[JStergis]

Originally Posted by JohnWill

Not to mention the labels are monochrome and pretty low contrast. I have a couple of LS burners, and I got some disks just to try them. I'm not that impressed, I'd rather print the labels with a printer that handles CD/DVD media, much cheaper and you get better looking labels.

Did I mention it takes longer to do a full LS label than to burn the disk?

Wow, thanks for the heads up! I have a bunch of laser printer CD labels I've been using, I can make literally one of them a second if I need to. I have a 40X CD-R; 16X DVD+-R burner now, but I need another to replace an aging DVD/CD-RW drive on its last legs (not to mention that it sounds like a jet taking off).

I can burn a full CD with 3 minutes, maybe less. I couldn't imagine having to flip the CD over and taking over that long to label it too! I might as well run a sheet of labels through the printer. I'd get dark black prints with much better graphics. If I really wanted to be fancy, I could run them through the color inkjet. I think I'll just grab a cheap lite-on one or something. If it has lightscribe, fine, but otherwise it sounds more cost-effective and better looking to slap a label on it if I really need it to be presentable.

[loony_taz00]

I love the 51 pages LOL Yes Defiantly Not the Best... Took them a week To even Diagnose a Dead MOBO they only got a hold of it Cuz it was still under warrenty I would of had it Replaced and done that day lol But hey it was Free and didn't Cost me anything

[White Wolf 00]

I had the local Nerds on wheels set up my network on a Wednesday morning. Cost me $80. By Wednesday afternoon of the same Wednesday, I had to have them come in and fix the network at another cost of $80. 2 days later, I found someone using my network to download porn. They were sitting right outside my house with a wireless laptop. I then called Encore and they walked me through the setup for the router. They never did tell me about changing the username and passsword. I finally sat down with the manual and my computer. I did a lot of research and found out how to set up the network myself. No problems since. Just goes to show that the geeks and the nerds usually know less than the average person.

[gurutech]

Originally Posted by White Wolf 00

I had the local Nerds on wheels set up my network on a Wednesday morning. Cost me $80. By Wednesday afternoon of the same Wednesday, I had to have them come in and fix the network at another cost of $80. 2 days later, I found someone using my network to download porn. They were sitting right outside my house with a wireless laptop. I then called Encore and they walked me through the setup for the router. They never did tell me about changing the username and passsword. I finally sat down with the manual and my computer. I did a lot of research and found out how to set up the network myself. No problems since. Just goes to show that the geeks and the nerds usually know less than the average person.

I'd see what you can do about getting your money back. If they don't know how to set up a network properly, they shouldn't be charging for it.

You should charge them "training" fees for each of their "techs"....

[Compiler]

LightScribe.... And idiot idiot... Now, If the burner Actually had INK inside to make a label, that would be neat.

Also... think of the amount of wear & tear that is being caused to the drive. 5min burn, flip 10min write-burn.. naa, takes me 10 seconds to write what I need to know.

[Couriant]

Originally Posted by White Wolf 00

I had the local Nerds on wheels set up my network on a Wednesday morning. Cost me $80. By Wednesday afternoon of the same Wednesday, I had to have them come in and fix the network at another cost of $80. 2 days later, I found someone using my network to download porn. They were sitting right outside my house with a wireless laptop. I then called Encore and they walked me through the setup for the router. They never did tell me about changing the username and passsword. I finally sat down with the manual and my computer. I did a lot of research and found out how to set up the network myself. No problems since. Just goes to show that the geeks and the nerds usually know less than the average person.

wow bad business there. If they did not set up the network correctly, or got a service call on the same day as install they should have not charged.

[JStergis]

Wow, another story:

Someone gave me a Toshiba Satellite to backup for them because "it was going back to the factory for a new motherboard under warranty."

They tell me it's locking up a lot and is generally slow and that was the diagnosis by GS.

I get it here and it won't boot to XP normally, just sits on the splash screen forever with the bar going across. Last Known Good...same deal.

Safe mode works flawlessly, and booting up to it I can tell it's simply loaded with junk. Five minutes worth of an AV scan revealed 52 trojans and various other things. I backup the music, documents, pics, etc. that they wanted.

Meanwhile, I have it for a few days and I'm just doing general stress tests on live linux distros. I can't get it to so much as flinch. I run a whole bunch of diagnostics apps and not one test shows any issue. Scans show loads of malware, and the hard drive is close to (35/40GB) full of random programs I've never heard of. I put a different HDD in it, installed XP, and it's working perfectly.

My plan is to tell them "it certainly isn't the board-for that matter it isn't hardware at all." and offer to restore it with the recovery disks with an explanation of all the malware and random proggys it has on it. Given the amount of stuff on there it'd take way too long to clean it up normally. For some reason, they have set this strange green cursor about double the size of a normal one that animates the normal one flying over it, for example.


I don't know where they got the shot mobo diagnostic, but unless it magically repaired itself, it can't be right.

[Couriant]

Definitely a wrong diagnosis there.

[new tech guy]

Wow, that is pretty bad J. They are really a bunch of knuckleheads.

[JStergis]

Originally Posted by new tech guy

Wow, that is pretty bad J. They are really a bunch of knuckleheads.

I'd say so. Threw a new copy of XP on the old HDD via the restore disks, and it's working perfectly. Needless to say, they're pretty happy that they don't have to send it away for who knows how long to have the board replaced.

