As I specified, this is for backup while mobiles are on the road or at the user's home and SAN is not available. This is for backup of specific, important files, not the entire machine. To clarify, backup is improved for the corporate versions of Vista, it is worse in the home editions
I was specifically referring to a client based backup solution that ties into Symantec EZ Backup, and I'd expect was available with other solutions. It backs up specific files on a laptop, and when it can get a connection, uploads the files to your backup server. Until then, it protects against any problem save a hard drive failure...
I think this is sort of missing the point. As I understand it the thought process is this: Vista is not compatible with my software. Vista is going to require lots of user retraining.
So, is XPSP2 doing what I need? Yes? Don't change. No?
If I have to rewrite/find different vendor/virtualize XP to run software anyway, will I save money with Vista or alternative? With Vista I have to pay $LicenseFee. I have to buy new hardware.
With Alternative I have to pay $ALicenseFee. I have to buy new hardware(maybe). If $ALicenseFee is less than $LicenseFee and the new hardware cost is less or even the same, you might save money by switching. This is where people start saying, "Hey, it looks like I might be spending a LOT for Vista. It may be worthwhile to see if I'll spend less on something else." It's not assumed they will, but the amount for Vista is *high enough* to make it worthwhile to check out the competitiors.
However, your benefits assume that coporations haven't solved these issues (assuming they are even an issue) on XP or whatever platform they use.
Indexed Searching: Free on XP, you've got Copernic desktop search, Windows desktop search, Google Desktop whatever, or do what I do and use Locate32...
Improved Included Applications? That doesn't sell linux distros. People buy products (or use free ones) that do a good job. They can already burn DVDs on XP if they want to, and while it is a third party app, it's free or featureful enough they bought it. (Mind you, I don't think you *can* buy a DVD Burner witout OEM burning software).
Improved Handling of Wireless networks: Hard for me to speak to this, but most laptops come with thier own wireless management, though the built in XPSP2 version worked better most of the time. I just don't see a failure in the XP version.
Improved backup? I don't know of any coporation that uses NTBackup. As I understand it the replacement is actually more gimped, not less. Doesn't everyone use dedicated backup software to their SAN or tape drives?
The only one that even gets a possible where I work is the wireless network handling, and we don't have a problem currently.
Ummm, CompuSec free Any of about a hundered widget engines Why do I want my desktop environment hardware accelerated? How is Vista's security model more sane than XPs? As far as I can tell, it consists of asking "Allow or Deny" often enough that the Apple commercial meme won't die.
If Ubuntu isn't focused on security, why not recommend an alternative that is? I don't believe Microsoft is the only OS developer focused on Security...
I haven't used Vista much at all, so I may be very wrong. But in all the Vista Pros, what I see is the following, both as a home user and at work in the IT department:
1. Vista has Direct X 10, which I can't get easily in XP. 2. Everything else offered in Vista can be done for free or cheaper than an Vista License (well, retail vista, volumne license vista business is about equal cost) in XP. 3. Many Many 3rd party tools still don't work in Vista, and this is even products that have had several releases trying to be more Vista compatible. Directory Opus, Opera, others...
It seems like some things you could do in XP, you *can't* do in Vista due to the new archetecture (may be a good thing for some reasons, but still to a user, it's a loss of functionality). Examples being some of the explorer replacement by Directory Opus, some of the gina hooks like with pGina...
To reply directly to the configuration for Vista clients - I think this was addressed before, but if Vista came out when XP came out, being easier to configure for normal users would be a boon. But it isn't. Everyone knows how to configure XP now, has software, scripts and what have you to make it easy. And besides, it never was *XP* that had problems with running as a limited user, it's the programs. And programs that work well on Vista as limited users pretty much work the same on XP. Finally, my understanding is in Vista, you still have to configure it to run a user as a limited user, the default is *still* admin...
