Why I support Ron Paul
photo credit: Gage Skidmore I am not one to typically talk politics, but this latest GOP field has me more on the edge of my seat than any other political contest to date. Maybe it is because I am getting older and find it more interesting. Maybe it is because I see that the only way things can change is by putting someone different in the white house. Or maybe it is because there is someone running that I can truly stand behind and not consider “the lesser of two evils”.
In the 2008 election, I watched things every now and then, and saw this person in the Democratic party start emerging, he was eloquent, very well spoken, and had me snowed. Then I actually looked at the issues and found that he was completely contrary to my beliefs, so he wasn’t going to get my vote. Whereas on the Republican side, I think most people knew McCain was going to get the GOP nomination, and I was hopeful that he would, even though he was probably the worst candidate the Republican party could have gone with, win in the Presidential race. So I voted for McCain in the presidential election. He wasn’t the ideal candidate, but he was better than the alternative.
Obviously Barrack Obama, the Democratic candidate, won the election, and we are deeper in debt than ever. More people are out of work than ever before. And the personal control he has over the governmental system and is continuing to gather is getting more and more scary.
I know I am not the only one who feels this way, and the GOP candidates know this as well. This is the reason why these are the issues that are brought up at every debate and in every ad.
As I said before, I am not a political person, and I am sure that each candidate on the republican side will fare better than our current president, but I do definitely have a preference. Ron Paul.
When you look at the field of nominees, they are fairly similar on most things. They are politicians who don’t keep their word and say what the world wants to hear, whether it is their own beliefs or not. But that’s not what I want in a president. I want a president who will stand up for what he believes in no matter what obstacles he sees, and who has always been consistent. I want someone who is a lot smarter than I am, who can make informed decisions that will benefit our country at the right times, instead of worrying about that next election. I want someone who will make cuts to our bloated government, and give business owners the opportunity to capitalize on this by growing jobs and helping our economy. And above all, I want someone with Christian ethics and values that values life and my choice to worship Jesus Christ.
When I look at the field, I see bits and pieces of each of these traits in the different GOP candidates, but I only see all of them in one candidate. Gingrich is a brilliant man. He is extremely smart, seems to have a memory like a steel trap, and values human life, as long as it doesn’t mean bringing our troops home, and he may be the most similar in my beliefs as far as religion goes. Romney seems to be a very shrewd business man, and would probably be good at helping with some of the economic issues we have by giving more control to business owners, especially since he is probably invested in many of them already. And Santorum seems like a typical politician who has changed his opinion a million times depending on what is popular at the time and might give him extra votes.
But the one person who embodies all of my wants; consistent, intelligent, frugal, Christian, and a value for life, is Ron Paul.
He was an obstetrician, so he obviously cares for human life and has been in a field that knows how the process works, and knows that there is nothing more valuable and innocent than a child. And because of this, he wants everyone to know where he stands, and I definitely stand with him. Not only was he an obstetrician, but he was also a flight surgeon in the Air Force and Air National guard. So obviously he knows a little about the military and what is best there. He wants to bring the troops home. We are so worried about what other countries are doing, we don’t worry about how it affects families at home, or think about what would happen if we actually were to get attacked here in the states. How would we defend ourselves when the majority of our military is spread out all over the country trying to make decisions for groups that they don’t know from Adam? The amount of lives we have lost by doing this “nation building” has been far beyond what anyone twenty years ago could have imagined. Not to mention all of the money that we are spending on these trips overseas for all of our military personnel.
He is also the only candidate who has a solid record of voting consistently on all of the issues, not just certain ones. If you look at his voting record, he is consistently saying no to all of the spending that the rest of Capitol Hill so easily says yes to because there is extra money in their pockets for each yes vote. When you look at his economic plan versus the rest of the candidates, he is by far the most fearless. He knows that changes need to be made in order to save this country from economic meltdown, and he knows that those changes are not going to be small, unlike the other candidates who make trivial changes that won’t impact the overall economic health of the country. He has put forth a plan that would cut $1 trillion in just the first year, compared to the other candidates who talk about a couple hundred billion over their entire term!
