VISUAL NEWSLETTER –
JUL 2001
While it has resulted in a slight reduction in monthly
billings, flat monthly support fees have reduced the data entry load at month end
and are gaining in popularity with our larger clients. For these reasons we
continue to encourage them. It also seems that a flat monthly fee also makes
consultant / client contacts less adversarial, in that every conversation does
not generate another bill.
To help cope with the ongoing difficulties of managing the
increasing numbers of calls received at the office, at clients, on our cell
phones, via fax & e-mail we will be implementing a new minimum charge of
$20.00 per call. Considering Libra charges $125.00 U.S. and Novell &
Microsoft charge $200.00 U.S. or more per incident this is still something of a
bargain in this industry.
This can, of course, be eliminated by signing up for a
monthly support plan. All monthly plans require 30 days notice prior to
cancellation since we stop recording the details of conversations for clients
on our monthly plans. Monthly plans start at $20.00 and go up dependant on the
number of applications & users to be covered.
We are just completing our changes to our new web site and
this should be up and running by the end of August. Product Offerings,
Questions & Answers as well as Monthly Newsletters will be posted there.
Common software downloads may also be made available as well, as time permits.
We hope this site will provide a common contact point for
the thousands of Libra Signature users across North America. Basic Web Sites
are fairly simple to construct and fairly economical to host.
More and more often we find ourselves spending time
rejuvenating computers, that have
developed glitches in their Microsoft Operating System. Microsoft Windows 95,
98 and Millenium Edition all have fundamental design flaws that are compounded
when different software is loaded and removed.
In fact loading and or removing some software from your
Windows system can actually disable your computer completely. This is
particularly common when users remove the software abnormally by deleting a
folder through Microsoft Explorer. Many Windows based programs modify Windows
and add instructions to the Windows startup files that will cause problems if
the files the instructions refer to are no longer present.
In most cases you should check to see if a program has its
own Uninstall Feature. If not, check the Control Panel under Add/Remove
Programs to see if the program appears there. If it does, it can generally be
removed safely from this point, if the programmers that wrote the software have
done their work.
If Windows does become extremely slow or begins to
malfunction it can usually be corrected by one of the following routines.
1)
Reinstall the current version of
Windows.
2)
Delete Windows and then Reinstall it.
3) Delete Program Files as well & Reinstall.
4) Reformat the entire
hard drive & Reinstall.
Each routine is more comprehensive and time consuming than
the previous one,
but may be necessary in severe situations.
Visual Accounting
(905) 458-6650