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Many small businesses wouldn't be undertaken and / or are only viable if they're run from home.

I agree with indizine, though, it can be easier to maintain a professional image if visitors come to glossy commercial premises rather than your home. On the other hand, the friendly, domestic, reassuringly solid and down to earth image of a home-based business can appeal too, particularly to clients who want to know you're unlikely to disappear on them.

Depending on your business and home, there are in-between options. The printer I use has a listed property with what was once a barn(?) in the garden - this barn has a gallery space used for the offices while the printing press equipment and storage is below.

I hire office space as and when I need it. At other times I work from home.

indizine - Looking forward to seeing the replies you get as I'm disgruntled too about apparent repeated small downtimes on the server my site uses!! Best wishes, Linda

Like life?????

Will be writing shortly with updates and thanks but just now am too busy looking up computers that fit the specs you've given me! Am SO, SO grateful!

Best wishes, Linda.

If you have a look at my other recent computer thread, you'll realise what's happened.

Having taken advice, I've discovered I can't use the Mac I inherited to do the Windows work I need it to do. You can't run Windows 7 on the Mac I've got nor Microsoft Office ... and even if I could get it to work, buying the software to make it do so would be as costly as buying a new Windows machine.thumbsdown

What I'm now asking the Mac and computer buffs amongst you generally is to guesstimate the min to max value of the Mac I have (which I'll use to offset some of the costs of the Windows PC) and to suggest how I go about selling it. I don't even really know how to describe it properly. I already realise it won't be worth much so I won't be horrified when that's what you say!

Info which may help you understand the Mac:-

iMac 2006 , Mac OSX Version 10.6.8.
Processor 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo
Memory 1.GB 667 MHz DDR 2 SDRAM
Model name iMac; Model Identifier iMac 4.1

It's got the Mac version of Microsoft Office 2004 loaded.

Any advice would be really welcome. Thanks in advance - Linda

I'm after impartial advice from people who use their computers to run small businesses. Would be very grateful for any suggestions you can offer.

I'm expecting to have a Windows computer bought for me but I don't want to ask for anything that's "over the top" as regards spec or price.

Currently, I mainly use my computer to produce documents, trawl the internet and pick up email and edit my website. In theory, I may also wish to produce Powerpoint presentations and spreadsheets, keep an electronic diary etc.

I understand I should get a Windows 7 computer loaded with Microsoft 2010 Pro (is this the standard spec for an ordinary business computer please)?

Can you advise me what would be "good enough" for my purposes as regards memory, speed, space on hard drives, peripherals (and anything else important) plse?

Are there makes of computer in my price range which are generally regarded as being more trouble-free than others? PM me please (lw@careers-partnership-uk.com) if you want to say "don't touch makes X or Y with a bargepole"! Thanks.

Yours hopefully, Linda

But Waterstones has got free national publicity out of all this, to put against the cost of changing letter heading, website etc. Ask even the non-reading public to name a book store right at the moment and I'm sure they'd respond "Waterstone's".

I suppose it would be just too cheeky for them NOW to say - "We've changed our mind, forget it, we didn't realise how much y'all loved our apostrophe!"?

... there's always a new source of naive, trusting victims too, whether they're people from the developing world who've not had much contact with the internet before or "silver surfers" from the developed world.

I think we've also lost much of the contact we'd normally have had with people likely to give us a trustworthy "second opinion" (eg our local bank manager).

I remember listening to a consumer advice programme where ordinary, presumably reasonably sensible individuals had been ripped off in a "boiler plating"(?) operation. If they'd have felt at home enough with their bank or the local police station to drop in and take advice they might not have lost the thousands of pounds this scam cost them.

Each one's a character in a child's story (written by a rather pretentious author) ... I like Tickletoad best because the biggest and best beast in the "zoo" I kept as a child was a toad.

Don't worry, RSPCA, the toad didn't know it was in my zoo. It thought it was living a completely independent life, hopping from drain to garden as took its fancy.

Thanks Wicketts and Accounting Help.

Am still trying to track down / acquire missing Windows disks, then will psych myself up to tackle Mac-speak. I'll need a glass or two of summat beforehand.