And Ron Paul is a Christian, which is the most significant trait in a leader. This means he would look to God for guidance, instead of thinking that he is above the law and think that he can make all of the decisions on his own. And this is where all of the above traits come from. He values human life because God created it. He tries to be frugal, because God calls him to it as a servant. And he is consistent, just as God expects us to be. I am definitely not saying that Ron Paul is perfect, no person is, especially, it seems, in politics. Such as his stance on drugs which I don’t agree with, but I understand where he’s coming from, so it makes sense. But Ron Paul is probably the country’s best hope for a turn around. By turning to a Christian man who is intelligent, consistent, and God fearing, we could make this country more similar to its foundational roots than it has been in at least a century.
I think the major hurdle for Ron Paul is that he doesn’t get the coverage that the other candidates do. He gets a tenth of the coverage that the front runners, Gingrich and Romney, seem to get in each show. If his name is mentioned, it is a win, if he gets an entire segment, it is a miracle. The mainstream media doesn’t give him the coverage because they don’t want him in office. Why they don’t want him in office is because change is possible under him, where they know that it is much less likely with the other candidates. I believe that he has the best chance of winning the presidential race as well. I have more than a few friends who are die-hard democratic voters who have said more than once that if Ron Paul won the nomination, then they would vote for him as well. They all have different reasons, but they all feel that he would be the best person for the job. This is a testament to how people actually feel about Ron Paul, instead of what the polls and media keep feeding us day to day.
I doubt he has the ability to get the nomination, because people tend to get their information from the media instead of doing the research themselves. This is like being spoonfed dirt, when there is a feast in front of you that you simply have to dig your hands into. I am sure that very few people will read this post, and if they do, they may not like what I have to say. But I feel it is my job to inform people of the differences, especially for those who haven’t done the research and kept up with things as much as I have.
I have turned comments off because this isn’t a discussion, but more of my forum on the matter. If you want to talk about it, then you can do that in another way.
Happy All Saints’ Day!
How do we forget about this every year? This is a much bigger deal than Halloween!
How to make a budget
You know, there are those things that I wish was a class in high school that they just don’t teach you and you have to find out later. In my opinion, budgeting is one of those things. Christian Personal Finance has an article on how to create a budget that is very good. http://christianpf.com/how-to-make-a-budget/
My thoughts on Google+
For almost 2 weeks now, I have been using Google+ as my primary social network, only checking in from time to time with facebook since, right now, that’s where the users are.
What is it?
Google+ is Google’s answer to Facebook/Twitter. Now, typically I would compare it to one or the other, but the truth is, it’s a competitor to both because it has features of both networks. You have the public aspects and the ability to follow without being a friend, and then you have the privacy and intimacy of keeping certain updates between you and your real friends. So, it actually is very much a competitor to both services.
How is it different?
Well, if the two major networks had a love-child, for the most part, it would be Google+. Not completely, mind you, but for the overall concept, it is definitely a mixture of the two. You have the publicity and the ability to follow famous people that Twitter has, but you can use something called “Circles” to create friend groups to keep things private, and even share specific posts with only a subset of your friends. So if there is a certain group of friends that are interested in tech, like me, then you could create a circle of friends called tech folk and share technical articles with them, because other people will just glaze over when they see the words Linux or PHP in something. It also separates your news stream into these circles. So if you want to look at only your family’s updates, then you can click on your family’s circle and it will show that group only.
It’s also got a skype or webex competitor feature called Hangouts. Hangouts are a group video chat. You can either create a public hangout, where you turn on your webcam and tell anyone who wants to come and video chat, to come and video chat. Sometimes there is a specific topic, sometimes it’s just to shoot the bull. Then you can create a private hangout where only specific people are invited and can see when it starts. It switches to the person talking automatically, and even allows for everyone to watch a Youtube video at the same time. A very cool use that we’ve seen in these last couple of weeks is that celebrities are having public hangouts where 9 people can come in and talk face to face with them to ask questions or have a conversation. Even Newt Gingrich had a Hangout with some people in order to talk about issues. Completely impromptu and with some great conversation.
It also integrates some of Google’s other services directly into the interface.
Latitude – If you check in to a latitude location, it goes directly onto your wall with whatever visibility you want, public, or other circles.
Chat – Chat shows up on your home page with the ability to chat with your gchat contacts that used to only show up on your Gmail. It gives you an opportunity to chat with those people you are used to chatting with and if you start a chat in that window or another window like gmail, then it keeps it open while you navigate through Plus.
