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Confessions of a Computer Repairman
nk497 writes "What really happens to your PC when it's handed over to computer repair cowboys? We reveal the horror stories from computer repair shops — the dodgy technicians that install pirated software, steal personal photos, lie about hardware upgrades, upsell to the unsavvy, or simply steal your PC to sell on. Plus, we tell you how to avoid such dodgy fixers and find a trustworthy repairman."
Exactly. Don't break your legs and head in a car accident if you don't know how to repair them!
I downgrade them to IE6, uninstall firefox/chrome, disable their anti virus, set their search engine to bing and their home page to lemonparty.org. Then I charge them in bitcoin.
Does it annoy anyone else that there are more and more articles here on /. that are submissions of an article/store by the author of the story ?
UPS Sucks
More like "Don't drive if you don't know how not to crash"
I read the article, some stuff might be hard for the beginner (cable got lose, that might take a while for a person to diagnose) but asking them to upgrade RAM and not knowing how to check how much RAM the system has is stupid.
Only just finished checking over my aunt's computer. She'd paid about £80 because a company cold-called her and said Microsoft had detected a virus on her computer... somehow they also had her postcode. Their 'evidence' for this virus was to show her that not all Windows services were running ('it had shut some down'), and that if it wasn't repaired soon, more services would be shut down. They accessed her computer remotely because she willingly visited a site and ran an executable for them.
I was quite surprised she fell for it. Even a Luddite should realize this kind of cold-calling scam. Maybe the Brits are just suckers? :-)
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
It's true that you really shouldn't take your computer to most GS places, but the reasons why might be different than what you think. There's always the chance of getting an idiot who has no clue what they're doing. But more often than not, the GOOD people can't really prove themselves because their hands are so tied by corporate policy. The "Diagnostic & Repair" service is a complete and utter joke unless someone who knows what theyre doing actually does the work (and the actual person doing the work will likely NOT be the one who checked it in). It goes something like this:
So no, even if the tech is competent, they don't want you spending a whole lot of time actually SOLVING the problem. They want you to spend maybe 10 minutes at most of actual touch time on a computer, then either get it on the complete shelf, or sell them a new one. Now of course they don't SAY this, but the pressure is there in the form of departmental budgets, and "revenue per transaction" goals. Basically, it's a matter of "if we can't fix it, we're discouraged from actually looking for a solution instead of upselling to something else."
The sad part is, it didn't used to be this way. But with Geek Squad being seen as just an extension of Customer Service (functionality checks on ALL returns, sending store-stock items for repair, and having to ring up ALL computer sales because corporate doesn't think the actual salespeople are capable of selling the much exalted "complete solution" of computer/software/cables/services), there's also no TIME to give each client the attention they deserve. Best Buy Mobile is actually fairly decent, because they're actually allowed to operate as a "store within a store", so to speak. They can't get pulled to other departments (which ALWAYS happens to GS people), and they're allowed to run their department as they see fit. This is why BBYM is one of the few departments that actually makes money on a consistent basis.
So no, not ALL the problems with Geek Squad are caused by incopmetent "Agents." I'll admit that a lot of them are, but corporate has basically castrated the department into nothing but sales drones who can "speak computers."
It is just me, or is this the dumbest article posted here since Jon Katz' tour of duty ? Yeah, duh, 9 out of 10 PC repair guys are shady, and the article's anecdotes sound like they're from 20 years ago. Zip drive ? come on, guys...
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I'd say 90% of the time, it's an operator error that causes something to break. I doubt anyone here would contradict me.
Humans are terrible replicators of Godly things.
If you're not a pulmonologist, stop breathing.
So, we typically pay the guys who handle our massively-complex-bundle-of-personal-information-and-spying-potential about as well as the guys who change our oil and then bad things often happen. The independent ones are subject to basically zero supervision and not infrequently include complete amateurs, some rather dodgy. The chain-store ones are subject to supervision aimed primarily at forcing them to upsell and bill as hard as possible, while working as quickly as possible. Quality results are assured. Wow. Allow me to collect my jaw from the floor.
