Uncovering The Real Numbers In A Business For Sale

January 31, 2010

When a prospective buyer is making an effort to find out whether or not they’re going to buy a particular business for sale, there are a variety of buy business factors to carefully consider. When prospects arise, quite apart from the question of suitability, location and longevity, the issue of real-world business valuation is front and center. At this point, the seller will provide financial documentation – and it is, of course, very much in their best interests to present their business for sale in a “glowing” light. As such, the issue of “add backs” is likely to represent one of the thorniest problems.

In a majority of cases, add backs are included to try and present the operation from a real world perspective. When compiling traditional accounting reports, it’s essential to adhere to a set of very rigid standards – there may also be additional footnotes to consider, and depending on your point of view, these can be either positive or negative. When you’re thinking about buying a business, it’s crucial that you carefully scrutinize each and every add back, as they can often make a significant difference in your final valuation figure.

When conducting a process of due diligence, it can be a fairly straightforward procedure to check recorded sales and purchases against ledgers and against reconciled bank accounts. Far more often than you might think however, the current owner will strive to draw your attention to points which may be “one-time” instances, or to extra income which might not actually appear anywhere in the books at all. You should be open to all suggestions of course but maintain a degree of skepticism at all times until you are able to validate the claims, or otherwise.

Don’t forget that for an item to be claimed as a “one off,” it must not have occurred during any of the previous years. Seller could argue that a particular expense is much larger than it should be due to a particular incident or requirement, but if you see a pattern of any kind, then the add back must be discounted.

One of the most common add backs, especially when the business can be owner operated, is to suggest the value of a manager’s salary. You need to establish that the outgoing owner was not actively involved in the operation of the business in this case and this figure is only of interest to you if you intend to assume the role of the redundant manager.

Add backs may not be asserted whenever they represent intangibles, such as the prospect of additional revenues due to a new marketing initiative that the outgoing owner has just put in place, for example. Nor should you believe an owner claim that you can reduce a certain category of expenses through renegotiation or other initiatives. After all, if the outgoing owner has not being able to do so to this point it seems reasonable to assume that an incoming “newbie” is likely to have even less ability to affect short-term change in this regard.

Be particularly wary when you are told that a business retains a lot of cash sales. You must essentially discount this notion from a strict valuation perspective, even though such a claim made, after review, may be seen as reasonable. If the owner has not entered the cash sales on the books, he or she will not have accounted for taxes correctly and it’s not fair for them to expect to receive a double benefit in this way, a net tax saving and enhanced business value.

When you have reviewed the complete list of business financials, treat each claim for add back on an individual case basis and never roll them into an inflated value. At this stage you must be particularly diligent to enable you to arrive at a real world price for this prospect.

Richard Parker is the President and founder of the prestigious Diomo Corporation – The Business Buyer Resource Center. His celebrated materials, seminars and consulting have encouraged thousands of aspiring business buyers from around the World to pursue their dream to buy a business.

Posted by Guest Post | Filed Under **Business**, Everything Else | Comments

Professional Virtual Assistant Services Can Accelerate An Online Business Venture

January 30, 2010

When it comes to your own business, you might not immediately consider virtual assistant services when you’re thinking about your response to the directive for environmental sustainability, the necessary requirement to become “greener,” for everyone’s welfare. However, you should give some genuine consideration to this path, as every significant organisation should carefully review its overall impact on the environment, set standards for itself of and be entirely responsible for its own carbon footprint. Considerable emphasis is being placed on environmental issues these days, with significant legislation pending in the U.S. Congress and already passed in countries like the UK. Such legislation will force larger companies to review their entire operations, to pro-actively cut down on energy use and save, or face penalties and disgrace. As the public becomes more and more aware of energy related climate change, each and every one of us will need to pay particular attention to this cause or be “called out.”

