The Tech Savvy Firm

Microsoft Office Live

I had a visit from a client the other day to discuss business.  As we were talking, he brought up the need to share files with his supervisors and managers.  They did not work out of the main office, but at the physical locations of the various restaurants he owned.  He wished he could share calendars and excel files.  I knew of some hosted online Exchange and Office servers, but that seemed like overkill.  I told him I would look at some choices and get back with him. 

The first thought that ran across my mind was some of the new Microsoft Live sharing capabilities such as foldershare.  I use foldershare to sync certain files between computers and it works well, but it wasn't exactly what I had in mind.  As I was googling,  I soon discovered Microsoft Office Live.   At first glance I thought this may be a practical choice since it is F R E E.  After using it for just a few minutes, I knew this was exactly what my client needed.  I was truly impressed with the ease of use and capabilities.  From storing and sharing Excel, Word and Powerpoint files to actually creating calendar events, contacts, tasks and lists to share with Outlook.  Just what my client had ordered.

To get started you simply need to sign up for the free account and download the Office Live add-in for your desktop Office applications.   Check out my getting started video showing how to get setup.  I also will be posting some subsequent short videos on Office Live in the near future at www.techsavvystudio.com.

XP Service Pack 3 - Better than Vista?

I recently updated all of my computers to the new XP service pack 3.  The upgrade was simple and took between 15 and 30 minutes per machine.  I did have to reinstall a couple of printer drivers that suddenly stopped working after the update, but otherwise the process was extremely easy.  Without any real stats to back it up, SP3 does seem to run faster, as some users had indicated with the release candidate versions.   Although it may be an illusion, because service pack 3 is basically a roll out of all of the service pack 2 updates into one nice neat package.  I suspect the speed increase from the update is similar to a speed increase from a clean install of your operating system.  The clean install gives your computer fresh life, as does service pack 3 in compacting and cleaning up all of the service pack 2 updates neatly into the operating system. 

Is it true XP is better than Vista?  Having used Vista for almost a year and going back to XP, I believe XP is still the better operating system especially for business users.  Don't get me wrong I love the latest and greatest and I really like Vista's eye candy.  It is just a simple fact, Vista currently does not run as well as XP on the same machine.  I also have had numerous compatibility and driver issues with Vista that I don't have with XP.  To be fair to Vista, I had similar issues when XP was first released.  I believe businesses just don't need the new features found in Vista, so there seems to be no current benefit for businesses to use Vista.

If I was ordering a new machine for my business today I would order XP, but how long will we actually be able to purchase Windows XP on new machines. The deadline from Microsoft is June 30.  Although there are many reports vendors are planning to still downgrade the machines to XP, if the customer requests.  I suspect demand for XP will continue through the rest of the year and maybe into next year.  Microsoft has extended support for all of the XP versions to 2014, so it is safe for businesses to purchase and utilize systems with XP for some time.

To receive the service pack 3 update simply go to your windows update.  You can read more about the update at lifehacker.com and as always Paul Thurrott's Supersite for Windows

Write-Up CS - Bank Reconciliation

Thomson Tax & Accounting's Write-Up CS bank reconciliation module is one of the most useful but under utilized tools in the arsenal of the Thomson CS suite.   We have been using the module since it's implementation and it has been a tremendous efficiency boost to our practice.   A large bank reconciliation can be done in just a few minutes, simply from importing the client's bank statement from their online banking.  This video is a demonstration on how to utilize this functionality.  Stay tuned for more Tech Savvy learning studio videos.