Table of Contents

(click on any article title to move directly to that article)

The Podium--A Quick Overview of this issue

Tech Flash – Bringing Back the Dead (Data)

Special Feature -- Increase the Speed and Power

Summer 2002 Calendar of Events - Where will MBS be this Quarter?

Did you know? - Nextrends Small Cemetery Software

Hints and Tips - Helpful Suggestions and other items of interest

TechFAQs – Update only selected areas of the map

Sites Unseen – Interesting Web Sites

Some thoughts from the CEO - Support, Training, Email and the Internet by Fred Miller

We enjoyed seeing so many of you at the ICFA Convention in Orlando. It was a busy, productive convention for us and we hope the same was true for you.

We talk about a scary subject in TECHFLASH on page two, something we hope you will never need: A Data Recovery Service. Also on page two is our Calendar of Events, and in Did You Know? We mention Nextrends, our Cemetery Management software for small cemeteries.

On page three we introduce you to our new corporate logo and explain it’s symbolic meaning. On the same page we tell you how to "Increase the Speed and Power of Nexus XP" with a simple hardware upgrade. As usual Hints & Tips, also on page three, is filled with useful information. Ready for a vacation (and who isn’t)? We’ve listed some travel-related Web sites in Sites Unseen. Finally, if you are in the process of having your cemetery mapped and are concurrently working in Nexus XP, check out TECHFAQs and learn how to avoid error text while updating from IMAP.

On page four Fred Miller discusses a subject that is as important to us as it is to you: technical support. We hope you all enjoy our spring/summer issue, and we’ll see you in the fall.

Look for our upcoming mapping article:

In the May Issue of American Cemetery Magazine

Return to Table of Contents

For Article Suggestions, Copies or Requests, please email Tom Balducci at tbalducci@mbs-intl.com.

For Site Corrections or Suggestions, please email jmcquiston@mbs-intl.com.

Thank you.

Bringing Back The Dead (Data)

Your hard drive suddenly chatters like a rabid squirrel and there is a distinct ozone odor in the air. Your worst nightmare has just come true: your hard drive is dead. But the nightmare is not yet over because you soon discover that your backup tapes are bad, too. The worst-case scenario of a computer user has just happened to you and your business. What now?

Like any business that is computerized, the files on your system are absolutely vital. You are going to need a data-recovery service. As the name implies, a data-recovery service is a company that specializes in rescuing bits and bytes of data from the brink of oblivion. But data recovery doesn’t come cheap. DriveSavers Data Recovery (www.drivesavers.com) reports that an average bill is between $800 and $900. But prices can range from $200 to $2000. The final charge depends on how long it takes to recover your data, the drive’s physical capacity and the operating system.

Data recovery engineers have seen it all including media damaged by physical impact, fire and water. But most situations really are not that dramatic because a drive is going to fail sometime, after all, it is a mechanical device. Like DriveSavers, CBL Data Recovery (www.cbltech.com) and ActionFront Data Recovery Labs (www.actionfront.com) also recover data from digital-camera media, Microdrives and the still ubiquitous floppy disk.

Data recovery engineers all agree on one thing: verify your backups from time to time. Most companies do back up their data, but for a variety of reasons their critical data doesn’t get backed up, and that’s when they get in trouble.

Return to Table of Contents

The response to Nexus XP has been fantastic. Really, it has been mostly nothing but kudos. One of our clients raised a concern about the speed of Nexus. Unfortunately, their complaint was lodged anonymously in a mailed survey we conducted, so we couldn’t determine the cause of the customer’s problem. With the enhanced speed of Nexus XP typically inadequate computer hardware is the culprit. This is something which we cannot control. The fact is, most computer hardware is far behind the curve within a year or two after it is purchased.

When looking at your hardware, your computer should have 256MB RAM. On a workstation, Nexus XP must have a minimum of 256MB of RAM, 512MB on a file server. As is usual with computer hardware more is even better. RAM continues to be extremely affordable so cost shouldn’t be a factor in your decision to upgrade. And if you are considering purchasing entirely new hardware now is a good time to buy. Why? The hardware industry is depressed so there are great deals to be had. As of this writing, $800 can buy you a pretty respectable machine, usually with 128MB of RAM. Remember the computer mantra: "more is always better". Add another 128MB of RAM for about $80.

The fact is Microsoft operating systems, as well as their other products, usually tax aging hardware. As with any other software, Nexus XP shares a computer’s hardware resources with many other applications, some of which are real memory hogs. Nexus XP may operate successfully on less powerful hardware, but as with most other software, it will be slower. Also, installation of MBS software onto non-supported configurations can result in errors, delays in operation and, in some cases, software failure.

Please check with us before investing in new hardware or programs that would impact the operation of the software you purchased from us. We’ll be happy to inform you of positive or negative feedback we have received from other clients or our own in-house testing. If you would like a copy of our suggested hardware configurations give us a call or write us at info@mbs-intl.com.

 Return to Table of Contents

April 23-24 Arkansas Cemetery Association, Annual Convention Hot Springs, AR

April 24-27 International Cemetery and Funeral Association (ICFA) Annual Convention and Exposition Orlando, FL

May

May 12 Mothers Day Nationwide

May 31 Memorial Day Nationwide--MBS Office Closed

June 9-12 North and South Carolina Cemetery Associations, Joint Annual

Convention Myrtle Beach, SC. Look for us there!

June 9-12 Jewish Funeral Directors of America Spring Meeting Chicago, IL

June 14 Flag Day Nationwide

June 16 Father's Day Nationwide

Return to Table of Contents

Did

...that MBS has a software product designed especially for small cemeteries?

800-844-4447

Return to Table of Contents

Hints & Tips

Access System Properties Quickly.

