Getting Gouged by Geeks

dottyslashdottydot writes "CBC Marketplace recently ran a sting operation and discovered that most home computer repair technicians failed miserably at diagnosing a simple RAM failure. Many techs tried to sell unneccessary software or upgrades. (or even a new computer!) However, the worst offender was one guy who claimed that the hard drive had failed, and that the only remedy was to pay $2,000 to have a special facility with a clean room recover the data."

Comments

getting gouged by whom?

[yagu]

I have to take a little umbrage at the inflammatory headline, though I suppose the choice of words generates traffic. These people were not being gouged by geeks. They were being gouged by assholes. These are the same assholes who'd sell you a re-built carbeurator to fix a low-transmission fluid problem (it's true, I stopped this guy from doing just that to a good friend).

Most "geeks" I've ever known or met often may suffer social ineptitude, but across the broad spectrum, geeks, IMO, seem the least likely to be the type to pull these ripoffs. Quite the contrary, my experience has been geeks, true geeks who really know technology are the ones far more likely to shrug and take no money for helping someone with technology. That's not to say they're not willing to make a living at it... just that they're not ripoff artists.

Also the story is long on anecdotal "sting" evidence, and short on statistically significant information to substantiate the claim. My advice, ask around, ask a friend you trust, not necessarily to do the work but to give a "yea" or "nay" on any recommendations. Also, if it's a company like "geeks.com", stay away... any company pedalling technicians en-masse on the cheap is suspect... the market doesn't sustain that kind of business model... fixing technology is hard, and not cheap.

Anyway, back to my thesis, this is ripoff by assholes, not geeks.

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[MightyMartian]

Also the story is long on anecdotal "sting" evidence, and short on statistically significant information to substantiate the claim.

Welcome to the post-Dateline world, where every news agency now wants to set up stings to bust the bad guy. I'd like to set up a sting to expose shitty journalists. I think modern journalism is the one area that seriously needs to be looked in to.

We can start with science journalism, which is now at nearly tabloid levels of accuracy.

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[jotok]

Totally disagree. Geeks are the most likely out of anyone I know to have a superiority complex and lord it over people who know less than they do. Now stick that geek in a shitty, low-paying job where people who can shit out $1000 for an overpriced Dell come in saying "My internet is broken," and every once in a while they'll dick someone over.

I also don't know what you mean about companies peddling geeks on the cheap. Geek Squad, for example, are not cheap. If you want cheap, in my area, you go to the Mom & Pop store (we actually are lucky enough to have a genuine independently run computer sales & service store, run by a genuine mom and pop) and they fix stuff on the cheap. They solder and go way, way down into the physical layer...when was the last time geeks.com checked your power supply with a multimeter? They also do great training, which you'd think would torpedo their business, but no.

Oddly enough, they don't consider themselves "geeks." They are retirees and grandparents who like to tinker. Weird, but true.

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[maxume]

That's not a very nice thing to say about tabloids.

Zing!

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[WaXHeLL]

Geeks.com is Computer Geeks, an online store. Different from Geek Squad. One actually provides reliable parts, the other is run by Best Buy (enough said).

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[Anonymous Coward]

These are the same assholes who'd sell you a re-built carbeurator to fix a low-transmission fluid problem (it's true, I stopped this guy from doing just that to a good friend). Wow, how old is your friend's car that it even has a carbeurator? Maybe it would have been even better advice to tell him he needed a new car. Unless it's one of those new-fangled carbeurators that sits right next to the blinker fluid reservoir...

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[ceoyoyo]

CBC has done this sort of stuff for a LONG time, usually on mechanics. They do an annual report where they loosen the battery cable on a minivan and send it around to a bunch of big-chain mechanics in different cities then grade them by how much the repair costs.

It's useful. Canadian Tire finished last one year and they improved a LOT after that. Not that I'd take a car to Canadian Tire anyway, but still.

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[nuzak]

Oh for gods sake. They were getting gouged by the Geek Squad. It's an alliterative headline, a grand tradition of hundreds of years. This is just righteous touchiness, and no one is going to say "gosh, anyone who says they're a geek can't be trusted, some guy on the news said they'll rip me off". Honestly, pick your battles.

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[jotok]

That sounded like you could spin it into a lawyer joke.

Q: What's the difference between a lawyer and a catfish?
A: One is a scum-sucking bottom-feeder, and the other is a fish.

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[adminstring]

I have found that power supplies that look good to a multimeter may not look so good to a computer and may still cause problems. It might be putting out 5 volts, but how clean is that 5 volts? An oscilloscope could give you a better picture of how the power supply is working, or there's always my favorite method... swapping in a different power supply and seeing if the problem goes away.

I'm glad that Mom and Pop are out there doing a good job at a good price for people in your area, though. More power to them!

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[cloricus]

We have that in Australia. It's called 'The Chasers WAR on Everything' and you can check it out on YouTube, abc.net.au/chaser, or your favourite BT network. One of the better segments is 'What have we learnt from current affairs this week?' in which they make a mockery of Australia's nightly rubbish news shows. Have a look at it, get a group of crazies in your country to start up a similar show. If it doesn't clean up the trash on those sorts of shows at least it will let you laugh at the sorry state of affairs.

We also have a semi-funny-semi-serious show called MediaWatch which is a 15 minute show that goes over all of the illegal, stupid, dangerous, and bad things the media did that week. You can also find copies of it at abc.net.au/mediawatch.

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[ConceptJunkie]

I'd like to set up a sting to expose shitty journalists.

Now, that is the best idea I've heard in a very long time.

It'd be a lot harder to find a good journalist.

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[sg_oneill]

An australian comedy show, "The Chaser" (The guys who dressed like Osama bin laden and snuck past the guards at the APEC meeting in sydney ) have done numerous kick-the-door-in type "Raids" on Current-affairs show hosts houses at strange times of the morning , usually causing all sorts of hilarious anger bursts from the victims. Its bloody hilarious, considering the usual victims of the current affairs shows tends to be "UNEMPLOYED PEOPLE NOT WORKING: WE SHOW THE PROOF" type beat ups.

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[Cprossu]

A big well said to the parent thread.

