It is back to school season once again and that supple list may or may contain one of the most expensive of all school supplies, a computer.  How do you buy the right computer for back to school?  Here is what you need to consider to stay affordable, get what you need, and hopefully keep from getting ripped off.

Set your budget – One of the biggest regrets with buying a computer is buying more than you can afford and realizing that you did not need to spend that much money. When figuring out how much you can afford remember that you may have to purchase software and in the case of a laptop you will want a bag to carry the laptop in that will not damage the laptop. Additionally you may or may not want to add an extended warranty and finally you will need to factor in the taxes.  Remember that all these factors should be factored into your “cost out the door”.   So set how much you can afford and stick to it.

Hardware Specs – Everyone seems to worry if they are getting enough hardware or power. Here is the easy way to determine what hardware you need.  First figure out all the software you need and find out what hardware it requires,  then take the fastest processor & the highest amount of ram required and use those as the slowest processor you can get and the least amount of memory you should get. As for the hard drive you should add up all of the required storage space then double it and that will give you the smallest hard drive you can get. Once you have your minimum specs then buy as much above those specs as you can afford. So if you need a minimum of a 1.6 GHz processor and you can afford 2.2 GHz go for the computer that will run faster for you.

Software – for going back to school your computer should come with a preloaded operating system.  Then you have your office productivity suit, which is your word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software, which does not normally come with your computer.  The old stand by used to be Microsoft Office which is still a good suit of programs but extremely expensive compared to alternatives. For two free alternatives to Microsoft Office check out Open Office or Lotus Symphony.  Both of these suites have the ability to deal with Microsoft file formats. But gaining in popularity are cloud applications like Google Doc’s or ZOHO both of which have free accounts that should handle anything your student might need.  We also know that some teachers want students to use these software suites so make sure you know what your teachers are going to use.
Now if you still want to get Microsoft office make sure you have your student id because many stores will have educational licensed versions of the product that you can get with a student id. Educational licensed are no different than full licensed versions of the product. They are just licensed for students and they cost less because software companies know people that are in school or parents that have kids going to school are normally on tight budgets.

The computer that is going to run an operating system and office productivity suite are not going to be cost or hard drive heavy systems. But if your student is going to need to run a graphic application like CAD or Illustrator these might push your budget.  First these packages are pricey but also they tend to be heavy on the system requirements. Just be aware that if your student is going to need to run a graphic package they may not be able to get away with the base system.

Warranties and extended warranties – Most computers will come with a 1 year warranty on parts and labor. If the computer you are looking at does not come with at least a 1 year manufactures warranty then you should keep looking as there are plenty of computers that do.
As for extended warranties or service plans they are not worth the money, after the first year which is when an extended warranty starts.  There are three things that will typically happen. (1) Battery goes bad – this is not covered by most extended warranties and if it is covered then the cost for a new battery is far less than the cost of the extended warranty. (2) Hard drive crash – If your hard drive crashes most warranties will replace the hard drive but will not try to retrieve the data. Now if an extend warrant does cover this the warranty will normally be more that just purchasing a new hard drive  and having it installed.  (3) You do something that destroys your computer. You can buy accidental coverage warranties but these warranties do not cover data loss and normally run close to what a new computer will cost.

Tricks of the trade. Whether it is a price match guarantee or something else to get you to purchase a computer today, they will revolve around matching the model number not the system spec. So what you will find is that just bought that new computer at store X and then week later you find what you think is the exact same computer with double the amount of RAM at store Y or it could be back at store X and you think great that price match is going to kick in.  Well think again because that extra RAM triggered a change in the computer model number and since it had to be the exact model number you won’t get that price match deal. Why, because you either are trying to return the computer that you got for the one you just found or you are stuck with no guarantee.

So to recap; remember to  figure out what you can afford, what you need, and then how much above your needs as you can afford. And finally remember that computers are constantly going down in price.

This is one of the more convincing phishing emails I have seen in a while. The email appears to be from GoDaddy.com but as with all phishing emails it is not. So here is how to tell if the email is real or a phishing scam.

1. Did you order any thing from Go Daddy?
2. If you did order do the order details match up with what you ordered?

If your answer is no to either of the questions then it is a phishing scam. But if you are still not sure here is a breakdown between the real one and the fake.

As always we hope this was helpful.

Tracking, stats, analytics, measurement what ever you what to call it, you NEED to be doing it. Most people know that is how you tell if  something is a success or failure. But with all the information that is collected  especially with online marketing it is great for learning, getting rid of wastes and a lot more. Plus who doesn’t like looking at a good pie chart.  Now with all the information that is collected when you hit a website most of it is anonymous data. So  even though you have not filled out anything we still know a great deal about you, Becky Smith from Colorado Springs, Colorado, last four digits of you social security number 4536, that it has taken you 55 seconds to read to this point in the post, and we won’t even talk about what we now know about what you do in your private time. Just realize that we know and you should keep some things off the internet.

So our take away from this post is, if you are not tracking your marketing you need to. For Becky just stop, and for those who need it  here is a delicious pie chart here you go.

If you would like to know more about tracking or more specifically analytics check out our sister blog the Analytic-lounge.com

In marketing it is unavoidable you will have failures. There is just nothing you can do about that,  except to try to limit them but they are unavoidable. But what you can avoid is waste. So what is the difference between waste and failure.

Failures simply are, you have an idea or a plan and on execution you have a worse than expected result. The great thing about a failure, if a failure can be a good thing,  is the ability to turn it successful. Turning a failure into a success is as simple as remembering the advice your parents always told you “learn from your mistakes”.

Now waste is something truly to be feared and unfortunately there is a lot of it in business and in marketing. Waste is doing something that is going to fail, without getting something out of it, just doing something for no reason at all, and so on. Now if you have the compulsion to do something for no reason at all please feel free to make a check out to me for one million dollars, see the contact page for mailing details. The two biggest wastes I see in marketing are material with no purpose and material with no contact information.

Now that you have set your goal(s). We need to take a small step back and take a look at all of your online marketing. I do mean all of your online marketing including your web page. Now when comparing your goals to your material you need to view and break the material down correctly.

First your web page. Your web page is the core that everything else should be linked back to in some way, shape or form. With everything linking back to your web page, your web page is the only thing that has to meet all of your goals.

The rest of your material needs to meet one or more of your goals but does not need to meet all of them. When reviewing your material you need to compare three main parts of the material, separately, to your goal(s) of each piece. The three parts are

• Message
• Presentation
• Location

If any part, of any of your marketing efforts, does not match up with one of your goals stop the advertisement immediately. You also need to make sure that each part meets up with the same goal. So if you have an advertisement where the message and the location match up with your 1^st goal and the presentation matches up with your 2^nd goal or no goal at all. You have a choice to either make the presentation match your 1^st goal or stop the advertisement. Either way the advertisement should not continue as is. Once you are done with this process you will more than likely have three categories of advertisements keep, stop and retool.