Been about a couple of weeks since my last blog here in Columbus, Ohio. Been really busy, here's of the highlights of some of the laptops I've worked on since my last blog.
A traveling comedian was here in Columbus and had an HP netbook that was bogged down with some viruses and spyware. Not really sure how I feel about netbooks yet. They're great for quick lookups on the internet and fit in the purse or bookbag but but so do most of the smartphones on the market. The have a large solid state drive on them but don't expect them to be as powerful as their larger laptop counterparts. Kind of limited on storage so if you're looking to keep music, video or pictures on them you may want to consider external storage mediums when you purchase one. In any case, a quick loading of Ad-Aware & AVG and several Windows updates later this guy was back in business and telling jokes.
The next customer had an Apple MacBook Pro that had met with root beer and believe it or not the laptop won. This particular Apple laptop had 4 wide electrical tape covering the bottom of the entire keyboard tray protecting the motherboard against anything spilled into the laptop. The customer was very fortunate that Apple had designed this laptop so well. That being said, it still took almost a complete disassembly of the laptop to clean up all traces of the frosty beverage. Be careful if you eat or drink around your laptop, they don't like to get wet.
The last laptop I'll be talking about was a mess. This customer had taken her laptop to Geeksquad and contacted HP support about it. I've had many customers have regrets about this very type of thing because they think they're going to get great support and they have no way of knowing if the guy or gal behind the counter or on the other side of the phone is someone just out tech school our an experienced IT consultant with many years of experience. In my experience with customers, it's usually the former based on them coming to me after the service provided to them. In any case, this customer had quite a few issues going on with her laptop. She initially had called me because she couldn't print or get on the internet through Internet Explorer. Upon closer examination, I had found that the customer service she had contacted before had used remote login programs to access her computer and had failed to remove software or instructed her how to do so when finished. I also had found that they had disable several critical system processes that prevented her computer from updating Antivirus, Antispyware and Window's update. The system event log files I examined showed many, many conflicts with the Remote Login feature that was installed. The customer service had also installed many, many startup programs and screwed up her printer drivers by doing a partial install of her printer software and telling her to shut the computer off in mid stream. NEVER shut off a computer in the middle of installation of anything, especially hardware. There are many, many things happening accessing window's system files and you are guaranteed to screw things up. I managed to get her computer up and running to a tolerable condition in my opinion. I also asked when her business would have some downtime so that I could do a complete system restore on her computer since there were many other issues going on and I still could not get the USB controllers to behave properly. In short, just because you have a warranty with your laptop and wherever you bought it from does not mean they're going to fix it or make things better. I'm not trying to sell myself but I let my work speak for itself, give me a call and I'll give you an honest and fair assesment of your computer. Happy Easter everyone.
BRM Laptop Repair3171 N. High St.
Columbus, OH 43202
www.BRMLaptopRepair.comlaptop.repair@gmx.com
614-313-9901