As you embark upon a process of discovery, to see exactly what kind and size of footprint your business has, you will find that you need to take account of all your internal services and the very cost of doing business in the first place. At this point, not only should you be looking at overhead expenses critically from a simply economic perspective, but you also have find a way of making your stakeholders, clients, customers and an opinionated public feel secure, while at the same time decreasing your overhead liabilities as extensively as is feasible.

Virtual assistant services make sense from a “green” point of view, and from many other different perspectives as well. Instead of relying on “employees” to travel to and from work five days a week, burning up valuable energy resources and emitting carbon gases with their vehicles, your reliable virtual assistant services eliminate this necessity, and as a single expert virtual assistant can provide comprehensive online solutions for a variety of clients simultaneously, the VA not only consolidates a large part of their client’s footprints, but saves each business owner time and money as well.

By hiring a professional virtual assistant service, you can dramatically reduce your electricity expense, overall energy usage and the consequent emissions associated with lighting your office, running your computers and the general maintenance of a normal office set-up. Here again, the value of a proficient VA is quite apparent.

You may not be aware that trees are known as a “sink” when it comes to carbon dioxide, absorbing a certain amount of these dangerous greenhouse gases that would otherwise enter our atmosphere and contribute to our climate change problems. We should therefore avoid the use of paper products as much as possible, thereby saving as many trees as possible. Virtual assistant services work electronically, using private networks, e-mail, teleconferencing and providing electronic versions of documents for clients.

Make no mistake about it, each and every business will be found accountable for its liabilities and must fully justify its systems and processes. From an environmental – as well as an economic point of view, it makes the ultimate sense to check out professional online business services for your day-to-day business operations.

Posted by Virtual Miss Friday | Filed Under **Blogs**, **Business**, **Internet**, **Marketing**, **Media**, **Motivate**, **VMF**, **eBusiness**, Advertising, Development, Everything Else, Promotion, Writing | Comments

Undertake Due Diligence When Purchasing Your Internet Business

January 29, 2010

The process of due diligence is essential when looking to buy website business enterprise. It is estimated that up to 50% of all deals can fall apart during this process and this is most often due to some misrepresentations during the initial discovery, but can also often be due to an inadequate assessment by the buyer, leading to cold feet.

When you purchase an online business, you may face particular challenges not seen in a “bricks and mortar” operation. You will need to focus on the very composition of the business itself, which will be structured around the website and technology used, understand the products and services being sold, get to know who the customers are as well as the employees (especially the tech people), go through the financials and any legal issues associated with this type of business. When all said and done, you’re the one who has to be satisfied with the marketing initiatives which are under way for the core website, become an expert at generating traffic and search for expansion opportunities on a daily basis. Remember that this is much more than just a website for sale.

With an online venture, marketing is highly important, but the technology and software used to determine the composition of the website are equally so. The website is the “window on the world” for this business, and you need to be happy with the way it has been constructed. You must get the owner to give you a full tour of the website, including the front-end and back-end, understanding the way that customers will interact with it and how transactions are handled. Find out how the website was built, if it was developed internally, who owns the source code if this is applicable, how it is managed. If any of this process is controlled by the owner, consider an agreement with him or her, following any purchase, to be available for a certain period of time in case of questions and especially of emergencies. If the entire process is outsourced, it’s crucial that you speak to the individuals doing this work before agreeing to any kind of deal.

During your initial thought making processes, you should ask yourself whether you are happy to be involved with the ongoing maintenance, coding issues, updates and all elements of website operation or whether you will be outsourcing this. Pay particular attention to how transactions are handled, credit cards processed, security and safety.

When you look at the products or services on offer by the business, consider if there is any type of exclusivity. If not, you may likely face opposition from competitors down the road. Does the business rely on certain suppliers? If so consider whether these are reliable or whether there are any alternative sources of supply available.

Marketing is everything when it comes to an Internet-based operation and you want to get a full understanding for the type of customer that you will have to deal with. Does the business market directly to consumers or to other businesses? You will need to be able to identify the unique selling proposition and the value-added benefit that the operation represents to your customers. Your support structure should be over and above and every element of the business should be aimed at over delivering to the client.

