Small Business Computing Staff

PCWorld: Preview – New Inspiron Laptops From Dell Minor improvements such as a better keyboard, repositioned USB ports, upgrades to processor, storage and memory options (of course) and the new brushed metal with chrome accent finishes make the new R series Inspiron computers a good bet, says PC World ‘Technologizer’ Jacqueline Emigh. “Dell today announced […]

PC Magazine: Buying Guide – Network Attached Storage (NAS) Everyone in your office needs more storage. Network attached storage (NAS) – a hard drive or array of hard drives that attaches directly to the network and is accessible by all on it – may be the solution. PC magazine offers a primer on buying NAS. […]

PCWorld: Preview – Lightweight New Toshiba Portable Devices Toshiba’s Portege R700 is a classic 13.3-inch screen ultralight laptop running Intel Core i3, i5 or i7 processors and up to 8GB of DDR3 DRAM. The AC100 is a netbook running Android software. The Libretto W100 is an entirely new type of product, a clamshell device with […]

Laurie McCabe’s Blog: Cloud Outages Signal Need For Different Strategy Several providers of cloud services to small businesses, including, most recently, Intuit, have suffered outages that prevented subscribers from accessing their data. Laurie McCabe discusses possible solutions. “This week’s service outage at Intuit is fueling a new round of speculation about the dark side of […]

InformationWeek SMB: Now Get MS Office 2010 Cheap Amazon is discounting Office 2010 by up to 13%. This article also discusses other ways to save when buying Office. “Online retailer Amazon has cut the price on Microsoft’s new Office 2010 productivity suite by up to 13%. Microsoft Office 2010 In Pictures The Home & Student […]

Wired: Review – Microsoft Office Web Apps The Wired magazine reviewer’s verdict: “a decent web suite that works well with the native Office apps, though it’s still a little unrefined.” “With Office 2010, Microsoft has taken an important (and inevitable) step into internet-stored media. That’s right; MS is all up in the cloud now. In […]

PCWorld: Review – Lexmark Interact S605 Inkjet Multifunction Printer The reviewer liked the touchscreen controls but didn’t like the “washed-out” prints or the price of the ink. Star rating: three out of five. VP>”The Lexmark Interact S605 color inkjet multifunction printer avoids being just another $200 (as of May 22, 2010) printer/scanner/copier by including a […]

PCWorld: Cloud-based Disaster Recovery Delivers Strong ROI Help At Home, a company delivers onsite services to shut-ins, was looking at a bill of $190,000 over three years to convert one of its locations to a disaster recovery site. Instead, it’s using cloud-based services. “The promise of cost savings derived from cloud computing is attractive, but […]

PCmag@Work (Small Business): Review – Zoho CRM Professional Edition An introduction and link to PC Mag’s full review of Zoho CRM, which it gives three out of five stars and rates as ‘Good’ – and cheap ($0 to $25). “Zoho CRM isn’t much to look at, but its drab interface offers plenty of sales, e-mail […]

PCWorld: Mini review – Memeo Google Apps Synchronization The new version lets you access files from Windows Explorer or the Mac OS Finder as well as from the Memeo client app. It also syncs files from your hard drive back to Google when you go online. The catch: it doesn’t work with the free version […]

Entrepreneur: iPhone 4 Not Just A Pretty Face A higher resolution screen, front-facing camera to enable videoconferencing and faster processor are among the substantial improvements over the previous model that the iPhone 4 delivers – for $199 (16GB) or $299 (32GB). “Critics may allege otherwise given Apple’s propensity for doling out changes in small amounts, […]

InformationWeek: Preview – New Toshiba Satellite Laptops While the new 14- and 16-inch multimedia models will be of interest to some small businesses, the ultra-thin Satellite T200 series models are more interesting. They feature AMD or Intel single- or duo-core chips, 320GB hard drives and up to 4GB of memory. “Toshiba has refreshed its Satellite […]