Posts

I'll concede to being ridiculed by the Mac fraternity, and like I said I would consider a Mac for home use to ease me in gently. But I can't afford disruption, retraining, confusion in the office, so going to stick with what we know for now.

Just need some reliable hardware, so hoping for some recommendations from other business owners. Be interested if anyone uses Lenovos and if they are as good as the old Thinkpads  

Welcome to the forums 

Can only go on my own experience. We used to a traditional backup server in the office, but was finally convinced to embrace the cloud, and now haven't looked back.

We use a product called LiveDrive and swear by it. It's very cheap to use, easy to set up, and once configured you have piece of mind. I also use their app on my iphone, meaning I can see all the office files on my phone if need be.

It gives you a windows explorer style view on your computer, caches them locally on your machine, but everytime you save something, it is automatically backed upto the cloud. They have had some bad reviews, and some early software wasn't the most reliable, but we've not had any problems in the last couple of years.

Email wise, also used to have an Exchange server in the office, but was also convinced to give it up and we use a company called Cobweb for our email. We use outlook as the client, and Cobweb provide mailboxes on cloud based exchange servers. Makes email hassle free, secure and costs a couple of quid per mailbox. Again used them for years and never had any problems.

Hope that helps.

This is only relating to Financial Services regulations. So I read it as if you are going to start offering insurance products, finance or some form of financial services, then you will need to be registered. 

So taking a deposit for a job/product wouldn't (I would have thought) be classed as finance, otherwise every builder in the land would have to be registered, along with a host of other trades.

Anyone on-board who is Financial Services savvy who can confirm?

Aha Ryan, I think I can answer this, advantage of running a directory across the USA 

On the US site, we have a category called Handy Man Services, and this is the search results of that category across the country: Handy Man Services USA

Looks like a lot of businesses call themselves "Handy Man" or "Handy Man Services"

Interesting question, curious to know why?

There has been a debate about PC versus Mac, and I suspect it will rage on for years  I'd genuinely consider a Mac, but as a Mac virgin, maybe as a home machine first to see how I got on with it 

For business, like it or loathe it we are shackled to Microsoft for some of the applications we use, but in recent years we seem to be destroying HP laptops. My Pavillion Dv5 overheated from 2 years, then gradually disintegrated and fell apart on it's 3rd birthday. It's replacement a Dv7 is creaking after 2 years. 

Our man Clive has a gift for killing Pavillions at the 2 year point, and killed his second one today. Then our general office Pavillions battery packed up after 18 months. 

I don't know if we have a poltergeist in the office or it's Clives negative computer karma...

I used to love HP's and Compaqs, when did they become so unreliable?

So after some ideas. What does everyone else use? I want to stick to larger laptops rather than notepads or go back to desktops.

Used to use Thinkpads when they were still made by IBM, and they were nice reliable machines. No idea what the new Lenovo ones are like?

People rave about Sony Vio's or is that so last year and a fad?

Will confess to being a bit snobby about Dells an Acers, only because they seem cheap, but have no experience of them.

What brand of lappie powers your business in 2014? And what's your verdict? Is it any good, any problems  All genuine coalface reviews and suggestions appreciated!

So can you summarise to the uninitiated like me from a high level what the new rules are? Just in case I need to fire Clive.

You can host a video on your own site, to be honest you can do whatever you like to your own site. A lot depends on the type of site you have, eg wordpress/cms site or a bespoke site, versus a freebie website which will have limited to little functionality.

Question is why do you want to host your own video? Is there a reason you are against embedding Youtube which is straightforward?

If you host it yourself, you need to consider bandwidth each time it's played, site speed etc. If you will be hosting multiple videos, then maybe check your hosting package and make sure it's suitable.

With your own website you can just about do anything you want. It's normally a question of budget for using a web designer/developer versus reward/ROI.

Ok, as ex wagon driver will confess to still being fascinated to lorries, but interesting story on the Beeb about the future of freight travel, and a concept called "platooning". This allows a convoy of lorries to travel close together, all being controlled by the lead vehicle using wireless technology.

This is an exert from a Scania promotional video

Amazing stuff. It's been know for years you can save fuel by sitting in a vehicles slipstream, and this is why you see wagons so close to each other going up the motorway, but it is a dangerous practice. New adaptive cruise controls and auto braking systems are slowly becoming available, and controlling the vehicles wirelessly seems a natural evolution.

So how will you feel seeing a convoy of automated wagons trundle past? Lets hope they don't run on Windows 

Agreed, it' not the same without El Tels comments after a few glasses of wine. Pure comedy