The only surprise is that anybody is surprised. Even in professions with a very long history of handling personal, highly technical, or discrete matters for their clients, with well developed professional codes, cultural pressures, and often substantially better compensation(think doctors, lawyers, priests) there are innumerable cases of ethical dodginess, laziness, and other issues.
"The trick,” one repair shop owner told us, “is to give the computer a good tune-up to clear any adware or malware that might be slowing down the machine; clean out the cache; perform a spring clean – anything that makes the machine much faster.
“There’s no real need to actually install the strips of RAM that the client has paid for, because they probably won’t know where to look for it. No-one’s going to notice if there’s 3GB or 2GB of RAM in there if it works faster when it comes back from repair, and they’ll probably never look.”
Doesn't it usually take much, much longer to clean up a crapware infested machine than to slap a DIMM into a slot? And isn't ram pretty damn cheap to start with?
Sounds like sort of a silly approach to take.. if the shop just charged for the labor they were actually doing instead of the cheap part they didn't install, they'd make more.
-Lod
I used to work at Geek Squad and we'd play around in people's computers out of boredom and were even told to look for things that are illegal. This was back before the whole case about that person who had CP on their computer and Geek Squad ratted on them so I don't know if they still do it. We wouldn't install anything that they didn't signed up for at least our store didn't because it was a waste of time but we'd try to convince people that they had to get these things installed because they would break it again if they didn't have it. I really hated working at best buy/geek squad. To lie to your customers or else risk getting little to no hours to work, to be told in the training room that you need to target specific races and old people because they have money and to avoid indians at all cost is insanely racist. We also would rarely get breaks because of the way they managed staff at particular times of the day but there was a lawsuit and we won so i think most people who took part of the class action lawsuit got like $60.
To anyone who wants to buy anything at Best Buy, don't. Their markups are insanely high, especially accessories like cables, their extended warranties "service plans" are nothing but a joke and good luck getting your hardware fixed through it. If you go through Geek-Squad they charge an insane amount to do the simplest tasks. Seriously, spend like a week to learn about computers and don't ever worry about it for the remainder of your life. It's true that certain things change gradually, but what you learn in a week like how to use google to find a fix to your problem is universal across time. You're not a monkey, you're a human and even if you have a very low IQ of 90, it doesn't mean that you can't figure it out with video tutorials.
make friends with one. Its as simple as that!
Seriously though Im probably one of the shady-ish people because some people say I over charge, but atleast im fair. If you're a family friend/aquaintence i'll do a diagnostic for free. If the problem is as simple as running a few software tools i'll give explicit directions and ask if you'd like to do it. If youre not comfortable doing it i will for a fee. If it's a hardware issue i'll tell you what you need to replace and assess the difficulty. Again, i give explicit directions. If youre uncomfortable I'll do it.
Here's the catch....my time is money. I've been raised by contractors to think that way and im not gonna change now.
1) Yes, there are idiots who do this stuff.
2) Most of these stories are from ten years ago based on the hardware described, but we can assume the same tactics are used today.
3) I service PCs for corporate and home customers - and I don't do any of that crap. I'm not the most hardware-oriented technical support person you'll ever see and I'm not the sort of techie who knows Windows internals forwards and backwards, but I usually fix the problem regardless and I do it in a way that doesn't cause problems down the road.
I also charge a reasonable rate - which means I'm barely paying my rent. So obviously I'm an idiot.
I charge 25 bucks per hour for home users with a maximum charge of $100 - and usually that means I work a couple hours for free on a spyware cleaning and repair - and 50 bucks per hour for business users. Obviously I could charge a lot more. But there's a lot of competition out there from out of work tech people who also charge low. And despite claims from some people that customers will pay tons of money for computer service, the reality is most people REALLY hate paying anything more than what they paid for the computer in the first place and only get support because they're desperate when the machine is unusable (which is why they can be suckered by the unscrupulous).
