Have you ever found yourself in a situation like this – where your new, fast and efficient computer mysteriously turns into a snail just months after you bought it? Firstly your internet speed slows down for no apparent reason, and then even opening a Word document becomes irritatingly slow. You don’t know why that has happened and what’s even worse – you have no idea what to do about it!                 

Probably the first thing you do is run different anti-viruses to check if your PC is infected. Usually all you are likely to find are one or

Small businesses typically focus on researching, understanding and managing elements related to their businesses. That’s good business sense, after all.
Accountants, in other words, invest time maintaining pace with changes (legislative, economic, etc.) that impact their customers, servicing clients and building their businesses. Physicians, dentists, plumbers, financial services companies, non-profit organizations, automotive dealerships and numerous other small business do just the same.
Few, if any, have time to monitor the daily changes that impact information technology. Even fewer possess the resources necessary to keep current with changes to Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office, proprietary business software, critical business applications, printing technologies

In today’s ever-changing market, the service provider must seek new ways to separate themselves from their competition. Sales forces are under increasing pressure to gain ground in markets that seem to be at saturation, and customer retention is a must. One of the keys to customer retention is the ability of a technician to “fix the customer”. Communication is the key to this process, and I have a few pointers that may help.

The first step in “fixing the customer” is to listen. Completely listen to what the end user is trying to tell you. Remove your technician mufflers so to speak and hear what the end user is really having trouble with. I was once told that the definition of a print defect is the difference between what the printer is doing and wha

Chief Learning Officers (CLOs) and other IT managers increasingly turn to training brokers for help locating the best of breed.

Training brokers connect their clients with the right resource, be it a training provider or an expert trainer that can fulfill their clients' needs while saving the clients a substantial amount of money.

Although several market leaders in the training and certification space continue to thrive, there is no single provider that can assimilate and offer ALL of the dynamic content of the major IT vendors while accommodating the continuous training and certification demands of the growing array of corporate and individual clients.

As a matter of fact, providers of training and certification services are unable to accommodate internally more

It’s hard to imagine our personal or professional lives without email.  It’s fast, it’s easy and for the most part it’s free.   There’s no doubt that email has changed the way we communicate and revolutionized the way we do business, but alas, it does have its shortcomings.

There are two major problems that businesses often face when using email.  The first is something you’ve probably run into at one point or another, and that’s the inability of most email systems to send or receive large files.  However, there’s another problem with email that has lately become such a major issue that the federal government and many state governments have passed new laws to address it.  

The problem is th

Running a small business is hard, a statement that every business owner can identify with. One item we learn early on is that we can't do it all. We can try to do it all for many reasons, often times because we can't always afford to hire an expert. I understand this issue, and in the past, have dealt with the same thing. How many of you have tried to create your own company logo in Word or Publisher because a graphic design firm was out of your price range? I know my first logo was done that way. However, there comes a time where we all need to realize as business owners, that experts are needed and should be seen as an investment instead of a cost.

The question you need to stop and ask yourself before moving forward is, "Do you want an expert or technician?"

Do

Today’s mobile phones combine nearly all functionality offered by separate portable devices, making it a great advantage to the users who want to have everything at hand when on the go, and do not want to carry too many gadgets or be afraid of leaving something behind.  Mobile users do not have to carry photo and video cameras, laptops, address books or other necessities -- nearly every option is available in one tiny device.  Offering many more options than those of previous generations, devices like smartphones combine some great capabilities offered by computers, photo and video cameras, and phones, making a busy life more manageable than ever.

But what threats do users encounter when they own and carry mobile phones? One of the biggest worries is loss or theft

If you're a business owner, it's likely that some of your recent workdays have gone something like this: You bolt awake (probably after a sleepless night!), grab the financial section of the paper, and turn on your TV to get the latest worrisome financial news. Then, once you make it to work, you lock yourself in your office to carefully examine your company's financial projections for the next few months, wringing your hands as you fret over every possible worst case scenario. Sound familiar? If so, David Giannetto says it's time for the handwringing to stop—and the smart thinking to begin.

"The word 'recession' by itself has been known to send business owners into a panic," says Giannetto, coauthor along with Anthony Zecca of The Performance Power Grid: The Prov