Gentle Nudge to all you procrastinators: Windows XP support ends next week – April 8, 2014

By Sandra Clitter  |  2014/04/02 15:28 Posted in General  |  Comments (0)

Oh, my…where on earth does the time go? Sorry I’ve been AWOL, but first the holidays hit, then the winter that wouldn’t end, and before you know it, the calendar turns to April. Wow.

This is a quick, gentle reminder to everyone who is still nursing along an old Windows XP machine and doesn’t want to get rid of it…Next Tuesday, April 8th, 2014, Microsoft will officially stop supporting Windows XP. Does this mean that your computer will cease to work on that date? No. That said, you should be contemplating upgrading (if your hardware is newer) or replacing (if your hardware is older) for a variety of reasons.

In effect, this is a mini-Y2K.

Why do you care, you ask? Here are my (unofficial) thoughts:

1. The world if full of hackers…they are looking for ANY and EVERY opportunity to abuse technology. Once Microsoft stops ‘plugging the holes’, the hackers will just trawl the internet looking for computers connected to the internet that are running Windows XP. They’ll hack into those machines (because no one is trying to stop them any more) and either steal your information OR use your computer as a stepping stone to do their nefarious business on other computers.

2. Software that you have installed on your XP machine will no longer be upgraded/supported on the current operating system. If something goes wrong, you’ll be left on your own to recover from it.

3. Certain program warranties (e.g. credit card processing software) will not be warranted/protected/insured on an XP machine. If you suffer a theft/loss of data, it will be on you with no recourse to the merchant processor.

4. If your XP machine is newer, upgrade to Windows 7 (available from Microsoft resellers) or Windows 8.1 (after checking to make sure the system requirements are adequate). That will breath additional life into your machine for under (typically) $150.

5. If your XP machine is older, well…perhaps it is time for it to retire. Wipe your machine of any data, and dispose of it in an eco-friendly manner. Seriously, if you’ve gotten 5+ years off of your computer, it’s given you all that it has :-).

Don’t leave yourself vulnerable to the ‘Why didn’t I…’ curse!

Control your desktop from your iPad, Android, iPhone, or Tablet – Seriously

By Sandra Clitter  |  2013/10/13 19:08 Posted in (Mostly) Free Tools, General, Tech Tips  |  Comments (3)

Happy Fall, everyone! If you live in the Northeast, I hope that you didn’t wash away in the deluge this weekend. It feels like fall now…leaves turning, Halloween decorations out, cooler weather. Time to settle in for the race to the New Year (yikes!). When I was shopping the other day, the entire front wall of a big, box store was Christmas Trees. WHAT?!?!? It’s not even Halloween yet! Seriously, I can’t stand it!!

But you’re not here to discuss the weather or upcoming holiday schedule.

To the topic at hand: I feel like one of the biggest challenges that I have in managing a wide variety of devices (I have four that I work with consistently – my laptop, my smartphone, an iPad and a Windows Surface tablet) is that the information or program I want is on a DIFFERENT device than the one that I’m on. Perhaps I have a program on one device that doesn’t run on the other device (e.g. Office on the iPad). Maybe a program is quite expensive and I don’t want to own multiple licenses.

I know that I can use Dropbox (or a similar online data service) to store information (If you don’t know what Dropbox is, or why it’s important, please check out this post: http://www.yourtechtamer.com/blog/2012/09/dropbox-what-is-it-why-do-you-have-to-have-it/), but that doesn’t handle having to license the programs themeselves multiple times to install them on different devices (assuming that that program is available for multiple devices types). Additionally, some data is massive in nature (e.g. videos, music, photos, databases) and you may not want to pay for the space required to store it (personally, I have almost a terrabyte of data [that’s 1000 GB/gigabytes of data], and I don’t care to pay for an outside service to store it all. I don’t need to access much of it regularly, but when I do, I need it!). Maybe you just forgot to save the data to your online storage site. Maybe the data is sensitive and you don’t want it “out there”.