If the business has employees, take time to understand them. For people coming from a traditional corporate environment, this may involve a process of adjustment. Often they will find that the more “creative” types are a little unconventional – will this cause a potential conflict of understanding, loyalty or respect? Be wary if the operation of the business relies heavily on one particular individual or another due to their skills and consider whether you should have a “non-compete” clause of some kind in place? You will definitely need a robust non-compete with the owner!

In addition to your focus on regular financial information and ratios, consider what you might need to do to establish new merchant operations for yourself if need be. A business such as this will process almost all transactions through credit cards or online checks and it is really easy to look at histories and see whether there are any significant charge backs of any kind.

Often the value of a website can be in its domain name. Check to identify the owner of the domain name through one of the registration sites online. You should also check to see where the site is hosted and how easy it would be to assume any of these agreements. Check on the material published on their website to see whether it is original and not plagiarized in any way.

We said that marketing is everything. Do you have a good “gut feeling” for this type of business yourself? This may be important. Always ask the seller to explain their main marketing initiatives and how they have worked in the past. Make a good note of any marketing programs that did not work so that you do not try them again, at least in that type of form. Tracking and testing is very important in this sphere, so check to see what methods they used.

When you’re evaluating an Internet business, be aware of how radical or unusual it may be. Is there any possibility that regulation will be introduced in future to significantly affect its very existence? Remember that this has happened in the past, and you don’t want to be the proud owner of a new business who faces such a threat in the short term.

Richard Parker is the President and founder of the Diomo Corporation – The Business Buyer Resource Center. His inspiring materials, seminars and consulting have assisted thousands of business buyers with achieving their life long dream to buy a business.

Posted by Guest Post | Filed Under **Business**, **Internet**, **Motivate**, **eBusiness**, Everything Else | Comments

Utilising Website Development Stats To Determine Your Results

January 28, 2010

Your website development can really make you money. You can go from 0 to 100, quickly! Statistics can help you, you just have to learn how to use them.

Website statistics can tell you a lot of things. They can show you which products are doing well and which are not. You can learn what visitors like and dislike about your website development. Do your keywords work? That needs to be explained as well.

By starting a plan for your business, you will be able to map out where your sales should be year by year. With an online business, this can be accomplished through website statistics. These are measurements of various activities on your website that directly relate to your business.

Your Website Statistics.

Traffic is paramount. If you don’t get traffic, sales will not follow and your business will stagnate. Your marketing plan outlines how you will proceed with getting that traffic. But, it’s definitely not foolproof.

You will need to measure your efforts to see if they are working. This is where statistics come in. What do you measure? Consider these:

* Unique visitors (how many different people visit your site).
* Keyword analysis (to tell you which keywords would bring in traffic).
* Conversion rates (to track when visitors progress from reading to actually buying).
* Web page analysis (where visitors go when they are on your site).
* Page views (how many people visit each unique page on your website).

These are just some of the statistics you should know about. When you begin marketing, the statistics can help you to see if you are on the right course.

Do the keywords you use drive traffic?

Statistics are gathered on a monthly basis, but it can still take a few months to see trends. Analysing a trend can show you if your current plan is working. As such, you should not make too many changes to your plan, allowing several months to see if anything is working or not. When a business is in start-up mode, it will take that long to get an accurate measure of sales.

Site statistics give you somewhere to start. Without some way to measure your business efforts it’s like shooting in the dark – you don’t know if you’ve hit or miss. Analyse everything from an overall perspective and you’ll get a better idea of what to change as you move forward.

To start off with, make sure you have a way to measure site information, right now. You can get both free and paid software tools to help you with this task. You can also hire companies to measure that information for you and analyse the data to anticipate the next move that you need to make. But, for small online business endeavours, using software to compile the data and your own brain to analyse it will suffice.