Picasaweb – This is what Plus uses as its photos hub. So if you have already shared photos or a photo album with someone and they are your friend on plus, then they will be able to go to your profile and hit the photos tab and see things no one else can, or you can make albums public. Picasaweb is my favorite online photo tool, and the integration here is extremely tight.
Profiles – Google accounts have had profiles for a long time, but they haven’t really been used for anything. But now your plus profile is a much nicer version of the old product, and it is actually useful.
Buzz – If you have a buzz account and anything shared to it, then it shows up in your profile under a buzz section.
+1 – If you have +1′d any sites, then a tab shows up on your profile that shows a few sites that you like and approve of.
Is it any good?
It’s very good, and this is just the beginning.
Especially for those of you who live in Google products, it is great. My typical browser usage keeps a few tabs open all the time, and then the rest change all the time. Reader, Gmail, Facebook. But Facebook has been supplanted by GPlus, and I couldn’t be happier about it. I still go to Facebook to look around a little, but then I come back to Google Plus and check things out cause I know I have missed some very good conversations.
What tips do you have for everyone else?
Create circles, but not too many. Limit yourself to less than 10 circles, because in the end, you probably won’t be sharing with more than a couple of groups of people, or to the public.
Mute this post can be used similar to Mark as Read. So if there is a conversation that you have looked over and just aren’t interested in any longer, then hit the arrow on the post and Mute it. That’s how I manage my feed, especially since, as of right now, if there is a new comment on a post, then the post jumps back to the top of your feed. This makes it difficult to keep up with what is actually new.
Get an Android Device. The Google+ app is fantastic, and even includes a nearby section so you can see conversations that are happening around you using latitude’s coordinates. Plus it has a really nice group messaging app called Huddle, which works very well if multiple people need in on a text messaging type conversation on mobile phones. It also automatically uploads, to a private album, all of the photos you take, automatically if you want, so you can put them on your plus page easier when you get back to your PC.
Dig through the settings. If you don’t, then you won’t be able to find out what settings you can tweak to make it better. And keep checking the settings to make sure nothing has changed that would make your experience better.
How can it improve?
It is new and has a ways to go. The Google team has been fantastic at crowdsourcing the next features and changes for the service from the beta testers, even going so far as to have hangouts so people can explain their ideas and problems in person.
Speaking of hangouts, if you could share your desktop, it truly would be a webex killer. Free 10 person meetings with screen sharing would be absolutely amazing, especially for Google Apps customers.
Google Apps customers do not currently have access. You have to actually have a gmail account to get in right now, but we have been told that is going to change, and Google Apps customers may find this a very useful tool in the long run.
Shared Circles could be a great addition. What if I could have public circles for things like tech posts, so the people who wanted to follow my tech news could just see that and wouldn’t have to see posts about underwater basketweaving or whatever else. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Business pages are another item that they haven’t gotten into yet. They will need something similar to facebook pages so that brands can build their pages and have multiple admins handling the account. And with Google Analytics on board, it would be extremely useful for large and small businesses alike.
There is a section called Sparks which is supposed to be news you are interested in that you can share, but it would be more useful if it was my Google Reader articles, especially since I have already, obviously, defined my interests through it.
Events page. I would love to see a full featured events page so that people could have a wave-like page that included calendar invites and docs integration. It would be great for having multiple people plan an event.
I wish there was a way to be able to see everything that I have commented on or interacted with. Kind of my personal activity feed. As of right now, you can only see items you’ve posted, not everything you’ve commented on or done.
There isn’t currently a super easy way to import your Facebook friends or info into Google Plus, but if they could figure out a way to use the facebook export to import specific info like photos, updates, friends, and everything else. That would be fantastic, especially if Facebook keeps blocking plugins that connect to Google Plus.
Conclusion
I really could talk about this all day, but no one would read it. 
It is a fantastic site with a lot of potential. There is going to be a point down the line where people will start coming en masse to the site, but it could be awhile. It has a lot of features and integration, but it will keep some people from joining simply since they have to create another email address, and if they don’t have a gmail address already, then they may not want to go through the steps.
The features for me, are great, and extremely useful, and much more of what I want. If it would get rid of the use for Facebook AND Twitter for me, that would be absolutely fantastic. It’s on its way, and it is still in beta!
