Carla Schroder

It is essential to have a Web presence for your business, even if it’s no more than a simple information page. Your customers will look for a website to learn about your business before they look for a phone book or newspaper ad. You can publish and maintain your website yourself, and with these five […]

There are dozens of excellent open source accounting software options for everything from simple basic ledger bookkeeping to invoicing, inventory tracking, point of sale, payroll, taxes, and reporting and forecasting, and this roundup highlights five of the best. The main thing to keep in mind is having accounting software is not magic, and it does […]

Name Servers and Internet Speeds One of the most common employee complaints is “The Internet is too slow, how can I do my work with such a slow Internet?” There are a multitude of reasons why your Internet might be too slow: network congestion, misconfigured switches and routers, inadequate bandwidth, slow servers…your service is as […]

You’ve heard it thousands of times — backup your data. A good data backup strategy is to have two copies of your data – one local (it resides in your office or place of business) and one offsite (you pay an online data company to store it remotely on their secure servers). Here are five […]

In Part 1, we installed the excellent Monowall and completed basic configurations. In part 2, we use it to create a firewall and set up secure remote access over the Internet. How to Set Up an Internet Firewall with Monowall Ideally you have an Internet connection that you can connect only to your little two-computer […]

A good firewall is a must for any Internet-connected network, and the open source Monowall (often written as “m0n0wall”) is one of the best. Follow along as we set up strong network security using the excellent Monowall to protect our local network (LAN). Today we’ll install and do basic security configurations, and in Part 2 […]

My friend and colleague Joe Brockmeier wrote The 5 Best Open Source Graphics Programs. But being friends doesn’t mean there can’t be a bit of competition, and I think I can go one better. So here in no particular order, rhyme or reason are my six top open source graphics software picks, plus a list of […]

No doubt you’ve bought cans of compressed air to clean out your keyboard, or maybe you’ve even cracked open your PC to give it a good dust off. But those cans aren’t cheap, and dust, pet hair and assorted other detritus can cause computers to overheat and otherwise perform poorly. Fortunately, you can solve the […]

Your small business runs Windows or Mac, so you don’t need a tech support team that can handle Linux, right? Wrong. So says Carla Schroder, who points out that the real world is a big mix of Windows, Mac, Linux and Unix. You live in the real world, right? Don’t you want someone with real […]

Linux oldtimers have known for years that it’s not necessary to go into hock for expensive, proprietary networking gear, because Linux comes with a powerhouse networking stack. It also comes with a host of first-rate network services such as intrusion detection, firewalling, proxies; file, print, Web, and e-mail services; excellent groupware and messaging; genuine secure […]

Here at Small Business Computing we talk a lot about Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP. But the first question about that subject that you really need to ask is: Do I really need VoIP? And if the answer is yes, how do you plan wisely so that your VoIP infrastructure will grow gracefully with […]

VoIP was supposed to bring cheap and easy videophones and video-conferencing to the masses. Web cams are all but free, and TV shows love to tease us with full-screen, full-color, perfect video calls. If you’ve tried it yourself, you know the reality isn’t quite so pretty. You get a tiny little screen that is updated […]