Many computer repair technicians fall into the same boat: they run a small business from their home office and primarily provide onsite service. When I used to be the sole person servicing customers, life was easy and a single phone number without any fancy features was more than ample.

However, adding workers behind your name and expanding a mobile workforce can be difficult without some sort of centralized phone system to handle call routing. The question remained: how do I take advantage of features that only in-house complex phone systems generally provide? I had a shoestring budget, didn’t want to install any complex hardware, and I had a soft-spot for cloud software. To my surprise, Google Voice saved the day.

MailStore Home is a small, portable and freeware utility designed to make archiving, backing up and migrating emails easy. MailStore supports many different types of mailboxes such as Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Exchange Server, Office 365, .EML files and more. It also supports a variety of internet based mailboxes such as Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo mail.

Once the email has been backed up, MailStore allows you to search in all of the email accounts from a central location within seconds. It allows you to restore the emails back to an email client with one click and migrate emails from one type of mailbox (ie. Gmail) to another type of mailbox (ie. Outlook).

If your personal life or business relies on cloud based email like Gmail, it is important to have an offsite backup since you never know when Google will suspend the account, have an extended outage or have your account hijacked by a hacker.

The computer repair field is filled with a dynamic variety of personalities, all with their own particular skills & traits. However, something must be said for a technician that performs all of his hardware repairs by way of guidance to his wife. I had the opportunity to sit down with the truly inspirational Kevin Berg, owner of CompuPane LLC based in Auburn, Washington (USA). Kevin’s story is one of perseverance, dedication, and a natural love of computers – in light of being diagnosed with the physically debilitating condition cerebral palsy as a child.

It’s almost a guaranteed fact, at some point this will happen to every one of us within our small business careers and first time round will likely result in some stress and the odd sleepless night, I am of course referring to late or non-payment! I’m more than thankful that I rarely encounter a difficult client when it comes to payment; in fact it seems to me that most of my residential clients understand that paying on the day is ideal for all parties. I’ve never needed to ask it just seemed to work out, from day one whether it be cash, cheque or PayPal I always received due payment on the day of any repair or returned computer. But then as the old saying goes “There’s always one!”

A quick jump around the Technibble forums and it won’t be long before you run into topics covering all manner of customer difficulties whether it be late payments, payment refusal or customers delaying payment through excuse of the “dog ate my wallet” variety. These problems of course occur with both residential and business customers alike for various reasons so having some form of deterrent in the form of a Late Fee may be the way to go? Perhaps, but there’s plenty to consider before you start adding charges to your next invoice.

Eraser is a data wiping tool that securely and permanently deletes files through a multi-step process. In addition to removing files from data tables within your operating system, Eraser will write over your deleted files with special patterns designed to completely and permanently obliterate anything you delete. Eraser even features scheduling functionality that allows you to specify when certain folders or files should be securely deleted.

The latest rumors are pitting Windows 8 at an October 2012 release date. Are you ready? It feels as if Windows 7 just came out, and to most large companies, they are just rolling out the operating system. However, whether we like it or not, computer technicians not only need to be aware of the arrival of Windows 8, but should have a sense of what changes this new platform will bring. Windows 7 has already proven to be the fastest selling OS of all time, and Windows 8 will likely be no different. Your customers may even have their hands on retail Windows 8 systems before you get a chance to.

It’s probably a given that we are all very tech savvy individuals with home networks that extend past the functionality and complexity of the average home, for the very simple reason that we love technology and that we love what we do. Sooner or later we reach a critical point where we start to spend an extensive amount of time managing our own networks which often relates to file management, backups, remote file access and a lot of time supporting our own family members.

Introducing your own business start-up into your home network further compounds the problem by increasing your storage needs and highlights the importance of keeping critical business files safe. Windows Home Server 2011 (WHS from here on out) is a powerful, cheap and an easy to use solution to help you take back control and focus your time where its needed most.

I just got an email from Fabrice, the creator of Fabs Autobackup telling me that Fabs Autobackup is now 25% OFF for a limited time.

This brings the price down from 50 EUR (about 63 USD at the time of writing) to 37.50 EUR (47 USD). Fabs Autobackup 4 Tech is one of the most used pieces of paid software in my business.

For those of you who dont know what Fabs Autobackup is, it is a small, portable application that makes backing up and restoring your clients data incredibly easy. It will backup pretty much anything your client would want backed up such as their My Documents folder, browser favorites, emails, address books and more to a location of your choice.

I personally use it to back up my clients data to a USB hard drive, plug it into the new machine, hit restore and all the data and settings are back where they should be without all the manual work. It works on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

This software is a must have in any Computer Technicians kit and now is a great time to get yourself a copy with the limited time discount. With the time you save with this, it wont take long for you to recoup your investment.

You can read more here:

http://www.technibble.com/fabs-autobackup-4-tech/

Unless you offer professional computer repair solely on a volunteer basis, your primary goal in exchange for honest service is payment from your customers. Some technicians prefer to operate on the payment on completion basis, and this works just swell for residential customers. However, for technicians who resemble any form of computer repair business, having a solid invoicing/billing system is key to watching over customers who owe money and providing a systemic history of all work performed.

Judging from some of the discussion on the Technibble forums, however, it seems that many newcomers in the business are unsure what techniques should be practiced and which should be avoided. At my computer repair company FireLogic, I am the final person who details and approves most of the invoicing that goes out to clients. Invoicing customers is just as much of an art as it is the ability to tell a logical story on paper for payment and record purposes. To avoid some of the pitfalls many techs stumble with in their first forays into invoicing, here are some of my best pointers:

Guest Post by William Conner
I started selling cloud services 7 years ago; I was a reseller of Carbonite a few months after they opened their doors and haven’t looked back. It’s easy to be afraid of cloud services, watching how they encroach on what used to be our exclusive domain, but really it’s the natural evolution of technology and we need to figure out how to leverage it to our advantage. The great thing about cloud services is they’re like any other IT product, diverse and ever changing. That still leave the IT Pro in the position of trusted expert to recommend products based on client needs.