Financial & Travel Musings

The iPod was a nice idea when it first came out but now there are so many different models that it’s quite confusing at first glance.

The ipod reviews are really no better as they tend to go into incredible detail about minor things that nobody’s really that bothered about but at least they list the full technical specifications should you want them.

Basically there are three different iPods. The nano is the baby of the bunch and basically aimed at people who just want an MP3 player although it will also play videos. The shuffle is basically the same thing but without the screen. The original iPod is a larger version of the nano but with a whole lot more memory which means that you could load your entire CD collection; personally I don’t really see a place for this model these days. Finally there is the iPod touch which is probably the best one to go for as it has by far the best facilities available; get the the one with the largest amount of memory that you can afford as you can use this to play videos and they just eat up memory.

But why get an iPod anyway? There are much cheaper versions of the nano, original and shuttle around (think around 90% cheaper) but the iPod touch is largely unique for the moment and is worth getting.

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Between one thing and another I ended up becoming something of an expert on the in-house document management system over a number of years.

Are they worth doing though? Well, at the outset I’d have said that it was a definite “no”. After all, there’s quite a bit of work to be done before you get any benefit from such a system. Whilst it’s clearly a good idea to be able to find things and certainly handy to be able to pull up the documents onscreen rather than hunting through a whole bunch of files to find something, there’s quite an effort to go through before you reach that stage. For one thing, it takes time to enter a document into the system with a minute or two to scan documents and adding all the meta-information in the form of dates, titles, keywords and so on.

Moreover there’s the problem that you don’t get any of the advantages for a few months (how long the delay is depends on your business) so you’re plugging away for ages before you can really see why. Sure, you could process all the historical documents and get the advantages sooner but few people have the time, money or inclination to do that.

Once you get over that hump you soon wonder how you did without the system. The only problem then is that it becomes increasingly difficult to find documents that predate the system which for many means a period of a few months more ’til those historical documents cease to be quite so relevant.

So, very worthwhile doing but put some thought into how you’ll motivate staff to enter details for the several months it takes before the system becomes one of those “can’t do without it” systems.

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Over the last 10 years we’ve all become very much DIY printers for all kinds of things that would previously have been the exclusive province of professional printers, but should DIY always be the only option that’s considered?

It’s certainly true that the software available these days is right up there with that which professional printers would use in pretty much every circumstance. The home-use page setting software of today is way beyond the capabilities of the professional page setting software of a few years back and most word processors are pretty much up to that standard too these days. Moreover, there’s the major plus point that doing it yourself means that the page looks just like you want it to ie there’s none of the interpretation that professionals apply to your ideas.

However, when you print it out it’s a whole different matter. Everything from business cards to wedding invitations is turned out on home printers these days and usually on inappropriately light card and with none of the embossing that gives such things the appropriate level of impressiveness. Usually that printing choice is down to a combination of perceived cost and perceived speed but neither really stand up. For reasonable volume there’s little difference in the cost since your own printer ink is pretty expensive and moreover you’re getting better quality printing, paper and potentially embossing too for the price. Whilst it’s true that you’re never going to get the stuff back in your hand immediately if you use a printer, for the likes of business and invitation cards the day or two delay is hardly going to be an issue, is it?

At the very least you should consider professional printing for specialty printing jobs.

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