Small business made easy

In the last year or two my working life has pretty much moved from a traditional office based setup to an almost purely online existence.

Thanks to the huge surge in online applications and cloud computing, combined with more affordable and faster  broadband connections it is now possible to make full use of online apps in South Africa.

These days I rotate between a office Laptop with a big screen, a desktop at home, an ultra portable netbook and an iphone. Each device has its time and place, but it has always been a nightmare keeping everything in sync, from contacts to emails to passwords to documents.  This was even more of a pain every time I had to re-install any of these devices.

Well, now it is a different story, and those about to re-install as part of their Windows 7 upgrade should take note.

Read more…

I took the plunge this weekend and installed Windows 7 on my Aspire One D150 netbook.

Initial indications are that it is remarkedly zippier than the dated Windows XP that was on their previously. Note that I am not going to comment on any new windows 7 features, as this post is about the netbook install itself.

The install was done using an external USB CDROM drive, from the official 2GB DVD image. The total install time was less than 30 minutes, taking far less time than expected.  The only issue encountered during the install was that I could not re-format the origina lWindows XP partition. This resulted in the final result containing some of the old non windows directories on the C: drive.

Read more…

I am a keen and long term supporter of both yootheme and RocketTheme, having long ago given up on free templates. The time you save using a professionally designed template means there is simply no comparison.

I also make extensive use of the template addons, like the lightbox effects, sliders, accordians and other tools that are available from these template masters.

My one frustration has always been the limited choice, as both only brings out one template a month, and editing these into unique variations does make life a bore. Read more…