Regardless of your reason for not having every program and piece of data on every device, there is a wonderful, FREE tool (free for personal use, commercial usage requires payment) that allows you access to your PC from virtually any device. Enter Teamviewer.

Teamviewer allows you to control your PC (and thereby, run ALL of your PC programs) from almost any type of device. Whether that’s totally practical or not is up to you (personally, I really can’t do anything from my smartphone…just too small). The idea is that you CAN IF YOU WANT/NEED TO.

Rick Broida, a terrific author on CNET, created a terrific step-by-step. Rather than recreating it here, I’ll let you check out his article, “How to Control Your PC from Your iPad for Free“. Rick has laid out all the step-by-step instructions (with pictures and suggested settings). Download Teamviewer from Teamviewer.com and away you go!

Once you’ve installed and configured Teamviewer, you can access your PC from almost any of your other devices with just a few simple “clicks” (or taps). No longer is that critical piece of information “back home” when you need it HERE!

It’s Friday, so how about BYOD?! (nope…not a typo)

By Sandra Clitter  |  2013/09/13 14:48 Posted in Business Processes, General  |  Comments (0)

When will “techie” people ever get tired of acronyms? Probably never. It’s a Friday afternoon, so I’m thinking about the BYOB (Bring Your Own Bottle) policy that one of the local eateries has, and trying to decide if that would be a good place for dinner. Enter into my mailbox a questions about BYOD (note the ‘D’ replacing the ‘B’). Is this person asking me about dining out options (with a typo)? Nope. They are asking about ‘Bring Your Own Device’ in the workplace.

Huh?

BYOD means that employers don’t require employees to use the employer’s technology, but rather, the employee can use their OWN technology to connect into the employers systems, allowing the employee to work on equipment that is FAMILIAR to them. With the advent of laptops, tablets and smartphones, people want to connect to information using WHATEVER device they have handy, from WHEREVER they happen to be. Not in the office? No problem…give me a minute to sign in and I’ll get you that answer.

What’s good about this trend?

BYOD is only getting more popular. Don’t like that Blackberry that work gives you? Forward your email to your iPhone. Need to finish up a project before a big meeting tomorrow? Don’t stay late to get it done. Go home, have dinner with your family, put the kids to bed, then sign in to the system at work to finish off the document. Employees who have BYOD available to them tend to be more productive. Gotta love that!

What’s bad about this trend?

The data from the company is more ‘at risk’. The more people can access data from a myriad of places, the greater the potential for a data breach.

So, what’s the answer. Well, BYOD is a trend that is continuing. In fact, it will only increase. Therefore, companies should take the money that they would have spent on desktop/laptop hardware replacement and invest it into better security. Install a VPN. Monitor access of information carefully. Put alerts into place for signs of abuse.

Studies have shown that workers and students are far more productive if they are working on their own devices. The additional productivity can MORE THAN offset the additional cost of putting good security in place.

Above all, put your policies for BYOD into writing and get every employee/consultant to sign it – agreeing to your terms and conditions.

If you’re interested in learning more, there’s a great article here:

http://customizedwhitepapers.s3.amazonaws.com/EduDow-BYOD101/BYOD101.pdf

I did not author it, but I think that it lays out the pros/cons quite well…and clearly, confirms that BYOD isn’t going away!

SEO – top organic rankings, keywords – and avoiding scare tactics

By Sandra Clitter  |  2013/08/07 19:43 Posted in (Mostly) Free Tools, Business Processes, General, Tech Tips, Web Tips  |  Comments (5)

Many of my clients have heard me go off on a rant or two about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and how to avoid getting taken to the cleaners by people promising you extraordinary ranking results.

What is SEO, you ask? SEO is the ability of a search engine (e.g. Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.) to locate your web page in response to a search string that a user has entered. Simple example: If you’re looking to purchase a cupcake in Maui, Hawaii, then you might enter the following search in your favorite ‘Search’ box: cupcake bakery maui hi (NOTE: I know that there would be proper capitalization and punctuation if you were typing an email or letter, but ‘search’ doesn’t care about capitalization and grammar). Hit return. If you’re the local cupcake baker in Maui, then you want to come up at the top of the listings. That’s SEO. Getting your listing to appear at/near the top.