Well, I don't know about you, and it may well depend on the area, but where I live - upstate NY, I just ran a quote on State farm. I have a 2007 Impreza i series (base subaru impreza). Statefarm, on their most basic quote was $116 a month, vs Geico with similar or better coverage (slightly over the State Farm base coverage) @ $79 a month... I see something similar with the other quotes I got save Progressive, which is still $10 more per month than Geico. I'm not seeing Geico's 15% they advertise, I'm seeing as much as 50% off some other insurance companies (Met Life Auto).
Well, for you it may not make sense, but for ~ 50% of the US, it can make a lot of sense to use Netflix. Look, many people are rural. They would need to drive 20 miles to get to a video store, and it wouldn't have the selection of Netflix. So, it costs them ~1 hr travel (30 minutes there and back - or they have to both work near one and plan around their work schedule), $3-$5 in gas, car wear and tear etc. They may not have broadband, but if they do, they still have likey slow speeds. They can use P2P and wait while breaking the law, or use Netflix and wait and be legal.
Netflix is great for these users. It's also great for people who want access to DVDs they really can't get save via Amazon... maybe.
Well, the answer is sort of. Opera has block content, which does some of what AdBlock Plus does, but not as well. Opera has site specific preferences or userJS which let you do things like disable javascript on a site by site basis and inject a script for UI sort of "in" the site. UserJS is actually equivelent to Greasemonkey, and compatible with the Greasemonkey scripts. I have no idea what Customize Google is, but with UserJS + UserCSS you certainly can change up websites.
All that said, Opera often falls into not doing anything quite as well as an extension might. The upside is Opera is generally much better performing that Firefox, probably because they don't do extensions/XUL like Firefox does. And they tend to have a unified UI.
I'm really tied to Opera for speed, MDI, IRC at work, and tab handling, but I want an Eee PC with Xandros. This basically removes my old web fixer stalward proxomitron and I don't know how I'll handle the ad-blocking... Maybe WINE will be up there for prox finally, but I don't see a lot of hope so far.
Okay, well I do wish you luck if you try to argue that someone snuck into your dorm room (and no one else's!) without your knowledge, carrying bootable equipment, opened the P2P programs on your OS, downloaded copyrighted files, and then vanished with no clear benefit to himself, without creating any witnesses or appearing on any video cameras.
Umm, hell people don't notice much larger things than someone (say, another student) wandering into someone else's dorm room and futzing with their computer for a while. Ever watch *any* cop tv show? People don't notice murderers wandering into neighboor's houses/apartments. And they usually catch the killer on TV!
Plus, did you miss the boot Knoppix + plug in flash drive? Music doesn't take hours to download, and that's what we're talking about.
Let me also address several other points:
1. Video camera's? How many *DORM ROOMS* have survellience cameras installed? How many *DORM ROOMS* have 2 people with access who regularily let in other people to hang out and do stuff? We're not talking about Mission Impossible break in people in black skinsuits here, we're talking other college students. How are you picking them out of survellience video anyway?
2. no one else's dorm room? I'll bet the RIAA is handing over more than 1 request - likely 10+.
3. Not reporting theft of a firearm? Not sure what the point here is but what if you don't notice the firearm is gone? If you think it's safely locked up, you may not check on it often. Maybe not for a year (next hunting season?). Likewise, how would you know (unless you really set up all sorts of software logging) if someone ran a portable app to save to a flash drive some music, or booted into Knoppix and saved to a flash drive/network share?
AIM is mostly security - it has had several cracks, same old phishing links work with no scanning in place at all, open text can be sniffed easily etc.
Web Radio could be bandwidth related. Some places pay per GB transferred, and while one web radio stream is negligable, potentially hundereds costs add up, and use up limited network bandwidth. The best part is when users forget to stop the radio when they go home for the weekend, then you've spent money for 2 days of less than nothing, not even employee enjoyment.
I personally have not written manuscripts, so I may be off base here, but in my limited (school, resume, etc) experiance - Word processors, be it Lotus Word Pro (my program of choice), Open Office, or MS Word - are only good for 4 things:
1) Writing MLA style research papers or Essays
2) Writing personal or business letters to textbook standards
3) Generating Outlines - perhaps for 1
4) Quick and Dirty envelope prints
Anything more complicated tends to really become frustrating, quickly, in those products.
