Lisa Hendrickson is the owner of Call That Girl. She is an Outlook Expert and Microsoft 365 Consultant.
Do it yourself. A common phrase for a lot of people who either prefer to be self reliant or are looking to save on costs.
But what happens when a “do it yourself” attempt ends up causing more problems than you started with? This is a very common issue faced by people seeking to repair their own electronic devices, and more often than not will lead to costlier repairs than if the repair had been done professionally in the first place. I am not saying that only professionals should fix handheld devices and other electronics. What I want readers to understand is that they need to consider if the risks being taken outweigh any benefits gained from attempting to perform repairs yourself.
For instance, let us say that a person has a high end smart phone and the camera stops working. They want to save some money and decide to order a part online and use a guide they found elsewhere (perhaps a step by step video) of how to perform the repair they want. This person gets home, picks up the part from his or her mail, goes out some tools and goes to work. This is, from my experience, how most customers start off their attempts at fixing their own products. The person may or may not be successful in their endeavor, but immediately there are four big issues with the process they have undertaken.
1. The new part they ordered. There are hundreds of places online where people can order parts from for more devices than I can conceive. The issue is that not every part is manufactured the same and most people do not have have any idea if the place they are ordering from is reputable and dealing in manufacturer grade parts or cheap knock offs. It may sound silly, but there are a lot of vendors out there that deal in parts that either will not last or will not fit/work at all for the repair being attempted. A company that specializes in repair services knows their vendors and the quality of parts they are ordering (and will typically also offer a limited warranty the repair for said part should any issues arise).
2. The next problem is the guide the customer is using. This is always a very hit or miss issue. Some guides may be very accurate and amazingly well presented, others could skip important information that lead to huge mistakes. Even more important to remember is that the people who often make these guides (specifically quality ones) are very practiced at what they do. They know which connections are easy to break accidentally, when to avoid putting too much tension on a part and exactly where that little clip is hiding that is preventing that one piece from separating for the next step. The average person, lacking this learned knowledge, is prone to making simple little mistakes that cause more harm than realized until after they close the electronic device up and try to use it again.
3. Something as mundane as tools may not come to mind when doing repairs, but more and more electronic devices are using specialized tools and drivers. If a person tries to use a substitute, they will likely cause unintended damages to the device being worked on. Should someone decide to go out and buy what they need for this specific repair that margin of money saved by doing it oneself begins to dwindle very quickly.
4. ESD, or electrostatic discharge, is the bane of every electronic repair. The tiniest, unnoticed discharge of static electricity can permanently ruin a circuit board. Sometimes the problem is not even apparently right away, but instead causes failures down the line. A good repair center will have anti-static equipment on hand to safely repair electronic devices without risk of such issues.
So next time that smart phone, tablet, mp3 player or other similar device breaks make sure to ask yourself if the small benefit of trying to fix it on your own is worth the effort and risks involved.
We offer free email quotes and questions, so before you jump on in that tiny device and possibly ruin ribbons, little teeth and whatnot, email us! info@callthatgirl.biz
This blog is a cross blog by Eric Salce of Gem State Computers
I much like everyone else like a good deal, and what deal is better than free? Sure we have been there, hanging out online, and you stumble across, or you see an ad for software that speeds up your computer, or it could copy your DVDs and CD’s. The best part, it’s all free. Or is it? I think most people will find that this software comes with a very steep price. While many people think the only way you get infected with virus or malware is downloading pirated music, and movies, or to be surfing material of a more adult/questionable nature. While some infections are very obvious, for instance if you download a video or music file and it contains a program, then most likely you will find some form of malware waiting to jump on to your system.
One of the most common ways computers are infected is by downloading free software. While not all free software is bad many free software comes bundled with tagalong programs or other malware. How do you know if you are infected? On sign of infection is the toolbars that have been added without your knowledge. Another Sign of infection is that your computer will slow down, as more and more spyware use up your systems resources, you will find your computer to slow to a crawl. What should you do if you find yourself infected? You should find yourself a friendly computer Technician to get your system cleaned up. If the infection is caught early then the damage should be minimal, and should be a very straight forward, inexpensive, and easy to repair. So just stop and think about what you are installing. If you are not sure give us a call and let us tell you what paid/free software might meet your need.
After all it’s like mamma used to say, if it’s too good to be true, then it most likely is.
Eric Salce of Gem State Computers
Welcome to my Outlook FYI series of blogs. We will be covering these topics in a series as there is just way too much information to handle in one blog. I felt that these FYI’s were important to discuss because so many people use Outlook every day, for so many things. And Outlook is just not for email anymore. I also apologize, there are no “How to” in my blogs, just FYI’s. This blog will just explain things hopefully better for you to understand.