Press your Windows key + Pause/Break key to quickly access your "Systems Properties".

Open Word 97

Click FILE>OPEN and click the file you wish to recover to select it.

In the "Files of type" drop down menu choose "Recover text from any file".

Click Open.

Recover From Accidental Move, Rename, Copy, Delete, Etc.

You can recover from most file management mistakes, such as copying the wrong file, moving a file to someplace you don't want it to go, deleting a file accidentally, or renaming a file incorrectly, by just pressing CONTROL-Z. If this doesn't work, click on the "File" menu of the current window and choose "Undo" if it is available.

TIP: (Nexus XP)

Here’s a time-saving tip: When entering a contract and you suddenly realize you haven’t assigned a PIN number, there’s actually no need to click the "Add a Person" button. Instead, right-click in the PIN number field on the Contract Entry window and choose "Add New" and the Add a Person screen will appear!

Multiwindow Management

At times you may have several windows open but want to see only two of them side by side. In other situations you may want to close some but not all of your open apps. The quickest way to accomplish these and other multiwindow tasks is to Ctrl-click the taskbar buttons corresponding to the windows you want to tile, minimize, or close, and then right-click one of the depressed buttons and select the option you want.

Open applications maximized

You may sometimes want to maximize your application windows to give them as large a workspace as possible. You can do this by clicking the middle button on the right end of any title bar, but you can also switch between the maximized and normal state by double-clicking anywhere in the title bar. In addition, you can maximize an application each time you launch it by editing its shortcut properties. Find the application on the Start menu, right-click its icon, and select Properties. Choose Maximized from the Run drop-down list, and click OK.

Return to Table of Contents

TechFAQs

Q: We have the IMAP program, but have not completed the process of mapping our entire cemetery. When we update the property information in Nexus XP to IMAP we get error text because of the unmapped gardens. Can we prevent these gardens from being updated?

A: Yes. In Nexus XP you can flag the garden’s property code to exclude it from the IMAP update. To do so, go to the Maintenance menu and select Codes and then select Property Codes. Find the garden to be excluded and then click on the edit tool. Click on the "Exclude from IMAP Update" box and then save. Follow this procedure for each garden to be excluded. Later, when the maps are complete, you can allow Nexus XP to update the new gardens.

Return to Table of Contents

Sites Unseen

www.mapinfo.com               www.ups.com

www.mbs-intl.com

www.expedia.com—Great site to get a good overview of your travel options; technically sophisticated.

www.qixo.com—Compares discounted prices from 17 sites so you don’t have to.

www.priceline.com—Good deals, especially with less than 7 days’ notice, but won’t let you specify the time or airline you want to fly.

www.hotwire.com—Good deals; lets you pick travel dates but not flight time or airline.

Sites Unseen is a list of interesting, informative and helpful Web sites we thought might be useful to you.  If your cemetery or cemetery-related business has a Web site, e-mail the address to us at tbalducci@mbs-intl.com.

From the inception of our company our mission has been to aid and guide the cemeterian to greater business effectiveness through the computerization of their organization. The mission was important to us because our owner was a cemeterian himself who understood the needs of the cemetery business. The fact that our company was owned by a cemeterian placed us in a unique position to develop products that we knew for certain other cemetery owners needed, even if they sometimes didn’t know they needed the products themselves.

That is how we view ourselves: a company that offers guidance to our clients and hope to newcomers who can sometimes feel disoriented and lost during the voyage to the automation of their business.

When we decided to redesign our logo one image returned to us again and again, an ages old symbol of guidance: the lighthouse. What more perfect symbol could there be for a company whose mission and reason for being is so perfectly embodied by the meaning and purpose of the lighthouse?

Return to Table of Contents

First of all, we welcome your calls. We are here to help…between the hours of 9:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. Central time on Monday through Friday.

We provide support in several ways: phone, modem via pcAnywhere, email, and even the Internet. At times we have to do off-line research to resolve issues, which may require the help of our crack technical staff.

MBS encourages you to use our support facilities. By this time, hopefully, you have pcAnywhere which allows us to eliminate a great deal of difficult communication and get directly into your system to examine and fix errors. You can email us your questions and sometimes we can email responses, which saves phone time. We use the Internet to download fixes and upgrades.

MBS generally responds to calls in the order in which they are received. Each call is logged and immediately forwarded to our all-understanding support team. Emergencies are exceptions to which we respond with intensity, sometimes requiring a meeting of the entire staff . Based upon the client's need, MBS may elect to provide emergency vs. first call service. If the issue prevents operability, the staff stays with it until fixed.

There are a couple of things that you can do that might help you get faster service. First, before calling for help, read the Install Instructions or the on-line or printed documentation. Your issue may be directly addressed in the docs, and if it is, there is no wait for a solution.

The second thing you can do is to make sure that someone on your staff has been trained on the system by the MBS support team and is familiar with its use. There is often staff turnover, which results in individuals having no or very little training being responsible for running your system. We realize that your data is the life's blood of your business. It is false economy to trust your system to those with only cursory knowledge.

Training isn't covered by the support agreement. We do walk people through fundamental items covered in training, (Example: "How do you enter payments?"), but when this happens we become concerned that there is a training deficit.

As always with the introduction of a new product with different looks there will be a number of questions and some glitches. Fortunately, not one computational issue has been reported on XP. Client feedback has been positive across the board. The first full upgrade of Nexus XP will be released soon. In Version 3.1 all known glitches will have been fixed and the product enhanced with new features.

All this being said, with getting used to "the new look" and your help, service, always with a smile, will again exceed your expectations.

Return to Table of Contents

Look for our upcoming mapping article

In the May Issue of American Cemetery Magazine

Return to Table of Contents