The piece focuses on Help with a Smile as a small business whose early growth and success has been accelerated by receiving funding from CDFI's like Accion USA.

You might find you have an acute case of the "What button did I push?" syndrome. When something goes wrong with technology, whether it's something as simple as your laptop suddenly bursting into a ball of fire, or as complex as not being able to get your sales projections spreadsheet to sync with your DropBox account, the first impulse is usually to ask yourself "what did I do wrong?". The implication is that since you're the only one using the system, and it was working at some point previously, something you did wrong must have caused the problem.

This reasoning works for simpler devices- like your dishwasher, for example. When your dishwasher breaks, it's usually something mechanical and therefore easier to visualize and grasp, even if you're not a dishwasher repair man. The guy fixing your dishwasher can take out the burnt out motor or the bent up spoon that got stuck and show you exactly what went wrong and who's to blame.

I wish I could reach inside your iMac and pull out the dried clump of oatmeal your toddler shoved in the DVD drive, but most technology problems aren't that simple, regretfully. Technology is more similar to the living fuzz on the unwashed plates inside your broken dishwasher than it is to the dishwasher itself. Always updating, installing, maintaining- your gadgets are going through massive changes on a frequent basis, even when you feel like you're barely using them or doing anything different. The sheer amount of parties involved make it almost impossible to assign blame.

As IT professionals, we don't always have the luxury of asking what button was pushed or who pushed it to cause such a catastrophic failure. Most tech problems are a cocktail mixed from so many moving parts that spending the time to untangle the who/what/when/where/why is too costly, and often an irrelevant question. It's more important to ask questions like: "What measures can we take to solve the problem quickly and efficiently", "Is this problem likely to occur again in the future?", and "Does it make financial sense to do further research and take preventative measures?", rather than "What button did I push?".

We've all sat through excruciating PowerPoint presentations. Don't let yours be one of them: follow the sage advice of these PowerPoint experts:

1. According to Seth Godin

"make slides that reinforce your words, not repeat them. Create slides that demonstrate, with emotional proof, that what you're saying is true not just accurate"

2. According to Guy Kawasaki

"a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points"

3. According to Lifehacker

"As a general rule, one should not use PowerPoint as a teleprompter. If an image is worth a thousand words, show the audience that one image, and speak the thousand words if you must, but please do not display and speak the thousand words."

4. According to @JESSEEDEE of Slide Share

"Most presentations suck because not enough time went into making them. You need to gather your content, create beautiful looking slides and rehearse, rehearse, rehearse... and not the night before."

5. According to Garr Reynolds, Presentation Zen

"The slides themselves were never meant to be the "star of the show" (the star, of course, is your audience). People came to hear you and be moved or informed (or both) by you and your message."

You've owned it for more than 4 years (laptop) or 6 years (desktop)

Why is your computer worth less (or worthless) after a period of several years?  For starters, the likelihood of some type of hardware failure, especially the hard disk (where your data is stored), greatly increases with time and use.  Why wait for the day where you're faced with a critical outage... replace on a regular cycle and you'll have a far better experience.  Replacing on a planned life-cycle also allows you to more carefully plan the switch to your new computer, rather than rushing through it hastily.

"Just the basics" no longer works with your computer

Upgrade and change is part of life with technology.  We all claim that "all we need is the basics", yet most businesses rely on the release of new technologies to stay ahead of the curve.  A vast majority of business users only need the basics, just like you- e-mail, web browsing, office applications... but what about that new iPad you just bought, or the faster Internet connection you put in your office so that you could host webinars... oh and there's that Skype video conference you need to get on later... all of these technologies are relatively new, and while they seem like "just the basics", some of these capacities didn't even exist when you bought your old clunker.  Time to replace.

When repair costs almost as much as replacement

This is especially true if your computer is more than 1-2 years old.  One of the most common scenarios involves replacing a failed hard disk.  Though you may (should!) have good backups for your data, there's a lot of labor involved in replacing the hard disk.  Although the part itself is usually relatively inexpensive, there's a lot to do in order to get your system back into working order after it's been replaced.  While it's true that there's equal or more work involved in replacement, at the end of the process, at least you have a brand new computer, instead of your old clunker that you may end up replacing in a year anyway.  Although it may seem more expensive to lay out $1400 for a new computer rather than pay $400 for repairs, remember that the $1400 expense is inevitable, and you're still going to be locked into the 4-6 year life cycle for the two reasons I mentioned earlier.

A Final Word

It's only a computer, people!  I have seen some strange attachments that people have to their machines... a computer is a tool to help you get work done- it doesn't have feelings, a pet name, or any other form of techno-personification.  Switching to a new computer is not as painful as it may seem- don't let your attachment to that old clunker hold you back from getting work done.

1. Use Dropbox to Monitor Your Computer Remotely

http://lifehacker.com/5541713/use-dropbox-to-monitor-your-computer-...

Setting up Dropbox to monitor your computer can be useful if you want to track the progress of a task or you want to know how your computer is being used while you are away.

2. Use Dropbox to Keep Your Passwords Synchronized and Secure

http://www.vilepickle.com/blog/2011/04/19/00105-using-dropbox-and-k...

With so many accounts, it's easy to be lazy by writing passwords in plain text file, reusing passwords across sites, using very weak passwords, or even depending exclusively on security questions to get into an account because it's used rarely (e.g., biannual payments to a service)... I use Dropbox to backup my password file. The free plan has plenty of space and can be accessed and updated from multiple machines cross-platform.

3. Use Dropbox to Wirelessly Transfer Pictures and Other Files from Your Smart Phone to Another Device

http://www.dropbox.com/help/84

The Dropbox mobile app will allow you to upload files from your mobile device to your Dropbox. Once you do, these files will automatically sync to your other computers and mobile devices.

4. Use Dropbox to Fight Crime

http://consumerist.com/2011/03/man-gets-lead-on-laptop-thief-using-...

Ryan believes he has a lead on who stole his laptop thanks to the Dropbox filesharing program that was installed on his computer. Turns out his laptop could be just up the street from him right now.

5. Use Dropbox to Avoid Emailing Large Attachments

https://www.dropbox.com/help/16

Dropbox designates a unique internet link to each file in your Dropbox Public folder. You can send these links to anyone by pasting them into your emails, instant messages, web pages... Any method you like.

Help with a Smile recommends ACCION USA, a nonprofit organization that offers micro-loans to small businesses to help grow their business through investment in technology and other areas.  If you’re interested, please contact Erica Dorn at ACCION USA directly: (646) 833-4533 or edorn@accionusa.org.  You can also apply online directly at www.accionusa.org/apply.

Read the article featuring Help with a Smile on ACCION's website

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