I've had to personally clean up messes that were made by a company that rhymes with "Geek Squad" and quite a few others as well, and can tell you that they push everything that makes them money and that a fair amount of them don't know what the hell they are doing (my buddy who worked there got fired for not selling enough product and not charging a few people for really simple problems). I have seen them and others totally miss easy problems on systems (a cpu cooling fan that is so caked up with so much dust that it doesn't spin), screw up perfectly functioning systems (install a floppy cable backwards, install ram backwards(!), forget to connect little things back up like the hard drive's data cable), and setup networks so badly it's a wonder they even work (Then again the ones I visit are because they don't work and I think it's terrible that they already gave up an arm, leg, and first born to a company which screwed everything up). The specific BSOD's that the bait system should have been putting up (if it is like the one they showed in a little blip in one of the segments) should have been a dead giveaway to anybody with the power of google that the ram, or at the very least some piece of hardware was at fault (not sure how that one fellow suggested the video card, or that other dude the cpu!), although I will say that I would have been a little confused had the customer said it 'just happened' that day, as ram is usually bad from the factory, I would have probably gone into questioning about if the comp had done anything like that previously before I run a memtest)

I personally always find out if a system is under warranty before even breathing upon any hardware inside the machine, never charge anything if I don't or cannot fix it (which although rare does happen ), and I always charge simple cheap fees for things like spyware and viruses, (ei $15-$20) on easily removed stuff (like an hour or so actually spent on it onsite), and involve the customer in any purchasing of parts directly if I can.

My motivation as a tech has always been to teach customers that there is no "magic box", that it is decently easy to maintain, they are not going to break it by looking at it, the internals are nothing to be afraid of (no they won't get shocked adding ram), they can live a happy online computer life by staying away from bad sites, not using IE or Outlook in most cases is the best, updating AV and spyware defs is a good thing running windows, using something called "google" to find answers to questions can prevent hair loss, and I also go the extra step and teach them methods of searching forums for answers to any given computer problem(also how NOT to use the caps lock key if they do post).

so I generally tell them anything they want to learn. Companies, and freelancers who are thieves, or don't know how to fix things give our trade a terrible name, and as long as there is money to be made, they will be with us making everyones lifes slightly worse off. Computer repair is tedious, and you have to really love or enjoy it to make your customers happy. I know nothing feels better to me than rescuing someone's vacation pictures from a hard drive that is on it's last legs with the dreaded "click of death" in fornt of their eyes, take em to the store to get another hdd, load everything back and be done and have them running in less than an hour and less than $100.)

I should probably say more about the actual video now, because I derailed my train and went into a rant.

Nothing on that tape surprised me sadly, there have always been bad techs around, and there have always been good techs who are told to 'add' something to the bottom line by their bosses at risk of loosing their jobs. I never have thought that the so called "formal training" or certs give you the ability to troubleshoot any given machine. If someone is gonna slack off and not pay attention, they will, and retain enough of it that they can pass a multiple choice test. I guess I didn't get my rant completed.. oh well, take it easy everyone.

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[gvc]

Canadian Tire is a franchise operation. While the corporation has, I'm sure, overall guidelines and standards, the quality of service you get will depend a fair amount on how the franchise is run.

Personally, I find that their parts are 1/2 the price of the competition and just as good, and the quality of work has about the same mean and variance as elsewhere. I like the service manager at my local franchise and any time I've had problems with the work they have fixed it with no hassle and no charge.

That said, I prefer to fix my car and my computer myself. It is less hassle, cheaper, and usually quicker.

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[phantomlord]

Along these lines, I broke a front end part on my truck and took it to a local service shop to get repaired since I don't have handy access to an alignment machine (I generally do all my mechanic work myself, barring the need for cost-prohibitive specialized machinery like the aforementioned alignment machine). After pulling my truck in to do the alignment, the shop came back telling me that they tested my various fluids and found dirt in my oil (which I had just changed a week earlier but they asked if I'd like a lube job at $25) and metallic compounds in my power steering fluid (which they recommended flushing at a cost of $90). Mind you, all I asked for was to have the part replaced and an alignment done. Fortunately, I generally know what I'm doing when it comes to mechanical repairs so I know better than to fall for that kind of stuff... however, I have friends and family who don't have a mechanical BS detector and have been swindled.

It isn't just mechanics who do it... I've seen electricians, plumbers, computer geeks, home improvement store employees, etc try to swindle people. It seems like almost anyone who works on commission (or something similar like staying employed based on how many extended warranties they sell) will try to BS you into something you don't need. Now, I don't think all commissioned people do it. I know that I didn't when I used to work in a home improvement store - I'd sell the product that would best suit the customer's needs rather than what might line my (or the store I worked at) pockets a little more. Building honesty and trust are important to me and I believe they are vital to the long term health of your business/work. Much like CEOs though, a lot of people just care about what puts money in their pocket today and I don't think you can tie those type of people to (or from) any given profession.

PS - that alignment? Six or seven months later, I had to get it redone since the inside edges of my tires were wearing unevenly. Needless to say, I took it to a different place and that one didn't get pushy about what I wanted done. At least I know where I won't be taking my vehicle in the future if I need similar work.

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[ozmanjusri]

An australian comedy show, "The Chaser"

Oh, come on!

At least link to their site. It's even got wobbly menus, for god's sake! What more could a geek want?

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[ceoyoyo]

I was shopping with a female friend and she commented on how cheap much cheaper guy's clothes are. I told her it's because we're too cheap to pay more, women aren't. Women also pay more for haircuts, car repairs and probably any number of other things.

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[sumdumass]

My mother is the type of person like your friends that would get caught up in stuff like that. She purchased some coupon book for a school fund raiser and there was an oil change and lube cupon at a local joint for something like $20. It was set to expire in a couple weeks so she decided to take advantage of it.

My brother and I, or my father usualy do the maintenance work on here car so when she got back, she told us she couldn't believe how much stuff was wrong with her car. The got here for a rear end fluid change (in a front wheel drive car), told her the air cleaner was bad/dirty (it had less then 1000 miles on it), and flushed the automatic transmission fluid for here because it looked burnt (in a standard). There was a few other things like a coolant flush and fill (with the green ethyl glycol antifreeze instead of the 150,000 mile organic acid tech sealed system stuff that came with it).

All in all, her $20 oil change and lube coupon trip turned into a $250 excursion. They kept saying "this is bad, do you want it fixed" and she kept saying "I don't want to break down somewhere so you better fix it". And when we went back to question them about it, they claimed our invoice must have gotten mixed up with someone else's. They assured us that nothing was done that didn't need to be done but couldn't find the invoice detailing a $250 expense for her car. They eventually refunded the differenced to a $20 fee plus tax. Lol.. Yep, there are people like that.

