EDIT:- Received a 'phone call from Trend today (04.03.08) to advise that the below tour has been cancelled. When pressed, the Gentleman from Trend said he "didn't know" why this was, and wasn't sure if or when the tour would be re-scheduled. Ouch... :-(

Here at Netlink IT we use AVG Anti-Virus at the majority of our client sites - and very happy with it we are too!

That said, Trend Micro are a company who I've heard a lot of good things about lately and who gave an impressive presentation of their products at an AMITPRO event in 2007, so we'll be taking another look at their offerings at the below event. If you're an IT Consultancy or Support Shop looking to gather information and get a feel for the vendors out there, then these are the sort of events I'd suggest it's worth your while to attend. It's worth registering with Trend directly, or drop me an e-mail for a suitable contact at Trend you can speak to if you'd prefer.

"Interested in the next generation IT security solutions and services designed for SMBs? Join us on the Trend Micro Security Challenge Tour 2008 and all your questions will be answered.

Who should attend? Any partner interested in providing best of breed security solutions to their SMB customers!
What is it all about? Trend Micro will share:

• Its vision for the future – business strategy and Worry-Free product development
• A technical overview and update on Trend Micro Hosted Services and other upcoming innovative security solutions by Trend Micro

Attend and you will:

• Become a “Web Threat Aware” reseller. You will receive a specific label to post on your website, in recognition of your security expertise!
• Receive a 25-seat NeatSuite™ for SMB NFR Licence valid for the next 12-months*
• Find out if you have won one of Trend Micro 2007 SMB Channel Awards**

Where is my nearest event? London (19/02), Manchester (21/02), Leeds (26/02), Edinburgh (04/03), Dublin (06/03), Newcastle (11/03), Bristol (18/03) and Birmingham (25/03). "

A quick heads up that registration for Microsoft's UK Launch Event for Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 is now available here.

The event is my own back-yard of Birmingham at the beautiful ICC venue on 19th March, and registration is almost full - so get signed up.

If you're going along on the day (and I know from recent conversations that plenty of people who are) then let me know - it'd be great to meet up and say hello!

My result shown above will not come as a surprise to anyone who knows me!

But tell me... How big a geek are you?

Thanks to Uber-Geek Microsoft blogger Stephen Lamb for the link. :-)

I've a few clients who run Open Office - the Open Source alternative to Microsoft Office.

Open Office is an ideal no-cost alternative to Microsoft Office if you don't require many of the advanced features of MS Office, and let's be honest, we all know somebody that uses Microsoft Word as little more than a glorified notepad and Microsoft Excel as no more than a very expensive calculator. In these scenarios, Open Office is an ideal fit.

One issue I've repeatedly seen with Open Office though is its inability to open Microsoft Office 2007 files - those file types of .docx, pptx, xlsx.

There are two ways around this.

1. Download and install the Microsoft Office 2003 File Viewers from Microsoft's web-site and upgrade them with the 2007 Compatibility pack. These are all free downloads.

2. Zip over to http://docx-converter.com/ where you can have your Word 2007 files converted and e-mailed to you in HTML format which you can easily read.

The best method, of course, is to ask the owner of the document to re-save it in "plain" .doc, xls or ppt format - but this isn't always possible.

I was chatting with fellow Small Business Specialist Andy Parkes recently. Andy was sharing an experience he had with a large hardware manufacturer before the Christmas break. Now that's not an unusual conversation for us to have but what was unusual was that it wasn't the usual Vendor Rant-o-rama (the term a certain wag dubbed my blog last year - not that I can honestly disagree with him...) that you might expect two SMB IT Consultants to exchange about shoddy service, poor customer support or unreliable hardware. No - instead Andy described how he had experienced a fairly serious problem with some kit, and the hardware manufacturer involved had solved that problem for him quickly and without pain!

I've encouraged Andy to blog about his experience, as during the course of 2007 I can recall reading dozens upon dozens of postings from people within the SMB Community who were displeased, upset or plain furious with the treatment they'd received from Vendors that had cost them time or money - but I can probably count on one hand the number of people who had a good, or (gasp!) excellent experience and decided to share that with others too!

Don't get me wrong, I'm as guilty as anyone of filling my blog postings with tales of woe! I guess it's human nature to complain about things, but more rarely do we also share our positive experiences.

