Slashdot Mirror
BBC Writer Tries PC Repair, Finds Poor Software
twitter writes "BBC author Paul Rubens tried out amateur computer repair and wrote about it. All of the software was for Windows, and he finds what most of us do: "Most of the problems I've been called to look at have been caused by viruses and spyware, some by strange software [conflicts], and only one by faulty hardware." He then flames the whole world of computer repairmen as 'a bunch of unqualified amateurs.'"
Luckily he wasn't trying out the amateur software development.
If we went by his definition of unqualified amateurs, most OSS developers would have been in the same category, but look what these "unqualified amateurs" have done to OSS?
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
But because computers are so complex, it's inevitable, and usually not very long, before they stop working as they should.
This is your first mistake. Computers are not inherently complex (even Windows). People have a habbit of making computers more complex than they need to be (i.e. installing whatever whenever and expecting it to remain on there and stable forever). If people would just take the time to understand that they do not need 10000 things in their tray and took the 10 minutes to read exactly what each of those things they installed did they would quickly learn what the Uninstall Program feature is for.
When a domestic appliance goes wrong, you can ring a repair man. When your car breaks down you can call the garage. But when your computer system goes wrong, who do you call?
Google or a manual. Just like I did for my burned out tail-light on my car, the squeaking dryer, and the rattling my engine made when it spun a rod. Now, in the case of the spun rod there was nothing *I* could do without taking it to the dealer to repair but at least I had an idea of what to expect when they told me what was wrong with it.
The simple truth is that although computer systems are sold as consumer goods like fridges or washing machines, there's no computer equivalent of a qualified service engineer who you can get to come around and fix things.
You bought software or your hardware from somewhere I would guess (if you built this stuff on your own you have enough knowledge to fix it on your own). Take it to them. Dell, Gateway, Apple, whoever. If you're talking about software issues, call the company of the software you installed, oooh, it's Spyware problems. You only have yourself to blame for not researching carefully what you put on your computer. Just because you can modify your computer more easily than most pieces of hardware you own does not mean you should be absolved of all responsibility when it breaks. I wish that more people would understand that.
It seems incredible, but millions of families and thousands of businesses have no-one to turn to but a bunch of unqualified amateurs to fix the most complicated pieces of equipment that have probably ever existed. It's a scary thought.
What do you suggest? A school where they teach spyware removal? Or do you propose they learn about securing their networks (wireless and wired), their computers w/firewalls, spyware and virus protection (and frequent scans/updates), and keeping abreast of new news about OS updates and protections to the latest and greatest things out there? Why not spend the 20 minutes reading one of my posts or the 10000000 other posts out there that tell you exactly what you need to know:
1. Get a software firewall (ZoneAlarm) that tells you when an internal software package is calling home.
2. Get AdAware, SpyBot, and SpywareBlaster. Keep them up to date and scan frequently.
3. Install all the latest updates for your OS and keep them up to date.
4. Don't install something that you don't understand. Check with Google first. It's not hard to spend the 5 minutes with a Google search on the name of the program you want to install to find out if it phones home (and if you don't at least you have ZoneAlarm to give you a heads up).
5. Get some sort of virus protection (i.e. NAV or AVG)
6. Realize that regular maintenance is required for ANY piece of hardware (cars, HVAC, etc). Do you not change your oil every ~3000 miles? Do you not check your air filters in your home every month or two? Do you not add water softener salt every month?
I just gave five pieces of software that are free, easily found on reputable/major distribution sites, and that have probably been repeated elsewhere thousands of times. It amazes me that someone who claims that he can fix other people's problems didn't find this software and then had the audacity to claim that the software out there sucks.
If only more people were w
Pee Wee fixes computers? (Heh, heh!)
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
If they knew what they were doing, they wouldn't be wasting their time cleaning spyware off grandma's machine for $12/hr.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
"a bunch of unqualified amateurs"
Perhaps if they were paid more than your typical McDonalds employee they'd be a bit better than said fast-food dispensers.
Boycott everything - they're all trying to fuck you one way or another
It seems incredible, but millions of families and thousands of businesses have no-one to turn to but a bunch of unqualified amateurs to fix the most complicated pieces of equipment that have probably ever existed. It's a scary thought.