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[alphabeat]

National broadcast and government funded media outlet the ABC also runs a show called "Media Watch" which focuses more on inept journalism, although The Chaser do punch holes in current-affairs shows like Today Tonight and ACA with style and grace. Media Watch even attack the ABC which is funny. Their shows can be watched at http://abc.net.au/mediawatch/

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[mallie_mcg]

Try the actual site http://abc.net.au/tv/chaser/ You can even podcast full episodes.

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[timeOday]

Welcome to the post-Dateline world, where every news agency now wants to set up stings to bust the bad guy. I'd like to set up a sting to expose shitty journalists.

Is this story somehow an example of bad journalism? I think it's good journalism. Computer repair (just like car repair and health care) are problems that free markets just don't solve very well. There's no way for consumers to make informed decisions since diagnosing the problem is the job. Most people not only can't diagnose these problems themselves, but don't make this type of purchase very often, and have little or no objective data to go by. It's a tough problem.

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[DamnStupidElf]

Is this story somehow an example of bad journalism? I think it's good journalism. Computer repair (just like car repair and health care) are problems that free markets just don't solve very well. There's no way for consumers to make informed decisions since diagnosing the problem is the job. Most people not only can't diagnose these problems themselves, but don't make this type of purchase very often, and have little or no objective data to go by. It's a tough problem.

What do you propose? The Department of Auto Mechanics and the Computer Repair Agency? We'll need the Senate Hairdressers Oversight Committee and the Federal Landscaping Commission, too. Don't forget the government watchdogs to keep track of wayward newspaper boys who can't land it on the porch.

Seriously, that's what consumer reports and the Internet are for.

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[Minwee]

Please, it's bad enough that 'podcast' is trying to become a noun. Don't let it move in on verb territory too.

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[DeadChobi]

If she's getting her hair cut the same way a man does, then she should be going to a barber shop and not a salon. The reason it costs more is because the salon people can actually style as opposed to cut to a length, block/fade into top, and even out sideburns. The latter is all a lot of men really need.

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[Cprossu]

quote:"That report was a hatchet job. Bad ram is very rare"

Back in the day it really was not a common problem, and the cases of it I remember were easy to diagnose because the comp would not even post. My personal first diagnoses I made of bad ram (that posts fine and 'looks' fine) back in '95 or so really had me pulling my hair out. I eventually tore the whole computer apart, set it up on a bench, and tested each part individually to figure it out, when I found it was the ram I was shocked. (it also didn't help having a 28.8kb dial up connection to the web, no affordable cd burner even on the horizon, and a lack of good low kb free tools)

Anyway, I beg to differ that bad ram is rare, I've had loads of bad ram since they released sticks with 512MB and over.
It's been so bad for me, I don't let a rig go to someone 'till it passes 2 times with memtest.
I've bought 3 laptops for me and my family in the last year from retail stores, and 2 came to me with at least 1 bad ddr2 module, and I see it very often on customer computers. Ususally I am the last resort before it gets the dumpster or sent back, when it ends up being a simple ram issue.

now you might say, wait a min, that's if you only use crappy ram, but I've gotten bad ram from everybody from corsair, kingston, crucial, PQI, patriot, micron oem, and a slew of others using any kind of chip, as well as straight from a big computer factory, where they are supposed to test it before it leaves. I've seen it in servers, workstations, desktops, notebooks, you name it, I probably have a bad stick of it somewhere in my room. Most everyone I've dealt with has great return programs which took care of me very well, but it's still a fact that I shouldn't have gotten the bad ram in the first place-

I have a feeling that if the test was 'more fair' as you call it and had something...easier(?) to diagnose, perhaps a bad power supply (the most often failure I see over here in Arizona), or perhaps dust clogged cpu fan, then most of the so called techs they hired still wouldn't have figured it out.

my only gripe is that crying over getting charged $35 for a $25 part is a bit extreme, I mean come on, a $10 markup ain't too bad considering that you didn't count shipping in "what you got it on the net" for.

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[vtcodger]

It must be a VERY old car. In most cars built in the past two decades, the engine is mounted transversley. The water pump is driven by the timing belt, not the fan belt (which no longer drives the fan(s)). A smaller number of cars have the water pump under the timing belt cover, but driven by an accessory belt so that a busted water pump won't break the timing belt. In either case, getting to the water pump is a lot of work -- need to remove the accessory belt(s); remove the crankshaft pulley; possibly remove a engine mount; remove the timing belt covers; might consider replacing the timing belt while you're there; remove the water pump. Then put everything back together -- right. All this has to be done with next to no clearance to the engine compartment wall.

Can I replace a water pump on one of these beauties in four hours? Sure. If everything goes right. But sometimes it doesn't. e.g. On our 98 Camry, you'd have to pull the crankshaft pulley. Possibly not a problem if you have a healthy impact wrench. But to reinstall it, you probably need to jam the flywheel with a screwdriver to keep the engine from rotating when you reach over at about half the torque the book calls for on the crankshaft pulley bolt. Jamming the flywheel calls for removing an exhaust system support bracket. But the bolts on that are surely going to be rusted into a lump that calls for nuclear weapons to get them loose.

Also, for most parts there are a lot of choices of manufacturer -- new vs rebuilt, etc. The mechanic will generally pick one that he can get delivered to him in a couple of hours and thinks will last beyond your mean time to blame mechanics. That will likely not be the (probably perfectly OK) $100 water pump you put in. And he will mark the price up some anyway. He is in business y'know.

Some amount of dealing with problems is probably built into that $768 -- which may well have included replacing the timing belt -- not the fan belt. (Timing belts are cheap and need to be replaced every 90K-140K miles-kilometers or so anyway). So I think that $768 isn't really a rip-off price. It's possibly a bit high -- depends on the local labor rates. As I understand it, the normal procedure is to look up the time for the repair in a book (or in the computer output from Alldata), maybe adjust it if the vehicle has obvious problems like lots of rusted bolts then multiply by the shop labor rate and add the marked up cost of the part.

If your car is rear wheel drive with a fore-aft mounted engine and an accessible water pump, then $768 probably is a rip-off. But I'm guessing that it isn't because replacing the water pump on one of those probably wouldn't have taken your sister's boyfriend four hours unless he drank both sixpacks before starting the job.

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[TheRaven64]

Bad ram is very rare Really? It's about the only cause of a computer problem I've seen that wasn't either software-related or caused the machine to fail to boot (and, in some cases, did cause that). The RAM itself might not be broken, but badly seated RAM is incredibly common, and bad RAM is pretty common in slightly older machines. If your computer is failing at random times, running memtest will often identify problems.

