New England PC Services is "In The News"

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Unsolicated Testimonials are Great!

For years I've professed, and those who know me will attest to that fact, that talking about how great you are and pounding your own chest just doesn't go that far in relaying how good (or great) you really are at what you do.  How many people, when talking about their business say things like "We are fairly decent at what we do" or "When it comes to roofing, I'd say we are the fourth best roofers around"?  Fact is that everyone says they are the best at what they do, but few actually believe it.  The public has become deaf when it comes to actually listening to the self-proclaimed "best in the business" so much so that they not only don't believe it, but in many cases, have created the ability to disallow the words from actually registering in their brains.  That is why unsolicited testimonials and referrals are so refreshing and satisfying (especially when totally unexpected).  I wanted to share one with you that I personally received today on my LinkedIn account from a customer that I provided a service to and provided him with the same level of service I know everyone on my staff provides to every customer.  It certainly put a smile on my face.

“Scott did a great job with "cleaning up" one PC in my office and delivered us a very professional report on the situation. We are so happy with the results we signed up the whole office for his annual service.” January 20, 2010

Top qualities: Great Results , Good Value , High Integrity

Will Hackler

Beware of the Extras

Have you ever downloaded some program you wanted for your computer, but it seemed like it took forever to go through all those screens to click "NEXT" and "AGREE" and "CONTINUE"?  Well here's another fact for you:  Most people when installing new software just want to install it and don't actually look at the screens during installation.  What you miss is the opportunity to save yourself disk space as well as problems and spy-ware.  Most often, these free programs also come with other programs that don't seem too intrusive at the time.  As an example, maybe a "deal-finder" or a search bar or a "free membership", but they all come back to bite you.  So the advice for the day is "Always read each screen when installing new programs and unless you are certain that the extraneous software does not add junk to your computer, make sure you deselect it for install".

Smiley Emoticons, Cool Screensavers, etc - NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is a topic that I hope readers of this blog will take to heart.  This is what is known as "unpaid consulting" (from my old world) and in fact actually may prevent us from getting more business to fix messed up computers, but heck, I need to give some good advice if I want this blog to work, right?  I also recognize that this topic will probably not be applicable in the business environment, but in homes all across these United States, people are downloading and installing "Smiley Emoticons", "Cool Screensavers", "Cute Page Colors", "Online Coupon printers". "Incredimail", "Search bars with cute cartoons on them", and the list goes on and on.

Do these fun faces look familiar?
STAY AWAY!  They are hazardous!

As an expert in this field, and believe me when I say this, the damage being done to your computer every time you install one of these silly things far outweighs the "cuteness" or "coolness".  It will guarantee that in the near future, your computer will be slowing down and getting loaded with junk that you didn't want on your computer.  Future posts will go into spyware and malware issues, but suffice it to say, most things that are free (especially if you aren't a computer whiz) have hidden things attached to it in order to grab information from you and in order to have companies market and spam you to death in addition to installing other programs that you didn't even know were installed in the meantime.  Take it to the bank, the more you install those things on your computer, the more I will be going to the bank with your money that you could have saved by taking this warning to heart.

Future Musicians

My son Jake (on the right) and his friend Mitchell Robbins (no relation) are in beginner band. The heavy snow came down this morning, so what better thing to do than to have Mitchell over for a duet. These kind of videos just put a smile on your face, don't they?

My 15 Minutes of Fame on the Late Show

Well I was told to populate this blog with interesting and fun things, so I figured "What could be more interesting and fun than this"?  It was 1991 and I was flown to New York City by the Late Show with David Letterman.  But there is more to the story.  There's actually a moral to the story.  I worked with a guy named Michael Frey (a very funny guy).  He actually did this silly trick in front of me.  I said, "Mike, you need to be on Stupid Human Tricks".  But he was lazy and said, "You call and see if you can get me on".  His disinterest and my love for making people laugh, combined with my larger ears and my burning desire to meet David Letterman, got me thinking.  Why should I help make someone else who has little to no interest in making this happen, when in reality I would love the opportunity to go.  Well the fact that back in the day (pre-operation to get my ears pinned back), my big ears made the trick even funnier.  I learned how to do it and the rest, as they say, is history.

Enjoy

Go the Extra Mile for a Customer

So many companies these days are so quick to point fingers or end communication with you if/when they hear that something doesn't benefit them or directly involve them. I think that is why so many people are turned off when dealing with some larger companies. So I wanted to share a story with you about a customer of ours.

This woman has a computer and has been very frustrated lately with it. She became a customer of ours a little over a month ago. We logged in and set it up with all the software and fixed it up so it was performing at its peak performance level (but you will soon hear why that level was not acceptable).

She called me a day after we cleaned up what was a mess of a computer. There was virus protection already installed on it, but that was the extent of their maintenance before engaging New England PC Services. In any case, she called me and said, "the computer is running horribly". Well, I knew for a fact that it had nothing to do with what we did. As a matter of fact, we improved the current state of her computer. So I was scratching my head and wondering what was wrong. I connected to her computer remotely and sure as heck, she was right. It was so slow. But again, "not my problem". That said, she is a customer of ours and rather than saying "You're on your own....", I spent 30 minutes on the phone with her asking her questions and trying to diagnose this issue with her (and not charging her anything for it). I heard a buzzing noise. I asked her if that was her computer making that noise. She said yes. I knew then what was wrong. Her hard drive was failing and hanging up the machine. I told her that we could come and install a new hard drive for her, but that she could save money if she brought it to a reputable retail store and asked them to Ghost her drive and install a new one with all the data and programs, etc. from her original drive.

She called me the next day. The computer store she brought it to, installed a new hard drive, but did not install any of the programs, nor any of the files that she had. So, if it were not for the off-site back-up program that we installed days before, she would have lost all her pictures, documents, music and other files that she wanted/needed.

So now she was back to square one. We spent 2 hours reinstalling all our programs on her machine, recovering her files from the remote server and putting her machine all back to the point where it was again. And we did it all for FREE. Did we have to? NO we did not. But we did because we feel that going the extra mile for a customer goes a long way.