Tuesday, February 23, 2010

So many computers, so few back-ups...


It's been 20 years since I first started using computers for work, and looking back I find it amazing how much these machines have infiltrated themselves into our lives. In 1990, my computer was a Mac Classic with a 10 MEGABYTE hard drive, 4 MEG of memory, and a floppy disc drive. I used it mostly for creating letters and simple, one-sheet flyers, minimal email, and playing archaic games. By 2000 that exploded into rich email, sophisticated graphics programs and web browsing. Today, I have five email accounts, three websites, write for three blogs, and have a 300 Gig hard drive that is almost full. All of my email, graphics, programs, etc. sit on this six-year-old hard drive. As computers go, this is an antique - and as such, can die at any second, for no apparent reason.

Luckily, I back everything up constantly. I've been around the block enough times to know that computers can and will destroy everything you have on a whim. But I've been careful, and have lost almost nothing over the years. The secret to my success is keeping everything backed up.

Most people don't even think of this. Most people seem to think, if the computer goes just call a computer guy, pay the $400 and have him restore all your files. Most people find out $400 later that this doesn't usually turn out very well.

With some simple, inexpensive systems in place, you can keep from losing everything. Here are a few:

1. Backup your email weekly. Especially the email you use for business. If your email database, your hard drive or your operating system becomes corrupt, you will lose everything, and it's not retrievable. Outlook, Entourage, Mac Mail - they all have a simple way to save a compressed copy of your entire email database. Save this file remotely...not on your computer...and you will be safe.

2. Use "Super Duper" or a similar program to copy the entire contents of your computer to a remote hard drive. This will save all of your files plus all of your programs, settings, passwords etc. Save it to an external Firewire or USB drive, and do this every time you have a major update to your system or add a new program. If your drive dies, you can give the external to the computer guy, and he can format your new drive exactly the way your old one was set up.

3. Save all your bookmarks from your web browser. This is easy to do, and will save you a lot of frustration if your browser fries. You can also save your bookmarks online at sites like Delicious.

4. Save files often as you work on them. I can't tell you how many times people have cried to me that they lost a half an hour or more of work because their program quit on them and they hadn't saved. My response is always the same: SAVE OFTEN. I hit the save button about once every three minutes, by habit.

5. Use a program such as Retrospect to auto-backup your files. There are several good programs that do this - you set it up once to automatically make a backup of all your computer's or server's files to an external drive, then let it run on its own. We have ours set up to backup every night at 10pm, and we switch out the external drive every other week. The drive not in use comes home with me - so that if there's ever a disaster or theft at the office, we still have a backup of our entire server.

6. Too much is never too much. I have one computer at home and one at work. Between the two, I have two Firewire drives, a USB drive, three USB flash drives, and a stack of CDs with backups on them. When my home computer died a few weeks ago, I didn't have to worry about a thing because I had a two-day old backup of the entire hard drive on my Firewire. I also save copies of the most important files to my ftp site - so if some catastrophe wipes out all my machines, I still have a backup on the Internet.

Remember to save often and backup frequently, and you'll save yourself a lot of time, money and heartaches in the long run.

Posted by Christopher Pinto, Creative Director

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Toyota Recall and the Used Car Business

This post is by Guest Blogger Tommy Gibbs, President of Tommy Gibbs & Associates specializing in Leadership Skills and Used Vehicle Management. Tommy Gibbs has over 23 years experience as a New Car Dealer. Today, Tommy focuses on increasing dealers' used car business through unique and proven methods.

Never in our history have we seen a deal like this Toyota thing. It proves the point that I’ve been trying to make that you cannot hang your hat on your new car franchise and you cannot stock primarily your own brand. Any Toyota dealer that has mostly used Toyotas in stock has a tough hill to climb right now.

First, I don’t think there is going to be a run on the bank so to speak with Toyota owners wanting to dump/trade their Toyotas. Even if you’re a Toyota dealer you’re not going to see a lot of these people showing up at your door step. If they bought a new Toyota recently they may show up wanting the dealer to buy it back and that may be the biggest can of worms for the dealers to deal with.

Dealers who don’t have a Toyota franchise will not see these people piling up at the front door either. Most Toyota owners are going to sit tight. Overall they are happy with their product and just want to see Toyota get this thing handled quickly. They are a loyal bunch.
So, what to do if one of the recall vehicles shows up at your front door to be traded? “Walk softly, but be not afraid.”

Sure, any dealer should protect themselves a bit by hitting a used Toyota a little low, but this problem will get fixed and then new and used Toyotas will come back strong. It has been said that Toyota is rich in cash. If that’s true they can advertise and rebate to a point that they grab lost market share back. They have the power to convince the public that all is well.

I think the biggest problem for a non-Toyota dealer is that if they trade a “recall vehicle” then they may be at the end of the line for getting the vehicle fixed.

Do you remember when the sky was falling on SUVs and Pickup Trucks and gas prices went to $4.00 a gallon? Don’t you remember what happened after the panic wore off and gas prices settled down? I advised dealers not to panic and not to dump those SUVS and Trucks in the wholesale market even if it meant letting some of them sit past the 45-60 day mark. I think dealers may have to take this approach with used Toyotas that might be sitting on their lots. In other words, don’t panic.

Dealers have to be careful that they don’t let this recall thing affect their thinking on the entire Toyota brand. Dealers need to get the exact list of the recalled vehicles and make sure their managers know which units are affected.

If I had owned a Toyota store today I would let the public know that their used Toyota is still welcome at my store. If I were a non-Toyota dealer I would do the same thing but, would walk softly on promoting this as you don’t want to offend anyone by putting this Toyota thing in their face. I would probably hit most Toyotas I appraise a bit back of book realizing it may have to sit a bit until this thing gets sorted out.

Ok, that’s my take. Hope to see you at the NADA convention. I'll be hanging out at the vAuto booth, #1631. If you stop by and say hello I'll give you a free copy of my little book titled "The Little Used Car Book." It's full of tips and ideas that will help your used car business.
-Tommy Gibbs for Engelhardt & Partners Automotive Advertising