I don't repair computers for a living, but I'd say RAM failures are about the most common kind of hardware problem I've seen. Hard drive failures are possibly slightly more common, but the fact that the machine won't boot and plugging the drive into another machine still doesn't work makes them pretty trivial to diagnose.

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[nagora]

Please, it's bad enough that 'podcast' is trying to become a noun.

Podcast, n. A downloadable file tarted up to sound like new-media.

TWW

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[Explodicle]

Computer repair (just like car repair and health care) are problems that free markets just don't solve very well. There's no way for consumers to make informed decisions since diagnosing the problem is the job. Most people not only can't diagnose these problems themselves, but don't make this type of purchase very often, and have little or no objective data to go by. It's a tough problem. This market failure is known as information asymmetry.

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[Thaelon]

It boggles my mind that people still think that there should be some difference between different professions and their ethics. People behave the same no matter what work they do. That is, people will do anything they can get away with if it's advantageous to them in some way. That one sentence is all you need to explain most things humans do. And indeed most things living beings do. It's nature's code of conduct. The sooner you accept it the sooner you'll stop being surprised by the behavior of living things.

"Getting Gouged by Geeks"

[QMalcolm]

Sounds like a good porn movie title.

Re:"Getting Gouged by Geeks"

[Eponymous Crowbar]

I'm not sure that you and I share the same definition of the word "good".

I always provide a detailed bill

[xkr]

... that includes a "Muffler Throw-Out Bearing."

Everyone knows that Microsoft operating systems require this for stable operation.

Re:I always provide a detailed bill

[Anonymous Coward]

Check the wiper oil, too, while you're at it.

Re:I always provide a detailed bill

[The Rizz]

Blinker fluid and bumper belts are much more important to check.

Re:I always provide a detailed bill

[pz]

... that includes a "Muffler Throw-Out Bearing."

Please, it's a zircon-encrusted muffler throw-out bearing!

it's not unnecessary.

[User 956]

Many techs tried to sell unneccessary software or upgrades.

Look, maintaining a proper level of Hard Disk fluid is extremely important in order to keep the tachyon flux of the read/write heads within normal operating parameters.

Re:it's not unnecessary.

[heptapod]

B-b-but how do I replace the smoke? Ever since the smoke was released it doesn't work anymore!

Just goes to show...

[Starteck81]

It's just as hard to find a good, read competent and honest, IT tech as it is to find a good car mechanic.

In other news...

[Sloppyjoes7]

In other news, some business people are shady and try to rip off consumers! See the groundbreaking report tonight, at 7!

Re:They're not geeks

[winkydink]

However, they probably know the difference between "there" and "they're".

Is it Planned, or is it Ignorance?

[Irish_Samurai]

I have to ask the question, is this type of behavior exhibited by ripoff artists, or inexperienced "technical" people trying to be entrepreneurial?

The end result may manifest itself in the same form, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's malicious. Incompetent? Yes. Scam? Maybe not.

Re:Is it Planned, or is it Ignorance?

[ceoyoyo]

If you're incompetent and selling your services then you are a ripoff artist.

Re:Is it Planned, or is it Ignorance?

[Irish_Samurai]

That statement assumes you know you are incompetent. Which, if you are incompetent, you don't have the skills to accurately judge your incompetence.

Those who don't know what they don't know aren't rip off artists. A rip off artist knows what they are doing.

Re:I blame windows

[Mr. Sketch]

If you don't have a memtest tool on you, you just have to make your best guess. Of course, if you don't have a memtest tool on you, you shouldn't really be calling yourself a diagnostic tech. A memtest tool is a staple of any computer tech, and at the very least, you shouldn't be saying the problem is memory without using the correct tool to diagnose it. That would be like a doctor saying you have a heart murmur without using a stethoscope to listen to your heart.

Depends...

[Penguinisto]

If it was a simple matter of semi-unseating a DIMM, then yeah, I agree with TFA - a simple check of cards, sticks, etc. would've revealed it to be busted, and a quickie re-seat would've been enough. If it were a simple POST-test failure, again, the beeps help t-shoot it if the guy is at least A+ certified (or knows enough to have one)

If however it was a matter of having a RAM stick with a subtle fault that kicked off only during extremely heavy RAM usage, then you may have had a point there.

Here's the trick, though... most of the 'expose' type stories like this usually involve something incredibly stupid, like loosening a cable or card (Hell, I used to drive students crazy when they were forced to troubleshoot a system I induced failure on with clear cellophane tape on the NIC card contacts).

Much like tweaking the distributor timing a bit on an other3wise perfectly running old car can out the fakes and the incompetents in the auto industry, there are some damned drop-simple ways of outing the scammers and dumbasses in the IT field.

/P

Re:Depends...

[Glonoinha]

Regarding the tape on the NIC card contacts - there's the rub, odds are I would never have caught it either. It's not a normally occuring fault that a 'real world' tech would ever experience in his lifetime. Any NIC that has been in use (successfully) long enough to gather dust has survived the infant mortality period and because they plug into only one other device (switch, generally) - if the device on the other end doesn't explode due to a crazy electrical storm, it isn't going to send a bad enough spike to smoke the NIC. IMHO, once a network card has been proven good, it never dies. Well almost never, assuming high quality NICs in the first place - I've installed somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 SMC/3COM network cards and have never had a failure once a NIC passed the first few weeks successfully.

Of course if it wasn't talking to the network and wasn't showing up in the device manager, I would have popped out the NIC to replace it (thinking it was bad) and when I saw the scotch tape on it, I probably would have whacked someone over the head with it.

Re:Depends...

[ciscoguy01]

Ya know what? Broken box field calls are very, very tough. I've been there. I avoid it. You can't have parts for everything, you can't have any motherboards at all with you. You have no place to work.
You really can't fix things with hardware failures in the field, and if you do it SHOULD cost a lot. $120 for a 1GB dimm? With field support? That's a great deal.
It's totally unfair for them to look up on some website a cheap mailorder price for the DIMM and comment that the field service delivered price is double. It HAS to be double! It should probably be triple.
If you want your hardware at the cheapest internet price you don't get customer service with it and you should order it and be ready to install it yourself.
That show was completely unfair.
Not that we didn't see some instances of incompetence and dishonesty, we sure did and there is no excuse for that. But field service should be reserved for software issues.
If you have a hardware failure you should take it somewhere that they have parts on hand, like a computer store that DOES sell motherboards and parts- hopefully one you have some sort of relationship with. Not to Bestbuy, Staples, or another chain like that. That's just ridiculous.
Fortunately most people's computer problems are very simple, or we really couldn't fix them. Now my computer problems, I already fixed the simple ones. The ones that are left are are insurmountable. Heh.

damn it....