Another scam that is very common these days is the "remote maintenance" company, who charges you a tiny amount of money per month and who promises to fix your machine remotely from their systems if you have a problem. I've never figured out how they expect to do that when the machine won't even boot because the hard drive has died or the home router doesn't work or the customer doesn't even have Internet. Sure, this can work with a spyware cleaning - IF the spyware will allow you to remote in or the machine isn't running bone slow because of the spyware. And if you've ever done any remote support over the phone, you know what a painful process that is, especially with a naive user.
There's no substitute for a guy standing in front of the machine who can assess what the customer has done wrong and can help the customer do things right from now on, as well as actually physically seeing what is going on with the machine. I've had several clients call me after the "remote maintenance" company either couldn't fix their problem or screwed things up even worse.
It seems to me things would eventually get better if every grammar school and high school in the country had a basic computer course teaching everyone how to buy a machine, something about the innards, and how to use a machine, including proper computer security, and how to fix the most common problems. I don't know if school systems do that these days, but they should - computer savvy is a basic survival trait these days.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
You're a fucking idiot.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
I whole heartedly disagree. Hard drives and boards in consumer laptops die a lot, and there's not much a user can do to prevent it aside from not using their machines (which completely defeats the purpose of owning one).
when you find out by accident while fixing your friends computer his wife is using a dating site to cheat on him? Then you realize your friend is hiring and meeting up with hookers he met online? The real kicker is they asked me to figure out what website they were going to that was giving them this virus. The install every pop-up people. I told them to stop installing pop-ups and figured they deserved each other and left it at that no need to embarrass anyone let them figure it out on their own and I stopped associating with them figured they were untrustworthy losers.
By most accounts, Geek Squad used to be a class outfit until Best Buy took 'em over; after that, they went downhill fast.
They quoted my father $200 to do a malware cleanup. Unbelievable! (Not sure why he even went there, I've warned him about them before. And yes, he declined the $200 Geek Squad cleanup -- at least he got that right!)
Computer repair is not an equitable business. Everyone loses.
Either the customer gets ripped off by paying high fees OR the company gets ripped off in labour costs. It just isn't worth it.
In business you need to charge out labour at x3 to cover overhead. If it takes 1.5 hours to fix a computer you need to charge 3 * 1.5h * $20/hr = $90.
And almost every task is going to take 1.5 hours.
Go ahead and spend 10 minutes slapping in that memory upgrade or video card and handing it back. When it comes back with the sound or internet not working you're going to get corn-holed. If you don't do any CYA when it comes in or goes out the general rules of thumb is: the last person who isn't retarded gets full responsibility for all current and future computer problems
To properly clean and tune a system takes me a day or so. Now I will say that our users (university professors) seem unusually good at spywaring their system and of course it isn't like I spend a ton of my time on it it is "Run utility, go do something else, come back later." Still, takes a good bit of time to run badware scans, defrag, uninstall crap and/or tune startup apps and so on.
Installing RAM? Hell that is 10 minutes at most, and that is only for a case that is a pain to open.
Personally I don't get the drive to be dishonest for these places. Do the job you've been paid to do, do it well, and people will want to use you again and recommend you.
Then again, maybe that is why I have a salaried job doing computer support for a large organization and they work at a small shop. Shit like that would be absolutely NOT tolerated at work and would at best get you fired and maybe criminally charged. We do what we say, we respect your privacy, and we ensure data integrity above all else. To me that doesn't seem special, that seems expected.
I do mostly business consulting now but originally did home business and residential work, the biggest contributor to changing my business model was the plethora of scammers advertising cheap rates. Its really hard to charge a reasonable rate for quality work when the scammers are advertising to fix any virus problem or repair any pc for next to nothing...yes you get what you pay for but often you dont find that out until its too late and the result is the customer doesn't trust any "small business" for that sort of thing and usually goes to something like Geek Squad the next time. The last straw for me was a customer that had called to have me fix a problem that a dodgy repairman had screwed up. After completing the job even though I had explained my rates up front she started complaining about how much higher my rates were than the guy that messed up her computer before.
My office charges for "face time" - time spent actually interacting with a machine. So a complete restore (which we frequently do since we work almost exclusively on business machines and the user's critical stuff is, in theory, stored on the server) that takes us 4-6 hours from top to bottom will probably only be billed for an hour or two, and most of that is going to be spent reinstalling their apps. The 3 hours that it sat there with the "HP is installing your software - please wait" and I worked on another project isn't charged at all.