Michelle Dale is Chief Executive of Virtual Miss Friday, an adept and highly-proficient Virtual Assistant Service which works closely with enterprising people who really want to succeed in their chosen field. If you’d like to learn more about online business building success strategies that are tailored to your needs, contact VMF today!

Valuable Reasons Why You Should Consider Expert Virtual Assistant Services

January 27, 2010

These days, online business services are front and centre as traditional methods of doing business evolve. Many of the traditional business methods are “out of date” these days, as the essential bywords of today are availability and flexibility. Clients have become increasingly demanding – as they should be, and they want well-researched, strategic options and excellent returns on their investments. Of course they expect good value for money and are willing to pay for quality service, but they especially value an organisation that exhibits a degree of flexibility in addition to attention to detail.

For a business to truly succeed these days, it has to really focus on its core principles. It needs to designate specific amounts of its resources and finances to pay for direct expenses, and it should also be willing periodically reconsider all of its direct expense centres. In a perfect world, a business will primarily focus on getting the product or service to the client or customer effectively, and not overly concern themselves with the ancillary expenses and peripherals. Virtual assistant services are the perfect answer. Instead of allocating expensive, fixed costs to those back-up and support areas, the virtual assistant service converts them into variable costs, which can be spent as needed rather than as a regular fixture on the books. Such cost-cutting provides a clear opportunity for extra funds for capital investments, or to be spent on pursuing – and securing, new business.

When a company is starting out, it doubtless aspires to match its competition, even when such competition is much more established and may be many factors larger. The more mature organisation likely has a more established raft of backup and office support services, which the fledgling company simply cannot match. By taking on virtual assistant services the 1-3 person firm can attain impressive economies of scale, when they want it and as required, reducing the progress curve greatly. Now it is not necessarily the case that the larger company is the more efficient one, as through the selection of virtual services the smaller company can exhibit the same amount of expertise and good footing.

Established virtual assistant service companies are often able to help steer an organisation, especially if it is somewhat new to the marketplace. Technologies can change, markets can diversify, and regulations can sometimes be a minefield. There is enough to worry about without feeling that you are alone in key areas of business. A professional VA can often assume, or suggest how to approach, risk in their areas of expertise.

A business should always plan for a rainy day and be prepared for any eventuality. In the virtual online business arena that we work in, things occur very quickly, and if a company is actively working through social media markets, you can never really predict when the newest buzz will be directed on your organisation. Sometimes they say that you should be careful what you wish for, as you may not be able to cope with the consequences. If your company suddenly receives a great deal of attention from the media (hopefully for a positive reason), and if you regularly work with a virtual assistant service, then you can instantly look to them for assistance with the oncoming administrative workload. With truly professional virtual assistant services – website development, online business, articles and press releases, blog posts, micro-blogging activities – all can be handled with the greatest of ease!

In the world of business 2.0, virtual assistant services should be immediately adopted by on-point organisations everywhere!

Dynamic Link Building Strategies Through Well Optimised Content

January 26, 2010

To improve your website development and its ranking, you must focus on linking, but it’s not easy to achieve. As people get to hear about your site, ideally they will want to link to it. To encourage them, make sure you have great content which is irresistible.

Your Inbound Links.

Your website is your home in cyberspace. If you do a good job, people will want to tell their contacts and friends about you. Linking to your website development is a way to achieve this. It is also called a back link. This back link is a link to your site on their website or blog.

You will find two different kinds of inbound links – reciprocal and organic. If you agree to swap links with other sites, this is reciprocal. It could be a friend who wants to help you out and vice versa. Getting links like this is okay, but it’s not ideal by any means when it comes to actually moving up in the search engine ranks.

As a matter of principal, it’s a good idea to look carefully at the quality of the sites that you are considering linking with. It may be fairly easy to swap links with this site, but if it is not well put together, reputable or optimised, it could be a mistake. In the worst case, the search engines can give you poor marks and it’s not advisable to pay for links, either. After you have worked so hard on your website, day in and day out, you don’t want it to go to waste by trying to take a short cut, when you know better to begin with.

