Yesterday I brought you Elizabeth Bowman’s tips on inbox management, here’s what she has to say about messages themselves:

Put a hooking key statement in the subject line. First impressions matter! And be specific– don’t send messages with subjects like QUESTION, IMPORTANT, or PLEASE RESPOND without including something specific.

If the entirety of your message can be conveyed by a subject line, do so! Just be sure to end the line with EOM (”end of message”). It’s like the e-mail equivalent of texting.

The body of your e-mail should begin with a quick statement of purpose. If you’re asking questions or making requests, be sure to separate each of them with bullets or a line of space.

If your messages seem too long or start covering too many topics, don’t be afraid to use several shorter e-mails to get the point across.

Always include a signature line with your contact information. Just be sure the information is up to date!

Slow down! Avoid typos, double check attachments, and review your to: and cc: fields.

Finally, six quick tips that will immediately improve how well your e-mail works for you:

1. Set rules to automatically filter messages.
2. Use categories and flags to highlight important messages.
3. Turn off automated mail checking.
4. Eliminate noisy alerts and popups that interrupt and distract you.
5. Move messages directly into your calendar.
6. Remove yourself from unnecessary mailing lists.

With these tips in place, 2010 will surely prove to be a tidy and productive year!

E-Mail has become an essential and unavoidable force in everyday business communication—billions of pieces are sent every week in the US alone. But it is far too easy to become overwhelmed with the contents of your inbox when you receive hundreds of messages per week, if not per day. Here are some indispensable tips inspired by professional organizer Elizabeth Bowman to make sure you are in control of your e-mail, and not the other way around:

When dealing with e-mail, be proactive not reactive.

• Forbid yourself from checking messages at inappropriate times like as soon as you wake up or in the middle of the night. Remember work/life balance!
• Limit the number of ways you receive information: services now exist to have both physical mail and voice mail become e-mail attachments to unite all your most important communication in one forum.

Take three steps to prioritize when to read and respond to messages:

1. Delete what’s unnecessary: spam, mailing lists, messages with attachments (save the file elsewhere and ditch the note)
2. Delegate tasks & responses. If you have staff who can deal with a message in a more timely and effective manner than you, don’t be afraid to pass it along. The “forward” button is your friend.
3. Decide your next step: if responding to a message will take you less than two minutes, don’t put it off till later. If it will take longer, set aside time on your calendar to respond. Set an appointment with yourself.

Messages in your inbox should fall into four specific folders:

1. Needs a response
2. Requires taking action (non-email)
3. Waiting for a response
4. Read & review (newsletters, mailing lists, etc.)

• Create a schedule for checking e-mail. Turn off automatic receipt and the distractions it creates. Instead, pick regular times each day devoted to checking and responding to messages. If people are expecting a more immediate response, don’t be afraid to set an auto-response to explain your schedule.

Check back soon for part 2 with Elizabeth’s tips on writing effective e-mail!

A recent study on laptop failure rates from SquareTrade, a PC warranty services provider, had some unsettling results: one in three laptops is likely to catastrophically fail within three years. But not all laptops are created equal, and some are more reliable than others. Here are the results among top manufacturers, from worst to best:

9. HP: They may be the laptop market share leader, but nearly 26% of their units failed within the three year study.

8. Gateway: The Acer subsidiary didn’t fare much better, with a failure rate of 23.5%

7. Acer: At #3 in overall sales, Gateway’s parent company was only marginally more reliable at 23.3%

6. Lenovo: A 21% failure rate from the Chinese-owned giant isn’t what you’d call inspiring.

5. Dell: Make fun of their ads and criticize their business practices all you want, but the oft maligned 2^nd place manufacturer was found to be more reliable than their top competitors, coming in at 18.3%.

4. Apple: They’re hip, attractive, innovative, and popular, but Mac Books aren’t immortal. Their 17.4% failure rate puts them in the middle of the pack.

3. Sony: Sony Vaio laptops aren’t cheap, but you get what you pay for with only a 16.8% incidence of crashing.

2. Toshiba: In recent years, they’ve lowered price without sacrificing quality: only a 15.7% chance of becoming a doorstop.

