Hi $contact_first_name!

The new IdeaPad series laptops from Lenovo are a great alternative to the award winning X and T61 (in the $1500 pricerange) models. We can now offer Ideapad Y510′s for only $1075, which includes shipping & 2 years of extended warranty, 3 years in all! While I wanted the the Lenovo Thinkpad X61, I found that the new Ideapad series had almost as much bang for the buck with the same quality and at far less cost, so I bought one and am very happy with it. I did turn off the facial recognition, as while it did work, it was cumbersome. You mileage may vary. The Y710 series offers a bigger screen if you need it.

Here’s another cool selling point: you can buy one extended warranty for multiple laptops! We can do this on the refurbished units we sell too. The warranty is then applid to the first laptop it’s used on however. All our new laptops come with their own 1 year warranty, I am referring to the optional 2 year extensions. Since you might never use the warranty, it’s a fairly safe gamble to buy, say, 1 warranty extension for every 3 laptops – that could save you hundreds!

Last month we didn’t cover any open source apps, so this month I have a doosie. SugarCRM has released it’s major upgrade to version 5. I upgraded our system (the open source “Community Edition”) from 4.5 just after the new year. One of the biggest improvements is the email client interface which mimics many of the best webmail clients (finally!). It’s a pleasure to use and the open source version (vs the many commerical versions with support that they offer) is a powerouse of features. As many of you know, I use it for our newsletters with detailed tracking, calendar sharing with email invitations, keeping detailed customer notes and history of contacts with their record and for mail merges to Word on searcheable critera. There’s also a plugin for my email program (Thunderbird or Outlook) that allows me to instantly attach any email to any client record if needed. Also I can synchronize the contact info to Microsoft Outlook or Thunderbird. Lot’s of power for free software, no? In addition to it’s lack of cost, the huge advantage it has over commerical offerings is it’s customization abilities (that are then yours to keep) and the ability to easily integrate into your inhouse network seamlessly, to pull all this data into your disaster recovery plan. Another major plus is that it’s web accessible anywhere – with lots of fine grained user access controls, employees see only what you want. CRM by definition offers a great way for entire teams to keep track of their various customer interactions offering a much improved customer experience. Improving customer communications improves service and drives customer loyalty. These things, of course, improve sales.

If you’re only looking for a way to do email newsletters but not all the other cool things CRM can do for you, checkout this list.

WARNING! GREEN SECTION FOLLOWS!

The gadget of the month this time are these really cool LED tire pressure warning caps. Replace your car’s tire valve cap with these, and when your tire pressdure changes they will start flashing to alert you. Poor tire pressure reduces gas mileage and can increase tire wear. I picked these up when buying a years worth (and then some) of carbon offsets for the Florence I.T. vehicle (see next section). You can find a non LED version of a similar product for less money on amazon.com. As you by now know, you can “green” your electricity through programs like “New England Greenstart” if you don’t have your own renewables installed. The nominal cost increase on your bill purchases renewable energy credits (REC’s), and supports renewable energy in a very real way. Carbon or emissions trading works somewhat similarly, directly funding new Renewable Energy projects. While it’s certainly beneficial, it’s no substitute for reducing our fossil fuel usage. So with that seemingly self defeating introduction……

The Florence I.T. vehicle now sports a “Carbon balanced by Terrapass” bumber sticker, which means we purchased carbon offsets through Terrapass – The way they offset the amount of carbon emitted by the miles we drive in a given year (I actually bought much more than we actually use) is to fund renewable energy projects. I did some research first and found that Terrapass simply trades and funds renewable energy projects through the Chicago Climate Exchange, a legit emissions trading organization with customers like Ford, Bank of America, and industry heavyweight Florence I.T.

My real solution for transport is an electric car (imagine the Florence I.T. Tesla!) charged by renewables. Until then, this is a good stepping stone. (BTW the all electric Prius is supposed to be out by 2010)!