So now that we’re clear about what we’re discussing, let’s delve a bit further into HOW pages become ‘top’ of the list. Bottom line: Pages come up at the top of the list because they are RELEVANT. Search engines try to prioritize pages by how closely to the question posed during the search matches the specific page content…and it does it based upon finding KEYWORDS. Words on the web page that match the words in the search question.

The trick is to get your pages to show up near the top of results ‘organically’ (no, we’re not talking about Whole Foods). In this case, ‘organically’ means that you’re not paying for placement. Your pages appear in the results on their own merit…naturally.

The trick is two-fold. First, you have to come up with the questions that your potential clients are going to ask of a search engine when they’re trying to find you. Second, you want to get your page to appear near the top when they do ask the question. Being buried on page 5 of the results won’t do you alot of good.

It is possible to ‘do it yourself’, but it requires time, study, and a great deal more patience than I possess. Good marketing people know the ins and outs and can help your pages climb up the ladder of search results by targeting the correct keywords (words used in the search queries) that your potential customers are likely to use. That said, if you’re going to invest in marketing assistance, you don’t want to fritter away your hard-earned money – you want results. And all of the people who guarantee a ‘Number 1 result’ can actually be yanking your chain – ALOT – but they are not necessarily fibbing.

To quote Kim Landry of Hollister Creative, “Their [the people who say they’ll make you number one] guarantee is solid because a web page optimized for a keyword phrase for which no other web page is optimized will take the top spot in search results for that phrase. But that “win” won’t help your business because chances are, the reason none of your competitors optimize for that phrase is that no one searches for it.”

AHA!!! There is the magic moment: PEOPLE HAVE TO ACTUALLY SEARCH ON THE PHRASE THAT YOU’VE CAPTURED FOR IT TO BE VALUABLE TO YOU!

Kim continues by pointing out the following (which I have been preaching for years, so I’m feeling vindicated today by her corroboration). I’m going to paraphrase, but please, PLEASE visit her original post here.

First, your keywords and the content of your page have to be relevant. No one wants to end up on a page for butterflies when they searched “cupcakes”. Kim says: “The best keyword phrase is highly relevant to whatever you are “selling” on your page. It is a phrase your target audience would type into the search field to find exactly that. Brainstorm a list of phrases. Do a Google search on each one. If the results show pages selling something very similar to your page, the phrase is relevant.”

Second, find out how many people conduct searches on a given phrase using another FREE Google tool (we LOVE free tools here). Landry again: “Using the free (and amazing) Google Keyword Tool, find out how many people search your keyword phrase each month. High search volume is good, but low can be fine if your phrase is so specific that only a knowledgeable prospect who is ready to buy would search that phrase. If the search volume is zero, you can pose as an SEO expert and con your competitors into optimizing for this phrase.”

Third, know the competition for a particular phrase. Kim’s tip: “The Keyword Tool will also tell you if competition for your phrase is high, medium or low. High means it is a very popular phrase that many competitors are optimizing for. It will cost you to pursue a page one spot for that phrase. Fortunately, the Keyword Tool automatically suggests alternate phrases, some of which have medium or low competition.”

Bottom line: You need to know your customers, and what your customers need from you, to be able to optimize your website for search results. YOU know best. Do some homework. Give it thought. Then, engage a reputable marketing firm to ‘make it happen’. The results will speak for themselves!

Why does my computer start up so slowly?

By Sandra Clitter  |  2013/05/21 21:18 Posted in (Mostly) Free Tools, Tech Tips  |  Comments (4)

Ah…remember when you first got your new computer (like I did just a couple of weeks ago), and it starts up almost immediately? Back when the time from pressing the ‘on’ button to being able to do something productive wasn’t measured with a sundial? Want to get your computer back in ‘fighting’ shape?

Enter your friend, ‘msconfig’.

This is a well-hidden, but powerful tool built right in to your Microsoft computer. For those of you using Windows 7 and earlier, go to Start-Search and enter the term ‘msconfig’ without the single-quotes around it.