So in the spirit of positivity, allow me to share my general experiences, and one particular experience I had with one of my suppliers earlier this month - Broadband ISP Arnolds & Andrews - more commonly known as AAISP.

I've been using AAISP to provide Broadband Internet to a number of my clients since early 2007. Why? They were recommended to me and I've found that they are excellent at provisioning new ADSL lines - set reliable dates for installation, keep you informed at every step of provisioning, and will even deal with the beast that is known as BT without fear. They allow you to manage your client accounts well - from easily viewing usage and uptime/downtimes (sending you an SMS text and e-mail during outages) on ADSL lines, to allowing you to easily view invoicing and charging details. But most importantly, they provide good support. Everything else is just icing on a non-existent cake if, when things are going wrong, you can't get anybody at the supplier to help you get to the bottom of things and give a credible answer to your clients.

Today was one such time when something went wrong. AAISP experienced routing issues on their network, meaning that one of our own in-house ADSL lines and additionally and more importantly some clients ADSL lines had intermittent problems that were causing problems with connectivity.

Now I've been in this situation before with some very big ISP's indeed, and I can tell you that they might learn a thing or two from AAISP - a provider much smaller in comparison. The usual procedure goes - check big ISP's System Status Web page - no problems shown - therefore telephone ISP's Support Line - put on hold for what seems like forever. Finally reach a human who lets you explain the problem in full and then proceeds to tell you that yes, they are aware of the problem and it's a system-wide one. No, they don't know when it will be fixed. Grrr.

In this case I checked AAISP's System Status page and at a glance was told what the issue was and what they were doing to fix it. I could then drill down to the specific issue, which was regularly (as in, every few minutes) updated with engineers comments on their troubleshooting. If I wanted more, AAISP have an IRC chat channel and a Usenet newsgroup with more information.

So bravo AAISP! They had an issue, as every vendor will do from time to time, but they managed it and more importantly kept me informed to resolution.

I ranted about many vendors and suppliers in 2007, and I no doubt will again in 2008 - but I'll be sure to share more positive experiences like this with you too (provided they happen!) - so in no time at all you'll know this blog not as Vendor-Rant-a-Rama but as Vendor-Praise-a-Rama! (probably) ;-)

I've been running Windows Vista Business on my laptop for a while now (although the Desktop PC firmly remains Windows XP Professional - what can I say, I'm not a total convert yet...) and although tools such as Windows Live Gallery are really cool for manipulating photographs, one of the really nice applications I miss from XP is the Microsoft Image Resizer Powertoy. It simply allowed you to right-click on an image(s) and then resize the photograph from say, a 500k JPG down to a 60k JPG without any noticeable loss in picture quality.

Image Resizer sadly doesn't work under Windows Vista, but I've found a useful replacement in the shape of VSO Image Resizer, which does much the same job. Right-click on your image, select the required re-size parameters, and watch your whacking great JPG file get crushed down to a more manageable size.

VSO Image Resizer is a free download and works under Windows 2000 / XP and Vista.

In an earlier blog entry, I talked about the number of presentations I'd seen in 2007 from suppliers/vendors trying to sell my their latest/greatest products. Some of these presentations were good, some awful.

One of the better events I attended was at the West Midlands ICT Cluster in November and featured security vendor McAfee presenting a fascinating insight into how Viruses and Malware do their nasty work and showing the gathered techies how a machine infected with some of the more infamous Trojans and Worms can do their damage so quickly.

I consider myself a very security-savvy IT user, but to actually see how quickly a Virus can exploit a Security loophole really was an eye opener for me. From the demonstration, I could see just how easily a unsuspecting (or plain naive) end-user could be tricked into infecting their computer, and then how rapidly their now compromised machine could be exploited for further nastiness.

Every computer should have Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware packages installed, and they needn't cost a penny. For home PC's, I highly recommend the AVG Free Edition for Anti-Virus protection, and Microsoft's own free Windows Defender product for Anti-Spyware safety. If you're protecting a work computer (or any machine that will be used for Commercial purposes) then AVG Internet Security can cost as little as £15 for a 2 year subscription - feel free to drop me an e-mail for more details about licensing.

