an alternative although it's probably less compatible with Office than OO.
The only thing I hope is they at least give the next version of Works the ability to save into MS Word, Excel and Access formats. If they did this, people might actually be prepared to buy it.
More Vista shame.
Following my rant about Hewlett Packard yesterday, I see Ed Bott gives a similar spray to nVidia today.
Ten pages of problems!?!
How on earth can a vendor release a product so buggy?
What's even more frustrating is one bug Ed discusses is at least six months old.
After twelve years of working in the consumer IT industry I shouldn't be surprised at how vendors treat their customers with contempt, but this surely is a low point.
The IT industry's failures with the roll out of Vista really make me wonder what the heck is going in the well paid boardrooms of these companies.
I wrote the Vista Hall of Shame on the PC Rescue website back in March. It seems I should have put nVidia towards the top.
It might be time to update that page.
Ten pages of problems!?!
How on earth can a vendor release a product so buggy?
What's even more frustrating is one bug Ed discusses is at least six months old.
After twelve years of working in the consumer IT industry I shouldn't be surprised at how vendors treat their customers with contempt, but this surely is a low point.
The IT industry's failures with the roll out of Vista really make me wonder what the heck is going in the well paid boardrooms of these companies.
I wrote the Vista Hall of Shame on the PC Rescue website back in March. It seems I should have put nVidia towards the top.
It might be time to update that page.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Keep it simple, stupid
I used to have respect for HP, when I was at uni their products stood for engineering quality and reliability. Twenty-five years later it's difficult to have any respect for a company that releases such bloated software.
A client yesterday asked me to set up an Officejet 7410, this is quite a good multifunction printer with wireless networking built in. The client couldn't get the printer to talk over his wireless network.
It only took a few minutes for me to get it right, but I work on this stuff all the time. The computer based options returned a "networking not supported function". I had to use the menu on the printer to setup the WPA security.
That in itself was a frustration, just to nark me more there was an irritating error in the HP Director software about an XML skin not being installed. This is just irrelevant fairy floss which I ignore but customers quite rightly worry about.
The fun really started when I went to set up the printer on another PC. The setup would go through three stages before returning a "the copy functions cannot be used" error.
Beauty.
All up it took me 45 minutes to install the printer. This is ludicrous for a simple, consumer product.
Some of the problem include their links not working on the support website, an estimated time of up to 35 minutes to install, a 240Mb download and installing the .Net framework.
Oh, and the thing requires a reboot every time the setup fails.
All this for a stupid bloody printer.
It only took a few minutes for me to get it right, but I work on this stuff all the time. The computer based options returned a "networking not supported function". I had to use the menu on the printer to setup the WPA security.
That in itself was a frustration, just to nark me more there was an irritating error in the HP Director software about an XML skin not being installed. This is just irrelevant fairy floss which I ignore but customers quite rightly worry about.
The fun really started when I went to set up the printer on another PC. The setup would go through three stages before returning a "the copy functions cannot be used" error.
Beauty.
All up it took me 45 minutes to install the printer. This is ludicrous for a simple, consumer product.
Some of the problem include their links not working on the support website, an estimated time of up to 35 minutes to install, a 240Mb download and installing the .Net framework.
Oh, and the thing requires a reboot every time the setup fails.
All this for a stupid bloody printer.
The key to reliable computing is to keep it simple. The failure of vendors to do this is the number one reason why consumers get upset and computers fail.
I've said before I'd like to see executives held responsible for their dodgy products. Vyomesh Joshi, Executive Vice President of HP's Printing and Imaging group received three million dollars in options last year.
I'd like to see Vyomesh's bonuses tied to how long it takes his grandmother to setup one of his consumer products.
This is what I like about Apple; simplicity. Steve Jobs gets it, Vyomesh Joshi doesn't.Too many Geeks and Nerds
At a car park on Friday I noticed cars from SIX other support companies. That on it's own should show how crowded the IT support market currently is.
But I'm not cranky about the number of tech businesses fighting in the marketplace: It's about their names.
There's too many Geeks and Nerds: Geeks R Us, Geeks To The Rescue, Geeks On Call, Geeks Central, Geek Chick, Nerds Downunder, Corporate Nerds, Neighbourhood Nerds. I could go on and on and on with variations on this theme.