In a few months, it could be a completely different ballgame and Google Plus could hit critical mass with people leaving Facebook in droves once they see just how great it is.
Don’t kill yourself to sleep
I am a hardcore sleeper. I love to sleep, though not as much as some other people. I always thought I had great sleep habits. I went to bed at reasonable hours, I didn’t sleep with the TV on, so I don’t have to have background sounds. I don’t even have to have it completely dark. So, I am a pretty adaptable sleeper. The one thing I didn’t factor in was the position that I slept in. I would sleep on my back, front, sides, whatever was comfortable because if it was comfortable, then that means I that’s how I should sleep so I can get the best rest, right?
Apparently not.
Read the rest of this entry »
My Ideal Home Device
Over the past few months, while sitting on the couch watching TV, I jump back and forth between devices depending on what I am wanting to do during that time, or sometimes what is closest to me.
If you asked me what was the perfect device for home use, I would have to get a qualifier depending on what you want to do.
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If you want to play games or read a book, then I would suggest either a smartphone or tablet (iOS or Android) device.
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If you want to surf the net, it’s much easier on a laptop or netbook of some sort. (The full browser makes this much easier)
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If you don’t want to have to deal with viruses or installations of any sort and amazing battery life, I have a Chrome Netbook that works really well.
So, “It depends” is actually a valid response because my dad has completely different uses for his computer than I do.
So, with tomorrow’s Google I/O conference beginning at noon, I would like to put my idea of the perfect couch computer out there.
Ideally, I would want all of the above in one device so that I could play games and work with apps, but also have a full browser with a file system, extended battery life, and no problems with viruses.
I know this is a lot to ask, but Google’s operating systems together actually are so close to fitting my criteria that it hurts.
Think about it, Android is not very good with battery life, and the browser is rough, but you have apps and a great e-reader, it has a file system, and has a lot of functionality.
Chrome OS doesn’t really have much of a file system since it is supposed to be just a browser, but it has amazing battery life, a full keyboard for typing, an amazing browser, and no problems at all with viruses.
So if you could put all of the features together here, it would really be an ideal world and wouldn’t take near as much work considering they are owned by the same company.
There are two ways that I could see this working.
- Create an Android version of the Chrome browser that would do all of the things we know and love Android for, but would give you a full browser with extensions and access to the file system.
- Create a dual-boot device that shares the file system of Chrome and Android. So upon startup, you would choose either Android or Chrome OS depending on what functions you want and you would have access to the same file system so that if you were working with a picture on Android, you would be able to upload it at next boot on the Chrome browser to Facebook.
As far as hardware goes, I really like the Xoom. I played with one for a short amount of time at Staples last week and really liked it. It was a really nice device with a really good feel. I don’t think you can get rid of the touchscreen because for gaming and many new applications, touch is the easiest way to navigate and get the job done, but for those who need a little more user input control through a keyboard, I believe it would be beneficial to have a real keyboard. I personally would like to see a flip and swivel keyboard. What this means is that if you were wanting to use Android as it is today, then I would just have the touchscreen to work with, but if I wanted to write this post on the device, I would just unlatch the keyboard from the back of the device and swivel it around to be more like a typical keyboard on a laptop. This would allow me to have the best of both worlds, especially if the weight, size, and battery life were similar to the CR-48 I currently have at home for Chrome OS.
So, overall, I think Google has a couple of great products, but in order to create a device that does it all, the Chrome and Android teams need to work together to integrate the platforms. I know that Eric Schmidt said that Chrome is for regular computers and Android is for touchscreens, and I agree with that to a point. But if they want the home user market to sit in front of the TV with a device, it’s going to be hard to outperform the iPad. If I can get my extensions and bookmarks on my Android device’s browser and include a real keyboard, then you just might see me move to one device instead of piecemeal depending on the function of the day.
The Hidden Costs of Corporate Email
Microsoft’s Tom Rizzo this Wednesday wrote a blog post about the hidden costs of Google Apps. Now, does he do this out of the goodness of his heart? No. Does he do this just for fun since “Google is failing in the enterprise” and Microsoft feels absolutely warm and fuzzy about their place in the enterprise? Of course not.
