This
month we continue our advice on technology’s little hassles, with
a few more areas that can be easily and inexpensively solved.
Starting from scratch? If you have a document,
spreadsheet or presentation to create, see if the topic is
used by other businesses too. An online search or a visit
to the Microsoft website may uncover a template that you
can apply to your situation. Common examples include budget
templates, sales presentations and employment forms.
How paperless is your office?
Consider these
alternatives to printing and posting:
- A fax card can be inexpensively installed into your computer,
connecting to your phone line and allowing you to send
documents directly to a fax machine without printing them
first. Another option is online fax services, which allow
you to upload your faxes to a website to be sent. For documents
that need a signature, consider scanning a copy of your
signature, which can then be added like a picture to your
document before faxing.
- Email is also a great alternative to regular postal mail.
Your financial software may even allow you to email invoices
directly from it. It you are concerned about document details
being changed, you can find free software to ‘print’ your
documents electronically into an unchangeable Adobe Acrobat
PDF format. This is widely used by airlines for sending
flight details and receipts via email.
Morning
slowness?
If you have time to finish your coffee
whilst your computer starts, there could be some easy tweaks
which will improve its performance. Review the items in
your ‘Startup’ group of programs and look at
the icons in your ‘system tray’ by your computer’s
clock, to see if you really do need everything to start
up at once. Also, check and see if your anti-virus software
is set to perform a scan each morning, perhaps changing
the schedule to during your lunch break instead. If computer
slowness is a constant problem, then a software tune-up
or additional memory could improve the performance for
less than the cost of a new computer.
Lost
your internet connection?
Intermittent internet
connection faults are very frustrating and can be caused
by any number of things between your internet provider
and your computer. Keep a log of any drop-outs and call
your internet provider to check if there is a fault on
your cable or phone line (especially for ADSL). Ensure
that all of your telephones and faxes have ADSL filters.
And, if you also have wireless access to your internet
that is provided by another ‘box’,follow this
method to get things up and running again after a drop
out:
Power
off your internet modem and your wireless router.
Power
on your internet modem.
Wait
for the ADSL light to be solid (approx. 40 seconds).
Power
on your wireless router.
Call
ITensure today to talk about any other little problems – they
may be easy and inexpensive to solve.
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