Am I qualified to be a PC technician? I have no certs (yet) and I majored in English. But I'm amazingly good at figuring things out, and I've been tinkering with computers for over a decade. I've met people with half a dozen certs behind their names that know a fraction of what I do. If nothing else, I can always do my own PC repairs and avoid any of these scams.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
OK, after reading the article and then reading the thread here I've concluded that I've had enough. Yes, there is fraud. You get that in every field. It is also not very common as most repair folk would rather make a living--few people I know are out to take you for everything at the expense of their reputation which equals their livelihood. Besides, anyone with specialized knowledge could fraud anyone that doesn't have that knowledge. They could just cheat them. Their prices could be out of line with reality.
Everyone feels at least once that they were not given as good a deal as they think they should have. They feel that way about lawyers, from car repair shops, any type of shop that would repair or upgrade your property, anyone with specialized knowledge. Yeah, and even our government.
What this article does is 1) gives examples of a few of the tricks that some fraudsters pull. Anything from outright fraud to just exaggerating their labor. 2) It then goes on this diatribe about the costs associated with repairs as if they are the ones that are the best judge of the costs associated with parts and labor. Much of the article is about this one guy expressing his unhappiness with what he considers to be a fair cost for repair work. This is, frankly, irrelevant, as setting a cost for your services is not a fraud. Setting a fair price is just good business practice. But hell, look at designer jeans from manufacturer to another. Levi Jeans cost much more than the Walmart store brand. Cost is a matter for the owner of the business, not the judgement of some half-baked tech journalist. Long ago someone said to me that you get paid for what you know, not what you do. So, please, cry me a river if you don't like the charges. You can go elsewhere.
A good company will "estimate" up front what the charges are going to be and approximately how long it will take. Customers have addictions to their computers and they want it all done cheap and done yesterday. Let's get real, neither is likely to happen. Generally, the parts of a computer are worth more than the whole.
Consider a fair cost of around $90 to get an OS re-installed on a netbook that might have cost $250. Adding a replacement HDD plus re-installing the OS on a netbook can come close to the value of the book. You don't really expect the repair technician to sell you the hard drive and then toss the OS install in for free, do you? Re-installing the OS can be a time intensive task. Most netbook manufacturers don't make it easy to remove the old and install the new HDDs (sometimes its even difficult to install RAM in those)--time adds up and time is money. Consider then that on top of that your customer wants you to transfer the data from that old defective HDD to the new one--how much labor is involved in trying to get it to be recognized by the OS (clicking, missing partitions, etc), to access the files, to copy those files to an intermediary device and then back onto the new install). Do you really think that it is out of line to have costs nearing the original cost of the netbook? You bought cheap. Don't expect the technician to fix it cheap due to your cheapness.
The technician needs to be clear on what is going to happen. Try to explain it to the customer. The problem is that the customer is often a closed mind. They don't want to hear an explanation. They just want it working again. How many times have I tried to explain to my customers precisely why their computer is slow (they are running XP and have 256mb of RAM and have all the updates done from Microsoft along with a slew of other software products that load at start up eating away at valuable resources). Or try to explain to them that their HDD is failing. That the diagnosis indicates the drive has tons of bad sectors and they screwed up their computer because they had viruses, bad sectors, and they tried to defragment it. Or explain that their nephew wiped out their hard drive by installing a version of Vista that they didn't have a license f
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
At least all they did was pretend to put in more, I've seen Rent a Ripoff actually steal RAM out of the PC when they brought it in for cleaning. And all these "if you don't know X" are so damned full of shit! Do you know how to rebuild your engine? Then you shouldn't be driving! Can you operate on your legs if you break them? Then you shouldn't be walking!
Dumbasses nobody can know everything and that is why we have mechanics, plumbers, and yes repairguys like me. I am proud to say I have NEVER copied someone's files, stolen a damned thing, or not done any job I wasn't told to do. I don't use hot software (although I will admit I use Windows copies and not originals, I use the correct key for the machine) I don't go looking for pics of your GF, I just do my job.
