Category Archives: Computers

1 Year Blogging

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Well this year is now exactly 1 year old.  My first entry was on the date back in 2008.  It has been an interesting year.  I expected to blog much more than I actually did.  I have so many ideas but many of them are already written by someone else much better than I could do it.  Then other times I have a great idea for something that I want to share with the world, but I either don’t completly form the idea and I figure that I would rather wait, or else I forget about it by the time I get to a computer.  I have tried to bring up interesting topics, such as my series on MLM‘s and my series on computers.

I have found some interesting stats while I have been doing this.  First off my article on How to select a laptop, is by far the most popular one I have ever wrote.   It has been the most popular article EVERY week after I wrote it.  Other entiries also have stayed popular for months, such as my article about Gold Prices, and one about a new Nigerian Scam that they tried on me.

If you do not subscribe to this blog I hope that you would.  I have a lot of ideas and I am also working on blogging about my new business I am working on.  I would love for people to follow along tell me what they think.

Thank you to all of my readers, I hope nothing but success for you in the next year.

I found a great deal on a laptop.

Computers, Marketing, , , , , , , ,

The other day one of my friends who also own a computer store emailed me that he purchased a large number of great laptops for a special price. He does this about once a week so I thought little of it. Well on Friday a customer came by and was interested in getting a laptop so I told her about the one my friend had. She said it sounded good and she ordered one. MSI LaptopI left an hour later and picked up one unit from my friend.

On Saturday morning my customer came back and I opened the laptop for the first time, and I was instantly blown away. For the price that I paid this laptop was the best one that I had ever seen. First off it was made by MSI, my last laptop was also MSI, and their quality is very high, they are one of the main OEM makers of laptops, and they make laptops for many other companies. Next it was a Pearl White color, this is the favorite laptop color of most women, and this customer also really loved it. For specs it had a Dual Core T3400 Pentium CPU on the Centrino Platform, this means it is fast and saves on power. It had 2GB of DDR2 RAM, a 250GB Hard Drive, Gigabit Ethernet, Modem, Wireless Lan, DVD burner, memory card reader, and a 14.1 inch wide screen all running Vista Home Premium. This is all fairly standard, but what made it stand out was the extra features, a built in 1.3MP webcam, the fingerprint reader (So you can log in to things with just your fingerprint), and support for Bluetooth and simcards. But the best part of the whole thing was the price, only $545. I looked online for another one like this and I could not find one with all these features and such a good price.

If you are interested in getting one send me an email at dragon@emeraldcomputers.com there are a few left. If they are gone there may be a different one that is also a good deal.

The biggest problem now is that my wife asked me twice today to buy her one of these.

The best way to have a good idea is to have many ideas.

Business, Computers, concepts, Entrepreneurship, Inspiration, Investment, Marketing, MLM, Money

idea_bulbI saw this topic on a TV today, was the quote of the day.  I was thinking about it for a while and it is so true.  So many people come up with one idea and they focus on that way too long.  And for most people that idea is to work for some big company.  Once in they are in that job the company gives them a ladder that they start to climb…. work two years then get a bit more power and a bit more money, then do it all over again.  It is just enough to keep people doing it yet never enough to let them do anything else.  This works great for the people who own the company.

See I have never had a day job, I have only had businesses.  I also have make it clear to many people that I am an entrepreneur and I have surrounded myself with people that are also the same way.  This lets me get on the ground floor with some great ideas, it also give me access to many great ideas and from that I can select the best ones and work on them to make them even better.

In the last three months, I have joined an MLM company that helps people do loan modifications, I have started a new company that sells online marketing, I have been developing a concept that lets us help people create instant online stores that sell my products.  And just this week I joined another MLM that has a great marketing idea to get people more web traffic.  I also made adjustments to my main company, Emerald Computers, I have lowered prices and automated things much more. On top of this I have discovered some tools that make my life much better and more profitable, and I have connected with some people who also do the same thing for me.

So all of this means that I am much better positioned to have wealth flow towards me.  With all of these ideas at least one of them should be a home run and make my fortune this year.

The best way to have a good idea is to have many ideas.

Computers, concepts, Entrepreneurship, Inspiration, Investment

I saw this topic on a TV today, was the quote of the day.  I was thinking about it for a while and it is so true.  So many people come up with one idea and they focus on that way too long.  And for most people that idea is to work for some big company.  Once in they are in that job the company gives them a ladder that they start to climb…. work two years then get a bit more power and a bit more money, then do it all over again.  It is just enough to keep people doing it yet never enough to let them do anything else.  This works great for the people who own the company.

