Over the past few months we have seen more interest in server upgrades or first server installations within local small and medium sized businesses. Perhaps this is due to the relaxing of the recession? Perhaps those businesses with existing servers have simply struggled on long enough with their aging server(s) and are fed up with server crashes and poor performance? Whatever the reason, now is a good time to start thinking about getting your first server or upgrading your old ones. In fact, there has never been a better time. Why? You now have even more choice than before as to what server best matches your business needs.

Time to get your first server?

Traditionally most small businesses purchased Microsoft’s Small Business Server, as it was the only cost effective solution available to smaller companies. This has now changed with the launch of Windows Server 2008 Foundation in October 2009. Supporting up to 15 users, with all the features of a standard Windows server, Windows Foundation Server makes the sub £1,000 server a reality.

Time to upgrade your server?

Upgrading your existing server to Microsoft Small Business Server 2008 is now even cheaper with Microsoft’s Solution Pathway programme. Depending on your current server version you can access savings of up 30% of the cost of your Microsoft Small Business Server 2008 licenses.

Server Options and Benefit Comparison

The table below provides a high-level breakdown of the Windows server products applicable to small and medium sized businesses.

The table below shows a high-level comparison of the business benefits that can be obtained from each of the server products.

*As at the time of writing, Microsoft has recently announced that Essential Business Server (EBS) is to go end of life later this year (2010).

I was with a customer recently and we recently installed a new application for them on Windows 7, that required us to run a program as Administrator. It seemed the only way this would work was to right click on the icon and “Run as Administrator” so I wanted to find a way that this could be done without right clicking on the icon, and this is what I found, on the internet:

The best way to do this, is to create a scheduled task, and then set up a shortcut that tells the scheduled task to run. I am sure there are better ways to do this but this seems to work just fine.

Start by Creating the Scheduled Task Item

Open up Task Scheduler through the start menu search box (in Windows 7 search just type “task” without the quotes ), and then on the right-hand side click the “Create Task” link:

Now all you need to do is to give the task a name, something simple preferably without any spaces in it. Then check the box for “Run with highest privileges” (*very important*). If you are using Windows 7, click on the “Configure for” dropdown list and select the option for Windows 7.

Next , click on the Actions tab, click the New button, and then browse down to the application that you are trying to start.

Close out of the dialogs by clicking the OK button, which should create the new task in the list. You can right-click on it and choose “Run” at this point, simply to make sure that it launches the application the way you were expecting.

At this point our scheduled tasks setup is done, so you can close out of that if you want, as long as you remember the name that you used for the task.

Create the Shortcut to Start the Task

Right-click anywhere on the desktop and choose New \ Shortcut from the menu.

Now here is where the real magic happens, we need to add a command that will run the scheduled task, passing in the name of the task that we used. As you can see, I used runregedit as the name for the task.

Make sure you enter the task name like this, replacing the capitalized letters for the name of your task. (It’s not case sensitive)

schtasks /run /tn “TASKNAMEINQUOTES” this is the name you gave the task when we created it, in this case “runregedit”

Now give your shortcut some useful name, and then click next to create it.

Viola, you now have an icon created that will launch the application in administrator mode.

As of 15th January 2010, Vodafone will release the APPLE iPhone to work on their network which means that you can now ANY iphone on the 4 networks that offer it whether or not it was supplied by your provider.

In order to do this, you will need to  get your existing iphone unlocked by visiting the  unlocking site of the provider, which in our case is O2, available at http://shop.o2.co.uk/update/unlockmyiphone.html.. Fill in the relevant information and in a couple of weeks, they will unlock the it  and then it will be available for use on any network.  Once you then synch with iTunes, you will be able to update the carrier settings and you are good to go.

Should you need any assistance on this,  please feel free to give us a call .

This week, like many other people , we have been affected by really bad snow and have been unable to get into the office and so have had to work from home.

However this does not mean that we have been unable to do any work,  because of the technology available today, we have been able to 100% effective and continue to be productive.

We have our systems set up to use Outlook, share files and folders with the workforce and also have our telephone extensions available at home, so that we can continue to communicate with each other as though we were in the office.  

The great news is that most small companies  have all, or most of this technology already available on the server, and  its a something that just needs to be setup.

So if your staff are unable to get into the office, rather than give them a day off (and watch TV or play in the snow) why not  let them remain productive ?

If you would like to know more about this then why not give us a call, so that we can set this up for you, and next time it  snows you wont get caught short. 

Why not visit our website and download our whitepaper entitled “Small Business Mobility”, it can be downloaded here

As we are at the end of yet another year and the end of a very important milestone for TCG, (We turned 5 years old  this month (December) so Happy Birthday to us) this has got me thinking and reflecting  on the past 5 years, and what we done right and wrong.  Despite having been in business for 5 years , it has not all gone right.. in fact far from it.  There have been many things we have done over the years that, given the chance to do  again, we  would do a lot differently.

Like a lot of other businesses, we have always done the same thing in terms of trying to get new business, and wondered why we always end up in the same place. In our case, we have always relied on referrals, and this year in particular the referrals have been a lot less than in previous years, for one reason or another.  Speaking to some other businesses owners and colleagues I have seen a pattern forming, whereby most people who do the same thing, always end up with the same results.

So this got me thinking, what can we do differently this coming year, that we have not done in previous years. ?