You can get organic links when somebody takes it on their own initiative to do so. This could be through your first-class marketing campaign for example and may signify that they want others to know about your existence. Search engines rate this type of link highly. In the beginning, this is difficult to achieve but through perseverance and good efforts with your online marketing, you may be quite surprised at what will eventually happen to your online business!

Obtaining Links.

How do you get the desired links?

* Use your content. Writing content that’s optimised for keywords in your niche can rank high. This way, others may click on your site first. Sites within your niche that are trying for those higher spots will check you out to see why they can’t knock you off the top.

* Become an expert. Post content to article directories. Guest on other blogs. Being found in other places increases your visibility and adds to your credibility. People like to be associated with experts.

* Comment on blogs within your target market. Go to where your potential customers are. If you give sound advice and include a back link to your site, this is a good start. Pretty soon these people may become loyal readers who will link from their blogs to your website.

Use your content to help build quality links. The combination can lead to increased traffic and subsequently more sales.

Michelle Dale is The Managing Director of Virtual Miss Friday, an Experienced Executive Virtual Assistant who collaborates with businesses and individuals with the sole aim of accomplishing their professional goals. Want to learn more about these comprehensive online business building success strategies? Contact VMF Today!

Awesome Pointers For Creating Excellent Website Development Titles And Headlines

January 25, 2010

If you look at people when they are browsing magazines in the store, when they find one they are interested in, they usually only look for specific articles and put it back if they don’t find what they want. They’re looking for something that will catch their eye. This same phenomenon can be observed with professional website development strategies on the Web. If you’re willing to invest a little bit of your time, you can quickly learn to write titles and content that will have visitors stopping in for a spell.

Your Title Basics.

A title is not just a little blurb at the top of your content. Use the title to help optimise the page. Here is an example. If your website development is about chocolates (a sweet re-occurring example), the content should be related to confections. But, your title doesn’t have to be just “chocolates.”

To be well optimised, the title should include some or all of these:

* Keywords – You have yet another place on your webpage that keywords can be used to help significantly improve your rankings. If you choose your keywords with great care, you can match a phrase that most people are going to use.

* Use a hook – What will make them keep reading? Give them a hint. ”How You Can Make Chocolate Bananas” would be an example. Readers know just what they will be learning. The use of numbers is even better. “7 Ways to Prepare Chocolates” lets readers know that they don’t have too much to read and that you will lay it all out for them.

* Focus – Don’t take up two lines with your title. Use as few words as possible that will appeal to readers and also include a keyword or a keyword phrase. You can reinforce the title by using the keyword again in the first sentence of the first paragraph.

Even with fantastic titles, a headline on the webpage is a good idea. Remember the article is just one bit of information on your page. Headlines can be optimised for good effect, as well.

* Font size – Your headline needs to stand out from the rest of the information on the page. Use a larger bolder font, but definitely nothing too flowery. You want readers to see it, not grimace at it and click away.

* Use keywords – What is the page essentially about? Use that keyword so readers know what all of the information will pertain to.

* Use a link – When someone runs their mouse across the headline they will realise that it is clickable. It can link to the homepage, your site map or anywhere else on your website that would be helpful to visitors.

Headlines and titles must be centred on your page. If you create them well, you will entice visitors to stay and explore your website a lot more. Are you getting the idea? With just a few changes, your website development can be a much more exciting destination.

Michelle Dale is The Managing Director of Virtual Miss Friday, a highly-qualified Executive Virtual Assistant Service which helps businesses and individuals accomplish every detail of their professional aspirations. Want to discover more about these insightful online business building success strategies? Contact VMF Today!