See I have never had a day job, I have only had businesses.  I also have make it clear to many people that I am an entrepreneur and I have surrounded myself with people that are also the same way.  This lets me get on the ground floor with some great ideas, it also give me access to many great ideas and from that I can select the best ones and work on them to make them even better.

In the last three months, I have joined an MLM company that helps people do loan modifications, I have started a new company that sells online marketing, I have been developing a concept that lets us help people create instant online stores that sell my products.  And just this week I joined another MLM that has a great marketing idea to get people more web traffic.  I also made adjustments to my main company, Emerald Computers, I have lowered prices and automated things much more. On top of this I have discovered some tools that make my life much better and more profitable, and I have connected with some people who also do the same thing for me.

So all of this means that I am much better positioned to have wealth flow towards me.  With all of these ideas at least one of them should be a home run and make my fortune this year.

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Market Share of FireFox

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firefox-logoI was an early user of FireFox, but FireFox version 1 would simply not render many sites that I used.  So I waited.  In the summer of 2007 I decided to try Ubuntu as the only OS on my main computer for a while, and for 6 months I only could use FireFox, by this time they were on version 2 and it worked as well as IE did on my laptop, so I installed FireFox on the laptop also.  It was great.  When I moved back to the US I had left my computer behind so I was back to XP, and then Vista but I still installed FireFox right away.  Then in the third quarter of 2008 they came out with version 3, and my gosh, it is now far BETTER than IE by every measure I tested it with.  I now use it about 95% of the time, there are still a few banks that will not allow FireFox to log in, and of course some Microsoft Sites.

So after all of this I decided to see how many people use FireFox as a percent of the whole.  First I looked at my sites, a very biased view of the world.  On my Treasure Page, a page that existing customers go to the number is 58% for FireFox and 40% for IE.  This number is interesting because we install FireFox on all of the computers we sell, we put both of the icons next to each other, so this means that if given the choice most people choose FireFox.    On our main page for selling computers recent numbers show that 37% use FireFox and 57%  use IE, this is much more like a random sample of the public.

So I decided to look around, and I found that the Global Market Share of FireFox is a bit over 20%.  There is a good company that tracks all of this here.  They have found something interesting also, that on weekends and on holidays the FireFox market share is MUCH higher than on weekdays.  This is mostly due to the fact that most people are forced to only use IE when they are at work, they usually don’t have the ability to install new browsers, and most companies don’t use firefox.  So the numbers for residential usage is probably much closer to 30-35% while the number for corporate usage of FireFox is probably in the single digits.  I hope the good people at FireFox will notice this and try to focus their efforts on fixing it.  It is obvious that people who have the choice choose FireFox, and at least 30% of the public cares enough about the added benefit of FireFox to install it and use it.  I figure at least 50% of the web surfing public can not figure out how to install it or does not even know that it exists.  FireFox then should also work with the OEM Computer Companies to get them to install it.

The only thing I really miss is that in IE I could hit Control-N and it would open a new window with the current window and its history intact, in FireFox it simply opens a new window with your home page.  I have heard other techie people talk about this also, but still there is no option for this.  The best fix I have found is an Add-On program called Duplicate Tab, it basically does this and a few other things.

Tell me what you think, reply down below.

Is it ok to steal?

Business, Computers, concepts, Government, Investment, Money, Politics, The World, , , , ,

I own a computer store.  It is fairly small and not so profitable recently.  In fact as our products have turned into a commodity it is very hard to make money any longer.  But there are other places that sell computers, CostCo, Dell, Best Buy. These companies are big, they make tons of money and are very rich.  They have tons of extra inventory just sitting there on their shelves.  Now if I went out and decided to take some of that inventory from their store and put it on my shelves, it would help my employees keep their jobs, it would help my store make more money this month and it would be totally illegal and immoral.  It is there stuff, I have no right to it.

But this is exactly what our government does but on a much grander scale.  In fact if you are the big store, and you don’t them steal from you Joe Biden calls you unPatriotic.  Yea if you are one of the people who will benifit from this plan I can see how you may support the Obama/Biden plan of taking more from the people who really make this economy work and giving it to the people who are middle class, or even those who choose not to work.

If you have any ethics you must see that this is simply another form of theft, the problem is that we have lived with it for about 63 years and people have become so used to it that they have become dependant on it.  If you make more than 120k per you, or maybe even less you should expect your taxes to quickly go up.  Obama says 250k in many speaches, 200k during his infomercial, and biden said 150k a few times last week, but now other written items from they say 120k.  Once he takes office, if he wins, I think it will quick drop to 100k or 75k.