For those of you on Windows 8, go to the Start menu (the one with all the tiles) and just start typing ‘msconfig’…it’ll find it for you and display it:

Once you’ve located ‘msconfig’, open it up. The initial screen will appear something like this (this is a Windows 8 version – earlier Windows versions will look slightly different):

Click on the ‘Startup’ tab. If you’re in Windows 8, you’ll need to then click the ‘Open Task Manager’ link.

In Windows 8, it will look something like this:

If you’re in Windows 7 or earlier, it will look more like this:

Now, start unchecking or disabling (by highlighting and clicking ‘disable’ in the lower-right side of the window), to turn off processes that clearly don’t need to start when your computer starts. For instance, I WANT my backup to start every time I start my computer, so I leave ‘Mozy’ enabled (checked). I do NOT want ‘Adobe Acrobat Reader’ starting when my computer starts, so I disable (uncheck) that one.

Once you are satisfied with your choices, click ‘OK’ to save and restart your computer. The first time it restarts, you will be warned that the startup options have changed. That’s OK…you changed them!

If some of the processes seem ‘odd’ or you don’t understand what they’re for, Google the process…there are plenty of sites which will assist you in determining whether a process has to run at startup or not.

Should I remove a program from my computer?

By Sandra Clitter  |  2013/05/07 21:17 Posted in (Mostly) Free Tools, Tech Tips  |  Comments (2)

WOW…where does the time go? I have no excuses for being AWOL. I do, however, have tons and tons of ideas for articles…many of which can be attributed to the fact that my laptop died on me last week…Yup…done…over…kaput.

As an aside (skip over this paragraph to the next paragraph if you’re interested in the topic of this article and not my ramblings), my laptop was about a 18 months old. Sounds ‘young’ to many people, but it was an inexpensive laptop (cost in August 2011 about $450), and I used it ALL THE TIME…basically, I wore out the keyboard. Replacing the keyboard (yes, I got brave enough to try that before deciding to retire it to the big laptop parking lot in the sky) didn’t work. So, after consulting with some people who are better with hardware than I am, I decided to just bite the bullet and purchase a new laptop. After all, if I can’t type, I can’t service my clients! So I headed off to Staples and bought a Lenovo Ideapad for about $550. Not the cheapest laptop around, but certainly not the most expensive. So far, I’m OK with it. Its nice enough (geez, it has an Intel i5 processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 750GB hard drive) and the keys actually type what I ask them to – what more could you want?! It’ll take me a while to get used to the new touch/feel of the keyboard (and a smaller-than-standard numeric keypad), and a slightly smaller screen (15″ vs 17″ on my old laptop). BUT, the biggest challenge is getting used to Windows 8 – so be prepared for some upcoming articles on it. Once I found the desktop, I was much happier.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand…(those of you who skipped can tune back in here)…when one purchases new electronics (virtually any kind of electronics), one turns it on for the first time and are confronted with…all kinds of JUNK! “Bloatware” is a common term. Your computer comes pre-loaded with all kinds of programs that you may never need or want…but how do you decide what’s OK to delete and what’s not?

Aha! I found a great little tool that helps tremendously. It is called “Should I Remove It” and can be downloaded from ShouldIRemoveIt.com. Simply go to the website and press the free download button:

Once the file has downloaded, double-click on the file and install it on your computer (yes, you actually WANT this software!). Open up the newly installed piece of software and you’ll see this screen:

The bar on the right indicates the likelihood that you should uninstall a particular piece of software. Click on the name of one of the installed programs, and you can choose to investigate that program further or uninstall it – right from that screen.

It’s a pretty safe bet that if no one else has uninstalled a program that it’s an important one – but not always – so check it out and see. For instance, if your computer comes pre-installed with Microsoft Office, but you don’t want to use it, then it’s OK to uninstall that, as well, even though many people wouldn’t consider it ‘bloatware’…it is for you.