1. Asus: While not quite as much of a household name as many of the PC makers on this list, the quietly dominant Taiwanese company produces components for HP and Apple, and their own units experienced the lowest failure rate of all, edging out Toshiba with a healthy 15.6%.

Source: http://www.squaretrade.com, 2009

Spyware, the sneaky, unwanted bits of junk that lurk in the corners of your hard drive observing your behaviors and slowing down system performance, has become a serious problem in modern computing. A study by prominent security firm Webroot found that 80 percent of business computers are infected with pieces of spyware. It is not uncommon for techs to find dozens of types of spyware on a single system! Some infections become so numerous and severe that the only remedy is a costly system wipe or even complete replacement. What’s worse, most spyware generates bothersome pop-up ads while using the web and more malevolent varieties can even result in identity theft.

For the most part, this pain and expense is unnecessary. While over 80% of businesses install antivirus protection on their systems, only 43% have implemented a credible form of spyware production. Most spyware sneaks onto systems through spam e-mail and questionable websites with flashy banner ads (we’ve all seen “you’re our 1 millionth visitor! Click here to claim your prize!”). After a few years of observing such sneaky tricks, most internet users are too savvy to fall into the traps, but it still happens—mostly during employees’ personal use of internet resources.

If employers want to substantially reduce the impact of spyware on their companies, in addition to blocking spam, they should publish and enforce an acceptable use policy for employee internet access. Two-thirds of large companies actively monitor email and Internet use by their employees, but not many small businesses do. If you find your systems weighed down with the burden of spyware, network security and monitoring packages like those available through Responza can diagnose and cleanse your resources and make sure they stay spy free.

Every business needs a plan for comprehensive disaster recovery. But plan development is neither quick nor cheap, and many entrepreneurs try to succeed without one. It’s best to have a complete plan, though it’s better to have a few crucial pieces in place than nothing at all. If a power surge blows out a server, could you recover? Even a basic online backup system could ease some of the pain. If the thought of developing a disaster plan leaves you overwhelmed, Responza can help. A small investment now can save money or even your entire business down the road.

The most common business disaster is data loss brought on by causes like human error, hardware failure, natural disasters, and theft. But it’s easy to recover with a backup solution in place. Here are a few steps to ensure you find the right one for your company’s needs:

1. Know your data. What do you have, where is it, and what is most important?
2. Consider your backup options. Are they offsite, secure, and available 24/7?
3. When outsourcing backup, choose a provider like Responza that offers constant security, monitoring, and support.
4. Do a run-through of the recovery process. Backup is nothing without recovery, so make sure you’re familiar with how to retrieve your files.
5. Review data regularly. Anything new to add to your backups?

In an emergency, things you take for granted like accessible contact information and reliable communication methods could disappear. If a storm took out your telecom or made your office inaccessible, could you stay in business?

1. Decide how to continue intercompany communication beyond your office. Cell phones are most common, but also be aware of web services like instant messaging and Gmail.
2. Make arrangements for incoming calls. Consider a Voice over IP (VoIP) system that will make forwarding office lines to other numbers possible.
3. Create contact lists that aren’t tied to your servers. Upload them to a secure public website or just make an old fashioned paper copy.

Even the best laid disaster plans will crumble if your staff isn’t on board and well informed.

1. Identify the most critical business functions to restore and decide who will handle the restoration.
2. Specifically designate an alternate work site, whether a different office space or simply having everyone work from home.
3. Make sure each employee has a complete version of your disaster plan available to them at all times and review it regularly.

Crisis management is not a question of if you will need a plan, but when you will need it. But with a little foresight and some help from the IT disaster pros at Responza, you’ll have nothing to fear.

