Margie's Travel Gets Serious About Protecting Data
The Margie's Travel series tells fictitious tales of how Margie and John, co-owners of a small travel agency, meet everyday business challenges — often with the help of their resourceful office assistant Sally.
Margie, John and the rest of the staff at Margie's Travel are experts when it comes to helping their clients make travel arrangements. And though they rely on computers in almost every aspect of their business — from booking reservations to keeping the books — they don't have an in-house IT expert on staff. They are a small agency, with just five full-time employees and three part-time helpers.
Margie's Travel is well-known and well-liked in the community. In fact, Margie was in the middle of creating a presentation on a popular new destination resort to show at a meeting of the Civic Club when she accidentally saved over her Office PowerPoint file.
Unfortunately, it is not the first time it has happened. Like many small businesses, the team at Margie's works hard and fast. Mistakes happen. In this case Margie was able to recreate her PowerPoint presentation in time for the Civic Club meeting — but the extra time it took meant other things she needed to do that morning did not get done.
That's why John, who is Margie's business partner, decided to follow-up on her suggestion and investigate Windows Vista Business. John had already heard good things about security improvements in the operating system and was also interested in the new fax and scan capabilities, since there always seems to be someone ahead of him when he wants to use the office fax machine.
What John found when he did a little research was that Windows Vista Business not only has great security improvements and faxing capabilities, but that it also has a number of innovative features that can help protect against data loss. One of them — called Shadow Copy — automatically creates point-in-time copies of files as you work, so you can quickly and easily restore previous versions of a document you may have accidentally deleted.
John also liked what he heard about how easy it is to back up files with Windows Vista Business. You no longer have to remember to periodically back up your data. Now you can use a simple wizard to schedule when and where you want your data to be backed up.
When John started telling Margie what he had learned, she knew that buying new computers loaded with Windows Vista Business made good sense. But she was reluctant to commit, admitting to John she dreaded the process of moving everything off of their old computers and on to new ones.
But John had that already figured out. He told Margie how Windows Easy Transfer helps you set up new computers by automatically transferring important information-such as files and folders, e-mail messages, settings, contacts, photos and even Internet Favourites—from an old computer to a new one.
Margie smiled and told John that it all sounded good to her — as long as he would take charge of making it happen.
One week later: Margie put down the telephone with a heavy sigh. " What's wrong? " John asked. " Well, it is good news and bad news, " she told him. " The Civic Club directors want us to put together a special group travel package for club members to go to that resort I told them about. " John smiled. " So what is the bad news in that? " he asked. " They want a colour brochure to hand out at their next meeting, " she told him. " And the meeting is tomorrow. " What will Margie and John do?
