Newsletter Issue 157, November 2008

Sam Young Newsletter

Issue 157, November 2008

Hi guys,

Consumer had a list of how we can Make Power Savings at home in their October magazine. Read on below.

Are you careful of your clients' time? Are you focused on saving your clients' time? Read Time ...and Time Again. 

Tiling Windows   TLAs for SMEs        Tips, Short & Hot Keys        Hot Linx

Don't forget, if you want to be taken off my mailing list, click here to send me a reply e-mail and I will remove your name.

Make Power Savings

In Consumer Magazine in October 2008, their team reported on a private home 'audit' looking at power wastage. They focused on the accumulation of small usage such as appliances on standby. They go on to say that most modern appliances are never actually "off" unless you turn them off at the wall; such as computers, monitors, TVs, DVDs, video recorders and printers. If you are a consumer member, click here to read the full article.

Their results were:

• One computer with the monitor, scanner and printer can use up to 20W while apparently being off. Consumer's average house audit had two; 40Wh
• Older model TVs, DVD players, VCRs, stereos and game machines can use 15 - 25W. Consumer's average house audit had three TVs - one plasma (plasma TVs use six times more power than the old cathode ray tube and LCD screens), a VCR, a DVD recorder, a Playstation, a home theatre amplifier, a CD player, and a stereo. All up, 74Wh.
• The Sky decoder can be switched off, although Sky prefers you to leave it going. It burns up a toasty 17Wh on standby (and Sky only uses another 0.4 of a watt when running!).
• In the kitchen a microwave clock, stove clock, cordless phone, a dustbuster, and three chargers (toothbrush, iPod & digital camera battery charger). If all these are left on, that's another 20Wh.
• Consumer's average house audit had five mobile phones for four people. However, CDMA phone chargers use between 0 and 1 watt per hour if left on (some use nothing), so this has hardly any impact.
• Your doorbell has its own small transformer. 5Wh
• So the potential standby waste in the average house is 156W at a cost of $264 a year.
• The garage may have the old household fridge as a beer fridge; a 1994 fridge is rated at 490 kWh per year. So that's 490000 Watts, using 60Wh once averaged out (fridges don't run constantly).
• So an adjusted total would be 216W at a cost of $365 a year.

That works out at $30 per month savings on Consumer's average household power account, just by flicking the switch.

Time ...and Time Again

I was just reading on Trendwatching's website that a lack of time is still one of the biggest consumer issues. They quoted some statistics around how time-poor we feel ourselves to be:

• 43% of Americans, 39% of British, 60% of Dutch and 47% of Australians rate themselves as ‘time poor’, ie short of time (source: J. Walker Thompson)
• 70% of Americans 16 years and older say they don’t have enough time to do all the things they need to do, and half of US consumers now say that a lack of time is a bigger problem in their lives than a lack of money (source: Yankelovich)

In addition, Nationmaster provides statistics on how many countries have a 'normal' expected working week of over 40 hours. In fourth place of 140 nations comes little old New Zealand, with only Japan, the US and Switzerland ahead of us in the let's-be-a-work-stress-monkey stakes.

So, from a customer service point of view, anything you can do to help save your client's time is — in the words of Trendwatching — "worth its weight in, well, long lazy uninterrupted days".

Trendwatching report on the Netherlands-based private bank Insinger de Beaufort (http://www.insinger.com/shoebox/). Trendspotters say they "have launched a new service aimed at saving (valuable) clients the time and hassle of dealing with the minutiae of their personal finances. Insinger's clients are sent a big shoebox by courier every month, into which they drop anything admin-related: bills to be paid, bank statements, receipts, tax returns, speeding tickets, insurance documents, etc. At the end of the month, Insinger sends a courier to pick up the box, and then processes its contents. Clients are sent a complete overview of actions and transactions within three business days, after which the bank takes care of the entire follow-up process, including paying bills, filing tax returns and processing business expenses."

There may be an add-on that you can provide your top ten clients that other clients might want to aspire to. Think about it.

Read the full article at Trendwatching.

 

Tiling Windows

Last time (Newsletter 156) I gave you a tip on reducing your Outlook mailbox size, and mentioned that to copy email messages from Outlook and into your file system, you needed to tile your Outlook and Windows Explorer windows.

I promised to give you that tip next time, so here it is.

1. Close all windows other than Outlook and Windows Explorer.
2. Right click on an empty place on the taskbar (ie to the right of the Windows & Outlook open tabs)
3. Select "Tile Windows Vertically" from the pop up menu.

That's it. Now you can drag files from one window to another. Another "Easy when you know how" tip :-)

TLAs for SMEs

Here are this newsletter's TLAs for you:

• ROAR, Right of Admission Reserved. An oldie but a goodie.

Please feel free to email me with any TLAs that you want to get the bottom (meaning!) of.

Tips, Short+Hot Keys

Over the next few newsletters, we are going to look at all you can do with Alt and letters. This time it's T:

• Word "Insert the trademark symbol while working" Alt & Ctrl & T
• Word "Insert a Time field into a document" Alt & Shift & T
• Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher, FrontPage, Word "Open the Tools Menu" Alt & T

Hot Linx

If you aren't already online, then check out http://www.squidoo.com/ & see if you want to create your own page there.

For those of you who want to know more about the technology, history and coming trends of the interweb, check out the stories at http://nethackz.com/

If you need any new driver files for software or hardware, then head over to http://www.dllfiles.com/ and search & download what you need for your particular problem

Have a cruise by http://www.timeforone.com/home.php and see what you can do when in London; where to eat, where to recreate, where to relax. I can see this site going global :-)

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                                Catch you again soon!! E-mail your suggestions to me here