The moral of the story is the same as with mechanics and plumbers ask around and you'll find out if they are honest or not. I'd be happy to give them the name of a couple of my business clients if they want to know about my work, or hell just walk into their place of business. See all those whiteboxes? Guess who built them. I design the machine for the job required, which is why the printer has middle of the road CPUs (AMD Triples) but 4Gb of RAM and 1Gb of RAM on the GPU, because it helps with those large banners they are always doing. The local engineer has only 2Gb of RAM but a fast CPU because the engineering program he runs doesn't use much RAM but slams the hell out of a processor.
So just ask around folks. You wouldn't take your car to "Crazy Joe's house of repair" just because he has a snazzy commercial would you? And please for the love of all that is good QUIT GOING TO WORST BUY! Because I swear I've had to fix more horribly broken shit from them than from any other shop! So just ask around, an honest fixit guy is more than happy to give you references of past customers.Hell I'll even take before and after pics and screenshots if that is what makes you happy, I'm damned proud of my work, thank you VERY much! I'm not the cheapest guy in town, but I'm honest, fair, and you get what you pay for.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
/. looks great to me in Win 7 with Chrome.
Maybe you should take your computer to the GeekSquad.
Please leave your geek card on your way out.
8)
(stolen from DaBum) I am dyslexia of borg - your ass will be laminated.
I lot of computer people have a hard time charging for services. It is just so natural and easy for us to fix some problems that we feel bad charging for it. It took me a long time to get in the mind set that my time was worth money and to ask people to pay me. I pay repair men a lot for all kinds of work that I cannot or will not do my self. Plumbers, electricians, mechanics, and even lawn care providers.
I was paying someone $54 a few times a year to fertilize my yard. They would pull up with a truck and a long hose and just spray the yard down. They were in and out in about 10 minutes. When my yard was over ran with weeds, I could justify it. I found that it was cheaper and not all that much work for me to do it myself. I still over pay for someone to change my oil and rotate my tires.
Once I decided that I was done with part time home repair work, I used my prices to drive away work. I would charge higher and higher prices and would be very up front with them. I even had a minimum charge of one hour. I was surprised at how much people were willing to pay. I eventually moved away from the area and was able to call it quits.
Note, I'm a coder & technology security researcher. If I ask a "competent" technician to remove malware from my machine, and they don't immediately flash the BIOS, then re-format the drives from a known good boot medium & (re)install a fresh copy of the OS -- I wouldn't call them competent.
Let's say you find out an agent working for you is really a spy -- What can they do to prove their loyalty? Nothing: They're a spy! You can't trust a spy, you have to get rid of them and get a new agent. The agent is your computer (BI)OS.
AV: Is there a rootkit on this machine?
RootKit: Nope.
AV: All clean!
Now -- How did that user get infected with malware? It could be any of the many THOUSANDS of exploit vectors for the infected OS; Many of which are delivered via image or other media files, and many can infect other such files, or install more malware that does.
I've actually had several experiences of backing up just the "important" data files of a system, then re-installing the OS, Scanning the data files for malware & copying the data files back to the system and re-infecting the system in the process.
In one such occasion the Anti-Virus scanner was the targeted vector! (It had a buffer overflow that allowed a file it scanned to initiate arbitrary code execution). In another occasion the file browser was exploited. In several other cases the AV scanners failed to detect any malicious files because it was new malware, that did not have a signature in the AV databases.
I agree that a customer should be informed that their system will be wiped clean, and perhaps offered the choice of a backup if it's feasible, but the backup should come with a warning "May Re-Infect Your Computer" -- For the most part, it's less hassle to just wipe the system.
IMHO, If you don't explicitly ask for a backup, it should be assumed you don't want one; If you don't expect a format to occur then you're not computer literate enough to understand why it should always be done.