Sure it seems scary at a glance (I hire a professional builder to fix my home, I hire some kid down the street to fix my computer) but after a while it does not seem so outrageous. If you're silly enough to download enough viruses or spyware to make Windows not load or your Internet connection stop working, you'd be silly enough to hire an 'unqualified amateur' to fix it.
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
...he didn't try to become a pilot!
-Valiss
that we stop getting shoddy articles from amatuer journalists. They have no business offering their opinions or articles. /sarcasm.
The Blaster Master Fighting for Truth, Justice, and Evil Pie since 1979
If they knew what they were doing, they wouldn't be wasting their time cleaning spyware off grandma's machine for $12/hr.
You're right, I charge $40/hr
Folks don't mind paying $50+ per hour for their vehicle repairs, but nobody wants to pay that sort of money to get their operating system de-loused.
I think that's a major part of the problem. It's hard to make money as a retail computer repair technician, and it's not a fun career. I would guess that the good ones aspire to move away from retail as soon as they are able.
Never ask for directions from a two-headed tourist! -Big Bird
I don't think he's calling the repairmen amateurs... but the people that joe user ends up turning to. Maybe the kid down the street, or the guy next door who hooked up his own router. Most people don't call someone for PC repair, they just find "someone who knows something" ... no shit that person is an amateur.
My family and friends don't bug me that much about computer problems, but when they do, they know that:
And I outside of the occasional meal, I am free.
Fortunately, the hardware problem ended up being a temporary issue.
"Play is the only way the highest intelligence of humankind can unfold." -- Joseph Chilton Pearce
I know people, and am someone who learned back in the mid 1990s how to fix computers, and managed to keep up with current hardware trends to offer service superior or at least as good as a place like Staples, or a box-store repair center could provide.
In the world of computer repair though, you often get what you pay for. If you're outsourcing your computer repair to the kid down the street, you might get lucky if they're smart and read slashdot, or you could get someone who thinks you upgrade RAM by adding a hard drive.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
If people went around treating their refrigerators as bad as they did their PCs, then we would have the same problem. Put the fridge in the middle of the street, let people take food, put food in, plug it into a DC power source etc. That thing would break in a heartbeat. However all we do is open/close the fridge and occasionally defrost/clean it. Have someone use their PC to goto ONE website ONLY (ie microsoft.com) with a direct pipe to the site - that computer will be bug free for a while. Maybe even 10-15 years just like my last fridge.
Get Paid to search
We really are a bunch of unqualified amateurs. That is, except for a top-level 3% or so (I could be wrong..... I could also be wrong about putting myself in this category). What matters is persistence and continuing research & education (self-taught properly niched persons, not that tech school stuff that is one of the greatest rip-offs and causes of problems in IT today)
What it comes down to is a very specialized people with a knack for dealing with themundane problems encountered on the desktop today. Server maintenance, network design and upkeep is simple in comparison to the myriad of problems encountered by a low-level desktop tech today, in retail or in a SMB environment.
The author does bring up some interesting points, however, regarding the difference between car/washing machine repairmen and computer techs..... there is very little one can do to ensure they are being serviced properly in todays marketplace that, at this time, can have no place for certification and the like.... "A+ Certified and Toilet Trained: Equally proud of both." to quote.
We built our systems, tuned them, made them perform better than they should, kept them virus free, and done it for less than going with a retail box just so we can be called amateurs. Sorry, but only pros can do things like that.
What's really sad though, is that all you need to do to use a computer and have almost no problems is well... RTFM. =/
-illumina+us "I put on my robe and wizard hat..."
A car is something that gets you to your job, and you invest thousands in (tens of thousands for most people). $50/hour for a few hours isn't all that much.
$50/hour for 3-4 hours ($150-$200) is often 20-40% of the original computer cost. When Dell is offering $549 packages deals with a flat screen, most people's knee-jerk reaction is that $50/hour is 'too high'. And it is too high, for most people and what they do. If it's related to their work, they can expense it. If it's just an email/gaming machine, they can buy a new one that's faster anyway.
creation science book
PRICE.
No one wants to pay $50 - $100 an hour for a qualified person to come to their house and tell them that their computer would run fine if they would stop visiting so many porn sites.
