It’s tough to imagine a better response to this application.  People love it.

Once you have this program installed, it is as simple as selecting a computer and choosing the services to monitor.  Once this is done, anytime your services are no longer running, you get an email.

There are too many products to list, but I can think of quite a few that I have personally run into that have a service installed on a server and if that service stops, that application quits logging, or working.  This can be a silent killer because in the computer services business, a log is extremely important.

If an application is running, but the logging service stopped or crashing, it may be days, weeks, or longer before you find out.  Try explaining that to your customer or boss if an incident happens and you didn’t do your job.

I can think of both URL filtering products and Event Log tracking products that have these kind of logs.  If the logging service stops running, the application still keeps churning away, but there are no logs.

Services Monitor is the answer to this problem and it does an excellent job.  It also comes with a special license permitting you to install the application on two machines.  The purpose of the second installation is to monitor the first.  This way, if the Services Monitor application service will to stop unexpectedly, you will know right away.  This is the built-in self checking system and it works wonderfully.

I’m expecting it’s release tomorrow!

Zachary M. Morvik

At some point you will end up with a customer that is not worth trying to retain. If you don’t have some level of turnover in your bottom percentage of customers, you are clinging on too tight.

Time Wasted or Time Well Spent?

Realize that the amount of time and energy that you are spending on this “dead weight” is holding you back from obtaining new customers or giving additional time to current customers.

Cut The Slow Pay / No Pay Now!

Slow Pay and No Pay customers have to go. If you end up with slow pay customers, it makes terminating the relationship very difficult because they still owe you money. Get this number as low as you can and even if you take a small loss, get rid of that dead beat customer.

Confidence Is Key

Part of this business is trading time for money. Whether thats your time or your employees, there is time being traded for money. Don’t waste your time, or that of your employees, by dealing with customers that are holding your business back. You will be better off after you weed out your customers. Try it!

Zachary M. Morvik

I have run into this problem so many times in the past I eventually just wrote a tool for it. I think there might even be others out there, but they weren’t around when I needed them and so I’m releasing mine for free.

I hope it saves you as much time as it saved me.

BTW, when you initially double click on the EXE to run, it may take a number of seconds before it loads. This is because it is building the list of available network machines.

Remote RDP Enabler

Zachary M. Morvik

I performed the upgrade on a couple other Wordpress installations just to make sure it wouldn’t blow up the sites.  I’m happy to report that it didn’t.

So I’ve upgraded this site as well.  It went very smooth even though I have many plugins installed and activated.  I love the new features and interface.

Highly recommend the upgrade to anyone.

Zachary M. Morvik

Have you heard that the US is entering a recession? Silly question, right?

What analysts have also said is that while the US is in a recession, there are certain industries that will be, largely, unaffected. The computer service business is one such industry. Companies need computer services. Recession or not, computers will break. They will need repairs and they will need upgrades to some degree. Backups still need to happen, SPAM still needs to be taken care, etc.

One of the great things about the computer service business is that, fundamentally, businesses need computers. Companies can cut back on a number of things, but the needs of computers can’t be overlooked. This is reassuring to those in the computer service business, but remember that the customers are now a little more price aware. In most markets, computer services are very competitive. Have you looked in the yellow pages recently? Dozens of competitors would not be surprising.

Take comfort in knowing that this industry is poised to do well, but don’t think it will be a free ticket.

Zachary M. Morvik

This campaign is fantastic and long overdue.   The “U Comment, I Follow” is displayed to let everyone know that when you comment on this blog, the URL you leave with your comment will not be tagged with NoFollow.  This means that search engines WILL FOLLOW your link and you will have another inbound link.

It made a lot of sense to have the NoFollow tag, but now with SPAM control and comment moderation, there is no reason why you shouldn’t get a link back to your site when you comment on mine.

You are helping my blog by leaving a comment, the least I can do is give you a link.

Zachary M. Morvik

Are you a tech or are you a business person? Are you more interested in technology or in business? Do you enjoy the thought of making sales calls and meeting new people or is this the last thing in the world you would want to do?

These are a few simple questions to ask before you become an independent computer consultant or a business owner.

If you are more of a tech and don’t really like business and sales, thats fine. Get a tech gig somewhere and be happy. Don’t bother with the stresses of consulting and business ownership. You’ll be happier in the long run.

If, however, you aren’t afraid of sales calls and all the challenges that come with running a business or going it alone, then you’re in the right place and I’ll enjoy you’re company.

Welcome.

Zachary M. Morvik

Just a quick note to make sure everyone is aware of the Office patches coming out on Tuesday.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms08-mar.mspx

Zachary M. Morvik

Wanted to give a warning to all of my readers and a lesson on how *not* to do business. I used a web hosting company named Glob@t for some side project domains. The web hosting was just like one would expect and I did not have many downtime issues. That is where my compliments for them end.

Beyond the hosting, specifically billing, they are horrible. What vendor or company do you work with that automatically upgrades your account and charges you for it?

They would send an email stating that your account would be automatically upgraded in X number of days. You had to unsubscribe from this or you could expect to see the credit card charge. As if that wasn’t bad enough, if you did unsubscribe from this automatic upgrade, you can rest assured that you will receive the same email with the same intent a short time later (measured in months).

Then, go try to cancel your service. Good luck. It got bad enough that I called while my bank was on the phone because I was disputing the charge. This happened because I did opt out of their automatic upgrade and they did it anyway. Their customer service refused to talk to me unless my bank hung up. We refused so they hung up on us.

Obviously, my bank continued the dispute and my funds were returned. But, guess what happened 10 days later? They charged my account again. Eventually, after 45 minutes on hold, I did get through to the Glob@t cancellation line (you can’t cancel online, only via phone and only after you put up with their cancellation rep trying to get you to stay) and was able to cancel my line.

I don’t like to call out companies like this, but I feel it would be a disservice to not warn anyone who reads this about what you can expect from this hosting company. There are thousands of hosting companies out there. Find a different one.

Zachary M. Morvik

I tried to upgrade Thunderbird this morning and during the installation, I ran into an error with file mozMapi32.dll.

Strangely enough, this turned out that my Logitech Quickcam software had a lock on this file.  Just right click on the Quickcam icon in your system tray and exit the Quickcam software or terminate the process.  Installation of Thunderbird will proceed with no problem.

Zachary M. Morvik

I have updated the service monitor tool based on the feedback of a few customers. Customers thus far love the product and can’t believe they ran their servers without it.

Knowing when services are no longer available/responding is powerful knowledge. You’re customers will be impressed when you can call them and tell them that you are aware of a problem before they were even aware of it.

Zachary M. Morvik