As we look toward the new 2010 year, you may be asking yourself what your business should invest in the up-coming year. This is a great question! Even as the economy is still in recovery, it’s important to think how you can improve and make your business stronger. My top three pics for 2010 will allow your business to gain more market share, save money and time by using ‘Green Technology’, and utilize a service that will allow your company to build loyalty with your clients. Want to know more? Watch the 3 minute video above!

Thank you to everyone that came to our end-of-year event at our Costa Mesa office! It was a great crowd of hungry folks – not just for burgers, but also learning about how to save money and time by unifying phone systems from Cisco Technologies.
In the up-coming year we’re looking forward to having a few more events, so if you would like to learn more about how to save time and money with technology, then be sure to sign-up for notifications on the right. You’ll receive our blog posts as well as when our next event will be.
All of us at Akins Consulting wish you an amazing New Year!

We’re gearing-up for our December 21st event, and I do hope you’ll join us. It’s going to be a great lunch of In-n-Out burgers and fries, and some informative presentations by Cisco Technologies on how-to use technology to help you, business owners in Orange County, succeed on a whole new level.

But, how do business owners choose what to do?

If you’re a Southern California business owner, then you’ll want to attend! You’ll learn how to overcome technical obstacles and threats to your business, focus more on your business, and have greater peace of mind.

You will also hear stories from other small and medium-sized businesses that have incorporated solid, reliable technology into their winning business strategies-easily, affordably, and successfully.

Business owners in Orange County, California that take the time to attend and will learn how to:
- Provide more personal customer care to build loyalty
- Gain confidence that your computer systems will run properly and securely
- Help ensure that employees are connected from multiple locations and can work quickly in real time

Many other Orange County, California business owners are expected to come-by, so you’ll have the opportunity to network with peers from companies like yours!  Cisco will also be available to share their improved financing programs-designed specifically for small to medium-sized businesses.

For more information, please visit Cisco Technology’s website at http://bit.ly/8ELho9.

Top 7 things I like about Windows 7

1.  Its fast.

Booting up to Windows is faster.  Waking up from hybernation is faster.  With a laptop, I often hybernate my system instead of shutting it off so I can get right back to the documents or sites that I was previously working on.  One thing I did not like about XP or Vista was how long it would take to resume from hybernation.  With Windows 7, it is very fast.  It only takes a few seconds!

2.  It works.

Although there have already been lots of reports about people having problems upgrading from XP or Vista, a fresh installation of Windows 7 was very easy.  Would I upgrade a system to Windows 7?  It depends.  If the system was due for a reinstall of Windows, then I would check that drivers for Windows 7 were available and go for it.  If my system was working great with lots of installed applications that I use for business, I would wait till I purchased a new system.

3.  Windows XP Mode

Windows XP Mode is actually Windows XP sp3 running on Windows Virtual PC but even better.  How is it better?  Say there’s an application that doesn’t work on Windows 7, for example Cisco VPN client or some older Accounting software.  Fire up Windows XP mode, install the app, and voila, your application is now installed on the start menu of your Windows 7!  It takes a few seconds longer to launch the application but it works.

4.  Its a Snap. 

You can use Snap to arrange and resize windows on the desktop with a simple mouse movement. Using Snap, you can quickly align windows at the side of the desktop, expand them vertically to the entire height of the screen, or maximize them to completely fill the desktop. Snap can be especially helpful when comparing two documents, copying or moving files between two windows, maximizing the window you’re currently working on, or expanding long documents so they’re easier to read and require less scrolling.  You have to see it in action to appreciate it. 

5.  Its Supported

All of the drivers for my laptop were compatible with Windows 7.  ALL OF THEM.

6.  Its Stable

I’ve been running Windows 7 on my laptop for about 2 months.  One of the advantages of being a Microsoft Gold Partner is we get the latest software prior to it being released to the public.  I haven’t had one blue screen of death (BSOD), you know the dreaded blue screen with a bunch of characters explaining an error and saying you need to contact your system administrator.  Not one!

7.  Its easy to go to open documents

With Windows 7, you can just drag your mouse over any of the icons on the bottom task bar and you see a small preview of the document or web pages.  When you then drag the mouse over the small preview, the document or page is quickly, and I mean quickly, displayed across your screen.  This is very handy when you have 10 web pages open and need to go back and forth between them.