Customer Reviews

Getting Productive With Google Apps: Increase productivity while cutting costs

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Awesome. Didn't realize Google could help my small rep agency. Set up a Gmail acct and kept seeing other things Google had to offer. Bought Getting Productive... and discovered I didn't have to spend a fortune to get set up. Too easy.

Wanted to try Google Apps for some time,but not feeling sure I wanted to try to set it up on my own, I was hesitate, but found this book by James Beswick, it
walks you through the process step by step, very easy to understand, and would highly recommend it.
Jack Bryant

If you are a Mac user, like myself, and are looking for an inexpensive alternative to Microsoft Office Google Apps is definitely worth looking into.

Mr. Beswick does a fantastic job of introducing new Google apps users to the suite and walking them though a number of different real life examples. The text and examples are very straight forward and easy to understand. The book is a very quick read and serves as a great introduction. Highly recommended!

I suspect that a lot of people who've set up small businesses over the last couple of years have, like me, struggled with the issue of what environment to run. PC/Windows, because that's what you've worked with for the last 10 years? But what about data backups? Upgrades? Version changes? Security? Stability? Or, how about Apple? Fine - a graphic designer I know, swears by them but do I have the time to start all over again from scratch? There is a "third way", but the problem is, if you're outside London, like me, no local tech support companies have heard of Google Apps. I needed a cheap, simple (I have NO tech background whatsoever), straightforward explanation of what was involved in Google & the cloud & I got it from Mr Beswick's book. MS & Apple are making billions off your fear of change - buy this book; act on it & you'll find out what it feels like to NOT be mugged on a daily basis.

If you didn't already know, cloud computing's totally the new geek buzz term. When I first learned it a few months ago, I jokingly told my friends that I'd be dropping that term more in conversation just to sound smarter.

....Even though I only about 80% knew what it meant.

Despite all my reading up about the cloud on various websites and watching multiple explanations on YouTube, it wasn't until a conversation that I recently had with the author, James Beswick, though, where he quoted his book, Getting Productive with Google Apps, that I had my a-ha moment. He wrote, "The current situation is like having to own a power station to run a toaster". That quote is so spot on about the cloud, because why have your own power station to run a toaster when you can run it on someone else's more efficient power station? A power station that's perpetually in R&D and gets constant upgrades at that. You'll still get your toast either way. Heck, the toast might be even better on the cloud. James was kind enough to give me a copy of his book, and lucky for me, it turns out that it was just what I needed to get in sync with the concept of the cloud. Google style!

James goes into details about most aspects of Google apps in this book, but one thing that he doesn't really explain is cloud computing. If you plan on reading the book and don't know much about the concept of working on the cloud, then I would highly suggest getting acquainted with that concept because it will help you really grasp the point of this book.

The book is conveniently divided up into chapters by tools such as Gmail, Calender, Docs, Presentations, Spreadsheets, etc, and definitely has the most organized and detailed table of contents ever. The book itself is also super organized and loaded with diagrams, screenshots and tutorials so that I know exactly what he's writing about. It's like a mini 200 page textbook.

I'm not exactly the most tech-savvy person and thought that I would have to look up a lot of terms in the book on Wikipedia, but that wasn't the case at all. I actually found it to be a pretty easy and straight forward read. It's almost as if the book was written for n00b5 like me! I'm mostly a social media fiend (meaning that most of my e-content is already on the net) and am otherwise a casual user of the internet (meaning that I'm no web entreupreneur or anything... at least not yet! :P), so some of the tools introduced in this book wouldn't be of much use to me, though it was neat learning about them and good to know that they're there. There were actually quite a few useful tools that I'll be implementing into my own net life, though, that will make my life and my web experience run smoother.

Suffice to say, if you want to dive head first into the world of cloud computing, definitely pick up this book and get your start through Google apps (though I'm sure that most people are already working on the cloud in one way or another without knowing it). Hint: this book is even more useful if you're a web entreupreneur because learning to use these apps will definitely help you reduce costs and more importantly, improve the infrastructure of your business.

My firm were on the fence about Google Apps... we have MS Office. This book is easy enough for even a novice to follow. The last chapter is a step-by-step walkthru on how to start an Apps account for your business and build email, calendars, spreadsheets and everything else.

We tried a sample site first with a few employees and then moved everything else over. The information in the book was all we needed since most of the problems are with domains and registry and it walks you thru. The Apps platform is real easy to use and is accessible anywhere without VPN (which is what we had before).

If you're short on time and need a quick solution I'd recommend this.