On a side note Bush made some tempoary tax cuts that were fairly large and they expire in 2010.  When Obama says that he will not raise taxes to the middle and lower class he simply means that he will not add any new taxes BUT he is fully intending for the Bush tax cuts to be allowed to expire, in effect raising taxes, but HE did not do it….it has long been set in motion.   This slick concept is not caught by most people.

Social Security is the worst kind of theft.  It is a huge program that simply will NOT keep working much longer.  Basically you have a shrinking group of hard working young people who are mostly working pay check to pay check hardly getting by.  Then you have a growning group of older people who have had 40 years of high income earning, they mostly own a house and they have on average 10 times the assests of the first group.  Who should give who money.   Well, you guessed it, our government has it backwards, the hard working poorer working people give their money to the retired people who sit around and lead a life of leasure for the most part.  The worst part is that they feel entitled to this life because that is what they have been told for decades, it is illogical and is the main cause to our problems but there is little that can be done to fix it.

The Election is Close, the world is on pause.

Business, Internet, Politics,

I have noticed that the last two weeks have really been slow.  I have talked to many other people who are in business and they are all slow.  Basically everyone is focused on the election.  I think that many people are also just waiting to see what happens.

I saw that on TV Gun sales are up 3 fold in Texas, simply because people belive that if Obama wins that he will quickly try to put restrictions on guns and the prices will skyrocket.  I also feel personally that if Obama wins we will see one of the largest sale offs in the stock market ever.  People who bought stock long ago and still have a gain will sell now to pay the current capital gains tax because who knows how high it will be when 2009 starts.  I think that at least 1000 point of the decline is due to this pressure.

At this point there is a lot of momentium going towards McCain but I think that it may be too late.  I do think that the election will be closer than anyone thinks.  I still hope, for our nations sake that McCain gets elected but in the history of our nation when the economy is bad the Party that is office looses.  For McCain it is like getting down to the river and you are holding an gut shot straight draw, while the other guy already has a made hand, McCain really needs to get lucky to pull this one out.

Back when the depression started Hoover was in Office, everything that caused the depression happened before he got there, but it hit.  He was the first highly successful business person that was president and he did a lot to get our nation back on track, but they still kicked him out, and replaced him with FDR, a guy who could not even walk by himself and knew almost nothing about economics.

McCain knows MUCH more than Obama about how to fix this nation, and about the economy.  But it does not matter, many of the voters don’t care who is more qualified, they simply want to elect something different.  Of all the republicans in that ran McCain was the MOST liked by the left, until this year when it started to become clear he was the choice of the republicans, they then started to find reasons to not like him.

I take comfort in the knowledge that no matter who wins the president will have the power to do very little.  If Obama wins the election his hands will be tied during his term and there is little chance that even a small amount of what he wants to be done will be done.  You can’t roll out huge tax cuts, huge new programs and still balance the budget, expecally in a down turned economy.  No one can.  If he gets elected this will be the years we will all look back to where our contry really goes down the wrong path.  The only solution is smaller government, and Obama does not want our government to be smaller, he wants it to be much larger.  To control much more, to be taking your freedoms all over the place, and to be stealing your hard earned money to give it to someone else.

Go vote, and when you do think about who you are voting for.  Just that person and what they want to do.  Do you want freedom or do you want big government?

New eBiz started, great so far.

blogs, Business, Computers, Entrepreneurship, Marketing

Hello.    I am working on a new and exciting entry into the world of eBiz right now.  I have been putting much of my attention on this project.  So far the results have been great.  I have built a simple site that talks about what we are doing.  We then hired a few commission only employees, gave them a stack of leads and a phone and they have been out killing it.  We have been operational now for 4 days and so far the sales have totalled over $1900.  We also have almost $2000 more in pending sales where people have said yes already.

With a 30% payout to the sales force, and a 20% cost for what we provide this looks like it will be a good deal for all of us.  I also feel that we are providing something that people really need.

More on this later, I have so much that I want to blog about but my time has really been limited.  The main factor is that about 10 days ago I injured my leg and it is very hard to sit at a computer for more than an hour or so, and when I do I usually focus on the most important work that needs to be done.  I am used to being on my PC about 10 hours a day and my recent average has only been 2 hours a day.   It is ok when I sit on a sofa but I simply don’t have a laptop I like right now, sold them all.

14 Choices

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My Choices and Why.

