I’m going to help others share this information, it’s not secretive, yet so few know about it.

Assuming you have an office, or a student computer, you want to kit it out with some useful software. It can be costly, your options are: Buy the software outright (costing thousands), Obtain illegal copies of the software (Illegal and often very awkward), or find an alternative.

What would you do?

Let me suggest the alternatives and the answer should be obvious:

Software comparisons

Microsoft Office 2007
(Containing: Microsoft Word, Excel, Outlook, Powerpoint, Publisher and Access)

Openoffice Any version
(Containing: Write, Math, Draw, Impress, Calc and Base)

Both have the same basic functions, word processor, spreadsheet, presentation and database software. Open office is missing it’s version of outlook, but you can use Thunderbird and Lightening.

Openoffice can open and save Microsoft Office documents and most other formats with ease. Microsoft Office can open MS Office documents but not most of Openoffice’s formats.

Microsoft office offer updates for a few years after sale, once this time is over, you need to pay for an upgrade.

Openoffice offer updates and upgrades for life, all included in the cost.

Microsoft office 2003 costs £280 through Amazon
Openoffice costs nothing… ever…

Antivirus

I’ll keep this one simple as I’ve covered this on another blog. My personal experiences are as follows

Norton

£17.99 through Amazon. Seems to have a habit of slowing down PCs. It has also let through the odd virus on my machine. The first thing I, and my IT professional friends and colleagues remove when they arrive at a call-out. You do need a good antivirus, but I wouldn’t recommend this one.

McAffee

£9.99 from Amazon. Works much faster than Norton, but I have had the odd virus get through it’s scanning process.

AVG

Free from Grisoft. (Free for personal non-commercial, around £25 for commercial) If this is going on your home computer, download the free one. If on work, unfortunately you do technically need to pay, however you get your money’s worth. Easy to setup and then just ignore. It runs itself, updates itself and doesn’t slow down computers very much at all. (Except during a scan, but this can be stopped) It’s very good at preventing virus attacks and has never let a virus onto my computer! My other article about virus scanning is here.

For web based solutions, see Joomla, Wordpress (this blog uses it), osCommerce.

For other ideas for software replacements, do a web search for the software name followed by the words ‘open-source’.

You should see some great recommendations from people using this same method of obtaining free software legally.

If you are UK based and really don’t know where to start, speak to Alan Lord at The Open Learning Centre for training and advice. The cost for one of his seminars is around the cost of one virus scanner. Don’t buy it, use AVG and use the money you saved to get some more great information from the Open Learning Centre. Say I sent you

I run my business from a single Laptop. I have insurance in place to replace the laptop it it gets lost or stolen, and I have funds in place to almost instantly replace the laptop or components if for any reason it fails.

My laptop goes everywhere with me, client meetings, sales meetings, holidays, everywhere. There’s no better way to demonstrate the simplicity of my software than to have a working copy right there.

But I’m a pessimist; everytime I leave the house, I assume that someone is going to offer not to stab me in exchange for my laptop. Everytime I go to the toilet, I assume that someone is going to break into my home and steal my laptop, everytime I turn away from my laptop, I assume that the harddrive will make a loud crunching noise as it grinds my data into sawdust. Everytime I leave my hotel room for breakfast, I assume the cleaner is going to run off with my laptop.

If any of this does happen, I’ll have a maximum of three phone calls: Police, Insurance Company, PC World.

I won’t have to change my client’s passwords
I won’t have to report my credit card or anyone elses card as stolen
I won’t have to phone my clients to notify them of the loss
I won’t have to inform my clients to change the passwords they have entrusted me with
I won’t have to scare my clients into changing their bank accounts
I won’t have to ask for copy invoices from suppliers
I won’t have to look up my suppliers and clients details anywhere
I won’t have to inform my bank of the loss
I won’t have to change my internet banking details
I won’t have to scrutinise every transaction in my future bank statements for 6 months
I won’t have to lose the trust and faith my contacts have in me
I won’t have to worry about getting family photos back
I won’t have to find my iTunes invoices and re-download all my tracks
I won’t have to worry about losing days of work, or even hours.
I won’t have to worry about who has access to the data on the laptop and what they can do with it.
I won’t have to worry about lost phone numbers or emails of my biggest clients, or even my smallest ones

In fact if my home and office burn down tonight and I narrowly escape with a single pair of jeans, T-shirt and naturally my wife. I can have my business backup and running as if nothing happened in a couple of hours.

I am entrusted with very sensitive data, I regularly have enough information about my clients to take loans out in their names, open bank accounts or on some occasions even obtain a passport.

But I can live without worrying? And I don’t resort to ignorance like so many [government officials]

Everything I value is backed up.
It is backed up on an external harddrive (£60) in my office, encrypted, secured and locked in a safe.
It is backed up on an external harddrive (£60) at home, encrypted, secured, and locked in a safe.
It is backed up online (£40pcm, part of my reseller web hosting, but can be bought through any good IT or backup company, I can recommend a few)
I make it a policy to not store sensitive information I don’t need.
If I do need it, I use a simple encryption software and hide the encrypted volume so noone even knows to look for it, let alone how to get into it. Once finished, all information is deleted. (open-source software truecrypt £free)
I have £1000 stored in a completely separate bank account for instant laptop replacement (will increase to cover other office-related costs)

This system is simple, reliable, it takes me 10 minutes a day waiting while it updates my Hard drive backups, and costs me £600 per year + £1000 replacement fees (variable for what you need to replace to operate.)

