Empirical evidence for benefits of good IT practices

Sometimes it’s good to look at a a report and say to yourself “I could have told them that”. Ever have one of those moments? The picture below represents one of those moments. At Harbor Computer Services, we’ve seen these results in action over and over again.











We’ve got some new tricks up our sleeve that we’ll be bringing to you in 2010 that we think we help push those percentages above even higher. We’re hard at work beta testing and training on those now. Competitive advantage is everything.

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Incompatible Quickbooks 2009 Update Coming

Heads up to our Accounting clients, Intuit is about to release an update to Quickbooks 2009 that is not backwards compatible. That means that all of your customers will have to be at level of update too. Here are the details from Intuit.

QuickBooks 2009 Release 9 (R9) Won’t Be Backwards Compatible with Earlier Releases of the 2009 Software
Intuit QuickBooks 2009 R9, going out live as an Automatic Update on December 1, has important improvements for both you and your clients. We strongly recommend that both of you use the update.
However, unlike other updates in recent history, this update will not be backwards compatible with earlier releases of QuickBooks 2009.
Accountant's Copy Remains Good Alternative: Backwards compatibility continues for the Accountant's Copy. That is, if you update to QuickBooks 2009 R9, you will still be able to receive, open, and return an Accountant's Copy of your clients’ files in earlier releases of QuickBooks 2009 and QuickBooks 2008, and your client could accept and upload the Accountant's Copy without moving to QuickBooks 2009 R9.

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New Backup Option

Over the summer several of our clients helped us beta test a revolutionary backup system. Through their feedback and our experience with the product, we helped the development team at Symform fine tune, debug and add some new features to make it the best off-site backup solution. I really appreciated the assistance of everyone that stood up and participated with us. Software companies want to make great software and it’s participation that makes it happen. Thanks to all of you our input can definitely be seen on the final product.
It’s ready for prime time.
Symform has officially released the product and as predicted it is making waves through the backup community. It’s not often a disruptive technology comes along, but Symform has managed to create one and they have turned the world of off-site backup on its head.
I’m going to plan a webinar, maybe 30 minutes long, with the details of how this backup system works. But here’s the bottom line:
Your server stores your data in a RAID5 redundancy or maybe a mirror. This backup system stores it off-site in RAID96. The data is encrypted and stored across this vast array of drives geographically distant from one another. It’s the most secure and redundant system I’ve ever seen. (I need to stop gushing because I’m starting to sound like a ShamWow infomercial.)
But I’m really excited because we’ve never had a good off-site backup solution that didn’t get horribly expensive really fast.
Servers $50 per month unlimited amount of data.
Workstations $8 per month unlimited amount of data.
You also need 1 or 2 external Sata drives in the office to hold the data being sent off-site and to contribute to storage. Whether you need 1 or 2 will depend on the amount of backup data.
We’re ready to setup anyone that is interested. It only take about 15 minutes.

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Free Outlook 2007 Training

http://office.microsoft.com/training/training.aspx?AssetID=RC101000901033

Each last from between 20 and 50 minutes and is a short video on how to use a specific feature or perform a task. Below is just a sample, there are many more courses than just these.

Not following us on Twitter yet? Do it. http://twitter.com/harborcomputer

Not a member of our Facebook Fan page? Do it.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/Royal-Oak-MI/Harbor-Computer-Services/157213751055?ref=ts

Understanding Social Media

Here’s a copy of the powerpoint that I did on Understanding Social Media. This presentation is for people that don’t understand what it is, why they want to use it and what impact it is having on doing business. We had 12 people attend the webinar. If you missed it and would like to attend one of these send Amy an email. If I get at least 5 more interested parties I’ll schedule it.

And don’t forget, if you are already into social media. Connect with us!

We’re Using Social Media

A few months back I starting using Twitter, Facebook, Facebook Fan pages, Facebook groups and LinkedIN.  Recently I added Posterous and SocialOOMPH to help me manage our social media and now it’s is sucking less time from my day and actually starting to add bring in client leads. It’s working for us and it is working for many businesses. These informal, less traditional more casual forms of business communication are taking the world by storm.

About 6 weeks ago I did an online presentation on Social Media for beginners. I didn’t teach anyone how to use it but we discussed why you would want to use it, what the terminology is, how it’s blurring the old line between work and pleasure, and showed how some businesses are using it today. Got several compliments on it so apparently it hit the mark. I may offer that one again soon. If you are interested let me know.

If you are already connected into social media and would like to connect with us. Please do, we’d love to see you there. Here’s how to find us:

Twitter: @harborcomputer or twitter.com/harborcomputer

Facebook Fan Page: http://www.facebook.com/amy.babinchak?v=feed&story_fbid=201613714255#/pages/Royal-Oak-MI/Harbor-Computer-Services/157213751055?ref=ts

Twitter: @ababinchak or twitter.com/ababinchak

LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/in/amybabinchak