For posters, anything with in line pictures or diagrams, etc require a different paradigm in my experiance. Scientific papers or textbooks often need better layout precision. Maybe manuscripts do as well? Certainly your formatting comments make me think something like HTML or LaTeX might be a better solution - something that *isn't* WYSIWYG.
Maybe not for programming, but when the employees want to use their iPhone on the company or university or wherever you work network, it helps to know how to get it on the network. And how to deal with issues like the (was it Duke?) cisco/iPhone bug etc. Any new network device will require some time spent on it for a Network Administrator.
Indeed. I'm 26 and I'm grumbling about stuff to my younger cousin who's 21... It seems once you're no longer a teenager, you're just an old codger now. Or... maybe you always were. I certainly don't understand myspace for instance.
First, that's an on-site charge. Second, it usually isn't as quick as you claim. First the tech has to *find* all the files. Customers often have no idea where their files are, or what files they need, so you end up with saying, well - all files are X amount, the files in My Documents (where you probably saved them, but not necessarily) are X, etc. Then the customer wants to look at the files, try and figure out if those are all the files etc...
Second, they have to split them to fit on the DVDs. Then they do have to burn them, but it can take some time depending on the customers burner speed.
What's worse is when I worked for Geek Squad last year in the store, there was an online (printable) manual that basically told you (WITH PICTURES!) how to do a passable diagnosis on home computer systems. To paraphrase: 1. Talk to Customer. Find out what happened. Try and get specific error messages or sequence of events. 2. Look at outside of computer. Any obvious damage or clogged air vents/fans? 3. Open computer, look for bluged capacitors, burn marks, interior fans clogged, loose cables. 4. Try to boot computer. Note any beep codes, odd noises, boot speed, POST screens, windows boot + Pop-up messages.
They estimated you could do this is about 10 minutes on most machines (some really old or screwed up windows installs will take 20 minutes to boot, but then you ought to be charging for time at that point). At this point give a gut estimate.
1. If you see hardware damage, inform customer what might be damaged, indicate we will need to do a full diagnosis before proceeding with a quote as we can't be sure what all is broken. Also, if you just aren't sure what's wrong, give diagnostic quote and inform customer that you'll call with a repair quote once that is done (also quote turn time on that). 2. If you get into Windows normally and see obvious spyware/virus issues (we had a tool from Webroot that would do a scan in 5-10 minutes so we'd catch most obvious infections with that) then quote full cleaning cost + if appropriate antivirus + antispyware upgrades/install cost. Inform that we will also do a full hardware diagnostic and may quote additional charges for hardware repair if necessary (we would contact them before doing any billable work).
There was also a guide for what to do in a full paid diagnostic... I will spare you the details.
The problem was the techs were never told about this guide, it wasn't printed out lying around, and so I only stumbled upon it while looking around the store knowledgebase while bored one evening. So it really depends on the store - the company may have made lots of tools available for even the least knowledgable tech to use, but if the supervisors aren't telling people to use it, or worse actively "cowboy" rules and procedures, well who knows what will happen.
Hmm, I always charge the next even amount per hour over what I make on my day job. Then again, I don't make what you make so . . . But I do find charging hourly is usually more fair for everyone than the "flat-rate" the big companies like Geek Squad charge. Though there is the question if you should charge for your travel time. I generally will drive up to 30 minutes for free. At your rate, you could spend 3hrs before you got to what the Geek Squad charges just to show up. Heck, you could spend 2 hrs to get to the Geek Squad "diagnostic" charge in store. What you get at the Geek Squad is a guarantee on parts for 90 days, and labor for 30 days. But boy do you pay a premium.
You know, part of this is the companies are all looking at whether they will lose customers. What about seeing if they can *gain* customers? And I think this is happening in that a major ISP is offering an add on for in home network support etc - the network equivelent of in home wire maitenence. Should it be an extra fee? Maybe - but I think it is sort of going in that direction, that "We offer support where others don't" and their price is not bad, you'd have to go well over a year with no problems to reach one in home diag by Geek Squad et al. Most users could likely use some help every few months.