When I go to bed, my laptop stays downstairs packed and ready for the office tomorrow. It’s easy to pick up as I run through the door, not hidden, not locked in a safe, and yet I can sleep soundly.

I don’t offer this as a service, but if you haven’t got something setup, talk to your IT contact, I can recommend a few, it will be one of the most relaxing phone calls you’ll make.

How much information can you afford to lose and where is it going?

I “Borrowed” the following from a geneology web site regarding my surname. (Not the rarest of surnames I’ll admit, but one I’m proud to own)

It’s a vague but interesting history, and one I’d like to share.

Last night I attended an amazing Ecademy meeting in London. The meeting had over 200 attendees each one as fascinating as the last. I wanted to share the information we received from the guest speakers that night as already it has proven to be a valuable tool. I will continue using it in my every day life.

French-Burgess Six Step Belief Change System is designed to help you get out of your own way. It is needed by people who want to improve or completely re-invent themselves. It’s a system which helps with motivation, getting things done, and getting things done better than before.

Step 1 – Choose what it is you want.

In my business, I want to become a better networker, I want to be able to approach strangers more easily and talk to them as I do my own friends.

Focus on what it is you want, not what you don’t want. When you focus on what you don’t want, you tend to get it. I don’t want to run out of money and have to ration food, but for this example, I will rephrase it as: I want to keep making money and clear £xxxx per month to ensure I can buy what I want, when I want.

Step 2 – Audit your thoughts.

Take a piece of paper, head it with the choice above and draw two columns below. Head each column: ‘Helpful Thoughts’ and ‘Unhelpful Thoughts’

Now write down all the thoughts you have about the above goal and put them into one of the columns. Helpful comments are positive comments: ‘I need take on new clients’, ‘I could speak to x about distributing’. Unhelpful comments are negative comments: ‘I haven’t got the money to pay for ….’, ‘I’m no good at talking to strangers’, ‘what if it doesn’t work?’

Step 3 – What iffing.

Look through your helpful and unhelpful thoughts and get to know them and understand where they’re coming from. Now take each unhelpful comment in turn, and convert it into a positive ‘What if’ and write these in the helpful comments box.

i.e.
I am no good at talking to strangers.
becomes:-
I do have a skill for talking to strangers.

What if it doesn’t work
becomes:-
What if it does work?
What if it works very well?

Step 4 – Provide Evidence.

When you use ‘What if ….’ negatively, you provide evidence reinforcing the many reasons why you shouldn’t do something. ‘I always mess up conversations with people’, ‘I always end up being stuck talking to the one person no-one else wants to talk to.’

So do the same with the positive ‘what ifs’ you wrote above. Continue each ‘What if…’ with ‘…because…’

i.e.
I do have a skill for talking to strangers because I do sometimes meet some very interesting and powerful people, I have developed contacts that I know I can rely on and talk to whenever I need help. I have received business from some of these contacts, and have made new contacts because of it.

What if it does work? Because I have worked on projects more complicated than this before, and they worked beautifully. I have helped others with similar projects, and they worked fine. I have had a few people literally throwing money at me for other projects they are interested in.

Step 5 – Experience the new situation.

When you think about negative outcomes, do you envisage them? do you imagine being there, imagine the complaining phone calls, imagine the shame, and imagine people saying negative things about you?

Does that really happen? You’ve seen it so many times, you believe it will actually happen, you almost implant a false memory and provide more reasons not to do something.

Again, in reverse, imagine this ‘what if…’ imagine what would happen if it did work, imagine the congratulations and smiles you get from important people. Imagine those phone calls out of the blue ‘Hi, I’ve been speaking to a client of mine and he said that you are fantastic at …. can we arrange a meeting, I have a job for you.’

Mentally rehearse this scenario, what you see, feel, how you walk, how you stand, how you speak to people. Keep rehearsing this in your head over and over.

You now have a goal, you have an emotional connection with the outcome, one which will help drive you to perform better and achieve more.

Step 6 – Imaginary friends.

Would you normally be more relaxed talking to a one-man-band company face to face or the CEO of a multi-national company?

Which scenario would you perform better in? Which would you present to more effectively? Which would you spend more time preparing for?

Would you perform better if your spouse was there? When your business partner or member of staff is present, would you feel more comfortable or confident?

Would you feel more confident talking to high powered business executives if you were one yourself?

If you’re not something you need to be, imagine you are. Don’t say it, else you’ll be lying and could be locked up. Just imagine it. I feel absolutely comfortable talking to this woman because my business has been around for as long as hers and is doing as well as hers. (Don’t use this one if you are offering you’re about to defend them in a criminal case, or specialise in business rescue loans!)

With these pointers in mind, change your mindset, decide that you can do it and provide evidence for this. Visualise the outcome and keep the feeling in memory. Be who you want to be in any situation and achieve all those things you put off until tomorrow.

6 Step Belief Change Official Document from French and Burgess