But even with Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware packages installed, your PC bang up to date with patches and fixes downloaded via Windows Update, there's still a chance you (or more likely your Parents/Grandparents, Son/Daughter - especially if they are teenagers!) can visit a dodgy site and be tricked into clicking through something nasty which will infect their computer.

Therefore I was interested to see a demonstration of McAfee's Site Advisor tool. Simply put, it will display a nice green tick for a trusted site, or a bright red cross against a known dodgy web-site therefore warning the end-user they may be visiting a site that opens them up to potential trouble. It's a completely free download, works with Firefox and Internet Explorer, and works with addresses typed directly into the address bar or on lists of URL's displayed by on web-pages - such as results from a Google Search.

At no cost I'd suggest that if like me you are the unpaid "IT Support Helpdesk" for your friends or family, then you get McAfee Site Advisor installed on their PC sooner rather than later, and save yourself some potential virus clean-up work!

Like many of you other hopeless addicts (apart from Susanne, who went cold-turkey early...) I am guilty of wasting time each week using Social Networking web-site Facebook and in particular the number of useless but usually harmless and fun applications available there.

In recent weeks though, I've noticed a trend for applications (usually Questionnaire type apps - "Are you addicted to Facebook?", "What kind of person are you?" or similar) to insist (or in other words, force...) on you inviting friends to use the app too before the app will reveal it's answers to you. Now I don't particular want to spam friends with an invitation to use an app they may or may not want to use - so this type of application behaviour certainly irritates me.

Yet to make matters worse, PC Pro reports that one such Facebook app - "Secret Crush" - may open up the users computer to Spyware infection. It's at this stage that such application usage goes from becoming irritating to downright dangerous.

As with all such Internet phenomenon's that become mega-popular, Facebook is now being targeted by the undesirable elements of the Internet and may have to take urgent steps to tighten up it's security. I'd suggest one way of curbing the spread of such apps may be to prevent users from inviting one another install applications - I'd much prefer to see on my Facebook News Feed that a friend has installed an app and if it sounds interesting, actively click-thru and try to install it. This is opposed to the current situation where I have so many Facebook application invitations that I rarely bother to look at them anymore...

I'm in beautiful Branston-Upon-Trent in Staffordshire this morning, having just returned from a walk alongside the River Trent after a full cooked breakfast in the lovely Riverside Hotel.

Yesterday afternoon was spent in the hotel Conference Room in the company of fellow Business Owners at a short seminar on Goal Setting. It was followed by what can only be described as a ridiculously overstocked buffet (the Cheesecake was especially good...) and an opportunity to network, where I met a number of interesting people and potential working partners. I then spent the evening enjoying the company of some peers and people I consider mentors, bouncing ideas and discussion back and forth.

The event and time spent away from the office was very worthwhile, helping me to gain some focus on goals in different areas of my life and take some time to consider how to achieve them in 2008. It can be all too easy to just jump into office grind again at the start of a New Year, and is always potentially difficult to "make" the time to do some strategic thinking - especially if you are a personality like myself who likes to "get on and do it"!

As I enjoy a cup of tea in my hotel room overlooking the River Trent, memories of last nights sumptuous cheese-cake still present, I have to remind myself that life as an SMB IT Consultant isn't always easy. ;-)

Susan Bradley has a great blog entry regarding dealing with clients who use illegal/unlicensed software.

My own take is that there isn't any justification for using pirated software anymore (like there ever really was!).

With the growth of the Open Source Community, the typical excuse for using pirated software of "The software is too expensive to buy for a small company like ours - but we *need* it" is blown apart. You genuinely can't afford Microsoft Office? No problem - use Open Office instead. It's free! Need the additional features Microsoft Office provides? There's your incentive for splashing out and purchasing a license.

This time last year I dealt with a client who had a dozen computers and wanted to move to a centralised server environment. My quote to them included a dozen Microsoft Office licenses, which surprised the client who raised the point that he was already running Microsoft Office. "Illegally" I added to that statement. All the MS Office 2000 licenses were using the same CD-key, a well known pirated key.

So I offered them the Open Source alternative. "But we use Outlook and Excel, we *need* them" they said. Then you'll be needing a dozen MS Office licenses I explained. "Can't we buy them at a later date?". Afraid not! I went on to explain how licensing worked and how not purchasing a license meant you were using software illegally. I could have explained financing options - but I was already getting the sinking feeling that it wasn't a case of the client not being able to afford to buy those licenses, it was a case of them not wanting to pay for something they'd already been using for free for so long.