Many of us use Outlook in our everyday computing needs. It’s a wonderful tool, but very misunderstood by the common user. And maybe by some not so common people. Many of us are really married to it and I am all for it because it’s been my favorite software program since 2000, but it can be tricky and problematic.
Last weekend one of my clients took a computer to a “big box” place to buy a new computer and in a panic, had them do a data back up from his old computer to get the files quickly. When he got his computer back, he asked many times about the Outlook files and they told him, “We couldn’t get those files, they were corrupted”. He panics and comes back to us, where we find his files in no time flat. Why is that? Because we know where Microsoft hides the PST files, their technician must not have known. Years of data, calendar appointments, tasks, contacts, emails, archives…all could have been gone in one fast “Nope” type answer. Let me explain…
By default, when you set up Outlook for the first time, it creates what is called a PST (personal storage). You usually complete a set up wizard, fill in all of your email account information and happy days, email is back and running again! Email is working fine, but…Houston, we have a problem.
Again by default, the Outlook PST file on older computers that have XP and Windows Vista are set up in a hidden folder (not in Windows 7, it’s in the Documents folder now), way deep in some folders that are not shown by default. Windows says “click here to show hidden files” the average person would never think of going to find. Nor do they really make it easy to find unless you know how to navigate around the Outlook properties and settings. To be honest, very few of my clients know where this file is or know it exists.
So you may ask, why should you need to know where that PST is? Because it stores everything you do in Outlook. If you are using Pop3 for email, that’s where your email probably is being downloaded. Using the calendar? That’s where your calendar is. Contacts, Tasks, Auto-fill name, archive files….Yep, all there and hidden. And please never assume your emails are being kept on your server because that is not the truth in many cases either. (That will be our topic next Wednesday though, email).
I think of Outlook like this, it’s like buying a house but you don’t know where the furnace is. You know you have heat and can manage the thermostat…but don’t know where the furnace really is. Could you imagine that? Buying a house with no furnace, then one day you notice something is wrong and you can’t find the furnace at all. But you Google it and find the house builders buried your furnace underneath your basement. That is what Microsoft does with your default PST, hides it under the basement pretty much. And when you find the furnace, let’s say you can’t get it out of the basement because the house builders never told you how to get in and find it nor do they allow you to just open that basement door and see your furnace. You can see the outside of it, but you can’t see the pilot light to know its running. Your PST is in those deep hidden folders and you can’t just double click them to open them. You must open them through two or three special ways and the common person, again…doesn’t know how to do this. (I hope I didn’t lose you on the furnance comparison, but it’s the only thing that I could think of this am!)
Whenever I am remoted into a client’s machine and they are missing an archive folder, I go and find it open it. Most times I get this, “How did you do that”. Such a mystery that Microsoft really didn’t need to do to people.
To close, today’s topic of the infamous Outlook PST file was a just a start of my series of Outlook blogs. I will try to keep up with these every Wed and will continue to post in this blog, so favorite it and come back next week! Please share with your friends on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Newsletters, etc. If you or a loved one are in a need of an Outlook intervention (haha), or just need assistance, I am the Outlook gal here at Call That Girl and I know it well. Let me help you and quickly!
When your Outlook is not playing well… Googling repairs is fine and I recommend you do that to learn, but when it comes to actually repairing it, call us first. I can help you get back to work fast. To book an appointment to see if you are backing up your PST, click on the monitor below.
Upcoming topics
Just got an email from Facebook Administration. Looked real, but I got this awhile back. As a daring person who troubleshoots malware and virus attacks everyday, I clicked on it out of curiosity and of course got sent to a weird banking site. I closed it immediately and ran a full scan of our malware detetion program.
Yep fake-no malware though on my computer for just clicking on it. Not sure how bad it could have got though if I had gone to the banking site and did stuff, I just closed the window quick.
What can you do when you get these emails? How can you tell when they are fake or not? You really can’t by just seeing it. It looks just like every other Facebook email notification I get about events, messages, etc. It’s pretty sad though that Facebook is getting hacked, has my email address, is sending me fake emails and Facebook doesn’t give a shit. Pretty sad, and I’m tired of it. Soon here I will be leaving Facebook for G+ due to issues just like this.
Here is a picture of it for you all to see…
If this blog post helped you or you enjoyed it, please share with your friends by clicking on the links below to share with your Facebook or LinkedIn networks! If you need help, we we are here to help!
