I have been seriously involved in technology for twenty eight years. I was at Apple Computer for nearly twenty of those years so I have seen technology both from the perspective of a manufacturer and a consumer. One of the things I learned long ago is to not become married to a particular technology to the point that you have no options.
Many computer users will tell you that they have felt like they had no option over the years but to stick to a particular vendor. The truth is that the web and many new technologies have made it easier than ever for you to set up your data so that you own it instead of it being owned by a particular technology or product.
With my history and that lead-in, you might expect this to be a commercial for Apple and its products. That turns out not to be the case, though I do use Apple's computer products alongside with Windows and Linux products.
But focusing on the hardware layer is not the way to give your self the most freedom and protection. The first thing I tell most people is that they need to clean up their email choice. While I have nothing against free email programs, I think you need to make intelligent decisions and consider it carefully if you are going to trust your critical client communications to a free service.
First off while you probably have never heard of POP and IMAP, what you really need to know is that in a world where your email might well be accessed from a home machine, your laptop, and your smartphone, you really need to get a service which supports IMAP.
IMAP is a more modern protocol designed to support multiple computers. Your mail resides both on a server and on your computer. When you switch to a new computer and have IMAP, there is no complex migration unless you have created some local folder. If you leave all you IMAP mail on the servers, once you have entered some basic information, including username and password, your email will be downloaded to you computer.
A few years ago I worked for an email services company Webmail.us. I actually started using their product before I went to work for them. I needed reliable email that could be used across several computers without a problem. Their IMAP mail has continued to work flawlessly for me even after the company became part of Rackspace. You will spend about $120 a year for their email plus a fee for your domain. That $120 can get you enough email accounts for a small workgroup.
Rackspace email is very good email. If you are interested in more about business class email, check out this article I wrote a few years ago. If you are serious about your making certain that your email reaches your clients, you might want to consider using email that is run by people whose only business is email.
I also use Google Standard edition for your domain which includes Gmail. Mostly I use Gmail for my personal correspondence and its chat capability. I also use Google documents though not as much as I once did. I do use the Google Calendar for my scheduling. As note, Gmail can be set up as an IMAP mail account.
Our company, Bluewater GMAC Real Estate, also happens to use a company for email which is a reseller of Rackspace Email. That makes my life easier, and I much prefer that situation to our company IT people running their own email server. I have been there and done that. It is not a good use of resources for a small business.
I use my company email address for internal communication. I use my personal Rackspace account for client communication, and my Gmail account for friends and other communications which are not business critical.
All are IMAP and work with practically any email client and also through browser based access on the web.
I have all the accounts running on eight computers spread across three locations plus my new Droid smartphone. All the email is syncronized across all the devices. The computers include one running Vista, one running Windows 7, one running Ubuntu Linux, another running Windows XP and four Macs running a variety of OSX releases.
I use Thunderbird as my email client in the Windows world. I have Outlook on one machine, but I am not a fan. I stick with Apple's Mail program on the Macs, and on Linux I typically only access my mail by browser though I have used their mail programs at times.
How did this all work when I chose a Droid for my smart cellphone? Actually it worked quite well since Gmail is tightly integrated with the Droid. I got my contacts and Gmail loaded within less than one minute of being handed the phone. When the salesman turned around to take my phone so he could migrate my contacts, I got to tell him that there was no need since I already had it going.
The IMAP based Rackspace email was also a piece of cake to get on my Droid.
Outside of the world of email, I try to save all my documents in rtf format or rich text format. That way it is very easy to use them on any platform where I have access.
Deciding on what computer to buy can be a matter of budget or personal taste. I convinced my daughter to buy an Imac at Christmas. A few weeks later I bought my wife and myself two Windows 7 laptops, but there are reasons that I will still use Macs even after getting a very fast i-7 laptop.
The Droid has proved very useful both at working real estate and at handling our continuing family obligations.
For me getting the Droid was driven mostly by AT&Ts continuing poor reception in our Southern Outer Banks location. With devices like the Droid it is easy to stay on top of your email and messages.
So far, Windows 7 has yet to crash on me, and the Droid is doing well. Both are helping me keep my data free from some seriously proprietary software.
I used the Droid at lunch the other day to forward a counter offer to a client.
All that is good since I don't want to be fooling around with technology as the beach season opens, and we get our first taste of spring.
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