Small Business Servers get a mention in USA Today

Nice to see SBS catch a little fame. So many small business overlook it either because they have never heard of it or they don’t realize that it is jammed packed with many more features than standard server.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/smallbusiness/columnist/abrams/2009-06-26-servers-for-small-business_N.htm

At some point, sharing all this information — let's use the geek term "data" — became incredibly clumsy. That's when I first got a "server" and our own company network. And I recently upgraded my server to Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2008 to get greater stability, more security features, and the ability to have my tech guy handle more maintenance remotely.

Windows7 – 50% off pre-orders

Microsoft is offering a good deal on Windows 7. If you anticipate that you’ll want to upgrade some of your PC’s whether at home or in the office then you should take advantage of the discount.

Limited time offer, just launched today! As a way of saying thank you to our loyal Windows customers, we are excited to introduce a special time limited offer! We will offer people in select markets the opportunity to pre-order Windows 7 at a more than 50% discount. In the US, this will mean you can pre-order Windows 7 Home Premium for USD $49.99 or Windows 7 Professional for USD $99.99.

Let us know if you would like to pre-order Windows7. The offer is good through July 12th and Windows7 releases on October 22nd.

Office for Home

A couple of people recently asked me where to buy Microsoft Office for their home computer. My stock answer is always CostCo or BestBuy because they will consistently have the best price on any random day.

But I wanted to point out an special advertisement that I got today from Amazon. Amazon usually has very good prices on most everything as well. Here it is:

Microsoft Home and Student edition is licensed in a unique way. It is limited to those computers that you have in your home and don’t use for business. (a laptop you use at work and home is counted as a work computer) As a reward though, it is licensed to load on 3 computers. So if you have 3 computers at home you only need to purchase 1 copy. Amazon doesn’t tell you that little juicy tidbit.

So if you have 3 computers, that’s $28.33 per computer for Microsoft office. You get Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote in this package. Not too shabby.

IT Training for the Unemployed

This is an announcement because it seems like a good opportunity. So if you’re an unemployed IT person and need to update your learning to current versions, or want to become one then please read on. If you know someone that could use this information please forward it on to them. This money isn’t going to last long.

(thanks for Detroit.net LinkedIn group for sending me this information)

There is a state grant that may be available to those who qualify who are unemployed.

You can potentially receive up to $10,000 for re-training if you qualify. But you need to make contact immediately (within the next couple of days). You have to get on the grant list potentially by Friday (6/12) in order for them to receive their money by the end of the month. If they can't talk to me by Friday, I can still help them, but it may take a couple more weeks to get funding.

New Horizons provides short term IT training programs (classes usually are 5 days long)

We include all books, pretests, and exams *YOU DO NOT HAVE TO TAKE THE CLASSES BACK TO BACK. - take a bit of time to study*

* CCNA - Cisco Certified Network Admin - 2 classes - 5 days total
* CCNP - Cisco Certified Network Professional - 4 classes - 20 days total
* Certified Ethical Hacker - 1 class - 5 days total
* CISSP - 1 class - 5 days
* MCTS SQL - 2 classes - 10 days total
* MCTS Sharepoint - 2 classes - 5 days total
* PMP - 1 class - 5 days total
* MCSA - 7 classes - 22 days total
* A+ - 2 classes - 8 days total
* Network+ - 1 class - 5 days total
* ACA Web Design - various
New Horizons does other various IT certs too, but there are too many to list. We also do classes in Medical Billing and Coding.
If interested, you should contact Christy Rowe at: 734-853-2077 directly or crowe@nhmichigan.com
They do accept NWLB/WIA/JET/WIA Youth (No worker left behind funding) as well as TAA/TRA funding.)

Bing: The new search engine in town

Like they did in the browser arena (remember Netscape?) Microsoft has found itself playing catch up again. This time it’s in search engine. Fortunately for Microsoft they are good at this game. The new search engine is called Bing. (www.bing.com)

So what’s different about Bing? At the bottom of the page you’ll see a question of interest, today is Get To Know your Food Pyramid. You’ll also see a list of top 5 searches, right now it’s National Doughnut Day, Belmont Stakes Entries, Buchenwald and Nenue Fish. (What’s a Nenue Fish? Maybe I should click to find out.)

When you do a search at the top will the latest new items for that phrase. For example, when I clicked on Nenue Fish, I quickly saw from the new headlines that it’s a fish in Hawaii that choked up a gold watch on the beach. Below the news items are the regular links to websites containing the search phrase.

There are a couple of new features that I like.

1. Fly outs. When I put in the search term, bowling, I get the usual list of bowling websites like I would expect. But next to the links there’s a little hover point that when I pass my mouse over, I get a fly out with more about what’s on that website. Below I ran my mouse over the hover point for the first link and I get the fly out you see. This is a huge time saver for me. Instead of clicking on links and waiting for the page to load, checking out the website and then going back to my search when the first link I click didn’t have what I want, I can get more of the information I need to make a decision from the fly out and spend a lot less time going from site to site looking for what I really want. Here I’ve got a fuller description, phone number, email address and links to other pages on their website.

2. Automatic Local Search. Over to the left I have a button called Local. Bing remembers where I am so when I press local, I automatically get results for bowling in Royal Oak, MI without even having to type it in. Complete with map and one-click directions.

3. Travel. When I type travel from Detroit to Seattle, I get the following as my first search result.

It’s smart. I knows that I mean I want to fly from here to there. This gives me a quick glance at flight costs. I get the least costly flight and a 7 day trend. Click those links and I get more information. I can even book my flight from here.

4. Maps. I’ve been using Microsoft Live maps for some time. I like the way that they are laid out and the additional information that they provide. Right on my map, I get traffic and construction detours. But more importantly, I get tips for finding my way like “Sunoco on the right corner” and “if the get to Glenview you’ve gone too far”. When I’m going to a new area this really helps me stay on the path.

So give a Bing a try. It’s difficult to change but it might be worth your while.