I have worked on at least 100 home PCs in my lifetime and have not found a single one that was free of pornography. Don't get me wrong, if someone wants to look at porn, that is their business, not mine. But don't get all pissed off when fat-young-heiffers.com loads your machine with digital nastiness that you didn't ask for.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
Nobody with skills wants a market (consumer computer service) with whiny, cash-strapped cutomers who don't think they should have to pay the time and cost it takes, when a better market (business computer service) exists.
Computers are like other service industries, except that they require a lot more knowledge and care to prevent the problems from happening in the first place. People don't realize that difference, and expect solving computer problems to be like plumbing, with easy estimates of time and cause.
Promote civility: mod down any post starting with 'ummm'.
I find that most people are very stingy when it comes to getting qualified or unqualified help in getting their computer fixed. They'll drop a thousand dollars to pimp out their car but won't buy a hundred dollar external drive for backup until all of their business records are wiped out. And its next to impossible to convince people that their Windows systems need regular upkeep, which will come out cheaper than feverishly fixing the systems after they failed.
I also had a gig providing free tech support for a small non-profit, and when I had to quit it, I looked for a paid support option for them. I have found highly qualified company that would support the network for about $120 per hour on a regular contract. But before them, I have talked to multiple organizations touting only slightly cheaper support options ($75-100) who were utterly incompetent.
Sure, there are schools to get certified in Computer repair. But people who get this certification usually end up being the "Amateurs".
I did computer service work for 4 years while going to school. It was for a consulting firm. I'd be farmed out to different businesses all over the GTA.
I wasn't great at it. But I knew loads more than anybody and these businesses. After the first service call, all computer related problems were automatically our fault. You constantly had to deal with irate people. No wonder I only made a fraction of what the company I worked for was charging for my time.
The thing is. I learned this stuff on my own. Taking apart my first computer, perpetually upgrading it, writing my own software, etc. I had an interest. Most people don't. They just want it to work. They want this website to show their video clip, or that file to play this sound clip or whatever. They have no interest in knowing what you should and shouldn't do and how it all works.
The people who KNOW how it all works usually don't want to do it. I sure don't. After working in computer repair service for four years, I hardly want to help out my best friends let along do it for "someone somebody knows with a problem". And there is the catch. People who know, who are good at it, and who can do a good job, don't want to. It's the Janitorial job of the IT world.
--- tracer.ca
Seriously, maybe he should try going to PC World (in the UK), and getting the "Qualified" "Professional" staff there to help him? Many "professionals" are random people with no experience who have been put on some useless training course.
So this weekend (yep, my holiday weekend) a close friend of my parents needed serious help. Her external drive (where she unfortunately saved all her data without backups) had stopped working. This was her entire business (stupid mistake, but common among end users). She had already spoken to one "IT Pro" who had taken a look, said the drive was completely dead and told her to send the drive to one of those low level recovery services which cost $3000. I took the drive, plugged it in to USB, and copied her files right off. Turns out the firewire connection on the drive had died. This "IT Pro" didn't even have the brains to try a different connection type! When someone tells me they've got a friend or brother or son in IT I assume only that that person is an idiot. Often I'm correct. If you don't know what your talking about, shut your mouth. Don't try to oversimplify or make something up. It makes all of us look bad.
Who wants to get roped into answering the phone at all hours from someone who cant figure out how to avoid a virus or worm? I wont answer that call from anyone. Get WebTV and shut the fuck up.
You cant pay me enough to swing by in the middle of my day to remove porn-popups, if you are gonna keep using IE, and not reign in your 13yr boy with a perpetual woody.
I dont care if you have a pair of 44Ds in your blouse, I aint fixing your machine unless you are prepared to sit on my lap while I load my "Spybot".
When I sit down in front of a Linux server I can whip out super professional tools like strace and ltrace and lsof and dig through /proc, whip out gdb, etc. and follow everything step by step through the source code. Everything's usually simple enough that I can fit the entire system in my head and see where the broken piece is (except for PAM). The system invites me to do this. I can diagnose problems scientifically, professionally, and quickly.
When I sit in front of a Windows box, with some exceptions, all I can do is push the same set of buttons that the user has been pushing, and see if I can find a combination that works.
PCs force me to become an amateur. Reason: bad tools available.
The problem isn't completely with technical incompetence, the problem can just as easily and will more probably be with care and respect for the customer.
It's a service issue, not a knowledge issue most times when you run into a computer tech who seems to be bumbling something up. Did they check to see what the problem actually was? Do they care enough if they're only making $7-10 an hour from their employer to save your enterprise business plan or presentation? Probably not.