[AresTheImpaler]

I read the title as "Getting Cougars by Geeks." I thought it was a book review written by Geeks...

bah.. I was seriously impressed at first

Re:damn it....

[Ajehals]

I read "getting gouged by greeks", mental image was of some sort of amphitheatre and gladiators with tridents.

Not sure why.

See? Geeks are stupid...

[Brickwall]

If they were really smart, they'd have been spending the last few years creating collaterized mortgage obligations (a not very difficult matrix algebra equation), and recomputing risks for sub-prime mortgages, again easy to do if you don't mind fudging some assumptions and outright lying about some others (hi, AGW fans!). Then they would have made billions, and once the scam was revealed, they'd be bailed out by Ben Bernanke, the Fed, and every European central bank. Manipulation of financial assets beats manipulation of physical assets every time.

Re:See? Geeks are stupid...

[FooAtWFU]

This is true. It's also not fair to dismiss wholesale the securitization of mortgages and other debt securities. Much of the problem arises from the fact that they are a new sort of financial instrument and are not spectacularly well understood, so an over-eager market was more than willing to pay too much for risk. You don't need to fudge things and defraud people in that sort of a market. I'm sure some people did, mind you, but to dismiss the entire affair as such would be to miss a useful lesson.

Diagnosing memory failures is hard

[DaleGlass]

Memory affects pretty much everything, so it's hard to isolate it from everything else. Bad RAM can result in disk corruption, making it hard to determine it's the memory and not the disk that's broken.

For example, take Nero, burn a CD, then verify it. If the RAM is bad it may well happen that a few bits you read from the CD got flipped, and now the verification fails. Obvious conclusion: The CD-R was bad. After a few of those, obvious conclusion: the drive is bad. That the computer crashes ocasionally can be attributed to spyware or viruses. A tech working for cheap isn't going to spend hours to test every possible case.

RAM is also one of the most annoying things to try to diagnose. Disks at least have SMART, so if it got to the point where it's really broken, SMART will tell you about that quickly. And once it breaks it tends to do so very obviously. Now memory can pass tests and still be bad, and be marginal enough to work most of the time.

I had several problems with RAM that firmly convinced me to always buy ECC.

First one was when my Linux firewall, which ran for months without a hitch suddenly had a kernel panic. I thought it was strange, but oh well, nothing is perfect. Rebooted it, expecting that the new kernel installed weeks ago probably has a fix for that. A couple days later it crashed again. Rebooted it again making a note to investigate later. A day later it crashed yet again, but didn't boot this time due to disk corruption. Turns out the RAM was loose in the slot, and somehow stopped making proper contact. The module itself was good and passed memtest86 just fine when I set up the box.

Second one was when I was buying a new shiny box, and started having strange crashes. This took me quite a while to diagnose, because memtest86 passed perfectly fine. Yet "memtester", an userspace tool did catch it finally, after running for 8 hours straight, and even then with about 50% accuracy. On repeated 8 hour runs sometimes it'd catch it, and sometimes not, while testing the whole memory several times during that period.

Something like that probably won't be diagnosed correctly by tech support. Even if they do test the memory they're almost certainly not going to bother running it for a day straight, just to make really sure it's not a marginal case.

Re:Diagnosing memory failures is hard

[linzeal]

That is the reason all of my recovery disks have some sort of memory testing program and it is the first thing I use. Is there a memory checking program for video cards out there?

Re:Diagnosing memory failures is hard

[jollyreaper]

Memory affects pretty much everything, so it's hard to isolate it from everything else. Bad RAM can result in disk corruption, making it hard to determine it's the memory and not the disk that's broken.

For example, take Nero, burn a CD, then verify it. If the RAM is bad it may well happen that a few bits you read from the CD got flipped, and now the verification fails. Obvious conclusion: The CD-R was bad. After a few of those, obvious conclusion: the drive is bad. That the computer crashes ocasionally can be attributed to spyware or viruses. A tech working for cheap isn't going to spend hours to test every possible case.

RAM is also one of the most annoying things to try to diagnose. Disks at least have SMART, so if it got to the point where it's really broken, SMART will tell you about that quickly. And once it breaks it tends to do so very obviously. Now memory can pass tests and still be bad, and be marginal enough to work most of the time.

I had several problems with RAM that firmly convinced me to always buy ECC. Have you ever used Memtest386? At my job I've only ever encountered two or three instances of bad ram and this is the tool that's done it. Replace the ram, perfect functionality. I've had very good luck with it. For servers everyone says don't dick around, make sure you get ECC, so that seems like smart advice.

"Simple"?

[Kris_J]

A RAM failure, depending on severity, is a right PITA to diagnose. Unless the PC suddenly has less RAM than it's supposed to the errors resulting from a RAM problem look a lot like a whole bunch of other problems. The people likely to find a RAM problem are the ones that start with something like a boot-from-CD hardware diagnostics run, which can take hours. In which case if it isn't a hardware fault they just "gouged" you for a couple of hours of useless diagnostics.

Re:"Simple"?

[Gideon Fubar]

Which is why, when you freelance, you don't charge people unreasonably for what is the equivalent of 5 minutes work for you. Especially since the bulk of the work was done by Chris Brady (who gives his software away for free, mind you). You simply start memtest86 running, walk away, tell them to call you if anything turns red. Simple.

Re:"Simple"?

[PlusFiveTroll]

I am one of these self-employed geeks. Whenever I run in to a hardware issue that doesn't manifest a simple solution quickly, I ask to take the computer with me overnight. That way I can run memtest without actually siting at their office wasting my time and my clients. Swapping out known good components is a quick way to find out what is going on if you've detected hardware problems. Before that, knoppix like boot operating systems can quickly remove the hard drive as part of the malfunction.

Most of my clients don't realize that I spend a good portion of my time waiting on there computer. Installing AV/anti-spam/rookit scanner then waiting for them to finish is time consuming. Most of the actual fixes take a short period of time (repairing the registry, replacing hardware, replacing corrupt files, etc). The biggest issue I have with most computer people is they don't even try to teach the user what went wrong and how to keep it from occurring again, in the case of viruses and such, not much a person can do about hardware failure other then keeping the case free of dust.

Re:"Simple"?