He does this because he has a goal and wants those around him to agree with his goal of moving people back away from Google Apps. Much of his information is incorrect, though to the common reader who has not done the research themselves, seems plausible. Below is my story about how we moved to Google Apps from Microsoft Exchange with much success.
We are a 200 person company where about half of our users have email accounts and we’ve actually moved our company over to Google Apps with great success. It took some training since Gmail is obviously different, but it’s been a great experience. The $360 Help Desk Support Services in the graphic is a supplemental service that you don’t have to get. If you buy your Google Apps licenses from a partner like Ltech or CloudSherpas, where the price is still $50/user/year, then you actually get support for free, though only to the account administrators. So the administrators troubleshoot and if it goes above their head, then they come to the partner support.
And if you factor in the amount that it costs for support and maintenance of the hardware and software of an Exchange server, which is the primary reason we moved, not for office and such, then you definitely come out ahead.
Because the piece they aren’t talking about is that you automatically get offsite storage for all 25GB of your mail, multi-site redundancy, Enterprise messaging and video/voice chat through Google Talk, and you can buy the message security piece, which is the add-on postini piece from the infographic, but you get postini filtering for free. Do you realize how much this would all cost, and how piecemeal it would be if you tried to create a Microsoft Exchange based solution of the same thing. Last year we did the pricing for 100 people and here is what we came out with.
On-Site solution with off-site redundancy
Exchange hardware – $2,000 per year with 5 year depreciation
Exchange License – $2,000 per year with SA
Spam Filtering software – $1,200 per year
Archiving product – $1,900 per year
OCS Hardware/Software with SA – $2,900 per year
off-site redundancy for all of these products – not even going to go there
Total of $10,000 if you don’t have off-site redundancy in place
OR
Totally off-site solution
Hosted Exchange with a lot of additional storage since most only come with 1-5GB of space – With 1GB space – $6,000 per year
Hosted OCS – $2,400
Offsite spam filtering – $2,100
Offsite archiving – $5,400
Total of $15,900
Now, for Google Apps, here is our pricing.
Google Apps completely hosted
Google Apps bought from LTech – $5,000 per year
Power Panel – $400 per year
Single Sign On – $900 per year
Postini Message Discovery Extended (10 year retention) – $3,300
Total – $9,600
So, as you can see, Google Apps is still cheaper than both of the other approaches, even without redundancy of the first Exchange scenario.
People just haven’t actually done the research on this in order to see the cost savings most of the times, and salesmen like this have a very clear goal and manipulate the numbers to meet that goal. So do your own research if you are actually interested in this and don’t rely on sales techniques.
At any rate, Exchange is not as cheap as this article suggests in order to get all of the features of Google Apps. And the vast majority of businesses aren’t even to the size of our corporation, and spending $100 per year on each user for email in a 10 person company makes a lot more sense than setting up all of the infrastructure needs of a fortune 500 company where you need a full time support professional just to troubleshoot all of the server/desktop issues for mail and collaboration alone. Plus you get Google Docs, sites, and lots of other features for free with no maintenance downtime and a 99.9% SLA.
Personally, I am going to push this to any organization that I work with or consult with, and our company has been extremely satisfied with all of the features and plan on staying with Apps from here forward.
Plus, it definitely helps that I just got my Google Apps Certified Deployment Specialist certification, so I do kind of know what I am talking about.
If you’re interested in moving to Google Apps, check out their site, or let me know if you have any questions and I’ll be happy to tell you all about it, or maybe help you make the migration.
My HP e-Print Printer (and all its wonders)
I have been big on these e-print printers ever since HP announced them last year. The thought of being able to send an email to an email address and it automatically print was a very neat concept. Plus the fact that it was wireless at my house made it even better. That way I wouldn’t have to have a desktop computer running all of the time in my house that was set to share the printer. Because that means that if the computer wasn’t on, then I couldn’t print from my laptop, and it is much more difficult to get setup and administer.
This past Christmas I got one of the e-Print printers as a present and it took all of 20 minutes to setup and get configured the way I want. I got the HP Photosmart D110A Wireless e-All-in-One Printer and have loved it. At the time, I think it was about $50 around the holidays, where it’s now more like $70. But still it’s a great deal on a nice printer. So, other than the wireless printing and the email printing, which I used just this week to print an email from work on my home printer, what else does it do?