What these guys don't get is that the term "Geek" or "Nerd" is not a compliment. Some people get upset when they are called a nerd.
Quite rightly too. The term "nerd" or "geek" implies a sexually inadequate young man who gets off on fixing obscure computer problems. To the average person, this indicates your tech will fix your computer because they enjoy tinkering with computers, not because they want to get paid.
I'd suggest the computer tech industry is the only industry where the participants gleefully use a term that's an insult to them.
It's time to drop the "Nerd" and "Geek" names, they are lame and devalue your skills and services. Be proud of your talents and find a name that reflects what you do and the fact you do it well.
But I'm not cranky about the number of tech businesses fighting in the marketplace: It's about their names.
There's too many Geeks and Nerds: Geeks R Us, Geeks To The Rescue, Geeks On Call, Geeks Central, Geek Chick, Nerds Downunder, Corporate Nerds, Neighbourhood Nerds. I could go on and on and on with variations on this theme.
What these guys don't get is that the term "Geek" or "Nerd" is not a compliment. Some people get upset when they are called a nerd.
Quite rightly too. The term "nerd" or "geek" implies a sexually inadequate young man who gets off on fixing obscure computer problems. To the average person, this indicates your tech will fix your computer because they enjoy tinkering with computers, not because they want to get paid.
I'd suggest the computer tech industry is the only industry where the participants gleefully use a term that's an insult to them.
It's time to drop the "Nerd" and "Geek" names, they are lame and devalue your skills and services. Be proud of your talents and find a name that reflects what you do and the fact you do it well.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Don't let your kids use your computer
The US Congress' oversight committee held hearings on the security of Peer to Peer networking recently. This raised an issue that's bugged me for sometime about programs like Limewire.
Programs like Limewire automatically share parts of your "my documents" folder. For many people there's some pretty confidential information in there.
For business users this can have some pretty serious ramifications. The CNET article on this story has an example.
..the Department of Transportation experienced an incident in which an employee's daughter installed LimeWire on the home computer that her mother occasionally uses for telework--and misconfigured it in such a way that documents from the department and the National Archives were open to others using the network..
That's a pretty typical scenario for a home office or small business: The kids get on mum or dad's work computer and Very Bad Things Happen.
The moral here is to keep work and play computers separate. Make the kids buy their own computer and stick Limewire on it.
Programs like Limewire automatically share parts of your "my documents" folder. For many people there's some pretty confidential information in there.
For business users this can have some pretty serious ramifications. The CNET article on this story has an example.
..the Department of Transportation experienced an incident in which an employee's daughter installed LimeWire on the home computer that her mother occasionally uses for telework--and misconfigured it in such a way that documents from the department and the National Archives were open to others using the network..
That's a pretty typical scenario for a home office or small business: The kids get on mum or dad's work computer and Very Bad Things Happen.
The moral here is to keep work and play computers separate. Make the kids buy their own computer and stick Limewire on it.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Premium SMS scams
On the day the mobile phone industry celebrates the 15th birthday of the SMS, we find a premium rate SMS operator is fined $150,000 for spamming phone users.
This scam was an irritating little stunt where they'd call you and quickly hang up, leaving an "unanswered call" on your phone. When you returned the call you'd get a recorded message telling you that you'd won a prize and to call a premium rate phone number.
If you fell for this, you would then find that not only had you spent $15 to claim your prize, but also you'd subscribed to a pointless and expensive ringtone service.
DC Marketing is not alone in this sort of behaviour. In fact there are many operators who are far worse.
The attitude of the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association is laughable. The chief executive, Chris Althaus, believes that 9,000 complaints in a six month period is simply because of new 3G services.
Exactly what 3G has to do with SMS scams is beyond me.
The ringtone and premium rate SMS industry has a serious problem. There's only so many morons who will spend hundreds of dollars a year on this garbage. By definition, those morons are easily parted from their money so competition for them is intense.
So the premium rate operators stoop to some pretty low stunts to trick people. One of the most common tricks is to offer a prize but bury deep in the small print that claiming it is agreeing to receiving two ring tones a week at five dollars a pop.
The worse ones just subscribe people who have never even rung the number. The first these people know of the scam is some charges on their bill.
Many victims of this found the response of Optus, Telstra and Vodafone was "discuss it with the spammer" despite the fact the victims often had no relationship with them and the scammers made it difficult, if not impossible, to talk to anyone.