Anyway, the ShouldIRemoveIt rankings go from red (most everyone removes it) to green (only some people remove it). Check each one out. Decide for yourself, but be sure to read the ‘What Is It’ area before uninstalling those programs that aren’t clearly ‘in the red zone’. You don’t want to uninstall something ‘important’.

I found some of the statistics on the ShouldIRemoveIt.com website to be interesting. Toshiba seems to install more bloatware than other manufacturers (Acer, the least). The most actively removed program by this tool (at the time of this writing) is the Ask.com toolbar (yes, I uninstall that one whenever it creeps onto my computer).

NOTE: You can run this tool on an old computer, as well, to help clean it up. Once you’ve removed the programs, I’d recommend running something like Disk Cleanup, Defrag or CCleaner to clear any cobwebs from your computer’s brain!

Free Meeting Organizer – boy, does this save time and emails!

By Sandra Clitter  |  2013/03/11 21:09 Posted in (Mostly) Free Tools, Business Processes, General, Tech Tips  |  Comments (2)

I don’t know about you, but for me one of the most aggravating parts of the Administrative side of my business is trying to organize meetings. Who’s available when? How do I organize all of the responses? Usually, I create something in Excel that works – sort of – but it’s tedious and manual and prone to mistakes.

Enter…MeetingWizard.com. Yes, a FREE tool that allows you – very simply – to organize meetings with no back and forth on availability.

Meeting Wizard is an incredibly simple, but elegant solution to this annoying administrative task. All that you and your invitees have access to email and a browser. It’s that simple. They promise it and they deliver!

To get started, you sign up for a free account. They only ask for the basics – your name, location and email address.

To start scheduling a meeting, click on ‘Create a Meeting’ (gee, they even label things with words that everyone can understand – what a pleasure!):

Meeting Wizard - Create a Meeting

I don’t know that I’d use this tool for a “specific time” meeting…I can do that right from my calendar, but I use the tool for ‘Propose one or more dates/times’. That’s the true beauty of this tool.

Select the dates/times that you’re proposing for your meeting. You just select a date/time from the drop-down, then click ‘add’. Select the duration of the meeting, the timezone and select ‘Continue’.

Meeting Wizard Select Dates and Times

Tell the people something about the meeting to which you are inviting them. It’s more likely that they’ll accept if you do :-)! People don’t like going to ‘mystery’ meetings.

Meeting Wizard send invite

Review the meeting invitation before you hit the ‘send’ button. You can even send an automatic reminder to participants a day or two in advance of the meeting.

Meeting Wizard - Review invitation

When the email goes out inviting participants to make their selections, they will get a link to Meeting Organizer. They don’t need a signon…they can just click on the link, then enter their response(s).

Meeting Wizard - Participant View

You’ll be able to see EVERYONE’s selections in one easy-to-review format…in fact, as meeting organizer, you can invite more people, change the meeting time, confirm the meeting, email people on the meeting list, send reminders, etc.:

Meeting Wizard - select the date

All of that back-and-forth and forth-and-back is taken care of. No fuss, no muss. Meeting scheduled.

What a terrific time-saver…and you don’t just need to limit it’s use to business…how about when you’re trying to schedule dinner with a bunch of your friends, or a weekend away with family. Give it a try, it’s painless – promise!!!

(Special thanks to one of our regular readers for telling us about this tool – it’s now an invaluable part of our virtual toolbox!)

How can I split up a PDF into smaller segments or combine multiple PDFs into one?

By Sandra Clitter  |  2013/02/13 22:16 Posted in (Mostly) Free Tools, General, Tech Tips  |  Comments (11)

How many times have you run into the situation where you have a large PDF and want to share just a portion of it with someone else…or, you have several PDF’s that you want to combine into one large one? Maybe you have the situation where you want a couple of pages from one PDF and a couple of pages from another PDF. Sound familiar?

I had forgotten about a tool that I use ALL the time (yes, it’s free!), but hadn’t written about until someone asked today for just page 2 of a 2-page PDF. AHA!!! The PERFECT opportunity for a post!

