Inner view of a Seagate 3.5 inches hard disk drive Medalist ST33232A model manufactured in Malaysia in 1998. Parallel ATA interface, ultra DMA mode 2, I/O data-transfer rate 33.3 MB/s max, 3,227 MB, 3 platters, 6 physical read/write heads, spindle speed 4,500 RPM, cache buffer 128 kB, MTBF 300,000 hours, dimensions 146.8 x 102.4 x 26.2 mm, weight 540 grams. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

    When a program on your computer seems to freeze, don’t try to force things right away. Wait a few minutes. This happens to me at least once a week, despite the fact that I’m running on a beast of a computer that’s kept in tip-top condition. Exactly that just happened to me today. I was trying to copy some text from a file, and everything went screwy. I couldn’t save, I couldn’t cancel, so I jumped on Facebook for 5 minutes, and when I went back to the frozen app, everything worked fine. I call these hiccups. The operating system gets confused for a bit, but rights itself after a while. It happens to most everyone regardless of how new or powerful their machine.

    But it happens all the time!

    If it happens often and you’re forced to restart your computer, then you might consider bringing it in. These kinds of symptoms are usually an indication of a damaged hard drive, and could result in loss of data. Please don’t wait until your hard drive crashes.

Originally Top Ten Business Tips for Techs

Posted: March 23, 2013

I received this timely reminder in my mailbox this morning. I’ve been feeling a little jaded lately and feel I haven’t had the “right” attitude toward each and every customer who comes through our door. This article reminded me that every customer is a gem for whom I should be grateful.

There are a lot of other helpful tips below, that can be applied to every business owner or manager. Please read on if you feel you’re due for a refresher.

Top Ten Business Tips for Techs

We all have our strengths and weaknesses when it comes to business practices. Perhaps we’re great with the actual work itself, but the paperwork aspect suffers. Or perhaps we’re great with paperwork but our customer service leaves something to be desired. Then there are those who are organized and seem to have everything else going for them, but they can’t seem to streamline their work processes. Here are the top ten business tips for Techs to help stay on track with all aspects of the Tech industry.

1. Honesty

Honesty is the most important quality your business needs to have. If people can’t trust your word, they won’t trust their computer with you. Being honest doesn’t just have to do with performing work you said you would perform, it has to do with accurate paperwork, accurate prices, and accurate specifications on your work, not only with the customer, but with your employer, your business partner, your staff, and your business associates. There’s no way like dishonesty to burn bridges faster than you can build them. To some, it may seem like you can cut corners and ‘massage the facts’ to turn a quick buck, but in the end, it will hurt your reputation and your business.

2. Integrity

Integrity is part of being honest, but there’s more to it. When you perform work, do you perform it well? Do you give your best, or just half hearted effort? Integrity in your business will go a long way to improving your reputation in your business network. If you perform sloppy work, your referral rate will suffer, and repeat business may become nonexistent. As with honesty, it may seem efficient to cut a few corners and toss things together, but if the quality of the work doesn’t meet up to customer standards, they’ll look elsewhere for tech services.

3. Be Customer Oriented – A ‘People Person’

Decent respect for your clients is a must. Beyond that, being customer oriented, or being a ‘people person’ is another way to boost your business reputation. Mocking your clients behind their back may get a laugh or two, but if word gets back to that client about it, you can be sure you’ll hear about it, or they’ll just take their business elsewhere. On the other hand, reaching out to the client, showing real genuine interest, is a sure-fire way to gain some ground with your reputation. Which service provider would you rather use, the one who remembers your name and your occupation and inquires about you, or one who simply hands you a number and asks you to have a seat? There’s a famous saying, ‘The customer is always right’, and while literally that may not be the case all the time when it comes to tech experience, keeping that mindset will help your customer service aspect of the business to a great extent.

4. Be Reachable

If your clients can’t reach you, or every call simply goes to voicemail, and you don’t return calls right away, your business will suffer. Some use an answering service, or outsource their answering service to an experienced provider. Regardless of the method you use, be sure your clients can reach you at the times you promise to be available. Return phone calls and emails promptly. If you seem to have lost touch with a client, you need to find a balance between pestering them and letting them think you’ve forgotten about them. This will ensure you don’t lose business due to clients looking elsewhere because they simply can’t reach you.

