So, while there may be specific reasons for personally choosing to use Windows, Mac OS or some form of Unix/Linux, there aren’t many compelling reasons to adopt a standard approach for business. Choosing an environment and operating system depends on your personal preference and what your needs are; for example, designers tend to choose Mac OS due to their support for high-quality design applications and aesthetics, while software developers may prefer Linux due to high levels of customization and uniform compatibility.

Many businesses tend to think that all computers need to be of one specific type or platform. I have personally seen large businesses do this, and although I don’t agree with it I do understand the reasons (mostly cost and configuration issues). A small business usually doesn’t have these types of issues, and can actually be more robust and successful by having a mix of machine types and platforms (Etnacom is proof). A common misconception is that there might be extra configuration or specialized software needed during setup and operation. In reality most basic networking tasks (such as file sharing, instant messaging, e-mail and anything requiring a web browser) are platform-independent can be done natively on both platforms.Also, platform diversity actually enhances overall network security, since most worms and viruses propagate among machines of the same platform. By diversifying the network, it is much more difficult for malicious activity or an outage to completely halt operations.

At Etnacom, we embrace personal preference. I choose a Mac because of its roots in Unix. Paul has he his operational and managerial reasons for using both a PC running Windows and a second PC running Linux. Our wider range of knowledge allows us to better address our customers’ needs because between the two of us, we can work a wider variety of issues and capabilities across platforms.

Personally, I tend to follow the Getting Things Done (GTD) approach fostered by David Allen. There are many other strategies that can be just as successful. However, if you’re a techie like myself, you may find yourself struggling to find software that best fits your personal organization scheme. I’ve been struggling with that question for a long time, and I finally found a solution. Yes, I do think that simplifying my life a bit is certainly part of the answer, but life gets busy, no matter what. For a long time, I sought a solution that could help me keep information from all parts of my life in one spot. A couple of months ago, I found my solution and it has been working wonderfully. I call it “life by CRM”.

CRM, as you may know, stands for “Customer Relationship Management”. It is one of the bigger business buzzwords these days, partially because we’ve entered the age where software to manage CRM is available and relatively inexpensive. It’s popular among sales teams and project managers for its strength in measuring customer requirements, tasks and interactions. SalesForce.com is one example of CRM software – other examples include Microsoft Dynamics and my personal and professional favorite, Highrise. Highrise is a web-based CRM manager created by 37signals.

Let’s back up to how businesses use CRM. It’s strengths are in tracking contacts, interactions and tasks, to keep it simple. Isn’t that how personal life is structured as well? When running personal errands, there’s usually something to do, something that happens and someone to do it for. Many people like to keep track of their personal errands in some sort of journal or diary. CRM is a journal that’s in electronic form and tailored to help you get things done.

Being that Highrise is my CRM tool of choice (and what I use for both business and personal), I can share my strategy for keeping my life organized. Here’s a screenshot of what my Highrise looks like (with some proprietary data conspicuously hidden):

When I log in I can see a “Journal” of recent entries, including my notes, e-mails, tasks and so on. I can also see upcoming tasks, which I can complete and assign categories to. On the top of the page, I can view my contacts, tasks, cases, deals and tags. Cases and Deals are great. They are special groupings of notes, e-mails and tasks that pertain to one particular initiative. Cases and Deals are very similar, but Deals pertain to initiatives when there is an incoming sale. You can keep track of bid information and whether or not the deal was won. Tags allow you to assign categories to various people, companies, cases, and so on. This is all set on top of a pretty powerful set of permissions, if you’re going to allow multiple users to access the system. I’m not going to go into too much detail about the product – you can access a tour on the Highrise website.

What’s important to me is that I can use this Web-based contact / case / task / sales / Rolodex manager to help me stay on top of everything that I need to do. As a part-time consultant, I am constantly trying to keep up with shifting needs, changing priorities, and multiple updates from clients and vendors on a variety of issues. Highrise is uncanny in it’s ability to help any kind of professional like myself stay on top of this and update case files easily. When I need to fulfill a request, I add a task and categorize it. When I receive new information or have an interaction with someone, I can add notes or forward e-mails. At the end of the day, Highrise is the best tool for me and helps me to stay agile.