Actually the whole thing is a lot like having a car. You can go through a bunch of different mechaniacs who are either dishonest or lazy, but once and a while you find that one shop where they're commited to service. I don't know about you, but I end up holding on to that shop's business card like it's solid gold. And that's an industry where there are standards to meet. I pay more for better, and I'm always happy with the result.
So WE as computer techies are to blame for this attitude in non computer techies in two ways; way #1, we undervalue ourselves and in turn make the work we do less valuable. #2 we don't do the work properly because we don't respect it ourselves.
Actually come to think of it, as a freelancer, I'm not competing with these low-balling stained-shirt wearing Linksys cablemodem router admins anymore, I'm going to set my rates accordingly. //more of a rant than I wanted that to be.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
I think he was. His point is that we have professionals to take care of our legal, automotive, medical, veterinarian etc problems, but we don't have an analogous professional to take care of our computer problems.
However, his theory is wrong because such profesionals exist. The problem is that users are not willing to pay them.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
"Then I applied the Service Pack.... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH, the Secret Word!
[insert lots of sirens and noisy things here]
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
I've met plenty of people with qualifications (computer science degrees, various certifications, etc..) who couldn't fix the simplest problems or don't even have an understanding of the most basic aspects of the systems. On the other hand, I've met other people who are more than capable and don't even have a college degree or a certification. The bottom line is this: If a person can fix the problem and provide you with an exact description of what caused the problem, and they can reproduce their results, they have the only qualification they need. (ie. they know what they're doing)
The biggest mistake that a lot of people make is thinking that computers are a business. They aren't. They are a technology and therefore you need technologically savvy people to work with them. I have no formal training at all, but most people I know always come to me for help because they know I can figure out and solve any software or hardware issue on a PC. I think it helps that I have a non-formal background in electronics first. I, generally, know how the circuitry works at the hardware level. So it's very easy for me to rule out hardware problems before I explore the software itself. Many times, I find that the culprit is too many apps that are stomping over each other.
When I was a Windows guy, it didn't take me long to discover that most of the instability in my system was caused by all the extras I loaded on for convenience. This was an alien experience to me as it wasn't that way in the Atari ST world I migrated from. I didn't like it, but I wound up finding that the best way to run Windows was to keep it lean and pretty plain vanilla. If I wanted extra apps, I always went for Microsoft products because they usually worked the best with Windows. Norton stuff was very cool, but resulted in a lot of instability (this was Windows 3.1). Then I got sick of having only one place to go shopping and moved to Linux. All problems solved...
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
... all you have to do is say "I CAN FIX THAT!" and have more of a clue than the person with the broke gear.
:P
Considering the number of retards and windows installs in the world, this is fairly easy to do.
Computer "repair" is a lot like plumbing... the difference is that you don't see everyone who's plunged a toilet calling themselves a plumber and billing out 50$ an hour. Real plumbers know their shit and get paid accordingly- likewise, a real pc tech who actually knows their shit is earning their paycheck without breaking much of a sweat.
The problem is finding competent people. It's reasonably easy to tell if your plumber doesn't know shit, but if you're not some degree of geek, you'll get totally snowed by "computer repair"- though if you're some degree of geek, you don't need one.
I'm an 'in house' computer tech. It's my sole occupation. I don't work on a helpdesk, not that there's anything wrong with that, I actually bring the machine to my desk and repair it.
For a while I tried to work independantly. I paid for some advertising and got a little work. Do you know what I found out. People (consumers, not businesses) don't want to spend money on computer repairs. And when they do they usually hire the wrong people.
I don't mind saying that I'm very good at what I do. And working for myself I had the freedom to do whatever I had to do to please the customer. That stands in contrast to what most 'store techs' have the freedom to do for the customer. They can only do what the customer is paying for... in other words, no extras, no 'going the extra mile'.
The end result was things like this kindly old lady (my first customer) paying $90/hour for some jerk to format and reinstall her pc. And he didn't update windows or tell her about doing so. WTF is that? 3 Months later she needed more work done....
So when I formatted her machine I made sure to instruct her on how to get updates. I made sure to give her a quick tutorial on security in general. I also told her she could ask me questions in the future via email if she forgot anything. And I did all of that *for free* because I care about the service I provide.
