January 3, 2008 by Dan Siegel.

Remember, it’s not if, but when in terms of hard drive crashes. My new Dell computer is an ideal example - new, high tech, etc. And the hard drive died in less than 2 months. Dell immediately shipped a replacement. Fortunately, I use Retrospect for daily complete backups. Once the replacement hard drive was in place, I merely re-installed Retrospect and restored my entire system. It took about 3 hours to recreate the index of files, and about an hour to restore my system. But every program, every document and setting were there, as if I just turned the computer on from the day before. I sighed a huge sigh of relief. So, if you aren’t backing up daily — and with the cheap cost of online backups and/or external hard drives, you should be — you are merely waiting for the crash. It may not happen today, but someday…

 In other words, back up everything all the time. I couldn’t be happier I did.

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December 6, 2007 by Dan Siegel.

It’s hard to believe, but the 2nd What You Didn’t Learn in Law School seminar (from the Managing Partner Development Institute) is just a month away. Ellen Freedman, David Sorin, MaryBeth Pratt and I have revamped the popular program to make it even more informative, with breakout sessions, etc. The program will be held on January 11 and 12, 2008 at the Pittsburgh Marriott. For more information, go to www.managingpartnerinstitute.org.

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December 6, 2007 by Dan Siegel.

Trying to save money is a great idea, in theory. Since I started in business, I used a Pitney Bowes meter. It worked fine, but there seemed to be a charge for just about everything. So, a company named ITS contacted me — it shared my firm’s initials, so it had to be good, right? Well, that’s up for debate. I met with their salesperson and we figured out I would save as much as $200 per year switching to their meter, so I signed on the dotted line. Mistake!

First, there was a problem that the initial postage wasn’t set up right, and then I couldn’t even download the postage. ITS, to its credit, sent a tech person right over and he fixed it. He also assured me a customer service person would call to address my emerging concerns. That was in September, still no call. But the machine worked, even though I had now wasted over an hour of time on the problem (and the value of the time is equivalent to how much I was going to save annually).

Fast forward to November, and I receive an American Express statement with a meter charge that I couldn’t identify. So I called Hassler. Guess what? They didn’t know what it was either, and told me to fax them the statement. More time on my end, but I did it. Plus, I called ITS, spoke to the head of tech support, who promised the president of the company would call me. So far no call.

Today, more than two weeks later, I called Hassler again. After 15 minutes on hold, I hung up, but sent an email to the ITS sales rep asking about the status. After all, on November 29th, she wrote that she had contacted Hassler and said that “They should be getting back to [her] today, or tomorrow at the latest.” Not quite. I just called again and they don’t have a clue what the charge was for, but they will get back to me.

Bottom line, when calculating how much you “save” when switching from a product that works, remember to factor in the value of the time you may spend resolving hassles that arise with the new vendor. In my case, those hassles cost me more in time than I saved.

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August 10, 2007 by Dan Siegel.

The Internet is there, like the air we breathe, right? Wrong. Stuff happens. And then you wait, and twiddle.

This week I learned that lesson. My Internet connection began to slow down, and get slower and slower. So I called Comcast, which is reputed to have excellent customer service for its business customers. They checked my connection, and found nothing wrong. They then promised me that someone would come to my office the following day.

Unfortunately, by the same evening, the Internet connection was dead, and so was my overall ability to communicate (although, Thank God for the Blackberry!). When I called Comcast the next morning (the day of the service call), I was placed into a maze of push this number, then that number, eventually leading to a black hole of “leave your number and someone will call you back.” I’m still waiting.

At 3:30, 30 minutes after the anointed hour, I called Comcast to see where the service person was. A very unconcerned person, who said, “I’m just in a call center,” advised me that my call was scheduled for between 3:30 and 7:30, and he couldn’t do a thing for me — nor did he show the slighest inclination to do anything (except perhaps take a snooze). At 5 o’clock, the repair truck arrived, and two very helpful and pleasant workers quickly discovered that my three month old modem had died. They replaced it, and I was up and running.

The lessons: Comcast business service ain’t so great. Businesses need an alternate way of connecting to the Internet (a Blackberry is OK, but a broadband card would be better).

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July 26, 2007 by Dan Siegel.

I know, we’re all tired of learning how wonderdrugs can enhance our lives, and make us look and feel like we’re years younger. And, of course, how many lotteries have you won? That’s all that’s ever in our spam folders, right? Wrong.

It’s a good idea to read the periodic summary you are (or should be) receiving of the contents of your spam folder. Why? Because spam filters are not perfect, and sometimes they filter email you actually want.

For instance, in the last week, my spam filter determined that one bill, two new client inquiries and an email from a credit card processing company were spam, plus some other newsletters I actually wanted to receive. If I hadn’t read the daily email I receive listing the contents of the folder, I would have missed these items, and probably lost a new client or two — who would have wrongly assumed I just didn’t bother to respond to their inquiries.

