Last week, we talked about reducing  your rent. As a business owner, you constantly need to negotiate with landlords, vendors, employees, and customers. Most of us rely on intuition and personality to negotiate. Fortunately, there is one great book that can take you beyond intuition and your personality.

Getting to Yes teaches you how to negotiate agreements without giving in. In real life, we are always negotiate. We do more than negotiate legal agreements and rent agreements. We are constantly negotiate with our vendors, employees, parents, kids, and spouses.

Getting to Yes offers a straightforward universally applicable method for negotiating personal and professional disputes without getting taken ... and without getting angry.

"Getting to YES offers a concise, step-by-step, proven strategy for coming to mutually acceptable agreements in every sort of conflict - whether it involves parents and children, neighbors, bosses and employees, customers or corporations, tenants or diplomats. Based on the work of the Harvard Negotiation Project, a group that deals continually with all levels of negotiations and conflict resolution from domestic to business to international." (From the back cover.)

 Separate the people from the problems;

 Focus on interests, not positions

Work together to create options that will satisfy both parties

Negotiate successfully with people who are more powerful, refuse to play by the rules, or restort to "dirty tricks"

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Every business owners or manager should have a copy of the book and actually read it. We're talking about under $12 and less than 200 pages. It's pretty easy reading.

You can purchase a copy at Barnes and Nobles at:

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Getting-to-Yes/Roger-Fisher/e/9780140157352/?itm=1&USRI=getting+to+yes

...and for those of you who don't like to read, you can download a copy of the book in .mp3 format for under $15 (for use on your IPod or any other digital device) at:

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Getting-to-Yes/Roger-Fisher/e/9781440667466/?itm=2&USRI=getting+to+yes

A CD version of the book is available at:

http://productsearch.barnesandnoble.com/search/results.aspx?WRD=getting+to+yes

Various versions of the book (soft cover, CD, and hard cover) are also available on Amazon.com at:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140157352/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0R6BSJDPPP3GFVN4RYVY&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846

If you have been using computers for a long time, you have probably heard about the Buffalo Box. Buffalo Tech makes all sorts of hard drive storage devices.

Buffalo Tech has a cool new line of external portable hard drives called MiniStation Metro.

The new MiniStation Metro has several features that make it pretty cool.

An external USB Hard Drive allows you to backup all of your desktop or laptop data. An external portable hard drive can be a life saver assuming that you make a daily backup of your data. I also recommend that you make a monthly image backup of your computer using a program like Acronis.

The Buffalo MiniStation is small enough to fit into your pocket (5.3 x 3.6 x 0.8 inches).

It comes with attached USB cables.

It does not require a power cord.

No software is required to use it.

It comes with encryption software that can automatically encrypt all the data stored on your portable hard drive. Should you lose it, it is almost impossible for the finder to copy or use your data. All or part of your drive can be encrypted using 256-AES full disk encryption which cannot be cracked (unless you use a password like 123).

A 500 GB version of the drive is available for under $100.

USB. 3.0 versions of the drive are now available.

For more information go to:

http://www.buffalotech.com/products/portable-hard-drives/ministation/ministation-metro-hd-pxtu2/

Dell, HP and other computer manufacturers are now starting to ship some computers with USB 3.0

As you probably know, you connect your portable drives, printers, cameras, IPod and other devices to your USB port.

Almost all of you are using a USB 2.0 port. Older computers came with the USB 1.0 port.

USB 2.0 is much faster than the original USB 1.0.

The great thing about USB ports is that you can attach devices to your computer without having to open it up to add additional computer cards.

USB stands for Universal Serial Bus. In the old days (5 years ago), you had to plug some printers into a serial port, other printers into a parallel port, and other devices into special computer cards that would only work with one specific peripheral. USB is universal and allows you to attach all types of devices using the same type of plug. Windows automatically recognizes most devices that you plug in automatically.

So now, we have USB 3.0 which is 10 times faster than USB 2.0. At the present time, it probably won't make much of a difference to you. In the future, you will be able to plug in monitors, TVs, and more reliable wireless devices into the faster USB 3.0 ports. Transferring photos and hard drive information is already pretty fast using USB 2.0. It will be 10 times faster using USB 3.0.

I expect that all new computers will soon be supplied with USB 3.0  All of your old devices will work with USB 3.0. It probably won't make you printer run any faster, but it will make backing up hard drive information or synchronizing  your data much faster without affecting your normal computer use. You will also be able to easily add additional monitors (if you do lots of multitasking). Look for lots of new USB 3.0 gaming devices.