I've seen quite a few postings on various forums regarding users using a slower DSL service over Cable because of stability, support etc. I certainly have had exceptional support from my local DSL ISP such that I recommend it even though it's not especially fast. We're talking a call about an outage at 5pm, vans are rolling by at 8pm that night. Call about a bad modem on Sat of memorial day weekend, new modem dropped off sunday morning at 9am. Can't really beat that IMO.
You know, maybe I'm really cheap - but where are you shopping that you're paying $70 for a button up shirt, especially one you might wear once (I'm assuming here, but if you normally wear T-Shirts, then your button up might be worn once every few years for special occasions, in which case it may have gotten damaged, lost, you out grew it, it's out of style (Doesn't fit the next occasion)...)?
You can order from Haband a button up for less than $20 and you could go to Burlington and get a short sleeved white button up for $10. These are dress shirts.
Pants for $60? Maybe if you want high end slacks from Sears and don't plan enough to grab a sale. I can go to Sears for $25-$35 for their high end slacks during their quarterly sales, a local store (Boscov's if anyone cares) during their frequent sales for $25 for the same brands, Haband whenever for $17-22, less on sale. These are all fine looking slacks. I can hit a local Dollar General for $10 Jeans, K-Mart or Wal-Mart for $15-$25 Jeans and these again are fine looking, easy to care for, and last as long as Sears or whatever versions.
Sneakers for $75? I got out of that racket when I was in High School. Don't buy Nike's and you can get decent sneakers for $45, you can grab throw away sneakers good for 6 months or so for $10 at Wal-Mart. Leather shoes can be had for $30 from Tom McCan @ K-Mart.
Boots I'll give you are expensive if you want good ones.
So, I think spending that kind of money, on dressy clothes, is probably overpaying In my humble opinion. I'm talking about 50% less for the same sorts of products new. If you can stand local thrift stores for clothes (I can't, but some poor or thrifty people might) you can get clothes close to free.
I get about 3 years or so out of my pants and shirts vary, so maybe I just replace clothes more often than you do. However, I have bought the name brand from retail stores in the past, and the clothes did not last 2x as long to justify 2x the price. YMMV.
I think if they get rid of XUL, there goes all the extensions, and possibly makes extensions impossible, or at least needing to learn an entirely different and likely harder API.
I'm not sure if Firefox could get away with killing all the current extensions requireing a rewrite.
Anyone would think that this guy was trying to steal, and the store has a right to make a reasonable attempt to try and stop him. This likely depends on state law, but I know several retail stores in NY will ask to check recipts, but specifically instruct workers that they CANNOT prevent someone from leaving unless they actually see the person steal something. Refusing to show a recipt is not enough, and infact would open the worker and the store to charges of possible assult/battery, unlawful confinement and various harrassment charges.
Just like because I'm in your home doesn't mean you can tackle me or lock me in, being in a store does not give the owner the right to physically restrain me (and if you aren't physically restraining me, how are you keeping me in your store if I want to leave?).
I think the point in this case is you can demand whatever you want, but once someone has concluded his business with you (bought the item) you can't force him to do anything else but leave.
You cannot hold him (kidnapping), search his person, force him to give the products back(theft), or otherwise harrass a person lawfully attempting to exit your property.
In general, you can require whatver you want of people to stay on your property, but the only enforcement you can do is asking them to leave. In this case, CC was preventing him from leaving. They cannot legally do this.
As I understand the results of this and other such reports if you demand a recipt from someone and they refuse you can force them to leave and deny them readmittance. If you think they are stealing something, you can call the police and report the theft.
Well, I guess they could ask people without a bag for a recipt - but who would give out the recipts that you didn't buy anything? I'm rather sure they cannot search your person if you do not have a bag and recipt...
Commenting on this, I actually like Lotus SmartSuite and prefer Word Pro as a word processor. Maybe because I started using it back in 1996 on my first Windows PC. It would be nice if they would open source that suite if they're not going to update it. I expect there's a minority who would like to be able to use it, and maybe pay for or get small updates / bug fixes like ODF support etc. Personally its one of the applications that keeps me on Windows.