This doesn’t just translate to my professional work, either. Highrise CRM’s organization capabilities help in my personal life, too. My fiancé and I are planning our wedding and this tool helps us keep on top of our vendors, financials, and everything that we need to do before the big day. Being able to search for a receipt or for conversations from a specific person or company works great! It is especially useful when something doesn’t go as planned and need to go back to a previous conversation to verify what was said. I’m sure many have been in a situation like that.

Although I strongly advocate Highrise, please understand that I have some specific needs and operate in a specific way. Highrise is a perfect fit for a small company with many different things going on – most of them short-term. If you are a larger organization or operate in a different manner, different software might work better for you. I’ve worked for medium-sized businesses that have used Microsoft Dynamics with great success. I’ve worked with startups who use SalesForce.com and it is a disaster, while other startups wouldn’t want to use anything else. It is all about finding a solution that meets your needs. I can certainly assist anyone looking to determine how to leverage the benefits of CRM software or just boost productivity in general.

I invite you to keep this discussion going. What sort of CRM or web-based productivity software do you use (or have used in the past)? How has it worked for you? Feel free to share success and horror stories. Perhaps I’ll even share some of my own!

In this blog post, I’m going to answer a few questions:

1. What is a Windows User Profile and how does it work? (Windows Admins – feel free to skip)
2. What kind of information is stored in the user profile?
3. Why does the profile get so large, but it is so hard to shrink down?
4. Most importantly, what are some strategies for keeping my profile size down?

So, what is a user profile?

A user profile is a collection of all of the information on a computer (or a set of computers) that has to do with you. Think of it as a manifestation of your personality in the digital realm. It holds information about your identity (your username, password, even biometrics if you use those kinds of devices), a history of the things you’ve done, your favorite items, appearance, and more. Your profile is your experience on a Windows computer.

What kind of information is stored in the user profile?

When you first log in to Windows (or in many cases, a computer network) your profile is created for the first time. Of course, you haven’t done anything yet, so your profile is empty. It might hold the default background on your desktop, a few suggestions for favorite websites, and some templates that you can use for applications like Microsoft Word. As you continue to use the computer and customize your experience, you’ll start using more applications, which will save settings and data about what you’ve done. You’ll visit websites, which will download temporary content and store it in your profile. Your documents, music, and pictures will also be stored. So, it’s easy to see how a profile can start to take up a lot of disk space after your computer use picks up.

There are two kinds of profiles – roaming and local. A local profile is a profile that is only used on one computer. Usually, if you’re using a personal computer or are part of a very small network, you’re on a local profile. That means that your customized experience can only be used from the same computer. On the other hand, a roaming profile can be used on many computers that are usually part of a computer network. In this case, your settings are stored on a server and wherever you log in, your profile follows you. This is common in large, corporate networks. Local and roaming profiles have their own sets of pros and cons, but since we’re concentrating on profile size vs. computer performance, the disadvantages are the same.

Why does the profile get so large, but it is so hard to shrink down?

The short answer is that profiles don’t like to forget. If you go hunting in your own profile (and we’re going to do that in a few minutes), you’ll see that unless you are vigilant about cleaning out your old temporary and application files often, information is stored that hasn’t been used in a long time. Even if you do stay on top of this, there’s still plenty of old data lying around taking up disk space. Many of these files are hidden, and so it’s hard to find them. The main system file for your profile, NTUSER.DAT, holds all of the registry settings and system configuration for your user experience, and tends to grow quite large over time. Since this is just one file and can’t be deleted, it’s difficult to simply go in and clean it out. An experienced user of the Windows Registry Editor might be able to go in and delete some old entries (a process that is sure to take some time), but if you’re not comfortable working in that application, stay out. Deleting the wrong registry keys can cause some serious damage to your system.