I think that a lot of 'rent a tech' types don't really give a damn about what the customer is going through because they're only getting paid $8/hour. (In Canada thats crappy pay).
But do you know what the funny part is? I worked for about half to a third of what my competitors charged. But they were from the big computer stores so I could charge less and make more... but that's irrelevent to the customer. But I found that most people didn't want to pay me, they would wait until it was so bad they couldn't do anything and then they'd take it to a 'store tech' and get crappy service.
So ya, no wonder people think the 'average' tech is a dumbass. It's because the tech is from Big O'l Retail Store and doesn't really give a damn.
You want good computer work, then find someone that does it exclusively. Ask for references. Shop around. But whatever you do don't pay $90/hour for an $8/hour tech to give you $8/hour-quality service.
My father is a veteran systems administrator with 35 years of experience in the industry. His and his girlfriends' home PCs keep getting virii, spyware, and adware.
It's not that dad's an old coot, he actually keeps his skills up to date. It's that Windows is so unbelievably insecure he just can't keep up with it. He uses antivirus software, he tries to keep it up to date, he has multiple spyware scanners/removers which he updates regularly, and he just can't keep the systems clean. Every year or two it gets too unbearable and he just has to wipe the machine and reinstall from scratch, or replace it.
If my father can't do it, then no normal mortal computer owner should be expected to do it.
I think I've got Dad just about convinced to buy a Macintosh. When he hears that I have absolutely no problems with malware and I don't even have to have special software to prevent it, he gets very interested.
One can be unfamiliar with LAN or common Linux/Unix issues (or PC-related issues at all) and be quite competent in their area(s) of IT expertise.
A lack of knowledge doesn't always imply incompetence. Sometimes it's simply a lack of knowledge.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Insightful? When he doesn't know that CPUs do in fact have multiply instructions, with hardware (for example, funnel shifters) and microcode to implement them? Isn't that CPU hardware and microcode "the computer"?
There are two reasons why so many amateurs are the only ones doing this kind of work.
The first reason is that computers often cost more to fix than what was paid for them in the first place.
It can take a few hours sometimes to fix some of the more persistent viruses and malware out there. As a consequence, only businesses seem to be able to afford my services.
The second reason is that home users have unreasonable expectations. Many seem to think that once I've touched their computer, I own it, and anything that goes wrong after that is my fault, not theirs.
I've only made a couple of home user calls. My first call was on a PC that had 26 viruses and over 100 malware and spyware-related issues.
In another case I had to tell a lady that she could buy a new PC for about $200 less than what it would cost me to rid her aging computer of demons.
Surprisingly, I have noticed that I charge $20/hr less than Geek Squad out of the local Best Buy. However, the home computer market is a touchy one.
Proverbs 21:19
I do this for a living. Thank you to all the crappy software vendors, virus creators and spyware companies.
But seriously...I use this analogy for my customers: You change the oil in your car every 3000 miles, you read the owners manual, you took a driver's test. A PC is a machine just like a car and it needs attention. You need to read up on it and look after it just like any other appliance or machine.
When you're on the highway, you're sharing the road with other drivers...much like when you're on the internet you're sharing it with other people. You have insurance incase someone hits your car...but you don't have virus protection or spyware protection incase someone from the net hits your PC.
Same story, different day.
Heh. Lightweight. I break their computer and then they have to pay me to get an all-new one. And if they're too cheap to get one, problem solved.
This is the classical example of somebody not understanding how to use a computer.
If a laptop fails:
First backup your things (which you should have done in the first place).
Next reload the system software. Windows will eventually screw itself up anyway.
Finally you contemplate other options.
The attitude of "somebody should have created an easy downloadable solution to fix my world" is increasingly being deployed instead of brains.
We are 4 people in my hopusehold. 12 computers of which 5 are running Windows, the rest running Linux. Even my kids have no problems with windows other than windows itself. They all know the drill: Keep your stuff in a directory structure called "My World". In case of malfunction or our linux firewall screaming bloody virus warning: Time to find the Knoppix disk and delete the windows system directory. Then you reload windows and the world is at peace once more.
How in the world do you think I could otherwise keep this menagerie runing?
As little as humanly possible, unless the employer's a commie.
I can't remember who said it, but "You put a supposedly intelligent person in front of a computer and they become an incompetent idiot".