Posted by Virtual Miss Friday | Filed Under **Blogs**, **Business**, **Internet**, **Marketing**, **Media**, **VMF**, **eBusiness**, Advertising, Development, Everything Else, Promotion, Writing | Comments

How To Use Article Marketing To Accelerate Your Website Development

January 24, 2010

While articles are essential in order to populate your websites and books with directly related content, article marketing represents a whole new sphere of possibilities. When it comes to seo services, the excellent content that you create can now be used to spread the word globally about your operation, through the creation and distribution of special article variants to directories, authorities and relevant blogs. There is a constant thirst for great information and you shouldn’t forget that the majority of people use search engines such as Google and Bing to look for answers to their queries. By distributing your articles in a concerted fashion, searchers will be able to find them within the article directories, leading to additional traffic back to your sites.

The key here is that the distributed articles will have a “resource box,” educating them about your organisation and suggesting that they follow the anchor link text within, specially designed, to trace back to your blog or website.

Article marketing is a long-term prospect. This method of promotion has been around for a long time and is well proven to be one of the greatest ways to generate traffic and to create a long list of solid back links to your website development. The top search engines look at many of the senior article directories in a good light and a link from one of these sites through one of your articles, back to you, is good. Your search engine positioning may well benefit if you build up, on a consistent basis, great back links from authority sites.

One of the most powerful benefits of article marketing is that it helps to establish your author name and your site as experts in your niche. You should never set a limit on the amount of great information that you have circulated around the Internet, all related and pointing back to your place. This is a very competitive world and you must, first and foremost, aim to build credibility through online business services.

Here, we are showing you a number of different ways to help you improve your online presence and to really get the best out of Internet marketing. There are a couple of underlying trends throughout. Firstly, you need to ensure that you establish your level of expertise. In other words, you must be the people to turn to for help within your niche. Secondly, especially as regards social media initiatives, be subtle about the way that you approach your presence. You need to make people aware of who you are and what you do and through careful interaction, once again establish your reputation.

For best effect, it is advisable to link all your strategies toward the common goal. Always link your Facebook and Twitter accounts to your blog updates, promote good comment interaction, syndicate your material, and always make sure that it’s bookmarked. First-class content is essential and should be composed regularly, being distributed efficiently to maximise your reach.

In 2010, make your move, and set out to take action. You have taken time to create a great-looking website and must now ensure that you take massive action to make it all worthwhile.

Michelle Dale is The Managing Director of Virtual Miss Friday, an accomplished Executive Virtual Assistant Service which helps companies of all sizes reach their commercial targets. Want to get more information about online business building success strategies that really work? Contact VMF today!

How To Select And Implement KEYWORDs In Your Website Development

January 21, 2010

I am sure you have heard of search engine optimisation services, also known as seo services. It’s the process of using keywords to draw targeted traffic to your online business. But what about keyword phrases? They can bring in even more lucrative traffic.

You will find keywords used in your headlines, content and elsewhere, designed to appeal to search engine robots. The engines employ robots to visit your website development once it is registered and to check on what you have within. If you select very specific words that your customers will likely specify when they look for your site, then your content will probably appear within the all-important primary page of results. This means that you will be the first link anyone sees for those words.

Website content is not just something for visitors to read. It is also a way to attract the “right” visitors in the first place. It is very important that you use the right keywords across your site, so that you gain the acceptance of the search engines and become visible.

Doing your Homework.

You thought that homework stopped when you graduated from school. In the world of business, you never stop learning if you want to go as far as the road will take you. Here, your home work will involve preparing your content with keyword research.

Don’t worry, you don’t have to be a research expert to be successful at this task. Correct keyword research will reveal the words that you need to rank your website ahead of everyone else. Do you think you are ready? Let’s begin.

Conducting Keyword Research.

Here is what you can do to start out:

1. Create a list of words. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes. What words would you input to find you? Write as many of these down as possible. Better yet, record them in an electronic spreadsheet for easier editing later. Pick single words and phrases with multiple words.

2. Talk to your customers. You have existing customers. Use surveys to determine how they found you. See which words they used if they found you through an Internet search engine. Many business owners will look past this solution as it seems too easy, or they don’t ask the correct questions.

