Making Cheese with Microsoft's Help

Here at Windows IT Pro headquarters, we can claim New Belgium Brewery as a fairly close neighbor (well, about ten miles or so away) and we're just down the river from Rocky Mountain National Park (well, about 30 or so miles away). HP is still in town, and we're just down the road from several up-and-coming software companies. But generally, in our coverage of national and international technology companies, IT pros, and IT solutions, we're used to ranging far and wide in search of stories. So imagine our delight in finding a story based in our own backyard (well, about eight miles away). Today, at Microsoft's online Small Business Summit (www.sbsummit.com), the company announced the winner and runners-up of its Total Technology Makeover. The $100,000 grand prize winner was GymStars Gymnastics, of Stockton, CA. However, we're also interested to hear of two runners-up: Sid's Bikes of New York City, and MouCo Cheese Company of Fort Collins, Colorado. Each small business won a prize of $10,000 in software and hardware from Microsoft and Dell, respectively.

We'll be curious to see what our neighbor MouCo Cheese Company gets and how it (hopefully) helps the company. (Our research might involve a field trip. And taste testing.) We'll keep you posted.

But it also makes us wonder—if we got to choose $10,000 in software and hardware from Microsoft and Dell (respectively), what would we pick?

What would you choose?