[Ajehals]

My laptop has a definite RAM issue, it doesn't appear to be too serious as it only very infrequently suffers any major crashes or hangs, but on boot it repeatedly reports that the 'system memory has changed' quoting the new value as something between 618Mb and the real value of 768Mb. I really should swap the 'stick' out, but I hardly use the damn thing.

(all right it has 2 'sticks' of RAM, I was going to write stick and see if anyone called me on it, to assess how altruistic the Slashdot community may be compared to the gouging geeks but then realised it may make me look a little stupid... not hard,. but still. (damn peer pressure))

And sometimes

[Kazrath]

you just don't know the cause. Few years back at a friends LAN party some non techy guy brought his computer and everytime it booted it BSOD'ed (Win2k). I was like "heh anyone got a Win2k CD" and a few ppl tossed me them. I then proceeded to reformat his box. Everything went fine during the install. On first boot we hit the windows splash screen and BSOD.

Now I am thinking WTH this does not make alot of sense. So we canabalized a different computer starting with a different HDD. Same problem. Then the Power supply. Then the RAM. And wallah it started working right. We stuck back in his old components with different RAM and everythign was fine. This took several "geeks" a couple of hours to fix and it was not a by the book type fix. We litterally had to use a process of elimination and had to have extra hardware available.

Alot of people will take the easy road. Especially with older crappy hardware. If somone is running an old Win 98 box and it appears it is a hardware issue.. They are just plainly better off buying a new computer then looking for antiquated parts. Or if it is going to take "days" to fix it may be cost effective to not pay a "tech" to fix it.

Some of the "Geeks" in the parent article may have been ripoff artists.. others may have in the long run been providing the correct response to the situation.

Re:And sometimes

[Hell O'World]

I have fooled around with debugging borked boxes a lot over the years, and the time I had RAM problems was the most perplexing. I found it very hard to diagnose. Even after having gone through that, I am not clear what symptoms would point to bad RAM. Anybody have any light to shed?

I don't want to watch a video.

[Seor Jojoba]

Could you give some indication in the teaser that the content is actually inside of a video? Ideally, I could filter out the video content. Can't watch it at work due to IT constraints and videos usually take much longer than text to consume.

Here, Here!

[eepok]

In every situation I have ever worked and with every person I have ever lived, I have been the go-to geek. I tell it like it is because I personally care about solving problems and making other peoples' lives easier. As the parent post said, most true geeks will shrug their shoulders and charge nothing. Personally, when fixing friends' computers (or their parents', or their friends') I refuse monetary compensation, but in college required the person to barter a home-cooked meal (hey, that meant a lot in undergrad!).

As the parent poster said, it's not that "geeks" in general are untrustworthy. It's assholes that seek to make money off their geekdom that inspire spite. If I had a dollar for every time someone brought me a computer and said "The Guy at Best Buy said the motherboard is dead and it will cost $400 to replace" only for me to go into safemode and remove spyware/virus bloat and fix the computer, I'd be paying someone to make my Slashdot posts for me!

In short, everyone should befriend a geek. If you know a nice geek, you're set. If you don't, then ask around for someone who does. Rarely does hardware need to be replaced, but when it does, you needn't pay sky-high prices to have it done.

A kiss, a chesty hug, a 6-pack, or a warm meal is usually enough.

Re:Here, Here!

[Anonymous Coward]

this is fucking non-sense. here's a hard dose of reality.

if you're good. i mean really good at home/desktop windows troubleshooting.

you will in no short order have 3 months of "free" as in not being paid, work queued up.

-you'll have to take time off from work, to actually start catching up
-whenever your phone rings, they take 2 seconds to say "hi how are you", then "my xp won't boot"
-they offer a meal, a 6 pack, a chesty hug. sure. how about helping stock my fridge, pay my rent, cover my dogs shots, help my brother with tuition, my dad had a bypass and doesn't have insurance.
-you'll have to cancel paying side jobs, because the abundance of chesty hug paying gigs.

it's all bullshit my friend.

if this isn't happening to you

YOU'RE NOT THAT GOOD.

(therefore you'd be the one 'caught' screwing up a bad dimm problem in a sting)

Re:Here, Here!

[rbochan]

This is theoretically true... but it doesn't explain why EVERY SINGLE on-call techie was such an asshole. That's, if I know my math... 100% of them.

Was that 100% of who they called, or 100% of who they showed?

Good techs get business from these guys

[grapeape]

I have about 2/3 of potential clients balk at my rates, but of those over half usually end up calling me after making a costly mistake. I charge around the same as Geek Squad but there are tons of little "computer guys" charging nearly half around here. My newest client figured out you get what you pay for when troublshooting a network file server problem, one of the local guys spend 12 hours working on the problem and half-ass worked around the issue after being unable to find the real problem. I showed up monday morning, found the problem in 15 minutes and had things working properly in about an hour and a half total. What matters most isnt the rate they charge upfront but what your going to be charged when the work is done, an incompetent tech is going to cost more nearly every time regarless of their rate.

RAM Failures..

[Qyouth101]

RAM failures are some of the hardest things to diagnose, because they do not present consistent symptoms, its not unexpected that people can/would get confused by it.

a system that is not makeing it past POST it not..

[Joe The Dragon]

a system that is not making it past POST it not that easy to fix and bad ram can make it look like a bad MB, cpu, bad pci / pci-e card, or some other part I one worked on a system with a bad HD that was stopping the system from booting / powering on And without a lot of spare parts it is hard to test in some ones house and with ram will need a lot of different types of ram to

Also the big box store over charge on ram and other parts and some times it is good idea to pay for more ram when you old ram is bad.

Also a system with messed up system file can be from a Virus / spyware and just doing a windows repair install is not a 100% fix in the case that you will need run a scan and If am working on system with bad system files I will run a scan As I have fixed a system that had so much virus and spyware on it that windows blue screen at boot.

I just did a job on a few laptops

[pair-a-noyd]

for a lady. Laptop #1 is a Compaq. She bangs it around over and over and keep breaking the power jack from the motherboard. The power plug acts like a crowbar and prys it loose.

