A discussion about the process, steps and options of starting a new business

Those of you who think that Microsoft Corp is worse than Homeland Security may want to skip this article. 

I myself don't mind signing up for things online.  With a legitimate company there is always a privacy policy that allows you to opt-out of future mailings, and besides, I already get so much junk email, what difference is another 3000 items going to make?  I feel loved when my inbox is full.

I read at the Computerworld site about a new program called Small Business Plus being offered by Microsoft.   It offers a monthly newsletter with tips about running a small business, business training courses (which I'm sure push Microsoft products), and training on any Microsoft products that you own.  I just signed up today, so I can't comment too much yet on the quality of the content, but I can make a few superficial remarks.

Microsoft does ask you to provide a lot of information when signing up for the service.  Ostensibly, this is so that they can tailor the experience at the website to meet  your needs, but we all know what it's really for.  They also require that you have, or sign up for, a Passport.net name and password, such as the one you create when you open a Hotmail account.

The very first time I signed in, the system asked me to download and install ActiveX.  Now, I'm pretty sure I've done that before, however I couldn't proceed without installing it again, so I did.  I couldn't find a way to get around it, but maybe that was just me. 

On to the training manual.  I wanted to get to the training because I just purchased Microsoft Small Business Accounting (which I will review in another article) and it has become painfully clear that I am not an accountant.  I was hoping to find some answers to the parts I'm having trouble with in the tutorials, but they only give a cursory overview of how to use the program, at best. 

One other thing that bothered me a little is the chat support feature.  If I hadn't read the Computerworld article, I might not have realized that this service would cost money.  In all fairness to Microsoft, it is free for the first 45 days, so maybe they were planning to tell me about the cost later.  I really had to hunt for the link to that disclosure though.

While I was signing up for things, I also signed up for QuickBook's version of a small business tutorial.  I didn't have to download anything, or even create an account, but I can't comment on the content because I'm waiting for the kit to be mailed to me.  The only thing I wonder is, why doesn't QuickBooks provide easily accessible information on it's website to let people know that the kit even exists?  When I was ordering trial versions of software products, I couldn't find any way to order a trial of Quickbooks, and that played a part in my decision not to buy it.  I found the information about the New Business Starter Kit among some other flyers in a snail-mailed packet that I received from Welcome Business USA.

If you have the time or the inclination, go take a look and let me know whether your impressions match mine.