"How Your Company Can Maximize Employee Efficiency and Job Performance"

Complete Transcript of
Anthony Crea – Diskeeper Interview
on Let’s Talk Computers
July 7 2007
Host Alan Ashendorf

Alan:  If it’s a well known fact that if an employee of a company is not completely comfortable in the use of their computer system, that this, over time will end up costing the company money – then why aren’t more companies doing something about this problem? Our guest today is Anthony Crea, Spokesperson for Diskeeper Corporation. Welcome back to Let’s Talk Computers, Anthony.

Anthony:  Thank you, Alan. It’s nice to talk to you again.

Alan:  Why is that when a company goes out and buys a computer for all of its employees – and of course, they buy the best possible computer to get the job done – but they completely miss the fact about the keyboards? And in many cases, where the computer system is a top-notch computer system, the keyboard is just a keyboard they ship with the computer system. It is just a keyboard.

The keyboards probably cost all of $4 or $5. To say nothing of it not being ergonomically made for long-term usage – while this in itself can end up costing a company a lot of money in the long run.

Anthony:  Let’s say, the most economical feasible ones that the company kind of "throws in" as an after the fact kind of thing. The result is that when people use them the experience is not what I would call top-notch. There is a result of that – and it’s not a positive one.

Alan:  Because you’ve got a person who’s doing the same thing over and over again, usually from early in the morning until late in the afternoon – and after awhile, it gets to be tiring to them. It gets to be sore on their fingers – and the bottom line is that it actually does cost the company a lot of money! The companies look at it and say "I’m saving money on the cheap keyboard that came with the computer system." And that’s not a good way of looking at it, is it?

Anthony:  It’s one way of looking at it, but when you notice that productivity falls off – usually the last thing that the companies will look to is the equipment. But, more often than not, I’d have to say it’s the equipment that’s being used.

Alan:  I agree with you 100%. You have really good keyboards on the market that are not very expensive, whether we use a wired or wireless, it has to sound a certain way. It has to feel a certain way. My wife is a touch typist and if she goes to a keyboard that doesn’t really fit right with her fingers, it throws her completely off her game.

Anthony:  And it slows you down. You need a keyboard that is going to have some kind of response or what they call a feel to it. Otherwise, it’s what you said, over time you will notice that it’s slowing down and your productivity slacks off.

Alan:  I would suggest to anybody that they should go to their local retail store and go play on the keyboards and then go back to their boss and say, "You know, I really like that keyboard and I think it’s going to make a lot of difference in how I’m doing my work and I want you to buy me one."

Anthony:  And there is any number of keyboard manufacturers out there, providing all sorts of different types and different sizes. The key size is important. The size of the actual board itself is important. Stores now are a bit keener to that and are providing a number of different solutions for folks.

Alan:  And if we think that the keyboards are made cheaply, wait until you look at the mouse that comes with these computer systems! I wouldn’t give you $1 for those things. I mean, they’re useless, and the user ends up using the mouse and the keyboard more than any other parts of the computer every day – all day long – and it has to be comfortable, doesn’t it?

Anthony:  Once again, it’s an add-on. It’s a throw away. It’s a secondary, (not even a secondary). It’s even further down the list of important piece of equipment for most manufacturers. But, when you think about, most users spend their day – they spend eight hours a day with their hand over that mouse.

Alan:  And it’s got to be comfortable - if it doesn’t really fit the hand. And I always suggest getting a laser mouse because they’re a lot more exact and they are a lot more comfortable to work with. And they’re not expensive.

Anthony:  And the learning curve is really fast. It makes things easier, over the long term.

Alan:  Then, you’ve got the monitor that you’re sitting in front of. If you have a small monitor, you’re not going to be able to do as much effective work as you would if you had, say – at least a 19" monitor. Or you can get one of these 21" monitors. They are well worth it!

Now, we have LCD monitors that are very inexpensive – we have high resolution monitors that you can pick up very cheaply and it’s a known fact that if an employee enjoys working with their computer monitor because it’s so nice to look at, they are going to work with it longer.

And I have even seen where the only thing that is wrong with their monitor is that it out of adjustment. For some reason, the brightness is off or the contrast – the colors are out. There are a lot of monitor test sites that are absolutely free on the Web. You just go and it’s like an HTML page to adjust the blackness and all these settings so that you can really see what it is that you are working with.

Anthony:  Most people don’t notice this because they get so used to the way things are and they forget. They make all sorts of allocations and we work around and try to make things fit.

The truth of the matter is that if you take whatever smaller monitors and then once again, go to your local store and test-drive one of those larger monitors – it’s a whole new world! And there are all sorts of changes that can be made for the brightness so you get a precise fit – as opposed to just settling for the way that things used to be. It takes all of five minutes to adjust and the experience is the difference between night and day.

Alan:  Having a computer that boots fast, that shuts down fast, that’s fun to work with, has a really nice monitor, has the right kind of mouse and the right kind of keyboard makes things so much easier for the user to work with day in and day out. The computer becomes just an extension of what they’re doing. It almost becomes fun in some cases!

Anthony:  As it should. We don’t want to know all of those other things – we want it to work. we want it to be an expression of ourselves.