There are a couple of ways you can accomplish getting a few pages out of a larger PDF. The first is to open the large PDF, then click on the print icon. Select your PDF ‘printer’ (if you don’t have a free PDF tool, click here to find out about getting one of those for free: Cute PDF), and print ONLY THE PAGES THAT YOU WANT – just as you would a ‘real’ printer. You will be challenged (as is traditional with PDF writers) for a file name…simply name your new file whatever you want and you have your ‘slimmed down’ PDF.

There is also another way to split a PDF AND merge multiple PDF’s in a bit more elegant of a manner. Enter the phenomenal tool by Adolix, “Adolix Split & Merge PDF”.

Go to http://www.adolix.com/split-merge-pdf/ and download the free version. There is a professional version that removes limitations in the free version, but most of the time, I can do what I need to with the free version. Sometimes it takes me a few more steps, but I can accomplish the task that I set out to do. If I were managing alot of large PDF’s on a regular basis, I’d spring for the $19.95 (as of this writing), and get the unlimited version, but I only have this challenge occasionally – and most of the time with smaller files.

Anyway, back to the task at hand…download and install “Split and Merge”.

When you open it, there is a simple (and relatively intuitive) interface:

Adolix Split and Merge Menu

Click on the correct tab to take the action that you want – split or merge – and away you go. We’ll start with ‘split’. Simply click on the + sign on the right side to add a file to be split:

Once you have the file(s) selected, use the middle section to say HOW you want the file(s) split (first 3 pages, one page each, pages 6-9 and 11, etc.)

Click the ‘Split’ button and voila! Multiple PDF’s:

If you exceed the ‘freebie’ length (as I did here), you’ll get this message:

No big deal…simply split your first (large) pdf into two smaller PDFs (or more, depending upon size), then continue to split until you have all the ‘smaller’ PDF’s that you’d like to have.

Next, if you want to COMBINE PDFs, click on the ‘Merge’ tab:

Just as you selected the PDF(s) that you wanted to split on the first step, this time you select the PDF’s that you want to merge. If you want to change the order, use the up/down arrows to move the pages around:

Once you’re satisfied that you have all the PDF files in the merge list (and in the correct order), press the ‘Merge Files!’ button and you’ll have one, larger PDF file…AND, the pages will be in the order your specified.

Hint: If you need to combine more than a few PDF’s into one larger PDF, and it exceeds the ‘freebie’ limitations, then combine a few PDFs, and just keep repeating the process until they are all combined into one big file. Splitting larger files works the same way – first break it down into two files, then break those two files down again, etc. It’s a bit more work, but it’s still free!

Happy PDF managing!!!

USB Flash Drives – Don’t forget to wipe them before discarding them

By Sandra Clitter  |  2013/01/20 13:41 Posted in (Mostly) Free Tools, Business Processes, Tech Tips  |  Comments (0)

Ahhh…those ubiquitous little USB drives that litter our desks, briefcases, pockets, purses. How handy they are. How easy to lose. And, typically, we carry our most important information on them – or our current ‘most important’ projects. Once you’re done with the drive, you may just hand it over to someone else to use, or delete the files and leave the drive on your desk for the next use.

Here’s the problem…even if you delete the files, they’re not really ‘gone’. Hackers (or other evil-minded people) can recover deleted files from Flash Drives – even if it’s hard for you to do.

So, how do you deal with this, given the need to keep/use USB Flash Drives?

When you deleted the files (ostensibly ’emptying’ the drive), or after you’ve ‘cut’ and ‘pasted’ the files on the flash drive to another location, WIPE the drive. Use a utility to erase it completely.

Enter ‘Disk Wipe’ by Roadkil.net (http://www.roadkil.net/program.php/P14/Disk%20Wipe). This little utility is great tool to add to your virtual bag of tricks.

Download it, then unzip the file and copy the contents (there is only one file) to a separate Flash Drive (not the one you want to wipe). Run the application. All you need to do is to select the drive letter and the number of times the utility should run over the data (the more passes, the more thoroughly the data is erased – use a minimum of three passes). You can decide whether you want “junk” data written in place of your data or whether you want all data erased. Your choice.