The real disgrace here is the action was taken against one provider under the spam act. The real scammers should be feeling the heat of the ACCC, TIO and state police forces for the frauds that have been committed.
The phone companies should be copping some penalties too. They are complicit in this and profit very nicely from these scams.
Until the authorities start taking serious action, the premium rate SMS scams will continue.
Anyway, happy birthday to the SMS.
This scam was an irritating little stunt where they'd call you and quickly hang up, leaving an "unanswered call" on your phone. When you returned the call you'd get a recorded message telling you that you'd won a prize and to call a premium rate phone number.
If you fell for this, you would then find that not only had you spent $15 to claim your prize, but also you'd subscribed to a pointless and expensive ringtone service.
DC Marketing is not alone in this sort of behaviour. In fact there are many operators who are far worse.
The attitude of the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association is laughable. The chief executive, Chris Althaus, believes that 9,000 complaints in a six month period is simply because of new 3G services.
Exactly what 3G has to do with SMS scams is beyond me.
The ringtone and premium rate SMS industry has a serious problem. There's only so many morons who will spend hundreds of dollars a year on this garbage. By definition, those morons are easily parted from their money so competition for them is intense.
So the premium rate operators stoop to some pretty low stunts to trick people. One of the most common tricks is to offer a prize but bury deep in the small print that claiming it is agreeing to receiving two ring tones a week at five dollars a pop.
The worse ones just subscribe people who have never even rung the number. The first these people know of the scam is some charges on their bill.
Many victims of this found the response of Optus, Telstra and Vodafone was "discuss it with the spammer" despite the fact the victims often had no relationship with them and the scammers made it difficult, if not impossible, to talk to anyone.
The real disgrace here is the action was taken against one provider under the spam act. The real scammers should be feeling the heat of the ACCC, TIO and state police forces for the frauds that have been committed.
The phone companies should be copping some penalties too. They are complicit in this and profit very nicely from these scams.
Until the authorities start taking serious action, the premium rate SMS scams will continue.
Anyway, happy birthday to the SMS.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Telstra offer a self install kit
Telstra have another crack at the small business market with a new offering.
AustralianIT reports that Telstra will be offering a small business network self install kit that includes a domain name, two managed Exchange mailboxes and a wireless router.
It certainly sounds like an interesting product. The small business market is seriously overlooked and this is the sort of product small business owners love.
I can see a few problems though; the cost of Telstra's plans, ongoing support and domain name problems.
Choosing domain names is going to be fun. A lot of small business owners don't understand the rules for choosing .com.au names and don't appreciate that most good dot com names are gone. I expect Telstra's support people will have some serious headaches with this.
The cost of Telstra's plans is another major drawback. Telstra are never cheap for Internet access and the proposed entry level plan of $55 for 500Mb of data is recipe for small business bankruptcy.
Ongoing support is the deal breaker here. Telstra's previous efforts in this field have left small business owners on hold and frustrated for many hours.
This product will take a lot of supporting and hand holding. To make it a success, they'll have to be sharp on both marketing and support.
Telstra's moves in the small business market are well worth watching. It looks like competition in this space is going to heat up and if Telstra can do it right, they'll be in the position to grab the best market share.
AustralianIT reports that Telstra will be offering a small business network self install kit that includes a domain name, two managed Exchange mailboxes and a wireless router.
It certainly sounds like an interesting product. The small business market is seriously overlooked and this is the sort of product small business owners love.
I can see a few problems though; the cost of Telstra's plans, ongoing support and domain name problems.
Choosing domain names is going to be fun. A lot of small business owners don't understand the rules for choosing .com.au names and don't appreciate that most good dot com names are gone. I expect Telstra's support people will have some serious headaches with this.
The cost of Telstra's plans is another major drawback. Telstra are never cheap for Internet access and the proposed entry level plan of $55 for 500Mb of data is recipe for small business bankruptcy.
Ongoing support is the deal breaker here. Telstra's previous efforts in this field have left small business owners on hold and frustrated for many hours.
This product will take a lot of supporting and hand holding. To make it a success, they'll have to be sharp on both marketing and support.
Telstra's moves in the small business market are well worth watching. It looks like competition in this space is going to heat up and if Telstra can do it right, they'll be in the position to grab the best market share.
