Few of us realise how much our Microsoft XP systems could work to our advantage.

At a recent breakfast at Dartford Football Ground, Simona Millham from Microsoft opened up members' eyes to the potential of using existing systems as a working tool.

It's not just a homepage on offer, although you can stay at that level. You can have pages, view site stats to see how many people click on to your site, set up Paypal for payments and upload your jpg pictures and PDF documents. Once your confidence is flying you could even set up an informal blog page with your customers

There are instructions all the way through the process and you can update your business news whenever you want. It's as much or as little as you need and time available..

You can also make your own business cards using Microsoft Publisher as well as a three fold leaflet and dip into Outlook and you'll find the business contact manager where you can list individual names.

All the above can be found on Microsoft's small business centre which can be found by tapping into any search engine, or into your browser as Microsoft.com.  Advertising pays for the free service.