MaconMacGuy.com:

Putting the tech pieces together
for Macon & Middle Georgia
for "a good while now"

I have a client who called with some computer issues, and their situation serves as the inspiration for this entry.

This is a small business, with a couple of people in the office taking care of “just about everything”.

So, if you want to keep your office from working well, do these things:

1) Put the absolute minimum of RAM in your computers. (One machine has 260K for the OS – Windows2000). This will make your office personnel spend most of their time WAITING for their machines to do anything.

2) Never train them in anything. That way they won’t know anything about tools that will help them do their work – like Outlook, or web browsers, or….

3) Don’t share ANYTHING, even though they are on a network already. This way one person will have to wait until the other machine is open to get anything done.

4) Never backup anything. That way you’ll REALLY be hosed when (not if) a machine breaks down!

5) Don’t setup any standard communication lines – like a REAL email address based on the business’s domain. That way no one will know how to contact anyone – they’ll all be using yahoo, or hotmail, or…….

6) Don’t crosstrain – don’t let anyone know what anyone else is doing, especially in terms of websites, usernames, and passwords!

7) Don’t setup guest accounts on your machines – that way anyone who walks by can mess around with the machine.

So how is YOUR office doing? Need some help? Contact the MaconMacGuy for some mostly intelligent help!

I’ve had a few clients express interest in Linux, especially for their older machines which would be doing real basic computing tasks (web, email, word processing, etc).

Many are afraid to muck around with the standard installation – the idea of messing around with the hard drive, or wiping out their current OS is enough to scare them away.

I’ve begin recommending WUBI to them (Windows-based Ubuntu Installer). Aside from being actually fun to say (try it three times, as fast as you can, while sitting at a traffic light with your car windows down….) it is a non-destructive way to install Linux onto your WIndows machine to see if you like it.

You download and install Wubi, which then takes over the rest of the installation. You do have to give it an amount of the hard drive for it t “take over” – I used 10gig which has been enough for my needs. You’ll also give it an administration username and password – WRITE IT DOWN!

On reboot you’ll see a “Pick which OS you want” menu. Select Ubuntu and the machine will boot in Ubuntu. It’s a full fledged installation, and works MUCH faster on my glacial Athlon 2200+ machine. My rough guess is tasks are about 25-35% faster on this machine under Ubunut compared to Win XP Home.

I can provide training on this, and installation help.

More information:
Wikipedia article on Wubi
The Wubi Installer

The Wubi Guide

I had a client recently whose website was put on hiatus – they had forgotten to pay the hosting bill!

Fortunately their domain was good for another year, so all that happened was their site was temporarily replaced with an “account suspended” page – easily fixed by paying the bill.

So why did this happen?

The easy answer is that someone wasn’t paying attention to their emails! After all, the system starts sending out reminder messages a month in advance!

Looking deeper, however, reveals a flaw in the system setup – and this is why I look at the whole system when setting up a new website. There should be a line of communication that is put in place to ensure someone who can react to problems vis-a-vis the site is kept apprised of problems.

This particular client is a homeowner’s association – and as such has a management staff PLUS a volunteer board of directors. Communication lines have not been clear in the past, which made it difficult to decide who needed to know what when originally setting up the system.

As a result, the original setup was for account info be sent to the main office email account….and here is where the flaw was exposed last week. The office does not have a clear communication setup – the website email account is used, but also a additional “off-site” account, which was getting heavy traffic (and thus most of the attention.

The fix? The primary hosting account now is listed as an alias – which automatically forwards everything to the webdesigner, the board’s president, the office, PLUS the communications committee.

A lesson learned with a very small price to pay. You don’t often get those in adulthood!