Archive for September, 2010
Wednesday, September 29th, 2010
Hey Everybody in Portland Computer Repair Land,
For the last year, we have been recommending Microsoft Security Essentials as our anti-virus program of choice. Unfortunately, a new virus came out yesterday that mimics it *perfectly.* It has the same screens, the same color scheme, etc., as the real thing. I, personally, was 100% fooled by it the first time I saw it.
Be aware of its tell – if at any point the program asks you to “go online” to do something, that is a virus. I repeat, the REAL Microsoft Security Essentials will *never* claim you need to go online to make a scan. If you see a window asking you to do that, you have a VIRUS, not the anti-virus program you thought you had.
Viruses get trickier every day, but we stay a step ahead, fighting that good fight, thanks everybody!
-Zac
Happy Hamster Portland Computer Repair
Saturday, September 18th, 2010
Hey Everybody in Portland Computer Repair Land,
I want to talk to you all today about laptop sales. It was only recently, about 9 months ago, that our company got to a financial state where we could afford to start stocking and selling laptops. Since then we have sold, no joke, over $50,000 in laptops. In 9 months, they have become a full 20% of the total volume of “stuff we sell”. Last month, we sold $21,000 worth of laptops, fully half of our total sales for the entire month. We did this without a single advertisement, and without even displaying any in the shop! We don’t yet have anywhere to put them on display. Why do we sell so many computers? Because we are selling computers people actually want to buy. People understand value, but it has become impossible to get value at Best Buy or Fry’s or any other big box retailer. They don’t sell value; they sell useless sparkle.
Allow me to explain. 10 years ago, laptops cost a lot of money, so they were all well built, because for $1,000 or $2,000, people expect quality. This was the era of the Dell D600 (that grey one with the silver bar on the lid that lives forever) and the IBM Thinkpad T40 (still an excellent computer). Computers that felt good in your hands, and that lasted on, and on, and on. Fast forward to today: we have seen a pathetic race to the bottom. Go into any big box retailer today, and you will find a section or a wall with an array of 20, 30, or 50 laptops. You’ll find plenty of information about their sparkle–gigahertz this and high speed that–but no information about their value. Next time you buy a laptop, ask the retailer about its anticipated 5 year failure rate, or look for some notes about whether the laptop is constructed with plastic or steel hinges. I’ll give you a dollar if you can find that information anywhere in the store.
Retailers do this because they have decided we, the consumer, are stupid. They think we can’t understand value, they think all we care about is sparkle, even when sparkle is counterproductive. Let’s look at a few areas where sparkle is 100% counterproductive.
1) Consumer laptops now come with glossy LCD screens so they will look shinier on store shelves. Glossy screens are inferior to matte screens in every single way. They reflect a huge amount more light and are difficult to see in many lighting conditions. They increase eye fatigue significantly, and reduce the amount of time you can work on your computer. They are much easier to crack because they have a rigid glass front. Nothing is better about them than matte. Yet glossy screens are a newer invention. The first glossy screens didn’t start to appear in laptops until (I’m guessing here) maybe 5 years ago? I know that nothing we see with an older screen has gloss.
2) Consumer laptops now have “designer” touch pads. They work the touch pad into the whole shiny plastic element, so instead of the boring old black box with two buttons, you get a shiny, smooth finish. And you get the worst touch pad experience money can buy. There is a reason touch pads are a specific, distinct black surface. That surface has been scientifically developed to smoothly and easily move your finger across it to allow you to use it as a mouse. The modern touch pad, integrated into the plastic design, sucks. They have also started to use one of the most ridiculous design features I have ever seen: the unibody mouse buttons. Instead of a distinct left and right click, designers have put in one long plastic strip. If you click on the left-ish side of it, it clicks left, and the right-ish side, it clicks right. This design is inferior in every single conceivable way to the old two button design. But it looks shinier.
3) Consumer laptops come with full RAM slots. Every laptop has two places to put memory, or RAM. RAM comes in sticks. It used to be that the manufacturer would put all the memory in one stick, so you had one free space to add memory later. Not anymore! Now they take the amount of memory, put it in two sticks, and fill both places. This means that in order to upgrade the memory, you have to take out one piece, and then put in a much larger piece to compensate, making later upgrades much more expensive.
4) Consumer laptops no longer have access panels. Many of the new laptops we see are smooth and sleek all over, ooo… pretty! In order to achieve that smooth, sleek look, they have eliminated access panels. So while in the past we could upgrade memory by removing 1 screw, removing an access door, and putting in more memory, now we frequently have to spend a full hour disassembling your computer 100% to find the damn memory slot. It’s not cute that Mac does this; it’s what makes repairing Macs such an unholy pain in the ass, but it sure does look nice!