You are not anonymous
The story that every single page of the latest Harry Potter book was photographed and posted to the web is fascinating on a number of levels.
First, who the heck has the time? This book has a lot of pages. Obviously some people at Scholastic have cushy jobs.
The more compelling point is the news that the poster didn't strip out their EXIF information before posting. This means the camera's maker and serial number are there for the world to see.
As the Electronic Frontiers Foundation points out, it's not just digital cameras that live your electronic fingerprints everywhere; mobile phones, printers and web browsers do a good job as well.
While it's not impossible to be anonymous it takes a lot of work. When I read some of the things people do on the net, I'm amazed they think they have some sort of anonymity.
First, who the heck has the time? This book has a lot of pages. Obviously some people at Scholastic have cushy jobs.
The more compelling point is the news that the poster didn't strip out their EXIF information before posting. This means the camera's maker and serial number are there for the world to see.
As the Electronic Frontiers Foundation points out, it's not just digital cameras that live your electronic fingerprints everywhere; mobile phones, printers and web browsers do a good job as well.
While it's not impossible to be anonymous it takes a lot of work. When I read some of the things people do on the net, I'm amazed they think they have some sort of anonymity.
Wireless USB is coming.
The news that Dell and Lenovo are releasing wireless USB equipped laptops will have those who hate cable clutter rejoicing.
Wireless USB is one of these technologies that's been promised for a long time but never seemed to arrive. With this announcement, it looks like USB devices without wires will be common by Christmas.
This is good news to a lot of computer users. Many people loathe the clutter that comes with a personal computer.
All these technologies have teething problems, so we'll probably see some frustrated people in the next few months. But as the prices drop and the technology is bedded down, we'll see more devices and more people buying them.
Wireless USB is one of these technologies that's been promised for a long time but never seemed to arrive. With this announcement, it looks like USB devices without wires will be common by Christmas.
This is good news to a lot of computer users. Many people loathe the clutter that comes with a personal computer.
All these technologies have teething problems, so we'll probably see some frustrated people in the next few months. But as the prices drop and the technology is bedded down, we'll see more devices and more people buying them.
Friday, July 20, 2007
Risks with wireless networks
George OU at ZD Net makes a point well worth considering about wireless hotspots.
"As ubiquitous and convenient as Wireless LAN Hotspots are, it is probably the single most dangerous technology to the mobile computer user"
He's right on the money. I've often wondered how many crooks have set up a honeypot of a free wireless access point to steal users data or passwords.
Another similar risk that's disturbed me for a while is how vulnerable many access points are. George illustrates this with the Wall of Sheep at the Defcon convention. For a competent but crooked tech it's easy to pick passwords up off a wireless network.
This is also a risk if you have unsecured wireless network, once someone is on it they can sniff out your usernames and passwords.
It's important to take care when you are using a wireless network. Like everything else on the internet; if you don't know them, don't trust them.
"As ubiquitous and convenient as Wireless LAN Hotspots are, it is probably the single most dangerous technology to the mobile computer user"
He's right on the money. I've often wondered how many crooks have set up a honeypot of a free wireless access point to steal users data or passwords.
Another similar risk that's disturbed me for a while is how vulnerable many access points are. George illustrates this with the Wall of Sheep at the Defcon convention. For a competent but crooked tech it's easy to pick passwords up off a wireless network.
This is also a risk if you have unsecured wireless network, once someone is on it they can sniff out your usernames and passwords.
It's important to take care when you are using a wireless network. Like everything else on the internet; if you don't know them, don't trust them.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Bidding on Ebay and other auctions
USA today has an article on irrational Ebay bidding. Apparently researchers found bidders often pay more than they could if they just accepted the "buy it now" price.
The researchers put this down this down to bidders getting carried away with auctions. While that's almost certainly true, I suspect there's also a mentality that an auction will always result in a bargain.
I used to go to technology auctions and and was an early adopter of the Grays Online website. One thing I discovered very early was that the average punter pays way over the odds for computers and electronics at these auctions and it's why I rarely bother with them these days.
One thing I've always noticed is that bidders don't know the retail price of items. Often you see somebody paying well over what it would cost to buy at the local computer store.
Another factor that trips buyers up is not understanding hidden costs. An observation in this article was that Ebay bidders are suspicious of hidden charges but often didn't consider shipping fees.
