Computer Software You’ll Need for Your Online Business

If you have, or are planning an online business there are a number of software programs you’ll want to have – and know how to use. Here’s a list of some you will be happy to have on-hand.

1. JASC Paint Shop Pro. This graphics program is similar to Photoshop, but it’s infinitely easier to understand because it’s intuitive for first time users. Things work the way you might guess they would. This is the opposite of Photoshop which was designed for professionals as the ultimate graphics tool. Unless you’re a full-time graphics designer or employ someone that is in your new business – Photoshop is overkill – both in complexity and cost.

2. Google’s Suite of Business Applications online. These are free apps you use within your browser. There is a word processing program, a spreadsheet program, a presentation program, and a cool program to help you make forms easily and quickly for your website. No longer is Microsoft’s Office suite mandatory software for the business – online or offline. Google has stepped right into this space and their free tools are quite capable and sufficient for most users.

3. Speaking of Google… There are a number of things Google does better than anyone else. Here are some others… forget Outlook, use Gmail; forget PayPal, use Google Checkout as a payment solution for your online products and services; forget Outlook for it’s Calendar function also – and use Google Calendar. Forget expensive website statistics packages, use Google Analytics to keep track of everything on your site.

4. Internet Browser. There’s a new dog in town… the dog’s name is “FireFox 3.5“. It’s a recently updated, VERY fast browser that is heads, shoulders, and tail above Microsoft’s IE browser. Not to mention it’s quite a bit more secure because fewer hackers are targeting it for infiltration. Microsoft’s IE will always be the main subject of attack just by nature of who Microsoft is.

5. FireFox Plugins. These are free mini-programs that run inside the FireFox browser and give you added functionality.

These are some essential FireFox plugins to get up to speed with:

• Colorzilla - an eyedropper you can activate at any time to put over a color you need to know the HTML code for – it tells #xxxxxx code and RGB color scheme.
• FoxClocks - a world clock that resides in the lower left hand side of your browser, when you hover your cursor over it it will show you the current time in the time zones you pre-programmed.
• FireFTP - an amazingly simple program to help you FTP files to and from your web server (files for your website). Very well done – and free. I strongly suggest sending the creator a few bucks as there are no other decent FTP programs for under $20.
• FireShot – takes a screenshot of the page with one click. Allows you save it as a few different formats. This program takes a screenshot of the entire page – not just what you can see in your browser… if the page is 60,000 words long… it takes the whole picture. Priceless. (and free).
• ScribeFire – If your business has a blog, and it should, you will love this post editor. I’m using it now to create all the new business articles on this site. It allows for more customization than does WordPress or Blogger and you can use it on- or offline.
• SpeedDial – Each time you open a new window you usually face a blank page. Speeddial changes that so you can see many pages in a table. You can program each cell in the table with a new page. I have 36 cells on my page – each a link (and screenshot I can see) to a page I frequently visit. The coolest part is you can have multiple tabs of these pages – I have 4 tabs… about 80 links I use frequently. This is an amazing program no new business should be without.

6. Skype – if you call long distance or overseas much at all you’re going to want a very cost-effective way of doing so. Skype is that. Skype is free chatting and internet phone software. You can setup an account quickly and put phone credit on your Paypal account. It’s great quality – and it runs through your computer connection. So, you’ll have headphones and microphone for speaking – or a headset that plugs into your audio/mic jacks in your computer. The quality is quite acceptable. The price – cheap!

7. TweetDeck – it’s a GUI (graphics user interface) way to use Twitter that makes Twitter a joy to use, rather than a pain. Twitter is fast becoming an essential tool for businesses looking to target people in real-time that might have a use for their products.

8. AVG Antivirus – this software is free for the basic edition but it’s worth it to upgrade and receive the full coverage. Other antivirus programs are Norton, F-Prot, and McAffee.

I use many other programs but I thought I’d list the basics and share them with you. Any others that you would consider essential? Let us know!

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Choosing the Right Notebook Computer for Your Business – 2

WIFI. WIFI is a way for your notebook to reach the internet without wires and without paying for an internet data plan if you’re using someone else’s and get lucky. There are many open networks across most cities – many places will leave their WIFI on at night for anyone to use. You can set up your own WIFI network in your home with a Wireless Router. Easy stuff. Now, do you need it? Of course you do. If you ever travel WIFI is available in all major airports by now and even Starbucks and other coffee shops offer it all over the world with reasonable data plans. Remember – Free WIFI connections
for your business are nice WIFI connections. If you don’t have WIFI on your notebook computer you’re going to be wishing you did someday. The price for adding WIFI to your notebook as an option at HP or some major OEM is about $40 and becoming less with time. Get WIFI!

