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We help small and medium sized businesses with IT Support in Stamford, CT. For a succinct list of our services and a forum for sharing with us visit our LinkedIn page. If you have computer or internet questions or problems call us at 203-595-9091 or email us at Stamford@CMITSolutions.com.
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Whatever your business, we help you achieve your business goals by making technology work for you. We provide IT consulting and computer support services so you no longer have to worry about IT headaches.
Monday, June 17, 2013
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Changing the Sales Tax rate in POS
As many of you may know, CT sales tax will be increasing as of Friday July 1st. The increase will be from 6% to 6.35%. For further details visit http://www.ct.gov/drs/cwp/view.asp?A=1514&Q=480936 . Please speak with your accountant to determine exactly how this will impact your particular business.
Here are the steps to make the change within POS.
To change sales tax in POS, follow the steps below:
POS version 9:
· From the Edit menu, select Preferences, Company
POS Version 10:
· From the File menu, select Preferences, Company
· Select Sales Tax from the preferences listings on the left to open the Set Up Sales Tax dialog as shown below:
![clip_image001[1]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0iR0LZ_5mzhoz3n5OnD4hhDBvUDLINUx1CHQuxbxJJ5aVFjSq4OtJ7OWe3YH8tFKGG_0M39C4h8eetrLNKPDhL9EgEAJltS7m2b1HR-Z37oPLgVQkabrjNB_-hMxhoyDZSqO4RvCMwUU/s1600-h/clip_image001%25255B1%25255D%25255B2%25255D.png "clip_image001[1]"){kind=small}
· Click on the Edit Tax Code button to open Edit Tax Code dialog. Select the next button until the box shown below appears:
Select Finish
Select Save at bottom right of screen to save changes in Company Preferences.
The new sales tax rate will be effective immediately
Contributed by: Lucy Walker QuickBooks and POS Consultant
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Tablets, Tablets, Tablets; How to decide if (and which one) is right for you
Well our one month evaluation of 3 tablet models is ready for a wrap up and this is it. The CMIT Solutions Stamford team evaluated the iPad2, Blackberry Playbook and the Samsung Galaxy and we've been busy this month! Our main questions were this:
Q: How does the tablet compare to other mobile devices? Can it replace a laptop or netbook?
Q: Can you really run your business life on it?
As you know CMIT is dedicated to small business and that is one of the reasons for taking this project on. Most of the reviews and general information about technology are geared towards 2 audiences, big business and the consumer. I'm still baffled by this because small business creates more than half of the nonfarm private gross domestic product (GDP). Small business IS different and so it's been my joy to help provide targeted information about small business to small business.
Besides having our local staff actually "play" and try to work off the tablets, we conducted a local survey of small business technology users, had a great in person event as a segment of our new KnowITAll series and have talked with other CMIT Solutions staff across the country about their experiences. Frankly this has been a lot of fun and I'm committed to doing another research project like this in the near future.
Our intention of this article is that it be a resource for you, so with that in mind here is summary of this "wrap up" and bookmarks to each of the sections. We have also added links to other related resources we came across during this project.
Slide Deck from "Tablets, Tablets, Tablets" KnowITAll event
Stamford Small Business Survey Results
Decision factors (for our) small business
Our evaluation was focused on whether mobile computing needs of us and our small business clients could be satisfied with a tablet. We did immediately notice when creating the features, that would be used for the decision, that we had some unique needs that typical small business clients wouldn't. In considering a tablet for our clients we found that in fact many of them had unique needs. This just goes to show you the reason there are (and more to come) so many different ideas from manufacturers as to what makes a good design.
In making a decision for your business, you must identify what YOUR needs are and select the one that best meets your needs.
Must have Features (for us)
Excellent web experience
Excellent email experience
Ability to interface with our Line of Business applications (AutoTask and SharePoint)
Remote to client's machines
Access to MyDocuments
Acceptable typing experience
Note Taking
Offline experience (when you don't have an internet connection)
Edit Word and Excel files
Acceptable performance, stability, battery life, cost, weight, size
Ability to have a hard network connection
Secondary Features (not must have, but enhance or extend the user experience)
Read in the sun
Ease of configuration
Viewing and updating contacts and calendar entries
Instant Messaging
Social Media updates and reading
GoToMeeting
Sound Quality
Camera quality
Printing
Projector Connections
Finally there is the cost versus alternatives. We currently are using netbooks and Blackberries.