5. Balanced Pricing

A very successful businessman I knew once laid out his pricing plans for me. There was much competition in his industry, and he devised a method of ensuring he had a decent income while making sure he didn’t take on too much work. While this may not work for everyone, it’s something that may be just what small businesses and sole proprietorships need. He priced his rates much lower than the competition. Eventually, as his workload grew, he began to raise his rates until he had just enough work to keep him busy and keep a decent flow of income going, without having to worry about turning business away because he couldn’t handle any more work. If his workload started to lessen, he would drop his rates again until his workload was balanced again, and then he would level off his prices at that rate again. Regardless of the method you use, balanced pricing can keep your workload steady while ensuring you’re not running around with no methods at all, trying to take care of business you can’t handle while doing shoddy rushed work in order to get to the next customer.

6. Keep Up With Tech

Do you subscribe to Tech RSS feeds? The face of the Tech industry is continually changing. New models and new features are brought out frequently, and with all the upgrades and updates, being a Tech means keeping on top of it. Balance is needed, of course. Spending 4 hours a day reading through RSS feeds will cut into your work schedule, so if you can thumb through and narrow your reading down to the essentials, focusing on your general area of expertise, it can help to keep you on top of things while not taking up too much of your time. For instance, if your clients are bringing in their Windows 8 machines already and you haven’t even had the time to toy around with the OS, you may need to take a step back and get back on top before moving forward.

7. Be Organized, and Delegate If You Can

Lack of organization is a pitfall you can avoid. Do you have a digital or paper organizer? If you have a digital organizer, whether it is your smartphone, your Palm device, or PC software, do you have a backup plan? You don’t want your data to be centralized in one device. If you lose that device or if something happens to it, you just lost your organization tool and all the data it held. Paper organizers are still a good choice. You don’t need to scramble for batteries or the charger to use one, and everyone still carries pens. However, some of us type incredibly faster than we can write, so digital organizers hold our attention more often than not as an easier way of entering data.

In the way of organization, being able to schedule appointments and keep everything orderly on a day to day basis will go a long ways towards making us effective Techs. Running from one task to another, helter skelter, is a good way to miss things, forget tools, and more often than not, we lose our heads, and things go downhill from there. The next day may consist of calling customers back, relocating our lost tools and supplies, and then ending the day with everything back in place, but we weren’t able to get to the day’s clients, so tomorrow will be worse. Organization can help us avoid all that, and keep us on a steady pace. Use checklists and calendars if it helps.

If you have business partners, employees, or staff, delegate tasks if you can. While you might not like to relinquish control over certain aspects of the work, if you have a qualified, experienced team that can handle it, delegating will free up your workload, and you might be amazed at the results. If you’re not sure you can delegate tasks, give it a trial run, or do some training so your team is up to the task. You won’t regret it.

8. Write It Down

Are you preparing to do web design and hosting for a client? Migration of data and programs? Virus removal? Write it down. This means preparing and serving contracts for the situations that require it, and preparing reports and checklists for other tasks that don’t require contracts. You don’t want to enter into the scenario of ‘we agreed it would be this much,’ and ‘no we didn’t, we agreed on this much’. If it’s in writing, you can save yourself from major headaches on a regular basis. If someone seems uneasy when you bring out the clipboard and paper, just emphasize that it’s just a written agreement so they have in writing what they’re expecting of you. It’s as much for their protection as it is yours.

As far as the day to day aspect of paperwork, our reliance on digital planners and gadgets may lead to using less of our brainpower as far as memory is concerned, and we might seem to be losing some of it due to lack of use, but you can improve that, by first writing it down, and refreshing your memory later.