It's not evidence of an incompetent consultant if "Fix this malware problem for me" translates to "Reformat & Re-install the software for me." There is no such thing as "uninstall malware" or "remove malware" short of a full drive (and possibly BIOS) wipe -- and even then I've seen BIOS malware that prevents re-flashing... "Looks like it needs a new motherboard" Bu-but! Software can't harm Hardware ( Fortunately most malware has other aims than gorking your computer -- malware designed for this purpose, can occasionally melt CPUs and/or make the CD/DVD, NIC, and/or motherboard non-functional thanks to flash-able software embedded in the hardware.
P.S. If you have private/personal data on your computer and it's not encrypted then it's not private; In this case smash the disk drive with a mallet and ask the computer tech to install a new one during the "repair" (hint: it should really be a re-build anyhow).
ugh, malware.
I would have no problem quoting someone $200 for a maleware cleanup. Best case its a fresh infection and whatever automated tool you run will clean it up or its a google search away. If that's the case, then you over estimated and only charge $60-$100. Worst case its years of infections that finally broke the computer on a 4 year old computer with too little ram that wont boot from USB.
This stuff is like cancer. Not to bad if you catch it early, but once it spreads you never know if you got it all.
Piffle. Every hardware failure I've had in 30 years of computing has been just something up and dying for no apparent reason other than old age. Hardware fails. It ages, even things without moving parts. That's a fact of life with anything.
Professionally, I work in a field where the hardware I design needs to be available with rates approaching 99.99% for years, so we have to do MTBF abnalysis involving every component and, yes, every component has a MTBF rating. It's basically impossible to meet rates like that for those spans for a single circuitboard, so so we design in redundancy and, as a fundamental part of the design, make replacing a failed unit with a spare take less than a minute in the field. A chassis with a backplane and hot swap capability helps here.
I knew a guy in college who got a new job when he sent his computer in for repair. They liked his resume. He was a Computer Science major and got an interview followed by a job offer after he picked up the computer.
Kriston
If you're not a pulmonologist, stop breathing.
When anyone suggests that some personal responsibility is appropriate, it's very easy to demagogue them. It's particularly easy when they say it in an abrasive, absolute, "why doesn't everyone see it" sort of way. Then it's like an cheap slam-dunk one-line victory, isn't it?
GP is going about this the wrong way. I don't precisely agree with his absolute stance. Yet my point is similar in nature to his, but you will find it more difficult to deny. Simply put, if you spend hundreds of dollars on a machine and then refuse to learn the very most basic things about it, you are placing yourself completely at the mercy of others. To know what a stick of RAM looks like, to read a little sticker and see that it says "2GB" and not "4GB" is hardly a strain of one's technical prowess. It merely requires that you bother to spend a few minutes reading some very basic, entry-level literature written specifically for beginners.
I'm not sure if it's due to functional illiteracy or an inability to handle a contrary position without getting overly emotional, or what, but a lot of people would read the paragraph above and swear on all that is sacred that I am saying it's somehow okay for these shops to prey on people and rip them off. I didn't say that. What I am saying is that placing yourself completely at the mercy of total strangers, strangers who stand to profit from your ignorance, when it's so easy not to, is a great way to get a result you won't like. Those who choose not to do this generally don't end up getting ripped off.
The way this works is simple: there are bad people in the world. They do bad things; for example they overcharge and they rip people off. There's nothing you can do about that. There have always been people like this, since ancient times, and in the foreseeable future there always will be. What you can decide is whether you will be the low-hanging fruit that they target. If it took long years of training to acquire extreme expertise, then I would have fully agreed with your one-liner. To avoid almost every scam listed in that article, all it takes is a natural curiosity and a willingness to spend a few minutes here and there learning about that machine you purchased.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
That's high, I guess, but I agreed to clean up the laptop of a wife of a best friend, and that shit took six to eight hours to finally set right. They took me to dinner, at least.
And then she manages to infect it with malware again *days* later by doing one of the very things I told her not to do!
Ah well. I got lunch *and* dinner out of that. I told my friend if she does it a third time the price will involved a period of indentured servitude.
Then they got matching Macbooks. No problems since. ;-)
Despite your somewhat arrogant comments this has to be one of the most ignorant posts I've read in a while. I have a protip (god I hate that word) for you... actually two protips.