Laptop #2 is a Dell. The hard drive started acting up. I diagnosed it as a bad HDD.
She purchased a new hdd through Dell and had it shipped to her. She brought me the laptop and the drive.
The new drive refused to install, the mobo insisted the drive was password locked.
I spent about 4 hours on the phone with dell (someone reading a que card in India) and after much agony it was determined that the mobo was bad.
I called the lady and asked her what she wanted to do. She said that was it, end of the line, trash the PC she wasn't going to spend another penny on it and was buying a new desktop. She asked me how much she owed me for what work I had done.
I told her "No charge. I didn't repair it so there's no charge. You pay for what you get and nothing more."
She was flabbergasted and insisted on paying me for my time and trouble. I told her no, don't worry about it.
She insisted though and after almost getting into an argument with her I told her that if she felt she had to pay me then she could pay me a gratuity in whatever amount made her happy. Her husband suggested $25. She asked me if that was enough. I told her it was more than enough so she wrote me a check for $25.

I treat people fairly and honestly. I'm not out to get rich and you will never get anywhere by screwing people over. I have a small circle of loyal customers that like me because I treat them well, I treat them with respect and I always deliver on my promises. I LIKE my customers. And I think they like me. I assume they do because they keep calling me back over and over.

Treat people the way you would want to be treated.

Re:I just did a job on a few laptops

[garompeta]

Wrong!, very wrong. You are clearly thinking like a technician, not a businessman.
There is a golden rule in business: time is money.

It is nothing unethical to charge for the time that took you to diagnose the problem.
Not charging the diagnose is actually a "free service" provided by technicians to attract customers, but not clearly it is not the normal thing.

Charging ridiculous amounts is unethical, but charging for the time it consumed YOU (whatever it was) is perfectly ok.

In the service business (private teacher, schools, colleges, sky diving lessons, transportation, whatever), whatever service that requires scheduling most of the times they charge you a time slot, if you don't come or come late, they don't refund you the money.
In the Industrial/Goods Business, the product is money.
In the Service Business, Time is money. Much more critically than the goods industry, since it is your only limited and not renewable "raw material" from which you can generate revenues.

Charge for your time.

Memtest86+

[Zymergy]

http://www.memtest.org/#downiso Bootable from USB Drive, CD, or Floppy... ...A standard troubleshooting tool in my TS kit. Sure, it takes some time, but it eliminates instability/random software/OS issues and verifies the RAM is 100% IN SITU.

Does anyone really think

[Wapiti-eater]

Shows/videos/articles like this are made to help anyone - other than the producers?

They exist to sensationalize and already existing fear. capitalize on it and sell air time.

If "the market" was really pissed about poor service, believe me, the market would make things change.

Re:Geek Squad anyone?

[garompeta]

lol!
  Customer: "er... sir, I wonder if you can help me, I have some problems starting up the computer..."
  BestBuyGuy: "Uh, oh, yeah, that is typically because the flux-capacitor is getting to the end of its lifetime. Bring your computer so we can fix it, unfortunately it will be quite pricey, you know, there aren't many flux-capacitors available. ..the replacement costs 500 dollars"
  Customer: "flux-capacitor? what is that?"
  BestBuyGuy: "It diverts the time/space continuum fabric in the harddrive delorian sector, you know. It usually goes in the back of the machine."
  Customer(trying to be funny): "damn!, that sounds like quantum 'continuum' physics, huh?, heh, heh...
  BestBuyGuy: "..."
  Customer (scratching his head embarrased): "...*ahem*, as you can see i am completely clueless... so how much was it?"
  BestBuyGuy: "700 dollars."

Video was a HIT PIECE

[Dr Kool, PhD]

They set out to do a story on how much techs suck no matter the facts. Memory failure causing the system not to boot is very uncommon. Motherboards and power supplies dying happens far more so it's no surprise that this was misdiagnosed by the noob techs. Then they delete a bunch of system files and are OUTRAGED that people tell them they have a virus. If I saw missing system files I'd probably assume a virus too. Then they claim that a reformat was unnecessary, all that was needed was a Windows reinstall? If there were system files missing I'd just assume virus and do a reformat.

What pisses me off most about this video is the crap they give the guy who diagnosed the memory problem correctly, yet "gouged" them on replacement memory. This guy installed a 1GB DIMM for $120 and they say they were GOUGED because they went on Newegg and found the same memory for $65. Never mind that $65 doesn't include shipping. Never mind that $65 doesn't include tax. Never mind there is NO B&M STORE IN THE WORLD where you can get goods cheaper than you can get them online. If this lady went to Circuit City I bet the same memory would be at least $120. Yet this guy gets called a crook for doing his job well and charging a reasonable price (not even close to gouging).

This isn't journalism, it's a hit piece.

It wasn't hard in this case

[Vainglorious Coward]

You can't have seen the show - they inserted RAM that had been "blown" (I think they'd dropped a blob of solder on some crucial area) so the machine wouldn't even POST. It's not hard to diagnose why a machine won't even get to post - RAM or motherboard or CPU or an external card. (Indeed all four of those reasons were given by various different techs).

Re:I've had the opposite happen

[Solra Bizna]

Serial cable, $10.

Knowing to replace the serial cable...

(blatantly stolen from a previous post, which was stolen from a famous quote, blah blah)

-:sigma.SB

Did the geeks charge.....

[GaryOlson]

$150 for a courier fee?
$1000 per "point" of processor speed?
$350 document transfer fee?
$650 document research fee?
$350 document copying fee?
$75 long distance phone calls?

If the customers were lawyers and mortgage bankers, I think they did not charge enough. I suggest investigative reporting spend more effort investigating lawyers and financial service companies first.

really a misleading report...

[sjs132]

Yeah, it looked like some guys tried to take the easy way out (sell a new computer instead of fix, etc..) But I also saw the "expert" from some college saying the ram part should be only $25... What about shipping, installing, time, I remember the days when I worked Temp jobs... I was billed out at $80/hr even though I only saw $12 of it. There is overhead to have a person come over to your house and fix something. "Fix it yourself?" Umm... Don't think so. Too many folks don't know. How many times do you change your own breaks? or do something on a car? You don't you take it to the mechanic. Some mechanics are crooks & As&holes.. Same in the computer biz. But the rest of us are not.

Also for getting parts online... I've always been asked when I tell someone they need ram/hd/etc to go buy online... but they want it NOW.... So off to the BigBox store we go to purchase it NOW... Tsk...Tsk... Rather one sided.

As for the "nerd" with the "clean room" idea... I tell people that all the time when I'm explaining what could go wrong and it happens to include HD's... A Person HAS to put a $$$ Figure on their data... Is it worth $XXX to get it back, or just drop a new drive in and go. It actually looked like he just diagnosed it wrong as a Drive instead of ram. If it was a Drive and he copied the files over and restored them onto the new drive after setup, my "customers" would see me as a GOD and not think twice. IF that was the problem but we know he missed it. I don't think it was ill intention, just choppy edits, and a bad personality that seemed to want to go for the glitz of the problem instead of simple ram fix.