9. Streamline Your Processes

We have an app for this, an app for that, a utility that does this, a utility that does that. If you don’t already have a USB Toolkit, start working on one. On a basic drive, you can get bootable repair operating systems for repair and malware removal, and still keep your treasure trove of handy apps and utilities for use outside of the bootable OS. If you offer specific services such as malware removal or computer cleanups, do you have a checklist process? Perhaps you can utilize utilities like D7 to better streamline your processes in one utility rather than using several each time you need to perform work on a machine. Streamlining will make your business much more effective.

10. Keep a Positive, Optimistic Outlook

I’m joking, right? How is this a business tip? A pessimistic, negative attitude leads to increased stress and tension, and that attitude is likely to lead to snapping at clients and customers, or at least being less friendly and personable. While Louie Armstrong sang about it, he wasn’t the first to come up with the idea. When you smile and manifest a positive outlook, it rubs off on your clients, and they’ll look forward to being around you, because you have that effect on them. Having a positive, optimistic outlook will help you avoid stress as well, and that will help you stay focused on your work rather than constantly worrying and second guessing yourself, which can hurt your efficiency.

Conclusion

In the end, how you implement these tips will affect how efficient your business is, the quality of your reputation, and your relationship with your clients, all major aspects that can ‘make or break’ you and your business.

Source: HERE

TP Technologies Web Site: HERE

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By Tony and David Pirog

Ubuntu 12.10 install

Posted: March 7, 2013

We’ve observed that MacOS is slow, clunky and cumbersome compared to Windows.  Whenever we’ve installed Windows on a Mac, it ran significantly faster than MacOS.  Unfortunately for Microsoft, even though Windows (and especially Windows 8) is clearly the vastly superior product in terms of speed, and because it’s so widespread, the virus coders target it almost exclusively, and so, I persevered with MacOS for my daily email and web browsing.

Recently a customer had us install Ubuntu Linux on his computer and that got me thinking.  So, I decided to install it on my Mac Mini.  We were literally blown away by how much faster and smoother it is than MacOS!  I have a 2009 Mac Mini with a Core 2 Duo processor, a Solid State Drive, and 8 GB of ram, yet Apple’s OS was sluggish and, at times, unresponsive.  Now I can feel the speed!  No slow-downs, no freeze-ups, everything runs smoothly, and it’s fast (unlike MacOS), which is what I expected from a computer with these specifications.  For you Mac users please consider, unless you need specialized software on your Mac that doesn’t exist on Ubuntu, come to us and let us do you a favor by installing Ubuntu Linux on your machine. You WON’T regret it!

In fact, if you’re a Windows user, and you want to avoid viruses, Ubuntu is 100% safe (unlike MacOS which is mostly safe), and we can even install your Microsoft Office and many other Windows apps in Ubuntu seamlessly!  Even if you want to keep your Windows, don’t worry you can have both.  Perhaps you’d like us to install it on your machine? If so, we’re your team. Call and ask for details.

Finally, don’t forget we can repair computers from anywhere in the continental USA.  You can currently ship anything that fits into a USPS medium flat rate box for under $11.  If you have friends or relatives downstate, or in another state, please let them know.  Why go to a local amateur or pay big box prices when shipping is so cheap?

Thanks everyone!

Related articles

• Steam: Linux user percentage close to Mac, Ubuntu 12.10 most popular
• Window 8 and Mac OS X Make Way, Steam for Linux Is Coming Through
• Ubuntu 12.10 Will Overtake Windows 8 on Steam, Valve Survey Reveals
• Steam: Linux Market Share Has Almost Doubled Compared To January
• Not so fast: The notebook market still has room for disruption

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So, you’d like to open up two versions of an excel spreadsheet to compare differences row-by-row. Seems simple, right? Just open them both up in separate windows and then arrange the two windows side-by-side. Just kidding, it’s not that easy. For some reason, Excel spreadsheets all open in the same application window, which is a real pain in the neck. Never fear! There’s a way to view two Excel spreadsheets side-by-side without using two computers.

Step 1

Open the first Excel spreadsheet.

Step 2

Open the second Excel spreadsheet. You’ll notice that there are now two taskbar buttons for Excel. But no matter which one you click, it pops up in the same window. Frustrating!

 Step 3

In Excel, Click the View tab.