Strategies for Keeping Profile Sizes Down

Strategy #1: Remove Temporary Files

Many programs, especially web browsers, keep temporary files that are stored in your profile. Unfortunately, these programs don’t do the best job of removing those files when you are done. The best way to remove temporary files is to go in and do it yourself. We recommend downloading a program that allows you to evaluate the size of and delete temporary files on your computer. One of our favorites is TreeSize Free, by JAM Software (available at http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/index.shtml). If you are using Windows 2000 or XP, look in the C:\Documents and Settings\username folder (username is your username), and if you are using Vista look in the C:\Users\username folder. Popular areas for temporary files to hide are in the Temporary Internet Files, Firefox Cache and Local Settings or Temp folders. Of course, always use caution when deleting files.

Strategy #2: Uninstall Old Applications

If there are any applications installed on your computer that you no longer use, uninstall them. These programs may keep data and configuration files within your profile and uninstalling will usually remove them. Never just delete files on your hard drive – always use the Add/Remove Programs applet in the control panel. If you don’t uninstall properly, you may be removing files and cleaning up disk space, but you won’t be removing the profile configurations, temporary files and shared files that are associated with the program.

Strategy #3: Run a Registry Cleaner Application

Just like deleting files ad-hoc, registry cleaners should be used at your own risk. We always recommend performing a full backup of your important files before performing a cleanup with an application such as RegCure (www.regcure.com). These programs will remove old entries and duplicate entries, compress your existing registry and even perform backups for you in case of a problem. It’s absolutely an option – but once again, use at your own risk.

Strategy #4: Delete Your Profile (this only works for local profiles)

This might seem like a huge hassle, but it really isn’t that bad. Keep backups of your most important configuration settings (such as web browsers, IM clients, office applications) and store your documents in a location outside of your profile (a flash drive or simply another area of your computer). When you see that your profile is starting to run slow and not cooperate, simply delete your profile and restart your computer. Once you log back in, a new profile will be created. You can then re-import all of your settings and continue on as if nothing changed, without the hassle of cleaning, debugging and compressing. This is a solution that I have personally used for quite some time and it works great – no wasted time trying to repair or re-install anything. Even if it does take some time to re-import all of your settings, it is guaranteed to take less time than troubleshooting all of the issues that will come as a result of these “bloated profiles”.

Secure Certificates Explained

Let’s look at this in a real-world scenario. Say you’re looking to buy a book on web design, and as such, you go to the king of online book retailers, Amazon.com. You select your book, add it to your cart, and click “check out”. You’re about to be taken to the part of the website that asks for your private information such as name, address and credit card number.

Once you arrive at this point, you’ll notice that some interesting things have happened in your browser. First, your address bar will show “https://…” instead of the normal “http://…”. The extra “s” denotes that we’re using the secure HTTP, or SSL protocol. You’ll also notice that somewhere in your browser, an icon of a padlock appears. This also signifies that you’re on a secure website. With most browsers, clicking the padlock will bring up the secure certificate details of that site.

So, what happened here? When you moved to the checkout portion of Amazon’s site, You connected to its secure website. In doing this, your web browser opened an encrypted connection to Amazon’s server, a process that prevents a malicious user from eavesdropping on the information you’re sending to Amazon, such as your credit card details. Once you’re connected, Amazon sends your browser its secure certificate, which is an electronic document proving its identity. Your computer verifies this document with a “trusted third party”, typically the company that Amazon bought their certificate from. Basically, this company is vouching for Amazon. Your browser is happy, and you proceed with buying your book.

Do I Need a Secure Certificate?

The quick answer is, it depends. If your website is purely informational and nobody is submitting data on it, you probably don’t need one. If visitors are submitting personal information to you, or if you’re running an online store, chances are that you need a secure certificate. Think about it this way: instead of typing in data on a website, someone is shouting the information to you on the streets of New York City, where hundreds may be listening. If you’re worried about others hearing that information, you need a secure certificate.

How Do I Purchase a Secure Certificate?

Many companies sell these services. We recommend VeriSign and GoDaddy. Both are extremely popular. Although GoDaddy’s certificates are priced significantly lower than VeriSign, there is barely any quality difference.

If you have any questions, or if you’re still not sure whether or not you need a secure certificate for your website, feel free to contact us. We’d be happy to help.