Your AdSense Empire: Which computer do you use?

How do you run your business?

[farmboy]

I recently acquired a netbook and I'm loving it. Since this is the start of a weekend, a cold one for many of us in the U.S., I thought I'd stir a little conversation and ask what type of computer you primarily use to manage your empire?

PC or Mac?

Desktop, laptop, netbook, other?

FarmBoy

[johnnie]

Holy moly Cancellara, thats quite some "empire" you set up for yourself! Impressive!

[Cancellara]

Holy moly Cancellara, thats quite some "empire" you set up for yourself! Impressive!

Thanks. 10+ years in online business, no investors etc. Started like most, working from home :)

BTW AdSense is just about 1% of the revenue generated from our websites. Sometimes I wish it was easier to work with Google. Also, I'm not too happy about the direction they are going. Bunch of ads on top, map (full of ads) beneath those ads, more ads on the right etc. If you have 1024x764 you dont even see any search results without scrolling. I guess they have to make (more) money somehow and the free ride is pretty much over.

Spartakus

[eeek]

PC sans windoze!

[incrediBILL]

The only problem with this approach is that Remote Desktop can be slow sometimes

That's not the only problem, if your house burns down while you're away, or some other natural disaster, or worse yet your desktop machine dies, you're out of business.

Living in California makes you think along those lines because 15 seconds of shaking ground can reduce everything to nothing in seconds, so I'm prepared to be fully mobile and fully functional at a moments notice.

If you worry about losing your laptop use something like TrueCrypt which keeps all your data encrypted in real-time on your laptop, no remote connection issues, and you have a complete viable 2nd copy of everything you need in the event of disaster.

[zoltan]

Of course, data backup is always important.
Right incrediBILL, but the problem is how do you synchronize data between your laptop and your desktop?

[gn_wendy]

Office:
PC (Duo core) Vista 2x22" monitors - main rig.
2 x PC (Duo core) Vista set up as crawlers (Xenu, WebRanking etc.) VNC connection
PC Linux, doubles as my personal 'network' server
1TB network drive
MacMini for doing iPhone stuff

Home:
Custom built PC running XP / Vista / Linux - 32" monitor and a 1TB external drive
Netbook (Samsung N120) for on the road. solid 8 hrs of working time off the battery.

[netmeg]

As far as backups, I use Acronis and do a Disk Clone (NOT a backup) onto an external drive, and each computer has at least 2 external drives that I rotate. One set kept at the office, and one at home.

As far as synchronizing, it hasn't really been a problem - I make heavy use of Dropbox and multiple thumb drives. I probably have four copies of my most essential data (including financial data) in four different locations at any given moment, and in the worst case scenario, I might lose maybe 2-3 days worth (if I get lazy and forget to do a rotation) But that much I can recover from.

I'm a very firm believer in "no single point of failure" (which you would probably guess at if you read the AdWords forum)

[HuskyPup]

how do you synchronize data between your laptop and your desktop?

I'm pretty basic on this having purchased a few external and portable drives over the years and simply back-up to those when I'm being a good boy.

The most important files for me are e-mails and websites.

After years of using Eudora Pro as my e-mail client I ended up breaking it in Vista therefore I was forced to seek an alternative. After extensive testing I settled on The Bat and find it absolutely indespensible now and very easy to back-up, restore or synchronise across all machines.

One thing I do with ALL e-mails is have a copy automatically sent to a dedicated gmail account for each address.

I keep all websites in one specific folder and can easily copy those and always take a copy of the actual live website to a dedicated external drive.

Like netmeg I might lose a few days of stuff when I've been lazy however I've had catstrophic failures in the past and been back up and running more or less up-to-date within hours. There's more hassle in crawling around disconnecting and connecting things than anything else!

[IanCP]

Boy some of you people make me seem like a back woods country hick.

Well we did whittle our chips out of balsa when I was a kid.

That's an electronics joke us oldies play on the young kids in forums.

[zoltan]

HuskyPop, I also manage several domain names and email addresses, I use Outlook Express at this moment and my only problem with this approach is the synchronization of data between 2 PCs. How does The Bat help here? I am working for weeks on my desktop than I travel for 5-10 days and bring a laptop with me. How easy is to simply move everything from the mail client on desktop to the laptop? Then, when I come back vice versa. I can manage the rest of my files just the emails are the problem.

I recently started to use IMAP instead of POP3 on 1-2 accounts for testing purposes and this might resolve this problem since IMAP leaves the messages on the server but I am not sure this is the best idea.

[HuskyPup]

Outlook Express is a nightmare, Eudora was good simply because you could copy the specific folders you had used.

The Bat is simplicity itself once one has played about with it and found where most settings etc are, I must admit that I still need to refer to their site occasionally to learn how to do something otherwise it's no problem and a very powerful client.

In Tools you have three options Backup, Restore and Synchronise and depending which one you want to do, off you go. It literally only takes a few minutes and with no hassle, I can't emphasise enough how much easier it has made my e-mailing life...hmmm...I wonder if I can get a referral commission:-)

You can try it for a month for free, after the first week or ten days I had already decided that it was for me and setting-up new e-mail accounts is the easiest thing in the world. Getting everything to display alphabetically in order (Sort Folders and Accounts) is a nightmare until you find out the very easy trick on how to do it...doh!

[Lame_Wolf]

I use Forte Agent for emails. Will never use anything else.

[vivalasvegas]

Your AdSense Empire

Why just Adsense?

I use a Toshiba Tecra laptop connected to an external kb, mouse and 17" monitor.

[CrustyAdmin]

Home 24 inch iMac
Work HP Laptop and Macbook and a couple 19 inch monitors. Using Synergy to use the Mac mouse and keyboard with it all.