At work I deal with some front line helpdesk stuff, and honestly sometimes you wonder what on earth these people do at home (I keep getting an error message! What does it say? I don't know... I don't understand computers) - like if a light bulb goes, do they sit in the dark until an electrician comes out to replace it?
I imagine like many a young geek I was not alone in repairing PC's for access to food, money and girls. I didn't have qualifications other then being born into a household where computers were modded on a regular basis.(my appleIIc dual booted between an ibm board and the apple board) Of course what was important to me as a young geek isn't as important now. Fixing someones PC is a pain in the ass. Inevitably there is going to be something you didn't expect - like very few people keep motherboard manuals, and how do you look up jumper info when the only machine around is the one your repairing. When I was 16-20 it provided pocket money and access to girls and food (pasta for powerpoint anyone?) but as an adult I long ago realized that my time is more valuable - if I was doing it for a company I would expect min $50 an hour, I spent the years accumulating the experience and refining the skills. The average home user isn't willing to pay the 50$ an hour so they get 16-19 year old kids(unqualified amaturs)fixing their pc's. I have nothing against these kids, and I imagine many of them are more capable then me with some of these technologies. As long as the home user refuses to pay professional rates for PC service then that market place will stay the domain of young geeks, and provide them a place to use their skills for food, girls and money. Let em have it - if you are worth professional rates work in the professional market - don't work in the home market and crowd out the kids.
The rock, the vulture, and the chain
Hmm... perhaps you're onto something there! If we could advertise Firefox as "the best browser for viewing porn sites without screwing your PC", I wonder if even more people would want to install it?
But then, I guess that might put you out of business, so probably isn't worth the hassle for you to install for people!
Organic free-range music... yum!
When I had a hiatus in my normal flow of software development projects last year, I attempted to build a sideline business in this kind of service. I was "convinced" by the older blog article posted here a couple of summers ago "Technical Self Employment is a Fat Paycheck Waiting to be Pocketed" as well as the Joshua Feinberg "Computer Consultants 101" course which I bought (my word on the latter: don't get it. I found it a cheap and quick "high" but very unhelpful in the longer run.)
Short version: this is a REALLY crappy business. This "story" of low end tech support being a viable career option seems to have been floating around for quite awhile. The pundits claiming that it is a good refuge for a underemployed techie are full of crap. You're much better off temping at Home Depot if you need quick money, and continuing to interview for a normal professional IT or engineering job.
The basic problems:
Customers expect a quick, easy spend; the potential liabilities are huge; there is extremely little pricing or maneuvering room even for due diligence.
What I found:
The market is absolutely glutted with freelance computer techs. I have absolutely no idea how this writer got off the ground so easily. My chamber has about 30 out of a 800 business member base. All quoting the "we are your virtual IT department" line.
As far as marketing: I had joined the chamber, I told every blessed professional and in-business person I knew, I gave talks, I advertised, I sent out a mass mailing of postcards. NOTHING. Or, very little business. I gave it a year.
The clients suck. You really need a signed agreement with every business you deal with, in order to limit your liabilities, but many won't sign one. The same people who will blithely sign away their rights at the Quick-Lube station that fills their crankcase with moldy Kayro syrup will act like you're trying to scam them if you ask their signature on an agreement to begin work.
Payment is a challenge. I let just one local business, an "ESTEEMED CHAMBER MEMBER", go without collecting on the date I was there. The jerk didn't pay me (a lousy $190) until he called me needing more work, several weeks later. Another business, a health club, stiffed me out of over 1/2 the billings for an onsite service call. And so on and so forth.
Respect? You're treated like the janitor by most clients.
More on due diligence: when a user has a really trashed out (virus/adware laden) PC, AND does not have any of the system recovery disks, AND wants their precious data recovered first... the amount of time it can take is essentially bottomless. You just can't tell them that it may be 3 hours to 15 hours. They will simply not accept that. And you just, absolutely do not know even the order of magnitude until you get into it.
EVERY job I got involved some hideously unpredictable ball of mud.
So you wind up looking like an asshole all the time because you can't predict within the $50 what the client may spend to bring their PC "back", so you wind up working like a dog to "keep it low".