I know that Spam isn’t part of my diet, but reviewing email spam probably should be.

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July 15, 2007 by Dan Siegel.

The first What You Didn’t Learn In Law School (two day seminar) sponsored by the Managing Partner Development Institute was by all measures a huge success. As a result, my partners (Ellen Freedman, Mary Beth Pratt and David Sorin) and I are planning the next Institute, this time for Pittsburgh. The tentative dates are January 11-12, 2008 (somewhere in Pittsburgh). I’ll keep you posted.

Plus, we’re just days away from launching our Managing Partner Listserv. I’ll keep you posted about that too.

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July 15, 2007 by Dan Siegel.

Lately, I’m the poster child for backups and restores. Yup, another story. I finally took Ellen Freedman’s advice and installed Copernic at home — it’s a far better desktop search engine than Google. I did it while also ridding my home computer of Norton Anti-Virus (which slowed it to a crawl at times) and installing the easy-to-use CA Internet Suite 2007. Google Desktop Search, however, didn’t want to uninstall and instead, after much frustration, I tried a variety of self-help options (don’t do this at home!) and then rebooted. Windows rebooted, but Explorer (the program that lets you access everything on the computer) was completely unavailable. I had a desktop, nothing else.

So, I embarked on a program to restore the computer. Five hours later, it works. Why? After trying some simple solutions — they simply didn’t work — I began to get creative. First, I had to verify that everything had been backed up properly, then I re-backed up all my documents so that if I had to reinstall Windows XP, I wouldn’t lose all of my and my family’s work. Then I tried restoring just the Registry — not enough. Then I restored all the Windows files and Google Desktop. That worked, but of course my installation of CA Internet Suite had to be redone. And Google Desktop is still there — and won’t go away.

But thanks to my backup, everything went well.

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June 21, 2007 by Dan Siegel.

Thumb drives/flash drives/USB drives, whatever you call them, they are great. They’re small, they hold lots of data, and they make it so easy to transport work from the office to home (and elsewhere) and vice versa. But, like any other drive, they can break or other things can happen.

Like your son decides to delete all of the data on an old thumb drive, but it turns out he did it on the one you use for work. (Of course, this is a hypothetical (sic).)

Anyway, picture your reaction as you walk by and witness your data waving goodbye. And remember, files deleted from thumb drives, just like those on servers, are gone forever; they don’t make it to the recycle bin.

What do you do? Backup your thumb drive! Add it to the list of locations you backup daily (you do, of course, backup daily, right?) and then do it. I do now!

Also, if you do accidentally delete information, there’s a nifty program — Active Undelete — that scans your drive and can restore those “lost” files. It’s only $39.95, and the person in the hypothetical found it very handy. You can buy it from www.active-undelete.com.

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April 30, 2007 by Dan Siegel.

Imagine a company so arrogant that its employees never return calls. Imagine a company so arrogant that its customer service representatives never return calls. Imagine a company so arrogant that its supervisor in customer service never returns calls, even when he promises to, and even after multiple messages are left. Imagine a company that, when you reach your regional supervisor, he says that you signed a contract and basically tells you to go to …. That my friends is Nova Information Systems, the wonderful company that my bank, Wachovia, co-brands with and recommended to me to handle my credit card processing. Since the fall of 2005 (that’s not a typo), no one from Nova has ever returned a phone call or responded to inquiries, even when my bank (Wachovia) tried to spur them to reply. The people I deal with at Wachovia acknowledge that I have been treated like …. but they are as powerless to deal with Nova as a dead skunk in the middle of the road. And the people at Nova don’t care — now that’s lousy customer service.

On the other hand, we’ve dealt with Verizon Wireless for years and have generally been very pleased (we just avoid the Ardmore store). Our sales representative (Carlton at the Springfield, Pa. store) epitomizes what customer service should be. He is helpful and honest, and the type of person every customer wants to deal with. And so are their customer service people for Blackberrys. Every time I have called for support, they have been helpful and knowledgeable, and have resolved my problems.

Let’s hope Verizon Wireless never merges with Nova. If that happens, all you’ll ever get is a busy signal.

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April 14, 2007 by Dan Siegel.

People are always asking for easy solutions to annoying computer issues. One of them is the proliferation of logins and passwords we have to remember, particularly on the Internet. While I keep a database of all my passwords, I also have an easier solution — the Roboform toolbar. It’s an easy to use plug-in that records (and revises) all of my logins and passwords, and can also fill forms with as much information as I like. There is a free version, but it only stores a limited number of passwords, etc. I bought the full version and it saves me a lot of time. The company’s website is http://www.roboform.com/. Try it.

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