Oh Jeeves…please fetch my data and clean my computer.

Feb 11, 2011

I’ve always been fascinated by butlers.  It’s a career where you have to dress up in a tuxedo everyday, then be paid great money to do things like answer the door with a smug look on your face or lay out your boss’s clothes for him every morning.  You also have to bring everything to your employer on a silver platter for some reason.  Breakfast bagels, the remote control, the newspaper, car keys…all of them get the silver platter treatment.  I imagine a whole “silver platter course” in butler college.  It takes training to be able to cart 12 glasses of Champaign across a crowded room of people on one of those things. 

Unfortunately, not many of us are lucky enough to obtain our very own Mr. Belvedere.  However, the latest trend in the industry is allowing everyone to get their own “computer butler” per se.   Managed Services are low-cost, specialized services that take over critical but mundane tasks for you.  Things like data backup, antivirus, email marketing, and web site administration are all examples of things that can be very expensive to handle yourself.  You can hire your own staff for only a few dollars a month to handle these services for you:

  • Your Data-Backup Butler – No more tape backups that never complete, no need to bother with troublesome external hard drives, no worries about keeping your backups off-site.  Simply run a small program on your computer and your data is backed up daily and automatically.  Your faithful servant will make sure your data is securely backed up with no problems, and alert you if something isn’t quite right.  Since your data is not placed on physical media, it can be backed up or restored from any Internet connection.  He works cheap too- typical prices are around $1/GB of data.
  • Your Antivirus Butler – Typical costs to hire this guy are under $5 per PC.  Antivirus service means that all of your security updates will be monitored, any detected infections will be brought to your attention, and assistance will be provided if a virus does get through.
  • Your Marketing Butle r- Why spend all that time pulling together email lists, designing news letters or ads from scratch, then send out your message only to have it returned because of problems with your mail server’s spam filters?  Get your own email marketing steward to handle most of the work for you.  Manage email lists from a simple website, use pre-made templates to fill in your newsletters or advertisements, schedule times that you would like your information delivered…all for about $15/month.
  • Your Web Site Butler – The problem most people have with their website is they hire someone to create it, then it’s so complicated to update that they have to pay someone for every change.  It’s like someone is holding your company’s face on the Internet hostage.  Well, that’s enough of that!  Employ a web site valet to design your sites to your liking, and then add the tools for anyone to make updates on the fly- as easily as typing an email!  Need to change your business hours?  Go to your site, log in, and you now have weekends off.  Have a new product?  Log in and copy/paste a picture in there.  It’s the way all web sites should work!  Website hosting plans range between $10-$30/month, and it usually costs around $100/page to have a site professionally designed to your liking.  Not a bad investment considering your web page will most likely be the #1 way your customers get information about you.

How about that?  You can hire an entire entourage of people who take care of you and your business for a fraction of the price of  a Gentleman’s gentleman.  You’ll save thousands on the cost of silver platters alone!

New Business Broadband Plans!

By Mike Pawlecki • 31 Mar, 2021
TOAST.net is excited to offer 4 new Business Broadband plans

New Fiber for Business Plans!

By Mike Pawlecki • 11 Mar, 2021
TOAST.net is excited to announce 3 new Business Fiber Plans

New Residential Fiber Plans!

By Mike Pawlecki • 12 Jan, 2021
TOAST.net has added two new residential Fiber Internet plans!

Switch to Universal Pricing

By Mike Pawlecki • 14 Aug, 2020
This coming Monday, Aug. 17th, we will be switching to universal pricing -- one price for all DSL speeds (around $65) and one price for Fiber (around $90). So if anyone is thinking they could use one of our basic service plans, now's the time to order. For example:  DSL - 12 Mbps for $43.95/month - Great for seniors on a fixed income. Plenty of speed for surfing the web, checking email, and streaming for 1 or 2 TVs. Fiber - 60 Mbps for $45.00/month - Awesome solution for just about any household. Note that fiber is a new technology and only about 20% of the country can get it.  Check your address to see what service you qualify for and order by Sunday, 8/16/20! This is your last chance to lock in the speed and price of a great DSL or Fiber plan before they are grandfathered! 
Google Meet for your home or office.

Google Meet

By Mike Pawlecki • 20 May, 2020
Google Meet is now free for everyone. Check out TOAST.net's blog that tells you more about Google Meet usage at your home or office.

Work from Home (part 2)

By Mike Pawlecki • 01 May, 2020
Google - Meet Meet is video conference software, similar to Zoom. To help businesses, schools, and people around the world navigate remote life, Google is making Meet free for everyone with availability rolling out over the coming weeks. See Google's blog post for details. SolarWinds - Take Control You may need to run applications off your PC or server at the office. In that case, SolarWinds makes makes an easy-to-use application that allows home users to remote desktop to their PC in the office. It's secure and doesn't require special hardware, a static IP, or VPN. We're offering this software free of charge for 90 days. Please contact us if interested.

Work from Home

By Mike Pawlecki • 20 Mar, 2020
This week we've taken quite a few calls from companies asking how their employees and staff can work from home (WFH). We're happy to offer several WFH solutions to help organizations mitigate health risks to employees and customers. TOAST.net understands how important it is to keep your employees connected, productive, and safe during this unprecedented pandemic. Here are the services we have to help your business through this difficult time : Business Portal is a 'home page' for your browser that improves communication and efficiencies within your organization. It's a private Intranet that features company news, announcements, links to vendors and cloud apps, an employee schedule, and more! We offer this at no charge to our customers. Visit https://start.toast.net Google's G Suite - TOAST.net is an authorized reseller of G Suite, a cloud-based collaboration tool featuring Email, Calendar, Chat, Hangouts (video conferencing), and Drive. You can create files, documents, spreadsheets, and presentations with just your browser (no software to install) and share these with fellow workers, customers, and vendors. More info Remote Desktop - an easy-to-use application that allows home users to connect to PCs in the office. It's secure and doesn't require special hardware or a static IP. We're offering this free of charge for 90 days. High-speed Internet for Home - We provide residential Cable, DSL, and Fiber Internet service . So you can pay for your employee's Internet connection on your business invoice. Please contact us if you're interested in any of these services. B est wishes to everyone to stay healthy, safe, and upbeat as we socially distance ourselves for a quick end to this situation. Note: Our customer support team continues to work their regular hours. We operate support teams in multiple locations and, while there may be some disruption at certain locations for a limited time, overall we do not expect any significant change in access to support.

Cut The Cord With Unlimited Data

By TOAST.net Internet • 28 Jan, 2019
In the month after Christmas, we’ve seen a high demand for our Internet service with unlimited data. Much of it is from people wanting to use their new streaming device (Fire Stick, Roku, Chromecast, Apple TV, etc.) to cancel their expensive cable TV service. This is commonly referred to as “cutting the cord.”

Fiber Expansion

By TOAST.net Internet • 17 Dec, 2018
TOAST.net is pleased to announce fiber Internet service in 12 new metro areas:

Start Page Updates

By TOAST.net Internet • 12 Dec, 2018
Moved Facebook link from top bar to the Popular Sites section. Added Yahoo Finance to the Personal Finance section. Yahoo Finance is one of the largest business news web sites in the United States by monthly traffic.
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