Therefore buy the licenses and become compliant, remove the pirated software or continue as you are and knowingly break the law were the three options. The decision that came back from the client was nothing short of stunning.

"We've made a Business Decision to continue as we are".

In other words, we've made a Business Decision... to break the law.

I informed the client that unfortunately, I wouldn't be able to undertake the work for them as a result of their decision.

On this occasion, sanity prevailed and my stance jolted the client into doing the right thing. But from that moment on I considered... if the client was happy to rip off Microsoft, maybe they'd be just as happy to rip me off when my invoice was presented? Thankfully they didn't, but they weren't a great client (always paid late, needed chasing for payment) and perhaps I should have followed my gut instinct and walked away at the start.

So whether you are a Consultant, employee or Contractor at a company that uses pirated software - consider that if that company has no business ethics when it comes to breaking the copyright laws, what else might they be equally comfortable at doing nasty or underhanded when dealing with you?

The GG and I are back at Chez Tubb today after celebrating New Year alongside my brother, Paul, and his girlfriend, Ruth, at a nice hotel near Stratford-Upon-Avon. We indulged in great food, (far too) much wine, frankly stunning (you'd be stunned if you saw it too) dancing at the "disco", a Conga line so long it gatecrashed a nearby wedding reception, and then clapped our way along to a traditional Bag-Pipe playing Scotsman as the midnight bells chimed. Not having to worry about getting a taxi home at the end of the night was fab, but the hangover we were all suffering with today was not...

Thoughts now turn to the year ahead and in particular, setting goals on both a personal and professional level.

I don't return to the office until Wednesday, so I'll be using January 2nd to do some tidying up and some personal goal planning. I've got some important decisions to make over personal finances, some thinking to do on how to improve my general health and well-being, and not to forget that all work and no play makes Ric a dull boy... so some fun goals and aspirations too.

On Thursday I'll then be sitting with one of my business mentors to talk over and decide some of my goals and ambitions for my business, Netlink IT, in 2008 - I've talked before about taking on new staff, growing the business and setting new targets for income, now is the time to put them in writing to work towards making those goals a reality.

Finally I'll be attending a "Cut'n'Paste" Goal-Setting session amongst other like-minded business individuals on Friday afternoon. It should be an interesting session as I always find it fascinating to hear other peoples motivations, driving forces and goals - I find they can help you to examine your own situation better.

One thing I'll be doing for certain in all cases - any goals and ambitions, be they personal or professional - I'll be writing down.

Why?

Well according to a Harvard Business School study, written goals can translate into earnings of 10 times more than those who fail to establish goals or put their goals in writing. In the study, Harvard graduates were asked if they had goals and, if so, were they written down? Three percent (3%) had written their goals down, eleven percent (11%) had goals but had not written them down and eighty-six (86%) had not yet established goals.

Twenty years later, they polled the same group. The 11% who had goals (but not written down) were making twice as much as the 86% who had no goals. However, the 3% who had written down their goals were making 10 times more than the average of all the other graduates… and 98% of all the wealth resided with that same 3%!

I find writing goals of any shape and size down helps me focus on achieving them. Review those goals often (I do a weekly "sweep" of my To-Do list to keep me "on-track") and don't be afraid to prune that goal list as your perspective changes - you may not feel the same way about some goals six months from now as you do today.

Finally, if you're struggling to get started on a larger goal - "salami" it - chop it into smaller  pieces! There's a phrase I've heard said before - "How do you eat an Elephant?" "One piece at a time of course!". Don't get overwhelmed by the task at hand, just decide upon a first action and getting that done. For instance - want to make a trip to Japan in 2008? Your first step may be getting the necessary brochures from the travel agent, so make sure you diary (or write down!) a trip to the Travel Agents during your next lunch break!

Two books I'd highly recommend you read in 2008 are David Allen's "Getting Things Done", and Karl Palachuk's "Relax, Focus, Succeed". If you're not sure where to start with your goal setting in 2008 - nip over to Amazon and grab those books now - money well spent.

Whatever goals you set for 2008, I wish you all the best with achieving them - and as always, feel free to drop me a comment or an e-mail to let me know how you are getting on!