On the other hand, I do so little word processing any more that I only open it 3 times a year.
Slashdot Mirror
Or, you know, you could have googled this:
http://www.teamcti.com/trayit/trayit.htm
and saved a lot of money...
As I specified, this is for backup while mobiles are on the road or at the user's home and SAN is not available. This is for backup of specific, important files, not the entire machine. To clarify, backup is improved for the corporate versions of Vista, it is worse in the home editions
I was specifically referring to a client based backup solution that ties into Symantec EZ Backup, and I'd expect was available with other solutions. It backs up specific files on a laptop, and when it can get a connection, uploads the files to your backup server. Until then, it protects against any problem save a hard drive failure...
I think this is sort of missing the point. As I understand it the thought process is this:
Vista is not compatible with my software.
Vista is going to require lots of user retraining.
So, is XPSP2 doing what I need? Yes? Don't change. No?
If I have to rewrite/find different vendor/virtualize XP to run software anyway, will I save money with Vista or alternative?
With Vista I have to pay $LicenseFee. I have to buy new hardware.
With Alternative I have to pay $ALicenseFee. I have to buy new hardware(maybe). If $ALicenseFee is less than $LicenseFee and the new hardware cost is less or even the same, you might save money by switching. This is where people start saying, "Hey, it looks like I might be spending a LOT for Vista. It may be worthwhile to see if I'll spend less on something else." It's not assumed they will, but the amount for Vista is *high enough* to make it worthwhile to check out the competitiors.
However, your benefits assume that coporations haven't solved these issues (assuming they are even an issue) on XP or whatever platform they use.
Indexed Searching: Free on XP, you've got Copernic desktop search, Windows desktop search, Google Desktop whatever, or do what I do and use Locate32...
Improved Included Applications? That doesn't sell linux distros. People buy products (or use free ones) that do a good job. They can already burn DVDs on XP if they want to, and while it is a third party app, it's free or featureful enough they bought it. (Mind you, I don't think you *can* buy a DVD Burner witout OEM burning software).
Improved Handling of Wireless networks: Hard for me to speak to this, but most laptops come with thier own wireless management, though the built in XPSP2 version worked better most of the time. I just don't see a failure in the XP version.
Improved backup? I don't know of any coporation that uses NTBackup. As I understand it the replacement is actually more gimped, not less. Doesn't everyone use dedicated backup software to their SAN or tape drives?
The only one that even gets a possible where I work is the wireless network handling, and we don't have a problem currently.
Ummm, CompuSec free
Any of about a hundered widget engines
Why do I want my desktop environment hardware accelerated?
How is Vista's security model more sane than XPs? As far as I can tell, it consists of asking "Allow or Deny" often enough that the Apple commercial meme won't die.
If Ubuntu isn't focused on security, why not recommend an alternative that is? I don't believe Microsoft is the only OS developer focused on Security...
I haven't used Vista much at all, so I may be very wrong. But in all the Vista Pros, what I see is the following, both as a home user and at work in the IT department:
1. Vista has Direct X 10, which I can't get easily in XP.
2. Everything else offered in Vista can be done for free or cheaper than an Vista License (well, retail vista, volumne license vista business is about equal cost) in XP.
3. Many Many 3rd party tools still don't work in Vista, and this is even products that have had several releases trying to be more Vista compatible. Directory Opus, Opera, others...
It seems like some things you could do in XP, you *can't* do in Vista due to the new archetecture (may be a good thing for some reasons, but still to a user, it's a loss of functionality). Examples being some of the explorer replacement by Directory Opus, some of the gina hooks like with pGina...
To reply directly to the configuration for Vista clients - I think this was addressed before, but if Vista came out when XP came out, being easier to configure for normal users would be a boon. But it isn't. Everyone knows how to configure XP now, has software, scripts and what have you to make it easy. And besides, it never was *XP* that had problems with running as a limited user, it's the programs. And programs that work well on Vista as limited users pretty much work the same on XP. Finally, my understanding is in Vista, you still have to configure it to run a user as a limited user, the default is *still* admin...