[new tech guy]

Good thinking, however i found that its best just to get a plain oem disk which is what ive done so that when i need to reinstall preloaded windows xp installations, i just use that disk instead of using the recovery software. This saves me alot of headache as i dont need to dig the machine out of the bloat. I just worked on a pc earlier today. I have worked on it before and remember between preloaded junk, viruses, and the expired mcafee install on the pc that machine was dead in the water. Used my plain xp pro disc on it to do a clean setup, configured his applications, and fully setup windows and the machine runs like a champ. Today's service i was originally just gonna load microsoft office 07 but he picked up a virus from limewire, then pulled off avg (which i setup) and loaded panda which half cleaned the issue. It wasnt as bad as when i first worked on it but he had an acronis image and i had no idea how far the infection went. Therefore we restored the acronis image, then i loaded office, updated it to sp1 and windows to sp3 and all patches. As well as put avg 8 and switched my original install of zone alarm with comodo firewall and he is running fine again. I also set up a network for him and cleaned out an old pc his grandfather used. And basically i took him from a small shop near us who would've charged allot more and couldn't even set up a router correctly as i wound up reconfiguring that as well. Be nice to actually have someone in the area who knows what there doing. Oh and on top of that i reinstalled the pc his grandfather had which he bought from said shop on a previous call. It had an illeagal install of xp sp1 and spyware gallore. Wiped that as well with a clean xp install and for as old as his old compaq is, it is running fine as well.
And the tech at the shop one day even told me he "inspects" his stuff before selling, heh some inspection.

[new tech guy]

By the way, the client i now have has been happy with everything i do so far and calls me every time he needs somthing done to his pc. that is how a tech should be, its just like a handyman, once you find one that you like and gets a job done right, you always call the same person back for everything. If these companies want trust that is what they need to do. Focus on doing their work right the first time so the customer comes back and that is how profit is made.

[JStergis]

Originally Posted by new tech guy

Good thinking, however i found that its best just to get a plain oem disk which is what ive done so that when i need to reinstall preloaded windows xp installations, i just use that disk instead of using the recovery software. This saves me alot of headache as i dont need to dig the machine out of the bloat. I just worked on a pc earlier today. I have worked on it before and remember between preloaded junk, viruses, and the expired mcafee install on the pc that machine was dead in the water. Used my plain xp pro disc on it to do a clean setup, configured his applications, and fully setup windows and the machine runs like a champ. Today's service i was originally just gonna load microsoft office 07 but he picked up a virus from limewire, then pulled off avg (which i setup) and loaded panda which half cleaned the issue. It wasnt as bad as when i first worked on it but he had an acronis image and i had no idea how far the infection went. Therefore we restored the acronis image, then i loaded office, updated it to sp1 and windows to sp3 and all patches. As well as put avg 8 and switched my original install of zone alarm with comodo firewall and he is running fine again. I also set up a network for him and cleaned out an old pc his grandfather used. And basically i took him from a small shop near us who would've charged allot more and couldn't even set up a router correctly as i wound up reconfiguring that as well. Be nice to actually have someone in the area who knows what there doing. Oh and on top of that i reinstalled the pc his grandfather had which he bought from said shop on a previous call. It had an illeagal install of xp sp1 and spyware gallore. Wiped that as well with a clean xp install and for as old as his old compaq is, it is running fine as well.
And the tech at the shop one day even told me he "inspects" his stuff before selling, heh some inspection.

I would love to run a normal XP disk, but all I have is my copy of XP Pro and this took XP Home. Also, my XP Pro disk is not an OEM copy, so I don't know if their key would have worked. It is quite a headache to get all the bloatware off of the recovered install, though

Originally Posted by new tech guy

By the way, the client i now have has been happy with everything i do so far and calls me every time he needs somthing done to his pc. that is how a tech should be, its just like a handyman, once you find one that you like and gets a job done right, you always call the same person back for everything. If these companies want trust that is what they need to do. Focus on doing their work right the first time so the customer comes back and that is how profit is made.

Same here, I have probably 5 clients, two of which call me back whenever something happens (always their fault messing with things or something). The other three have yet to have another issue, but they're extremely pleased with the job. Two of them are ex-GS customers. They say I get it right the first time, fix the problem quicker, and charge less for it. Four out of five of them are my dad's co-workers. He tells them to call me if they have issues, and they do.

[new tech guy]

What i did atcually to get the setup disc was look for them on bit torrent. Yes i know, they have illegal cracks, and i have one for home, pro, and media center. I try to avoid cracking by making sure they have a legal key for one and if they do i reinstall windows and input that key when asked for it. If they dont then i just use that as the original install was not legal anyway. For instance my one client his dell has an oem and the pro disc i have is a dell oem, therefore the dell key was picked up automatically and never needed acitivation. However, his pop's compaq had an illeagal install and no key so i had no choice on reinstall but to crack. Sometimes the client gets annoying though because they will nag me on instant messenger about something stupid.

[gurutech]

Installing an illegal copy of anything is illegal... You should advise your customers that they had an illegal copy, and you cannot reinstall a copy of XP (or whatever) unless they can either provide the original key, or show proof that they purchased the software (such as a receipt.)

If they show me a receipt, I tell them they will need to contact Microsoft to get a valid key, and they MAY charge for it, which would be separate from my charges.