Press the ‘Erase’ button and wait. You can now leave the flash drive laying around, hand it off to someone else, or even lose it/throw it away without fear that the data it contained will fall into the wrong hands.

By the way, Roadkil’s utilities (and there are a BUNCH of them available for download) are free. The developer does ask that donations be made if you feel like you’re getting good value, so that they can continue to offer free apps.

To upgrade to Windows 8 or not to upgrade…that is the question (and yes, my Uncle did it!)

By Sandra Clitter  |  2013/01/06 10:56 Posted in (Mostly) Free Tools, Business Processes, Tech Tips  |  Comments (5)

Happy New Year, everyone!!! I hope that you all enjoyed your holidays. Now, its back to reality, working on your New Year’s resolutions and generally getting things ready for another productive year.

Many of you may have gotten a Windows 8 device as a gift, or are considering a Windows 8 device in the New Year. Most people know that the “traditional” look and feel of Windows has undergone a RADICAL transformation – if you haven’t seen it before, check it out below:

windows 8 start screen

Perhaps of greatest note is the lack of the iconic ‘Start’ button (which counter-intuitively is how you ‘shut down’ Windows). A techie friend of mine spend a good 1/2 hour searching for the way to turn off her machine once she updated. It’s just one of those things you’d never expect to ‘lose’! (BTW, the answer is hit ‘Windows+C’ to bring up the new ‘Charms Bar’, click ‘Settings’, then ‘Power’, then select your choice – yup…you got it – four clicks)

Anyway, I’ve been pretty much ignoring Windows 8 existence. I’ve seen major changes to operating systems and integral office productivity tools truly wreak havoc with a business’ equilibrium. Think back to the major update to Office from the 2000/2003 version to the 2007/2010 version. Offices across the country had productivity plummet when they upgraded (and some have yet to upgrade). It wasn’t that Microsoft took away functionality, but rather functionality which you could locate intuitively (after 5-10 years of use) had been moved/hidden. My sense was that Windows 8 would have similar issues…therefore, I’ve tucked my head firmly in the sand and decided that I didn’t need to deal with it yet, since Windows 7 is still available.

Imagine my surprise when I went to visit my Uncle (yes, he’s 85 1/2 now) and found that he’d upgraded his Win7 laptop to Windows 8 – and LOVES IT – mostly. He had tried to keep both Windows 7 and Windows 8 on the machine (you can do this by setting up a partition – Google “installing both Windows 7 and Windows 8” and you’ll get alot of help), but the installation went awry and he ended up with only Windows 8 on his machine.

The upgrade went flawlessly (if you ignore the fact that he didn’t end up with a machine with both Windows 7 and Windows 8), but my Uncle was a bit flummoxed by the lack of the ‘Start’ button and the inability to boot in a more ‘traditional’ Windows desktop (Microsoft REALLY wants you to work with it’s new tiles). We solved both problems with two little program/app installations.

First, we installed a nifty (and free) app which has a dual function – helps you to reinstall all of your legacy programs with one click after the Windows 8 upgrade (yes, you’ll need to reinstall/setup your programs again once you’ve upgraded) AND it has a Classic Start menu built in. This is a ridiculously easy tool and SO useful! Simply go to http://ninite.com/ and install the app.

This app allows you to install all of your major applications with one click AND automatically rejects all of the ‘junk’ toolbars, etc. that many installations try to force upon users.

This list is just a small snippet of the programs Ninite will install/update for you (the list goes on and on…I just took a snapshot of the top few). On top of that, there is the added benefit that will the click of your Windows key, you are taken to a ‘Classic’ start menu for Windows:

.

We went to a second utility, because he wanted the start button back on the desktop (not having to click the Windows key), we splurged and spent $4.99 to install Stardock’s “Start8 for Windows 8″ (http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/).

Voila! Now you can have the best of both worlds – Classic Windows or Windows 8. Now, organizations don’t need to be afraid of lost productivity because as users are getting used to the new interface, they also have the ‘classic’ view to rely upon.

My Uncle pushes me out of my comfort zone once again!!!