Archive for November, 2010
Saturday, November 27th, 2010
Hey Everybody in Portland Computer Repair Land,
Now that the holiday season is in full swing, I want to remind everybody about a few things they should keep in mind for the season.
1) Lots of people want to get a computer fixed as a Christmas present, so please plan ahead! We are very busy Christmas week, and if you bring in a computer with only a day or two to spare, we may not be able to get it back to you in time for the big day.
2) ‘Tis the season of scams. Be wary of all the shiny add ons that people will try to sell you at major retailers. They sell on fear, but the answer to extended warranties, protection plans, and all that crap is a resounding “NO!” They only offer those items because they make such a huge profit on them. Profit on a $800 digital camera? $50. Profit on the $200 extended warranty? $100.
3) Snow is REALLY bad for your computer! Keep your computer out of the snow! Even a few flakes that fall on it and melt inside can cause serious damage. For some reason people take rain seriously, but think its okay to let snow get on their computers, and we get many of those unhappy people here ever year.
4) Keep your computer out of the kitchen. I know it has the recipe you want on it, but the oil, water, steam and other things that fly around a busy kitchen will cause serious harm to your laptop. Write it down, print it out, but if you can reach your computer from the stove, it’s in trouble.
5) We also hate holiday muzak. Don’t worry, at Happy Hamster we will continue to play the same high quality staff picked indie rock, pop rock, choral chanting, classical, and whatever other weird taste we have for that day. Under no circumstances will you hear anybody croon anything that you’ve already heard 100,00 times before.
Thanks everybody!
-Zac
Happy Hamster Portland Computer Repair
Monday, November 22nd, 2010
Hey Everybody in Portland Computer Repair Land,
Just a friendly reminder that Thanksgiving is one of the 4 days a year we will be closed. Please also remember not to spill any gravy on your computer, every year we get at least 4 or 5 gravy spill cases, and they are messy!
Have a fun holiday,
-Zac
President
Happy Hamster Portland Computer Repair
Wednesday, November 17th, 2010
Hey Everybody in Portland Computer Repair Land,
I found an interesting piece of information while digging through our financial stuff last night. The price of a virus removal has actually decreased in the last year at Happy Hamster! Originally we went to a flat rate system to make the process easier for our customers, $150 gets the virus removed, with no concerns about hourly billing or the severity of the virus. However, in addition, our numbers show that the average price of a virus removal has also declined. Before we went to our flat rate system, the average virus removal cost $175, so now that our average (and only price) is $150, we do a virus removal for a full 15% less than we did a year ago.
Further, we’ve gotten better at it! A year ago, we saw 2.5% of all virus removals return to the shop within 30 days for a warranty second removal (our 30 day virus removal warranty is second to none, let me tell you, most of our competitors offer a zero day warranty, or 3 or 7 days). This year we’ve seen that number decrease .9% (thats 9 tenths of 1 percent!) So our virus removals are both more efficient and more effective. Those are the kind of numbers that warm our hearts.
Have a good one everybody,
-Zac
President
Happy Hamster Portland Computer Repair
Thursday, November 11th, 2010
Hey Everybody in Portland Computer Repair Land,
Reading through my New York Times this morning, I can across a story that I almost wouldn’t believe in a lesser publication. Apparently a computer repair shop in New York convinced a man that his computer virus could threaten his life, and then, over the course of 6 years, charged him over 2 million dollars from to fix it. I don’t even really think this needs anymore comment, just check out this story.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/nyregion/09fraud.html?_r=2
Thanks!
-Zac
Happy Hamster Portland Computers
Saturday, November 6th, 2010
Hey Everybody in Portland Computer Repair Land,
I want to make public a secret that we’ve been keeping here at Happy Hamster Portland Computer Repair. In July we purchased a piece of software that claimed it could do a lot of things, about which we were quite skeptical. This piece of software supposedly could do remote monitoring of customer systems for hardware failures, viruses, missing updates, and about a million other things. Simultaneously, it did not allow technicians any access to customer systems without permission, and perfectly protected the privacy of any computer on which it was installed. Anybody who has been here since July actually has already seen it, it’s the little blue shield in the lower right hand corner of your computer. We did make a big to do about this software because, frankly, we were not sure if it would actually work, and we did not want to promise a lot of features we could not deliver.
Well, since July, it has been installed on roughly 600 customer computers, and in that time it has detected a host of problems. The most impressive, though, is that it has detected 3 failing hard drives before the user had any idea they were failing. This let us alert the user to a potential failure, get their computers, replace the drive, and get them back up and running without any risk of data loss for that user. In addition, recently when major critical security patches were released, we could deploy them quickly and remotely. Using only 30 minutes of time on each machine to do something that normally takes over an hour.
We have about 200 licenses left, and we will continue to install this great monitoring software on all customer computers until we run out of our license pack. At that point we’ll give people a choice to either purchase their license for continued monitoring, or just roll the oldest ones out of circulation.
Anyways, I know this feature is unique to Happy Hamster, and it’s just another way that we are making sure your computer repair experience here vastly exceeds the service and expectations you will find at any of our competitors.
Thanks everybody!
-Zac
President
Happy Hamster Portland Computer Repair
Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010
Hey Everybody in Portland Computer Repair Land,
Let me let you in on a little secret if you are a business owner – we do more business work in December than any other month. People who have profits at the end of the year, and need new computers, know it by December and go on a buying spree. We will sell almost twice as many custom desktop systems, networks, and laptops next month than any other month this year. We, unfortunately, however, only have the same full time staff available to do all of that work, and that makes December for us quite an over-time fueled wild ride.
In order to try, maybe, to avoid that fate this year, we are offering a special discount to businesses in the month of November. Buy any 2 systems this month, and take 5% off the total. Buy 3 or more systems in November and we will give you a full 10% off the total order! So, if you have been thinking about how your computers are getting a bit long in the tooth, and need to replace 5 of them, your bill could drop from $4,000 to $3,600!
We will only be offering this for computers ordered in the month of November, so if you have been thinking about doing some end of year replacements to write off for the tax man, now is your best shot.
Thanks everybody,
-Zac
President
Happy Hamster Portland Computer Repair
