√ Back-up Plan
√ Extend Battery Life
√ Flat-Panel Monitors
√ Barnacleware
 

“Could your business survive if you lost access to your data for a week?”

In today’s information economy, businesses thrive on the intellectual property they produce. This is a fancy way to say that your data (Word docs, spreadsheets, databases, customer lists, etc.) is the heart and soul of your business. The problem: Most organizations never slow down long enough to make sure that they are properly protecting their intellectual property – the livelihood of businesses – until something goes wrong.

Most studies conducted on traditional, accepted, and regularly utilized “backups” prove that they fail anywhere from 30 - 50% of the time! Call me crazy, but those are not odds I would entrust my company’s data with. Are you doing all you should be to make sure your company is 100% protected?

I speak with business owners about their backups on a regular basis. While I am trying to figure out whether or not they are properly protected, I usually hear one, or all, of the following:

• Joe takes care of the backup
• Cindy takes tapes home to protect us in the event of a disaster - no idea what she does with them while they are there
• I think we get good backups all the time
• We believe we are backing up all of our critical data, I don't know for sure though
• We are how many versions behind on our backup software?
• We run full backups across these three tapes...when we remember to change them and it doesn't throw an error
• I think Joe changes the tapes each night
• What do you mean it would take 24-74 hours to bring my business back online if a server died...and what do you mean it will only provide a "full backup" from 25 days ago?

These are not uncommon situations for most small businesses; however, the uncertainty in the business owners’ answers always alarms me. It is imperative to ask questions about your backup and recovery plan before something happens to your business; by then it’s too late.

There are three general areas to consider when evaluating your company’s level of backup preparedness; any solid backup and recovery plan should include the following:

4 Tips to Extend the Life of your Laptop Battery
by Christopher Elliott
reprinted with permission from the Microsoft Small Business Center

And then, before I could find an electrical outlet — Sea Tac has recently increased the number of available outlets, by the way; finally a reprieve for business travelers whose budget for airline club membership has been cut — the laptop expired.

The irony, of course, is that I had spent most of the previous week researching this column on how to extend your PC's battery life while you're on the road.

In a 2002 survey by chipmaker Intel, 57% of laptop users said they wished their batteries lasted longer. And that is wishful thinking, according to Isidor Buchmann, president and founder of Cadex Electronics in Vancouver, B.C., Canada.

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