Archive for August, 2008

Yesss, this is the announcement I have been waiting for. The current prices for a blu-ray player, I find, are way too expensive. I mean for the price of a Blu-ray, you can purchase a Playstation 3, and get more for your money.

Maybe someone at Sony realized the same thing…. read more at Gizmodo.

I was reading on business ideas, and came across the idea of a Sales Route Delivery business. Thought it was interesting, and looked further into it, and wondered how I would automate it, or rather make it easier for myself.

I have a friend that basically does the same thing for an international foods company. All he does are the sales and someone else does the delivery. I noticed he used a sort of cellular device to transmit to his company or the office the orders of the day.

I looked into that and found the CIS Group. From what I gathered on their site, they seem to be a software company and offer a range of products and solutions in variety fields, including distribution, direct store delivery software, sales force automation (SFA) and merchandising, Bus and Coach Solutions and trucking transportation operations.

There seems to be a lot of money to be made in the route delivery business, I mean I was able to find Snapple beverage routes that net over $3,500 a week. But, the combination of a good sales route and good sales automation software will provide the efficiency needed to accomplish success in such a business.

I was impressed by CIS software solutions offered on their website. I found exactly what it is that is needed and what my friend’s company uses: Route Companion ® a route accounting software. It is offered to provide a complete software solution allowing efficiency and proper management of direct store delivery (DSD) transactions. They also offer a tough handheld computer that you can equip yourself with to manage your company’s daily activities.

What is also impressive is that all the collected data can then be transferred directly to your system.
We have to admit that in today’s competitive business environment, computer systems are necessary in order to obtain real success. The products offered at CIS seem to be designed for efficiency, and this of course results in an increase in productivity and profits.

So this was the error I received when configuring a POP3 account to use the Office 2007 Outlook client. I have to say that lately I have been getting pretty lazy in troubleshooting.

Why bother, if someone has already gone through the labor pains and posted the solution somewhere on the internet. So I googled it.

Solution! It was so simple that the title of my blog completely fits me…. a dummy.

Simply uncheck the box that requires SMTP authorization, (outgoing server requires authentication) and you should be all set….

  If you select tools from the top of your window and from the menu select Accounts, or Account Settings, and choose the account you are trying to make the change to. Under the ‘More Settings’ button you will see the tab or option to change whether or not your account needs smtp authentication.

EASY!

This is a very common question in our field of IT, and what’s worse is that the wrong answer can cost you money.

Not too long ago a client brought in her PC to have us install PC3200 DDR400 SDRAM upgrade she had purchased from an online vendor…. Weelllll, I felt so bad because the memory purchased was not the correct bus speed. Her motherboard just could not handle it. She was willing to give me the memory for free, 2GB of RAM.  My heart did not let me accept it.

Imagine I had in my hand a 2GB memory upgrade, that I know would have done me some real good.

Instead I tried to help her out and give her a quick lesson and at the same time, help her save some money. I was able to show her an online company that helps in taking that worry out of purchasing memory upgrades. MemoryDeal.net has in place a great tool to help dummies like me, prevent falling into the upgrading computer memory money pit. It offers a service that actually guarantees all memory modules ordered are an exact match of those originally installed at the factory.

Not many companies, or I don’t think any company can actually make such a guarantee. And what is a great asset is that they also offer Apple Memory & MAC RAM. So, we can also offer MAC users an upgrade option.

The client was very happy to know that she can actually order with confidence after getting burned by the other company…. Tech Dummy to the rescue!

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