Small Business Computing Staff

Engadget: Review – CTL 2goPad SL10 Windows 7 Tablet PC This 10-inch-screen tablet computer from little-known CTL is better than the other early Win7 tablets released but poor battery life and chunky size mean it’s not much threat to iPad. “Last time we left off in the tale of Windows 7 tablets, we’d taken a […]

Switchfast Blog: Small Biz E-commerce – Ten Tips For Better Sites Some of these go almost without saying, such as making check-out easy and providing lots of product detail. Others are less obvious, such as ensuring site security and selling your company’s core values along with the products. “It’s not surprising that modern consumers are […]

PCWorld: Review – Intuit Quicken 2011 Finance Application The new version supports data downloads from 12,000 institutions, it’s less cluttered than previous versions, and it’s easier to set up. But at $30 to $150 for various versions, it’s “pricey,” this reviewer says. “Quicken 2011 is one of the biggest new releases in the recent history […]

PCmag@Work (Small Business): Monitor Social Media Marketing With Sprout SRM Service Sprout offers online “social media management” (SRM) services that can help you measure the success of your marketing efforts with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, FourSquare, etc. “Sprout Social, a provider of social relationship management (SRM) services, recently announced the launch of its new Sprout Social […]

PCWorld: Turn Your PC Into A Pen-Based Computer With RitePen Connect a graphics tablet to your PC and ritePen lets you input handwritten text in programs such as word processors, which it then translates into electronic text. “Computers are amazing tools for writing. Well, scratch that: They’re amazing tools for typing words into documents. When […]

Engadget: Review – HP Envy 17 Laptop HP’s Envy 17 laptop is powerful, sleek, good looking and has a great screen. Is it the perfect desktop replacement? It comes close, this reviewer says. “When it comes to selecting our favorite mainstream Windows laptops these days the HP Envy 14 is pretty much at the tippy […]

PCWorld: Review – Lexmark C792de Color Laser Printer The one downside with this high-capacity color laser workhorse: the toner cartridges are more expensive than competitors’. It may also be too expensive for many small businesses at $1,599. “The Lexmark C792de color laser printer ($1599 as of October 12, 2010) is one of the better workgroup […]

ITBusinessEdge: Study – SMBs Turning To Cloud Storage The report, from research firm Storage Strategies NOW, says many SMBs generate volumes of data disproportionate to number of employees. They often can’t find affordable storage solutions anywhere but the cloud. “Small and mid-sized businesses are turning to cloud services as they find themselves underserved by traditional […]

New York Times: Tumblr – The Next Big Thing In Social Media Marketing? It’s almost as easy to use as Twitter, doesn’t have a 140-character word limit and allows bloggers to post pictures and videos, including from their mobile phones. “The singer and guitarist John Mayer, whose prolific posts on Twitter drew nearly four million […]

SMB News From NetworkWorld: Proof Positive Tablet Computing Won’t Go Away The poll, at a site in the UK – where the iPad arrived late – suggests that small businesses should be thinking about how to reach customers using tablets, and how they can use tablets themselves. “A combined 43.2 percent of the 1,128 respondents […]

ComputerWeekly: Report – Skeptical SMBs Should Embrace Social Media The Forum of Private Business argues that SMBs have much to gain from using social media for marketing and notes that a significant percentage of small businesses still don’t even have a website. “The Forum of Private Business has urged small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to […]

Entrepreneur: Making The Most Of Your CRM Investment Briody’s tips: choose carefully, make sure employees use it, ensure data is secure and keep it constantly updated. Well, there’s more to it than that. “Every once in a while a piece of technology so completely revolutionizes how we do something that we nearly forget how we […]