I recently had a conversation with a small business owner here in Billings. Her business has experienced tremendous growth over the past few years, and it’s obvious (from both a consulting and a customer’s perspective) that they need some help managing it. Luckily, the owner has realized this and is looking for some help.

But she’s moving forward in a manner that I see all too often. She’s going to spend money, time and effort doing things that are not going to help her run her business very much better.

How do I know this? Let’s look and what she told me her problems are and what’s she’s doing to fix them…

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I rarely write about developments in mobile computing. But today’s announcement by Verizon Wireless that they will allow phones to use the network even if they’re not hand picked by Verizon is welcome news.

Wireless network operators have historically offered phones on the cheap with the stipulation that you sign a 1-2 year contract for their service. In addition to that lock-in period, the operator typically cripples the phone in areas that may compete with their own offerings. For example, Verizon cripples the Bluetooth features on their phones so that you can’t move pictures back and forth between your phone and your PC without going over their data network. And their Wi-Fi enabled phones certainly wouldn’t support calls over a VOIP service such as Skype.

So how will this affect the typical business owner?

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Following my disaster last weekend, I decided to upgrade to Microsoft’s latest operating system, Windows Vista. There was not a huge reason for me to do this upgrade. I had mostly been operating ok under Windows XP Pro. But since I was down anyway I figured I might as well get the upgrade done.

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There’s a great blog post on Found|Read about free or nearly free software offered as web based services.  I love #3 – Don’t do that custom development!

On Friday night, I turned on my laptop and was unable to boot into Windows. Error messages got progressively worse with everything I tried and everything I found on Google led to a “you’re screwed…reload Windows” diagnosis. Considering that one of my early posts was about preparing for technology failure, I had a decent handle on getting everything restored. But now I have another thing to add to the plan:

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