Plumber, Electrician... Digitician?

Alien54 writes "This article from the Sunday Boston Globe describes the rise of a new type of tradesman called, for lack of a better term, a digitician, a label describing the burgeoning army of overqualified, unemployed, or free-spirited computer technicians being deployed to front porches around the country."

Comments

A Profession?

[myownkidney]

"It may be the beginning of a profession. It's being driven not by your computer, but your home network in the house and the increasing complexity -- it's creating a need for this."

When I used to work as a Computer Support at an office, I used run around all day doing this. Sure, I didn't make house calls, but that in itself doesn't make this a new profession. I was just called the "IT Support Guy", not a "Digiticain".

I really hated my job when I was doing IT support. I met these lusers who wanted do weird things with their computers, and then exepected me to support them. Often, I had to stay in the office till 8:00pm.

Thank god now I have a job as a full time developer. I would never want go back to the days of being a "digitician", even if I got paid US$100/her.

Re:LiveCDs

[Saint Aardvark]

I was thinking this a couple of days ago when I had to clean out some viruses at work. I Googled, and was able to find a few such systems.

The first was mentioned in a blog, and uses F-Prot, which is FAIB for home/personal use.

There's also Knoppix STD, a security/vulnerability live CD that includes ClamAV. Doesn't look like they're using the Captive NTFS driver, though, so not sure how well that'll work compared to one that does, like...

BitDefender, which seems to be All That And More. It uses Captive, has ClamAV, and I'm pretty sure it's GPL'd, too. (The company does make commercial/proprietary products too.)

These take care of viruses. I'm not aware of any spyware-removal programs that run under Linux, which is a shame. It really would make it easier to boot from the CD, sip coffee for 15 minutes, then go back to Windows with that fresh feeling...

Re:Mechanics for the 21st century

[Mad Marlin]

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."

-- Mark Twain

Re:Mechanics for the 21st century

[NuttyBee]

We don't respect mechanics because we, and our friends, have been lied to by mechanics so many times. Either about what needs to be repaired, what they broke while they were repairing something else, etc. If computer techs started pulling the same shit that mechanics have been pulling, taking severe advantage of their greater knowledge of the subject, computer techs are going to be just as disrespected.

I'm both a mechanic and an engineer. (Guess which field I haven't been successful in obtaining gainful employment in.)

A Couple Of Things About Mechanics:

1. Not all mechanics are dishonest.
2. Not all mechanics are competent.
3. Dealerships make most of their money off of parts.
4. You usually get what you pay for.

If you really want a good mechanic in CA, find someone who passed ASE L1 (Advanced Diagnostics) and has a CA EA Smog License. ASE L1 is both a difficult test and has an experience requirement. The CA EA Smog License is a state exam that requires completion of ASE A6, A8, L1, a Clean Air Course, and an OBD-II Course -- most mechanics do not bother. These guys don't screw around, know their stuff and don't fudge anything. The CA Bureau of Automotive Repair does pull smog licenses and they aren't trivial to maintain. Most shops have very few smog techs.

That being said:

1. Not all computer techs are honest.
2. Not all computer tech are competent.
3. Computer stores with techs make most of their money off of parts. (Benefits and overhead are pricy.)
4. There are a lot of dishonest people out there who'll gladly take advantage of people.

Bad computer techs do the same crap as bad mechanics. They overcharge, the replace things that don't need to be fixed. They outright lie.

I was recently brought a family friends computer. Some "tech" said he wanted $250 to try to recover the data on her hard drive because the computer "stopped working." What had happened was the PS/2 keyboard connector had a bad connection and it failing the boot process. In 30 minutes, I copied the hard drive data to a CD, verified it was the keyboard connector, and returned the items to the owner for FREE. I was rewarded with a $50 gift card to Best Buy.

The computer owner had gone out and bought a new computer as she was unwilling to spend $250 for someone to TRY to recover her data. And she was incredibly grateful to have someone tell her what was really wrong with her computer and fix it for a reasonable (FREE) charge.