Is your small business server running at it’s best? Microsoft has a free tool to help you find out. It will automatically look at your server configuration and present to you a list of issues to review.
The Windows SBS Best Practices Analyzer examines the server and collects configuration information from many sources including:

• Active Directory Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI)
• Registry
• Metabase

If you’re running SBS 2003, click here

If you’re running SBS 2008, click here

If your small business uses a Microsoft Exchange Server, you can delay delivery of an e-mail. Here’s how you can delay delivery of all messages by having them held in the Outbox after you click Send:
^{Note: These steps were created specifically for use with Outlook 2007}

Delay delivery of a single message

1. In the message, click Options.
2. Under Delivery options, select the Do not deliver before check box, and then click the delivery date and time you want.

Delay delivery of messages to a specific person or group

1. On the Tools menu, click Rules and Alerts, and then click New Rule.
2. Under the heading Start from a blank rule, select Check messages after sending, and then click Next.
3. Under Step 1: Select condition(s) list, check the box that says sent to people or distribution list.
4. Below that box, under Step 2: Edit the rule description, click the blue underlined words (should say people or distribution list).
5. Select the contacts you’d like to delay sending messages to, then click Next.
6. Under Step 1: Select action(s), check the box that says defer delivery by a number of minutes.
7. Below that box, under Step 2: Edit the rule description, click the blue underlined words (should say a number of).
8. A little window should pop up that says Deferred Delivery. Enter the number of minutes, then click OK.
9. If you’d like to set any exceptions, click the boxes that apply. Follow the same rules as above. Click Next.
10. Under Step 1, type in a name for the rule. Make sure the box that says Turn on this rule is checked, then click Finish.

If you’ve been working with computers for any length of time, you know computers aren’t invincible. Hard drives crash, data gets lost, and it costs a good chunk of money to fix the issue.

Responza specializes in mission-critical data recovery for businesses like yours. We have IT experts who specialize in virtualization and backup.
The long-term solutions we offer could save your business thousands in recovery costs, but if all you need right now is a quick fix for a crashed hard drive, here are a few free tools:

TestDisk^* – cgsecurity.org
^*Only good for recovering lost partitions and making non-bootable partitions bootable again.

PC INSPECTOR File Recovery – www.pcinspector.de
supports the FAT 12/16/32 and NTFS file systems. Includes a ton of great features.

Recuva – www.recuva.com
The only freeware that can do a “deep scan” of your drives for lost files. It can take hours, but may turn up more missing data than the other options out there.

When you think of saving a few bucks, does printing come to mind? Well, perhaps it should.
Printing is a massive cost to small businesses. Here are ways you can save on printing costs:

• Unplug printers. Fine Line Pacific did this one of their bigger machines and cut their printing costs by 1/3 with no reduction in business service.
• Make printers less ‘available’. Responza did this by moving our HP printer into a corner office, away from the team. No one makes the walk and we save trees.
• Document management. Instead of renting out space to hold a warehouse full of documents, why not store it all on a simple disk drive? Could save hundreds, if not thousands.

Do you have any printing tips? Feel free to share them below!

As for performance, I think Microsoft is going to surprise people. And if you’re working for an enterprise that hasn’t upgraded to Vista because it won’t run acceptably on your existing PCs, you’ll want to look again at Windows 7.
– Paul Thurrott, Supersite for Windows

Small business owners need a no-hassle, secure OS. Windows 7 is just that. Here are 5 benefits you’re sure to enjoy:

1. Improved Wi-Fi connectivity – Say goodbye to those woeful days of sitting in an airport, trying to find a signal. Windows 7’s Virtual Wi-Fi allows you to connect to multiple networks simultaneously, allowing you greater flexibility and easier connectivity.
2. Cut costs with “XP Mode” – All your old software and hardware will work fine thanks to the new compatibility mode in Windows 7. This saves your business the expense of forced upgrades.
3. Improved Security – Bitlocker on Windows 7 makes it easy to encrypt sensitive data on your computer.
4. Energy Efficient – This leaner, more efficient OS saves you money and is better for the environment too.
5. Improved Useability – Of course, we can’t forget the awesome new taskbar in Windows 7. The ability to peek at opened windows just by mousing over the icons works really well and saves you time. You can also quickly access your files with the jump lists.

If you’ve been disappointed by Vista in the past, now is the time for your redemption. Give Windows 7 a chance. You won’t be disappointed.