Well, I don't know about you, and it may well depend on the area, but where I live - upstate NY, I just ran a quote on State farm. I have a 2007 Impreza i series (base subaru impreza). Statefarm, on their most basic quote was $116 a month, vs Geico with similar or better coverage (slightly over the State Farm base coverage) @ $79 a month... I see something similar with the other quotes I got save Progressive, which is still $10 more per month than Geico. I'm not seeing Geico's 15% they advertise, I'm seeing as much as 50% off some other insurance companies (Met Life Auto).
Well, for you it may not make sense, but for ~ 50% of the US, it can make a lot of sense to use Netflix. Look, many people are rural. They would need to drive 20 miles to get to a video store, and it wouldn't have the selection of Netflix. So, it costs them ~1 hr travel (30 minutes there and back - or they have to both work near one and plan around their work schedule), $3-$5 in gas, car wear and tear etc. They may not have broadband, but if they do, they still have likey slow speeds. They can use P2P and wait while breaking the law, or use Netflix and wait and be legal.
Netflix is great for these users. It's also great for people who want access to DVDs they really can't get save via Amazon... maybe.
Well, the answer is sort of. Opera has block content, which does some of what AdBlock Plus does, but not as well. Opera has site specific preferences or userJS which let you do things like disable javascript on a site by site basis and inject a script for UI sort of "in" the site. UserJS is actually equivelent to Greasemonkey, and compatible with the Greasemonkey scripts. I have no idea what Customize Google is, but with UserJS + UserCSS you certainly can change up websites.
All that said, Opera often falls into not doing anything quite as well as an extension might. The upside is Opera is generally much better performing that Firefox, probably because they don't do extensions/XUL like Firefox does. And they tend to have a unified UI.
I'm really tied to Opera for speed, MDI, IRC at work, and tab handling, but I want an Eee PC with Xandros. This basically removes my old web fixer stalward proxomitron and I don't know how I'll handle the ad-blocking... Maybe WINE will be up there for prox finally, but I don't see a lot of hope so far.
Okay, well I do wish you luck if you try to argue that someone snuck into your dorm room (and no one else's!) without your knowledge, carrying bootable equipment, opened the P2P programs on your OS, downloaded copyrighted files, and then vanished with no clear benefit to himself, without creating any witnesses or appearing on any video cameras.
Umm, hell people don't notice much larger things than someone (say, another student) wandering into someone else's dorm room and futzing with their computer for a while. Ever watch *any* cop tv show? People don't notice murderers wandering into neighboor's houses/apartments. And they usually catch the killer on TV!
Plus, did you miss the boot Knoppix + plug in flash drive? Music doesn't take hours to download, and that's what we're talking about.
Let me also address several other points:
1. Video camera's? How many *DORM ROOMS* have survellience cameras installed? How many *DORM ROOMS* have 2 people with access who regularily let in other people to hang out and do stuff? We're not talking about Mission Impossible break in people in black skinsuits here, we're talking other college students. How are you picking them out of survellience video anyway?
2. no one else's dorm room? I'll bet the RIAA is handing over more than 1 request - likely 10+.
3. Not reporting theft of a firearm? Not sure what the point here is but what if you don't notice the firearm is gone? If you think it's safely locked up, you may not check on it often. Maybe not for a year (next hunting season?). Likewise, how would you know (unless you really set up all sorts of software logging) if someone ran a portable app to save to a flash drive some music, or booted into Knoppix and saved to a flash drive/network share?
AIM is mostly security - it has had several cracks, same old phishing links work with no scanning in place at all, open text can be sniffed easily etc.
Web Radio could be bandwidth related. Some places pay per GB transferred, and while one web radio stream is negligable, potentially hundereds costs add up, and use up limited network bandwidth. The best part is when users forget to stop the radio when they go home for the weekend, then you've spent money for 2 days of less than nothing, not even employee enjoyment.
I personally have not written manuscripts, so I may be off base here, but in my limited (school, resume, etc) experiance - Word processors, be it Lotus Word Pro (my program of choice), Open Office, or MS Word - are only good for 4 things:
1) Writing MLA style research papers or Essays
2) Writing personal or business letters to textbook standards
3) Generating Outlines - perhaps for 1
4) Quick and Dirty envelope prints
Anything more complicated tends to really become frustrating, quickly, in those products.