3. Keyword software tools are excellent. They are especially helpful if you have determined your keyword list already. By entering the keywords, the software will tell you if they are likely to be good enough to reach your prospects.

4. Analyse the data. Take your list and condense it, so that you are left with just the keywords most likely to succeed. Now rank these keywords, first to last.

5. Try them out. Don’t use all of them at one time, but keep track of which ones you use and for how long. Using website management tools you can find out how much traffic and conversion (how many people used your keyword content as a means to do something – click, sign up, or buy) rates changed.

So, are you ready? You obviously already use content, but maybe it isn’t working well enough. There are always ways to make it better and keywords are one of those ways.

Posted by Virtual Miss Friday | Filed Under **Business**, **Internet**, **Marketing**, **Media**, **VMF**, **eBusiness**, Advertising, Development, Everything Else, Promotion, Writing | Comments

Windows 7 – How Does It Stack Up?

January 20, 2010

It appears that people everywhere have a tendency to love or hate Microsoft, and the company has certainly had some harsh criticism over the years, most likely due to its widespread control of the personal computer operating system for such a long time. Before it became trendy and then eventually just plain sensible to use a Mac operating system, people used to constantly complain about the incredible variety of idiosyncrasies with Microsoft’s Windows operating systems. It seemed that you were only getting used to a particular version and the Seattle-based company would trot out another. If you were thinking about buying a new PC, and you had a particular preference for one version of Windows, you often didn’t have any choice, because the new version would be automatically “bundled in” in the new computer.

Microsoft didn’t do much to assuage its many critics when it first released its Vista version of the Windows operating system – supposedly better, from someone’s point of view, than the popular XP version. Out of the box there were problems due to unavailability of drivers or a counter-intuitive process of upgrading. Application providers were slow to release drivers to work with Vista and the new OS came with a variety of annoying features and processes that made many wish they had stuck with their XP.

Late October saw the release of Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system and the initial verdict is that it’s much better than Vista and really where we should be. Some have compared it favorably with Mac’s latest OSX version, which is good news indeed for Microsoft.

Windows 7 is quite a bit more secure than XP, whose users are square in the marketing crosshairs – as for the most part, they were the people who totally refused to upgrade to Vista. Even though Vista was toned down and made far more user-friendly during its “day in the sun,” the terrible press it received seemed to stick with it the whole time.

Windows 7 is much more efficient, requiring only half of the memory needed by Vista and it is much quicker to load on startup, also drawing less battery power on your laptop. Those who did not upgrade to Vista from XP will notice significant differences and will take a little while to get used to them, but those who went through the initial pain on Vista will see a much less clunky interface and one which makes the user feel that he or she is far less constrained to tabbing, resizing, fumbling around and the general “1990s” feel of previous incarnations.

For example, features such as Aero Snape allow you to put two applications side-by-side and copy and paste easily, Aero Peek makes windows that you’re not focusing on temporarily transparent and Aero Shake allows you to “shake” a window, thereby closing all others. In short, there’s a much more instantaneous action feel about the whole platform.

In recognition of the fact that homes now have multiple computers and that they should be linked together easily, Windows 7 has a great new networking feature called HomeGroup, enabling you to set up and share any number of files very easily, including access to printers.

It is true to say that Microsoft will find it very difficult to come up with a “perfect” operating system, due to the unbelievable legacy of programs, peripherals and hardware manufacturers reliant on “uncle Microsoft” to function. Windows 7 may not be pain free, but it is a much better product out of the box than Vista ever was.

Adam Toren, Co-Founder of Young Entrepreneur, specializes in maximising the profitability of failing businesses with his own unique ‘bottom line’ method. Adam, along with his brother, have established, bought and then sold on an assortment of companies in recent years. At present, they own and operate a very successful publishing company and variety of online businesses.

Posted by Guest Post | Filed Under **Business**, **Media**, **eBusiness**, Computers, Technology | Comments