Well, it copies and scans as well. Plus it has a memory card slot so you can print directly from the card. And it has apps. I know that apps is kind of a buzz word, but it really does have apps. It has applications that you can install on the printer to make you print more. So, for example, I can flip through the apps and print a coloring page for Lyla from Disney without ever going to a computer. You just go to the apps on the touch screen and click on what you want to print and it prints. Sarah can also do the same thing with coupons from coupons.com. She is able to go to the printer and choose the coupons she wants to print and print them directly from the touchpad. It’s a smart ploy to get you to print more. I like it personally because it actually does make sense as you are going to have to be at the printer anyway to get the papers, so why not just do it all from there?
Also, it is AirPrint capable, which means that you can print from your iPad or iPod touch or iPhone just by hitting print and it will find the printer on your network.
Not only that, but yesterday, Google announced that all HP e-Print printers
It won’t be long before we won’t have to have print servers anywhere. And especially at that low of a price. Now, there are higher priced models that contain things like tablets like the HP Photosmart eStation All-in-One, but really, for most people, the model that I have does everything that most people need.
So, in my personal opinion, I think that your next printer definitely needs to be an HP e-Print printer to make sure that you are compatible with the wireless technology in the future.
My 5 week 4 hour body progress
About 2 and a half months ago, i got Tim Ferris’ book The 4-Hour Body, which, among other things, talks about his Slow Carb Diet. It consists of putting a vegetable, meat, and legume at each meal and cutting out carbs and sugar in order to lose weight. That includes pasta, bread, potatoes, except red potatoes, as well as sweets and fruits. Even rice is off-limits on this diet.
At the same time, I have been listening to a podcast called Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott who said at the first of the year very definitively, “I am going to lose weight this year”. He never really went much further than that, but a few weeks later, he mentioned a book called Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It
Our culture has turned these cheap, white foods into the basis for all of our meals and snacks. If you look at pretty much any dish in magazines, there is almost always some sort of carb and/or sugar on the plate because that is what we see as normal, and it is cheap to produce, but in other cultures, only the poorer people eat a lot of potatoes, bread and rice because they are cheaper and filling. But just because they are filling doesn’t mean that they are good for you obviously. And his book is, like the 4 hour body, based on scientific findings, not on exercising and fads.
But one thing that the 4 hour body allows is an anything goes, eat as much as you want of anything cheat day. So, about 5 weeks ago, on February 21, I started doing the 4-hour body diet, and placed Saturday as my regular cheat day each week. I am not going to say that it hasn’t been hard, because it has. There are many times that I would much rather have sweets or bread or pasta over what I am having, (I had someone today set 5 full size snickers bars on my desk as a thank you for some work I did), but I know that my goal is to lose weight and feel better. So I push on and look toward Saturday. Like I said, I started on February 21, and here we are at March 31, and I have lost 10.6 pounds. I went from 215.4 lbs to 204.8 lbs in 5 weeks. Not too bad huh? And especially since I am not that big of a guy, I just wanted to get back to a comfortable weight for me since I have put on my married weight.
But I don’t think I would have stuck with it as long and I would have fallen off the wagon much more if it weren’t for those Saturdays where I could eat the things I missed throughout the week.
One thing I wish that I would have done early on in this diet is to take my measurements to see how much I have lost in inches instead of weight, because that is a better gauge of how much I have lost. But oh well. I know it’s working because my stomach is a little flatter than it was and I think that my face has gotten a little thinner as well.
My goal is to get down to 200, so I am very close, but I may stay on a little longer to get to 190 if things are going well. But we’ll see how it all goes. I like the diet and think it actually is a pretty sustainable long-term diet, which really becomes more of a lifestyle. Because of this diet, I will be making changes for the long term that I believe will help me in the long run. I eat more protein in the morning (eggs, bacon, tomatoes, and yogurt) instead of my smoothie (apple juice, strawberries, mixed berries, peaches, and keifer), which has helped me to regulate my blood sugar so that I don’t have a sugar drop in the afternoons like I used to. And I now know that I don’t have to always eat bread with every meal or there are other options besides french fries when I go out to eat (asparagus is always a welcome change).