For posters, anything with in line pictures or diagrams, etc require a different paradigm in my experiance. Scientific papers or textbooks often need better layout precision. Maybe manuscripts do as well? Certainly your formatting comments make me think something like HTML or LaTeX might be a better solution - something that *isn't* WYSIWYG.
Maybe not for programming, but when the employees want to use their iPhone on the company or university or wherever you work network, it helps to know how to get it on the network. And how to deal with issues like the (was it Duke?) cisco/iPhone bug etc. Any new network device will require some time spent on it for a Network Administrator.
Indeed. I'm 26 and I'm grumbling about stuff to my younger cousin who's 21... It seems once you're no longer a teenager, you're just an old codger now. Or... maybe you always were. I certainly don't understand myspace for instance.
First, that's an on-site charge. Second, it usually isn't as quick as you claim. First the tech has to *find* all the files. Customers often have no idea where their files are, or what files they need, so you end up with saying, well - all files are X amount, the files in My Documents (where you probably saved them, but not necessarily) are X, etc. Then the customer wants to look at the files, try and figure out if those are all the files etc...
Second, they have to split them to fit on the DVDs. Then they do have to burn them, but it can take some time depending on the customers burner speed.
What's worse is when I worked for Geek Squad last year in the store, there was an online (printable) manual that basically told you (WITH PICTURES!) how to do a passable diagnosis on home computer systems. To paraphrase:
1. Talk to Customer. Find out what happened. Try and get specific error messages or sequence of events.
2. Look at outside of computer. Any obvious damage or clogged air vents/fans?
3. Open computer, look for bluged capacitors, burn marks, interior fans clogged, loose cables.
4. Try to boot computer. Note any beep codes, odd noises, boot speed, POST screens, windows boot + Pop-up messages.
They estimated you could do this is about 10 minutes on most machines (some really old or screwed up windows installs will take 20 minutes to boot, but then you ought to be charging for time at that point). At this point give a gut estimate.
1. If you see hardware damage, inform customer what might be damaged, indicate we will need to do a full diagnosis before proceeding with a quote as we can't be sure what all is broken. Also, if you just aren't sure what's wrong, give diagnostic quote and inform customer that you'll call with a repair quote once that is done (also quote turn time on that).
2. If you get into Windows normally and see obvious spyware/virus issues (we had a tool from Webroot that would do a scan in 5-10 minutes so we'd catch most obvious infections with that) then quote full cleaning cost + if appropriate antivirus + antispyware upgrades/install cost. Inform that we will also do a full hardware diagnostic and may quote additional charges for hardware repair if necessary (we would contact them before doing any billable work).
There was also a guide for what to do in a full paid diagnostic... I will spare you the details.
The problem was the techs were never told about this guide, it wasn't printed out lying around, and so I only stumbled upon it while looking around the store knowledgebase while bored one evening. So it really depends on the store - the company may have made lots of tools available for even the least knowledgable tech to use, but if the supervisors aren't telling people to use it, or worse actively "cowboy" rules and procedures, well who knows what will happen.
Hmm, I always charge the next even amount per hour over what I make on my day job. Then again, I don't make what you make so . . . But I do find charging hourly is usually more fair for everyone than the "flat-rate" the big companies like Geek Squad charge. Though there is the question if you should charge for your travel time. I generally will drive up to 30 minutes for free. At your rate, you could spend 3hrs before you got to what the Geek Squad charges just to show up. Heck, you could spend 2 hrs to get to the Geek Squad "diagnostic" charge in store. What you get at the Geek Squad is a guarantee on parts for 90 days, and labor for 30 days. But boy do you pay a premium.
You know, part of this is the companies are all looking at whether they will lose customers. What about seeing if they can *gain* customers? And I think this is happening in that a major ISP is offering an add on for in home network support etc - the network equivelent of in home wire maitenence. Should it be an extra fee? Maybe - but I think it is sort of going in that direction, that "We offer support where others don't" and their price is not bad, you'd have to go well over a year with no problems to reach one in home diag by Geek Squad et al. Most users could likely use some help every few months.
