If you are an IT consultant you frequently face the situation where one of your clients is missing the CDs for the software they have purchased. They are entitled to use the software that they have purchased, but how do you install it?

Many companies make the software freely available as an online download, others make it difficult.

I had a situation yesterday where the client owned Quickbooks Premier 2010. They had to do a format and reinstall of the operating system on a computer. The Quickbooks CD was missing and a hurried search of the office did not turn it up. They had the book with the license number and the product number.

I called Intuit to get access to the program itself. When I spoke to their representative He told me that to help me with the installation they would have to put me on a service contract as I was out of the warranty help period.

I assured him that no help was needed, just a link to the downloaded software.

He sent me to www.usequickbooks.com/premier2011 where I was able to download the software after I entered the codes from my QB booklet.

“Are you sure that my license codes will work on the 2011 version of the software?”

“Yes”

No. The codes did not work as I started the install. I went to getquickbooks.com/premier2010 and downloaded the software that worked with my codes.

I found this page on the Intuit site that will just let you download any version of Quickbooks going back to 2005 (as of this post).

http://support.quickbooks.intuit.com/support/articles/INF12417

Why not send people to this page in the first place? Now I know about it and hopefully it will help someone else.

What services and equipment can help us keep going when things get difficult?

Online Backup

In a flood or fire, your computers and backup might be taken out at the same time. A well thought out strategy would include an offsite copy of your information (maybe a backup drive taken to another location). If you include an online backup service ( Carbonite, Backblaze or CrashPlan) your data is safe even if your original and offsite copies are lost.

Smart Phone

Mobile email, web browsing, calendaring and contacts. Always with you and functioning even if you lose power and wired internet at your locations. Not the most ideal way to carry out your work, but it is an option. Many phones can also serve as a way to get a laptop or other wifi device online with optional tethering (sharing the phone’s internet connection).

Tablet

The same benefits as the cell phone but with a bigger screen. Think iPad or Android tablet with cellular data connection. The carriers allow you to get online with their data networks and you usually can pay just for the time you need (by the month) without a contract. The $25 you spend that month may allow you to keep going when you might not otherwise be able to. Tablets come with and without cellular data radios, so make sure that if you purchase one with this in mind, you get one with the cellular data. It adds $130 to the initial cost of an iPad.

Carbonite works fine and the price seems fair at $59 per computer per year. They offer a $229 for unlimited computers with a total of 250 GB. Carbonite will not backup external drives and virtual machines (pretend computers inside your real computer).

The gotcha with Carbonite seems to be with video files. If you do the trial, they do not backup videos by default. When you pay you have to tell them to back up your videos. If you do not you could have a problem when you go to restore after you have a hard drive crash and your video files are not up at Carbonite.

Here is the page at Carbonite that explains this:

http://carbonite.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1336/partner/carbonite

Music and Video Files

While in your free trial period, Carbonite will not automatically add your audio and video files to your backup. Once you purchase a subscription the music files will then be added to your backup (as long as the folder was originally selected for backup). This is because these files tend to be larger and can lengthen how long it takes to complete your initial backup, resulting in not being able to test the product effectively.

Adding a music or video file to your backup is as simple as right-clicking and selecting Carbonite; Back this up. (On a Mac you can use the Carbonite Preference pane to add files.)

It is important that you follow the directions or else you might get an unpleasant surprise.

What if you have an external hard drive you want to back up? Try backblaze.com

Whatever you choose make sure that you do a backup, the consequences of not backing up can be expensive and/or frustrating.

There were no documents that they needed on the computer and the hard drive replacement was done under warranty. They still had the pictures they had taken on their digital camera’s SD card. We were able to load them back up again.

This got me thinking about using SD cards as a way to keep the pictures after you import them into your camera.

Don’t Delete the pictures from the card.

Just put the card away in a safe place after it is full. Maybe go ahead and slide the lock tab on the card to lock.

This will not work for every family, i.e. the obsessive photographer with terabytes of pictures, but for many families spending $10 buying a new SD card every 6 months or so is not a big deal.