The reason nobody in the retail area wants this business is for the reasons I've listed. It's just too bloody hard to undo the damage that end users do by unsafe computing practices. That's why most stores' service departments just format and reinstall. Their attitude is "screw you and your data, tough luck" for a reason. They know that few will pay to have it "done right". And you can't run a business that is so marginal.
One of the biggest problems with PC repair and support is that the majority of technicians treat all problems like some poorly-trained doctor, prescribing antibiotics by the handful rather than doing in-depth tests.
When's the last time you saw a PC technician try to debug the problem at a low level? It's always just reinstall, reinstall, reinstall.
about his "overqualified amateur" rant, since it was off the cuff.
And his point was that appliance repair people get training in fixing a specific item, whereas computers have such varied configurations that it is nearly impossible to be an expert in fixing EVERYTHING.
Or at least, I hope he understands that.
I happen to be one of those "unqualified amateurs" doing home and small business tech support for low rates. I have twenty years in the IT field, so I know the basic facts about IT: nothing works and nobody cares. I have only been messing with current PC systems for the last three years, but I learn fast and usually have some idea where to look to solve a problem. But there's no doubt that the bewildering variety of screwups in both hardware and software make it very hard to do a quick, efficient fix.
As an example from my own machine, a couple weeks ago I moved some partitions on the 160GB hard drive to make more room for my Windows 2000 and Windows XP root partitions (thankfully my Linux is on the other drive). Once I started accessing the partition that ended up on the other side of the 137GB barrier, both Windows crashed totally.
I reinstalled and reconfigured, making sure I had SP4 on 2000 and SP2 on XP (which I had before the crash). After accessing that partition again, I discovered that neither OS could see files put in that partition by the other OS.
To make a long story short, after nearly a week of wrestling with this, and being amazed at some of the bizarre behavior (all of which clearly indicated that at least one of the OS's simply was not seeing that partition in the "right" place on the drive), I discovered an MS Knowledgebase article that helpfully stated that Windows 2000 with Service Pack 3 cannot read the partition table correctly for "some" hard drives! (God forbid that MS tell us WHICH drives, WHEN, and WHY! Now I know! Big drives!) And I had installed 2000 with SP3 and THEN applied SP4 - too late, homes!
Now, I spent a HELL of a lot of time on Google looking for ANYONE who had similar symptoms or a similar problem. Nothing - on the Web or in Google groups. I should have checked MS first, but even there it was not easy to find this particular KB article.
Apparently, only under the specific conditions I had - a particular drive, installing 2000 SP3 first, then applying SP4, and possibly dual-booting with XP - did this problem arise.
Multiply this by the tons of proprietary motherboards, manufacturer-tweaked BIOSes, "custom" hardware, scores of thousands of software apps, and add in a pinch of spyware - and how the hell can ANY tech ever hope to figure out what is wrong in less than two to four hours?
Which, at the rate techs charge, is a hell of a lot of money for some home user who has, on a national average, maybe $100 disposable income for the month. It's no less of a problem for a business user if a critical server is out of action for that time.
Another tech told me about trying to get a wireless LAN working for a small business down in Palo Alto. The frequency saturation in the 2.4GHz band was so bad there that the users kept getting kicked off or re-associating with the wrong access points. He tried everything - other brands of wireless, bigger, more directional antennas - nothing worked. Finally he had them buy a Cisco access point that was seven times more expensive than the ones they had been trying, which put out 100mw instead of 20. That worked - so far.
For the last week, my AV has been turning off its email scanner for no apparent reason. No indication why, no good explanations on the company's forum. Since turning off the outbound SMTP scanner, it seems to have stopped doing it - so far.
PCs are a nightmare today, no question about it.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Wow, I guess you had to walk uphill both ways to school in 7ft snow and didn't even get weekends off.... Give me a break, we would still be fixing computers old-school if parts were not so cheap. Why pay $400 on labor to fix a $150.00 monitor? Why pay $900 to fix a MB when a replacement is $50.00? I myself remember diagnosing & repairing, but to hell with that I would rather stick in a new video card or whatever, charge $30.00 and move on with my day. I'm glad those days are gone. Why in the heck would you go into Best Buy if you know there are Windidiots there anyways? I give them a gruff look and tell them I don't need help, thank you. Avoids lots of hassle. I buy 99% of my stuff online anyways, get what I want, without hassle. I for one applaud M$, I love Windows, keeps my family fed.