Step 4

In the Window section, Click View Side by Side. By default, this will show your two Excel spreadsheets in separate panes, stacked horizontally.

Step 5

To change the orientation, Click Arrange All. Choose Vertical to have them side-by-side, with one in a left-hand column and the other in the right-hand column.

This is how I prefer to view my spreadsheets.

Step 6

To compare content, Click Synchronous Scrolling. Now, when you scroll down on one window, the other will scroll down, too, making it even easier to compare differences.

Enjoy!

Visit our business site here: http://www.tpteq.com

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Image via Wikipedia

A customer came to us looking to clean up his iTunes duplicates and rebuild his iTunes library. As we searched the web for answers, we found that no one seemed to have a good solution so we ended up figuring it out for ourselves.

What follows works on a PC, but we are confident the same technique can be used on a Mac.

Step by step instructions:

1. Move your iTunes library out of your Music folder (Desktop seems like a reasonable place to move it to.)
2. Check that the Music folder is empty then open iTunes. It will create a new empty iTunes library.
3. Exit iTunes.
4. Delete all the files in the old iTunes base folder (iTunes Library Extras.itdb, iTunes Library Genius.itdb, iTunes Library.itl, iTunes Music Library.xml, and “sentinel.”)
5. Modify the old iTunes music as needed (remove duplicates etc.).
6. Move the old iTunes library back to your system Music folder.
7. Open iTunes.
8. Click on “File”, then on “Add Folder to Library,” then drill down to your Music folder and select it.

iTunes will now rescan your music folder and rebuild the iTunes library with your modified content.

That’s it. You’re done! Enjoy your music.

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Copying the email address works in Firefox, Opera, and Chrome. Surprise! It doesn’t work in Internet Explorer! Since we don’t recommend IE anyway, we suggest you not use it for this purpose.
That’s it. Piece of cake, right? 

Tony and Dave.

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Image by mick / Lumix via Flickr

By Computech. (Click here for the original article.)

In the wake of recent events overseas it has become clear that we need to be more aware of how important securing our phone and voice mail is. The hacking scandal in Great Britain has revealed just how easy it can be to break into someone’s voice mail – that is if they haven’t taken some simple steps to secure it.

Without taking the time to protect your phone and voice mail anyone with your phone number and a little know-how could potentially access, or delete, important personal information. Most of us probably aren’t too worried about someone listening to our messages, but as we’re seeing now it only takes one event or one incriminating message finding the wrong ears to trigger serious – sometimes life threatening – repercussions.

Securing your phone and voice mail doesn’t have to take a lot of time, and you don’t have to be any sort of tech guru to enjoy a fair level of security. Here are some simple tips to protect your phone and voice mail from the most common avenues of attack.

Lock your phone and voice mail

Tabloid journalists at the center of the previously mentioned scandal were able to retrieve voice mail messages by using default passwords. If you’ve yet to setup a password for your voice mail, there may be no protection at all. If you’re able to access your voice mail from your home phone or cell without entering a password, go into the settings and ensure that it does ask you for your password every time. Without having to enter your password every time would-be hackers can use caller ID spoofing to masquerade as your phone and are granted the same access. So take a minute to select a password, add it to your voice mail and keep your phone locked.

Avoid common passwords

Using an easy to guess or common password is virtually the same as having no password. In a recent survey of iPhone locking passwords 15% of subjects used one of the following 10 passwords:

1234, 0000, 2580, 1111, 5555, 5683 (Spells “LOVE”), 0852, 2222, 1212, 1998

If your password is one of these then it’s time for a change. Check with a friend and see if they can guess your password – do you want them reading your voice mail? I didn’t think so.

Use different passwords for different systems

It’s important for all services and devices – not only phone related – to avoid using the same password over and over. You might give someone the unlock password for your phone in order to allow them to place a call, you wouldn’t want that to be the same password you use for ATM withdrawals. If you happen to lose your phone its unlock password can be extracted with software, if it’s the same password you use for voice mail and banking then you may end up losing more than your phone. It can be difficult to juggle a variety of passwords in your head (especially given the next tip) but it really does improve the security of your accounts greatly. Having only one password is like having a single key which opens every door in your house, everything in your office, starts your car and unlocks your diary; sure it’s convenient but if someone makes a copy you could be in big trouble.

