Get Free Office Supplies From the Web
Free Business Cards Every small business -- whether it’s has two employees or 50 -- needs business cards. If 250 business cards are enough, then opportunities abound to get them for free. At Vistaprint, the Netherlands online printing company for small businesses, you can choose from 42 different designs and all you have to do is pay for shipping and processing. There is a catch, the Vistaprint logo is printed on the back of the card. BizCard of Scottsdale, Arizona also offers 250 business cards for free if you use one of the company’s free designs. Like with Vistaprint, you’re on tap for the shipping costs.
Free Daily Planner Sure buying a daily planner at Staples won’t break the bank, but what about a free one you can access anytime, anywhere on the Internet. Keepandshare of San Francisco offers a free online calendar at its Web site that’s accessible from any computer. You can view the calendar by day, week and month and easily add and remove appointments. You can also choose to share the calendar with other employees or friends or opt to keep it private. You’re free calendar can also be linked to your Web site or blog.
Free Video Calling These days with budgets so tight, traveling to visit a satellite office or client can be tough. Video conferencing over the Internet can reduce those costs with some even offering their services for free. Skype has free video calling for other Skype members at www.skype.com. All you need is a Web cam and broadband Internet. Want to have multiple people on a video conference? Then Palbee may be for you. The free service Zenitum of Seoul South Korea, offers an online video meeting for free for multiple attendees and even lets you record the meeting and store it on the Internet. Currently the service at www.palbee.com only lets you record the host of the meeting.
Free Office Software Microsoft (MSFT) may be the leader in the office-software market, but there are free options out there that get the job done. Take Openoffice.org, which is a free open source suite of word processing, spreadsheets, presentations and database software. It comes in a slew of languages and works with all computers. The work is stored in a standard open format and can read and write files from other software. To download it go to www.openoffice.org
Free Anti-Virus Software One of the most time consuming things for a small businesses is contending with a computer virus. It not only costs money to fix, but also costs a bundle in lost productivity. While a small business can pay for antivirus protection, there are also free ones available that do just as good a job. In fact one such one, AntiVir from Avira of Germany, even got high accolades from CNET, which called it one of the best freeware security solutions out there. AntiVir protects a computer from viruses, worms and Trojan horses, and includes anti-spyware. The software can be downloaded at www.free-av.com.