The end of an ERA

The end of a very nice ERA has finally arrived, With effect from 1st August 2009 we will be moving our blog over to its new home on our own website, which is www.tcgcomputerservices.com/blog

So this means with immediate effect we will no longer update this blog.. so please update your bookmarks accordingly.

Good by Blogspot .. so long and farewell.

I am still in the office .. Just finalizing my day before I go on holiday next week.

Best Customer Services in the World

So just what is Good Customer Serivce ?

• Being available when your customers need you (even half way across the world) ?
  
• Going the extra mile for your customers ?
  
• Always willing to help and Polite ?

Well of course its all of the above..

So for the last year or so I have experienced this kind of 1st rate customer service myself from one of our suppliers. They are always willing to go the extra mile, ALWAYS polite and willing to help and their staff never seem to sleep (I can contact them any time of the day and I get a response) .. The company I am talking about is Reflexion. (www.reflexion.net) they provide AntiSpam solutions for Small Businesses and we use their services ourselves at TCG.

Reflexion is one of the fastest and best products available for Anti Spam and my customers all love it. If you are a small business consultant and offer IT services to your customers you should really look at Reflexion if you have not done so already..

You can contact either Scott Barlow (scott.tcg@reflexion.net) or Karen Guarino (karen.tcg@reflexion.net) both of who I know would be delighted to hear from you.. If you do speak to them as a result of reading this blog please tell them I sent you .

As SMB Consultants, we really can a leaf from the Book of Reflexion not only do they have a first rate product, but their service is the best in the world

AND before you ask.. No I am not being paid to write this blog. I am happy to do it as service like that deserves writing about

Microsoft EULA

So today we were talking with a customer, about using Microsoft Office on multiple machines.

The first place to turn was the "EULA - End User Licence Agreement". But like any good customer, they don't keep these kinds of things. :-) .. At least some of them keep the Media though :-)

So never being one to admit defeat I headed to my favourite search engine, which incidentally is fast becoming the new Microsoft BING.com (they have some awesome pictures on there)

Anyway, needless to say, with very little searching a link pops up which refers to the Microsoft License terms website, via the following link

This is a very useful site for looking up Eula's and a great site to keep in Your favourites.

Engaging With Vendors

So yesterday I was in Birmingham, UK, for the Channel Expo 09 event. This is yearly "trade show" event where Vendors and Disties come together to exhibit thier wares to the Channel.

This year, the show was the smallest I have ever seen, in the all the years that I have been attending . Could this be due to the downturn in the economy or just that there is no interest in this kind of show any more ? Although, speaking with a number of the Exhibitors such as Zenith, Kaseya and Ingram Micro, they all said how valuable the show was to them and how many leads they generated, despite it being small and very quiet on the second day.

One of the great things I enjoyed about the show being small was that there is a great oppourunity to really engage with the vendors and have a proper conversation without feeling rushed that you have to move on to the next vendor in order to get it all covered in the day. So personally I think that the smaller it is, the more value you get out of it

As well as engaging with Vendors and Disties, attending the show was a great oppourtunity to meet with my fellow peers in the SBS Space, some who I know well, such as Richard Tubb from Netlink-IT and Simon Aronowitz from Support Lounge

So if you have been wondering about these shows, I would say that although most of the updates are available on the Internet, and you can get the latest information from thier websites, nothing beats meeting the vendors and peers face to face .

Next year (2010) the show is moving to London, which I assume is to make it more central and easier to get to for people in the South .. If you have not been to the show before, this will be a good oppourtunity to visit for the day.

Windows 7

A couple of weeks ago Microsoft officially released the "Release Candidate" of Windows 7 which is Microsoft's latest operating system, which is going to replace the much maligned Vista Operating System.


I have personally been using Windows 7 on my everyday laptop since the early BETA days and I can honestly say I am very impressed. Usually BETA products are very buggy and unstable however that is not the case with Windows 7 it just seems to work brilliantly. Windows 7 certainly seems to work better and faster than Vista, and although I do have a highly spec'd machine, I have heard that even on slower machiens, it tends to work very well. (I will be testing it on old hardware this long weekend )

One of the great things about Windows 7 is its support for older applications. All the applications that are designed to run on Vista just seem to work and are actually a lot faster on Win 7 than on Vista. Windows 7 has something called "XP Compatibility" mode, which makes applications for XP run better under Windows 7 as well.

Windows 7 has lower hardware requirements than Vista, which is good news for most customers because they dont have to spend money buying new hardware when it comes to upgrading and therefore, when Windows 7 is fully released would make it a very viable upgrade path for those customers who are looking to running the latest and greatest.

If you would like to learn more about some of the great features of this truly wonderful Operating system, why not visit the offical Microsoft site now which is here. Once on the site, you will be able to download the Release Candidate and then install it on a spare machine to try out for yourselves.

If you would like to test out Windows 7, for your organisation, or you just want more information on what it can do for you, then give us a call or email us, and we would be happy to help.

Windows 7 Readiness Day

Please Join us for the Windows 7 Virtual Partner Readiness Day on May 7th, 2009

Location - http://www.windowspartnerreadinessday.com/index2.html
Time - 8:00am-2:45pm (Pacific Time) 3:00-9:30pm (Universal Time)
Registration - The event is FREE, register here and be notified the day prior with the link to the live feed of the event.

At this event you will have the opportunity to learn about Windows 7, the next-generation operating system from Microsoft. Online attendees can take advantage of the readiness and marketing tools made available specifically for partners to help prepare for the Windows 7 business opportunity.

Windows 7 Partner Readiness Day will provide the resources you need to become a Windows 7 expert and help better prepare you for customer conversations. Microsoft executives and product experts will be on hand to answer all your questions and to provide you with a look at the following Microsoft product strategies:
Industry trends and how Windows 7 will affect the marketplace
The business opportunities that Windows 7 brings for partners
An overview of the key steps and programs to get ready for Windows 7