Alan:  It’s these little easy things that people can do for a company or even for an individual that make using a computer so easy. Speed is very important - and one of the things that we always over look is defragging your computer system. That’s because we use it – we don’t worry about what’s going on in the background and we don’t realize that computer is getting slower and slower, every time we use it. And after awhile, it does get on our nerves a little bit, doesn’t it?

Anthony:  It does. What happens is that humans are so good at adapting and conforming and we are very accepting – and we have forgotten that over time, we tend not to notice how slow things get – until it’s usually a breaking point and it’s a few months in and you realize that this isn’t what I paid for.

Alan:  Why is it that our system starts slowing down? Because the operating system – as sophisticated as it is – it should handle all this. It should take care of all this in the background. We have file transfers in the background. We have updates in the background. Why can’t it take care of itself?

Anthony:  It is an interesting world in that computers, the Windows Operating System, the way it works is that it fragments the file every time you go to a web site, every time you answer an email. Everything you do on your computer more or less helps to slow down that computer, over time.

It’s not one of those things that Windows automatically puts back together for you. The net result is you’ve got a slow computer and your productivity goes down.

Alan:  Defragging a computer system – of course, it’s going to make it run faster. But, there’s another reason why you want to defrag. It’s because you want to defrag – it’s because it helps organize you data so that the computer system, itself can load files faster.

Anthony:  It’s an intelligent way to get those files and the bits of information back into some kind of order – and like you said, to make things faster.

Alan:  How does that work behind the scenes? I’ve seen defrag programs that we have to run over night or we have to run them as a first pass and a second pass and a third pass to finally get things to be organized. It should be something that we don’t even worry about! I mean - this should have been something that came with the operating system.

Anthony:  It should have been, but it didn’t. We’ve been working for years and years to find that solution for the end users. And we think we have. Basically, what you want to have happen is that you want to be involved in what we call the defragging process. So, we have come up with a way to have it be done automatically for you. You really don’t see it working and the net result is a faster machine.

Alan:  This is something that Diskeeper Corporation has been focusing on for so many years now. You have specialized in this so you know how the hard drives work. You know how the operating system works – and you know how to interface with it in such a way that the user doesn’t even need to know that it’s there. You just kind of shoe-horn yourself in there and say, "Hey, this should have been here in the first place."

Anthony:  That’s in a nutshell. You’ve hit the nail on the head, there. I’m not an IT guy and I don’t want to be an IT guy. That’s the same experience that most users have. They want to be able to do their job and they want to do it on a computer the same way the first day and the same say the 500th day! And they don’t want it to be slower. So, yes – we have listened to people and that’s how we designed the software. We listened to our end users and they want to have a good experience and they don’t want to be involved in the changing of the oil, as it were or the spark plug replacement. They just want to make sure that it’s working the way it’s supposed to be working.

Alan:  And you don’t want to have to be worrying about scheduling – because this was something that you had to do before, was to actually set up a time where nobody else was working with the computer and it wasn’t going to be needed for anything else and then set up schedules for doing defrag. Well, scheduling is old school, isn’t it?

Anthony:  It’s an interesting concept and it worked for a while. More often than not, when you schedule – at least when you talk about companies – you have more companies that are working 24/7 and don’t have that off time to schedule. It’s a difficult thing to schedule when the computer is slow then you want the slowness, let’s say fixed immediately. You don’t want to have to wait until the end of the day or the weekend to fix the problem. You want it done in real time. You don’t even want to have to think about it.

Alan:  But, talking about real time - I’ve seen defraggers that actually own the computer. When they turn on, you can tell it instantly, because every other process that you’re doing, kind of takes a back seat, because it’s I/O. It’s going back to the hard drive and that is one of the slowest parts of your computer system, is interfacing to that hard drive and when that happens, everything stops!

Anthony:  It certainly does and for want of a better expression, it’s not a very good thing. What we’ve designed is a way for our software to run completely in the background and we use "idle system resources". The net effect is there is no impact on the hard drive by using the software in real time.

What you get at the end of the day is that you don’t know that we’re doing our job, number one, and your computer will maintain its speed and efficiency.

Alan:  What are we looking at, as far as the price of starting with Diskeeper – from an end user, all the way up to a small business?

Anthony:  There are a number of different price models. For the desktop for the home user, the suggested retail price is just under $50. Obviously, for the businesses, we’re talking about servers, we’re talking about different cost models. We also have a Small Business Server Edition, which bundles the Server Edition with a number of Desktop Editions. We have all different price points.

Alan:  If somebody would like to find out more information about Diskeeper Software, and especially why defragging is so important to maintaining your computer system, where should they go?

Anthony:  They can go to our site at www.diskeeper.com.

Alan:  And you can also download a full 30-day trial. Go to your website. It’s not stripped-down in any way, whatsoever. This is a fully functional and you can try it on your machine to see exactly how it works.

Anthony:  What I always tell people, "If you don’t want to believe what I have to say, download our software. Run it for 30 days and you will see that the proof is in the pudding."

Alan:  Anthony, we’re out of time. And there are so many other little tips that could talk about as far as speeding up your computer system or even making it more enjoyable for the user. And we’re going to have to continue this conversation at another time.

Anthony:  It’s my pleasure, Alan. It’s always fun to talk with you.