For Starters we are going to change the way we look for business and instead of relying only on referrals, we will do some Marketing campaigns to specific vertical sectors ( we already serve the Accountancy vertical so why not market to prospects in the same vertical using the pain points we have already got from our existing customer).  Not only is this a great  opportunity to engage our existing customers, who we may not have seen for a while, but its also a great way to get testimonials and case studies from them, which you have not have done before.

We have also  started to look at all the relationships we have with vendors and  2010 will be the year that we will engage a lot more with our vendors and look for ways to help them get more business,  which ultimately will help us to get more business for ourselves, so this will be a WIN WIN for both parties.

I am sure you have all heard the saying “IF YOU ALWAYS DO WHAT YOU’VE ALWAYS DONE,  YOU WILL ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU’VE ALWAYS GOT !!”

This saying is so true and sadly most people, including myself have always ignored it and continued doing the same things every year and then wondered why , every year they get the same results, so why not make 2010 the year that it all gets turned around, take a sheet of paper and copy the above line, in BOLD and stick it on your wall, so that whenever you get to the office, you have something to remind you, to do things differently this year.

Thanks for reading and here’s hoping  you all have a very prosperous 2010 and together lets make it the best year of the decade..  

As we know, Christmas is a time for giving, and this year, Karl Palachuk of Great Little Book is giving away a really nice gift, the  SMB Books FREE Sampler CD

The CD Sampler contains, more than seven hours of audio and video training plus hundreds of pages of excellent content.

If you want to get your hands on this, head over to the  SMB Books FREE Sampler CD Blog Listing and order yourself a copy.

Thanks Karl, this is a great gift.

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE!!!

Did you know that you can use Microsoft Word as your blog editor, for WordPress ?

Here’s how !!!

Open up Word, and Select Publish > Blog

To link your WordPress account, click Manage Accounts, New and then select WordPress as your blog provider.

Enter your blog URL in the Blog Post URL Field.

Example: http://www.tcgccomputerservices.com/xmlrpc.php

Enter your Wordpress User Name and Password and thats it !!!

From Word’s page editor window, you can create new posts or edit existing ones. To edit an existing post, click on Open Existing, that will give you a list of all posts to edit. 

This entire blog post was done this way.. If you have any problems let us know and we would of course be happy to help

My good friend Richard Tubb, from JamesCash/Netlink has written a really good post on his blog about installing Windows 7  from USB memory Stick.   I thought I would share this in my blog  and rather than “plagiarize” Richards blog, I have copied a link here for you to have a look at .

http://tubbweb.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!BDC5D8CC9BEA292B!2369.entry?ccr=945#comment

In the last couple of weeks, we have  installed a couple  server(s) for various clients.   Both servers were installed with Microsoft SBS 2008 and for some reason, apparently random,  the servers seemed  to loose connection, to the Internet.  It would appear that certain websites worked and others did not. It appeared as if the server was just rebooting itself and not starting up correctly.

Anyway after some research and talking to some of my SBSC colleagues, I found a solution to the problem. !!!
It would appear that when you set up SBS 2008 one of the defaults it takes is root hints, and seems to set the wrong DNS setting (well at least for UK TLD’s)

So it seems that the solution to this is to set up DNS forward look-ups instead of using root hints.  There is a very simple way to do this, using OpenDNS..   See the post below.

http://www.channelprosmb.com/blog/entry/2894/How-to-flip-your-SBS-2008-to-forwarders/

So far this seems to have worked well for me.

Q: So what do you do with around 1500 business owners who are hungry to network.. ?

A : Put them all into the same room together, throw in a secret millionaire, a dragon, and a Rustefarian sauce maker and you have  some very happy and well inspired  business owners.

Well , thats exactly what happened yesterday (01 October)  in Chineham, a  small town in Basingstoke, at the Inspire09 Networking event which was organised by Business Link.   The event was opened by Richard Farleigh of Dragons Den, who gave an amazing insight about how he got to where is today and the successess and failures along the way.  Richard stayed around after the talk and engaged with some of the local businesses and also took time to visit some of the businesses who were exhibing at the show.

Later on the in the day, was a talk by one of the most inspiring people of them all , a local Basingstoke resident  Liz Jackson, of Great Guns Marketing , who despite losing her site while starting a business,, still  managed to build  a very successful, multi-million pound business and also appeared on the TVseries of the Secret Millionaire. Liz is one of those people who just inspires you as soon as she starts speaking.  Something she said yesterday, which stuck in my mind all day (and is still there now) was   “.. If you think you can, or you think you can’t .. you are right” although this saying has been around for a very long time, and I have heard it a million times, something about the way that Liz said it just made me sit back and take another look my attitude to business and life in general.  Always think positive and positive things will start happening.

If all that wasn’t  enough, there were a number of other workshops such as “How to save TAX in 100 different ways” by Paul Sherrington, of Sherringtons Accountants. Paul is not only my accountant,  a customer and friend but one of the only accountants who does more than  just “count the beans” (His words, not mine).  Take a look at his website to find out more

The last key note of the day, was by a man who needs no introduction, (well at least not to us Brits),  none other than the great Levi  Roots maker of the famous, Reggae Reggae sause and Successful “Dragon Slayer”.   Levi Sang his very famous “Reggae Reggae Sauce song to us” and had most of us tapping our feets and singing along, where was Simon Cowell when we needed him..

All in all the day was very inspiring and left me wanting more.   The events are run by Business Link and so it is possible that there may be one coming to a town near you.. if you are a local business owner, do yourself and your business a a favour and go along to one and “BE-INSPIRED”