In my last post I started telling you about a small firm in Nebraska that I am helping - well I hope I am helping. Wow - that's probably not what you want to hear from a consultant - it's like hearing your tattoo artist say "oops". Even though I've been doing this a long time, I still get nervous about saying "use this", "do that" or "buy this". I don't care how long a consultant has been at it - even the best can be wrong at times. I feel like I can say that with confidence because before I went out on my own, I worked at large firms where we hired "the best" and paid for "the best" and still had to clean up mess after mess. So yes, sometimes I get a little nervous - and it's not like I have an easy audience! (But I should say so-far-so-good, no major blow-ups yet.) So as I started communicating with the folks at B&B, I tried giving them as much info as I could about the suggestions I was making and I'm sure they appreciated it - but in the end they just kept saying "whatever you tell us to get or do, Adriana". Which, honestly, was very refreshing and certainly made me work harder about the new technologies and processes we decided to implement.
From the start of our relationship - it was understood that I would travel to Nebraska and work with them in the office. They don't have an in-house tech person that I could liaison with - why would they? They are an office of three. But I will say that between the three of them and especially with the help of their very capable assistant, we could have done it all over the phone - but really, that's not optimal. So anyway, I gave them a list of things to order and purchase and have ready for my two and a half day visit.
Let's start with laptops. eek. This is like telling someone what car to buy. I will say that I personally LOVE
and think the best business laptops are those by IBM (now Lenovo). I
have/had a Dell, an Acer and a 4-year old IBM that is THE BEST and I
have been at firms with Toshiba's and Compaq's - seen them all. There
are many, many great laptops out there. I gave B&B a list of
choices based on my likes, experiences and those of my clients, friends
and colleagues. Here they are (and mind you, this list is 3 months
old so there may be new models):
- Lenovo
3000
$829.97
- Lenovo
ThinkPad T60
- Toshiba
Portege R205-S2062
- Toshiba
Satellite M105
- Sony
VAIO VGN-SZ220
- Compaq
TC1000T Tablet PC
I was happy to hear that they ordered 2 ThinkPad T60's. They will not hate their laptops.
On to file/document storage (the digital kind). They were storing
all of their
documents on Mary's PC - she's the legal assistant. And
since they were networked together they could all save to, open from or
email files from her PC (and yes, they were backing up her PC - good job!). The downside to this system is that her PC has
to be powered on to get to it. So if Peter came in over the weekend, he
would have to be sure to turn on his PC and hers to get access. At this
point in the problem-solving process, the term "server" always - and
should - come up. Essentially, Mary's PC was acting as the server but not
in the full sense. A true server - one that manages the comings
and goings of both users and data on a network can be pricey and with
the addition of a server can come a lot of work. So instead we decided
to start with a "NAS" - a networked storage device. These are the two I
suggested - and actually asked them to order both in case one was DOA
when I got there. They could return the one we didn't use.
- Maxtor
300GB Shared Storage External Hard Drive
- SimpleTech
250GB SIMPLESHARE OFFICE SERVER
More next time...
