Small business IT set up

[covmutley]

I launched a new business a couple of weeks ago (yay Corona....!) and am looking for some advice on my IT set up please.

Its a consultancy business and it will be me on my own for at least a couple of years, so a mobile phone and a laptop and I'm pretty much good to go.

My current set up is a Samsung galaxy S8 (just finished 2 year deal so on a cheap sim only deal now) and a Lenovo ideapad 320s, i7 7th gen with 8GB ram and SSD. I will only really ever use it for email, creating word doc reports, PDFs, web browsing and some occasional and light photo editing/saving.. Im using Gmail and dont have any backup storage sorted yet.

I think my mobile and laptop are both fine, and I dont want to spend a load of money unnecessarily, but these are my essential business 'tools' that I will be using 24/7 and absolutely rely upon, so I want to know Im not missing out or failing to put something in place now that I will later regret. I do think I need to sort some file storage backup, but I want this to be automatic, so probably cloud storage. I dont want a desktop as I am likely to be working from a couple of different locations.

A new macbook air with icloud for storage sounds nice, but Im not sure its a good use of money. I did have a iphone7 in a previous job which I pretty much just used for calls and email, but I have always had android phones for personal use and I dont think I have ever even had a play with macOS. If I stick with my Lenovo, how can I backup my files automatically?

Thanks in advance

Edited by covmutley on Friday 3rd April 23:26

[Brother D]

Download google chrome - both the laptop and phone.

Create a gmail account if you don't have one.

Turn on syncing in the browser.

Enable 2 factor authentication on both (and for any banking/finance).

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/185839?...

install this password checker https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/password... and use the suggest strong password on your websites you visit

Install adblock plus https://adblockplus.org/

If you are using microsoft office then turn on onedrive and make sure your desktop/pictures/documents are saved to there

https://youtu.be/Zx4Lw9L-gOA

Also makes sure you have 2FA on your microsoft account

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12408/mic...

If you don't have microsoft office, then use the google docs/slides/sheets.

For your phone add your google account and turn on backup - makes moving to a new phone seemless

https://support.google.com/photos/answer/6193313?c...

Edited by Brother D on Saturday 4th April 00:09

Edited by Brother D on Saturday 4th April 00:13

[Troubleatmill]

With Google - You are the product. They are selling all your metadata on where you are, what you do, what websites you visit etc.


With Apple - They prefer to keep your stuff private to you.


Pays your money and takes your choice.

[Brother D]

Troubleatmill said:

With Google - You are the product. They are selling all your metadata on where you are, what you do, what websites you visit etc.

With Apple - They prefer to keep your stuff private to you.

Pays your money and takes your choice.

Hate to break it to you, but if you are connected to the internet - you are being tracked in some form, no matter what steps you take to 'not allow cookies' etc.

[Wombat3]

Given that you are travelling one of the greatest risks would seem to be that you either lose your laptop or it gets nicked.

You might want to think about how you can protect the data on it (disk encryption etc) or possibly even not actually keep any data on it at all by using either cloud storage or your own personal storage device at home. Practicalities of that also depend on file sizes etc. The ability to remotely wipe the thing would be handy as well, same goes for your phone.

All too easy to open an email attachment on a phone & forget that it actually gets saved to the phone by default when you do that.

[covmutley]

Thanks. I had One Drive and get 1TB of storage with office 365 and managed to link my documents folder following the youtube video. So I think that is backup storage sorted I think.

All easy enough . Guess I dont need a shiny new mac

[Haltamer]

covmutley said:

Thanks. I had One Drive and get 1TB of storage with office 365 and managed to link my documents folder following the youtube video. So I think that is backup storage sorted I think.

All easy enough . Guess I dont need a shiny new mac

What you've managed to fathom out would be my reccomendation:- It sticks to the principles of "KISS" and avoids overcomplicating things. With that said, bear in mind that it is a real time syncronised backup:- There is some versioning available using onedrive, but I'd suggest keeping a seperate backup - Even something as rudimentary as a securely stored portable HDD would do - That gives you a fully uncoupled, static copy of your data.

Onedrive down? No problem - HDD Failed? Instant availablility of data without downloading - Ransomware encrypts files on share? Protected (This being most common / critical)

I'd certainly avoid the new mac - As you've not used it before, it's not going to boost your productivity to jump to an entirely new toolset:- There are a number of enterprise applications / features not easily available to the mac - Not so much a problem now, but possibly in the future; And you'll find it uses a slightly kneecapped version of Office - Probably the biggest turnoff. (It's functional, but with all manner of issues IME.)

ETA:

As mentioned above, Set out as you intend to go on - Use a secure password manager, and ensure that all of the systems you are using are documented with login accounts. It'll save you problems in the future, and make expansion far easier to manage when it comes to granting access to employees securely.

[Heres Johnny]

Aside from your technology, buy a domain and use that for email. Nothing looks cheaper to me than a business using [e-mail]

Adblockers just screw other peoples businesses and when I get round to it, if I find a way to detect their use, I’d block the delivery of content from my sites

[covmutley]

Thanks all.

I have built myself a website using square space and am using a domain specific email.

[nikaiyo2]

Heres Johnny said:

Aside from your technology, buy a domain and use that for email. Nothing looks cheaper to me than a business using [e-mail]

Adblockers just screw other peoples businesses and when I get round to it, if I find a way to detect their use, I’d block the delivery of content from my sites

More important than anything IMHO. Using gmail, Hotmail etc lacks any credibility.