Cost of the unit itself
Cost of applications
Cost of 3G plan
Summary of Our Evaluation
Evaluation standards:
- Excellent – Same as a desktop
- Good – Works great for our needs, but not as good as a full-sized pc
- Marginal – Adequate in a pinch, but not as good as a full-sized machine
- Not Suitable
Feature | iPad2 | Playbook | Galaxy | Netbook |
Web experience | Marginal | Good | Marginal | Excellent |
Excellent email experience | Marginal | Good | Good | Excellent |
Ability to interface with our Line of Business applications (AutoTask and SharePoint) | AutoTask – Marginal SharePoint – Good | AutoTask – Good SharePoint – Good | AutoTask – Good SharePoint – Not Suitable | |
Remote to clients machines | Good – free app required | Good – app pre-loaded | Good – purchased app required | Excellent |
Access to MyDocuments | Good – but couldn't use MS Web apps had to use Dropbox | Not evaluated | Not evaluated | Excellent |
Acceptable typing experience | Good | Excellent | Good (thumbs) | Yes |
Note Taking | Good | Good | Good | Excellent |
Offline experience (when you don't have an internet connection) | Marginal | Not evaluated | Not evaluated | Excellent |
Edit Word and Excel files | Good once you purchase Documents to Go | Good Documents to Go was pre-installed | Good ThinkFree office was pre-loaded | Excellent |
Performance, stability, battery life, cost, weight, size | Good | Good | Good | Excellent |
Ability to have a hard network connection | Not Suitable | Not Suitable | Not Suitable | Excellent |
Reviewer Comments
Galaxy
The Galaxy came preconfigured to be used with Sprint and continued to prompt for activation (annoying) until we put it in airplane mode.
Comments on features more important to consumers (although there are circumstances where these may be important to business use)
Great sound quality
Netflix not preloaded
Email used ActiveSync; was able to delete mail when there was no internet connection
No LogMeIn Free version; had to purchase premium version for $30
Couldn't get Skype to work
Due to location of power button can easily inadvertently power off
PlayBook
Bonus-came with a HDMI connector
Video quality equivalent to a Flip
Virtual keyboard changes based on the application you are in
Review has big hands; typing experience was good
Pre-loaded with Bing Maps, YouTube, DocumentsToGo, Adobe reader
Can be used as a remote control for your TV
Has a remote control mouse pad
Has a Teleprompter
Got 2 days out of the battery without recharging
Small enough to fit into the pocket of your cargo pants
Hated the email experience as you had to tether the unit to your Blackberry
Internet tethering cost on Verizon is $20 pm
Touch controls were good once you figured them out; Tutorial was poor.
Too small of a screen for Medical EMR software
iPad
The mail application was only good for reading and replying. We couldn't delete or move mail into folders without an internet connection. Because Safari is the only rowser available, a lot of sites wouldn't display properly. We installed CloudBrowser app for as an alternative for Flash play but this is only an adequate experience. Safari is not supported by AutoTask, and free app available only provided limited number of functions.
SharePoint access was good, but the screen was too small to make full use of the site. Microsoft Web Apps for Word and Excel editing don't work in Safari.
The virtual keyboard was good; we got pretty close to our usual typing speed, however virtual keyboard doesn't automatically change with use of app so we often needed to jump to an alternate keyboard for frequently used alternate characters like "@"
The OneNote app we tried was only okay, and so many normal things you want to do require an internet connection; so when you don't have it, it really reduces what you can do.
Conclusions
In the end we all agreed that although our netbooks are not as "fun", they do enable us to do more of the out of office business
functions that our roles require. We also agreed that the increased cost (we can get a decent netbook for $300-$325 while the tablet will go
for $430-$900) was not worth it even if it could do everything we needed it to.
There is however the "fun" and "cool" factor to be considered. I for one, opted to keep my iPad2 but I've written this article on my
trusty old netbook. As for our small business clients? We went through a number of our key clients discussing whether they would find value in one of the tablets we evaluated, and a number of them felt it would worth talking about.
This just goes to prove again that the variety we see if the marketplace is needed as everyone's needs (and wants) are different.
Survey Results
Responses reflect small business users in the Greater Stamford, CT area
Additional Resources
KnowITAll
KnowITAll slide deck from Tablets, Tablets, Tablets
Can an Archive PST file get to big? Is there a recommended maximum size?
Before Outlook 2003, PST files used ANSI encoding which limited the size to 2Gb, and beyond 2Gb Outlook would not recognize the file. In Outlook 2003 and newer they reconfigured this to allow for a default maximum PST file size of 20Gb using Unicode encoding. The maximum file size can also be configured to be larger if needed.
The location of the archive file can be an issue as well, specifically in Outlook 2010 which will hang/crash when trying to open an archive file located across the network. There does not seem to be an issue with this in Outlook 2003 and 2007, though keep in mind if your archive file is very large, performance will be impacted when opening it, especially over the network.
It is always best practice to delete the emails you don't need and to clean out your Inbox and other folders of unneeded emails regularly.
Additionally if you have multiple archive files, determine if you need to have all of them open every time you use Outlook as this can affect performance as well.
Generally speaking (when using Outlook 2003 or newer), if your .pst file gets larger than a few Gb's it's a good idea to make an archive of it. When doing so there are options to archive emails older than a given date. Using this feature will allow you to archive specifically what you want. There are also AutoArchive settings which can be applied to your Inbox or even specific folders within your Inbox. For instance you could have emails older than 1 month automatically added to an archive for your Inbox or any other folder in Outlook.
Lastly, even though your Outlook 2003 and newer archive and .pst files can grow to 20Gb or larger, if you find either one of these files is larger than say 5-10Gb you may want to consider probing through them to see if there's anything you can get rid of...if not, then at least you know you can grow to at least 20Gb without any issues.
By Kyle Stewart
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