Protip: You do not know about other people's circumstances and have no right saying "In most of the Western world, you don't need that job to survive." How the hell do you know that? How the fuck is the person going to feed their family or pay the mortgage or whatever without an income (even if it's only temporary)?
Yes, it's very easy to criticize someone else's actions from your armchair and act all high and mighty, but in real life things are not so dichotomous.
Thanks
More like "Don't drive if you don't know how not to crash"
Sucks to be the person who knows how not to crash but ends up getting hit by someone who had their very first seizure. Or had a sinkhole open up beneath them. Or hit a couple of large nails that dropped off a truck while on the freeway.
That's an interesting world you live in. I could have a rootkit right now and not know it. In fact, I better format and flash immediately after posting this.
I'm not sure why this was posted in reply to my comment. When I spoke of others having their data wiped by a technician, it was usually because they couldn't fix a Windows problem (no start, software doesn't install, etc). As far as rootkits in the wild go these days, they're nearly all used to empower a hoax product. Their removal has become mundane. Sure there could be another, more exotic rootkit that doesn't exhibit symptoms, but that could be the case at any time.
Are they full of shit because they infuriate you? Because of the smugness and certainty with which most of them say it? Because there's actually a small kernel of truth to it and that just pisses you off even more? I'm starting to wonder if the habitual urge to cherry-pick extremes is the root of all misunderstanding.
This wasn't a story about the ability to build computers or other electronics. This car analogy is not a comparison of two similar themes. You're making an analogy between users who don't notice RAM that's suddenly missing (requires basic technical knowledge) and the mechanical skill it takes to rebuild a modern car engine (requires advanced mechanical and technical knowledge). That isn't instructive or edifying; it's misleading though it's an easy mistake to make.
I'd answer it by saying I wouldn't know how to rebuild my car's engine, but if a repair shop removed it and replaced it with a significantly inferior engine without telling me, I would notice. I think that's a fair analogy to removing a stick of RAM.
I wouldn't know how to properly set a broken bone. But I would know that the leg is broken. If I ask the doctor to do something about my broken leg I do not expect him to also put a cast on my uninjured arm.
In this entire discussion, I haven't seen a single person dispute that. If you assume there is no balance, no sense of what is reasonable behind what they believe, then I suppose some have displayed a perspective that could go in that direction -- if taken to an absurd extreme that few or none would actually believe and advocate.
It's a matter of having integrity. There's a non-technical skill which would have been handy for those targeted by this kind of fraud: the ability to recognize sincerity, to distinguish it from the perfunctory, from the approval-seeking and the phony making-nice which is so much more common.
A person with real integrity is not simply making a choice not to copy someone's files, steal, pad the bill, etc. It's more like they don't even find that tempting. Those who think it's about adherence to a list of rules don't really get it. It's more like what Aristotle said: "I have gained this by philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law."
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
P.T. Barnum underestimated the birth rate.
$54 is actually pretty cheap for that sort of service. It does depend a bit on how many houses they're able to do, but it's unlikely that they can do more than 2 an hour, unless they're all fairly close together. Even paying the workers minimum wage, you're still probably talking not much less than that for labor alone, not to mention the costs of providing that labor, the equipment and supplies and whatnot.
Back around the time the Mac II came out, I took one into Sears for repairs. They called me a couple of days later and told me it was ready, and when I got there, I found out that they had cannibalized it for parts, and they said they couldn't get it to me for another week.
I sent Apple a letter about it, and got an apology signed by John Sculley. I don't know if there were any repercussions for Sears.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I think I will refrain from searching for that term thank you very much ;)
This is the sig that says NI (again)
Allow me to agree and disagree. yes to being a pro, and I have never EVER looked at someone's files (I go so far as to tell them if they want me to back up their files they should be aware I may see file names during the backup so please don't be asking me to back up funky files) but as far as MSE? Meh.