WIFI will be designated a/b/g/n. These are all the different possibilities and speeds. Usually a notebook will get 3 or all 4 of these. Get the “n” if you can because it’s the latest and fastest. Meaning, get all of these.

Bluetooth wireless network is a short-range wireless network that is very cheap to have added to your notebook (about $10) and you should get it too because it enables you to transfer files from mobile phones and other devices easily and securely. In addition to this Bluetooth can be used in place of wires for your mouse, headphones, speakers, and other electronics.  Get Bluetooth -it’s inexpensive and you’ll need it someday.

Hard Drive (HDD). Hard drives are growing and shrinking all at the same time – all the time. Every year they get bigger. Every year your operating system gets bigger and takes more of it. In addition, with each passing year you have more multimedia files to interact with and save. So, your 500GB hard drive becomes full in a few months. Storage is far from being in abundance. Get a large hard drive. If you do lots of video – use a big 500GB hard drive on your notebook and have several 1TB drives to backup your data. Speed of hard drive rotation is an issue too. Choose minimum 5400 rpm. Optimum is 7,200 rpm. Well, optimum is an expensive Solid State memory drive that doesn’t move – it’s like a USB stick memory – but very fast for inside your notebook. These are very fast and yet, not that big yet and very expensive. Soon the prices will drop and we’ll all have big smiles. Maybe 3 years?

RPM speed of the disks spinning in your hard drive is important for a couple of reasons.

1. If your hard drive disks spin very fast you have a fast computer. Access speeds and writing speeds to the hard drive takes time when done by the thousands of times. You’ll love a 7,200 rpm hard drive – so get one if you can afford it. Otherwise a 5,400 will have to do.  Remember – a faster hard drive means a faster emptying battery. A fast hard drive can REALLY kill a battery fast. Take that into account – and plug in if you need to.

You’ll find there are many considerations you must make before buying a notebook computer as battery life is usually held in high esteem – but, top components sometimes eat at it.
business computer.

Optical Drive. (DVD +- R/W). Get a Blue-Ray compatible with + and – designations and you should be OK. Most drives write dvd’s at only 8x (8 speed). That is slow, but you’ll need to pay extra for a faster one. Again, the choice… If you’ll be creating many DVD’s for your business or for backups you’ll probably want to buy an external DVD drive that can burn at 32x and if you wanted you could even get multiple drives – stacks of these to use all at once.

Battery. Lithium Ion is the standard – don’t get another type. You can get a battery with 3 cells or 9 cells sometimes. IBM is good for offering batteries with extra capacity. HP is not. Some HP’s come with 6 cells, which is double a 3-cell. Under no circumstances should you get a 3 cell battery for your business notebook. They are just horrible! Be careful that the extra cell batteries don’t transform your notebook into an uncomfortable brick – some of the larger batteries are strangely shaped and add a slant to your notebookthat you may not be able to deal with.

The Weight Factor. Most notebooks are about 5 lbs. The lightest they get is just over 2 lbs. Lighter means more flimsy and easier to break. It also means easier to carry around for a day of it in your pack. Sometimes you can do without a DVD drive – so maybe an external USB DVD is best? Notebooks are getting lighter weight now – so a 4 lb. computer is pretty strong. The HP line is strong, as are the IBM’s – always.

Ports. Ports are for plugging in external devices to your computer. Network ports (for RJ-45 connectors), modem port, USB ports, PCMCIA ports, Firewire, etc.

You should have these ports as a minimum:

3 USB 2.0 or 3.0 ports. USB’s are the standard and you should have at least 3 of these. You can connect just about anything to these ports

Modem. A place to connect your phone line for dial up connections when broadband internet isn’t available.

RJ-45 in plug. Computer cables have RJ-45 cable connectors to plug into your computer, you should definitely have one.

Serial VGA port. Plug your external monitor into this. Very helpful if your notebook computer display dies!

Extras.

