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This is a question I asked allot when I was starting out my Internet busness. I ended up using both a laptop, and a desktop. They both have their time and place.

QUESTION: Is a laptop or a desktop better? I have a small company and need to do some graphics, photos, etc., plus 100 page reports. I like the mobility of a laptop, but is a desktop better in the long run for holding/retrieving data, etc.?

ANSWER: Great question. Sounds like it’s easy to answer on the surface, right? Laptops are mobile, desktops aren’t. But there’s more to it than that. Here are some issues to consider:

Mobility - Well, sure, it’s the big one. If you need to work remotely, a laptop is the way to go. Remember that a 3G card from your cell phone provider can give you high-speed internet access in most urban areas.

Storage - One of the major places where laptops and desktops differ is in how much hard drive space they offer. Laptops use physically smaller drives, which can only offer so much storage space. Though larger drives are available, 100GB is still common on a laptop, while 500GB desktop drives are seen all the time (again, bigger drives can be had).

This is a huge difference and it seems to be expanding, not contracting. If you have very large storage needs, desktop is your best bet.

Graphics and Gaming - You said you run a business so I don’t expect this is a big deal for you, but with Vista it’s important to consider graphics now, no matter what kind of user you are.

Laptop graphics have come a long way, but I’d still say only 50 percent have really sufficient graphics processors. On the other hand, you can outfit any PC with perfectly good graphics for $100… and you can upgrade it later.

Upgrades - Speaking of upgrades, it’s more difficult to upgrade a laptop. In some cases, it’s impossible: Sure, you can pop in a new hard drive later, but adding a second hard drive means plugging in an external disk that will be cumbersome to tote around with you. Many laptop optical drives can’t really be upgraded at all, nor can motherboards or CPUs. Laptop repairs are far more expensive and difficult than desktop PC repairs.

Peripherals - Remember that when you’re in the office, you can always plug in an external mouse, keyboard, and monitor to your laptop.

Price - Expect to pay $300 to $500 more for a comparably equipped laptop (though this varies widely).

Other considerations are about the same, to be honest. CPU and RAM are about equal on laptops and desktops now, unless you’re considering an ultra-high-end PC.

I obviously can’t make the buying decision for you, but I’ll reiterate my computer plan in case you haven’t seen it before. I use both: a moderately-priced laptop is with me on a daily basis, syncing up with an inexpensive desktop that works as a print and file server.

The desktop works as a machine for my daily backups, has plenty of storage for stuff I don’t need to take with me on the road (or to other rooms of the house), has two printers hooked up to it, accepts incoming faxes, and otherwise stands as a backup in case something fails on my laptop. My laptop, however, is where I do most of my work. Sure I could get by with just a notebook PC, but having both makes things so much easier.

[Source: Christopher Null : Yahoo! Tech]

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Well I’m back home after my holidays in Montana and British Columbia. Had a great time - fun in the sun and all that. Did some boating, camping etc.

While I was gone the commissions kept on coming in and everything was fine as far as my Internet business goes, but I did have one issue to deal with. The Google Adsense team emailed me and said that one of my sites was not in compliance with the Google Adsense TOS (terms of service).

Turns out that one of my sites had some Google Ads presented in a way that broke the Adsense publisher rules. I had two Google ads (in the Medium Rectangle format) that had a title above them including the word “directory”. This could be misleading to my visitors in that they would see Adsense ads only, and yet they are told it’s a directory. So this is what I did.

I emailed the Google Adsense Team ASAP, and showed them the site amendments I had made. I thanked them for their attention and detailed how I had fixed the oversight as soon as I had received their email. It’s very important that you respond quickly to any emails from the Google Adsense Team.

As a result, I received an email back within 12 hours stating that my site was now in compliance with the Google Adsense program’s terms of service. This is the 3rd email I have received from Google Adsense regarding my page layout and design. Everytime I responded the same way, quickly, accurately, and with courtesy.

You will hear of webmasters that have their Adsense accounts shutdown out of the blue, but I’m here to tell you the Adsense Team does not normally whack out sites (or accounts) without first trying to give the web site owner a chance to fix the issue.  

So it’s back to work on a number of projects this week. I will making more posts for the Affordable SEO series.

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Have you heard of the RedZee search yet? RedZee is a new search engine on the Internet market that disallows pornographical sites from being listed in their search results. That is a good thing, or a bad thing, depending on your personal search and surfing habits.

For those of us raising children, it’s a breath of fresh air. Yes, I know the standard adage — “it’s up to the parents to control the content their children consume” — but at least their Internet consumption can be somewhat cleansed
when they use the RedZee search engine. Of course, as soon as your children are past the age of 5, they will figure out how to search “Google”, “MSN”, and “Yahoo!” in the RedZee search field, and awaaaaay they go.

Try the RZ search function. Go to the RedZee homepage and do a search for ”porn” (or any other adult term), and watch the results. All you will get is the little red zebra shaking his head and doing a dance for you. Now if they can design a filter for all the drug and violence content. (don’t get me started) The red zebra reminds me of the donkey in the hit animation movie Shrek. Yeah yeah, cute.

It’s funny though; when I was talking on the phone to one of RedZee’s employees, (more…)

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Well the sabres are rattling and the cash is jingling in Washington, as the mighty Republicans have voted down the Democrats regarding the latest move in the so-called Net Neutrality battle. If you have never heard of the internet neutrality struggle going on in Washington, you can visit Save The Internet before reading further. 

In my view, the whole issue is as old as the hills. Big business wants more control over what the buying public consumes. To give my readers a clear example of the importance of this issue. There has been cases of ISP providers blocking the Vonage web site and service from being viewed on their customer’s computers. This sums up the issue here. The ISP companies (more…)

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