FAQs of Life

I’ve been thinking a lot about what people’s expectations of the computer repair industry since watching a recent CBC “undercover investigation.” The premise was a TV new producer had 10 different technicians from various chains come to a private home to diagnose and hopefully repair a broken computer and the visit of each tech was filmed. Of course, the computer had been expertly sabotaged by some “highly respected” computer professionals and professors at the local university who proceeded to claim that the problem would cost $25 to fix. Now the actions of one of the techs was outright deplorable, the other nine techs seemed to preform reasonable troubleshooting techniques. While the reporter and her band of pros back at the university find fault in the performance of the 7 of the 10 techs, the majority of their critiques are based on their unrealistic expectations.

What you need to know before calling for in-home repair

1. What is it going to cost? Does the provider charge a flat-fee or is it hourly? Is there a charge for travel? In the CBC investigation, the “customer” is continually shocked when presented with the bill. The charges were between $60-$120 for labor which is well within the norm for this type of service. Ask about the charges BEFORE you schedule the service!
2. If your technician works for a company that sells hardware or software, they will most likely attempt to “up sell” a hardware or software upgrade. This is how they make money.
3. At the same time, it may very well be cheaper to replace a computer than to pay an hourly fee + parts to repair your 6 year old PC. I have made this recommendation several times with an clear conscience. I’d rather a customer spend $500-600 dollars replacing an old machine than pay me for 2-3 hours (at $125/hr) to get another six months of use out of a machine. In the long run it will be cheaper to replace than repair.
4. Think about why in-home repair costs what it does. While most PC techs enjoy what they do, this is not charity and the businesses have to make money or they would not exist. With travel time between sites and other overhead, from my experience it is difficult to have more than 3-4 visits in a single day. Plus, when scheduling appointments, you have to give a cushion in case a job runs longer than anticipated. How much would car mechanic charge for servicing your car in your garage?

Most of the folks that are in the computer repair business are not out to gouge you but you need to have realistic expectations and ask questions before getting started!

As a IT professional/computer geek, I have to stay current with the latest mainstream (meaning Microsoft) operating systems. While I’ve had access to Vista since November of 2006, I’m still running XP and have absolutely zero motivation for “upgrading.”   And I’m not alone. While XP to Vista upgrades are very rare due to the Vista’s hefty hardware requirements,  business customers continue to order new computers, fully Vista compatible, with Windows XP preinstalled! Just last week, due to high demand Microsoft announced OEMs would be allowed to sell computers preloaded with Windows XP until June 2008. At that time Vista will have been out for over 18 months!

I directly support nearly 200 desktop computers over a variety of industries and provide second-level support to organizations with another 500-600 computers.  Of all these computers, there are about 10 computers (7 are at one client) that have Vista installed on them.  All of these computers were purchased new with Vista preinstalled.  Since Vista was widely released in Febuary 2007, I have personally deployed somewhere in the neighbor 40 computers that were ordered with Windows XP despite the availability of Vista at the same price.

From my experience, here’s what is holding back the adoption of Vista:

1. Despite the marketing campaign touting the WOW! there are no “killer” applications or features. What does Vista do that XP doesn’t do better or faster? There are a few “neat” features, the graphics are prettier but that is no motivation for a business to move to a new OS.
2. Compatibility issues.  Cisco, Intuit (Quickbooks), Palm, and Dell (printers) are just a few of the companies I’ve encountered over the past six months whose products have Vista compatibility issues.  I’ve had problems with Vista integrating with other Microsoft products (specifically Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007).  Due to the drastic changes in the security model employed in Vista, many applications and peripherals that worked in XP have to be modified to work in Vista (if they’ll work at all) since many of the behind the scenes stuff changed to increase “security.”  While Microsoft is to blame for the decades of lax security in previous versions of Windows that allowed developers to ignore security issues to be swept aside, these companies literally had years to prepare their products to work with Vista.
3. Performance.  On hardware that exceeds the recommended specs for running Vista, XP is faster.  I don’t have any fancy graphs or charts to prove this but it isn’t hard to see it.  Simple tasks such as coping files doesn’t work well.