Webcams are fun – you should probably have one. Microphones jacks are great as are headphone jacks as you already know. You may also want an external monitor to be able to connect to your computer – IBM usually has this serial 9 port for this. Some ports allow TV’s to be connected (S-video)
I hope this helps you choose a business computer that puts a smile on your face. Obviously I didn’t cover everything but the points I did cover are crucial to helping you make a good business choice.

Choosing the Right Notebook Computer for Your Business – 1

Choosing the Right Notebook Computers for Your Business – Part 1

Many businesses are getting by with just purchasing notebook computers instead of desktop computers and notebooks. If you want, you can find powerful (2.5 GHZ+) computers and dual-processor notebook computers for very reasonable prices today – thanks to the economy and the competion that tablet PC’s are bringing to the market place.

There are so many types of notebook computer today that you shouldn’t have a difficult time choosing the right one(s) for your new business. Stick with these brands who are known for their better quality control and servicing departments: Toshiba, IBM, HP/Compaq (Hp bought Compaq some years back).

There are business spec’ed notebook computers that you might think you need for your business – probably – you don’t. Business spec notebooks are ready to sign on company networks and have advanced security and backup options in some cases. If your business will be handling sensitive information you’ll probably want to look into this. IBM has some great fingerprint reader notebooks that protect your computer from being broken into easily.

It’s likely you don’t need a specific “business” notebook. Here are some tips about what you might need and what will satisfy most new business owners. Keep in mind this article is focused on cost-effective choices and not someone with an unlimited budget. The specifications I list here will work for someone that does and doesn’t have an online business too.

Here is an overview of what you’ll want in a business notebook computer:

Operating System (OS). Mac or IBM/PC? Sorry, I don’t know anything about Linux, if you do then you already know what kind of computer you need! If you’re a Mac person – I can’t help you either. It’s not that I despise them, but I just don’t “get it”. Macs may be a good choice for your business if you’re primarily multimedia based or will only use email, internet browsing, and some other simple programs. The downside to Mac is the choice of software is never as complete as Windows software.

You’ll likely be using Microsoft Vista or Windows 7 or some version of Windows. Windows 7 is supposed to be the better option – it uses less system resources for the operating system and is faster. Hold out and get it – many people are dissatisfied with Vista. Vista is slow if you don’t have a fast computer and 3 – 4GB of RAM. Microsoft XP PRO is a much faster operating system but Microsoft is phasing it out in favor of their new OS’s

Notebook Display (Screen) Size. If you have big hands don’t bother even looking at anything under 12 or 13″. Start there and go bigger. There’s nothing like trying to conform your fingers to a small keyboard – it’s aggravating and many errors result. Better to get a keyboard that fits your hands – regardless of coolness factor implicit in the latest micro-notebooks.

As the screen size gets smaller – the weight decreases. That’s a factor, but shouldn’t be much of one. All computers weight about 5 lbs. Count on it – and bulk up if you can’t carry that around in a good backpack. You’ll save lots of money and won’t sacrifice comfort that way. There are very large notebooks with 17″ screens that will break your back but be VERY comfortable to use, as well as being fast and quiet. Up to you.

Processor. 2.5GHZ+ or go with a Dual Core processor – AMD or INTEL, no matter really. If you get Dual Core go for at least 1.7 or 1.8 GHZ speed for the top processor. If you have small hands and opt for the ultra-small notebook get a NEO processor and you’ll do better on battery life.

Battery life dies quickly with a faster processor – A 1.6-1.8GHZ processor is really all you need for most apps except editing video or high resolution graphics editing. If you need faster – go for a 2.8 GHZ or
faster processor. Your battery might last a couple hours – tops, and you’ll need to be close to a wall electric outlet to continue working longer than that.

BUS Speed. Bus speed is kind of like how wide the highway is… If you have a 4-lane road going one way that might be like 1600 MHZ bus speed. Some notebooks have this, but not many yet. The average today (in 2009) is about 800MHZ. Which, really is fine. We bought a new Hewlett Packard computer that has a 1600MHZ bus. It’s quite fast and we’re pleased. Choose a BUS that’s at least 800 MHZ to ensure your computer is fast enough – Bus speed affects the speed of everything.

RAM. Random Access Memory. Get as much RAM as your notebook holds. Really. If it holds 4GB – get it. RAM is something that adds to the speed of the computer, the applications you use, saving, copying, just about everything you do on the computer. Microsoft operating systems are big RAM hogs and you’ll be much happier if you get the maximum and don’t try to save money in this area.