If you find that you simply can’t remember new passwords or more than a couple at a time I highly recommend Joshua Foer’s recent book, Moonwalking With Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything.

Change your password regularly

Yes, it’s a precaution we all know we should practice but for the most part don’t. I won’t belabour the point; suffice it to say that if someone has deciphered your password without your knowledge changing it regularly is the best defense.

Lock, Reset or Cancel your lost phone

You’ve lost your phone. You’ve called it, you can’t hear it ring anywhere and no one answers – or worse yet it’s not on. If it’s an iPhone and you’ve enabled “Find My iPhone” you can login and attempt to locate, lock or reset your lost friend. If these types of options aren’t available with your handset, call your mobile provider and have them put your account on hold. They may be able to locate or remotely reset the phone to keep your data away from prying eyes, but at the very least you can put your account on hold so that no one may make phone calls on your behalf. Don’t wait too long before making this call; there is always a chance that your phone was stolen with malicious intent.

Be aware

I’ve always enjoyed this particular quote which I first heard in a film, “Where there is doubt, there is no doubt.” Extra points if you can guess what film. In the context of keeping your phone and voice mail secure I see this quote to mean, if you notice something that causes you to doubt the security of one of your accounts – treat it as if it has been compromised. After all, changing the password is a quick and easy process. If you login to your voice mail to find new messages have already been listened to or someone tells you they left you voice mail that you never received – don’t doubt, just change your password. In most cases there’s probably no cause to be alarmed, but you’ve nothing to lose by changing your password. So be aware of your accounts, and if something concerns you don’t ignore it.

With these simple tips you can transform not only your phone and voice mail accounts, but almost any type of account, from a shoebox under the bed into a one ton vault bolted to the foundation of your home.

Got viruses? Call us for help. Click here for more information.

Related articles

• Phone hacking is much easier than you think (cbsnews.com)
• Simple Passwords Open Door to Hackers (online.wsj.com)

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Image by Gerard’s World via Flickr

Computer Viruses: Getting a Mac is no longer the answer.

Summary:

• Virus activity seems to be on an upswing and you don’t have to be visiting porn sites to be infected.
• Mac’s are being targeted due to their increasing popularity.
• We’ve been testing an alternative to Windows and Mac called “Joli OS.” It’s awesome and it’s much safer from viruses than either of the big two.
• Call us if you are interested. We’ll back up all your data, install Joli OS, and save your data back to your computer.

• The curse of being too popular: Apple Macs now seen as a ‘soft target’ for spreading viruses
• Are Apple Mac Users No Longer Safe from Viruses?

We often get customers ask about whether it would be a good idea to buy a Mac to avoid viruses. We’ve always said that Macs are expensive to buy, expensive to repair, and limited software-wise. Now we have the added drawback that hackers are going after them.

We at TPteQ have another solution: Joli OS

• Check out a Youtube video here:  Joli OS – Your new personal cloud desktop

Bottom line: I love it. If I were using my computer for internet, Facebook, games, news, email, documents and such, I’d drop Windows in a second and go with Joli as my only OS. It’s, cheap (free actually… just the cost of our service), it’s legal, you don’t have to buy new hardware, it’s robust and safe from viruses. What more could you want?

If you are interested, call us at 630-447-9067, or 888-847-2955 to set up an appointment.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

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Image via CrunchBase

Over time, as you install more and more programs, you notice that your computer begins to get sluggish. This is preventable if you take a little extra time during the install phase. Almost every program you install will add unnecessary components that start and run in memory every time you boot your computer. What we want to do is minimize the number of programs that run automatically, and prevent those unnecessary extras that get installed when you choose “Express Install.”

Here’s the easy solution: Go to http://www.ninite.com and see if the program you want is listed there. If it is, select it (and any other programs you might want), download the installer at the  bottom of the page, and run. It will install the latest version, without any extras, or unneeded toolbars (like Bing, Google, Yahoo, and Ask). You can also select programs that are already installed to upgrade to the latest version.