You have the freedom of choice, you can choose who you do business with, where you shop and what you think and believe.  Every dollar you spend is a vote for the way that company does business, are you rewarding a company for having good prices or good policies.  The choice is yours.  The important part is the WHY, why do you choose to do these things.  It is very interesting to see what people pick and why they pick it.

Please post your what who and why on these following subjects.  If you pick more than one please state them.  Some are very important and some are trivial but will shine insight on how you think.

My Choice of Political Party (If none state why)
My Choice of Operating System
My Choice of Religion
My Choice of Grocery Store
My Choice of General Merchandise Store
My Choice of Vehicle
My Choice of Housing Type
My Choice of Primary Bank
My Choice of Brokerage Account
My Choice of Gas Station
My Choice of ISP
My Choice of TV Service (Bonus Entry)
My Choice of Wireless service
My Choice of Cell phone
My Choice of Drinking Water
My Choice of Browser (Bonus Entry)

If you fill this out and make a post with your answers please post a comment on the blog where this all started, at http://capitalactive.wordpress.com/2008/10/13/14-choices/ so that everyone can read it, if you don’t have a blog of your own then put your whole answer as a comment on that blog.  Simply copy and paste the above section to start your blog, then copy the subjects again and answer them.  Also use the tag “14 Choices”.

My Choice of Political Party (If none state why)
Republican.  I generally think that government should be smaller.  I think that the republican party still stands for smaller government.  Democrats stand for more services but more taxes, which is why people who need more services often vote democrat.  In general both parties mostly are the same on most issues.

My Choice of Operating System
I choose Windows Vista.  If you asked me a year ago it was Ubuntu, and before than windows xp.  The reason I use vista is because it is more stable than XP, able to run more things than XP, and simply works better than XP.  The reason I don’t use Ubuntu any longer is because I needed to be compatible with windows to run all the software I need for my business, and the games I like.  Too many things still did not run with Ubuntu, but as an OS for stability, and fun/ease of use Ubuntu was by far the best OS.  If I was making a computer to for office us and the internet I would go with Ubuntu for sure.

My Choice of Religion
I am a Christian. I have been my whole life, I grew up in it.  Mostly I still choose to be because I think it is the right choice for my life.  I think that it is true, and that Jesus actually did die for my sins.  It also gives a good way to live and a great community to be a part of.

My Choice of Grocery Store
This is complex for me, I choose different stores for different reasons.  I like a local store called LeeLee’s for asian food.  I also shop often at Fry’s (Owned by Kroger) for the sales, but the stuff that is not on sale is often too much money.  I also buy some items from walmart but often they are not a good deal on food.  My favorite store recently is Fresh and Easy.  They have great quality and they make home made meals you can just microwave, and if you use the coupons they always give out they really are cheap.

My Choice of General Merchandise Store
Well we find ourselves at Walmart at least 4 times a week.  The main reason is that they are only 200 yards away from our house.  I like target a bit more but they are simply too far, and they have too small of a food section, there is no super target near where I live.  Walmart seems to have at least 80% of the items I am looking for and usually at a good price.  They also usually have a good amount of stuff on clearance, I have noticed that prices change a lot there and there are a lot of things that are usually too much.

My Choice of Vehicle
The Vehicle I drive is a Pontaic Aztek.  It is an odd vehicle.  It is what is called a cross over.   I originally bought it because it had huge cargo space, good gas milage and it was high profile so I could see over all the cars out there.  I also really liked how unique it was and it was very comfortable for me to drive.  It has been, by far, the best vehicle I have ever owned, but it is getting older and I should replace it soon.

My Choice of Housing Type
I live in a nice large house, in the suburb of a Major US city.  I love close enough that I can go downtown is under 15 minutes yet far enough that it is nice and yuppie.  I bought a house larger than I needed so that I could rent rooms out if I wanted, and also have room for a large office and a workshop.  I don’t really care for houses too much because there is no community, no one here talks to each and I have only talked with my neighbors a few times.

My Choice of Primary Bank
My primary bank is really a Credit Union.  They are cheap, no fees and such, and they usually have no line or a very small line.  I also banks with Wells Fargo, US Bank and B of A just to have flexibility but none of them are my main bank.

My Choice of Brokerage Account
I have tried a few out there but I have stuck with eTrade for quite a while.  They have great software that gives you a ton of information.  Some other places out there have been advertising better prices for trade, and also have built great software tools so I may try them.