In computers there's even more hidden costs. Usually an auctioned second hand computer doesn't come with software licenses and warranties. My view is this alone reduces the value of the box by 60%.
I reckon auctions are a good way of buying and selling. But when you're buying the most important thing is you need to be aware of the retail price before placing a bid.
The researchers put this down this down to bidders getting carried away with auctions. While that's almost certainly true, I suspect there's also a mentality that an auction will always result in a bargain.
I used to go to technology auctions and and was an early adopter of the Grays Online website. One thing I discovered very early was that the average punter pays way over the odds for computers and electronics at these auctions and it's why I rarely bother with them these days.
One thing I've always noticed is that bidders don't know the retail price of items. Often you see somebody paying well over what it would cost to buy at the local computer store.
Another factor that trips buyers up is not understanding hidden costs. An observation in this article was that Ebay bidders are suspicious of hidden charges but often didn't consider shipping fees.
In computers there's even more hidden costs. Usually an auctioned second hand computer doesn't come with software licenses and warranties. My view is this alone reduces the value of the box by 60%.
I reckon auctions are a good way of buying and selling. But when you're buying the most important thing is you need to be aware of the retail price before placing a bid.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
The joys of selling a business
Over the last nine months I've been looking at exit strategies from the IT support business and to say the process has left me scarred and bitter is an understatement.
When selling a business, the prospect buyer quite rightly wants some certain that wheat they are buying is what's been represented. For the seller, this means quite a bit of work. What's more it's quite reasonable for the buyer to require the vendor to spend some time helping with the transition to new owners.
So given the amount of work involved for the business owner, the sale price of the business needs to be worthwhile.
My experience was that the prices on offer weren't. I even had one prospective buyer claim they had just bought a 30 year old business with a turnover of 750,000 and gross of 180,000 for $18,000.
With those sort of numbers it was hardly worth selling.
I thought this was just me, that I really hadn't built a business that was worth anything. Fair enough, such is life and it's time to move on.
But then I started talking to others who've owned businesses and tried to sell them. I was surprised to find my experience was not unusual. Many people just walk.
So when I read a recent article on the Smart Company Blog about the under-representation of services businesses I couldn't help but add my two bob's worth.
This lead to this interesting reply from Andrew Kent at Biz Exchange. His view is the idea that these business are worthless is bunk.
I agree, all businesses have a value, but the market price for many businesses make it not worth selling for many business owners.
My suspicion is a service business needs to get over the two million dollar turnover threshold before it's attracts the attention of investors and serious buyers. Below that you are largely selling to people buying their own jobs or competitors who are at best half hearted about building a client base.
Andrew to his credit has decided to test this by making an offer on his blog: The first ten IT and construction business that approach him will get a free listing on Biz Exchange. It's an experiment I'll be watching with interest.
When selling a business, the prospect buyer quite rightly wants some certain that wheat they are buying is what's been represented. For the seller, this means quite a bit of work. What's more it's quite reasonable for the buyer to require the vendor to spend some time helping with the transition to new owners.
So given the amount of work involved for the business owner, the sale price of the business needs to be worthwhile.
My experience was that the prices on offer weren't. I even had one prospective buyer claim they had just bought a 30 year old business with a turnover of 750,000 and gross of 180,000 for $18,000.
With those sort of numbers it was hardly worth selling.
I thought this was just me, that I really hadn't built a business that was worth anything. Fair enough, such is life and it's time to move on.
But then I started talking to others who've owned businesses and tried to sell them. I was surprised to find my experience was not unusual. Many people just walk.
So when I read a recent article on the Smart Company Blog about the under-representation of services businesses I couldn't help but add my two bob's worth.
This lead to this interesting reply from Andrew Kent at Biz Exchange. His view is the idea that these business are worthless is bunk.
I agree, all businesses have a value, but the market price for many businesses make it not worth selling for many business owners.
My suspicion is a service business needs to get over the two million dollar turnover threshold before it's attracts the attention of investors and serious buyers. Below that you are largely selling to people buying their own jobs or competitors who are at best half hearted about building a client base.
Andrew to his credit has decided to test this by making an offer on his blog: The first ten IT and construction business that approach him will get a free listing on Biz Exchange. It's an experiment I'll be watching with interest.
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