If Kerry was the answer, it must have been a stupid question.
The UN - The largest "political" cause of death.
When was the last time you had to do maintenance on your screwdriver?
And the fact that you have to do maintenance on a computer just means that the industry is still very, very immature. It SHOULD be just a tool. You shouldn't have to learn the intracacies of it just to use it. Case in point: cars. When was the last time you changed a distributor caps, or re-did the points on your engine or had service on your carbureator? Oh yeah. You haven't. Most people your age never have because cars are much more mature than are computers in terms of life-cycle, which is why it's easier to run a car (which is more complex than modern computers). It's getting better (Windows 2000 was a big breakthrough), and it's going to continue to get easier, and easier to use a computer, as it should.
I don't respond to AC's.
Not to state the painfully obvious, but the way most retailers work, it's no great suprise their employees say unintelligent things like "it's the gold contact that let you know it's a USB 2.0 cable because electricity travels faster through gold." (That is a direct quote, by the way!)
The big chain stores charge customers $50 an hour (for in-house repair) to upwards of $100 an hour (for on-site work) and then turn around and give these hard-working individuals a whopping $10 to $12 per hour to survive on. The word "geeksploitation" comes to mind in a big way. It's this reason that most computer repairmen who tolerate this onerous situation (you can make $10 an hour doing data entry if you can just *type* fast) and hire on at these places are literally the bottom bidders in the system. That is just barely enough money to keep a geek in new hardware so they can learn the intimate details of troubleshooting it (which is cheaper than regular training classes, and includes employee discounts on the hardware). The majority of these poor, damned souls either stagnate, or tolerate the situation only long enough to get jobs at better places as either system administrators or network engineers, who are typically only marginally less underpaid.
Your best bet to finding really skilled geeks is still word-of-mouth to find an independent contractor or small group of geeks acting in concert.
Stop the geeksploitation!
That's like complaining that a book is too hard to use because you have to spend all this time learning how to read. Some things have a certain amount of complexity and people need to learn. The car analogy is great, except that you aren't expected to repair your car or computer. You do have to learn how to drive a car, and you should have to learn to use a computer. Learning simple things like "read messages that appear on your screen instead of immediately clicking the ok button", and "do not install random shit that you don't need" would solve 99% of people's problems. The fact that people don't treat computers with the same respect they do cars is the problem. People don't tend to shove random fluids in random holes under their hood and expect their car to work, but they do the equivelent to their computers all the time.
If you want to check on a local business, you can check the local BBB. You know that a doctor with a degree from somewhere besides University of Phoenix has a reasonably good chance of being competent, but there is no way to prove to the average consumer that you are not an amateurish hack. I've been working with computers for the past 15 years (competent for last 10) and normally know what's going on, or when I don't know what's going on, where to turn to so that I don't crap up the situation even more.
A few years back I took the A+ Certification test to prove myself. The only thing that I proved was that the A+ Certification was a joke. I passed the test with flying colors without studying, or opening one single "10 easy steps to A+ Certification Glory". Not only did I not have to study, but I found a few questions that had no/incorrect solutions. One question had a picture of the connection riser of a legacy motherboard, and it asked to identify the USB port, except there was no USB port in the picture.
I find traveling or visiting friends to be a hassle because I seem to be the roaming tech support man. In the past 10 years of working on other's computers, I have only had to work on three Macs, and I don't have enough fingers/toes/hairs to count the number of Windows machines from which I've removed spyware and general crap, or changed settings that the user had no idea about.
Whenever I encounter a Windows machine connected directly to the internet, I refuse to work on it unless they make the small investment of a hardware router. I know that a router is not the end-all solution, and doesn't block things from phoning home, but it shows them that there are associated costs with computer security. Also, a few minutes explaining a few specific security functions can go a long way.
From the article:
When a domestic appliance goes wrong, you can ring a repair man. When your car breaks down you can call the garage. But when your computer system goes wrong, who do you call?
In my experience, most people call their ISP, even for problems that are not internet related. How do I know? I work for an ISP. And they expect their ISP to fix it. They see their ISP subscription as a service contract. When, after some questioning, the ISP helpdesk operator ascertains that the problem is not internet related, or not covered by the support policy, then begins the hard part of convincing the customer. It's often easier to tell the customer to reboot.
You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.
Man who annoy computer fixer often have broken computer.