Recently a friend of mine called and asked if I could help him recover some files that he said were “accidentally deleted” from his laptop. “Don’t worry,” I said, “as long as you haven’t added or deleted anything else, there’s a good chance we can get them back.” It’s been a while since I had to [...]
Jeff’s Quick Tips: 5 things techies should NEVER do or say (in sales presentations)
Do you manage techies who participate in sales presentations for your company? If so, this rant is for you. Slice and dice THIS! I recently spent six hours listening to three different companies trying to sell “enterprise” software to a high-profile, highly-successful company. All three companies blew it, and it wasn’t because the software sucked. They [...]
Call Me Maybe: A simple solution to a temporary phone outage
Often IT folks are expected to fix more than computers. If it plugs in, the computer geek is supposed to fix it, right? That can be good when you get paid by the hour, but it requires quite a bit of versatility, not to mention quick thinking. If customers can’t reach you, they won’t stay [...]
Mike’s Top 15 IT Manager Tools
When the Editors of Toolkit Café asked me to provide a list of the Top Ten IT manager tools every IT manager should have, three things happened: • First, I never had really thought about “must have tools” for every IT manager. I had always just focused on individual tools or my entire IT Manager [...]
IT Security and the Thumb Drive
One of the banes of the IT manager’s existence is data security, particularly customer data. Being connected to the rest of the world, allowing customers in and employees out while keeping the data safe from prying eyes is a high wire act performed daily by IT shops around the world. The problem is most of [...]
Jeff’s Quick Tips: Comparing two Excel lists
In this edition of Jeff’s Quick Tips, I’ll tell you how Excel’s COUNTIF function made me the hero for a client who needed to analyze a lot of data in a hurry. The Dilemma I got an email with a workbook attached and one sentence: “I need to know any duplicates and keep those.” Translation: [...]
Welcome to Readers of ToolTalk Weekly
Greetings, and welcome to the home of ToolTalk Weekly! This e-newsletter each week brings you IT management advice and free IT productivity tools from ToolkitCafe’s contributing writers and IT pros from around the world. As your host and emcee for the ToolTalk Weekly online show, I’ll make sure that ToolTalk Weekly subscribers are the first [...]
Round Up Them Telecommuters!
Managers, don’t let your telecommuters grow up to be cowboys! Or, to put it another way, before you start letting people work from home, you need to train them. Telecommuters need to know all the requirements and obligations – legal, financial and technological — that come along with the privilege of the work-from-home gig. The [...]
You want to connect to the network on WHAT?
Who else remembers the good old days, when IT shops ruled their shops with aluminum alloy fists and no one outside the IT department dared touch a cable or move a monitor? At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, I don’t like the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) movement, no, not one bit. I [...]
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