Tips, tricks, and secrets: 70 exclusive time-, money-, and lifesavers for your business - Tutorial

Home Office Computing, Dec, 1991 by David Hallerman

Whether or not you want to admit it, your business just couldn't survive without help from others. Assistance often comes knocking in the form of a good trick that you can put into play right away.

Whether the tip is about a product worth buying, a tactic for saving money, or a timesaving way to handle a complex task, it can be a key to getting organized and doing your work faster, better, and less expensively.

That's why we've gathered 70 short tips, tricks, and secrets for running your business and getting the most from home-office technology. The tips come from several sources, including not only HOME-OFFICE COMPUTING's writers and editors but our readers as well. So dip in and try a few tips, or dive in and try them all. You have nothing to lose but your frustration.

MAKE MONEY COUNT

Cheap mail. Using electronic mail is a lot cheaper then you may think. Consider MCI Mail's Preferred Pricing option: For only $10 a month, you can send up to 40 e-mail or fax messages. For more info: MCI Mail, (800) 444-6245.

Fax without a fax. When you need to fax long documents that already exist as files on your computer, but you don't have a fax board, use the MCI Mail, CompuServe, or America Online fax option. You don't need to print and send--or buy a fax device either. Instead, just upload to the service and let them send it.

Laser-printer savings. If you leave your laser printer on all day, it will jack up your electricity bill. So unless it's pressing, wait until the end of the day and print out everything at once. To help you remember what to print, either (a) save everything in a subdirectory or folder called PRINT on the root level of your hard-disk drive; or--for the Mac only--(b) use PrintMonitor to schedule all printing for the time when you plan to turn on your printer.

Find out anyone's credit rating. Want information about your own credit rating, or better, the credit rating of current and potential clients? Here are credit rating firms, which charge a small fee for each request (TRW is free for personal ratings):

* Computer Science Corporation Credit Services, 652 Northbelt, Suite 133, Houston, TX 77060; (713) 878-4840

* Equifax, 1600 Peachtree St. NW, Atlanta, GA 30309; (404) 885-8000

* Trans Union Credit Information Co., 555 W. Adams Blvd., Chicago, IL 60661; (312) 258-171

* TRW Information Services Division, 505 City Parkway W., Orange, CA 92668; (714) 385-7000

How to avoid an IRS audit. No one wants to be audited by the IRS. But since the self-employed are about four times more likely to get audited than others, you'll want to know these four key ways to reduce your audit odds: One, detail charitable deductions. Two, categorize Schedule C expenses exactly. Three, take fewer chances with a higher income. And four, you should prepare your return with a computer.

Getting equipment you can't afford. While there can be significant tax advantages to buying office equipment, what if you can't come up with the money to purchase equipment? Then leasing may make sense for you.

With leasing, you don't have to dole out a large chunk of cash, and the monthly payments are tax-deductible. The lowr initial cash outlay can also give you access to sophisticated equipment that you might not be able to afford. However, your product choices may be limited.

There are two types of leases: operating and financing. An operating lease requires that you return the equipment at the end of the term. A financing lease is designed so that you own the equipment by the end of teh term, and it usually involves additional fees. Financing leases are preferable but not always available.

Cheap computers. If a computer doesn't fail early on, it tends to live a long time. That makes the used-computer market a smart source for high-quality, inexpensive equipment. Know what prices the market will bear before you shop. The hottest source for current used-computer prices is the Boston Computer Exchange's BoCoEx Index. Based on real trading of complete used systems, the BoCoEx Index lists weekly closing prices, along with asking and bidding prices, for many popular brands and models. For instance, two prices from the week ending September 20, 1991: Compaq Deskpro 286 with 40MB hard-disk drive, closing price $800 (ask $1,000, bid $700) and Macintosh SE with 40MB hard-disk drive, closing price $1,025 (ask $1,100, bid $950).

The BoCoEx Index is available through several sources, including CompuServe (GO BCE), the Business Radio Network, the Boston Globe, and Fax Yourself Information ([617]) 542-2345, extension 300). For more info: Boston Computer Exchange, (617) 542-4414.

Speed up your hard-disk drive. Both MS-DOS and the Macintosh operating system save datqa on a disk wherever they find room. The operating system starts writing in the first empty space it finds; if that isn't enough, it jumps to another empty area and continues. This may happen several times in the saving of a given file. When the time comes to call up the file, the drive's read-write head has to search all over the disk to find the data, which slows down reading. However, when data for a given file is saved in contiguous spaces on the disk, calling it up becomes significantly faster. That's why you want a defragmenting utility that physically puts all your cut-apart files into one area on disk. Such programs include Disk Optimizer for MS-DOS and DiskExpress II for the Mac. Genera-purpose utilities and PC Tools or MacTools also include defragmenting modules.