Oh well...

BTW, I didn't see a single "geek" with a wrist strap... And the complaints about some standards or lack of screening would be fixed if people hired were at least A+ or etc... SOME type of certification is better than none. At least with A+ they (used to) stress static shock damage with hardware, etc...

Lies, Damn Lies and Editing Video... From Toronto

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I'm in the computer repair business AND in Toronto and my mom called yesterday to tell me this was on, so I tuned in, as an 'expert' as it were. Watching the show and then rewatching the first part I missed from the web, it becomes obvious that parts of the recorded sessions with their tech help were edited to make it seem over the top.

Here's a bunch of points and the text from the show:

The presenter says that blown ram is a "simple problem" ?? WTF ... Also the price they quote for the 512MB DDR ram at $25 really lowballing it. 512MB of DDR-184 may be $29 to $35 at the "in store" for good cheap parts in Toronto, but where any average person would shop at Staples.ca it's $79.92... And of course there is installation, and more importantly diagnosing which can be nasty, so stating $25 gives the viewer the impression that A) it's easy, and B) total cost _should_ be $25... (see end for URLs)

They show three of the in-home techs at work, again just snippits.

"Grade A Students": he supposedly, remember the video is heavily edited, tells them they need a new motherboard. Well with an older computer, the chances are just about even that its the ram or the motherboard. The guy may not be the best repair tech in the world, but it's not over the top to suggest that. The one fault I find with him is telling the customer to "go buy a motherboard" as there's no way an average user could do that. The show points out A) he charged $80 which seems fair for in-home visit to diagnose something, and B) reiterating it's a motherboard "don't need" thus making the diagnosis seem rediculous.

"Nerds On Site": this is the fellow they make to look the worst, but from the few edits they do have of him, he seems to ask some good questions off the bat, "Is the hard drive making different sort of sounds?" That is the best question to ask a user since the CLICK CLICK CLICK of a bad drive most people do hear and they know "it didn't sound like that before". So this guy guesses it's the HD before he opens the case, which is actually a bad diagnosis since we can only assume the box didn't even POST with the bad ram (if it did POST with flakey RAM well it could be anything right?). Their expert tells the viewers, "you can't make any kind of diagnosis that quickly", when in fact yes you can with a bad HD or even bad ram/mb...

"Geek Squad": So they show the guy saying "My professional advice is the motherboard. You have to have it taken in and you have to replace the motherboard", which is perfectly reasonable. On-site it's almost impossible to figure out if it's the mb or not, and if you don't carry spare ram, figuring out if its the ram is also best done in the shop. At this point the show states "Remember the problem's a broken ram part. So far we've heard it was the motherboard, the cpu, and the hard drive. All wrong." But those are their guesses and all are reasonable for being in the field guesses, so they're not wrong, save the HD guess, but that guy is not necessarily the most adept diagnostician... Continuing, "Out of 10 techs we call in, only these 3 can figure out what the problem is." So these three guys try pulling out the ram and try one at a time. Again, since it's an old system, guessing that's the the MB is not that off base, though not trying the ram is a shame but not over the top.

Taking Advantage of "most of us"

"we track down 3 techs who used to work for big name retailers, Rob, Macolm, and Shawn confess that taking advantage of most of us is easy"... um 'taking advantage' of most people who often don't know much more than 10 things about using the computer, when a seasoned pro may know and encounterd say 1,000 to even 10,000 things. Well how easy would be for a doctor to say to a patient, "look's like you've got a dwarf living in your belly" and that person believe them??

On the average customer

Presenter: "When people come in with a crashed computer, how much do they actually know about what was wrong

perhaps not so simple?

[Russ Nelson]

Perhaps a "simple RAM failure" isn't so simple to diagnose?

Idiots

[codingmasters]

That is why I will never let a so-called computer technician into my house to look at my computer which he knows jack all about.

Who cares about haircuts?

[Rix]

Men pay a *lot* more for insurance. Fix that before worrying about petty little things.

Absolutely right

[FoamingToad]

I posted a while ago because my free/low-cost repair sideline was getting out of hand. In particular, one family who were endemically clueless had turned into complete time sinks. This was affecting the time I had available to meet family commitments, and was severely affecting my social life.

The situations in the article may be extreme, but balancing those situations with the idea that "geeks often provide free / cheap resources" (quoted from several posts above, not parent's) also leads to problems. Performing work for low costs just ends up with your customers undervaluing your time/effort.

It's the same dissociation from technology that leads to a user being gouged, that also leads to the same user undervaluing their local geek's time/effort/skillset - it's that the user has a complete disconnect from the technology and neither understands nor cares about the situation. It's also unfortunate that the only way the user is going to be able to assess the amount of work that is necessary is if they start to understand their machines.

Any home-based stuff that is charged at a reasonable rate (reasonable to us as informed /.ers) will expand to fit all available time, as the parent quite rightly points out. While I never got to the stage of taking time off my day job to fulfil my home-based work, nights in with 5-6 machines being concurrently diagnosed/repaired weren't uncommon for me. As a result, my other responsibilities got neglected.

For the record, I talked to the bloke that elicited the earlier post, explained the situation, and asked that he find someone else to sort out his problems. It didn't work, and six months later I was still receiving calls from the guy asking for tech support help. In the end I had to break out the cluebat +4 of derision before he finally got the message. I'm still doing sideline work, but it's been a whole lot more on my own terms recently.

A process of elimination

[Atilla the Bun]

And wallah it started working right.

Praise to Wallah

it was not a by the book type fix. We litterally had to use a process of elimination and had to have extra hardware available.

Then please change your book!

Sorry

[stupidpuppy]

Proving that the document has been "forged" is pretty much impossible, since we would literally have to know who wrote it.

What we do have is 1) the knowledge that it looks exactly like something produced today in Microsoft Word, and 2) typewriter experts who say that the only way this document could have been produced at the time was with an extremely expensive and rare typewriter with several custom modifications. It's entirely possible that such a typewriter did not exist, let alone happen to be in a Texas Air National Guard office.

Having to "prove" that it's a forgery is a pretty tall and unreasonable order. Dan Rather is supposed to be a journalist -- it's his job to prove his allegations are either true, or that it's highly likely they are true -- not the critic's job to prove it is absolutely false. Instead he presented it as fact when it's 99.999% certain that it's fake.