It is great if you already know what you are doing and aren't going to any dodgy sites, but home users? Avast free is a better choice, as it has web shield which scans pages before they load and will strip out nasty scripts like drive bys, has P2P and messenger protection, all in all I'd say it is a better AV and with both being 100% free (I'd never give a customer trialware crap) why not use the better solution?
As far as NTBackup? If you want built in Windows 7 imaging backup is fine, personally I prefer to give my customers the free Paragon backup and recovery. Its solid, its free, it is reliable, it gives you a live CD option if the machine ever gets borked beyond booting, and if the customer has a USB HDD I'm happy to set it up to backup to it so they don't have to worry about HDD failures.
I used to have this argument with my former boss all the time. he was one of those "give them just enough rope" types, that wouldn't patch it, no AV, just clean it, so they'd get boned later and have to pay him again, whereas I believe I've done my job if the ONLY reason they have to come to me is they want to upgrade the hardware. I give them either Dragon or Firefox for a browser, put in ABP so they don't get ads (which are a big source of infection) give them a full AV, I even ask if they'd like the "full package" at no extra charge and if they say yes they get the latest Flash, Klite codec so they can play any format, and Libre Office so they can edit word docs, and a PDF reader (Foxit) along with a PDF printer so they can easily save files offline without printing. Thanks to Ninite it takes no real time from me and gives them a nicer PC
Between that and Comodo time machine which lets them just push F11 if they ever screw up the boot to restore from there, otherwise they can restore straight from Windows, makes it pretty damned hard to screw up a machine that I fixed. Sure I don't see these people again hardly ever, but I get enough referrals from their friends and family they send by to make the extra effort worth it. I'm quite proud to say many of my builds from a decade ago are still going, they just get passed down through the family as they age. Like I tell my new build customers "My machines won't be as cheap as a Dell, but you know what? MY machine will keep going past the warranty period." Just take pride in your work, treat folks right, and you'll get a good rep and with that comes the work.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
“I fell victim to a company that cold-called and fed me all the patter about viruses, and because I’m a computer Luddite they were phenomenally persuasive,” reported reader Cougar J. “I ended up going for their ‘Diamond’ option at £199.99. Now I’m petrified because I gave them all my credit card details and they also accessed my computer virtually.”
To support parent, here is an example of a person who could have easily fall for a myriad other "persuasive" phone calls. I say 200 quid is a great bargain for a priceless piece of education: don't give your credit card number and personal details to random callers.
Being a computer Luddite has nothing to do with it, it's plain old stupidity.
"Standing up for a minor issue "
Bait and Switch is HARDLY a minor issue.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Easy for you to say but there is only so much time in the day to learn about everything, At some point you have to trust some people to just do their jobs. Say you run a small business and you need a few computers to to that. The only thing important is that you need the computers and you need them to work. Time spent learning about computer components and even basic trouble shooting to prevent being ripped off a few hundred dollars, is time that could be spent selling your product or service to new clients or customers to make thousands in profit.
If you need some wiring done in your house, do you buy a book on basic wiring so you can check what the electrician did? If you need a plumber, do you learn basic plumbing code to is if your plumber is being lazy or trying to cheat you? If your car breaks down, do you spend hours in internet forums trying to get the internet to diagnose your problem before you take it to a mechanic?
At some point you just need to trust people to do their job, other wise you need to do everything your self and that is just not piratical. Find people you can trust to do good work for you but sometimes that trust is misplaces. All this article does is show a few warning signs to look out for before you do trust someone.
Personally I think high schools should allocate an afternoon to simple PC construction.
Yeah, and I'm sure everyone will show up, not just the geeks.
Do you think most of these people really even care to learn? No. They get pissed when they get ripped off and they'll remember the guy and the company for a long time, but they still don't care about how it works or how to troubleshoot it. Most people are like that and it's just a fact of life.
Knowing how pipes fit together isn't that difficult either. Again, a basic knowledge of plumbing doesn't take very long to learn.
And yet, if you set out to re-do all the plumbing in your house with the understanding that plumbing is really nothing but knowing how to fit pipes together, you're in for a big surprise the first time you flush the toilet.
Breakfast served all day!
Ever since my mum's computer became useless, I've had no problems either.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.