If your program isn’t listed on Ninite, just follow these simple rules of thumb:

1. If the installer asks you to choose something like “Express install” or “Custom Install”, or in any other way gives you the option to choose the components, always select “Custom” or “Choose …”. DO NOT select “Express” or “Install All”.

2. When you are choosing what to install, carefully uncheck any and all of the following: “Google Toolbar”, “Ask Toolbar”, “Yahoo”, “Bing”, “Real Networks”, or anything that says “Toolbar.”

3. Complete the installation.

This will keep your browsers uncluttered too.

That’s all for now folks!

Check out our Villa Park, Illinois computer repair site at: http://tpteq.com/Illinois/Villa-Park.php

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Image by RobotMachine via Flickr

This may be the most important article you will ever read by us!

We know your computer data is important to you. If you haven’t done anything about it yet, what’s stopping you? Give us a call. We’d love to help.

Here’s some food for thought:

THE PROBLEM

SOLUTIONS

RAID Mirroring: This is primarily a quick way to get back up and running and should never be depended on for backing up your data … for a number of reasons. What it doesn’t do is protect your data if the computer is destroyed or stolen. Like any on-site backup solution, a fire, flood, lightning strike, theft of the computer, or other catastrophic event could leave you with no backup at all. This is where keeping multiple external drives and online backup come in.

Multiple external hard drives: We encourage our business customers to buy two portable hard drives, swap them out and take one off site once a week. Then, if their system crashes for any reason, they buy a new computer and reload their data fast. If the on-site portable drive gets stolen or damaged, they can bring in the other one while their computer is being rebuilt, repaired or set up, and quickly restore their data without losing more than 7 days worth.

Online backup: Covers the worst case scenario when all on-site hardware has been damaged and up to 7 days of data lost. Downloading from off-site locations can be slow, which is why we recommend the portable drive option. The off-site backup by our preferred vendor keeps as constant, complete, up-to-date copies of all your files as possible and allows for the recovery of that lost 7 days of data.

Call us at 888-847-2955 or 630-447-9067 to talk about our recommendations for online backup. Even if you’re confident of your backup plan, it might be good to call us in to check it over. It can’t hurt to get a second opinion.

Disaster Recovery Plan: Our “Multiple External Drives and Off-site Backup” strategy is low-cost, assures virtually no data loss, and results in minimal disruption. The worst case disaster recovery scenario looks like this:

1. Buy a new computer or repair the damaged one.
2. Restore your data using the off-site portable drive.
3. Make up the balance from the online backup site.

Image copy of system hard drive: The final option we offer and recommend to our business customers is to clone their system hard drive and take it off-site. In the case of a complete system meltdown or hard drive crash, the drive can be brought in, mounted and the system back up and running in no time.

Forensic data recovery: This is what happens when you haven’t got a backup. We have a customer who paid a technician to set up their backup, and so thought they were set. When their hard drive crashed they found out that the backup plan didn’t work and they were stuck with all their business data on a broken hard drive. They sent it to a lab and paid in the region of $2,000 for forensic recovery, their system was down for 2 weeks, and some of their files were never recovered. Even if you pay through the nose for recovery you can’t guarantee all your data back from a damaged drive.

SUMMARY:

It’s still a good idea to sign up for online backup. Seriously, one backup really isn’t good enough.

No one is twisting your arm, but if you don’t act, and your hard drive crashes we’ll be delighted to take your money to recover the data. We prefer if our customers and clients are educated and knowledgeable enough to know better though. Please do yourself a favor: spend the time and implement a backup plan so that you won’t need to panic when calamity hits. We’ve told you what needs to be done, so what’s stopping you?

CONTACT US:

Call if you need help setting up the right backup plan for your needs and budget, or if you need someone to review your current backup plan. Once again, our number: 888-847-2955 or 630-447-9067.

Visit our Villa Park site at: http://www.tpteq.com/Illinois/Villa-Park.php

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