Overall, i’m very happy with it and will keep going with my diet for awhile longer to get to the point where I’m happy with my weight and feel good as well. I would recommend the 4 hour body to just about everyone because it doesn’t just talk about how to lose weight, but also how to gain weight, workout, sleep better, as well as lots of other things in the process. Plus it’s a very interesting read because the author, Tim Ferris, has done lots of self-experimentation in order to find what works and what doesn’t. And obviously he has found the easiest way to lose weight with the least amount of effort. Hopefully I will be able to keep most of these changes permanent, but if not, at least I have some headroom before I get back to 215.
Ideal Small Business Network
So I was thinking the other day about my Ideal Home Network post the and I thought it might be nice to do a post on what I believe is the ideal small business network.
Most small businesses over-invest in IT hardware and software, as well as create too much complexity for less than 10 people on a network. And with a business this small, it really doesn’t make sense to have a full time IT person twiddling their thumbs the majority of the time.
I’ve said before how much of a fan I am of Microsoft Home Server. It makes my life here at home much easier as I don’t have to think as much about what is going on with my network. So if only that could be translated to the business world. And I believe that it can if you have the right setup where you can actually set it and forget it.
So, the major pieces that a small business needs are email, file sharing, collaboration, remote access, printer, and a website. The best way that I can see to do this is to use two major tools for all of the needs, and then some bits and pieces.
The first tool would be Google Apps. Google Apps Premier Edition is $50 per year per user and includes email, calendar, document sharing and editing, voice, video, and text chat, group forums and mailing lists, enterprise spam filtering, and easy intranet and internet sites. It is essentially everything that major corporations have at their disposal without the maintenance, without the on-site IT staff, and at a fraction of the cost. It even gives you the software you need through Google Docs to replace Excel, Word, and Powerpoint. I have even set up Google Apps to host corporate, public-facing websites so your corporate identity is all set as well. For 10 people, it would only cost $500/year for email and collaboration that the big boys enjoy.
The second major piece is Windows Home Server. Specifically the HP Mediasmart EX495 which has a 1.5TB drive in it and is expandable with 3 more internal bays and 4 USB ports. So you could buy 3 more large drives internally where you could replicate the files so you have redundancy, as well as allow it to backup all of the PC’s on the network for quick recovery. You could also couple it with Carbonite backup for cloud storage so that all of your files are backed up remotely for easy recovery for only a little over $50 per year. So you would get offsite backup, as well as onsite backup for very cheap.
As I have said before, Windows Home Server also gives you access to your files and computer remotely so that you can access them anytime and anywhere. And it also allows you to search across all of the file shares so that you can find what you need easily.
Printing in a small business is always a bit of an issue, as well as scanning or copying. But with HP’s ePrint technology, you can not only print wirelessly while you are in the office, you can print wirelessly from your phone anywhere you have internet access just by sending an email to a specific email address. And the cost isn’t any more than a typical printer. We got the base all in one model for about $50 bucks and it copies, scans, and prints, and works great. All the way up to the high end multifunction that is more like $300. So you could put one at each person’s desk or just give everyone access to a couple of printers and even if one had problems, you wouldn’t have to go through the driver issues, but instead could just print to a different printer.
Couple all of this with the laptops and desktops needed for the users, a nice Meraki access point that can be managed from anywhere and is super easy to setup, a small network of wired switches and you have essentially an entire corporate network on a smaller scale without the major maintenance of the enterprise network.
So, for 10 users, you would have to buy the computers for less than $500 each for a total of $5,000, plus the $700 for the Server and extra storage and a router and wired switch for less than $300, 2 printers for $50 each, and a Meraki access point for $300 and you have all of your equipment for less than $7,000
Then your yearly cost of $50 per user for 10 users comes out to $500 per year and the online backup adds another $50 and you have recurring costs of $550 per year. This takes care of pretty much all of your major IT needs for a company smaller than 10 users with 10 computers without a lot of the hassles of a typical network.
So, a summary.
Initial Investment
10 computers x $500 = $5,000
Server = $700
Extra storage, router, and wired switch = $300
2 HP ePrint printers x $50 = $100
Meraki access point = $300
Total Initial Investment = $6,400
Yearly Costs
10 Google Apps user accounts x $50/year = $500
Carbonite online backup for Home Server = $50
Total Yearly Cost = $550
All in all, not a bad setup for a business just starting out so that they can hit the ground running with all of the tools they need to be up against the big boys.