If you are using 365, get an iPhone, even an ancient iPhone 6. You will have a thousand times less agro with it syncing etc

[covmutley]

I'm using gmail, but my email address uses my website domain, not @gmail. I agree it doesn't look professional otherwise.

[Baldchap]

Don't forget antivirus.

+1 for drive encryption. You are legally responsible for the client data you hold.

[Mr Pointy]

covmutley said:

Thanks. I had One Drive and get 1TB of storage with office 365 and managed to link my documents folder following the youtube video. So I think that is backup storage sorted I think.

All easy enough. Guess I dont need a shiny new mac

The greatest fear I have is losing or my laptop or it breaking down which would render me unable to work so I used to buy on-site NBD warranties when I bought a new laptop: nowadays I have a backup laptop ready to go. I'd suggest you give serious consideration to buying a cheap refurb from ebay & setting it up so you can pick it up & use it at a moment's notice. Given you are running O365 then you probably have a licence to install five instances of the applications so use one of them on the backup laptop. Configure it to see the Onedrive drive & you'll have all your data available. Turn it on once a week or so & let it sync up.

It doesn't have to be the latest & greatest - you can get a good workhorse Lenovo for not much money (probably less than a day's fees) & it's tax deductible.

Check how you have set up your Onedrive storage as well. I prefer to have a copy both on the local drive & on the Onedrive storage - it can be set up to be remote storage only & sometimes it defaults to this.

Phones are vulnerable as well - consider insurance to get you a new one next day or asap. A backup phone would probably cost more than the laptop but might be a lifesaver. I've known someone have to go into Tesco & buy a phone & SIM card just to sort out replacing a lost phone.

[Wombat3]

nikaiyo2 said:

Heres Johnny said:

Aside from your technology, buy a domain and use that for email. Nothing looks cheaper to me than a business using [e-mail]

Adblockers just screw other peoples businesses and when I get round to it, if I find a way to detect their use, I’d block the delivery of content from my sites

More important than anything IMHO. Using gmail, Hotmail etc lacks any credibility.

If you are using 365, get an iPhone, even an ancient iPhone 6. You will have a thousand times less agro with it syncing etc

??

We've used 365 for 5+ years & not really had any major issues syncing mail on a number of Android devices. Even shared mailboxes now work properly if you know how to set them up.

[omniflow]

I would also suggest getting a spare power supply for your laptop. Keep one to use at home and the other in the bag with the laptop. That way, if you leave your power supply somewhere, you still have the one at home to use.

[crowfield]

And sort out a backup for Onedrive. If you accidently delete something ( or if Microsoft do ) then you can restore from your backup. So many people think once data is stored in the cloud, they don't need to back it up.

[Wombat3]

crowfield said:

And sort out a backup for Onedrive. If you accidently delete something ( or if Microsoft do ) then you can restore from your backup. So many people think once data is stored in the cloud, they don't need to back it up.

True. One of the reasons I use a NAS (Synology) is because I can access it from anywhere. I can then run a realtime sync to the cloud so can also access that copy from anywhere which then syncs back to the NAS copy AND I can also get it to run an incremental backup to the cloud every night as well.

[nikaiyo2]

Wombat3 said:

nikaiyo2 said:

Heres Johnny said:

Aside from your technology, buy a domain and use that for email. Nothing looks cheaper to me than a business using [e-mail]

Adblockers just screw other peoples businesses and when I get round to it, if I find a way to detect their use, I’d block the delivery of content from my sites

More important than anything IMHO. Using gmail, Hotmail etc lacks any credibility.

If you are using 365, get an iPhone, even an ancient iPhone 6. You will have a thousand times less agro with it syncing etc

??

We've used 365 for 5+ years & not really had any major issues syncing mail on a number of Android devices. Even shared mailboxes now work properly if you know how to set them up.

That’s the difference you have not really had any major issues, we switched back to Apple phones 6 months or so ago and went from your situation to no syncing issues at all ever.

Also you get less grief in general, apps work on app,e that sort of kind of ish work on Android, banking apps in particular, any SAGE product works 100% of the time on iOS and 50% of the time on Android.

I can’t see why anyone wanting a a simple one man IT system would use Android it just makes things harder.

[sparkyhx]

1 - Portable USB powered screen - productivity boost.
2 - Kensington Lock

3 - if you have ergonomic issues get a portable Keyboard and mouse and laptop stand. The Microsoft folding keyboard is brilliant, will connect to 2 things at once, MS, Apple & Android
4 - Cloud storage is deffo important doesn't matter which one. Unless you pay lots, decide what is important/irreplaceable and size accordingly.
5 - If you get a Office 365 (about £80) per year you get 1TB cloud from Microsoft. You will probably need word excel powerpoint etc anyway £80 gets you 5 licences so you can share around family members if required.
6 - Alternative power supply in case of loss/forgetting

What sort of consultancy are you doing?

In my consulting experience many businesses don't want YOUR laptop anywhere near THEIR systems. The closest being thru Citrix, or just for webmail access, so potentially your laptop is irrelevant. 9 times out of 10 I was supplied with a laptop.

Edited by sparkyhx on Sunday 5th April 16:53

[covmutley]

I'm a planning consultant . So I never 'touch" anyone else's systems.

The website I built is linked in my profile page if anyone cares to tell me how good it is

I'm going to look at a NAS. Especially if there are no settings that prevent me accidentally deleting from my kn laptop, and then it automatically being deleted from one drive too!

Edited by covmutley on Sunday 5th April 19:44