I've seen quite a few postings on various forums regarding users using a slower DSL service over Cable because of stability, support etc. I certainly have had exceptional support from my local DSL ISP such that I recommend it even though it's not especially fast. We're talking a call about an outage at 5pm, vans are rolling by at 8pm that night. Call about a bad modem on Sat of memorial day weekend, new modem dropped off sunday morning at 9am. Can't really beat that IMO.
You know, maybe I'm really cheap - but where are you shopping that you're paying $70 for a button up shirt, especially one you might wear once (I'm assuming here, but if you normally wear T-Shirts, then your button up might be worn once every few years for special occasions, in which case it may have gotten damaged, lost, you out grew it, it's out of style (Doesn't fit the next occasion)...)?
You can order from Haband a button up for less than $20 and you could go to Burlington and get a short sleeved white button up for $10. These are dress shirts.
Pants for $60? Maybe if you want high end slacks from Sears and don't plan enough to grab a sale. I can go to Sears for $25-$35 for their high end slacks during their quarterly sales, a local store (Boscov's if anyone cares) during their frequent sales for $25 for the same brands, Haband whenever for $17-22, less on sale. These are all fine looking slacks. I can hit a local Dollar General for $10 Jeans, K-Mart or Wal-Mart for $15-$25 Jeans and these again are fine looking, easy to care for, and last as long as Sears or whatever versions.
Sneakers for $75? I got out of that racket when I was in High School. Don't buy Nike's and you can get decent sneakers for $45, you can grab throw away sneakers good for 6 months or so for $10 at Wal-Mart. Leather shoes can be had for $30 from Tom McCan @ K-Mart.
Boots I'll give you are expensive if you want good ones.
So, I think spending that kind of money, on dressy clothes, is probably overpaying In my humble opinion. I'm talking about 50% less for the same sorts of products new. If you can stand local thrift stores for clothes (I can't, but some poor or thrifty people might) you can get clothes close to free.
I get about 3 years or so out of my pants and shirts vary, so maybe I just replace clothes more often than you do. However, I have bought the name brand from retail stores in the past, and the clothes did not last 2x as long to justify 2x the price. YMMV.
I think if they get rid of XUL, there goes all the extensions, and possibly makes extensions impossible, or at least needing to learn an entirely different and likely harder API.
I'm not sure if Firefox could get away with killing all the current extensions requireing a rewrite.
Just like because I'm in your home doesn't mean you can tackle me or lock me in, being in a store does not give the owner the right to physically restrain me (and if you aren't physically restraining me, how are you keeping me in your store if I want to leave?).
I think the point in this case is you can demand whatever you want, but once someone has concluded his business with you (bought the item) you can't force him to do anything else but leave.
You cannot hold him (kidnapping), search his person, force him to give the products back(theft), or otherwise harrass a person lawfully attempting to exit your property.
In general, you can require whatver you want of people to stay on your property, but the only enforcement you can do is asking them to leave. In this case, CC was preventing him from leaving. They cannot legally do this.
As I understand the results of this and other such reports if you demand a recipt from someone and they refuse you can force them to leave and deny them readmittance. If you think they are stealing something, you can call the police and report the theft.
Well, I guess they could ask people without a bag for a recipt - but who would give out the recipts that you didn't buy anything? I'm rather sure they cannot search your person if you do not have a bag and recipt...
Commenting on this, I actually like Lotus SmartSuite and prefer Word Pro as a word processor. Maybe because I started using it back in 1996 on my first Windows PC. It would be nice if they would open source that suite if they're not going to update it. I expect there's a minority who would like to be able to use it, and maybe pay for or get small updates / bug fixes like ODF support etc. Personally its one of the applications that keeps me on Windows.
On the other hand, I do so little word processing any more that I only open it 3 times a year.
But can I indicate that this choice seems to be very different from the choice between Scott and Charmin toilet paper for instance?