The Live Team at Microsoft have released an update over that past few days, and are trying hard push ram it down your hard drive. They have flagged this 160 Mb piece of unneeded junkware as essential. It isn't in any way. Its a collection of Microsoft tools and utilities that very few need, and far fewer want, let alone need the latest version. And its size just goes to show how much is it this essential update.

MSFT loses Ray Ozzie and the role of Chief Software Architect - how does the market react? As of right now, its trading at 25.10 -0.72 (-2.79%). Of course if you look at it over 1m or 3m its flat. Does that mean the market really doesn't care?

It is November, the 11th month of the current calendar year, 2nd month of Q4. How are you doing on budget for October and September? How are you doing on budget for the year? We need to take some time today to review our recent performance to see what we can work on and improve.

Its Thursday and you only have two days left in this week to work on cutting costs and improving your position in your IT organization. What do you have planned for this Saturday? Can you move any meetings from the calendar to a Saturday meeting, in the office, without catering services, to increase productive time today and tomorrow with your teams?

IT management has to make cost cutting decisions and today we are going to make a large decision that has a long term impact to your support model. Yesterday we fired the delivery man, and today we are firing the delivery truck. That’s right, we are going to cancel all of our orders for new desktops and laptops for the next 3 months and possibly hold until Q2 2009.

Mrs or Mr CIO, its time to fire someone today - the delivery person. As part of our cutting costs for the remainder of 2008 and planning for 2009, immediately put a hold on all purchase orders and discussions for new projects.

Its Monday and we need to do something a little bit practical today. Now I understand that you have gotten a huge benefit from the first three parts. But now we need to do something today and start looking for immediate hard dollar savings. We are going to look at your printer infrastructure.

Today is Sunday, our third article in this series of helping the CIO or IT manager cut costs in the current economic crisis. Our goal is to maintain or improve the service levels we provide to our customers. We are not here to be a big bad wolf with a budget axe and just hack and slash at things. We have already talked about reviewing what your people do in part I, and in part II going to work on Saturdays to improve yourself. Today is Sunday and like a large percentage of the population, it is a religious day.

Every day this month we will focus on steps you can take to help manage and reduce the costs in your IT environment for the remainder of 2008 and help with your planning for 2009. Today’s tip - Saturday workers

It’s the third quarter, the economy is tight, or really bad, depending upon your industry and sector. What is the CIO and IT manager to do? Start looking for ways to cut costs while keeping or improving on the efficiency of your IT operations.