We had a new HP laptop come in for a keyboard replacement the other day. Instead of our usual $25 charge to replace a keyboard (about 15 minutes of work, 6 – 12 screws, etc), we had to charge the poor guy $95 because his stupid new HP laptop needed to be fully, 100% disassembled, motherboard out, LCD screen off, etc., to get to the damn keyboard.
5) Consumer laptops are now cheap and made of plastic. Pick up your old laptop, open and close the lid, snap your fingers on the bezel, and feel how solid it is. Now go to Best Buy and do the same thing. Now cry. All of that shiny sparkle belies a slow move away from quality, well fit plastics to cheap, shiny stuff that shows a lot of fingerprints and does not last.
But hey, they are cheap, so that makes it worthwhile, right?
No. No it does not. The average netbook costs $300, but will only last for 18 months. That means to get 4.5 years of life from a netbook, you need to spend $900. That is 3 different computers, and every single time you have to redo all of your settings, favorites, etc. If you had spent $900 on a quality computer, not only would it still be going (probably for another year or two) but you would have had a vastly more pleasant user experience, a faster computer, and you would never have needed to switch all of your data over.
So that’s why we sell what we sell. The cheapest computer we offer is $599. It’s about $200 more than the cheapest thing at Best Buy, but it has a few things they lack. I can easily access all of its internal components in about 90 seconds. It has a high definition matte screen, super easy on your eyes. It has a solid keyboard, and a great touch pad. It has a solid, aluminum design. And no part of it is shiny.
For a few hundred more, around $799, you can get an HP Probook, probably the second nicest laptop made on the planet today. Its solid metal hinges, aluminum backed keyboard and frame design, custom rear hinged touch pad buttons, and matte screen blow away everybody who uses it.
I would say that is the nicest computer money can buy, except for the existence of the HP Elitebook. This is a fully aluminum framed laptop. My roommate has one. She once kicked it off her bed in the middle of the night, and it fell on the floor, screen side crashing into the ground. It still works perfectly, and suffered zero damage. Spend the same $1,000 you were willing to spend 5 years ago to buy a laptop, and you can get an ultra fast, ultra lightweight monster that will keep you smiling for years.
I know people understand value, because every month we sell more and more laptops as people come to realize that at Happy Hamster you can get the laptop you want, not the laptop they are trying to sell you. We get no kickbacks from HP (we are far too small for them to notice us, sadly)–we pick their high end business product because after testing dozens of laptops, we really do like them the most. And I’ll give you something they won’t. We offer a “try and buy” program. Come in, we’ll put a hold on your credit card for the price of the laptop, and you can take one home to try it out for 3 days before you decide if you want to buy it. Don’t like it? Just bring it back and we’ll take it off your hands. Want it? No problem, we’ll charge your card on file.
Consumers who buy cars can choose to buy sparkle or value, but people who buy laptops don’t get that choice. We’re proud to be the store in Portland that is bringing choice back to laptop purchases. Stop in today and see what all the fuss is really about.
Thanks everybody, have a good weekend!
-Zac
Sunday, September 12th, 2010
Hey Everybody in Portland Computer Repair Land,
A tech from up in Vancouver asked if he could post a guest blog on our blog, and I said sure! Find his guest post below.
—————————————————————————————————————–
How to Find your Missing Password
Computer passwords are great for the most part because they keep other people from
accessing our account and looking at our potentially sensitive files. Unfortunately, at
times they can backfire and manage to keep us out of our own account. Now, this may
not be a huge issue if a machine were more like a human; in this case you could simply
bribe him or her, or talk to him or her in a rather calm, rational manner – asking for
forgiveness. As we are all aware though, computers are not like (most) human beings.
They can be extremely difficult to deal with; if you do not provide the correct answer
to a particular question then you are basically hooped. You may beg all you want, but
without that magic command or code your PC will simply stare back at you as if nothing
is wrong.
Luckily, there is a way to force your computer to give up his secret information even
without the need of a professional computer repair technician. All you need to do is go
online and download something called a password recovery program. The goal of such a
software application is to sneak into your computers memory and pluck out appropriate
information without his knowledge. Once you have this information (a password in this
case) you can simply recite it back to him and he will happily let you back into Windows,
none the wiser.
There are a variety of free password recovery tools out there on the web, and, luckily,
each of them is simple enough for an intermediate computer user to use. If you have
reasonable skills we recommend that you try a little DIY (do it yourself); if, however,
you run into problems then you should go ahead and call your local computer repair help.
One of the most popular programs for password recovery is Ophcrack. It is a software application that
runs on all recent variations of Windows and can either load from within Windows (if
you have access to at least a single account on your machine) or load off of a CD (if you
do not have access to any account on your PC). We have personally used Ophcrack and
it is quite easy to use (particularly the bootable CD method). All you need to do is burn
the program to a CD, boot it up, and wait for Ophcrack to do its thing. Within minutes
it will discover the passwords associated with each user account on your computer.