Lots of people ask me how I manage all of the stuff I have going on with the business and the side projects. It hasn’t been easy in the past year to manage all of this growth! We ended up opening the third store, landed a large contract, hired nine employees + two contractors, grew the LinkedIn group that I own and I published an ebook–all since the new year started. That’s a lot in nine months and that is a lot on the “to do list”. Not only is that all hard to keep track of, I use many computers for work and keeping one to do list on one computer is not good for me. So I found a nifty solution to help me with this organizational stuff.
Here is what I do to keep it all under control. Below are the steps.
1.) I have installed on my computer (and all my techs computers too) a tool called “Dropbox”. Click on the link to install it for free and use 2 gigs.
2.) Then I create a folder called “to do”.
3.) Then I open notepad (to find, go to the Start menu->Accessories->Notepad) and start my to do list, be sure to save in your new Dropbox folder.
4.) Then go round up your to do lists from other sources (take off your paper list, emails, all the post it notes by your desk, etc) and type them all up, order doesn’t matter right now.
5.) Now after you have the list all typed up, underneath the lists type this in
6.) After that, start at the top of your list and take those items and cut/paste them into the days below. Not everything on your list needs to be done on Monday and as you go through the list, you will see that Monday’s items are more critical and Friday’s are more “back burner”.
7.) Now save your file.
8.) At this point, you should have a nice tidy list of things to do everyday for the week, your paper work should all be shredded and your desk in order. HAH! Or not…but mine is usually quite tidy as I try to keep that file open all day/everyday. When I am on the phone with someone and I need to call them back, I put it on my “day” of the to do list. If I have to do something before that call, I put it in the day or two before’s day and write down “Research Jackie’s email issue” so I know to do that before the call.
Yep, I still use my Outlook calendar. Nope, I don’t use the tasks. Mostly because the task list doesn’t follow me computer to computer at the three locations I go to for work.
Two final tips: Using dropbox is nice because it saves a copy “in the cloud” that you can get from any computer in the world and you can use it on your smart phone. So you are never really without it, its very nice and a time saver.
How many of you remember “the old days” when we only knew of AOL for internet searching? Then jump a few years, maybe to 1997 and or so and we had Internet Explorer in it’s 4th and famous life. Remember “Best viewed in IE 4.0”. Hah! I remember that oh so well especially since I had to use Netscape Composer for our web design class and not everything would view right in Netscape, so viewing it in IE was best. Ok, that didn’t make sense, but back then that’s how it was.
Moving along 14 years later, we have many choices for our internet surfing. IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera are the most downloaded by the average person. I tend to believe it’s down to what you like best for the look of the browswer, how you like surfing, using tabs, using the add-ons, plug-ins, etc. I still use IE as my main browser, probably because I used it so much in my past life as a corporate brat it’s been hard to get off it. But I have to admit that as much as I am used to IE, this past year I have delved into the world of FF and Chrome. (I have to also admit, that I have troubleshooted FF more than I have used it, so I know it, just didn’t use it).
Firefox (FF) has been around long enough and had enough updates and whatnot that it’s now bringing the business more work than ever. Believe it or not, we have clients who actually pay us to fix their FF over the simple usual fix of “reinstalling” because of their FF **bling** I call it. All the special settings and all their plug-ins, add-ons, drive people to fixing over reinstalling. And I understand where they are coming from, so we at CTG work hard to not have to reinstall.
Chrome is the new hottie in town and I have to admit, I am kinda digging it too. I am finding it easier to do a few things, it appears faster than IE for browsing, the look is better and the downloads are eye blinking fast. For the past two months or so I have forced myself to use Chrome on a daily basis and have to admit, it’s now becoming my favorite. Unfortunately, I still have to use IE because some of my internet based programs will not work in Chrome (mostly work tools).
Now, to answer the question posted in the title, which one is best for you? Any of them. Just make sure when you download it, you get it from it’s website and not through another website, could be a link to a virus. Be aware that FF and Chrome use the “download” feature by default, so you will have to look for what you are trying to download to run it (usually in the Tools area (FF) or at the bottom (Chrome). IE users are used to the pop up box that allows you to “Run or Save” the downloads.) This is the most confusing I think for new users. As all programs have settings options, you can change that option in the browsers.
If you are a simple internet user that doesn’t need all the extras, IE is still just fine for you. If you are a bit more interested in seeing what else is out there, download FF and try it out. Go to Google and type in “Firefox” and the link will be at the top for you to download from Mozilla (ok, it was Mozilla back in the day, then renamed to Firefox in 2004). To try out Chrome, just go to Google and you will probably see the download button on the right side if you don’t have it installed.
That’s it tonight folks, just a few thoughts for my clients and fans that are not into all the different browsers yet! Not for my tech buddies who all know way more than me who get the feeds. Just a lil disclaimer:)