My Choice of Gas Station
By far I like QT (QuickTrip) the best.  They usually have good gas prices but the reason I like them is that their gas seems to work better in my Aztek.  I get better mileage when I use their fuel vs most other brands. I also really like their drinks, they have a ton of unique and very good drinks, including a Horchata shake, and a Hot Milk drink, both only $1.09 for a very large cup.

My Choice of ISP
Again the choice is clear, I choose Cox, they have the best service, best uptime and best prices.  Internet over Cable is always much better than DSL.

My Choice of TV Service
For this I also use Cox, they have a fairly good Digital Converter with a nice list of HD channels.  I have been looking into Dish Network recently, they have even more HD, and more channels for an even better price, the problem is that I have three other TV’s on analog that may not work, I will find out soon.

My Choice of Wireless service
I use T-mobile. They have far and wide coverage, great customer service and a plan that perfectly fits my lifestyle.  I have a family plan with 4 phones, that has unlimited texting, unlimited nights, unlimited weekends, unlimited in network calling, and each phone can pick their 5 favorites and call for free but the killer feature is that when I am near a hotspot (such as at home) my phone will connect using the Wi-Fi and all those minutes are free.  Because of so many free minutes I am on a plan with only 700 any time minutes, and we have never used more than 400 of them.  I get all of this for only $140 including taxes, and I have sub leased two of my phones for a total of $80 per month so my out of pocket cost is only $60 per month.   Quite nice.

My Choice of Cell phone
I have chosen the Samsung Katalyst, I have been a huge fan of Samsung phones for a few years now, they simply are much easier for me to understand.  I also love the slide feature, and the Wi-Fi compatibility that is a must for my service.  It has a nice crisp 2.1 inch screen, and has a great camera and a great music player with good sound.  Call quality and battery life is also excellent.

My Choice of Drinking Water
I choose Reverse Osmosis Water.  I like the clean taste.  I also like the fact that there is no fluoride in it.  I think fluoride is really a bad thing.  I get it from the local water store down the road and they charge only $1 for a 5 Gallon refill.  They have filters that are larger than my car and the taste is great.  I often fill up bottles with it and take it while I drive.

My Choice of Browser
I have chosen Firefox, it works great, and is much more stable than IE.  It also shows the websites better.  It has a ton of features I can set and generally work well.

Thanks for reading, be sure to post your answers also.

My new website

Business, Computers, Internet, Marketing, , , , , ,

Last most I got back into the business of creating websites.  I did this mostly because the hardware part of my business has gotten a bit slow recently.  I did a few websites for some of my customers.  There are still thousands of small businesses just in my city that STILL do not have websites.  It is crazy.

Anyway after doing a few of these sites I looked at my own site.  It was version 3 of the Emerald Computers site, I have had it for about 2 years.  It was very limiting because I was in a fixed width and fixed height template.  It limited how much content I could have on any one page.  I decided it did not look good enough for a company that was going to create websites, add to that it simply did not generate sales.  So I spent 3 days designing and building the New Emerald Computers site.  I found a nice template that I liked, but the menu was simply too small so I created a pull down menu, for the first time.  I also did a few other firsts on this website.  I built the entire site without using tables AT ALL.  Tables are so lame and hard to work with.  I also made the entire site with proper CSS, no more setting fonts in the text.  Something else I did, for the fourth time is that I divided the entire site up using PHP.  I have found that this makes it SO much easier to edit a site.  Everything is server side includes.  Most of the pages are 5-8 different PHP files spliced together, the server does all the work so the user can not even tell.  But what this lets me do is change just one file and all of my pages are changed.  Yes I KNOW this is not new, in fact this was been going on for 10 years, but I have only used it for 2 years.

On sunday I decided that the site was better than my old one, even though only 60% of the content was written so I deleted the old one and uploaded the new one.   I did something on this page I never did on any of my other pages, I put a call to action at the bottom of all the services pages.  A visitor simply can fill out a short form and then I can all them and set up a service call, it also has a link to our contact page.    I just did it because I thought it would be nice, but to my huge surprise I have had over 10% of the people who visited this page fill out the form, and I called them tuesday and two have been converted into sales!!!  WOW.  On top of that my volume of phone calls is up over 50%, with almost half of the calls mentioning my website.  This is crazy, I did not expect results this fast or this good.  Google still has not even indexed the new site.  I am working quickly to get the rest of the site down.  Yesterday I wrote a huge page about dropshipping, and I also wrote one about how to upgrade a computer.

I hope this keeps up, I will keep my readers informed.  By the way this is why I have been fairly quite on the blog, I am too busy with this to blog much, even though some really important stuff is going on.