Offline NT Password & Registry Editor is another popular program. However, instead of
retrieving your password (which can potentially take quite some time), it simply erases
it. Once your password it erased you can access your computer account and add a new
password whenever you deem it necessary. Offline NT Password & Registry Editor must
be booted off of a CD to work.
There are a variety of other password recovery programs including Cain & Abel and
John the Ripper, yet we would personally recommend one of the free programs listed
above (as they are relatively easy to use).
So, next time your computer decides to prevent you from accessing your user account
simply slip behind his back with a password recovery program and grab the information
you need. This will solve your problem and he will be none the wiser. If you have
any questions about the programs discussed above come and visit Keith’s Computer Repair Blog where we
talk about a wide variety of issues including password recovery.
Thanks for reading,
-Keith
Saturday, September 11th, 2010
Hey Everybody in Portland Computer Land,
Please stop buying Alienware computers. They make us sad. Despite costs ranging from $2,000 – $5,000, they are lower quality than the cheapest Gateway that we deal with. They are plastic, heavy, and unreliable. They burn out at amazingly high rates of speed. Yes, they are powerful and can play video games, but it’s not worth it. Trust us.
For example, today I needed a wireless driver. From 99.99% of other computers, this is a very simple project. I go to the website and get the wireless drivers. Not with this Alienware. Despite the user spending $4,000 on his laptop, the Alienware website does not list the wireless driver for his computer. Extensive Google searching shows dozens of other users looking for the same driver and no help.
Seriously, a company that sells $4,000 computers can’t put together a website with the drivers for its product.
And god forbid you want tech support… it’s e-mail only. Even Dell, the owner of Alienware, has a phone number.
Lame,
-Zac
Thursday, September 9th, 2010
Hey Everybody in Portland Computer Repair Land,
Something happened this week that I don’t even know… I really don’t know how to wrap my mind around it.
A man came in, a very elderly gentleman, and Heather, our beloved office manager went to help him. She asked him,
“How can I help you, sir?”
And he turned to her and said,
“I’ll wait for a man.”
I don’t even know how to respond to something like that. I mean.. .it’s so far behind the pale of anything I’ve ever experienced in my life. I can’t imagine turning to somebody, picking out a racial or sexual characteristic, and thus deeming them invalid. This isn’t even going to get into Heather’s supreme qualifications to help anybody who walks into the store, because that is not even relevant here. Unfortunately I was not here at the time, and nobody else felt comfortable kicking the man out, so he got to ask his questions and leave. But seriously, if I ever heard anybody say anything like that to one of my employees, they would find their asses placed promptly and directly on the street with instructions never to return. This is not a “customer is always right” sort of situation.
I mean, had he said to my Russian employee “I want to talk to an American” or to my short employee, “I want to talk to somebody tall.”
How does this even work?
I can’t wrap my brain around the callous ease or mental state that would ever make somebody think it’s appropriate to talk like that to another human being.
I pick my employees on one basis – their qualifications to do their jobs. I expect each of my customers to respect them as much as I do, and behavior like this is unforgivable and beyond inexcusable.
Thank you to the thousands of customers who trust us with your computers. We appreciate your support enormously.
-Zac
Sunday, September 5th, 2010
Hey Everybody in Portland Computer Repair Land,
At least once a week I have the following comical interaction -
Zac – “I’m sorry sir, but your computer is dead. I would be happy to recommend a replacement for you, though, if you’d like to discuss one.”
Alex – “I would be happy to have such a discussion, what would you recommend?”
Zac – “Well, first, tell me what you use your computer for.”
Alex – “I use it for XYZ”
Zac – “Great! Let me pull 5 models out of my closet and show you some options.”
….
30 minutes of discussion pass about the merits of various laptops, and a best one is settled on
….
Alex, “Thanks for all your help! Now can you tell me where I can purchase this laptop?”
Zac, “We sell it right here!”
Alex, “Oh, I didn’t realize you guys SOLD these laptops, I thought you were just making a recommendation!”
Zac, *headdesk*
So yes everybody, we have spent a great deal of money on demo models and training in order to bring you the latest and greatest high quality laptops. Our shop size allows us to order directly from HP and other leading manufacturers!
So the next time you need a laptop, come on down and take a look at what we’ve got.
Thanks!
-Zac
Friday, September 3rd, 2010
Hey Everybody in Portland Computer Repair Land,
Just so you all know, we will be open regular hours Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Computers break over the holiday, so we will be here to fix them! Also feel free to stop by to talk about some screaming deals we have on new HP probook and elitebook laptops.
Thanks!
-Zac
